http://www.thomasplummer.net/ If what you are doing isn't working, then what you are doing isn't working, and in business the opposite of failure is always the necessity to change.I have written for years that many of the people who own businesses, or make their living running them on a daily basis, would rather ride the business into complete and utter failure rather than face the pain of making major change in what they are doing. It is hard to contemplate, but failure is often seen as a more preferable option than putting your shoulder down and driving through the wall of inertia that separates you from current reality and the growth and freedom on the other side. For years I always thought people fought change because of arrogance. Changing course would be admitting that what you are doing isn't working and this is especially painful if what you are doing was your idea. Admitting the need to change is admitting that you were wrong, and few people who ever get into that position of leadership and power like to admit that maybe the course they have set isn't going to reach the goal. The fitness business is now changing faster than almost anyone can keep up. Functional training, the advent of the literate trainer, the failure of the box style business plan, the cannibalism of the low priced players, the increasing sophistication of the clients we serve and the general frustration by the consumer that fitness centers only exist to take money from people who will never use their services have all combined to create an industry that seems lost, dazed and inept. It is interesting to note that the chain players fight change the hardest. This worldwide group spends all their time, money and assets wishing for the past to return. If only we can find the right special, funding, unique line of equipment or programming the membership sales will return to past glory days. When your wife goes away for a few days to "find her own space" and takes your pool boy with her, and you are too desperate to remember you don't even have a pool, she isn't coming back-not now, not ever-and neither are the glory days of fitness. On the other side are the training club owners who live by change and whose businesses exist solely due to the fact that the chain players failed so miserably in "the getting clients in shape" portion of their business. If the chains understood how to get people in shape, there would be no need for training clubs. These training club owners were born of change and will lead the charge for the next generation. Change is inevitable in this business during the next five years and here are a few rules that might help you get that shoulder into that ever-growing wall of fear and inertia: ·Realize that your current numbers don't reflect a downturn, but your new reality. If your sales numbers have been flat, or are declining, for more than three months, this isn't the sign of a short-term trend, but your new reality. This is where you are, and where you will always be, unless you realize that change is the only tool you own that will help you escape. ·Commit to change fully. Most of the chain players act like an old lady at a public swimming pool who takes an hour to get wet. First one toe, then maybe all the toes and eventually she sits on the wall with her feet in. By the time she gets into the pool the rest of the family is packed and ready to go home. This is like the box club guys who want to put in a functional room with just a few limited pieces of equipment to see if it works first. By the time he messes around with a fake change, the rest of the industry has passed by the window. This strategy guarantees that it will fail because you failed to commit. Get naked, run hard and jump into the damn pool. What you are doing is failing, so where is the risk at committing to a new, broader plan? ·Realize that someone is going to get pissed. Some members, and key staff, refuse to change and they need to go home now. So many owners stall on making change due to fear of making some members mad or through the agony of fighting resistant staff. Members will get mad and there is little you can do about it but replace them. The big picture is that if your business plan generates X now, and it has tapped out as proven by a flat growth line, then losing a few members will open the door and allow you go to get your business to Y, something that can't be accomplished with your current plan. The old adage is right: the needs of the many are more important than the needs of the few and you might have to take a few casualties to get change done. And if you have a resistant staff then explain fully, take some time but in the end some will not be able to grow and they need to be replaced. ·Get your staff involved early. The larger chains especially suffer from this lack of internal information. The staff needs to be informed early and often as to what is happening, how it affects them and how it affects the members. Your team can't support change if they don't understand what is happening ·Inform the members. Members that see stuff happening, but don't understand it, will make up incredible, negative stories to fill the void. Members hate a vacuum and left without information will make up some incredible bullshit to fill that void. Get them letters, email, Facebook posts and Twitter feeds early and often ·You have to change the culture, not patch the hole. Major change requires a change in the culture of the business. For example, when Howard Schultz returned to save Starbucks, he shut down all the stores in the world for an afternoon of training and corporate re-indoctrination. He realized that change could not happen until the culture that supported the failure also changed. Most box players are only willing to make superficial changes rather than committing to a culture change strategy that defines what the business stands for and what it will be in the future ·Lead: don't follow. I will never understand why any company good enough to build over a 100 clubs ultimately fails because the owners are waiting to see if someone else is doing it first. The, "I am waiting to see if anyone else does it" excuse is another way of saying that you are incapable of judging the information and making a decision for yourself. If you can't make a decision yourself then your company needs to fire you and hire the guy that is going first. How many fortunes have been lost because someone has a good idea but is too scared to go first? Every industry has a leader and why aren't you leading this one? Think Steve Jobs ever waited to see if anyone else would come out with an IPod first? How did that work out for Microsoft? There has been more change in the fitness industry during the last few years than there has been during the last three decades or longer. Seeking and planning for change is not only good business but also the only way a number of the big boxes will survive. If all else fails, remember one thing: if it isn't painful, then it isn't a big enough change to make a difference. Mon, 7 May 2012 10:00:43 -0500 Don showed up to the club everyday, six days a week and had been doing that for 11 years. He became a member the third month the club opened and he considered himself one of the original members in the club. The only day he missed was Sunday, and that was only because his wife said she would divorce him if he didn't at least go to church with her once a week. The group always met in the big chairs in front of the shake bar every morning. The average age of all the guys, which sometimes numbered as many as six, was about 60. Everyone in the gang ambled in for morning coffee around 6:30 a.m. carrying gym bags, or if they were retired, they sported every old, tired tee shirt and short combination imaginable. No one wore new stuff, unless it was after Christmas and you had to wear what your wife gave your for at least a week, because new stuff wasn't as cool as wearing the same beat up workout shirt for 10 years in a row. There was status in a tee shirt that was old and most of the shirts were either acquired free or were from some long forgotten vacation. These guys were gentlemen loved by the staff and the other members. If one missed, the group was concerned and if anyone needed help the gang was usually there moving furniture, helping with a home project or doing whatever was needed. Sometimes these guys even worked out. Most of them did the same circuit, using the same reps and same weights, year after year. On off days, they all walked on the treads slowly talking to each other up and down the row, but never fast enough where you couldn't hold a good conversation. Don died of a heart attack at age 60 and he died because we failed him. He died because we all knew that what he had been calling fitness for the last 11 years was in reality nothing more than a gentle stroll on the tread followed by a circuit that hadn't challenged his body since the first month he started as a member. We failed Don, and all the other guys, and all the other members like Don, because we knew that what he was doing wasn't good for him or enough of a challenge and we let him get away with it. Of course there might be other reasons associated with Don's death, but for 11 years, six days a week, we knew that what he was doing in this gym was working against him and we definitely did not do our job and intervene. The real issue is how hard do you want to push the Dons in your business? Even trainer gyms have clients that do as little as possible and after a few years we just let them get away with it. We love them, take their money, and make a few suggestions that they should work harder, but mostly we accept that fact that this client just isn't motivated and he just keeps moving at his own speed. We do not do the clients, members or ourselves any good by ignoring what we know to be harmful behavior. If you have these members, you have to do whatever possible to change the behavior and at some point you might be better off pushing enough that the client either changes or leaves. We can justify ourselves and say that at least Don was moving a little every day, but in reality we could also show how much we care, and how much we believe in what we are doing, by pushing hard to get more out of the people who give us money, but don't get what they pay for in exchange. We owe guys like Don our best attempt to give them more then they sometimes get from us. We have to remember that we are in the fitness business, not the clubhouse business and if we know that what the member is doing is detrimental to his own well being then we need to sit the member down and have the talk. If you accept the money; then failing the member is not an option, and the responsibility becomes ours to do what we can, and beyond, to help every member live a long and healthy life. Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:05:54 -0500 Fitness does not sell, and will never sell, and we spend too much time trying to force the concept of fitness down the consumer's throat. Dave Chesser, owner of Formosa Fitness in Taiwan, and who makes frequent comments on my Face Book pages, recently asked a challenging question that seemed to big just to quickly answer on FB, although I did attempt to give it a short blast. His question was, "In The Business of Fitness you wrote that fitness doesn't sell and never will. Do you see the rise of training clubs as changing that situation?" You can't answer this question without defining the words, "working out." Fitness to all of us means there has to be an effort made by the client to sweat a little, move a lot and chase a defined goal that equates to our version of fitness. Working out is the action the client takes, and that we direct, to get the job done. The problem with this definition is that what we think of as fitness is seldom what the client is seeking or wants to attain. In other words, there is a huge disconnect between what we think he should be doing and what he really wants to have happen. Perhaps the strongest example is an early Crossfit video I recently viewed that showed two women working out and one of them having an emotional breakdown during the workout. I was on the site because I like Crossfit and think their contribution to group fitness and training is vastly underrated due to a few weak trainers that get too many people injured. Greg Glassman's original writings and theories are simple and strong and I find the workouts fascinating. I do think it is a shame; however, that such a powerful concept gets tainted by a few coaches that just live too far over the edge. Most of the Crossfit people I have meant are sincere; don't make the money they should, and deeply care about the health and safety of their clients and much of Glassman's early genius is lost due to a few clouding the image of many. The video in question showed a fit woman sobbing near the end of her workout, yet she kept going. She commented that working out is an emotional high for her and that she often cries if the workout is challenging and pushes her. There was even a comment on the video about how motivating a trainer found this video and how he wished that he could evoke this same passion in his clients. The disconnect is that a trainer could look at this video and get really excited about the workout and the challenge, but the vast majority of clients would mutter that your spandex is too tight on your lower unit cutting the blood flow off to your head. What gets us excited, which is fitness done passionately, is also what drives away clients. In other words, being a purist is a great way to achieve maximum fitness, but a very poor way to attract and sustain clients in sufficient numbers. The sufficient numbers part is important. Any good trainer can always attract a band of followers that will work until death seeking the approval of the trainer. In this case, a good trainer is no different than a good preacher: both attract that tight band of followers that believe in you and will follow you and do anything you ask. The failure of course is that 20-30 loyalists seldom combine to pay enough for the trainer or the preacher to make a living doing what they were born to do. If you have 20-30 clients, but have to have another job to support yourself and the business is more of a hobby, then you have missed the big picture, which is you can make money doing what you love if you follow the passion but drop the purism. We have to realize that fitness is just another tool for the client to use to seek a higher plane of living. The mistake is that we make fitness the goal and forget, due to our passion, that the client seeks fitness for totally different reasons. There is nothing better to me than hitting the gym, throwing some kettle bells around, listen to some music, and try and push myself (most days/some days just survival is the goal) to new limits or try new exercises. Often the workout is the best part of my day and is something I plan for even on trips. The clients, on the other hand, tolerate fitness as something that has to be done to enhance other things in their lives. Fitness means looser clothes, a higher chance of getting laid this weekend, a job promotion, a higher chance of getting laid this weekend, keeping up with the kids or walking on the beach with a significant other and of course having a higher chance of getting laid this weekend. Looking better naked is still a driver for many people and fitness is just a tool to get that done. The problem is that we try to sell fitness as something logical. We want you to workout so you will live longer, enjoy more health, lose weight, have fewer health issues or increase your energy. Logical doesn't sell and logical doesn't attract new clients. Living longer is only important if you are 85 and logically I understand that having a glass of wine offsets a lot of fitness, but I trade the emotional satisfaction of a glass with friends giving up the logical fitness reasoning that I should be drinking Fiji water out of metal bottle specially made by Patagonia and chewing on some home baked almonds without salt (die purists die). There is a wonderful book call, "Switch" by Chip Heath, which addresses how to target the emotional context of an argument. The analogy the authors use is that the logical mind is like a rider on an elephant, while the elephant represents the emotional side of the person. You can't talk logic to the rider; you have to appeal to the elephant. This is a simplistic representation, but read the book. Will trainers change all of this? Training clubs are the perfect vehicles for change, but most trainers do not have the mindset. Traditional training, especially one-on-one, is nasty ass boring and the traditional studio that turns the client over like a grade school class change every hour when the bell rings kills all chance for energy and achieving a sense of belonging. But the training clubs have a huge advantage over the boxes in that belonging to a special community, again something that Crossfit does well, sells and protects the clients. If you can create this community, you can have clients that stay longer and pay longer than the other guy. If trainers want to make money, and change the world, everyone needs to understand that the client is there simply because he is trying to get somewhere else. We have to understand that most don't want to end the workout sobbing and most don't view working out as a religious or orgasmic experience. Our jobs is to light them up with energy, group dynamics, fun, music and the occasional free glass of wine. We have to strive to be the best part of their day everyday and not something they dread over time, because they do not want to hear one more lecture on diet or how to live the pure life. Purism doesn't sell, and neither does fitness as a goal. What does sell is a crazed trainer willing to understand that the client is there to escape everything else in his life and he needs another lecture like he needs another ex-wife or stressful job. Dave, if you're going to error, error on the side that it is better to just sometimes sit down, buy the client a glass and not take this fitness crap too seriously. If all else fails, turn up the music, get a pile of people moving and make sure everyone leaves laughing. If you can make that happen a few times a week, they got what they paid for, and most importantly, they will be back. Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:36:31 -0500 Dan John has been mentioned many times in my writings over the last few years, especially since he released his book, "Never Let Go," which I still think is an essential read for any trainer or any box owner trying to develop a training-centric business philosophy. Dan has of course continued to write and has released several other books and DVDs since I first starting writing about him and I have even used some of his philosophy in keynote addresses I have done for Perform Better. As much as I like his work, the books are not what makes Dan John important in our industry. Why I think he is a powerful role model for all trainers is not what he writes, which I find funny and often brilliant, but who he is and what he represents to all of us who work trying to make a living in fitness. The usual professional course of education for most trainers in our field is to start out as a dangerous human with little practical knowledge, but an enormous amount of theory and arrogance, and a personal theory derived from books and magazine articles as to how a person should be trained. These new trainers agonize over the perfect workout, over train virtually everyone and are the crazy purist idiots that embarrass themselves at restaurants trying to impress everyone with how clean they live and eat. This is also, by the way, why you should never eat dinner with trainers. It takes an hour to order the meal, as the trainer has to discuss with the ever-patient waiter types of oil, origin of meat, freshness of vegetables, and then humiliate the entire table as he whips out his own organic mustard and pre-meal dried meat snack. We get it, you live pure, now order a big hunk of carcass, drink a good beer and just workout a little harder tomorrow. You will live and you will survive dinner out at 90% pure, but just once realize that life, and diet, are not perfect. Luckily, the idiot stage only lasts for a year or so and then the trainer moves into hunger for knowledge stage where he travels the world following the gurus and spends hours with his other trainer friends discussing the latest Cosgrove post or Todd Durkin video. Every word is absorbed, every nuance copied, every book read and he never misses a Perform Better Summit, or any other training agenda, where he can stalk his heroes and get the rare chance to ask questions and "hang out" with his Gods of fitness philosophy. After this phase fades, a few continue the quest for life long education while most stagnate, trapped by their own success. Develop a successful business, fill your life with clients and family and then never learn anything new again is the chosen path. Over time, what you know is what you know and a new idea has about the same chance of getting through the dense, and usually shaven head, as a vegetarian does sneaking into a CrossFit convention. Which brings us back to Dan. Dan represents what we all should be, which is a seeker of what works, not only in training, but in life as well. His career and his life represent a never ending search for how things work and how to not only be a good man in the classic sense, but also how to bring that trait out in others, which alone is something to make your life's work. He also represents the best of what a leader should be in that he is fair, humble, willing to help anyone who needs or wants his help, seeks a higher power through a lifelong career teaching how to think about religion and higher power to students, and is not afraid to say he tried something, believed it for awhile, and then decided he was wrong and he moves on. His life is a testimony to passion for coaching and yet he is the proverbial man of all seasons who, thinks, drinks now and then, is not afraid to eat bad food, thinks and teaches about faith, will share his knowledge for a fee but usually free whenever asked, and despite all his success will stand and answer questions until the last knucklehead rookie leaves the room. Perhaps the trait that he wears best, and is probably the most important thing that a young trainer should learn from him, is that over time you have to develop your own philosophy on training and on life as well. Following gurus can help you get started on the trail, especially if you follow the honest men and women in the world, such as Mike Boyle, Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, Lee Burton and Gray Cook, Greg Rose, Todd Durkin, Mark Verstegen, Coach Dos, Jason Glass, John Berardi, Eric Cressey and all the others who are willing to do your thinking for you and then share their best and the brightest opinions without arrogance, and usually with patience, driven by the simple need to help others around them succeed. I have watched Dan teach and am surprised at his patience to share without the need to always be right, another brutal trait of the young trainer who only knows his way or no way. Dan has spent a lifetime to finally get the recognition he deserves; yet he takes all the new attention and success as if he was just waiting on the side of the stage waiting for his turn to be called. His goal for his students and readers is to emulate to learn but you have to surpass the masters to make a difference. You are in fact the sum of the questions you ask and your willingness to learn. When I am asked about the future of the fitness business, I usually respond by stating that the big box membership era is on dangerous ground and that most of what we have presented as fitness to the public during the last several decades is at best somewhat worthless and is mostly failing the consumer and as a business model. There is hope, however, and the future of our industry, and the endurance of the common belief that what we do makes a difference in so many lives, is safe because change is coming from the trainer up and not from the big chains that only want to sell memberships to people who they hope they never see again. And of course, who is nurturing this new generation of leaders. It's the new hero, such as Dan John and all the other gurus who are willing to share what they know and teach those who are next to be more than their teachers. Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:31:43 -0500 There used to be a time in the past where I believed every owner could succeed in this business if he or she wanted it bad enough. Somewhere, no matter how badly beaten the person was, we could find a way to get the person righted and financially successful. My belief was simple: No one fails-everyone wins. Over time, I learned that I was only half right. The problems the owner had could indeed be identified, solved and his business could be turned around. Applying the simple rules of business works everywhere and if someone is failing it is because he has strayed from these rules. Figure out the mistakes, correct the issues and this guy should be able to make money. Intellectually, this all is logical. Reality is a tough thing for me. I believed, and still do, that we are doing the right thing in this business. We help people and we change lives, which is a worthwhile way to spend your life. There are, of course, many owners who are in the business to cheat, steal, rape, pillage and otherwise do anything they can to take the money and run with no concern for the damage to the client, the market, the industry or even their soul. Sadly, there are still guys like this out there and the system hasn't yet corrected everyone. But over the years I have finally come to admit that there is another group that fails in business because that is what they want to do. This groups fights, postures, screams and goes through the motions, but unconsciously their train is heading for the cliff and there is little anyone can do to prevent the catastrophe that results from their ultimate failure. They fail because they can't, or won't, do what it takes to succeed. Here are a few reasons people fail in this industry and what you can learn from these nightmares: It is nobler, and you get more attention, by suffering. This is the owner whom would have been happy hundreds of years ago wandering the streets in dirty clothes talking about the return of a forgotten saint, living under a bridge and eating out of a garbage can. His suffering is his identity and if he gives that up he loses his noble reason to fight. Today, this is the guy who works stupid hours, makes little money, yet loves to brag about how tough the business is but he is not giving up. He is a martyr to the gods of small business and lives to let everyone know how tough it is, but he is paying the price to someday make it. This guy will never make it, because success cancels out his right to complain to his wife how hard he is working and how hard the business it. Money would ruin him because he is happier as the poor, hardworking tough guy rather than being the successful guy with money in his pocket. His identity is the suffering and he can't bear to lose that supposed admiration he gets for taking the daily beating and proclaiming, "Poor, poor me the overworked business guy." This guy also doubles as a purist in many cases and is the one who always shouts about him being the only guy who can train people, who knows how to sell or who can keep this business running. Only his magical bullshit is holding this place together and if he would ever take a day off the whole thing would crumble to dust and blow into the streets. No one but him has the answers and no one but him will ever have the answers, because to recognize others you would also have to recognize that what you are doing isn't working and isn't the answer. This is the toughest guy to identify because he always says the right things and works hard. If you are this guy, or suspect you might be, you have to ask yourself how you feel about money? Do you take more pride in your bank account or the struggle? Do you really believe that you are the only one who can run that business or train that client? Do you fight new ideas, not because they are wrong, but because you would have to change and that those ideas might work? The nicest person who ever lived. This is the owner who makes it his life's work to carry every worthless employee for way too many years, hates confrontation and lets all the employees do things their way because he doesn't want to upset them. Every employee in this business that should be fired has a personal horror story, such as a sick kid, a pending divorce or big bills. The owner can't ever correct these people due to personal guilt and every employee knows this and plays the guy like a 2:00 a.m. drunk in a strip club. You owe the employees an opportunity. You do not owe them guaranteed success. You should provide a safe work environment, opportunity for education and advancement and the ability to make a living wage. Once these criteria are met, it is now up to the employee to do his share by performing the job. The issue of course is that this type of employee seldom if ever does the job because he has been trained not to by the employer. Why work when you are guaranteed a paycheck for just showing up and whining about your broken car, sick kid or husband that hates you? Work is two ways: the owner creates an opportunity and the employee accepts the money and does the work. If either side fails in this, the other person should leave the game. As an owner, you have to live with the reality that once you create opportunity and give pay, then if the employee won't/can't do the work then fire his ass Monday morning and get on it with it. There are a lot of other people out there who will do the work if given the training and opportunity. As a side note here, if you constantly hire people who can't do the job, it is either you and your training approach, or you might be paying too little and attracting idiots, which is the industry norm. Talent cost money and few owners are willing to pay for talent when stupidity is so cheap There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. If a good employee has a bad run of luck, then work with him or her. Cars do break, people do get divorced and things do go bad that affects good people. You can't, however, get into the trap that this becomes a way of life for you and the employee. Here is where the 3-Gs come into affect. The rule of thumb is that once a good employee hits a bad time, such as a divorce; give the person a couple of weeks to deal with it. At the end of that time period, he now has to Get back in it, Get on with it and Get with it now. If he is still a wreck, that is tough, but you still have your business to run and your life to manage and carrying someone who will be in a funk forever isn't going to help you stay in business. The person who seeks everyone's opinion but does nothing. This is perhaps the most common way to fail. This is the person who calls five times a week; then calls someone else five times that week and then emails everyone to make sure she understands what to do, and then, of course, does nothing. When you are talking to her as a business coach, you become frustrated because you realize that she is now arguing with you about what to do and is using arguments from other coaches. The best advice as a coach here is to walk away, and the best advice for her is to pick someone she wants to work with, layout five things to do this week and then get your ass moving. You could also define this person as the deer in the headlight person who freezes once things get tough. The business once might have worked, but as markets or times change every business struggles. This owner is the one who brings in a bunch of different experts and then works them against each other looking for that magic combination of words or that magical theory that will turn the business in a few days. The only magic in hard business is selling someone something everyday. Pick one line of advice and go to work. Get some leads, sell come clients and work your way out of the mess. It is that simple, and it is that hard. The saddest thing about these clients is that this group is usually the best and the brightest who could really be someone. The inability to pull the trigger and do the work prevents them using that talent to make money. These are the ones who have a checklist of five things and a week later she hasn't done a single one of those things, but she now has a bigger list of even better things she has gathered from being on the phone all week instead of getting into the gym and doing meaningful work. Failure in this business hurts all of us. That greedy bastard that was selling paid-in-full memberships the day before he closed rocks that market for years. The owner who fails overwhelmed by the noble struggle still failed and took down the bank, the parents and everyone else who believed in him. Failure is failure and there is really nothing noble about a valiant effort. Most of success in this business is mental, meaning you are prepared to succeed and are willing to do what it takes to get there. Some of you, though, have that hidden self-destruct button that gets hit every time you start to get it going. If you have been in business for a number of years, but still haven't made it yet financially, ask yourself if you are the roadblock to your own success. The difference between making money and failing might be staring at you in the mirror every morning. Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:51:54 -0500 In almost all small business, owners fall into two categories: the ones who simply focus on hanging on to what they already have and the ones who seek growth and are willing to accept a little risk in the process. The first category is called maintenance people and the second group is called risk takers. Maintenance owners focus on just one thing: keeping what they have already achieved even if what they have is not enough to be successful over time. Owners that plan their month by just matching the same numbers as the facility did last year are examples of a maintenance management style. Owners who hang on to equipment for an extra year past its life span, put off painting their facility for another six months, rip-off programming instead of buying proven systems and who hire the youngest and dumbest staff because they can be hired cheaply are all signs that this operator is more focused on just keeping things going rather than trying to grow the business. Risk traders are much more rare in small business and are willing to take a little risk if it will give them an advantage in the market, or if that risk will allow them to grow their business to a higher financial level. Risk is also where life is lived, out there on the edge where the best things happen to those who seek adventure. Moderation, or seeking to maintain everything and avoid any extreme, is where life is lost. Who, for example, ever shouted at the birth of their child, or during a wild vacation, or even perhaps the day you first fell in love, that "Yes, it was an unbelievably moderate day?" I would rather drink the wine and do a few extra pushups than deal with the restraints of living a moderate life. The risk takers are also the owners who market each month, invest early in proven programs, have a more mature and better trained staff capable of generating income and who are willing to sacrifice a little now in the business, such as painting the club as needed each year, in order to achieve higher retention numbers later. Risk traders are willing to gamble a little if it will improve their business and are the ones who seek growth rather than taking the chance of becoming stagnant in the market. In any small business, only about 20 percent of the players make money, about 60 percent just do enough to stay in business and the bottom 20 percent need to get out and get a job somewhere because they should have never, ever, opened their own business. Risk traders are in included in the top 20 percent and maintenance people are the 60 percent and perhaps a small percentage of the bottom dwellers. Perhaps the biggest problem with becoming a hardcore maintenance management style is that you end up relying on tools and techniques that are no longer effective. There are the guys still out there in the market place who keep doing what they did 10 years ago and now wonder why it no longer works. For example, in today's market there is pretty good evidence that most of worked in the 90s doesn't really work today for the club or the member. Long, slow cardio has been proven ineffective for weight loss, crunches destroy your back, circuit training has about a six week window and then fails for the client, and most standard club business practices, such as the pursuit of pure membership volume, is getting harder to do since so many owners are now flocking toward low price and there are now too many fighting for a shrinking segment of the same market share. Staying focused on what is important in your business is the foundation of what it takes to be financially successful over time and often is what separates the maintenance people from the risk takers who make money. The key to developing a focused management style is learning how to keep your business focused daily on creating revenue as well as learning how to project your business into the future over time. Focused management helps you avoid the new, bad idea and makes the need to chase the bright shiny distraction less appealing. Part of a risk taker management style is learning to be proactive in your business instead of operating as a reactive to your competition and to what they are doing in the market. To become proactive, you need to understand the importance of planning. Every owner should have these planning tools in motion at all times: ·A plan for the coming month ·A plan for the next 24-hours for your staff ·A plan for the next 90 days for growth ·Other planning tools you will need in your business ·A12-month marketing plan ·A staff training plan ·A member service plan Most owners are totally reactionary by nature. If the guy down the street runs an ad, you run an ad; if the guy down the street lowers his price, you lower your price; if sales slow down for a day or two, you panic and run crazy price specials hoping you can pack the club overnight. The guy down the street is not any better of an operator than you probably are, but he is trying to move forward, and even a weak plan is better than no plan or no action. He too is running ads under the same conditions that you are in your business - without a long-term plan, and probably in reaction to current market conditions or to what he views his competitors are doing. There are many problems with being a reactionary manager, but perhaps the main one is that you let business happen to you--you don't make it happen or create the business you want. This means you're not creating or growing your business, or your revenue, by a plan, but rather you're letting your business be dictated by the surrounding, short-term market conditions. Another name for this is situational management, which means you react to whatever situation or catastrophe that is in front of you at the time rather then working off a set, well thought out plan that keeps you focused on what is important in your business over time. For example, let's say a club owner wants to generate 60 new memberships a month. Most club owners do set a sales number they would like to achieve that month and most do some random marketing and then hope for the best. Their sales people may be given a few quotas and the owner may increase marketing that month; but there is still no actual plan in place to generate sales. Setting a number is just a small part of focusing your business. Remember that it is not just setting the number that is important, but the "how I will make money and make that number happen" and the "what is my written plan to make money" that is really the most important part of the equation. What kind of owner are you? Do you constantly seek growth and are willing to risk what you have now for something bigger later or are you the owner that thinks good enough is good enough and you struggle to keep what you have? This also applies to employees too. Many people get stuck in jobs they hate because the known, such as a consistent paycheck, is a stronger anchor than risking your security for something you do love and that would move your career forward. The problem with this is that at some point you wake up, maybe at a birthday that ends with a zero, which is always an event that gets most people thinking, and you realize that a large chunk of your life slipped by and you are nowhere now and going nowhere in the future. Sadly, you become what you fear most, which is a dead end job with no future and no chance for you to become the person you should have been. Tue, 7 Feb 2012 09:30:19 -0500 There is no such thing as perfect in small business and seeking perfection can often kill what could have been a successful operation. Seeking perfection is based upon the premise, "Build it and they will come." This old movie line strongly states the belief system of an owner who wastes immense time and money trying to buy the perfect club. This is the owner who will spends three days at a trade show going from equipment booth to equipment booth assembling the "perfect" line of equipment. He tries every piece, makes a list and then orders random stuff from 10 different suppliers. His belief is that if he can just find the perfect line then members will seek him out and stay forever because he is the only one in the market who knows equipment. This is also the guy who builds a new club and then goes $2,000,000 over budget building something too big and stuffing it with every piece of equipment he could cram into the shell. His thought here is that he will crush the competitors since he has more stuff and a bigger club than anyone else in the market. He obsesses over every detail and spends more than the club can ever return believing that the biggest training floor and the biggest locker rooms will be the determiner between failure and financial success. Even the big chain players fall for that trap. How would you like to put $30,000,000 into a club and then discover that you have the same retention problems that the little guy down the street has, the one who you laughed at when you opened against him, and that this huge box you created does little to attract and even less to keep members. Even the trainer heads suffer from the disease of perfect. If only he can attend enough workshops, join enough mastermind groups and get enough certifications he will become the perfect trainer able to create the perfect workout. This is the guy who runs his own picture in the newspaper and on the website and then lists all his accumulated initials behind his name. This trainer also becomes the guy who is the most frustrated when he realizes that all that education makes him knowledgeable, but hasn't done much to create wealth in his life. This is also the guy who can spend two days with the Cosgrove's or Durkin and not hear a word they say about business, but who will walk away with 20 pages of notes about the perfect dynamic warm up. What we have to realize is that perfect is not a business plan. In fact, the search for perfection is what kills many fitness businesses, and many more trainers, because at some point everyone realizes that there is no perfection and if there was, the clients couldn't care less anyway. We also have to realize that anyone who spends that much time and money to educate himself or build the perfect box isn't doing it for the client, he is doing it for himself and his own ego. Perfection is all about you and little if anything to do with the client. We can lie to ourselves and tell everyone that when this big $9,000,000 gym is done it will generate big money by attracting members, but in reality, the box is nothing more than a monument to our own ego and is nothing more than a shrine to little dicks everywhere What the clients do care about is results delivered by someone who gives a damn about them. If the member were really the target, then the choices would be different. For example, the owner who buys five treads each from every major maker tells everyone that he wants to give the members variety and that this concept sells in the market. The truth is, however, that the members would simply love a lot of good treads that have adequate replacement parts so nothing stays down long when it breaks, and it will. Will a guy with six brands on the floor stock parts for all six? Not likely, but the ego part of the equation is that the owner got a lot of attention from the vendors, probably got some free stuff, and can be a rock god at the trades shows getting invited to parties and dinners. Keeping the member in the top of mind position is where the money is made in the business, but often the member slides to the bottom of the pile behind personal ego, showing off to the competitors and creating a business that is a testament to your own self-satisfaction. This is why so many small training clubs make a lot of money; the trainer cares and gets results even if the place isn't a beautiful physical plant and this is also why big boxes struggle these days. Members are beyond endless rows of equipment and actually want results, something the box players never designed into their business plans. If the member was truly top of mind with the other trainers, the trainer would pick one guru to follow for information, attend a few workshops a year to stay current and then spend the rest of the time studying business, facility design and member service. The hardest part to grasp here is that once you achieve a certain level of competence as a professional everything else is then about delivering results to a satisfied customer, and all the information in the world is worthless if you can't knock five pounds off a chubby housewife and then get her in shape over time. The simple rule is that perfection almost always works against success for the member. Creating a member driven service business is the plan, but to achieve that you have to park your ego at the door and remember that the fitness business is nothing more than helping people get in better shape over time at a place where they are respected for the money they spend with you. Every decision you make has to reflect only one thing; the member has to stay at top of mind. Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:34:53 -0500 Huge isn't Always Better At some point you cross a line where just enough becomes too much. One scoop of ice cream is nice; three becomes a stomachache. A few glasses of wine with friends makes for a relaxing evening, but after several bottles one of those friends often becomes a drunken ass. Muscle and strength is beautiful; too much and you're a freak on Muscle and Fiction. And we don't even want to start on the fine line between, "Wow, that woman is hot" and "Those giant fake boobs are so hilarious." Somewhere in the fitness world we also let, "More is better," become the standard we all sought, but after searching for the perfect club for so many years I can safely state that enormous physical plants do not guarantee a good experience, and in most cases the bigger the club the worse the workout. Fitness is shrinking and what used to take thousands of square feet can now be done better in smaller spaces. In the 90s, we used to put a premium on the size of the workout floor and every Gold's Gym in America was proud to advertise how much workout space they had. It seemed logical at the time: the more space you had meant the more equipment you had, and the more equipment you had to use the better workout you could get. More meant variety and the larger the club the better it must have been outfitted for the ultimate workout experience. Recently, I visited a large box club that was a part of a national chain. The club was over 100,000 square feet and I was there on a weekday night. It took me over 10 minutes once I was in the parking lot to find a space and get to the door. Check-in was packed and there was another 10 minutes getting a day pass. I was in this for over 20 minutes and was still no further than the front desk. Just as I started back toward the workout floors, a sales person appeared and it took me another five minutes to convince him that I wasn't a potential sale, but that I was from out of town and just there for a day pass. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but the locker rooms, which were also huge, were in the back of the club, which added a long wander about in a 100,000 square feet. Once out of there, I was off in search of the workout floor. This club had what seemed like acres of fixed plane, single joint circuit equipment with hardly anyone using it. The classes seemed to be going well, the free weight area had people and the small functional area was packed. Working out in this behemoth was an exercise in frustration. We are talking about one of the bigger clubs in the country and yet there was no space for a warm up, there was no place to toss a med ball and there was no space to swing a kettle. If there was anything amusing about this place, it was that I found myself standing in a corner of a $33 million dollar club using a few dollars worth of equipment that the owners felt was secondary and stuck it in a corner. Despite what they hype, working out with several thousand of your closest friends in not a sales point. This lack of space, the inability to move and workout, the shear waste of equipment and the stupidity of creating a huge club that locks people into tiny spaces are all reasons that not only the giant players are struggling but the low priced guys too. Somewhere along the line, the member has learned that it isn't the tool that builds a good house; it is the skill of the carpenter. What is the perfect club these days? To me it is smaller, with about 600 members max, has coaching for sale at various levels, yet I can come and workout on my own with a plan provided by the club. And what about the price? How much do you think the top 5% of the members of a $10 club or some mass production national chain would pay to get out of those hellholes? The financial future of fitness, meaning which businesses will generate the highest net per member, is not trying to stuff an impersonal box with 10,000 members. The future is creating a service intensive, training-centric business where everyone who is a member gets the maximum help and, therefore, the maximum results. If you own a box, the challenge is to create a price structure that allows you to generate a higher return from fewer members. This is a concept, however, that is so foreign to these operators that most will fail rather than adjust. Seeking volume as your only business plan must be like the person who takes that first hit of crack and then ruins the rest of his life seeking the next high. Training clubs with less than 750 members are generating over $2 million a year, which is often more than big boxes can do with 3000 members. Making that transition mentally seems harder than making if physically in the clubs. The industry is changing and the perfect club in the future just might be that 6,000-10,000 square foot training club that has that intimate feel and that becomes something the consumer looks forward to several times a week rather than trudging through a giant parking lot and trying to get through a workout that must be endured or survived rather than valued. Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:18:12 -0500 The issue that confuses most owners of box clubs or training facilities is price. When clubs hurt for business, the owner figures all it could be is the price, and immediately he lowers his price believing that once the price comes down, the memberships go up. The low-price guys have believed this for a decade and the value chains, such as Planet Fitness, have built a company based upon price and the illusion that they exist solely for the beginner who is threatened by the bodybuilders, who don't really exist anymore anyway. Talking about dated marketing: trying to scare a consumer with a boogey man that isn't out there anymore. The low-priced guys are also now gobbling each other up like a starving jackal turning on its injured buddy. They are creating their own problems by mass copying of the same business plan by so many new players and those problems are going to get worse for them as more and more $9-19 players think the number is magic. But what about the rest of us who don't want to charge $9 for someone to rent a treadmill and who will never get any help as a member? You can compete against anyone if you stop chasing memberships as the primary source of revenue and start thinking differently about the market and your club. The training clubs are killing the box clubs when it comes to generating revenue, but most box club owners just don't believe the numbers these guys create in their businesses, or that they can do it in their own box. Selling nothing but memberships as your primary cash generator simply does not work anymore, and no matter how whacky you play with the $19 price, the volume will never be back again. As I have noted in other blogs and on my Thomas Plummer Late Night Edition mini blog, if a box is doing a million a year in net membership revenue, but only about $84,000 a year in training where is the growth potential? Do you really think, with all the competition that is out there and more on the way at all price points, that you can continue to grow the million, or will you finally realize that the only growth potential left in the industry is getting the training revenue to match the membership revenue. Most owners yell bullshit here because they can't believe it can be done. Rick Mayo, owner of North Point Personal Training, generates $1.3 million a year in his facility, which is only 6,000 square feet. This business concept could easily be picked up and dropped into any box, such as the Gold's Gyms that used to rule New Jersey for so many years, and in fact he is already doing this as a side business. But the number is so high it sounds impossible to achieve for guys who have spent their careers chasing nothing but memberships. It is hard to believe, but an owner who spends $4,000,000 to open a Gold's can't figure out how to get a few hundred members to pay for training. But let's look at it another way. Take $1.3 and divide that number by the 330 members he has, which equals about $328 per month per member average. You are telling me box owner that you have 2,000 members, but can't find 300 who will pay more for some type of training? Even if you charge half of the numbers illustrated below, you can't find 600 members in your base that would pay for the extra help and support? Rick's prices, by the way, range from $99 for a template membership up to $2100 per month for unlimited 1/1 training, and this is north of Atlanta, not downtown Manhattan. Of course these members are there, but no one can see them because everyone is blind from staring into the membership sun. Sell more memberships. Sell more memberships. Sell more... Try selling memberships, but sell the same gross dollar amount of training too each month. You would have to be a totally incompetent owner of a box to not be able to take a few hundred of your members out of thousands and turn them into training fools. But to do this, you first have to realize several things. First of all, 1/1 training is too limiting and should be less than 15% of your entire training revenue. Secondly, stop selling sessions and packages dumb ass. There is not money in using this antique tools, just like there isn't any money in paying aerobics instructors $40 per hour and then charging the members $19 a month. Just because we were once stupid doesn't mean we have to stay that way. Pricing has changed over the last three years and the emphasis now should be on showing the lowest price you can to attract the widest range of members along with a layered price structured that appeals to the different clients in the market sorted by interest, age and price. Wow Thom, didn't you use to teach us to be the highest price clubs in town? Yes, I did, but would anyone still be reading this nonsense if I was talking about the same things I did in 1995. Business changes, the members change, the competition changes, the economy changes, which all means you cannot use the same tools to make money we did 15 years ago. Many of you change spouses more often than you change your equipment or business plan. You will pay to get rid of the silly wanker you are married to, but won't consider that your price structure and method of training are no longer viable and needs to be divorced too? This also applies to training people too. Most training people build failure into their business plan by limiting their program to only the smallest segment in the market, which is the middle-age white business dude and his wife, counting on just 1/1 to pay the bills. Sessions and packages are also very limiting and have to be eliminated here as well. All of Rick's clients are on long-term memberships and the Cosgrove's (Alwyn and Rachel), who could probably claim credit for virtually reinventing the training club model, won't even do 1/1 in their club, and they are doing a million a year in 6,000 square feet with only about 280 members. Here is a sample pricing model and whom it applies to in the market. This is the essence of what we will be teaching in 2012 in our workshops along with creating the role of the assessor who does nothing but feed the trainers. This model will have to be adjusted depending on the market. That means when you read this and yell, "This is BS, I charge $XXX per client now," it means you have to adjust your prices for your market you anal retentive miscreant: ·Unlimited traditional 1/1: $899-2100 per month x 12 months. This is a guided program based upon full support. The more stuff you can add the more you can charge. The client would train with a coach 2-3 times per week and then be guided into other support training if he wants to come more often. This is targeted at the elite typical client most trainers seek. ·Limited 1/1 training, 5 times per month, no roll over for the sessions: $399 (based upon $80 per session) per month x 12 months. This is targeted at the elite typical client most trainers seek. ·Unlimited small group training (2-4 clients/members) offered at $249-349 per month with no limits on how many times he or she can attend: This is offered about 26-40 times per week depending on the clientele, age of the club and number of members. This tool appeals to a totally different segment than 1/1. Personal training is just to boring for too many people and there is an entire clientele that likes small group dynamics. This group will usually be in the 35-55 age range, a little more affluent and not the typical person who seeks 1/1 and the image that goes with it but also doesn't want to be part of the big group energy either. ·Limited small group training (2-4) people per group, offered at $149-249 per month for 12 months: This group is limited to 5 sessions per month. Keep in mind that every level includes the one below it. This means that if you sign up for 1/1 training you can use the gym as you want, drop into small group or take part in large group training as you desire. ·Group personal training (12-15 per group with a coach): This is the heart of group pt and replaces your boot camp model. This is offered at $99-149 per month and is on the schedule for 8-12 times per week with unlimited attendance, although most clients die at about three times. This is tightly structured and you do the same workout for two weeks. This is nothing more than a group ass beating to music. No one should be allowed to attend here unless they can keep up so beginners have to be brought up to speed using fundamentals for 30 days or so as needed. Contrast this with the small group that changes daily, is more intimate coaching and where everyone goes at their own speed. The client for this is not a 1/1 client. The client for this is not a small group client. The client for this is the 24-40 person who likes music, a challenge and the group dynamic. Most box clubs do not do well with this person and this potential member is happily doing crazy crap in someone's garage somewhere because the box owner can't figure out how to train this guy without a bench press, fixed equipment and curls, tools this client refuses to use or even try anymore. ·Template programs, offered at $49-99 per month. This program gives the client a workout/program design to follow for about 30 days. This is not personally designed, but more of a template. The training clubs would be on the high end of the rate and would spend about 20 minutes with a client once a month. The rate for box clubs should be about $20 more than you are charging for a base membership. For example, if you are charging $19, this would be $39. If you are already at $39, you can simply post workouts on the walls in the club that change weekly giving every member a "trainer" without the cost, giving you an advantage over the cheap players merely renting equipment and providing no help. The keys here are that you are appealing to a wide variety of clients, there are price points for an even wider range of potential members and that you are offering totally different products. Do not make the mistake of trying to blend the levels by offering one of each product each month. This assumes that all clients are alike rather than targeting different clients for different products. It is going to be a good year. Get your prices right, get your people trained, get an assessor in place to sell training and make some money this year. This could be your best year yet if you get ready for some change.Next up for us is Charlotte, January 19-20 - Drop by and get a plan for next year. Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:46:52 -0500 Most of you are now working on your marketing for next year. The core element I still recommend; primarily because it is still such a successful tool, is some form of the trial membership. Here are the three main ways to use this tool and why it works: The 21-Day Risk Free Trial This is the tool that could be used by mainstream fitness facilities that do not have a lot of competition. Do not forget that all marketing is supposed to do is to get leads in the door. Many rookie owners get upset that people show up but no one signs up. That is a sales problem, not a marketing problem and the marketing worked if someone comes through the door. In this trial, the guest would get full access to the club and should be part of the group personal training or small group offerings. Remember that if you treat them like members they become members. This also replaces the older 14-day trial we used to recommend. The 21-day is a smarter version that has proved to attract more leads and has more perceived value. Do not use this tool to attract potential members, get leads into the door, and then drop close the person the first visit hard. Trial works because people expect to get a few visits in before they decide to become a member. Lying to them by promising them a trial and then banging them hard once they are in the door will work against you over time. I still believe in offering incentives, such as a kick ass messenger bag and a free month, if they sign up by day 10. Incentives still work if they are positive and you should be thinking carrot not a bull whip on the ass, which is what the old take away drop the price today and today only close is. The Paid Trial Membership If you are a mainstream club, run this at half your monthly. For example, if you charge $39 per month for one member then run a paid trial for 30 days @ $19. If you are in a super competitive market, then you might try 30 days @ $9 to mess with the low price guys down the street. Training clubs should be in the 30 days for $49-89 range in most markets except in New York or other major metro areas where it could be as high as $129. Again, most trainers fight this concept because they are afraid they have to train too many people too cheaply, but put everyone into groups if you can and give yourself a chance to get some new blood into the business. Most training clubs average about 4-7 new sales a month but you can't grow until you average 15 or higher and you can't do that if you don't get leads into the door. Also remember that you can be too elite and many of you slowly starve your business because you are so worried about offending the 20-30 clients you started with your first few months. Closing rates for all trial memberships of any kind should be about 60-65% of everyone through the door over a 30-day period of time. If someone starts at the end of month, just count that person in the month they sign up and don't go back to the first month. All we are looking for here is gross average and the number of new members you get over a 30-day period. The Extended Paid Trial I like an extended paid trial that allows the guest to get fully involved over a longer period of time almost as a course they would sign up for at a community college. Phil and Michelle Dozois and Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove both do forms of these quite successfully and we have had huge success in our women's-only club on Cape Cod using versions of the Biggest Loser to attract women we now know would have never shown up through any other marketing. You can call this program NewYou60 and it is targeted at the person who is not experienced in fitness. It is an extended trial for 60 days and includes everything you can offer, such as nutritional guidance, full training, full classes and anything else you can throw into the mix. Pricing for this depends on the market but you can be aggressive here. If you are using it as a true trial, keep it in the $69-99 range. If you have the stuff and team to add value, then price it in the $149-249 range and include items such as workout journals, team weigh-ins, tee shirts, etc. that give it a course feel. This would work well in markets where you have competition but you also have been marketing for a while and need a new tool to pry out those leads that haven't responded to the paid trials. Use one of these for your marketing starting in January and stick with that tool for at least 90 days. You can mix these and follow one, 90-day period with another using a different tool since each one is designed to target a separate potential member. Remember that "to know you is to love you" and that trial marketing is designed to get leads into your club for an extended period of time where you can prove your patience and caring attitude. As always, you are still looking for a 60-65% overall closing rate, or conversion into regular members, no matter what trial you use. Market well and kill it next year. Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:29:23 -0500 Perhaps the most amazing thing about the broken housing market is the blame game that everyone connected seems to playing and the complete lack of any type of responsibility by anyone, which is also something I see everyday in this industry too. There was an article on one of the news services talking about how bad the housing market was hit in the lower west side of Florida, and although it is showing signs of life and coming back, there are still many homes in foreclosure and people in trouble. The troubling part is that no one, and I mean absolutely no one, is accepting any responsibility for the position they are in now. One particular woman stood out. She rode the wave, cashed out of her house, acquired a new loan, which of course was done with little down and little qualification, and purchased a house dependent on her ability to pay her bills if nothing at all changed in her life. She also took the cash equity she had accumulated in her first house and spent it on a car, trips and updating the new place. Now she lost her job and is getting foreclosed and is blaming the terrible banks and mortgage companies for "letting" her get into this mess. It also went on to say that she cashed out the equity and spent it, saved nothing, had little reserves and in other words should have never, ever been in that new house. Why doesn't anyone blame her for being stupid? She made the decision, she spent all her cash, she saved nothing and she signed the papers by choice. Her situation is 100% her fault no matter how much she whines and no matter how sad the situation is. Sadly, there are too many fitness business owners in the same situation. They hire stupid staff, don't train them, follow 13 different advisors looking for the magical cure, leverage all their money into ego projects, refuse to change when things don't work and then blame everyone else for their lack of money, failing marriage and failing business. People arrive at bad places in their life through a long string of decisions that constantly lead to the present. You not only made the first decision, you probably made them all and where you are is where you deserve to be. Here are a few rules of life and personal responsibility that can be listed in just a sentence or two: You hired them, they are only as good as you make them: Too many managers or owners are so insecure that they hire people they can step on or dominate and end up with people that can't perform at any level. Don't blame your people, blame the person who hired them and then didn't train them. Bad employees who are constantly in trouble? Stop hiring children and start hiring adults and always try and hire people smarter than you are. If you are wearing it, you ate it: Fat is self-induced. Lack of fitness is self-induced. I would like to blame my travel schedule for 10 pounds but it is my lazy ass that won't get up before the workshops and move. If you're unhappy in your marriage, you are the one that agreed to get married. Stop blaming your spouse for not "letting" you reach your potential. No one is holding you back except yourself and your unwillingness to fight for what you want. Yes, your significant is a pain in the ass and if you don't like it pick up your ass and move it somewhere else. If your kid is a prick it is because you made him that way: The schools didn't ruin the kid. The friends didn't ruin the kid. You had him and he is a prick because you didn't do the work. If only my boss would....: It isn't your boss that is stopping you from being brilliant, it is your inability to stand up and get a job you like and can do. It is smarter to work hard in a job you love than being forced to work hard in a job you hate and now you have to bust ass to just keep a crappy job. If you're broke, stop spending money: I know your cell phone is six months old...poor you, but walk away from the spending the money. If you don't have six months of reserve capital for your life in the bank you don't understand money. This is especially true if you are still living in your parent's house, but drive a nice car. Grow up, get your own place and own life and be thankful that you realized what a loser you are and moved on. But you don't understand how bad this area is: I do understand, which is why they make big bus things to haul your butt to cities where things are better. Yes, sometimes you can't simply pick up and leave but more often than not you can make a break. Seek the money and where it can be made. I tried that once and failed: Everyone fails and that means everyone. Failing at something doesn't mean you are a failure; it just means you weren't ready for the adventure. If you do fail, take the responsibility and move on and just win bigger next time. My parents are anchors: There is often truth in this one but if you are over 18 ignore the bad advice and do what you have to do. Letting the mistakes of your parents ruin your chance of ever trying is wrong on so many levels. Parents want to protect their children but you have to try, fail, try and win before good stuff will ever happen. Learn from the younger kids and just ignore the old people. I am not good at...: Not good at sales? Take a course. Not good at program design. Take a course? Not good with money. Find someone who is and have that person teach you. There is a big difference between being uneducated in something and just plain stupid. Weird personal habits getting in the way? You choose to smoke, drink too much, eat too much, cheat on your spouse too much, do drugs too much, waste too much time and whine too much. All that can end today. Personal responsibility is what separates the doers and makers in our culture from the wanters and the needers. The current slang now is the "1%." This group of people control wealth and make money because they have taken responsibility for who they are in life, the companies they build and the wealth they create. The grunge guy in the sleeping bag at the park, who still lives in his mother's basement and smokes a few dozen doobies a day (yes, showing age here) who cries unfair has yet to take responsibility for anything in his life. Have big school loans? You now have an education and if you couldn't afford it then don't go and no one made you major in novels of the 17thcentury. The quality of your life is simply controlled by the responsibility you choose to accept versus the power you are willing to give others. Stated again, we chose to be who we are. Thu, 8 Dec 2011 14:49:10 -0500 This simple question has also become the most powerful question I can ask anyone who has come to me for help and guidance through the years. My point is, if you don't know where you are going then no one, including me, can help you get there. The point of this discussion always returns to one of the most basic concepts of personal development: if you know where you want to go we can build a plan to get there together, but if you are unclear on the direction you wish to travel there isn't a person in your life who can offer guidance that matters. It is save to say after over 30 years of coaching and mentoring, I can bluntly say that most people have no idea of what they really want from their lives, but most seem oblivious to the question and what it means in their life. But if you continue to ask more deeply you will also hear that these same people are fairly sure that they don't have "it" yet. "It" is defined as the big thing, the meaning of your life, the goal you believe you should have that will lead to a fulfilled and satisfying life. The point of contention is, just what is "it?" In other words, would you recognize "it" if it ran you over with a bus? "It" for most people is defined as something out there in the future that they will figure out someday but right now they would rather not think about it too much. Thinking requires growth and for many bus tracks on your back are preferable, and easier to take, than a few hours spent working and defining what your life could be. This lack of definition leads to the randomness in so many of the careers of the people I have met through the years. Too many in our line of work are simply doing whatever job was available and it is rare to find anyone who has planned his or her life's work. Most are doing work they don't like, for people they don't respect, living in towns that don't interest them and even stuck with significant others that they might have outgrown years ago and who work against finding your own direction and fulfillment. The first step toward achieving personal growth, and defining a life that you create yourself, is to take responsibility for your own life and choose to live at a higher level rather than accepting whatever comes your way. Again, why should you just take what you get rather than go after exactly what you want in your life? Life is motion, and the process of constant progress toward a fulfilled life is the most important work anyone can seek. Happiness and satisfaction are the result of this progress, which can only be defined as your ability to set, target and achieve what you want, and only what youwant, and not wasting your life chasing the dreams of others. What magic are we seeking here? Focusing your life forward, and answering where will you be in five years, is the simple act of writing goals that clearly state what you want, when you want it, and who you will be personally when you get there. Focused goal setting is the tool you use to set your life in motion. We all have dreams that keep us occupied during idle times, while doing boring work or during that last five minutes before we fall asleep. But these are just dreams and fantasies and none will ever be achieved unless you constantly create written goals to turn those dreams into reality. What is a goal? Goals are definable targets set in the future. Definable means that once you achieved, you can clearly recognize that you have accomplished that step in your life. Achieving goals requires you to focus your energy, time and thought into the process by first stating the goal and then working backwards by developing all the small steps it would take you to get there. For example, if you want to own your own business, you might first clearly define what this business will look like, how much money does it take to build it and where will this business be and how it will work. Once you know this, you can create a series of steps over time to get there. In other words, start with the goal at some date in the future and then build a series of steps in that time period working backwards to get there. If it is a worthy goal, it will take more of everything you have and are to reach it, and often the bigger the goal the more reward on arrival. It is important to understand that goal setting is just not "things." Goal setting is who you want to be someday, where you want to go professionally, how you want to live your life and what you want in that life. This information, and a new workbook I am creating for our clients next year, derived from what I have called the Starbuck's moment. For over 25 years I have gone quarterly to the corner shop and set for several hours projecting my life ahead. What do I want to achieve in business? How do I want to improve my life? What do I want to learn? Where do I want to live and how much money do I need to get there? All these questions and more filled many journals over the year and the process has defined my life and has kept me focused on the things that make me happy and that lead to the biggest rewards while keeping me from chasing the flash of the moment that is bright and shiny but doesn't get me to where I want to be. Over the years I have been teaching this quietly to clients and asking them to do the same thing before we work together. As noted above, if they know what they want then putting a plan together to help them get there is a lot easier. An outcome of this teaching is that a consistent theme appeared, which became Life in 3s. Just set 3 goals, today, this week, for the month, for the year, for three years and for the next five, and you will achieve more than you ever thought was possible. Mastering goal setting is simple: get three things done today that moves you toward the big things and those larger life goals will take care of themselves. One day at a time focused on getting just a few things done that makes you happy and that will lead to a life fulfilled. The Art of Setting Goals Setting goals is not hard and the word "art" refers to the fact that goal setting is personal and will reflect who you are and what you want. Here are a few guidelines to get you started. The exercises themselves will help keep you focused but after awhile you might just resort to blank journal for your quarterly review: Write the goals as if they are already done: For example, "I will be living in Denver, Colorado in five years working as a chef in a downtown restaurant." Concentrate on what you want in your life and eliminate what you think you should be doing to satisfy others. It is your life and you need to live it on your terms chasing your own dreams. Don't be afraid to write down everything that pops into your head. Keep your work private and don't be afraid to write what you really want even if it would be embarrassing now for someone else to read it. If it isn't in writing, then it isn't real. Goals written become the threads of your life. Goals unwritten remain dreams. Forget the limits. Think big and create big. Goals equal time/How much time do you have left in your life and what are the most important things you want from that time Make the goal so clear you can visualize and see it in your head Don't forget the small goals Write "I am" rather than "I will" Realize that goals will change over time as you age and mature Write every three months (your Starbuck's moment) for the rest of your life/In a life fulfilled there is always more to see, do and accomplish Accept full responsibility for your life. Your life is your fault and there are no excuses or no one to blame. Living in the past achieves nothing and the future seldom turns out as bad as we fear. Live today, set a path for tomorrow and take full responsibility for who you are and who you will be Areas you might explore during your goal setting session and some examples: Personal development (finish a course/sign up for a workshop/take camera courses/work on your personal health and fitness) Family (spend time with your parents/plan a family vacation/quiet time with your significant other) Money (new ventures/growing your personal income/financial planning/retirement goals/expanding your business/start a savings plan) Career/occupation/your life's work (getting further education for your job/attending workshops/learning new skill sets that give you an edge/planning to change careers and what you might need) Fun/trips/adventures (run a marathon/enter a triathlon/plan a ski trip/plan a month off to hike the mountains) Future dreams (anything counts here that is important to you/career changes/major life changes/moving to the city of your dreams/opening your first business/getting married) Retirement (how much will you need/when is the date/when would you have enough to live your life on your own terms even if you decide to keep on working/where would you want to live) Spiritual life/giving back in your life (If you have a good life what are you doing to give back or share with others/what are you doing to explore your spiritual side) Your business (what can you do to grow it/where is it going/how will you eventually get out of it/do you want to open another one) Toys (what toys, loot, personal goodies are on your someday list) Here are some exercises you can use to get started. These are only just a guide and the more often you work with these the more variables that will pop into your head. The first time you do these, you might do them in this order: Your Day in 3s: What three things can you do tomorrow that will move your life and your dreams forward? Buy a box of index cards and write three things, one on each of three cards, and carry those cards with you that day. Don't end your day until those three things are done. Do this every single day, even the days you don't go to work. Remember that the single item on the card might be anything from calling your parents to enrolling in an advanced course. Just three things, done everyday, add up to a solid three months of accomplishments. List three things you will start tomorrow, and make them part of your life for the next three months, that will enrich your life. (Examples: spend an hour a day reading to your children, spend 30 minutes walking and holding hands with your spouse, calling old friends or mentors, reading something everyday for 30 minutes that motivates you) List three things that you will get done during the next 30 days that will improve your career, your life, your money, your business and your family, or any other area that is important to you. List three things that you will do in the next 90 days, which might be part of the smaller 30 day goals, that are important to you Where will you be one year from now? What do you want from your in one year? What do you want from personal development in one year? How about your business, family, community, friends or life. You might have three things for each of the categories. Where do you see your self three years from now? Write three big things you want to accomplish in three years in all the categories listed earlier. Where do you see yourself in five years? Where will you live, what will you own, where will you be in your career, how far are you along in five years financially and toward your next life and career? What three things have you left undone in your life during the last few months, or longer, that you need to fix (a fight with a friend, a client that left angry, old arguments that were left unsettled that make no sense now). Fix them now and move on. Leave nothing undone because you many never get a chance to fix it. What are the three "Big Things" you want from your life? What are the three biggest things you want to accomplish in your career, life, business, or personally? Remember that these can change as you grow but write three things down during each session. What are the 25 things you just have to do before you die? Write this list and start checking things off now. Why wait until you are too old to care? This is by no means a complete list but it is a good start. Remember that the act of writing something down makes it real in your mind and you will be surprised how much of your list gets done between three month sessions. Start now, take care of yourself and create the life you want. Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:43:34 -0500 Fitness is Motion-Motion is Life Simple words and maybe the forgotten essence of what fitness really should mean. Fitness should be defined to our clients as the degree which they can enjoy life. Fitness should set you in motion and motion is the very breath of life itself. Workout now and live longer. Seek a higher degree of personal fitness now and live a higher quality life later. Motion is freedom and the degree to which you can move determines the amount of freedom you can enjoy and retain throughout your life. The problem with all of this is that we so often confuse the act of fitness with the results we seek. Far too many of us associate going to the gym as the act of fitness itself and the only way to get fit is to endure hard work in the beginning for a nebulous goal later that somehow states we are now, "fit." If you are an old bodybuilder, the only definition of fit is muscle. If you are a cardio freak, then you define fitness as long workouts requiring high energy. Every specialist has his own definition and that definition is right for him but usually wrong for everyone else Look again at the first statement: fitness is motion and motion is life. Motion is walk on the beach, or a gentle run through an early morning sun touched forest. Motion can be dance, gardening, animated sex or an extended tour through a new city. Motion is also biking with your kids, throwing a ball or chasing your grand child around the yard. Motion leads to fitness and fitness leads to a better life. Sadly, we have become too pure in our definition of fitness and this affects how we treat our beginners in the clubs. We set impossibly high standards for almost all of our members by telling them that fitness is a structured activity that requires serious record keeping and at least six days a week of intense effort and sweat. Many of the current fitness books even claim that fitness can't be achieved by mere motion but that it has to be intense in nature coupled with defined changes in the body meaning that walking and other sources of pure motion don't even qualify as exercise. This is all true if you are chasing advanced fitness coupled with looking fit, but most of our clients just want a better life but not always a great body. Fitness in motion is just plain feeling better with less stress and pain in our lives and is often associated with an overall stronger sense of well being. Move today and feel better tomorrow. Is losing weight and looking better the ultimate goal or should we lower our expectations and settle for simply a higher quality life through daily movement doing whatever feels good? Is it really that simple? For fitness professionals the answer is no because the intensity it takes to achieve advanced fitness isn't there. If you are a deconditioned female that is 40 pounds overweight; however, movement today can be life changing tomorrow and after a few months she is in a better mood, chasing the kids, riding a bike and having better sex. Movement is change and change is often accompanied by a new confidence. No, we shouldn't stop chasing perfection, but maybe we should realize that fitness is relative to the client and her dreams and shouldn't always reflect our narrow definition of what fitness is or should be. This may be why we only have 16 percent of the population in this country in clubs and why we are over 62 percent in the overweight or obese category. Our definition of fitness is so severe, as defined by the masterfully portrayed negative image on the Biggest Loser, by the trainers who create an association in the audience's minds nationwide that the only way to fitness is through pain and humiliation. Maybe fat is a better choice compared to having a semi-naked and abusive trainer in your face trying to embarrass you on television and in front of your friends. If it is that way for them on this television show, then it must be that way in every gym in America. Fitness is life itself and any movement adds to the quality of that life. When you're working with beginners, remember that what we consider fit may be something still in their wildest dreams and the standards we take for granted may represent something that is many years in their future if they ever reach that level at all. When you work with someone new, concentrate on motion. Get them gently moving and keep them moving doing something that is fun and playful. Just taking some of your members to a park and kicking a ball and chasing each other in a game of tag might be the highlight of their week. In our world, we are the coaches that set people in motion and there might not be anything more satisfying than realizing that what we start may lead to a life well led in their future. Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:50:12 -0500 Good gyms are hard to find. I want a lot of good equipment; space to move and play, a staff that doesn't come unglued if you do any kettle bell stuff and some place that is clean and decent. But I also realize that it is often the members that ruin a club visit and not the owner or staff. Working out on the road is by the way always an adventure in the bizarre. Based on too many workouts done in alien clubs, I have come to the conclusion that there are now many more disgusting members working out than in past years. Here are my rules for the tribe of pathetic, nasty gym losers that give a struggling local owner a bad name: You, the poseur! I don't care who you used to be. I don't care that you used to be big, were tough, scored a few touchdowns in high school or were the meanest guy in your fraternity. Dude, you are now in your 30s and you are a disgusting mess. Finally, by all that is holy in the fitness business, lose the string tank top. No one, and I mean not even the woman who has just walked out of prison after 30 years, really thinks that tuff of gray, scruffy chest hair works for you. You are fat, your kids are fat, your woman is fatter and those meaty arms you are so proud of are 13 inches of muscle surrounded by 4 inches of jiggling hamburger fat. Get a shirt, put down the bench press, walk away from the leg press and try a little full bodywork. You, stinky man! There is no excuse to stink when you work out. Here is an idea stinky boy; try a clean tee shirt or shower before you work out, try some deodorant and stay away from too much garlic. You stink, we know it, and we hate you. You stinky girl! Perfume is nice if I am drunk and it is 2:00 o'clock in the morning. Perfume is offensive if I am working out and you are standing next to me at 6:00 in the evening. As before, you stink, it is not sexy, it isn't your personal style and you are killing us out here. You, old man in the running shorts! Reality check here for you old guy. Yes, you have had those shorts for 16 years and we know you take great pride in wearing the same outfit every day year after year, but you are scrawny, have a bony chicken ass and any short cut that high on the side lets far too many people see junk that was out of service when Carter was president. You, body builder dude! Screaming is stupid. If you can't put it down, then don't pick it up and leaving plates on the leg press doesn't mean your huge, it means you have the penis of a sterile chipmunk. Grunting, dropping weights, leaving bars stacked, carrying jugs of green nasty crap and wearing 1990s clothes is not cool but only validates why there are only seven bodybuilders left in America. You, horny boy! Women come to the club to have private time, get a workout in, relax without pressure and to enjoy just a few minutes of me time a day. They aren't there as your personal stable of potential dates that are sweating for your pleasure. Don't stare, don't flirt, don't wait for them in the parking lot and don't ask them out ever. You, cell phone idiot! I don't care if you are the president of the biggest financial company on Wall Street. Talking big and loudly on a cell in the club is poor taste and only confirms that your daddy gave you the job because you are a moron. Have to take the call? Then walk away to the lounge but I do not want to sit two feet away from you and here your call. If you can't live without the phone then workout at home where you can irritate your future ex wife and leave the rest of us alone. You, spit fool! Whatever possessed you to think that hocking up a goober the size of a house cat and then spitting it into the drinking fountain is socially acceptable? Do you really do this at home? Do you do this at work? Are you just f@#$%*ing stupid? You, BMW boy! Hey nice you can finally afford that new 7 series car but parking it across two parking spaces so it won't get dinged is like putting a sign on it inviting anyone with anything sharp to gouge every inch of paint you have. Two spaces? Park it way out in the lot and enjoy the walk. You, fat girl! It is your fault you are fat. Stop blaming your ex, your boss, your genes, your job, your kids, the trainers and your life. If you are wearing it then you ate it and you won't lose it until you move it. Weight is not accidental, it is usually an insidious process that takes years and only one person in the world can change the course, and that is the owner of the big jiggle herself. You, lying members! You signed a membership agreement with the club and now you are too lazy to workout so you lie to the staff because you don't want to pay anymore. Try a little personal responsibility here and pay for what you signed for. Clubs are not gold mines, all those cars don't mean a lot of money and you are a liar that would be indignant if that happened in your business. You, seat saver! Hurray, you got to class early but do not try and save bikes in the front for all your friends. One member, one bike and let the next person in take their own chances. You drive members away by being rude and you aren't paying nearly enough for the owner not to throw your ass out. And the rest of you rude members out there, pick up your garbage, don't pee on the seat lids you disgusting human piece of trash, don't flush your personal thingies down the stool, don't leave gum in the urinals, wipe the sweat off the benches, don't shower and then get your soaking wet ass on a scale, don't stand there naked lecturing me abut the economy, don't hog three pieces of equipment because you just read about tri-sets in a magazine and don't by any chance try and offer advice because you have been working out wrongly for 15 years. Owners have hard enough time without trying to make adults out of immature idiots who have no respect for anyone around them. Be courteous, be nice and help make the club a decent and enjoyable place to go. And most importantly, to you fart boy, you might be the rudest of them all. There is a special room in hell for you populated by hundreds of flagellant factory workers amped up on cheap beer, hot wings and shots of bourbon just waiting to blow you into eternity. Wed, 2 Nov 2011 12:09:58 -0500 This will qualify as the shortest blog I have ever written, but has been the single hottest topic these days in our workshops so here is my take on why the low-priced guys seem to be struggling and will ultimately fail. The business plan for a low-priced model is based upon the ability to service a lot of people cheaply and quickly. The primary tool used by the low-priced players is the circuit line (single joint, fixed plane equipment). Limit the free weights, load up on cardio and throw as much circuit style selectorized at the client as you can stuff in the room. The reality is, however, that circuit training is dead. The clients have moved past it, athletes have moved past it, any trainer worth more than $5 per hour has moved past it and there isn't a popular fitness magazine in the country that has ran an article on the benefits of circuit training in the last decade. Circuit training is done, gone, failed, worthless except for 1% of the population too weak to stand up and has been replaced by upright athletic based training If your entire business model is based upon failing technology, in this case thousands of low-priced guys filled with circuit stuff, then what you are doing is not sustainable. Would you risk your fortune on opening a pager store? Would you open a bookstore in the era of E-readers? And how many businesses today are based upon technology that is over 40 years old, in this case Nautilus dating back to the late 1960's? Circuit training as a technology is dead; the members don't use it much in the clubs, and the only people still advocating this method of equipment or either the equipment companies that haven't seen the light or owners stuck in 1995. Think circuit training is sustainable as a business model? Ask the Curve's guys how that is working for them these days or any other circuit based business model. Get over it people. If you are still setting people up on a circuit and giving them a big card kept in a box on the edge of the floor you have been warned that the end of your business is near. You simple cannot compete with out of date technology that does not work and that no one wants. Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:01:16 -0500 During the last 50 years in the fitness industry, change has been initiated by only two sources: the chains started a new idea, which became quickly stolen by everyone else, or a new fad hit the trade show floor and it became a "must have" tool in the club. In the first example, look at 24-Hour Fitness and the advent of EFT (electronic funds drafting/auto-deduct from the member's credit card or bank accounts). When 24-Hour first started this in the 80's, it became a national craze and everyone thought they had found the magical solution to members not paying. What a simple concept: sign the member up and just take the money automatically each month. It wasn't long before most clubs in the country were, and still do, automatic EFT payments. There were probably two reasons for this. First of all, 24-Hour was based in California and dealt with more sophisticated markets that were in many ways early adapters to new technology so most folks in that region were more comfortable allowing this process years before other parts of the country embraced it. In fact, there are still parts of the south that still don't really understand the whole check book concept yet and still keep money under the bed. The second reason was that Mark Mastrov was a pioneer in the business and was constantly looking for new ways to grow his business and create a more solid company. He was young, in California, and surrounded at the time by many people willing to take chances. Mark was a head of his time and led the way in many innovations. He was a risk taker, something we don't see these days. The trade shows have also been a steady stream of new ideas and tools for the industry. The first true elliptical, introduced by Precor at a trade show, set the industry on fire for a decade along side other trade show phenomenons, such as the Stairmaster. I think both of these avenues of change are now both somewhat dated if not outright dead. There is no more innovation from the chains because there is so little leadership or risk takers left in charge. Everyone is conservative and looking for the "going public" train to come through town. Risk takers and innovators, such as Mark or Tony DeLeede, are gone and may not be replaced since the culture has changed so significantly. Change today is coming from the ground up matching the advent of instant information and social contact and most of this change is stemming from the next generation training facility owners. The innovators are still out there, but today they are running smaller clubs and doing bigger grosses than ever before. Perhaps the perfect example is sports performance. In sports performance training, such as that used to train professional athletes, what you do either works now or is discarded today since that athlete you are messing with cost the team millions a year to keep in the game and to keep effective. The information developed in this arena is often years ahead of what you see in the research journals since the sports performance specialist's need for what works is so immediate. He tries it, it works, and several years later a PhD candidate validates it in a lab trial at a major university. This cutting edge information used to take years to get from the trainer to the mainstream fitness professional. The sports guy spoke at a conference, a few trainers might try what he is doing with their athletes and several years later, maybe longer, the information might make it to the mainstream. Now, guys like Todd Durkin, Mike Boyle, Bill Parisi and Gray Cook think up new stuff, test it on their athletes and then post it tomorrow on their websites, Facebook and YouTube: instant information today from the best minds in the business. This information posted today becomes the workout tomorrow for the middle-aged fat guy at Fred's Training Gym. Some trainer, perhaps a Boyle fanatic, reads about a workout in the middle of the night, gets excited and starts using it the next day. Instead of years for information to go mainstream: it is now only hours between a posting and a direct application. Throw in the advent of the functional training and you have a huge push from the bottom up led by new generation trainers that is changing the very core of what we do in this industry leaving the chain clubs and their 13 lines of circuit equipment asking, "WTF happened to my business plan to sell endless memberships and not service people?" There is also a little serendipity working here as well, meaning the right time at the right place for this to work. The consumer is bored, the era of membership gyms is dying thanks to the low-priced guys that not only threatened the mainstream clubs but also shot themselves in the private parts by spawning so many copy cats, and by the immediate awareness on television and websites as to how real athletes train. Just as a side note, when was the last time you saw an athlete on ESPN training on circuit equipment, or do new generation professionals spend their entire time upright doing cool stuff like 50' ropes? Joe Big Belly, on the couch at home and weekend athlete extraordinaire, sees his favorite guy doing cool stuff and he now becomes the last guy ever to go to a gym and do circuit crap. In the case of change, the philosophy of training was first but the second wave, led by folks such as Rick Mayo, Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, Frank Nash, Phil and Michelle Dozois, Todd Levine, Jeremy Klugerman and other owners who are building training-centric businesses, are now bringing the delivery systems to the industry. First the information is developed and then someone figures out how to make a truckload of money with it. Guys like Mayo are now developing models and systems that they are installing in mainstream clubs to help those players make the shift from membership to results-driven upping the bottom line and keeping those clubs sustainable over time. This information is available here too, and is what we have been teaching this year in the workshops and we are seeing a wider variety of players in the room then ever before because everyone realizes that the era of living on memberships is gone and the era of the trainer is just beginning. Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:41:07 -0500 Group exercise is fading and despite the claims, which are usually from group gurus who make a living from group exercise, it may not come back this time. Dead is dead, and this programming stalwart for most clubs is looking really ill these days. Weirdly, the signs are there but most owners are refusing to accept that reality that this part of their business might not last. Many of you have heard me explain micro-trends in prior posts or in the workshops. Micro-trends are short-termed cycles usually around 12 years, which come and go throughout the industry. We are currently just moving past the "hot phase" for low pricing, for example, and many of the low-priced guys are already starting to fade. Micro-trends usually have a fairly defined life span. There is a period of long, slow growth, a "hot phase," a period of the quick fall and then a period of oblivion. Roller blades, for example, illustrate this phenomenon quite well, They caught on over time in places such as California, had a burst of "must have" popularity, faded quickly and today you don't see many people on them...except that it appears they might be coming back again. Group exercise, or aerobics for the older owners who refuse to change their mindsets, is subject to that cycle as well and if I had to place group exercise in the steps listed above I would say it is somewhere in the beginning of the fading quickly stage. This does not include, however, cycle, which seems to have a separate track these days and this also does not apply to group personal training, which is one of the factors killing aerobics based classes. The last time aerobics faded, Billy Blanks saved it with his take on a martial arts based group approach in the late 90's, which started the cycle again. Prior to that resurrection, group was in the oblivion stage and many clubs were pulling it out completely in the mid-90's. Just recently, we have been caught in the Zumba "hot period," but Zumba is only a few steps away from the quick fade and I look for it to start a slow descent next year. Can't happen you say? Zumba is too popular to die you say? You only have to look back at the disappearance of step in the early 90's to see a parallel. Step was almost a cult, Gin Miller was the step queen, and the Reebok Step has allegedly sold over 8,000,000 steps, but now what is the hot factor today of step classes? Do you still have lines for step classes? Is step driving your membership these days like Zumba is in some markets? It did at one time, but no longer. Here are four reasons I think group exercise will fade, and perhaps disappear altogether this time. I have been a big believer is group for years and have endorsed it heavily through the workshops, but everything has its season and perhaps this activity is doomed to be part of our history: The average age of the instructors: Any female getting into the industry today is becoming a trainer. You only have to attend a Perform Better Summit and see that about half the 900 people that attend are females. Most group instructors currently working in the industry are last generation instructors and are a decade or more older than the average trainer. The exception is the former group instructor that left group and is now primarily a trainer. Instructors will be hard to find in the next decade as more women pursue opportunities as trainers. The average age of the participants: Old habits die hard and nothing proves this more than looking at the average age of the group classes. This does not apply to group personal training as mentioned above, but only pertains to group aerobics style classes. The members who attend these classes are usually a lot older than members using other services in the club. Many of them have been doing group for over 20 years and it is hard to change something so ingrained in their life. But as they get older, these members will be harder to replace and there is no new base of members waiting to fill their slots. The advent of group personal training: Results are the killer app here. You get the group experience, but better results, doing group personal training. Strength training rules and the only way to get sustainable results over time, as illustrated by weight loss, increased mobility, agility and overall strength, is to do strength-based training. The new members either understand this concept or are learning it quickly driving them to group training rather than group classes. Look no further than boot camps here for proof. Look at the ages and conditions of 50 women involved in group over a year versus 50 women involved in just classes and tell me what you see. Who is in better shape and who can sustain that shape over a longer period of time? Muscle rules and will be one of the deciders in the future. Return on investment for the club owner: This is perhaps the biggest killer. We have been taught for years as owners to include group with our simple access memberships. Pay $39 for example, and group is included as part of your membership. Two issues here, however, are putting an end to this thought process. First of all, the cost of offering these classes is rising. Many clubs in the east are paying $30-40 or more for a group exercise instructor due to how hard they are to find and to the simple rising pays and specialty instructors, such as yoga people, can command $60 or more. This pay wasn't an issue if the club can charge $49 or more for a simple membership, but it is a real factor if you are now charging $39 or less for a membership and a killer if you are at $19. It simply costs too much to offer group as a major programming offering these days. Secondly, owners are learning that you can offer the group experience, in the form of group personal training, and charge additional for it. That same club that is charging $39 per member, for example, can offer group personal training at $79 a month or higher depending on the market and the training clubs are getting $149 a month or higher for small group training. Why give group away free when you can charge more for a better product. Cycle will survive on its own and shouldn't be treated as part of group. I think the breakout of group is due to the support trainers give it in the smaller training clubs. I recommend that any training club that is over 3000 square feet still offer cycle classes as part of their group personal training. It doesn't take up much space and the concept fits the training philosophy of most good trainers. Is group dying? Check your numbers, look at the ages of the players and determine where your financial future lies. Group personal training is the big trend now and will last for a number of years, which is the stake through the heart for the old style group programs. The old saying goes: Never be first at anything in this business but be sure to jump off the wave before it crashes on the beach. Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:10:15 -0500 Living in the Past is No Way to Run a Business The dinosaurs never saw it coming, at least that is my theory. There was no planning, no stocking of food, no gathering of the team to plan their survival; there was just the often asked dinosaur question, "Hey, has anyone seen Bill, he was just here a minute ago?" The same is also true for the chain clubs. The comet is heading their way and yet nothing changes. There is no survival conference, there is no shake up of the leadership, there is only the cold dark night awaiting the last of their breed as the comet bears down on their unsuspecting heads. Are all chains dysfunctional? Of course not, but the very nature of being a chain organization works against them for a number of reasons. First of, the arrogance of just having a 150 clubs is enough to shut down the ability to learn anything new or progress. "Hey, we have 150 clubs so we must be doing something right" is an attitude that seems logical, is impressive at first glance, but in reality is only impressive if the organization is showing growth. What you did to get 150 clubs is seldom what it takes to keep 150 financially successful over time. Secondly, "real" business guys hired to run the chains are usually shocked by how damn hard, and how antiquated most chains are once they start to apply their vision. It must be frustrating coming from the real business world and then trying to make change when most of your owners are truly independent operators who will insist on running their club their way no matter what course the new CEO is going to chose. Most of these guys interview well and look good in IHRSA magazine but the reality of their words versus the reality of their units don't match. For example the story might read: Mr. Smith, formerly CEO of the Hilton chain (substitute any big company here such as Pepsi, etc.) is going to save this chain by introducing his unique style of customer service. When you visit one of their clubs, however, you find that it is the same dumb, undertrained, hired for the cheapest wage kid at the front counter delivering the same terrible service that all 149 other clubs in the group offer. Talking big at the top is different from performing at the bottom. Another point is that the bigger the group the harder it is to change the existing culture. Culture runs deep and an organization that was started in the 1990's and has anything more than 50 units is hard to change. There is always that sense of, "we have always done it this way" that takes the strongest of the strongest CEO's to redirect. This inability to change is not; however, limited to just the chains. Club owners who have been in business for more than 10 years often have trouble changing direction, especially if they were successful with something early in the business. For example, if the club owner did draw boxes in his early years it is hard to tell him now that they don't work anymore. The staff hates draw boxes because no one wants to make cold calls, the idiots who enter the boxes aren't really qualified and with the advent of cells, answering machines and other devices that make it impossible to get through to people, draw boxes are simply an archaic part of our history. But don't tell this to a guy who use to be the Bally's draw box king in 1995. Times change, but once successful owners rarely adapt quickly enough to the changing markets. Maybe Neil Young was right: it is better to burnout than to slowly rust away and most independents that have been in business over 10 years fight rust away one rusty idea at a time. Here are a few sure fire tests, derived from years of prodding the beasts with the sharp stick of reason, that might help you ascertain that you are, indeed, a dinosaur and on the soon to be extinct list: You know you are a dinosaur if you still have a sales office in your club and still do your sales sitting behind a desk. Is there nothing more obvious that tells you that you are still living in 1995 than a sales office? It is intimidating, dated and ineffective but old habits die hard. Turn off the Michael Jackson, put away the Journey posters and create a more positive sales area. You know you are a dinosaur if your total training revenue is less than 20% of your total net membership monthly receivable. For example, you do a $1.2 million a year in net membership revenue but only $100,000 in training. Simply put, you are a membership club. The next decade will force clubs to chase the other end of the formula. In this example, the assumption is that there will be endless new members to replace the ones lost. This to me is the biggest false assumption in the industry. The member is no longer replaceable and in this case the owner of this club is chasing the wrong end of the formula. The growth in the future won't be from an endless supply of new memberships but in getting the $100,000 to equal $1.2 million at some point. The growth potential is not in membership but from money from members already in the system. Put down that massive shoebox cell phone, cut the mullet and learn about training You know you are a dinosaur if your sales people have no training credentials, you turn your prospects over to a trainer for a couple of workouts to determine if he is one-on-one potential, and then the sales guy slams him first visit. So 1995 and our guests are so done with this. Take off the stupid sales ties, kill the turnover sale and create a sales team that has trainers who can talk about money doing the primary assessment. You know you are a dinosaur if your last ad was a price special. If you can't sell it at full price discount it to pennies. Price is killing you because that is all you advertise on and that is all that is in your ads. Stop watching the OJ trial, turn off Brave Heart and run a trial ad that creates a new customer base rather than trying to kill one that already belongs to a club. You know you are a dinosaur if most of your new members get set up on a circuit and get a big workout card so they will remember how to set the seat. Compare the circuit technology with any other tech from that era, meaning 1973. Is there any business system left over from the era that is still effective? Cell phones last two years but we use a technique that is over 30 years old to still train our members. No wonder they hate us. Get that Jennifer Aniston haircut off your silly head and get into 2011. You know you are a dinosaur when your members have to use the walkways to do lunges because there is no room in the club due to so much antique equipment, such as old plate loaded stuff. If you have more bench presses than staff, you know what I am talking about. The grunge look is gone and those 92010 sideburns are so last century. You know you are a dinosaur when your true average EFT (member payment) is lower than the stated price for one member. You might show $39, but you know that your real average, after all discounts and allowing for couples, is around $27-32. Check your last 100 memberships, divide couples, and determine your average. If this number is lower than your monthly payment, which it will be, you are a 1995 membership club. Dude, lose the roller blades and work on a layered pricing system You know you are a dinosaur when you lower your price to match the other cheap guys because you have no clue how to fight back. You don't really have a business plan that is sustainable; you just drop your pants because you think the other guy is getting rich and you're not. He is getting his ass kicked too but his PR is just better than yours. When everyone goes low there is not enough members in any given market for all to survive. It is not about price, it is about return per member. Come on turn off that Howard Stern and let's get back to reality. You know you are a dinosaur, especially you chain guys, when you roll out a national initiative based upon a price based model and you haven't even really tested it over time. Reactionary management is what happens when you have a f!@$%^ing clue as to what you are doing and where you are going as witnessed by a national franchise that offers a $9 express model with absolutely no clue if it will work, and it won't because everyone else that is clueless is trying the same thing. No, Jerry Seinfield is coming to your club so get on to a results-driven model. You know you are a dinosaur when you blame your lost members on the economy and then order more equipment and call it customer service. Throwing new equipment at members is what you do when you don't know what you are doing. If your cardio is old, then yes you have to replace it. But buying more of the same old stuff is not customer service, it is a reflex based upon 1995 business plans. The model itself is broken dinosaur breath and we are so over Demi Moore You are a dinosaur when you think you know everything there is to know about fitness and you are closed to any new idea. Why go to a workshop when you know everything. Hey, we have 150 clubs and we are the kings of the world. Look closely, however, and many of the former kings are merely shadows of what once was and have no clue how to save their sinking ships. What is it like at the Curve's office when everyone sitting in the break room talks about the over 10,000 clubs they once had and now are down to a few thousand and no one has an idea of how to right the ship. Turn off that Hanson CD and realize that to change your path you have to change your model. New information and ideas are the new gold standard in today's market and anyone closed-minded enough to believe otherwise deserves to fail. Many of the big players are hurt badly yet they cling to the old ideas and fail to grow. I have said it before: the new breed of trainer/operator looks to the future and what is next and the old style box players sit and whine about how good it was in 1995 and how unfair it is they can't make money using the same old tired and worn out techniques. 1995 isn't coming back. Pressured sales aren't ever going to work again. Price driven ads will not work when everyone goes low. Circuit training is insulting to today's clients. Service is not the amount of equipment you have but the amount of results you get per member. And your Pokemon card collection is worthless too. The comet is coming and the chain's membership driven format is sitting directly under the comet. Can they be saved? Yes, a progressive management team could change the biggest of chains; but arrogance and the unwillingness to admit that you don't know everything will always be the block. Failure hurts everyone in the business and any fitness facility of any type that closes hurts all of us. The information is there to change but you have to be willing to face reality to get there and the harshest of reality is to admit that you aren't the guy you used to be when you were young. Everything in the world has changed and all the chain guys do is buy different equipment instead of fixing the ultimate problem: they simply don't know how to operate a club in a changing market and the trainer clubs are new cavemen killing off the last mastodons. Hey, by the way, when you in a bar someday with a lot of other fitness guys, I guarantee someone will say, "What ever happened to that one chain....you know the guys that used to be somebody back in the day and had all those clubs?" I don't know, maybe it was the results-driven training-centric comet that kicked their collective asses. Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:40:58 -0500 The fitness business is at an unusual crossroads. On one side, we have the implosion of the box club concept as mainstream fitness centers struggle to stay relevant in a hyper-change business environment and where for decades the equipment has been the star at the expense of the membership. On the other side, the evolution of the training-centric model that puts the client back into the center of the business plan is putting pressure on how we do business and who in the fitness business will survive in the coming years. The rise of the mainstream chain-style club during the 1980's also directly corresponded to the demise of most of what has passed as member service for the last 20 years in the industry. Chain clubs, along with the independent operators who emulate that business model, exist for one reason and that is to sell as many new memberships as possible each month. Membership revenue in these clubs is often 85% or more of the business' total deposit each month and if there isn't heavy volume there is no business. The problem is that volume and member service are mutually exclusive. The rise of a training-centric, results-driven business model will perhaps be the most important breakthrough in the last 50 years of fitness. It sounds so simplistic to say those words it somewhat negates the power of what is happening in the industry; but we are witnessing the end of the membership driven model while simultaneously watching the return of the client centered business. Simply stated, fitness business owners have to figure out how to get the most results for the most clients or fail since the cannibalistic nature of the bottom feeders is that the cheap eat the cheap leaving little room to exist on volume alone. This transition, however, is causing a number of problems including the not so insignificant issue of the industry no longer understanding even the rudimentary points of supplying basic customer service. The volume sales approach negates the member as relevant since it is all about sell, burn up, replace and sell again. Over the last decades this belief that the member is forever replaceable has made us forget how to value and serve the clients we so desperately seek. When you are struggling to stay alive in a crowded market customer service is the one tool you can wield that gives you an edge at a low cost. As the box players live in the past dreaming of the glory days of volume and how to recreate it, more progressive operators can invest in customer service training at a low cost. Members that are treated well will stay longer and pay longer. Members that feel they support a business where they feel valued with stay longer and pay longer and members who get results because the clubs touch beyond the traditional 3-6% of training clients will also stay at that club longer generating more revenue than the club that lives to turn and burn its membership. Here are a few simple rules of customer service we have lost in the years of seeking volume. Customer service is not a hard thing to master and done correctly true service is nothing but doing a lot of small things right every day. This isn't by any means an all-inclusive list but these few points can serve as a nice foundation to build upon: Start with the phone: This is perhaps the most annoying part of any fitness business for the client. Trying to get information from a club employee over the phone could make a Southern Baptist minister down a pint of Jack Daniels. Nothing should be this hard nor should anyone paying a monthly fee to support a business be treated that badly. Here are a few simple rules of giving good phone: · Answer live by the third ring. Do not under any circumstances, ever in your entire life, not even if you are a trainer head in a small studio, ever rely on voice mail. Someone is already paying you, or might be trying to give you money so either way pick up the damn phone and say hello. There is no reason in any service business, no matter how big you are, not to answer live. You take their money? Then you take their call. · Answer like you care, not like you are bored out of your lame, dumbass, you interrupted my texting session, mind. Use a strong welcome statement each and every time the phone rings. For example, "Hi, we are having a great day at the Workout Company." Energy sells and is contagious and the transfer of this energy should start with the phone. · Learn to screen calls. Do not say, "Who is this please? Let me see if he is in." This is just another way of saying, "Let me see if he wants to talk to your insignificant worthless soul." It is always safe and sounds professional if you train your staff to say, "Fred is with a member (or is currently on another call). May I take your name and number please and a short message as to what the call concerns?" · Master appointments online to ease the phone volume. Next generation software, such as the new ASF scheduler, is a step forward for the members to be able to book online for training appointments and classes easing the flow through the front desk phones. Many of your older members, however, will still pick up the cell and pound the buttons but keep the online registration option at the front of their minds with Facebook and on your website. Timeliness is the basis of respect: Respecting someone's time is the first step in showing the client that you value them as people and as paying clients. Failure to respect their time is failure to respect their money and you only need to do this a few times before you lose the client forever. Here are a few simple ways to look at time and clients in the business: · On time for a training appointment is 15 minutes early. Trainers that have an appointment at 3:00 and show up at 3:00 should be fired. Respecting the client means the trainer is there at least 15 minutes early and has eaten, gone to the bathroom, brushed the teeth and is ready to set the client on fire with energy. · Training sessions and group classes of any kind should be a maximum of 50 minutes. Despite what the divas say, there is no valid reason to keep a group class going beyond 50 minutes. Those that insist on going that extra five minutes into the next classes time because they think it is extra value need to go home now and not come back. Many people do group because it is compartmentalized and breaking the rule of 50 minutes leaves a kid standing in the rain in the front of the school for another 20 minutes. This also goes for training sessions. If you can't do it in 50 you simply aren't a good enough trainer to do it at all. There is simply no valid training reason or service reason for a session or class to run past 50 minutes. · If you still have group exercise programs (aerobics for those of you over 40) your instructor has to be part of the service act. Instructors should walk through the club prior to their classes and invite people to join and the instructor should stand at the door and thank every single participant for taking part in the class today. Yes, you should give the instructor a few extra dollars for this but this is not an option for the instructor, it is mandatory for the instructor who wants to keep the class. · End all group personal training with the official Todd Durkin "group hug." I learned this move from the master of energy himself. At the end of the group session, he calls everyone in, they give the group shout and then Todd thanks them as a group: "Thank you all for being my clients and for supporting my business." Every group is thanked every time. If you take the money, say thank you. Your personal image is still important: The trend today is to dress down but in small business you can create a stronger business environment by adding some style to your team. Here again are a few points worth considering: · Wear real clothes not baggy workout crap that always looks like you are an old crazy New Jersey lady walking the streets in South Beach. There are so many uniform options now available that there is no longer any reason to rely on tacky tee shirts or golf shirts. Honor your clients by dressing a little better than you think. If you are a trainer, develop your own personal uniform that makes you look professional. Club operators are notorious these days for the jeans and shirt out look, which is fine if you are trying to get naked with strangers on Saturday night but not so good if you are trying to build a business. Just remember that one badly dressed kid at the front counter is the image of your business when a potential member visits. Control your image by controlling the look of your staff. Every member is thanked every time they leave the club: This isn't a hard one to master. Simply teach the staff to say, "Thank you for stopping by today, we really appreciate your business." If the staff has an issue with this or is shy and can't say it, fire that person and get someone who is not afraid of saying thank you to a member who supports your business with their money and time. There has never, ever been a club that is too clean: Most of you spend so much time in your business that you become club blind. This means that you no longer see dirt clutter, or decline in your physical plant. It is sort of like the middle aged guy who drives a Porsche, wears his ball cap backward, thinks oversized basketball shorts are cool and still wears the matching jersey. This is the guy who looks in the mirror and still sees himself as 21 and cool rather than 40 and pathetic. You see what you want to see and owners who are in a business more than they are at home stop seeing the business for what it really is. I believe dirty clubs cost you more female members than any other issue. Get outside eyes to look at your club. Get retired people to clean it constantly during the day to create the perception that it is really clean because your members watched someone clean it. Hire mystery shoppers, or honest friends, to visit the club and give you an opinion. The club is never as clean as you hope, or as you think, so get some help here. One hint is that if you haven't used a piece of equipment or other clutter sitting in the corners in the last 60 days then throw it out. Members equate clutter with being dirty. The final service thought is that sometimes problem members are what are helping kill your member service. In some clubs, cliques form that destroys your image and work against your staff. This group of lifters or group exercise people feels the need to control the club and will set other members straight if they don't follow the rules of the clique. The problem is that their rules often have little to do with the club rules. Part of mastering customer service is knowing when it is time to fire your members. Some just don't play well with others and by letting them just carry on being a pain in the ass you hurt the overall image of your club. If that member bothers you, he is probably irritating many of your members too and it might be time to walk him to the curb. Start your service training with the thought that the member is not replaceable. If you put this on the white board at the start of your service training you will realize that much of what we do in the business is not done to retain clients but merely to service the new ones before we run them out. The big question is, "If the member is truly not replaceable, and you have to keep every member you have or fail, what would you do different in customer service?" Tue, 6 Sep 2011 11:59:14 -0500 If the universe threw a rock at your head you probably started it Karma is one of those strange things that no one believes in until the universe corrects whatever you are doing, and believe me, after 30 years in this business of watching otherwise good people do stupid and often bad things, when the universe decides it is time to get even it comes with a vengeance. Most of the time, the biggest part of being a consultant, life coach or whatever you call my job is to help people clean up messes that are usually self-induced. These stories always start with the same line from the person who needs help: Man, it just came out of nowhere and I never saw it coming. Out of nowhere started somewhere (notice the Zen like phrase here). Neal Spruce, the nutritional guru, once shouted down an extremely fat woman who kept interrupting his presentation claiming that he was wrong about nutrition and that she only ate salads, "Lady, if you are wearing it then you ate it." The same rule applies for karma. If the universe threw a rock at your head it wasn't out of nowhere and you, not the universe, were the one that started the fight in the first place. Karma in that sense is just another way of saying cosmic retaliation. Start a fight with a higher power by doing something stupid and out of nowhere becomes your new reality until the score is settled and the universe is once again at peace. This might be a minor adjustment, such as getting your car hit at the mall, or this could be in the form of a major adjustment where you lose everything you have and will never have anything again. Here are a few rules of karma gleaned from so many years of cleaning up client's cosmic litter boxes. Read and learn so you may avoid the rock to the head from above: Rule One: Give more than you take. We want and we want from our community but we give nothing back. Every fitness business owner wants the community to support his business but what have you done for your community lately if ever? Oh, you gave a few three-month memberships to a local charity for an auction or you gave $50 at Christmas to the food bank so big whoopee. The rule is that you have to give more than you take. One client teaches free fitness at the local grade school every afternoon in his small town. It is dead anyway at his training facility in the afternoon and he told me the alternative would be to go home and sleep and that wasn't really helping the business either so he spent several afternoons a week at the school helping a poor school district offer something the kids needed and valued. If you want the community to embrace your business, you have to reach out and be part of where you live. Train someone who can't afford it for free. Speak somewhere for free. Volunteer somewhere that makes a difference. Do something besides going through life as just a taker instead of a giver. Rule Two: Anger back spills Two immensely important words to learn if you want to live at peace and to be successful over time are "forgive" and "forget." There is nothing, and I mean nothing, which is not worth forgiving and getting on with your life. Anger is perhaps the most destructive of all emotions in that it spills back on you so often. This means that most people wear their anger almost visibly and that most other people mirror what you project. Over the years I have noticed that angry clients are in and out of the business quickly. Holding grudges for years drains the creativity out of your soul and eventually you become just an angry shell living for retribution. Forgive, forget and move on people. Rule three: Rotten members and bad staff are black holes. When you don't want to go to work in your own business because you know "Bob" will be there, the prick member who constantly antagonizes you, your staff and your other members, you have a karma issue. Throw Bob out and do it today. And while you are at it throw out that constantly negative staff person even if they are a producer. Negative people create black holes around themselves that constantly suck the life and energy out of their surroundings. We in the fitness business try and create a positive atmosphere for our clients but even just one or two black hole people can ruin this effort. If you don't enjoy them in your business, or if their constant negativity affects the rest of your otherwise good staff, correct now, today, and get them out of your business. And it you are married to a black hole person the same rule applies and it is time to correct. Don't go through life constantly washed over by negativity by someone who doesn't enjoy his or her own life and is pissed because you enjoy yours. Rule four: Boinking your staff rarely turns out well. Several years ago I was an expert witness in a divorce trial concerning a couple who owned a large number of clubs. She caught him in full naked boink position on his desk with the group exercise director. He threw the first rock at the universe and it came back with a truckload of whip ass. Needless to say, this didn't really turn out well for him and luckily I was on her side. He went from successful owner to unemployed with big bills. Yes, he got hammered in the divorce but maybe he really did deserve it. Affairs in public where you totally embarrass your spouse only end one way and that way is nasty. The odd thing here is it is never the sex that is the issue in the divorce; it's the public embarrassment of the spouse in his or her own town and own businesses that is so hurtful and causes the damage and brings the whoop ass a callling. Rule five: Arrogance is rewarded. The day you become so arrogant that you think you are the best there ever was is the day the universe calls together the troops and begins a long-term siege of correction with the only thing to prove is that you might not be nearly as cool as you think you are. Look at the endless stream of movie stars that used to be somebody and were quickly humbled by a few bad movies or bad choices. Look at some of the training heroes in our industry who went from headliners at the Perform Better Summits to equipment whores trying to peddle the next giant rubber band that will change your life. You might even ask Bernie Madoff how things turned out for him. The state of mind you should be seeking that is the functional equivalent of arrogance is confidence. I can unequivocally state that after working with so many money guys that arrogance buys you nothing but misery. You can have all the money you can handle but it doesn't make you a better person and in fact often makes you a walking arrogant turd. Confidence, on the other hand, is something that you see in the great ones, such as Warren Buffet or Steve Jobs, where you are just so good at something that you rise above your insecurities and become that decent guy who can get things done. Be confidant in what you do but be humble enough to realize that there is still more to learn. Rule six: You are a role model. If you are working in this business, you are a role model whether you want to be one or not. Living two separate lives is perhaps the easiest way to draw that unwanted negative attention from the universe. The list of cosmic offenders is long here but would have to include fitness business owners who smoke, trainers that are fat, owners and managers who can't work out a client, anyone in the fitness business who still thinks doing drugs is okay, and any other person who preaches fitness but who chooses to live otherwise. Besides hurting your business by projecting an inconsistent image to your community, you also risk the wrath of the karma police who do not find it amusing that you are preaching fitness to clients who trust our belief system and us and then go home and drink a bottle of Jack and have a smoke. You are either in the fitness world and are doing the best you can to keep up or you are living the double life that harms the business, clients and ultimately yourself. You don't have to be in incredible shape to live the lifestyle, but you do have to be a work in progress that understands that the clients are seeking a better, healthier life and you are the role model for that life. I officially declared on my Facebook page that the rest of the year is, "Do something nice for someone who needs it you self-absorbed losers" initiative. The title might need a little work but you get the point. Most everyone I know in this business are really blessed people who have most everything they might ever need, but we get caught up in our lives and forget to share some of this talent, skill and even money. Dedicate the rest of the year to building up some good karma because it is just a matter of time before you accidently throw that first rock. Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:56:03 -0500 Most of us in fitness live in a sheltered world and over time that world becomes our reality. We go to work and are surrounded by people on a mission seeking fitness. Except for a small number of clients who wouldn't be happy even if you gave them $100 bills to use as toilet paper, most of the people we encounter each day are fundamentally happy to be working out and to have a little time to themselves. Seeking fitness makes them happy and they appreciate what we do and the lifestyle. We then go home and usually are somewhat grounded in the fitness life. We may not work out as much as we would like, or need to, but the era of the fat owner is fading replaced by more and more fitness professionals who understand and practice what we all believe in. We live with, work with and are surrounded by fitness people all chasing the same goals. Visit the Wal-Mart on Saturday morning, however, and you will immediately have our fantasy world of fit, happy people shattered by the harsh reality of thousands of fat, nasty bargain hunting predators whose only mission in life is to break your leg with a cart filled full of the cheapest crap they could find in the store. The real world is Wal-Mart and it is an ugly place for fitness people. We were recently on a trip and my wife needed a contact lens. The hotel suggested that we visit the eye care center at the local Wal-Mart down the street. This was the last place I would have thought might be a solution to an eye problem on vacation but it was close and we gave it a try. The eye care center was right by the check out lines with a bench right outside the door. My wife was in the center for almost an hour giving me a chance to sit on the bench and watch all of humanity flow by. Based upon this mind shattering experience, here are five lessons learned by my visit to the Wal-Mart. Yes, if you are in the south, you have to refer to it as "the Wal-Mart" not just Wal-Mart: 1. Lesson 1-While the national average for obesity may be 32%, the average at Wal-Mart might be more like 75%: Obesity must be like smoking where the lower your IQ is, the more likely you are to smoke. My on-the-bench research revealed that if you wear a Nascar tee shirt, you are doomed to have a belly that blocks out any chance of seeing anything below your waist. In the south these are called Dickie-do guys, explained as your belly sticks our further than your dickie do. I also noticed that most guys who wear the wife beater white tee shirts think they are ripped because they equate being built like a fat refrigerator with being in shape. Almost any middle-aged woman doing Crossfit could trash these guys in any fitness contest in minutes. It is also the first time in my life that I have seen belts worn at almost a 90% downward angle. If you consider belts as horizontal and traditionally worn at 0% of tilt, you have to have one whale of a belly to force a belt buckle to tilt almost toward the floor. If they had little headlights on the buckle, they would be pointing at their toes. I am seldom at a loss for words, but I could hardly speak when a middle-aged woman 40 pounds overweight wearing sweat pants with "Pink" on her huge ass, bare midriff with rolls of pink fat hanging over the top of the sweats and a workout bra stretched to its maximum capacity got into the check out line. If that bra had broken 14 guys in line would have been flopped to death. I don't want to say she was big, but watching her bra as she walked reminded me of 14 hamsters in each side doing Zumba. She probably thought she had a nice jiggle, but is was more like being afraid of putting your hand into a bowl of your aunt's cheap fruit salad Jello. Big, big ucky factor. 2. Lesson 2-This fitness stuff isn't catching on out there in real America: Younger and younger women are leaning on the back of the carts to hold themselves up. I at first thought this was just lazy but I stalked a young couple in their 30's and realized that both she, who was about 60 pounds overweight, and her equally overweight husband had to stop and rest several times as they wandered through the store. She needed the cart to hold her up since she couldn't walk the entire store standing upright due to no muscle and not enough strength in her core to keep her upright. How do you get that out of shape at such a young age? I also realized that there is little we can do in fitness to ever touch her. Fitness for her and a lot of the other Wal-mart visitors that day would be about as real to them as doing brain surgery would be to me. 3. Lesson 3-Muscle is attractive, fat is nasty: I have seen more and more women at younger ages that don't have a single muscle in their bodies and the numbers seen from the bench that day was truly depressing. Rounded shoulders, flabby arms, big bellies and wide hips and you are only in your 30's. I also see this on airplanes where younger and younger women can't even lift their bags to put them in the overheads. If you are like that when you are 30 how much mobility and functionality will you have left when you are 50? And if you want to look at least 15 years older than you really are, then gain a little weight, lose all muscle and get a bad haircut and poof, you are instantly an old man. This also makes me appreciate even more how women with muscle and structure look in our industry. Muscle is sexy, strength is feminine and lean, athletic males are motivating but fat; fat is anything but sexy. I do, however, find it scary that so few people care anymore whether they are fat. I have a number of guy friends my age that are overweight and you can tell it affects their ability to move, to enjoy life and most likely even their sex life but their solution is to just buy bigger shirts. By the time most people care it is too late. Caring when the doctor tells you that chest pain is a major coronary and that you are now a type 2 diabetic is too late and the reality in Wal-Mart is that we are turning out a generation of people who don't see a problem even as they realize that they can't see their own genitals without a mirror. 4. Lesson 4-Given a choice, people will choose to eat the worst food you can buy while walking by healthy stuff: According to my unofficial survey, the number one snack food in America is any type of chip in a bag followed by soda. I saw people pushing carts that were overflowing with chips, cases of Coke, frozen pizzas, frozen dinners and boxes of cheap pasta, all put into the cart just yards from the fresh produce and meat department. I don't understand how there can be any discussion of any disease in this country without beginning with the concept of eliminating the simple carb and the damage it does. Dude, put the white bread down, drink a little water and go for a walk. Could fitness really be that easy? After my visit to the breeding ground of the Biggest Loser contestants, I do think it is that easy. Wal-Mart customers are simple fitness uneducated people who don't know what to eat and wouldn't know healthy if it snuck up and pinched some fat. Many of the boxes in the carts were branded with some type of healthy hype. Look at the Cheerios campaigns. Everyone in America is told that eating overly processed boxed cereal is healthy for you and most carts had a lot of food that was in reality horrible but made some type of health claims. Our solution? For the last decade or so it has been the Food Pyramid, which was most likely the biggest waste of money our government has ever thrown away. 5. Lesson 5-Getting fat is contagious: When families go bad, they go down together in the war of fat. If mamma is big, then the odds are good that the whole damn family is big. It is sad, especially after so many years in fitness, to seek kids that are 10 and already fat. They don't move, eat poorly but in essence do nothing but emulate their parents, who are fat, eat poorly and do nothing but watch television. I have hyped this before, but I think every trainer in the country who believes that he or she is good at what they do should start an exercise program for a few hours a week at the local grade school. The schools don't have budgets for these things anymore so donate a few ropes and tools and go teach it yourself. Even if one kid gets excited about fitness and keeps going you have saved another kid from being trapped in the fat hell of Wal-Mart. Is there any good news? I think we are moving more toward a national awareness that fitness is something we can all do. The lesson to learn is that you have to be the source locally. You should be helping the kids at the school. You should be writing a weekly column, that doubles as your marketing, on lifestyle and fitness. You should be posting free fitness and nutrition tips on your website, Facebook and the other social sites. Just remember, only you can change the madness at Wal-Mart on a local level. Mon, 8 Aug 2011 11:04:22 -0500 Hello, welcome to our gym. We would like to sell you a membership here so you can use all of this cool I equipment I just bought. Come along on the tour. I know you have no interest in Step Aerobics but I just paid for the damn steps so you will see them as part of the tour. Over here we have 60 expensive treadmills and over here is the room where we lock up women because everyone knows they get in the way in the free weight area. We offer 50 classes a week in there but I have never really taken one myself so I have no idea what the hell they really do. So, if you pay $39 a month, here is what you get to do. We recommend you do this at least three times per week if you are really serious about getting in shape. Hey dude, we are here for you and you're going to love working out here. First of all, we want you to come by yourself so you have no one to talk to while you are here. If you bring headphones, you can shut everyone completely out and we also have small televisions on the treads so you can walk slowly for an hour not breaking a sweat watching ESPN and watching athletes train hard. Be careful with those televisions, though, if you jog. They are so small that if you run too fast it is like: TV/where did it go?/TV/where did it go?/TV. We know it is hard to watch and move so just walk slowly and you will be fine, because what's more important, watching TV or actually getting into shape? This is our circuit equipment and this is Curt, our trainer. Curt will spend about two minutes with you and when he finds you really aren't interested in one-on-one training, he will be uninterested in you. You will then receive a really cool giant card you can keep in a box over there. Every time you come to the club, go around a circle; don't talk to anyone and when you are done go walk slowly on the tread. We know this doesn't work anymore and your body will adjust in about six weeks but we sell memberships, not fitness and besides a am a trained salesperson who will later amaze you by writing the prices upside down when you sit across from me at the desk getting slammed. Once you are a member here we will completely forget whom you are so bring this card every time you check in so we know when your membership is up so we can then harass you about signing for another year. This will be, by the way, the only time anyone on our staff will talk to you during the entire year. Oh, and we also do something a little sleazy here. Once a year the owner needs a new car so we sneak in an extra payment on you. We call it an enhancement fee, which is a pretty cool name if you ask me and of course you will forget you signed for this because the print is so small but don't worry, we will whack you anyway and then look for the owner to pull up in a really styling new high-end SUV about a week after we hit everyone. One of the drawback here is it is rather difficult to get in shape at our club since none of this shit really works. You see, we are using technology that dates from the late 60's but the equipment guys tell us it is coming back so what can a guy do. Come on, don't worry, everyone loves to sit on their ass and workout and despite everything you see on TV and every book you read, this is the only way to really get in shape. By the way, if you have read Todd Durkin's new book, any of Alwyn's or Rachel Cosgrove's book or anything by Mark Verstegen you officially know more than everyone on our staff. Maybe you could be a trainer here? If you want to really get in shape, I would suggest getting a Men's Health and doing their workouts like those guys over there in the corner sharing the club's only three medicine balls. That kettle bell, by the way, belongs to a member who brings it each time since we think those are dangerous and don't let members use them. Oh, while we are here, here is our leg press and neck machine areas, which aren't as dangerous as they look, unless you want a bad back and our out-of-date trainers will also show you how to do a crunch, which is guaranteed to finish off that bad back if the leg press doesn't do it for you. Our serious members workout six times a week doing a split shift body part because you just never know when bodybuilding might come back. That 40-year-old man over there the size of an Abrahams Tank is Ed and he is a master trainer when he is not competing as a "natural bodybuilder." Kind of strange that a guy that age still has acne and the balls the size of Grape Nuts but you just can't get good drugs these days. By the way, don't make him mad. If you catch him on a new cycle he will kill you man and I mean it. Hey, let me introduce you to our young, dumbass front counter girl. This is her first job and if you can get her to put down her cell phone she might help you, although don't expect much since we go through people in this position like free donuts at Krispy Kreme and none of them stay long enough to learn anything. Besides, we aren't really about service here, we are just about selling more memberships so if you can give me the names of all your closet friends I will pretend I am grateful and we will then proceed to call them endlessly referencing your name each time. Okay, let's get you signed up. All of our deals are three years long and there is a membership fee, card fee, processing fee, starter fee and initiation fee so I can get you started for $199 today but wait, you just happened to catch a deal where we are offering a chance to get started for only $49 dollars and no, not one stupid person has ever paid full price but we have to run something to bring in new members don't we? This might be funny if it wasn't so sad. Visit any chain club and some version of this will happen. Why is the fitness business so hard? It is because we make it hard. Instead of questioning our business practices, we just lower the price. It is not the member. It is not the price. It is not the trainer. It is the concept that is wrong. We can't patch it, we need to blow it up and start all over again. No wonder the members hate us, leave early and don't refer. What we do is antiquated, insulting and just doesn't work anymore. Once you read this, look at everything you are doing. Is it a bad habit left over from the last decade or is it something that is ethical and professional and that will lead to new members who will stay longer and pay longer? Start there, the answers are right in front of you. Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:37:31 -0500 Slow Down the First Experience, But Not This Slow Fitness has changed during the last several years but how we sell it commercially hasn't really evolved that much. Today's potential clients walk through the door better read and more inspired than they have in the past. In the easy days, they arrived seeking fitness but mostly having no idea of how to chase it, except for the guy who still wanted to do his high school weight routine because it worked so well for him about 20 years, and 30 pounds, ago. Potential members today have resources past guests never had access to when they began their fitness pursuit. Type fitness, running, kettle bell or any other industry related term into YouTube and you will pull up literally thousands of videos and clips. Go online to Amazon and you can order Durkin's bestseller, "The Impact Body Plan," Rachel Cosgrove's masterpiece, "Female Body Breakthrough" or Alwyn's "New Rules of Lifting" series. These books are so far superior to the old bodybuilding books we had access to in the past that it is like comparing a 62 Volkswagen to a new Porsche. They all might be books but what's under the hood is mindboggling. Not everyone coming through the door is well read and ready to rumble of course, but even those who haven't been doing their research know that a couple of workouts with a bored trainer and then starting a fitness routine based upon a 1995 circuit is both stupid and ineffective. The current method of selling in commercial fitness is to start with a salesperson, who often doesn't know a lot about fitness beyond his own workout style, who then turns the client over to a trainer, who has no sales training, no interest in sales and who just wants to train clients, eat a lot, train more and get a check. Trainers can't, won't and are by the nature of who is attracted to the job, incapable of selling anybody anything. The trainer takes one look at the person's car keys, sees Hyundai, and then loses interest because this client is obviously not a potential one-on-one victim. He sets the person up on a circuit, sets a few seats, counts backwards from 10 a couple of times and then hands the client a big card with a workout on it that will fail the client in about six weeks. The trainer then hands the client back to the salesperson, who now has to overcome the bad job and attitude the trainer brought to the process. This is a stupid, inefficient and a leftover legacy from the 90's when you could get away with this nonsense. Non-profits are even more inefficient. Luckily, the days where everyone just handed them money so they could waste it are gone and now there is the start of accountability within many of the organizations. They still, however, use the sales system based upon fear of being thought of as a mainstream club. So instead of helping the person get some information that might help them make a decision by using a trained sales team, the young counter staff at most non-profits simply points toward the back and the guest gets a self-guided tour. The fear of the "sales" word makes the Y's and their friends a hard place to get help and guidance because no one wants to ask the guest to get started. The last category is the trainer club, who wants to so impress the guests with their knowledge that they take the person through every test they can buy and then they spend an hour taking the person through a complicated and overdone routine that does indeed make the potential member come to a hard realization: that yes, I am fat, and yes, this is a crazy bastard because if this is the first workout for a deconditioned guy I have no chance of surviving a regular workout. The guy is there because he is fat and can't move well. You do not need to pull up his shirt, pinch a huge handful of fat and call out a number nor do you need him to step over a string with a stick on his back to prove he has the moves of a 100-year-old meth addict. This is baseline stuff you use once he becomes a member not something to try and impress a scared and nervous guy who knows he sucks. The point of all this is that we can change the initial perception by using a different tool. Here is the overview: · Slow down. You should spend at least an hour to an hour and half with a person teaching him how to workout. If he doesn't have his workout stuff, present the club but your best chance of getting new folks into your business is to get him working out using a positive experience. Sweat sells and a workout with a motivating coach that is actually teaching the how instead of just do this will increase your success · Use two sales teams. Use a regular sales person and also use a second person that is a trainer who is not afraid of money. The trainer/sales person should try and upgrade the person into a training program and should feed the other trainers, who as I mentioned earlier, are the last people on planet Earth that should be asking for money. · Use an anally structured assessment tool. I have referred to this tool as an induction tool in past blogs. Induction means this is a tool to introduce, or induct, the person into your system. · Your goal is to demonstrate expertise, professionalism and a caring attitude by spending an hour teaching someone to workout If you have been in one of the workshops in the last year you know that I recommend using a format that applies to almost everything we do in the clubs these days. If you start the guest in the same format you use elsewhere, he or she will fit in more quickly and can participate more easily in other club offering building up their confidence even more. The format is: · Meet and greet for one minute. This is where all the clients get to meet each other, shake hands and make new friends before you begin. · 12 minute dynamic warm up. This is classic these days and we vary this using 7-12 for the assessment since the condition of the client varies. · 20 minute strength · 3-5 big finish · The group hug at the end. This is where everyone is thanked for being a member of the club and supporting the business. When we do the assessment sale with a new guest, we vary this slightly. The meet and greet is altered for 10 minutes with the goal of determining the guest's goal, time frame and commitment. Spend 10 minutes finding out who the person is, what do they want from you and fitness, how many days a week do they have to commit and any relative time frame, such as wanting to be in a wedding or training for a 5k. I also recommend using these exercises exactly in this order for the strength session. By using a set format, I can use different trainer/sales people and gauge their effectiveness since each one will be doing exactly the same sequence. The strength portion looks like this: · Kettle bell swing · Push movement overhead, even if it is a one-pound medicine ball · Goblet squat · Pull movement, preferably with a kettle · Lunge movement · Dead lift movement This sequence allows the trainer/sales person to demonstrate a high level of coaching and professionalism. The swing, for example, looks so easy but takes some time to build up through the teaching sequence. Remember that your competitors aren't doing this and are using some version of stupid, so by slowing down and spending time here teaching you are changing the mindset of the client. The big finish might be 30 seconds for a totally deconditioned old guy or five minutes for the young female soccer player looking to stay in shape after her baby. We then take the guest back to a high table, coach cardio and then place them where they need to be in the system to reach their goals. We coach cardio because many folks will come to the club thinking that all they will do is walk on the tread for an hour or two a day, watch some TV and lose weight. We take this away from them early be talking about intensity and giving them a 20 minute HIIT program. The final question to ask the guest is: Are you the type of person who prefers working with a personal coach or are you the type that would rather be part of a group and share the cost of the trainer? This question allows the person to place himself into the type of activity he prefers but also allows him to place himself financially without being embarrassed that he can't afford expensive one-on-one training. This is probably the most important thing we teach this year and will have the biggest impact on your business in the shortest period of time. Simply slowing down and spending time teaching and educating instead of merely getting the person started on a set routine will change your numbers. If the person is truly deconditioned, you can offer what we call "Fundamentals" 4-6 times a week in groups where the person repeats the same sequence and can learn the basic movements before moving on in the club. Important note: We will be in Louisville this month, Baltimore in August and off to San Francisco in September. There is also one Perform Better Summit left this year and that is in Long Beach in August. Every owner and manager should be there and do the workouts and sit in on the lectures. Fitness is our product and there is no better source of new information. I have also started using Facebook more often starting a Late Night Edition as sort of a mini-blog. Take a look and let us know what you think. Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:40:13 -0500 Change is happening and the box chains are off to Jurassic Park My theme this year for my keynote at the Perform Better Summit was that we all have to evolve or we will figuratively die in this business. Part of my presentation on this subject stressed that the chains are not changing and will continue to suffer dismal numbers because the product they offer is one that fewer people want each year. The chains simply refuse to move away from the membership model as their sole product. One of the attendees at the event, which this year went over 700 in Chicago, told me that my premise was essentially wrong and that nothing was changing in the industry and nothing would change in the near future. The chains have dominated, at least in his head, for the last decade or more and that they would continue to dominate in the future. I quickly grabbed his shoulder and spun him around to look at all the bodies still in the room, "Look, there are over 700 here this year, up by at least 150 over last year. Change is happening and it is happening from the bottom up and these people are the ones that will bring down the chain guys unless they grasp the future." Innovation and change seldom if ever come from the top down. There is always too much, "we have always done it this way" mentality at that level and if the organization is over a few units most are frozen in trying to recreate the past instead of looking toward the future. In fact, I wrote on Facebook that most chains spend all their time trying to make failing, 30-year-old technology and ideas still work while trainer/operators spend all their time trying to figure out what is next. One group lives in the past, the other can't wait for the future. I believe that change is happening faster than most people realize, which is why I predict doom and gloom for the next generation low-priced guys trying to get into the game way too late. The consumer is progressing faster than the club chain operators are changing their concepts and while the new low priced guys are just getting started the consumer has moved on and is ready for the age of results, not more of the age of just price. The evidence is all around us. Look at the popularity of the new fitness books, such as: Born to Run,The Impact Body Plan, The New Rules of Lifting series and Female Body Breakthrough. All of these are changing mindset and all are selling serious numbers with the consumers. The sad thing is that if a motivated consumer camps out on the Cross Fit site, reads a few of these books, hits all the blog sites of the gurus, such as Mike Boyle or Todd Durkin, this same consumer often walks into a gym better educated than the trainer he meets. Even Mrs. Johnson, the fictional consumer I use so often, will watch Biggest Loser, read Women's Health and walk into the club asking for services and equipment that they don't even offer. Even this woman knows that a club with one TRX locked up in the training room is stupid and bad business. Further evidence can be found in the spread of Boot Camps and the other specialty offerings that challenge and excite the consumer way beyond normal club offerings. The consumer is changing; the chains are not. The consumer wants results, and many, but never all of course, are more concerned about offerings instead of price as long as the price stays reasonable. My theme for the year is that any club, no matter how big, can become a training facility. The only thing that truly has to change is the mindset of the owner and the culture of the club itself. Yes, you can offer a $19 price and be successful, but you also need to offer layered pricing on top of that low number so more people can get help at a price that meets their needs, age, training style and budget. In the typical box club, training still only represents about 5% of the membership. No matter how you state this number, we have failed. We can sell memberships but the harsh reality is that we have created a system so elite that 55% of the membership or more can't afford help, which is bad business and also asinine as well since allegedly we are in the fitness business not just the selling of memberships business. The last bastion of stupidity of course is the standard training options that most clubs still cling to so stubbornly. One session is $75, 5 is $250 and 10 is $400. We have used this discount system in the past to show a lower rate in order to attract more clients. This is also why we have gone to 30 minute sessions as well, a horrible concept meant to show a low price and give little service. The training mindset represented in so many training clubs, and now in many mainstream clubs that have gone through our workshops, has already beaten this system and that is what we have been teaching. It is not the price that needs to change; it is the number of people who share the cost of the trainer/coach that is the answer. If you want energy and action, take group personal training/boot camp and pay a lower fee because you are sharing the cost of one trainer with 15 other people. If you want more help, but still like group dynamics, then take small group and limit the number sharing the trainer to 4 people. If you still want one-on-one, the take it but you will pay full price and not a discounted priced that ruins the integrity of the trainer and the club as well. Change is not only happening, it is happening at a blistering rate. We are truly living and working in the age of the enlightened consumer who wants help and who is willing to pay for a program that fits his budget and likes, but doesn't want to be forced into a one-on-one situation that represents technology that is over 60 years old. How many 30-year-old people do you see in a typical box working with a trainer? It isn't the money the prevents them, it is the boring factor and boring your clients may be the biggest sin of small business. This change is grassroots. It is in the small training club near you, it is at the park at the boot camp and it is the next generation club that is smart enough to figure this out now, not later. Jurassic Park was created for a reason: it is where all the chains that refuses to change go to die. It is worth saying one more time; you don't want to be the last club in the world still trying to sell nothing but memberships to survive. Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:59:46 -0500 Someone asked me at the last workshop why am I still doing this? Why, after all these years, am I still on the road and still teaching almost anywhere I can get a gig? I got into this business as an accident. During graduate school I sat through a goal setting exercise, listed martial arts as something I wanted to do someday, and on the way home drove past a martial arts school/gym and signed up. One month later I was selling memberships there. This was in the late 70's and except for a six-month period as a school teacher the fitness industry was all I have ever done. The initial draw was the teaching and the training. I loved helping people and loved teaching someone something new each day. There was, and still is, satisfaction in thinking that you send people away a little better if they will just spend a some time with you and are willing to listen, learn and try. It also dawned on me at the time that what I was doing didn't make sense economically. Touching 30 people a week one-on-one or teaching a few classes made a small difference but it didn't feel that it was enough. The seed of something bigger was there was there but I didn't yet understand where by frustration would lead. Part of growing up and becoming a functioning adult is being able to determine exactly what you want from your work and your life. I wanted to change lives, but training and teaching martial arts was not enough of a platform for me and working in a single unit in Arkansas was not defining what I saw in fitness. We were good at selling memberships but overall we knew nothing about training people and despite whom we were not much more about developing a skilled, athletic martial artist. What we did made money but instinctively I knew the client was not getting what he paid for in that club. Through the years I have learned to define success much differently than I did as a younger version. In the early days, it was just about the money. Today I realize that money is nothing more than a tool that gives you the freedom to live life on your own terms. Making money is relatively easy and it didn't take long to understand that you can help and influence more people with a million dollars in the bank than you can with a depleted checkbook and living week to week. Success at this stage is defined as the ability to make someone's life better. Meet me and I hope to leave you a better person, more successful financially and better prepared to build a business that is profitable, and better prepared to carry on the ultimate mission, which is to change lives in what you do. Things changed quickly when I realized that I had been chasing the same hidden dream for a number of years. When I could articulate this dream, I was able to build a company and lifestyle that supported what I wanted to do with my life. The mission is easy to explain now: I exist in business to change lives and to change the fitness industry one club owner at a time until we reach a point where we return to our foundational truth, and that truth is that all fitness should be about helping the client succeed in reaching his goals. The industry is damaged and we have spent decades doing nothing but selling memberships as our product with little regard to the member and what he needs to be successful. In fact, the member has played a small role in our industry since he is nothing more than a number that can be replaced each month with a newer one that will take his place. What we do in this industry at the foundational level, no matter who you are or what you own in this business, is based upon a simple agreement between a client seeking change and a fitness professional delivering it. Nothing more, nothing less, just a basic trust between the person paying and the person accepting the money and providing the vehicle and leadership to help the client get what he wants. If the chain clubs would grasp this point and return to the simple truth that if you help get a client results, he will stay longer and pay longer, you could revolutionize this business, but if continue to frustratingly do nothing but seek new ways to sell an endless stream of memberships to people who will fail in just weeks, we cannot sustain what we do. We lose the business and the members lose faith that we can help them realize change. Many of the training people get his. The Cosgrove's, before they were famous for being the Cosgrove's, understood this a decade ago. They gave a damn, figured out ways to support the client, and became successful one client at a time. Todd Durkin might be this decade's ultimate example of passion in motion. No one who enters Todd's domain leaves an unchanged man. The intensity he brings to each client, and delivered by those who work for him, is the same intensity that he brings to a discussion of kids over a glass of wine. Todd succeeds, and makes money, because the client is more important than anything else in his working life and people will pay for that over time. Mike Boyle is also this guy, one who puts the clients first but still makes money. Joe Millet and Rick Mayo, two guys you might not have heard of yet in the business, also have built sustainable businesses by focusing on changing lives and treating their clients with respect, support and patience. The Fitness Together franchise believes this and is progressing toward even bigger ways to change lives, but sadly you can't point to one major chain that makes the member, and getting results for that client, as their major goal. Perhaps the last example of an organization that made a difference one member at a time was Gold's in the late 80's and early 90's and then they lost their way and became just another player in the membership hunt. The mission, my mission, is to get an owner to understand that we are in the business of changing lives and that if you return to this concept you can make money ethically, professionally and without hurting people and this concept is also scalable, meaning it would apply to the biggest chains in the business. Results and caring sell and retention is a far better business plan than competing for a membership base that is no longer in the market. What does this mean to you? It means you should be chasing lives, not money. Get the client what he needs and the money will come. It also means that you need to rise up as far as you can. For me, it was not about one client, it was not about 30 clients, it wasn't about a small club and it wasn't about a fitness center. The goal, which also should be your goal, is to touch as many people as possible in your life leaving each one better for the encounter. We change lives; it is what we do. What we do everyday makes a difference. What we do is important. What we all do in fitness will become even more important in the next decade. This mindset doesn't work for everyone, but I hope some of you will go on this mission with me. Make a difference today with everyone you touch. Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:06:26 -0500 The classic definition of chaos is complete disorder and confusion. Much of what most of you are feeling in the industry today is a reflection of the chaotic state of the industry at the moment. Even the financial gurus of our industry, such as Rick Caro, declared 2009 as the worst year in modern fitness history when it comes to financial aspects. Chaos is direct result of rapid change without a set direction. The industry is definitely suffering from this disease at the moment as illustrated by these examples: · The chains such as Gold's trying everything from $9 memberships to full service $59 clubs. · The equipment guys still trying to sell fixed equipment to an emerging functional industry. · There is a lack of leadership in the industry on the business side as the old heroes, such as Tony DeLeede or Mike Chaet, fade and aren't being replaced. · The emergence of a new breed of rock star, such as Todd Durkin, Gray Cook, Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Boyle, who are driving change in the industry from the trainer up instead of from the owner down. · The silliness of over a dozen new franchises emerging based upon a $9 model, all too late to the dance and all of who have missed the low point window, which is fading faster than I can write this article. · One hit wonders, such as Zumba, that will be here today but quickly replaced by their many imitators. We look at these as saviors but a dance step or piece of equipment isn't going to save a dying concept. · The end of the circuit club concept. Look at the loss in Curves in units and every other circuit club chain. My business definition of chaos is that you reach a point where you suffer from information overload. In other words, it seems that change is happening faster in the industry than the average owner can adapt to in their business. Where do seek shelter when everything in the industry is nothing but a raging storm? The thing to remember is that when chaos occurs, it creates ruin for many but opportunity for those who are ready. For example, Virgin Record stores close but Itunes emerges. Ipads rule but end the life of a typical desktop computer and most laptops and Blockbuster closes hundreds of stores but Netflix flies high and many new trainers opening businesses find homes in the old Blockbuster locations. Chaos for some is opportunity for others. Here are five trends reflecting this chaos and what they mean to us in the industry: The low priced guys have create a panic in the mainstream clubs Those that get caught up in the panic overreact and match prices causing many to fail or to compete on low-end volume. On the other hand, opportunity exists for any club who wants to finally master the training aspect of the business. For the first time ever, we are forced to get results for our members since we now realize that they are not replaceable due to the cannibals eating the cannibals in the $9 category. There are, and always will be, a class of members that will pay a little extra not to wait for an hour to get in line for a beat to shit treadmill and there will always be a class of member that will pay a reasonable cost to get some help, have a clean club, have access to current equipment, such as kettle bells, and who couldn't give a flying donkey shit that your membership is $19 or $39 versus the low-priced guy down the street. The opportunity for us is retention and a new source of revenue from training, something only apparent due to the chaos caused by the cheap players. The failure of the big box club The big box club based upon an endless membership stream, but in reality doing nothing more than renting equipment, has been hit hard and is staggering in the corner. Some boxes will be reinvented as large training driven facilities but most will simply lower the price and fight it out at the bottom. Sadly, many box operators will fail in the next few years as they are forced to the floor quicker adversaries. Remember again, it is not the big that eat the little, it is the fast that eat the slow, that counts in business and the box operators, such as most chains, are just too slow to change from a membership model to a training centric model. Their failure opens the door to the emergence of the small training based facility in the 3000-7500 square foot class. Anytime is a perfect example of this new class and the owners of the franchise are showing real leadership in that they are letting the franchise evolve per Howard Shultz and Starbucks. The essence of the small facility is that you can make the same money in 6000 square feet that a typical Gold's makes annually in 25,000 in most markets with only 300 members. We have a number of units now that generate a million or more in only 6000 feet. Why can't the chains just infuse this concept into their boxes? Good question that we can ask the last guy standing. It is not just the size that is killing the big box, it is the business concept based upon an endless supply of new members to replace lost or burned up members. The chaos here is that the big boxes are struggling for an identity with the consumer while the small guys are winning the neighborhood war and the war of leads and sales since they are dependent on generating about 25 new sales a month rather than 250 a box might need. The pressure on society of the obese consumer Few clubs seek these folks and even fewer trainers know what to do with them. The chaos occurs in that we are still looking for the traditional sort of in-shape member and ignoring this growing (pun intended) segment of potential member. Trainers and mainstream owners who can master this group and make them feel at home in your facility will make a lot of money from this group in the coming years. And there is a valid case for someone becoming the next guru of obesity in the industry. Look at these statistics I generated on the web. Over the past decade, obesity has become recognized as a national health threat and a major public health challenge. In 2007--2008, based on measured weights and heights approximately 72.5 million adults in the United States were obese (CDC, unpublished data, 2010). Obese adults are at increased risk for many serious health conditions, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and premature death. Adult obesity also is associated with reduced quality of life, social stigmatization, and discrimination. From 1987 to 2001, diseases associated with obesity accounted for 27% of the increases in U.S. medical costs. For 2006, medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at as much as $147 billion (2008 dollars); among all payers, obese persons had estimated medical costs that were $1,429 higher than persons of normal weight. In 2001, the Surgeon General called for strong public health action to prevent and decrease overweight and obesity. We cry and sob as a nation about these numbers but how many owners or trainers are rushing to dominate this emerging field. It seems that television and the Biggest Loser does a better job motivating this group then we do as an industry because while we talk a good game about changing the world most clubs don't do a hell of a lot but sell memberships and replace those they run out the door. The aging population and their need to be forever young Between January 1-December 31, 2011, over 7000 people a day will turn 65 years old. That is 7000 a day, not just a month or a year but in a single day. Here is an article derived from the web that best illustrates this open field: MIAMI, May 28, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune News Service delivered by Newstex) -- The sky is the color of freshly brewed coffee when Liliana Retelny slips her 27-foot shell into the still waters of Miami Beach's Indian Creek and begins her daily three-hour routine. She rows. She rows as the rising sun stains the clouds, as students practice with their crew teams, as the sounds of a waking city begin to fill the air.

Retelny, 47, is practicing to compete against rowers two decades her junior. The Aventura, Fla., psychotherapist already has won two silver medals in the Central American Games, placed 20th in World Cup competition and second in her division in Israel's Maccabiah Games. All this in a sport she took up only four years ago, when her daughter was rowing for her high school team.

"I love it," said Retelny, who competes under her maiden name, Boruchowicz. "For me this is not work. It is not a matter of discipline. When I'm on the water, I'm the happiest. I feel alive and young."

 The Costa Rica native is part of a growing cadre of baby boomers who seek the proverbial fountain of youth in swimming pools, on running tracks and in the gym. Many have taken up sports _ even extreme sports _ in mid-life, pursuing fitness not only to look good but to feel good.

"Boomers have always appreciated being physically fit, and they're not about to let go of that active lifestyle,"says Kara Thompson, spokeswoman for the International Health, Racquet and Sports Club Association (IHRSA). "They want to stay healthy. They exercise because it makes them feel better." Again, who is going to emerge as the leader of this group? Chaos appears in the form of an aging population willing to pay almost anything to stay young but as of yet there are no rising stars that are becoming industry symbols of what it takes to drive this market. And yet again, we talk a good game but what percentage of most clubs are really over 55 and being serviced? Even the functional gurus are late to this game and haven't yet discovered this niche. Fitness after 50 is a business plan within itself and we can turn it into a vital method of driving business in the industry in the coming decade and there lies the opportunity. The death of sacred cows Sacred cows are sacred cows and are so sacred we can't talk about them in public. We seldom talk about the cows at trade shows, articles don't appear in the magazines and speakers don't speak of this almost endless list of bad habits and ancient technology. Take a look at this list of common things in the industry from 1995 and see if you can spot the cows: · Circuit training · Crunches · Long, slow cardio for weight loss · One-on-one training · Packages and sessions for training revenue · Low fat, high carb diets · Traditional group exercise (aerobics) Where is the cow? The surprise is that everything on this list from 1995 has proven to be false or has failed in the industry. Circuit training is what trainers do to people without enough money to buy elite training. If we can't figure out how to service the client, put him on a circuit and let him go in a circle for six weeks or so and then he stops coming because he has hit a plateau. And most importantly, the clients are now smart enough to hate this training and find it extremely boring. Even Jillian Michaels knows circuits are boring and stupid. In the era of equipment as the service portion of the club, circuits ruled because equipment was what we sold. Now, circuits are a failure and are what you do in your club because you don't know what you are doing. Crunches are the sure way to trash your lower back. Just ask Stuart McGill, the premier back expert in training in the world. Watching Oprah for an hour while walking at 3 miles an hour may be relaxing but it won't do anything for a fat butt except make it fatter. And has anyone really walked up to you in the club and exclaimed, "I want the body like the woman on treadmill four, the one walking slowly hanging on to the handles. I always wanted to look like a slowly rotting pear." One-on-one is the least cost efficient method to train someone. It is too elite, too expensive and too restrictive for a business plan. If your training revenue is less than 20% of you net membership receivable base, you are not a training facility, you are a very vulnerable box mainstream club. Packages and sessions are out; training offered at various price levels determined by the amount of people sharing the cost of the trainer is in. Why can Crossfit get $150 a month for people doing group person training and clubs can't figure it out yet? The high carb thing just keeps going on even though books such as, Good Calorie, Bad Calorie by Gary Taubes keep citing the complete lack of research that supports this theory. Even group exercise might be on the rope. There are two issues here that will determine the outcome of group (not cycling, which still has room to grow). First of all, it seems that all the young women that used to enter the industry to teach group are now becoming trainers instead and are not interested in group exercise. Secondly, group itself is evolving into nothing more than functional training and therefore it should be something we charge more for and hand over to trainers. If group wants to stay a part of the fitness scene, it needs to rapidly evolve and appeal to a younger generation of members who find it an, "old person's workout." Killing sacred cows is the only way to generate change. If you want to improve your life, create chaos for yourself. There is no growth without a motivating factor for most people. We are in an era of complete chaos in this industry: perhaps the perfect storm of failing clubs, changing technology and evolving members. There will be vast failures in the industry during the next few years, but out of that chaos there will be huge success for those who can capitalize on the changing conditions, as they exist. Side Note: I am doing this as a one-hour keynote this year for Perform Better at their Summits. I will be in Chicago in two weeks and in Long Beach in August. Owners and operators and their senior teams should make it a point to attend one of these events this year. There is no better format to see the best in the world in training and fitness education. I will also do a version of this at the ACE Symposium this fall, another vital source of everything education in the fitness world and it too should be attended by owners and managers and not just their trainers. Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:06:47 -0500 Reactionary owners are the ones who let emotions and a sense of feel guide their business decisions on a daily basis. In this group, the gathering and tracking of relevant numbers are avoided because either the owner doesn't know what to track or simply avoids the numbers altogether since the reality of those numbers might contradict their sense of what is going on in their own business. Trends lines represent how the key indicators track over time. In our business, usually anything over a year is so far out of date as to be worthless. Our reality in the fitness industry is what is happening now and if the indicator we are currently tracking is up, staying flat or declining slowly. Intense owners, and might I add usually financially successful owners, normally track dozens of key indicators on a daily basis. These indicators reflect the current health of the business and give the owner clues as to not only how the business is working today, but also how the business will work in the near future. The key indicators also illuminate the performance of your current staff and whether they can perform at the necessary basic level necessary to sustain your business. At the basic level, you need to only track these foundational indicators on a daily basis: · Daily traffic: potential business through the door (leads) · Conversions: How many of your leads became members over a 30-day period of time (closing rates)? Keep this for individuals and for the team. · Average EFT: What is the average of all the payments in today's memberships? Always split couples into two separate contracts. Your goal of course is to keep the average higher than the monthly payment for an individual. · Gross amount of membership contracts. · Gross amount of training membership contracts. We never used to track gross contract amounts but our goal now is to have a receivable base based upon training revenue that is higher than the receivable base derived from just simple memberships. · The daily number: The amount we need to hit each day through the register to hit the target deposit minus the net receivable check. · Retention numbers: Track the total possible for the month and the total saved. · Daily traffic and the usage rate, which reflects the average per member visit spent in the club each day in the club's profit centers. · Total annual memberships for the month · Total training memberships for the month · Closing rates be the assessor, which is the person that spends an hour with most of the new or potential members getting them properly placed into the club. See prior blogs on this. This is probably the single most important thing I am teaching these days. This list reflects some of the most basic indicators that highlight how the business is doing. Most of these numbers are taught in the workshops or are in my books. What we are looking for in this blog is what these numbers represent as trends. Trend line # 1: Slight downward numbers slowly eroding over a 12-month period but notable if lasting for a minimum of three months. Many owners never feel the bullet that killed them. Death for most fitness people in business is a slow process that quietly creeps up on an owner until it is too late to make significant change. The example here is the insidious death of the frog story used by many motivational speakers. In this example, it is noted that a frog that jumps into hot water will jump right back out while a frog that sits in cool water that is slowly heated to a boil will die and not jump not realizing that its world is changing for the negative. I don't know if this story is true but it makes a great example and as a side note who was the nasty bastard that decided to boil a frog to see if he could validate this theory? Anyway, most owners that fail go the way of the frog. By ignoring downward trends over time they eventually reach a point where the business is distressed but it is now too late to jump out of the boiling water that is killing you. Let's take lead generation for example and let's say that your leads trend downward for a period of three months, which is the most important time frame to take action. The typical owner looks at the numbers (maybe) and decides to maybe add a little more marketing or to start marketing if he hasn't been in the market. Mostly his reaction is too little too late because what he is really doing is just stalling with the hope that the numbers will turn around next month. It is important to note here that: Trend lines never reverse until they are reversed by immediate and severe action by the owner Three months is the key here. If you are declining in any key area for three months straight your business is in trouble. Subtle reaction would not be the key here but rather an immediate and concentrated response by the owner will be the only thing that changes the trend. Trend line #2: Flat line over time. In 2009, designated by the financial gurus in this industry as the single worst year in the modern history of the fitness industry, flat line would have been a good thing. There was a story in the financial magazines where Subaru celebrated a year in the recession where they grew the company by only a point and a half. In tough times, just hanging on is a success. But we are past that point now and flat line is no longer a badge of merit but rather a sign of a unhealthy business. In small business, there are only two speeds: you are either kicking ass and growing your business at an annual clip of at least 5% over the same period last year or you are in reverse and losing ground. Flat line is just another way to say you are losing ground because while your numbers are the same everything else went up. Gas, food, utilities, wages, equipment, printing, toilet paper and virtually everything else rose while you just hung on. The same rule applies here: if you are flat for three months and trending that way toward a 12-month period, you are in some deep boiling water my soon to be cooked frog friends. Flat line is still death just like the declining trend although it is slower. It is, however, in many ways nastier in that owners gather false hope because they feel they are at least holding their own in the market. The reality is that a year later that end is still near as the expenses rise to cancel out whatever income you still might be generating. These are also the clubs that have equipment that is just a little too old, paint that is a little too stale and all the other signs that the business is still there an functioning but not healthy. Go out and look at your cardio. If it is over four years old, you are a frog and the water is getting a little hotter. Trend line #3: Steady growth over time. We all like to see this one but only if it represents total growth of at least 5% over last year's numbers. Growth that is 2-3% is nothing more than an extended flat line that can't keep up with the rising expense of doing business but in reality many owners live at this sustenance level for years. The only accepted trend for any indicator except new sales, which will always top out due to market limiters, is growth of 5% or more. Anything less than that and you are in some form of extended failure. You can be an owner that tracks all these numbers and still miss the train that is bearing down on your overextended ass. Numbers based upon one month at a time, which is the way we teach them, give you a quick picture but fail to give you the overall reality of a business. The difference is like looking at a photograph or a video. For example, you might have looked at a still photo of the plane that crashed into the river in New York. A picture taken just 10 seconds before it hit the water would have shown a plane in normal flight, as at least as you could tell from a still photo. That same plane as part of a two-minute video, however, would have shown a totally different reality for Captain Scully and the passengers. Numbers without a trend are nothing more than a still photo of short-term reality. Numbers tracked over time and trended out give you the ugly truth of the video. Thu, 9 Jun 2011 18:26:13 -0500 Seek the Simple in Everything You do in Business There are no magic sales words nor is there a perfect sales pitch that will make every person join your club. There is no class, hot trend or magic piece of equipment that will be a sustainable sales driver in your club over time. There is no hidden business or pricing system that will fill your club year after year no matter what the franchise or low priced guys tell you. There are no magic ads that will drive thousands of people to your business over time. There is no magic in this business. The only things that do matter to your survival are lead generation, closing rate, your ability to generate a higher return per member through training EFT revenue, cost control and staff training done more often than you think. These things matter and very little else does. These things are not glamorous or sexy but they do make money if applied daily. Most club owners that do falter or fail do so because they spend most of their time trying to add something new to their business that will suddenly turn them around. For example, owners at IHRSA buying a new line of equipment, but who can't convert over 40% of their leads into sales, are trying to buy a magic solution to a failing business rather than figuring out how to get their closing rate to 60% or higher. When you don't have basic skills, you try and add something to the business that will do it for you. The big chains are great examples of complex businesses that can't even handle the most basic business skills. Many throw millions of dollars into their facilities but can't close enough sales to grow the chain because they are still using 40-year-old technology in their sales system. It does not matter how much stuff you have if your sales techniques prevent people from buying your product. Many of the franchise clubs in the Northeast have this problem. These guys put $4 million or more into their clubs and then get whacked by a $19 guy down the street in a mediocre club. Is it price or is it the fact that you have 3000 members and only do $12,000 a month in training? Is the problem that you charge too much or that you are nothing more than a club that merely rents equipment and someone beat you at your own game? Were you lucky to get away with it for years but failed when competition came to town because you never really knew how to run your business? Remember, it is not the price that is killing you; it will always be the return per member. It doesn't matter if you show a low price to attract a wider range of members even if you go as low as $19. It does matter if all you sell is memberships based upon price and have no other way to increase the return per sale. No one can win the volume game in a market where everyone is looking for the low price to be his or her own personal magic. Low price is a tool, not a solution or even a business plan. Low price is not magic and won't solve your problems over time if that is the only tool in the chest. When complexity fails seek the simple. If your business isn't performing, look at these questions and answer them in order: · How many hours a week am I really working to get leads in here? For many of you, this should be the biggest part of your week. · Is my price set at the lowest point I need in this market to expand my lead base? Set your price to broaden your entry level but this alone is not the answer. · If someone shows up, have I hired the right people, and trained them, to convert over 60% per month into new sales? · If they do become members, do I have a layered pricing system that allows me to up sell them into higher priced memberships, such as group personal training, that allows me to generate a higher return per member on EFT? If your training revenue per month is less than 20% of your membership EFT you are in the membership business, which is tough to sustain in a price war where everyone is bottom feeding for huge volume. · Do I work each month to lower my cost or is all I do cut cost? There is a difference. Good owners work to permanently lower the cost of their operation by asking hard questions. Weak owners simply cut stuff when they are broke and never really restructured the business and its basic cost of operation. · Do I train my staff on the fundamentals of the business, such as sales, the new member induction process and customer service, at least four hours per week? No magic here my friends, just hard work; yet this all I do these days working with clients. The problem is that when we had it easy and there wasn't much competition we could ignore these skills. Now, in the middle of price wars, we find that most owners don't know how to do these things, and if they do, they find them too hard and too much work. The club business is sort of like a drug head that would rather get wired than deal with his life and his problems. Dealing with reality takes hard work and relearning basic fundamentals, but that isn't as much fun as looking for the magic that would allow me to own a club and not actually do much real work. Adding a Zumba class or a TRX class to your schedule is much easier than working your ass off to change your brand and train your staff, but over time the tools fail and the only thing left is the carpenter. Either the carpenter is skilled at his craft, and can really build, or we find that he relies on spending thousands on getting the right tools but he never learned how to actually cut a straight board. How many guys do we see in this golf that have a $500 driver and a $.50 swing? Spend all you want on clubs, you are still the same guy with the same crappy swing. Times are tough in the industry. No matter who you are, or how successful you have been in the past, if you are finding your business flat or in a decline, remember the consultant's golden rule: when complexity fails, always return to the simple. Important notes: It is the start of the Perform Better Summit season. They are offering three this year: one in Providence, RI; one in Chicago and one in Long Beach. Get on line and sign up. This is for owners and senior trainers. Get back into the business and go sweat a little. I am doing the keynote at all three of these events. There is one more speaker's school this year in August. Go to mytpi.com to sign up. These are limited to 16 people each. If you speak for a living, or want to, this is a must do. These are offered through the Titleist Performance Institute and I team teach this with Greg Rose. We are in Denver next this month and then in Louisville in July. If you want to learn how to set a low price and still drive big training numbers come this year. The material is changed about every 90 days so if you haven't been in awhile you might be in need of some new ideas. Mon, 30 May 2011 15:02:15 -0500 It's Time to Get Past the Fear in your Business You just had your second Red Bull and it isn't working. The music in your car is loud; the windows are down letting cold air blow into your face and it is midnight but you're still an hour from home. The only plan is to keep your car between the lines and hang on another hour. Not many cars out this late and you are hitting it hard trying to get home before you fall asleep at the wheel. Suddenly, a deer takes one massive leap out of the brush along the road and lands dead in the middle of your lane. He stares at you, frozen in mid stride, head turned, staring at a car screaming down on him at 70 miles an hour. Several seconds later you swerve, but not in time and the deer is road kill and your front fender is a crushed piece of cheap plastic barely attached to the car by a few screws. Why didn't the deer see the car and run? Why didn't he react to something that was trying to kill him? In our world the small business owner is too often the deer. Competition increases, divorce happens, leases go bad and the owner, instead of fighting back, chooses to stand in the middle of the road and stare at the light until he is crushed and loses it all. This scenario might be the most frustrating business situation in small business: the owner becomes so afraid of doing the wrong thing that he does nothing and simply exists as an inert mass in the middle of the road staring at the light until the business is taken away from him. I used to believe that you that if someone is trying to break your head with a bat that you would at least swing back and go down fighting, but over the years I realized that this doesn't happen. I remember watching one of the earliest full contact marital arts fights pitting a guy with about three fights with one guy who was in the ring for the first time. The new guy was an experienced martial artist, big and tough looking. The fight started, the more experienced guy threw a quick, vicious kick at the new guy's head and the new guy panicked, turned away and refused to fight. It was over in less than 30 seconds and the challenger never threw a punch. This was real life failure, not someone in the movies making a heroic fight against overwhelming odds and beating three drunks with a pool cue. People get challenged beyond their capacity to deal with the situation and they shut down, not only in a martial arts bout, but in business and in life too. Too much is simply too much and the game is over. I see this happening now in the fitness world. The competition has increased dramatically during the last several years with a negative connotation that good clubs are eating bad clubs that are charging less. This isn't the actual case and in reality it is the fast eating the slow to change that is affecting the market. We have the new functional technology, an increased difficulty in finding good staff and training them, and the disappearance of the old retro marketing ideas that worked for decades yet now are worthless concepts leaving current owners struggling with newer electronic technology to drive leads. Change is happening and the fast adapters are eating the slow movers. For many owners, it is simply too much to change and too much to understand the new rules of the fitness business and many find it easier to stare into the headlights waiting for the car to end the pain. Most owners only have so many reinventions in their soul and then they quit the business and perhaps nothing in this business is more painful than watching an owner who has been in the industry for 30 years trying to cope with the current rate of change. "You're crazy, this idea worked for the guy who started Bally's and he made a million bucks doing this. That new stuff is bullshit," which doesn't explain why the old guy is losing his business if that idea is still so viable. Another way to look at this is that it is somewhat like watching a person who smokes or who has a drinking problem blow up their life while intellectually understanding that what they are doing is killing them yet they refuse to change. I use to use the line, "change is more painful than death" and now later in my teaching I am only now truly understanding how powerful this sentence really is. The frozen person believes that staring at the light is the right thing to do. By not making a decision you avoid doing anything wrong or harmful for the business. But not making a decision is making a decision: you just made a decision to avoid making a decision and many decisions in today's blinding speed market must be made quickly with the thought that if you're wrong you at least moved it forward and can later adjust. Here is a self-test to help you understand if you might be one of the deer people: · Is your business slipping, as indicated by the numbers declining, and yet you find yourself waiting for them to get better rather than taking action? The light is coming deer person. · Do you have personal issues, such as carrying too much weight or a bad relationship, that you simply avoid rather than dealing with in your life? Fat deer make better meals. · Are you one of those people others look up to in the business, have been in the magazines, might have been a past president of a major trade organization, but now you find yourself struggling because what you know no longer works and it is embarrassing to ask someone for help because you lose guru status? Maybe the other deer would respect a smart deer who still seeks new ideas and doesn't have to know everything. · If you haven't been to a training conference in the last three years, aren't certified as a trainer or haven't done any one-day workshops on newer training concepts, you are the deer and the lights are a big SUV. · If you don't know who Gray Cook, Alwyn Cosgrove, Mike Boyle, Jason Brown or Todd Durkin are and you own a fitness facility, you are the deer and the car is moving faster toward your furry ass. · If you are doing the same workout you did 20 years ago, just go ahead and jump on the barbecue. · If you can't use your own software, can't Facebook, can't shoot and post a 30-second video, check your back for tire prints. Many owners will fail this year and most deserve what they get because of failure to take action. Is it fair? The rule of business will always be the fast eat the slow, not the big eat the small. We are in the world of change yet if you refuse to take action your business will be taken away from you. If things aren't working, take the first punch and at least go down fighting back. Losing isn't everything; failure to fight will cost you your soul. Fri, 13 May 2011 21:23:29 -0500 Originally Posted 04/18/11 What business are you in? Most owners give the trite response that we are in the fitness business, but in reality few owners actually ever rise to the level where their primary mission is to help the client get what they paid for through their membership. Most owners are simply in the membership business, which is the last business I would want to be part of during the next five years. Being in the membership business today is sort of like being in the pager business a few years ago. One day your hot, next day you are gone. The fitness business is changing and your ability to continue as a business that exists almost solely to sell just memberships is coming to an end. Membership driven businesses are defined as those that generate 75% or more of their gross income from membership sales. This includes receivable base income as well as cash sales and any down payments. The other side of this means that you generate less than 20% of your total income from members already in the system. A sample club here might be one that generates a receivable check each month of $70k but only has another $10k in training coupled with about $5000k in new cash from memberships. This club is in the membership business, not the fitness business, because it does nothing but rent equipment to a bunch of people who get little if any help (defined by the low revenue in training). If sales slow down, the business fails because they are too dependent on new income to survive. High volume clubs have worked during the last few years, as evidenced by Planet Fitness and their endless imitators but what happens when everyone in the market is chasing the same business plan that is centered on high volume and replaceable members? Does anyone think that 10 clubs in a market all charging $10 or less can survive? Cycles hit this industry hard every few years but we fail to learn from our past mistakes. Look at the Curves craze and what it did to the market. Just a few years after Curves destroyed the market there were copy circuit clubs everywhere and most mainstream fitness guys were adding 30 minute circuits to their clubs. It was the rage and everyone was crying how unfair if was that these little clubs could damage the mainstream boxes. Now Curves is a shadow of its former self and the imitators are gone. Another craze that was deemed the next greatest thing was gone. The question is why would anyone think that the low priced model is nothing more but another craze that is doomed to failure as the copyists line up to produce their own versions? Curves was circuits, and easily copied, and the low-priced model is nothing more than a low price and equipment rental that is also easily duplicated, although the market can't generate enough volume to feed too many of these insatiable beasts in most towns. For example, look at Workout World, who just gave up trying to compete with Planet Fitness and just copied exactly everything they do, including their ad format and price specials. If you can't beat them, then rip them off is their business plan. If I was a Planet Fitness, I would seriously be thinking that what happened to Curves could happen to them; a period of industry domination followed by sudden decline as the industry adjusts and rolls past them. They might also do well to remember Bally's, Living Well, Spa Lady, Cuts, and all the other chains who had a brief glimpse of the sun before sinking back to the depths of competition. What is next then and how will it affect us? As anyone who reads this regularly, and I thank all three of you deeply, there has to be an evolution even in the Planet Fitness world of low priced players. If everyone is copying your business plan, then you must evolve what you do to another level of play. The point here is that we have to at some point move beyond renting equipment to people who fail in six weeks and start to create systems where the highest percentage of members can get the most help at a reasonable cost. There is another level of play and we are in the era where we will see a lot of mass failures in the next few years. Every herd gets culled (the weak get eaten or the stupid walk off a cliff) and the next few years should be more than exciting for some of those clubs seeking the magic of a low priced business plan. Failures will come and they will be spectacular. We need to be in the fitness business, where people stay longer and pay longer because we do the right thing. The day your training revenue passes your membership receivable check congratulate yourself, you have evolved. Darwin would be proud because you have now joined the survival of the fittest, the fastest and the brightest. You can't fix stupid but you can fix a dated business plan. Original Comments: Becky- Hi Thom! As always, I love your blog. I learn so much from you and you validate so many things for me. What advice do you have for personal trainers to update their business plans? I've been trying to move beyond traditional personal training by offering more online services. It's convenient, effective and affordable for the consumer. Let me know if you are interested in hearing more about it and I'll send you a link. Otherwise, I'm curious what your thoughts on regarding online personal training. ----------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hello Becky, Thanks for writing. I have a number of training clients who are getting into online help and it seems to be paying. Like most things, we probably over thought this for years and it turns out that simple works. There seems to be two approaches to this system. The first is that clients actually belong to the club but never appear. These folks get a monthly program geared somewhat towards them (template driven but no one-on-one personalization except for profiting). The member/client can stop by once a month and get the program or he can just access his information on line and never set foot in the club. You could charge about $20 more per month for this client than you would a basic membership. This member could actually use the club if he wanted. The second client type is all online. Clubs that have good local reps but are not convenient for people who are extremely busy or who live outside the easy drive time go to the club[s website, fill out a profile and then the club generates a program monthly. The key here is do this more cheaply than you think to build a broader base. You are still using a template driven system so once you build a series of workouts for a middle aged triathlon guy for example, you just take him through the series adjusting as needed. You could charge somewhere between $49-99 a month for this service depending on the market. There is a third choice if you are a specialist. The Titleist Performance Institute (mytpi.com) has an extremely quality site if you are certified with them. This site allows you to build a program by video clips for your individual client and then grant the client access to the site. Most of the exercises are beyond golf and have a wider range of application. Gray Cook and Lee Burton are also heading that way with the FMS site, which should be up very soon. I think there is a great need for this and it will be hot during the next few years. Rick Mayo, the guy in Atlanta doing great numbers in 6,000 square feet, is getting into online and is having solid initial success. Please post your link and let everyone know. What you are doing with your site so the rest of us can learn. Thank you for the kind comments. Thom. ------------------------------------------------- Rcreech- Thom As in most cases, I think that you are right on the money again. Thanks for all of the knowledge over the years. See you soon. RC -------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- From 2009 to 2010 with changing this gym into a training center. Training went up 45% We are at month 4 into this year and its up to 60%. Memberships sales still to be even month to month with a lot of people moving out of San Diego in 2009 and 2010. 2011 has a lot of new and young faces moving into town. We now have 5 low priced clubs in a 3 mile range that were not there when we opened ten years ago. We have less members now than 4 years ago. I have less trainers on staff because with the training system you know where everyone is at and if need be trainers are easily replaced now, not like before. When the trainers did what they wanted. You cant fix stupid but you can fix a dated business plan! That's for sure! Everything we do with this club from now on is for Beginners and Training. Oops Coaching! ----------------------------------------------------- Jerrynapp- Hi Ton, I am one of the three people what read your Blog... Always interesting. ------------------------------------------------ Thomas Plummer- Jerry, Where have you been? You are missed on the tour. Thank you for the support. All three of you make my day. See you soon, maybe in Florida. T --------------------------------------------- Matt- You are 100% right, man cannot live on membership alone! As we prepare our expansion we are evolving right along the lines...50% is around the corner. Current revenue; Membership EFT; 49% PT & group PT: 30% Cash sales/downpayments; 21% PT and group are growing much faster then memberships. Membership is slow growth, but lifetime revenue per member is on track to be up 100% year over year! I could no t agree more with your post Tom. Chasing memberships is like being stuck in neutral. It's tough advice to follow but I'm sure it's the right thing to do. It feels great not chasing memberships but rather guaranteeing results and delivering the fitness leadership our clients are seeking! ------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Good job my friend. Numbers like that will make you bullet proof and best of all, if you can master it there you can open a lot more just like it not dependent on just membership. Thank you for writing. It is appreciated. Thom ------------------------------------------------ Mike- Hi Matt, we run a small private gym in England with 500 members. Can u tell us what sort of deal your PT's are on and how you promote in-house? Mike ------------------------------------------------- Rick- Jo Mike, Definitely get to the NFBA workshop. Thom and the crew will layout exactly what it should like. Invaluable! ------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hi Mike, We teach a complete multi level training system based upon a combination of group personal training, semi-privates and unlimited one-on-one as part of this year's workshops. We have a number of small clubs with about 300 members doing $100,000 per month or better based upon this system. Matt is a very good operator who does membership and training with the goal of getting the training numbers higher than memberships, which he will most likely do very soon. Look at our schedule and come see us for a workshop. We will be on the east coast soon. Thank you for writing and I am sure Matt will answer as well Thom -------------------------------------------------------- Matt- Exactly what Thom said, still refining the system in our 3200 sq. foot cub and 700 members (not a typo). Our new space is exactly double so we expect our training to grow as we finally bust out of our tiny box. Our growth formula is following Tom's basic outline, plus; Adopting a world class's training program that coaches deliver (after 100 hours in house training) Guaranteed Results Free Quarterly Personal Training for all Members On ramping everyone via a group orientation system with unlimited coaching (within the Fundamentals program) Vetting out issues with fellow owner operators in a MasterMind group. It's been tough learning, but the last year we hit our stride. I'm looking forward to sharpening our saw in Thom's workshop in CA later this year. Feel free to drop me a note. Commit2fit@sbcglobal.net Fri, 13 May 2011 21:18:44 -0500 Originally Posted 04/06/11 Freddie was a dumb employee. He was born dumb, his parents were the kind of folks who would spend the equivalent of a month's salary to go to wrestle mania and the sum of the entire IQ of his friends was less than that of a typical poodle. Freddie was unique in that he was smart enough to know he was dumb. I hired Freddie because he showed up on time, learned to dress decently (this took work and extra training by me and the managers), was polite and did whatever I told him to do with a smile on his face. He was good at running errands, picking up equipment, fixing minor breaks, cleaning and helping the members on the floor and doing anything, at anytime, that was needed in the business. Freddie was a legend because of the amazingly stupid things he did on an almost daily basis that validated his less than a chipmunk brainpower. For example, he got out of his car to tell me something but left it in gear and running. It slowly plowed into the side of the building. He also managed to fallout of a moving bus, get arrested for streaking, shoot a farm animal on a deer hunt and marry a woman who held the record for eating the most hot dogs in 10 minutes at the local sports bar. Freddie appreciated the work and was loyal but keeping him was more an adventure in management than an act of good business. He was paid near minimum wage but I gave him a little extra cash each month because he showed up and did his job without much hassle and with a good attitude. He was with me for years and I was sorry to see him move away. In all the years he worked for me, he never called in sick and never failed to do his job. He was a good man at heart, a good worker and was one of the few people I have ever met that used most of the talent he possessed. He wasn't bright, but he did get more out of dumb than many smart people get out of their talent. The mistake most owners make is that they think that a Freddie hired for near minimum money can then be magically converted into an employee that can generate revenue and take responsibility. It is kind of like the shows on television where a bunch of people bid on an abandoned storage locker, the winner buys the rights to the contents of the unit cheap, and then hope he hopes to find valuable stuff long forgotten by the original owner when he opens it. The difference is that when you buy an abandoned storage unit, you don't know what is really inside. You might just find that priceless painting if you are lucky. In Freddie's case, and in the case of most other cheap and dumb employees, what you see is what you get. There is nothing hidden inside here that might become more valuable later. You hired a guy willing to clean toilets for minimum wage and that is what you get and all you should expect. He might be a nice guy, but he is not a diamond to be mined from the mud. He is, an always will be, a guy willing to do menial, demeaning tasks for a low pay. The problem here is that most owners can't tell the difference between a basic employee and a storage unit. These owners hire cheap, because they are cheap, and because their accountants teach them to keep the payroll expenses down since that is the only thing they recognizes on the statements. After hiring the first available person at the lowest wage in the market, this owner then expects the person to suddenly bloom into a rare find capable of making him a lot of money. You see it all the time in this business: an owner who is mad because his staff can't perform, are totally unreliable as a group and who show no interest in the business beyond, "where is my check/it is time for me to leave now." If there was ever a case of you get what you paid for, then hiring cheap employees is it. The old saying, you can put a tuxedo on a pig but it still is a pig, applies to employees. If you hire cheap because you are cheap, then what you hire is what you get and you have to recognize that the 19-year-old dumb ass at the front counter checking people in, chatting on her cell phone and bitching because she has to empty the trash is working at her upper limit and all the management books in the world can't elevate her game. You hired wrong and you got exactly what you paid for in potential and performance. You cannot fix stupid and your plan to make money with a herd of immature talentless minimum wage drones will fail. On the other hand, if you pay a little more, say a couple bucks more than the local minimum wage, you will usually get talent instead of a warm body that merely fills a time slot on the schedule. In this example, local minimum wage is what it takes to get someone to take a front counter job in your area. In the northern states, this is often $4-5 more than real minimum wage. Buying talent is always worth the extra money. Buying adults with real life experience and business skills is always a good investment, with the emphasis here on investment. Productive people can get more done in 40 hours than 60 hours of labor by people who are more worried about the next text than they are the person needing help standing in front of them at the counter. Look around your club. Are you staff with the people working for the lowest wage you can get by with in your market or did you pay a little extra and get talent capable of generating revenue. Real salespeople need real money. Real assessment people capable of putting big training numbers on the board should be the highest paid people in your business. It is an easy test. Could you leave your club for a week, not call in, and count on making a little money while you are gone? If the answer is no, welcome to Freddie's world, the land of good people who on their best day aren't going to make you any money. The Freddies show up as needed and you will have clean toilets, but would you trust a team of Freddies with your business while you're on vacation? Come on, he only set the dumpster on fire once, how bad can he be at your front counter selling memberships? Oh wait, I forgot, you have your own Freddies and you did give them real jobs in your business expecting low-end wage slaves to sell members and become great trainers. How is that working out for you? Maybe you have more in common with Freddie than you think? Original Comments: Mark- Thanks for keeping me away from the Freddies Thom...The test for me was last week in Atlanta...Left my club, did not call in, and (not to my surprise because of your help) made some money. Best part about it was that I had no dumpster fires to put out and our numbers went up!!! See you in Orlando. ----------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Well I just let my Freddie go last nite! That felt pretty good no more Freddies for this club for now on! It was crazy I did what your blog said. Or what I read into. I took his cleaning and desk hours away slowly and really worked with him on building his training and WOW he wanted those hours like it was a drug. He would jones and beg for cleaning hours instead of working the floor for clients. So text book just wild to watch it unfold in front of your eyes. I almost feel bad because what is this guy going to do. But I guess its not my day to save them all. That to be said we closed the biggest deal we ever did on membership with 40 memberships sold to one company at full price on EFT! So Freddie gone and the signing of a major company in one day! Oh no what is next! Whats going to break and cost us! Lol! Thanks Thom! Frank --------------------------------------------- Maher- Great post. U helped a lot in fitness business by reading your books. Great job -------------------------------------------- CH Had a great young man that we picked up from a homeless shelter to do a short-term project around the club (5 years in prison). Ended up giving him a regular job. He ended up getting his GED and eventually a 2 year degree. He took mechanical courses and learned valuable trades that helped the club. He got married and has a beautiful family - he now runs the entire dept at the club. BEST THING THAT I EVER EXPERIENCEDD IN 30 YEARS OF THIS BUSINESS. -------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Lol Just Lol! :} ------------------------------------------ Jeff B- Funny, we king of have a Freddie. He's not dumb, but he has NO personality, zero, none, nothing! He has a degree in exercise physiology but I've never seen him workout. We hired him to help us fill out people's workout charts on a program we use. He comes in at 9:00 sharp every morning, gets all the charts (usually well over 150 of them), sits at the desk, puts his head down and fills out the workout charts. When done, he asks if there's anything else he needs me to do. He does not speak unless spoken to, other than letting me know he's done with the charts. We don't have him answer phones, we don't have him give tours, and we don't have him even attempt to sell memberships. He comes in, does a great job on charts very quickly, then leaves. That's it. We pay him $10 an hour and he's worth every penny. ---------------------------------------------- Ken- Great blog, Thom! I think I may have hired a couple of "Fredericas" myself. Ha ------------------------------------------------ Thomas Plummer- Looking good or effective is a whole different blog but it does highlight your personal issues as well. See you soon T Fri, 13 May 2011 21:11:46 -0500 Originally Posted 04/06/11 Freddie was a dumb employee. He was born dumb, his parents were the kind of folks who would spend the equivalent of a month's salary to go to wrestle mania and the sum of the entire IQ of his friends was less than that of a typical poodle. Freddie was unique in that he was smart enough to know he was dumb. I hired Freddie because he showed up on time, learned to dress decently (this took work and extra training by me and the managers), was polite and did whatever I told him to do with a smile on his face. He was good at running errands, picking up equipment, fixing minor breaks, cleaning and helping the members on the floor and doing anything, at anytime, that was needed in the business. Freddie was a legend because of the amazingly stupid things he did on an almost daily basis that validated his less than a chipmunk brainpower. For example, he got out of his car to tell me something but left it in gear and running. It slowly plowed into the side of the building. He also managed to fallout of a moving bus, get arrested for streaking, shoot a farm animal on a deer hunt and marry a woman who held the record for eating the most hot dogs in 10 minutes at the local sports bar. Freddie appreciated the work and was loyal but keeping him was more an adventure in management than an act of good business. He was paid near minimum wage but I gave him a little extra cash each month because he showed up and did his job without much hassle and with a good attitude. He was with me for years and I was sorry to see him move away. In all the years he worked for me, he never called in sick and never failed to do his job. He was a good man at heart, a good worker and was one of the few people I have ever met that used most of the talent he possessed. He wasn't bright, but he did get more out of dumb than many smart people get out of their talent. The mistake most owners make is that they think that a Freddie hired for near minimum money can then be magically converted into an employee that can generate revenue and take responsibility. It is kind of like the shows on television where a bunch of people bid on an abandoned storage locker, the winner buys the rights to the contents of the unit cheap, and then hope he hopes to find valuable stuff long forgotten by the original owner when he opens it. The difference is that when you buy an abandoned storage unit, you don't know what is really inside. You might just find that priceless painting if you are lucky. In Freddie's case, and in the case of most other cheap and dumb employees, what you see is what you get. There is nothing hidden inside here that might become more valuable later. You hired a guy willing to clean toilets for minimum wage and that is what you get and all you should expect. He might be a nice guy, but he is not a diamond to be mined from the mud. He is, an always will be, a guy willing to do menial, demeaning tasks for a low pay. The problem here is that most owners can't tell the difference between a basic employee and a storage unit. These owners hire cheap, because they are cheap, and because their accountants teach them to keep the payroll expenses down since that is the only thing they recognizes on the statements. After hiring the first available person at the lowest wage in the market, this owner then expects the person to suddenly bloom into a rare find capable of making him a lot of money. You see it all the time in this business: an owner who is mad because his staff can't perform, are totally unreliable as a group and who show no interest in the business beyond, "where is my check/it is time for me to leave now." If there was ever a case of you get what you paid for, then hiring cheap employees is it. The old saying, you can put a tuxedo on a pig but it still is a pig, applies to employees. If you hire cheap because you are cheap, then what you hire is what you get and you have to recognize that the 19-year-old dumb ass at the front counter checking people in, chatting on her cell phone and bitching because she has to empty the trash is working at her upper limit and all the management books in the world can't elevate her game. You hired wrong and you got exactly what you paid for in potential and performance. You cannot fix stupid and your plan to make money with a herd of immature talentless minimum wage drones will fail. On the other hand, if you pay a little more, say a couple bucks more than the local minimum wage, you will usually get talent instead of a warm body that merely fills a time slot on the schedule. In this example, local minimum wage is what it takes to get someone to take a front counter job in your area. In the northern states, this is often $4-5 more than real minimum wage. Buying talent is always worth the extra money. Buying adults with real life experience and business skills is always a good investment, with the emphasis here on investment. Productive people can get more done in 40 hours than 60 hours of labor by people who are more worried about the next text than they are the person needing help standing in front of them at the counter. Look around your club. Are you staff with the people working for the lowest wage you can get by with in your market or did you pay a little extra and get talent capable of generating revenue. Real salespeople need real money. Real assessment people capable of putting big training numbers on the board should be the highest paid people in your business. It is an easy test. Could you leave your club for a week, not call in, and count on making a little money while you are gone? If the answer is no, welcome to Freddie's world, the land of good people who on their best day aren't going to make you any money. The Freddies show up as needed and you will have clean toilets, but would you trust a team of Freddies with your business while you're on vacation? Come on, he only set the dumpster on fire once, how bad can he be at your front counter selling memberships? Oh wait, I forgot, you have your own Freddies and you did give them real jobs in your business expecting low-end wage slaves to sell members and become great trainers. How is that working out for you? Maybe you have more in common with Freddie than you think? Original Comments: Mark- Thanks for keeping me away from the Freddies Thom...The test for me was last week in Atlanta...Left my club, did not call in, and (not to my surprise because of your help) made some money. Best part about it was that I had no dumpster fires to put out and our numbers went up!!! See you in Orlando. ----------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Well I just let my Freddie go last nite! That felt pretty good no more Freddies for this club for now on! It was crazy I did what your blog said. Or what I read into. I took his cleaning and desk hours away slowly and really worked with him on building his training and WOW he wanted those hours like it was a drug. He would jones and beg for cleaning hours instead of working the floor for clients. So text book just wild to watch it unfold in front of your eyes. I almost feel bad because what is this guy going to do. But I guess its not my day to save them all. That to be said we closed the biggest deal we ever did on membership with 40 memberships sold to one company at full price on EFT! So Freddie gone and the signing of a major company in one day! Oh no what is next! Whats going to break and cost us! Lol! Thanks Thom! Frank --------------------------------------------- Maher- Great post. U helped a lot in fitness business by reading your books. Great job -------------------------------------------- CH Had a great young man that we picked up from a homeless shelter to do a short-term project around the club (5 years in prison). Ended up giving him a regular job. He ended up getting his GED and eventually a 2 year degree. He took mechanical courses and learned valuable trades that helped the club. He got married and has a beautiful family - he now runs the entire dept at the club. BEST THING THAT I EVER EXPERIENCEDD IN 30 YEARS OF THIS BUSINESS. -------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Lol Just Lol! :} ------------------------------------------ Jeff B- Funny, we king of have a Freddie. He's not dumb, but he has NO personality, zero, none, nothing! He has a degree in exercise physiology but I've never seen him workout. We hired him to help us fill out people's workout charts on a program we use. He comes in at 9:00 sharp every morning, gets all the charts (usually well over 150 of them), sits at the desk, puts his head down and fills out the workout charts. When done, he asks if there's anything else he needs me to do. He does not speak unless spoken to, other than letting me know he's done with the charts. We don't have him answer phones, we don't have him give tours, and we don't have him even attempt to sell memberships. He comes in, does a great job on charts very quickly, then leaves. That's it. We pay him $10 an hour and he's worth every penny. ---------------------------------------------- Ken- Great blog, Thom! I think I may have hired a couple of "Fredericas" myself. Ha ------------------------------------------------ Thomas Plummer- Looking good or effective is a whole different blog but it does highlight your personal issues as well. See you soon T Fri, 13 May 2011 21:11:33 -0500 Originally Posted 03/28/11 Take snow boarding for example. The learning curve for this sport is fairly vicious. During the first three hours of your first day on the board, most beginner snow boarders follow this sequence: face, ass, face, ass, face, ass, beer, nap. After the nap, most can usually navigate an easy hill and by the next day most can be fairly comfortable cruising large chunks of the mountain. It isn't a pretty progression, but it is what most beginners endure to get into the sport. Joining a new fitness facility has the same nasty learning curve; only we have found a way in this industry to extend that curve for weeks instead of hours making the transition from beginner to intermediate last for a painful month instead of a harsh morning. The sequence for new fitness beginners looks like this: embarrassment, soreness, embarrassment, soreness, embarrassment, soreness, frustration, go less often and then just quit because this crap doesn't work anyway. The beginner fitness person is the most neglected in the facility and the first 30 days that person is with us is when we are most likely to lose him forever. He is vulnerable because of the newness of the activity, the learning curve is high and because he must endure pain for at least a month without much in the way of noticeable results. Sweat hard now and maybe you will get lucky and something will happen to your body out there somewhere in the future. A few blogs a go I talked about the induction process and how important it is to slow down the first experience with a potential member and actually teach him something about working out. Once the person is in the system, you then need to make sure the first 30 days is life changing in a positive way. He needs a lot of support and if you can get him grounded and moving forward during this time period, then you can probably keep him staying longer and paying longer as a member. He will stay because he gets results and because he feels supported in the club. If he fails during the first 30 days, he might keep paying for a while because he is honest but he won't stay forever and he is definitely not going to refer or become a renewal or long-term extension. Pain is best endured with a buddy. I refer to pain here in many dimensions. Pain for the beginner is physical as the body reacts to new exercise; it is mental because he must learn new things that makes him feel like a small child again, especially when it comes to swinging that baby kettle bell for the first time in front of an instructor that just set his 28k on the floor, and the pain also comes from the stress of adjusting his life around the need to find time to workout several times a week. Breaking routines, especially when you are replacing the old with something new that is physically challenging, is harder than most of you training geeks remember. As mentioned above, pain is best endured with a buddy. One of the most important things you can do to keep a new member in the system longer, and perhaps the most important, is to facilitate the opportunity for the beginner to share his first 30 days with a buddy. Sharing the adventure, and the tough parts, with a friend makes it seem more like an adventure and less like you are taking the beating privately and that you are the only loser currently experiencing this process. Based upon this idea, set a tight system that allows all new members to go through the first 30 days with a friend or buddy every time he works out. For example, you sign up a new member that is a 30-year-old female. Make sure she has the ability to bring a sister, friend or co-worker every time she is in the club during the first 30 days. It can be the same person each time or it can be a different person every time. It doesn't matter just as long as she has someone in her life to share this new adventure with every day. Think about is from a different viewpoint. She loses five pounds the first week and is excited but whom is she going to tell: Her worthless husband sitting on the couch at home watching sports and eating crap? This guy secretly hopes she fails because he feels guilty every time she leaves for the club. How about someone at work? Nothing is more obnoxious than having a friend that is getting healthy and you're not. If this member, however, experiences fitness during her most vulnerable period with someone that is at her side, she now has someone to commiserate with over coffee after the workout, someone to call during the day to check workout times and someone to shop with for those smaller pants. Sidekicks are not only good support; they become good business for you because they keep your client in your club longer. Here is a tool you can use today to help your new members become more successful and grounded during their first month with you. Yes, it will provide more leads, but the most important thing is that this system will add more retention over time because your new client had a chance to get grounded during the beginning. Each new member should get a letter in an envelope that uses some version of the following copy. I have seen someone owners use postcards but I think a letter looks like we are more concerned about the person and less concerned about just getting a buddy in the club. Give this at point of sale and explain it verbally first. Dear new member, We know from our years of experience that your first 30 days are always the most exciting and difficult part of a new routine. You will start to feel better, look better and changes will happen. We also know that this will be your most trying time as you adapt to a new routine in your life. Fitness may be new to you and it will take a full month before coming to the club becomes part of your normal routine. We can tell you now that you will feel a little frustrated because you are learning new things, you will feel a little stressed because you are changing your life to make fitness a core thing you do at least twice per week and you might also feel a little excited as you see your first changes in your overall fitness. Members that get the most out of fitness are the ones who get grounded during their first month with us. You will simply be more successful if you can get the most out of your first 30 days with us. Give it 30 days and we can change your life. We also know that you will get more involved and perhaps work a little harder if you have a buddy who will share your new experience; therefore, we strongly encourage you to bring a friend or relative with your every single time you workout during your first 30 days. Use the same person or change support people if that fits your schedule better. Sharing your new adventure with a friend will simply add more to the experience, give you someone to talk to also eliminate the excuse that maybe you don't feel like it tonight. It is hard not to go today when your buddy just texted you that he is on his way. We want you to get the most out of being a member and get the best results you can, therefore, we do not charge for your guests during your first month. Come on, think about it; you're going to lose 10 pounds and get into your best shape in years, you need someone to tell. Control the first 30 days and they will stay longer and pay longer. Make this personal, worry more about the client's experience rather than just tagging a buddy deal and you will have members who are more grounded and happy in your system. Original Comments: Wayne kosbe- Thom, thanks for all your great ideas and getting me to focus on getting better every day, I have been following you and getting a dose of your reality !! for over 15 years, and you are the most honest straight forward "friend" in our business, sometimes brutally honest, yes I fired "Freddie" today and paid more for somebody better (got me again) thanks again, next bottle of wine is one me !! your friend, wayne kosbe, Atlanta ---------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Wayne, I didn't even know you were still alive! The only thing worse than Freddies are relatives you can't fire because you could never go to a family event again. We are in Florida in two weeks. New material for the year and you might be due. Thanks for all the support over the years. Thom ------------------------------------------ Joseph- This is Brilliant Thom. Excellent Integration and retention idea for newbies! ------------------------------------------ Chrismrowlands- If we're offering 30 day trial for 19 how could we work this in? ------------------------------------------ Kym Wimbis- Hi Chris, I am a big fan of the paid trial, especially the 30 day trial; I would be interested in hearing of your experience with them. In our experience Trial Memberships are overwhelmingly used by beginners who can really benefit from the social support... One of the recommendations that we make in our report "The Leading Box is Dead...Long Live iPos" (soon to be released) is for a FREE PASS to be included with a New Member Welcome Letter. The FREE PASS is a bit different to your other free passes... one side is a typical Free Day Pass but on the other is a paid Trial guest Pass (which confers all the benefits on the Trial Membership). The Trial Guest Pass is priced at around 50% of the Trial so for you it could be 9.95. The rationale is that it is even better value than your Trial Membership and so the Trial Member will tell all of their friends and do their best to try and "recruit" someone to the club with them to improve their own experience (there is safety in numbers) and take advantage of the great value Trial Guest Pass (They don't want it to "go to waste"). The friend gets to elect which offer they will take up when they present at the club. Of course most will opt for the better value Trial guest Pass over the Free Day Pass and those that don't were probably not a high quality lead anyway (you will still collect their details so you can market to them in the future). In line with Thom's philosophy of allowing everyone the opportunity to have someone with them for every workout during the first 30 days... if their friend does elect to take up the Free Day Pass you can simply return the Trial guest Pass/Free Day Pass to the Trial Membership member so that they can use it again for their next workout (say something like "it seems like a waste to use it for one session ..see if you can get someone else to tri it"). Let me know what you think... ------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hi Kym and Chris, We just finished our Atlanta three day and handed out your first report Kym. It started a nice discussion. The guest letter was designed for new members only and we have not tested it on trials. It seemed at the time to have more impact on someone who had moved one step further and who was now committed. I would still use it for new only however try it with trials and see if it works. Maybe you are on to something here. It does need to be formal and not look like a cheap throwaway to get referrals so use it with real people who you are actually trying to save. Remember, it was designed to keep retention high, not just to get guests. Following Kym's thoughts, this seems to help move them along the path faster from newbie to intermediate. The trial marketing is designed for all levels. One weird thing we found early was that it did attract experienced people who were currently grounded in other clubs. The trial gives them a chance to try your club out at a low risk and then if they like it they come back when their current membership expires. We didn't expect that response but it was interesting. Thanks for the comments. Thom --------------------------------------------- Chrismrowlands- We've been running the 30 day trial for 19 for some time with great success for our 'tryers'. However, how do we try and avoid 'buyers' using them as getting a cheaper first months membership> ------------------------------------------------ Kym Wimbis- I think that this is a perceptual problem... it feels like we are getting ripped off when "buyers" use trial memberships (it's quite natural to feel this way... although not terribly productive). In fact, it is actually positive. Depending on who you listen to member acquisition costs run somewhere between $100 and $200. If you have more experienced members joining on a trial (to save a few dollars) your acquisition costs will be only a discounted first month... well under the industry average. Furthermore, buyers will, on average, stay longer and require less service than tryers, so their lifetime value will be significantly higher than your genuine tryers. My advice is to embrace them... overcome your natural tendency to feel exploited and to become antagonistic towards them, chances are they will be some of your most profitable members... and you've got to love them for that. ----------------------------------------------------- Kym Wimbis- Thom... I think it might be an artificial distinction to say that trial members are less likely to benefit from social support in the club, in fact I believe that they would benefit the most. It is interesting that more advanced members do use trial memberships, in your assessment what percentage are more advanced? ---------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Maybe as high as 30 percent in more sophisticated markets. We try to do everything we can to get everyone involved in the culture of the club during the trial -------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- This is so true I love the letter. -------------------------------------------------- Kym Wimbis- Hi Thom... you are 100% right. In fact, in my next (soon to be released) report I make the distinction between referrals (which the club does to generate leads) and recruitment (which the member, especially the beginner, does to improve their own experience i.e. make it less intimidating, stressful, confusing, etc). By providing the beginner with a means to "recruit" the club perceived to be doing the member a favour rather than, more self-servingly, expecting new members to refer their friends... especially when they haven't even decided if they have made the right decision for themselves yet. I wrote a post on this last year that you can check out here http://accessfit.typepad.com/a The beginner will willingly recruit (even without additional inducements) because it benefits them, but will less willingly refer because it is quite obviously intended to benefit the club. And as you quite rightly point out, the scientific literature overwhelmingly demonstrates that people with social support adhere better to their exercise programs and consistently achieve better outcomes. I would suggest that if it is the same person each time that the beginner "recruits" it will increase the chances of turning that person into a member as well... meaning better lead generation (for the business) and better retention for both. --------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Thank you for the comments Kym. It was you who started me down this path of thought with your first repot. As soon as the next one is out let's get some of it posted here so everyone else can get a taste and then order it themselves. Everyone who missed my first comments on Kym should read the first report as a base tool to start thinking about your members and how they go through the process as a new member and how we should help them progress. Thom. -------------------------------------------- Kym Wimbis- We have had to push back the release date to the end of April but I'll give you a sneak peak right now... if you check out my response to Chris above. I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts ---------------------------------------------- Matt- Great ideas Tom. I've got to believe the guest signs up in a high percentage of instances so a win for all! Once upon a time I would reject it but we've had great success with getting people in our programs via gift cards. This idea just takes it to the next level. Thanks for the idea and letter. --------------------------------------------- Frankkole- The letter to the members is really good! Thanks! Fri, 13 May 2011 21:06:57 -0500 Originally Posted 03/14/11 It is no longer about fitness when there are so many competitors in the market. At some point, the client moves beyond what he thinks he can get from your club and starts to think about what he can get from you. The clients want to believe in us. They want to believe that you are different, that you care and they most importantly want to believe in you personally and what you do. It is not enough anymore for someone to love what you offer in your business. Today it is about them falling in love with how you do it and what makes you different in the market. Any club can sell fitness and when the market is crowded that message is lost and no longer important. Most club marketing is sterile and never conveys the strength or belief of the people who own the club. A lot of good people who try to do the right thing are lost because their marketing is so generic. The clients are seekers and they look for the businesses that will give back to them and value them as people and clients and all marketing has to convey this everyday. What is also important is how you run your business. Any club can offer the same equipment you do, rent space like you do and hire the same people that you do. The consumer doesn't care about those things. He cares about what you believe in, he cares about your ability to help people, and he cares about what makes you different than every other fitness business in town. He cares that you care and if you don't he goes somewhere else with his business. Planet Fitness is not a fitness chain. It is a creation by a very talented marketing guy that creates the perception that the company cares about you (judgment free zone) and that it is all about regular people working out together. It is not, and never was, about the price; it was always about the customer's belief that PF was different than the other clubs. Look at their current marketing and you can get this in just one ad. What does sell is belief. In many ways, what we belief, and if the client believes in us, is all that is left to market in this business. What you believe in if you are in this business, which should be that we can help every client succeed, is what you should market. Good marketing is personalized marketing, which is the hardest form to do but is the most effective over time People want to be part of something these days. They want to follow someone, and give their money to someone; who cares about them as a client and as a person. We have lost this basic marketing knowledge in the drive to prove we are bigger, have more classes, have more equipment or have a lower price. We have also lost the client in most cases because if you can't demonstrate you care and believe in them then they will not believe in you and they will leave. All of your marketing should be personal and based upon making a difference in someone's life. If you own a club, you should be selling your personal belief system in your ads. Long letters, testimonials, a personalized web site with hundreds of members telling the world you are different and give a damn and building your tribe through your social networks all will lead to a differentiation and more business over time. Let people know you care about them and that your business is different because of this believe. Prove it to them with an extended trial. Then prove it again during their first 30 days in the club. We have run our workshops this way for over 20 years. We care that you survive, make money, take care of your family, don't get hurt in business and that you always strive to do the right thing with your members. I hate it when you're stupid and do things that will hurt your business. I take it personally when you fail because good people should win, especially ones trying to change the world through fitness. Caring is the right thing to do in your business and it is the right thing to do to be successful. Prove you give a damn and most everything else will work out over time. Original Comments: Frankkole- Help others to help yourself = successful life ----------------------------------- Contoursexpress5- I love what I do hea in my fitness club but the members just aren't looking for the same things anymore... I take great pride in helping my member achive there goals, but I feel like that's not what there looking for anymore ----------------------------------- Bigw- Every ad I see locally focuses on price only,,,Not the way to stay in business,,if people like what you are doing price is not a selling point,,they will come. And if you continue to deliver they will star ---------------------------------- Heather- I've heard testimony to this argument so often over the past year and a half. We are certainly not even close to the lease expensive gym in the area, and this is the exact feedback we get. People will pat to be cared about and to be part of something bigger than a gym. -------------------------------------- Rrichert- Great Blog Thom. I appreciate all you have done for me and Hendrick Health Club. Ron ------------------------------------ Cejaxo- Great read and very true! ----------------------------------- Bwiningar- You are so right. Fri, 13 May 2011 20:57:28 -0500 Originally Posted 02/28/11 There comes a time in a man's life when he has to admit that he hasn't got a f@#$%in clue about certain things. Some of these might be called the big picture, meaning of life ideas, but most things that baffle me are the everyday stupid things I see and don't understand. Here is my random list for this month. It could change by next week when another club person calls me with yet another idea that I just can't comprehend. Maybe I am not meant to know everything, but it would be nice to at least have a reasonable thought abut a few things. Why does every club person who goes bad, has an affair, breaks up his marriage and destroys his business do it with a front counter girl? Boinking staff is without a doubt the dumbest thing you can do and you will without fail lose your business and your family. How do you think you won't get caught? It is an employee you fool and the day your wife finds out, and she will because the other staff will rat your cheating ass out, you will then be sued for wrongful termination, sexual harassment and several other nasty things that will cost you money once the boinkee realizes you aren't leaving your wife, or your business, for her. This will cost you everything you have, and will ever have, when caught because you have no defense whatsoever. If you intend to do this, just hang a sign on your penis that says, "Owned by a very dumb man." At least you are giving people warning that you are an idiot. By the way, say goodbye to your kids too because you will also lose them you horney dummy. Why do club owners let themselves get really fat? I know losing weight is hard and staying in shape, as you get older, might be one of the more difficult tasks in life, but you own a fitness business and being fat is making a strong statement that your product doesn't work. Would you take weight loss advice from a fat doctor? Would you listen to a financial planner that has less money than you do? Being fat and owning a gym is the same thing. You don't believe enough in your product to even use it on a regular basis and if you can't help yourself you can't possibly help me. You are a role model, people do look at your as a representation of the product and fat owners make poor owners. Why do owners insist on running a business into the ground before changing? If what you're doing isn't working, but you refuse to change to something different, you deserve to fail, but why do you have to drag out the agony so long and hurt so many other people in the process? If you look at the key performance indicators in your business and you see a downward trend that lasts at least six months, then you need to change your business plan because what you are doing isn't working. It isn't going to come back on its own. It isn't going to change in the spring. It isn't going to get better next month. You are failing and you need to get a better plan while you still have enough money to make change. Ride it too long, and you won't have enough money to paint a wall. Change early if the numbers don't support a long-term growth. Why do so many owners fight the storm? If you are charging $49 and you get three competitors that are low priced and hurting you then bitching, moaning, complaining, yelling, calling your bank, screaming in articles in fitness magazines, and sitting in a bar drinking heavily and whining to whomever will listen will not change the outcome. The only thing that will change the outcome is to change the income. It doesn't matter that you think it is grossly unfair. What does matter is how you react. Reaction to stress in the market might be the biggest definer when it comes to determining who will, and who won't survive in a market. Stop bitching and go to work, get a new plan and fight back with a business concept, not with a barrage of meaningless words. What the hell is Zumba? Never saw it coming, don't really understand it, and don't know when it will leave. Enough said. Why do so many fitness professionals cling to the past? I once had a heated discussion with a PhD about her opinion that Nautilus equipment was the only true way to train someone. This is especially sad because this happened just recently. Why is she locked into 1977? Why is someone with so much education so limited in solutions? But this is also true of owners who still buy plate loaded (who is the market for that equipment these days?) or the ones that haven't yet purchased more than one small rack of med balls. Technology changes and how we train people changes depending on research. It is also important to remember that it is not the tool people; it is the carpenter that builds the house. In the 80's, we became equipment dependent. In other words, we stopped selling help and guidance and replaced our service with lines of equipment. At some point we simply let equipment become our brand at the expense of helping people or getting results. So put down your phone with the cord, turn off your pager, cut your mullet southern boys and get into what works now and then still be willing to adjust as we learn more and more about training people in the future. Why do we not understand the most basic element of fitness? Most fitness businesses exist to sell memberships. These clubs were never designed to help people get into shape but merely exist as vehicles to sell the maximum memberships to the maximum number of people and then replace them when they fail. It is all about getting people into shape. Get results and people will stay longer and pay longer. Change your club to meet that criteria and you will make money. Why do so many people that hate working with people open clubs? This is the worst part of our business; we are service intensive and no matter what you do as an owner you are wrong to many of your clients. But that, on the other hand, is the nature of being in small business and is no different than being in a restaurant, bank or any other service business. Making people happy, getting results and making money from that combination is what we do for a living whether you like it or not. Miserable members don't pay. Happy members refer and pay. Pissed off members will get even. Members who just lost five pounds will tell everyone in their office. You being miserable and hate being in your own club will lead to miserable members who will suddenly find themselves happier at a club down the street. I feel better now, how about you? Original Comments: Matt- It's been a while since you've rant, I can see it being inspired on you early 2011 travels. Change is hard, but each day it's pretty amazing to see the response. While our trade area has gotten 4 new clubs and multiple bootcamps since we open. It seems besides cross fit they are all doing the same thing. Equipment based memberships with no help & limited group... meanwhile people crave coaching. We are accommodating the demand. I hope my competitors remain stubborn and lazy, I'll remain all ears. Keep preaching it Tom, some of us are listening. -------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- I was thinking of adding your comment about why dose things go wrong. How about when they add something and don't think about what the out come will be. You are so right about the person that just reacts to his situation. The things that get implements dew to the reaction may be a band aid but in the end it will blow up in your face. ------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Don't forgot your tubro sticks that come along with the Zumba program. Lol! ------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- What brought this one on? -------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Well I took a big deep breath after that! Thanks Thom that was good! --------------------------------------------------- Becky Miller Fitness- Love your blog Tom! Especially your comments on equipment and Zumba! ---------------------------------------------------- Jeff B- Much better now Thom! ------------------------------------------------------ Robert J DeVito- Thom, Great as usual! Many of the points you make are what drove to completely change the direction of my business from club consulting and Programming to Physical Therapy and Wellness centers. These issues can still arise there, but, it is much less frequent and the programs are results driven. Have a great day! --------------------------------------------------------- Arlene Alpuerto- First of all...the cheater? Who is it? I agree with you in every point! Especially the cheater...I think he wanted to get caught... not to mention what a huge potential sexual harassment suit it could turn out to be... love the blogs! Keep them coming. Fri, 13 May 2011 20:53:39 -0500 Originally Posted 02/11/11 The fitness business is too much talk and not enough action, especially when it comes to getting a new or potential member into the system. We are in the fitness business but if you think about it all we do when client inquires is give them a single workout on machines and them pitch them hard about a membership The normal routine for most clubs is to get the potential member immediately in front of a salesperson, who then performs the rehearsed tour and also the final close. This encounter normally takes anywhere from about 20 minutes for a lousy sales person to about 30-45 for a more skilled person. Even the training clubs have their own version of this process but it involves a mere walk around the facility and then begging for a credit card at the front desk. Most trainers are willing to give one workout but these workouts are seldom designed to inspire or sell. The problem with this method is that it is doomed from the beginning because the potential member/client is never engaged in the process. He in essence receives the workout instead of gaining insight or education. We are in the fitness business, which I believe has a rulebook somewhere stating that to get action and results someone has to get sweaty somewhere in the process. A good fitness tour is like good sex: it you aren't sweaty then you probably aren't doing it right. This might be a strange analogy but how many of you are shaking your heads going, "I think he might be right about the sweaty thing. I can't wait to go home and get sweaty tonight with the one I love." I had a tee shirt once that said on the front, "Get naked and get sweaty" but I was much younger then and it made sense at the time. Now I would be a pathetic old man who would be better off with a pom pom hat and plaid pants. The induction process is what the potential member should go through to get placed correctly into the club. If this is done efficiently, the club will have a higher sales close and also have members that are less likely to leave the club during the first 90 days. This is the step that should happen after the potential member meets the client but before he takes his first real workout. We leave out this step and we suffer accordingly because the client never had a chance to get grounded in our culture and system. In other words, induction done correctly leads to more clients now and a higher retention rate later during the period when the new member is most likely to lose interest and fail. As we explore this concept keep in mind that we are seeking a overall closing rate of 60% or higher for a mainstream club and 70% or higher for a training club. Here for example, are the steps a potential member should go through in a mainstream club: • Meet the salesperson • Become a member if a buddy referral (she is then given 30 days of unlimited training as part of her new membership) • Become a trial member if not a buddy sale (she has 30 days of unlimited training as part of her trial) • If she is a buddy sale, she is turned over to the second sales team consisting of a sales/trainer that can do the assessment tool • If she is a trial, she starts with the sales/trainer to get her assessment and then placed into 30 days of unlimited training • If she doesn't buy early she is then placed in regular group workouts in the club. She will me more effective and have more fun in these because she had an hour worth of education prior to her first real workout First of all, in a typical mainstream facility, you will end up with only about 60% of your potential members/new members who will go through an assessment. Here is the breakdown based upon 100 new members or potential members: • 20 too stupid to change and will do the same weight routine they did in high school 25 years ago. The female equivalent is the one who is surprised that the club no longer offers the same classes it did when she lost those 20 pounds 20 years ago. • 20 will go to the club's group programming, matching your club's total penetration rate into group. If you average 20% membership penetration into group, then allow for about 20% who will chose this at point of contact. • This leaves about 60% who are lost souls and who will respond to the chance to have an assessment done as part of the induction process. Trainer people only have one option and that is whether she will become a client or not. The failure rate is determined by how the first contact goes. Most trainers, and many club trainers, are too anal to work in public and have to understand the sales process at hand. The goal of the first encounter is not to dazzle the person with a mind-boggling workout but to build confidence in you and their ability to actually get into shape. The goal of any assessment process designed to get the potential member properly inducted into the system has to be an experience created to encourage and motivate the person. This process is also designed to lead to a sale and should not be a one-hour trauma session illustrating how good a shape the trainer is in and how bad shape the client is in. There are two tools that are guaranteed to kill a first sales encounter: body composition and any form of a movement screen that involves a test. Yes, I want you to do both of these later to establish baseline, and no one believes in a functional movement screen and Gray Cook more than I do, but use these tools as a baseline once the person is placed into the system and not as a tool to humble someone during the first assessment. Mrs. Johnson comes to the club/studio looking for help. She is 20 pounds overweight and hasn't worked out in about 10 years. She is nervous, embarrassed at her weight and intimidated by everyone in the club. She is only there because she finally, after waiting for over a year, raised the courage to step through that door and ask for help. In Mrs. Johnson's case, do you really think that doing a full body fat comp and having her go through a screening process that will absolutely guarantee she will feel like a subhuman misfit effective? She already feels bad about herself; do we need to humble her even more by proving that her body is dysfunctional and she can't move and do we need to make her take her shirt off and do a nine point body comp, done by a in-shape trainer, that proves what she already knows. She is there because she is fat and she does not need confirmation with cold calipers or a laughing trainer. These are, of course, excellent base line tools and every club in America should have the FMS system as part of its core philosophy, but don't use it before the person becomes a member. Remember, the assessment tool is designed to build confidence leading to two things: first of all, we are patient and experts and will spend time with you, and two, we will spend time teaching you how to workout so you gain confidence as a member of this club. The induction process, again defined as the tool we use to convert a potential member into a paying member, is a system that allows us to make a professional recommendation as to where we place the client. Do not make weak suggestions; tell the person where she needs to be in your system to accomplish her goals. We call this tool an assessment because we are telling the person that we are trying to properly place them into our system, but first we need to find out exactly where they are in their fitness journey. We are assessing confidence, ability to be coached, need, interest and base fitness level. We do this by using a tool that allows us to present ourselves as true professionals. We can't help you Mrs. Johnson unless we first know where you are and where you are going. Contrast this tool with a typical club that offers two workouts and then you have to solo. If you are not able or interested in being a one on one client, then you are given a card, put on a circuit and are now doomed to fail in about six weeks. This system dates back to the 80's and is why our retention is poor and why most clubs have to beg on your bloody knees to get referrals. We rent equipment, we don't help people and very few mainstream clubs have any systems in place that aren't stupidly priced to help people get results. Keep in mind that what we do in this industry in the big box world was never designed to get results but to sell memberships. Here is what the assessment looks like. It should take an hour to do or longer if you are a training club. The goal is to convert 60% of these assessments into a higher priced program. First of all, use this price example as the club's membership model. Trainer people ignore the lowest price. I have also left out the membership fee for this example: $39 a month for 12 months (this is the simple membership or simple access) $69 a month for 12 months (this is group personal training/you can have a trainer every time you come into the club for only $30 more a month) $99 a month for us to write you a program each month and you are on your own $119 a month for small group training with 2-4 people $240 a month for four 1/1 sessions and includes supplements and powders $699 a month for unlimited 1/1 training including full support of supplements, powders, and bars. This is obviously priced for a smaller market. Bigger city folks go higher and trainer people go higher yet. Look at the model and adjust the price for your market. Here is the assessment model as we have used for two years. We have validated this model. If you change it, still make every assessment person do it exactly the same way each time so you have a baseline to determine if your person delivers the system correctly instead of the problem actually being a system that changes with each and every client. • 10 minute meet and greet. The goal here is to get to three questions. This is done sitting down with the client. You are trying to determine: their personal goal, their time line and their commitment as defined as how many days he or she can get to the club each week. • Then go to 7-12 minutes of a set dynamic warm up. Use the same format each time but vary the length due to conditioning • Then go to about 20 minutes of strength: Use the kettle bell swing, overhead pressing movement, goblet squat, pulling movement such as a kettle bell row, lunge and a dead lift movement. I like these because the person hasn't seen them at most box gyms, they give the chance for the assessor to illustrate expertise and the person probably has seen these on television on any of the fat shows. The goal is to teach and educate, now give the person a workout but they should still end up sweaty. • Do a big finish between 10 seconds and 3 minutes to illustrate the concept. • Take the person back to the table, coach cardio, which they will have stupid ideas anyway in their head about walking endlessly on treads and then go over goal, time line and commitment again. • Based upon gathered information, place the person into the program they need to be in. • The key question to ask them is always this: Do you prefer to work with a personal coach or would you prefer to share the coast of the trainer with other people and work in a group situation. • 60% of these folks need to buy a program that is $69 or higher in the model above. Most clubs fail at the induction process. It really is the missing link between marketing and sales. The emphasis in most box clubs is always more on a simple sale instead of meeting the needs of the client and engaging her beyond just a membership and price. The money, however, is in slowing the process down and engaging the client. Your total sales will be higher, and your average sale will be much higher, if you use a set induction system based upon need and coupled with sales. In the age of low priced guys willing to cut your throat for $9, it would be in your best interest to review your induction phase and see if this can be improved. The assessment person should be a full time person who does nothing but place people into the system. They should be paid a high hourly base and high commissions. This person should not be training many clients if any at all. Spend some time looking at your existing system and try and look at it from the client's viewpoint. She comes to the club looking for help and guidance and ends up with just a salesperson. Most clubs mangle this transition, therefore, cancelling out the effect of their marketing. Based upon just a sales encounter alone, most clubs will only close about 38% of their total leads in the club. Even the box chains that claim more really don't have a much higher average than this due to the fact that they just can't connect with the client in any meaningful way in a 20 minute high pressure sales pounding. Remember that the ultimate goal for any box club is to get to the point that 12 months from now your training monthly revenue exceeds your monthly membership income. Get there and you are hard to hurt Original Comments: Frankkole- I posted thought facebook but it did not make it here. Maybe it will take some time from facebook to down load. Weird! ---------------------------------------------------- Mark- Thanks for the great thoughts Thom. How do you implement this in a club with 4000 members and keep costs in line. Bottom lines are getting squeezed these days. I'm open to new ideas. When is the Chicago seminar? Thanks, Mark ---------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Sorry I missed this Mark and hope you get back and check. I have been on the road and not checking back this far. One person can generate about $25 k a month in paper and cash, which more than pays for this position. This person simply feeds the rest of the training staff. You are willing to feed a sales team, why not feed a sales team that can generate higher gross revenue than the regular sales people? The question really is how can you not do this and move beyond just sales into literally doubling your revenue by developing this separate income stream. With your number of members, you will need at least 2 full time people to get this done. Jeremy Klugerman, who I have mentioned in other blogs and who is the talented owner in Canada, uses one sales/trainer person and a team of others who do nothing but do the assessments/inductions. This might work better for you. We will be in Chicago in May for our two-day, which is teaching this business system, and again in October for a 3-day where we work on implementing this. Jeremy will most likely be one of our instructors in October. Thank you again for the question. Sorry I overlooked it for so long Thom -------------------------------------------------------------------- John- Really great idea. How would you recommend paying the trainers in this model? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hello John, The group people should get a flat rate depending upon the market. Most would range between $25-40. The trainer is not paid per member since he didn't fill the group. You should use the same program for 30 days written by your head trainer. You do not need to change these everyday. I like the Crossfit idea of doing something different everyday but for these groups I like progressions and consistency for the clients. Small group, designed as 2-4 clients or members, would pay about $15 for the base and $5 for each paying client. The trainer would not get paid for the guests. I want the trainer involved in helping us get turning them into members and I need to keep costs down anyway. Small group does do well with the workout of the day done on a blackboard. This gives you the chance to ad new exercises and excitement to the small groups. Pay the 1/1 people a flat rate, no splits, no percentages. Try and new about 40% after payroll and taxes. Thom -------------------------------------------------------- Matt- I know this is a big question for the blog (and I plan on making it to a seminar for the in depth answer) but here it goes. We are in escrow to get out of our small space to a 13K standalone building and we want to nail it when we launch this spring. ----------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- It would actually work well. Just drop the $39 to $19 and bring everything else accordingly. The goal is to sell at least one out of four at a higher price. If you show $19, but generate an average EFT payment of $40 or higher, you win. You state a low entry fee into the club but still have layers on top that drive up the average. The key is to also track the numbers separately. I have had a lot of offlilne questions on this blog. Yes, you can create a training income stream that is higher in one year than your membership stream if you create two sales teams and put the same effort into selling training as you do memberships. ------------------------------------------------------ John- I like the idea, especially if You had 1/2hr & 1hr packages for the unlimited training. --------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hello John, The ½ an hour is the worst thing a trainer can do in may ways. It sets a bad example of service, most trainers don't stick with it anyway pissing off the next client and it is not cost effective. We only added those to show a lower rate anyway. Create a price that gets a strong return and don't be afraid of the unlimited. The average person trains about 10 times per month (9.6) anyway. You want the person to come more often. If they come more than 8 times they will stay longer and pay longer. Also using the term "unlimited" is powerful when you are selling training. In this system, you can have a trainer every time you come to the club, shared by others, for only about $30 more per month than a regular membership. If you can't sell that turn in your "I do t his for a living" badge and sit on the bench little dog. Thanks for writing John. Rethink the ½ hour. It is not our best work in the industry. Thom --------------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- About the first assement so go through a workout and then place them in the right program first. So that should be like the fundmentls class? After what time fram should you do the fms? I like setting them up with a follow up eval after 4 weeks so we can upsale them? I like the program for $99, I want to talk more about this when on Tuesday. Fri, 13 May 2011 20:46:37 -0500 Originally Posted 02/01/11 A great man turns 70 today, but he is a guy that none of you who are reading this has ever heard of in your fitness careers. In his case, greatness is defined as contribution and his life has given many others a chance to be better people. Chuck Hawkins was my martial arts instructor in San Diego and I worked for him and his wife Fran for a number of years managing the martial arts school/gym, selling memberships, teaching classes and cleaning toilets. I was mediocre at the martial arts but I was kick ass when it came to cleaning a toilet in those days. The business was about 5000 square feet or so and was in a questionable part of town. We taught classes and offered an above average gym that attracted everyone one from cops to hookers and the occasional fighter pilot from Miramar. Chuck was the senior instructor and I was the guy that did anything that needed to be done even though there were a lot of firsts in those days, such as learning to market or installing a shower. We had something there though that I have seldom seen in many other businesses. We had a culture that made our little place somewhere special to be and we had hundreds of members and loyal students that valued the martial arts school as one of the most important things in their lives. Classes were big and the parties were legendary but it was all family and once in you were part of the group forever. Quite a high number of students from that school went on to be very successful business people and I think the reason many of us enjoyed success later was due to Chuck's influence. We use the word, "mentor" today as if it was one of those buzzwords, such as, "tweet" that is just cool to say and that really doesn't have a lot of meaning to anyone. Mentor, and mentoring, used to mean something to people because it was a word that conveyed learning from one party and teaching and guiding from the other. If you were a mentor you had special status as a caring person who spent a lot of time guiding your charges along the path to a higher quality and more successful life. Chuck was an old school martial artist. Form meant little and beating ass was everything. He was also old school in life as well. His word meant everything and if he told you he was going to do something it got done. He was also the most honest man I have ever meant, the most fair and in his way the most patient. He was classic in the sense that he was everything a man should be as a role model including have a personal code of ethics that guided his life and those who were around him. We over use the term today, "he is a good man" but that term has faded into absolute bullshit in most connotations. Today, we bestow these words on people who in the past wouldn't be fit to be called anything but weak creatures that suffer from a bad case of situational ethics. Their only personal code is what they can gain personally and every situation in their life is a chance to gain at someone else's advantage. We say they are good men because they make money and have a few kids but in reality they aren't role models for anyone including their kids. There are few "good men" today because someone who actually lives within the personal boundaries of what is right and what is wrong is not the role model that most people who are on their way up is seeking. Few seekers are looking for the long, slow path to success. Everyone wants the short version given over a three-day weekend and they want their mentors to drop the secrets of success on them like a pigeon taking a dump on a sleeping person on a park bench. I was only in my 20's during my days with Chuck. I grew up with a single mom who did an outstanding job of keeping us fed and clothed but my dad wasn't around much. I learned almost everything in my life the hard way: which is another way of saying I tried something stupid and got my ass kicked as the result. There was no one to talk to, no one to ask for guidance and no one who would challenge my often stupid life choices. I was wild, overly confident and primed to grow but the beating was monstrous and something you wouldn't wish on any young and truly stupid person. I didn't even realize it at the time but Chuck became a role model that I have kept as my guide for all those years since I was the young, arrogant and quite lost martial arts guy who could sell a few memberships. Leadership is insidious and sneaks up on you while you aren't even looking and the best lead by example rather than lectures and humiliation. His words were kind but his actions were always a more powerful example. I also have worked for other people who had big money but looking back over time I realized that I can honestly say I learned nothing from them that would positively affect my life or my goals to help people. If I learned anything at all from these guys it was how to not treat people and perhaps their best gift was to serve as a guide to do everything the opposite of what they did and how they lived. Chuck was a mentor, and if I had used that word then I would have been doing pushups until dawn, because he guided by example, and that example was how to live a life worth living. He lived quietly within his means. He worked his ass off to get what he wanted. He surrounded himself with people he cared about and then took care of them. He was afraid to say no but he was also not afraid to let you fly and crash. He was ethical and honest, something you learn by watching daily interactions with others. He talked about it little and lived it large. There are a lot of people out there billing themselves as mentors these days but in essence they are nothing more than very visible people who take money in exchange for selling their secrets of business, which so seldom prove to be worth the three days it takes you to learn them. Temporary success doesn't make you a role mode or mentor and most young seekers would be horrified at how their idols truly live their lives. Real mentors are rare in that they illustrate by doing how your life should be lived and how you should behave and act as a human being. Helping you with your business is important, and I have enjoyed a nice living doing just that, but being a true mentor means you are willing to help someone with their life and everything it contains. There are a few true mentors in our business. Dave Draper, Mike Boyle, Todd Durkin and Mark Verstegen all come to mind on the professional side and guys like Dan John make helping other people better their lives' work while also making it look so easy. There are also club guys such as Joe Millet, Robert Creech, Jamie Fernandez and Frank Kole that are working mentors in their clubs to those that follow them. The definition of a mentor should be that you left the person a better man after you touched them. This is the role fathers used to play in our life but most fathers simply aren't willing, or able, to fill that role today. Having someone to talk to that will offer strong suggestions, slap you in the head when you are doing something dumb and show you how to live by their own life choices is a lost art and if you find one of those hang on for as long as you can because they seem to be getting more rare in our society. Most of us need mentoring but we are usually so afraid to ask and listen. Chuck was that guy to me. He was there to talk to when needed, gave me room to be creative even when he knew it was a doomed attempt, and even wrote a check for a car I destroyed when I dropped a gallon of acid off the club roof trying to fix a clogged pipe. I also burned the pants off one of our students in that fiasco but that is a different story to be told later. I got the, "what the hell were you thinking lecture" which was deserved, paid him back for the car damage and after that he only brought it up over a beer. He played the father's role to a very stupid son and a lesson was learned, especially how patiently he responded and corrected. Many of you out there want to be mentors and some might already be and not realize it, as was the case with Chuck. My advice if you have employees or are surrounded by people who think you are something special is to earn that respect by living at a higher level. Mentoring is a total state of being and is not cheap advice given in a lecture taken from a Tony Robbins book. Helping someone with business is just that, business advice. Helping someone grow and develop into a better person because you have gone there first is true mentoring, which is what makes it so rare. Mentoring is living at a level where those around you benefit from your strength, wisdom and guidance; something that still carries me today after over 30 years of knowing Chuck Hawkins. Happy Birthday Coach, you changed more lives than you will ever realize. Original Comments: Frankkole- Thom you are a Great Mentor. Getting to know you over these many years. I see how much we are alike. As grown men we can always be to ourselves the father we never had. And by learning how to do that with many years of failure. We find strength in ourselves to pass that on to other people that need it. I am very touched on how you sharing this life experience with everyone on here. It takes a real man to do that, to open up like this. Thank you for sharing! I will one day be as good a mentor as you Thom! These are a few words, live by everyday and I got them from a mentor of mine. Stick to your task till it sticks to you: Beginners are many: but enders are few. Honor, Power, Place, and Praise Will come in time to the one who stays. Stick to your task till it sticks to you: Bend it, Sweat at it, smile at it too: For out of the bend and sweat and the smile will come lifes victories after awhile. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck- Thanks, Thom. You flatter me. I loved every minute we worked together, and you were the best employee I ever had. You spoiled me as an employer. One thing we learned together, was how to put up cheap paneling quickly. Private joke only you and I will get. I am very proud of your success, although, I never did learn to ski very well. I look forward to talking with you. Chuck J ------------------------------------------------------------------ Frankkole- Hi Chuck this is Frank Kole my wife and I Robin own UrbanBody Gym in North Park. And I have been sharing this blog with some of our members. And we have some of your old members and they all say the same thing. I am still using today what that man taught me and I use what he showed me to show others the right way! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck- Thank you. I am blessed to have been able to interact with so many good people. I know that your success is the product of your hard work and integrity. If my input has been helpful, it makes me feel good. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- Chuck the members we have that are your old members admire you very much. Since this blog has come up and sharing it with the members, I have been hearing story after story! This one member you were his first martial arts teacher and you meant a lot to him! He went on to be a san diego police officer, he is now retired. And he still trains the same way you showed him. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Larry Indiviglia- Thomas, Thank you for taking the time to share your personal story and introduce us to Chuck Hawkins. I can feel the emotion and passion in your writing and Chuck has made a POSITIVE IMPACT, a meaningful difference in your life. You recognized his GREATNESS and were smart enough to take the example he set on how to LEAD and how he LIVED to heart. Substance seeks substance, clearly manifested in your relationship with Chuck. Larry indiviglia, Todd Durkin Mastermind Coach, Executive Director, TD MM INSTITUTE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Josef- Amen. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joe- Thom, your post is a beautiful tribute to obviously a great man. In his own right, and through your many years of dedication to our industry, the two of you have positively influenced thousands and thousands of lives. Thank you, and thank you chuck, for everything you guys have done for all of us. It's an honor to be mentioned here, and a privelage thom to be your friend --- Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------- Rick- Brilliant! Thank you for this. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- That was good. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Blubaugh- We see our new horizons by standing on the shoulders of our true mentors. Great piece. Thanks. Michael Blubaugh MS PT, LMT, CLT, Preferred Physical Therapy, Gladstone, Mo ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fran Hawkins- Hi Thom, thank you for the beautiful thoughts about Chuck. He truly is the person you described. Why do you think I have stayed with him for almost 50 years. I know he has other students who feel as you do, but it really makes the heart feel good to see it in writing. Thank you again. Hugs, Fran Fri, 13 May 2011 20:38:49 -0500 Originally Posted 01/19/11 It is a new year and it's time for you to get focused. We used to work on getting ready for the new year at the end of last year and then I realized over time that most every fitness business owner is so mentally deficient by the first of December that he or she just doesn't start thinking about a new year's business plan until after the 1st. If it is December, then it is time to work less, drink more, plan little and hope I can survive until the first of the year without killing those stupid ass, worthless, degenerate, nasty, smelly, cheap, whinny shallow end of the gene pool members. In December, we hate them all and the in January we will love them all after we have been drunk for three solid weeks and go to the club as little as possible. Now that you're back to work, let's go to work. Here is your big goal for 2011 if you are a mainstream fitness center: By the end of the year your training generated receivable base will be larger than your membership receivable base. This is assuming you have switched away from stupid ideas, such as sessions and packages, and have converted your system to long-term EFT based training. If you own a training club, or something in between, your minimum goal for 2011 is to develop a training EFT receivable base of at least $40,000. Again, you are moving away from sessions and packages and moving toward getting all of you clients on long-term agreements based upon monthly usage and the number of people that train together at one time (sharing the cost of the trainer). Trainers, you have to get a dedicated new client acquisition person in place now, before you miss the January-May rush. Get one person in your system that does nothing but get new members each month. Trainers avoid this person but the successful, big number training clubs have already gone there. Creating dual income streams is perhaps one of the biggest ideas in fitness. Why haven't we taken what should be the biggest revenue generator in our businesses and developed it to the same level as memberships? You can do this, but you need to give up the concept that all we do is sell memberships. You also have to stop judging your day by memberships sold and cash in the drawer and start evaluating the total new training paper you created that day in comparison to your membership totals. Why do we find this hard? Look who sells training in the typical club? We hire the best people we can find and let them sell memberships. We then take the least likely person to sell anybody anything, the trainer himself, and expect him to sell directly to the clients. Trainers have a hard time dressing themselves each day and we expect them to generate revenue from a sophisticated clientele? The trainers can't even get dates if it wasn't for the clients asking them out. Look at the product sell? Training should be something everyone in the club needs, and it is, but we have made the product so elite that only 5% of a typical club's memberships will buy; yet we are in the fitness business and shouldn't we be designing a membership where the largest number of members get the best results so they will stay longer and pay longer? Why do we restrict the one product everyone in the damn gym needs to such a limited number of people by following such a weak business model? Look how we sell training in the club? We let a trainer give some person a workout and then the trainer sits on a bench and asks for money. No tools, no visuals, no plan, just sweat. What the hell are you thinking out there? We give the sales people tools and we give trainers a sweat-stained clipboard. Look again at who sells and when? We know trainers suck at sales, so we let a salesperson try and sell at point of sale. The salesperson probably has no training background, is not certified, probably doesn't use a trainer himself and yet this is the guy we want to pitch our biggest product. Here again, we have a sales person selling a product he doesn't understand to a person looking for personal information and guidance. The big question is where have we been and why can't we understand this? It is so logical if you think of training as the core product in our business. Training is to fitness businesses as coffee is to Starbucks. One should not exist without the other, but we have managed to build fitness businesses that provide no help at all. What if we created a completely different sales team centered on a closer (thank you Jeremy Klugerman) whose only job is to generate fresh training revenue every day. Two teams designed to generate big numbers. Say you can't afford it? The training/sales team can do better numbers than your membership team if you just get it into your head that you are loaded on the wrong side of the business. There is no reason that you can't develop a dual income stream that surpasses your membership monthly draft in less than a year. Create the same importance in training/sales as you do in memberships. Get the best person you can hire whose only job everyday is to convert at least a third of your memberships into a layered pricing model where there is a price and a level for almost every member. Track your training sales numbers every day. Look at the gross contracts being generated everyday in training. Add layers to your pricing model that doesn't drop the price but instead just adds more people to share the trainers. Dual income steams will also allow you to get into the price wars without becoming dependent on volume alone. This system gives you the best of both worlds. You can show a low entry price to get people into the club, and you can also get a much higher average EFT compared to your competitors because we are chasing a higher number through the layered pricing; something your price fixated, volume driven competitors can't match. We are teaching all of this in this year's workshops starting in Atlanta. If you haven't attended in awhile, come see us and get working on this model. Come on, you can't imagine a training income stream that is bigger than your membership revenue? Dream bigger and learn how to do this. Original Comments: Bwiningar- I do see the point in doing the layerd membership pricing is there anything you have seen people do that we should stay away from when doing this? -------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- The most likely thing to get screwed up in a mainstream club is that they don't understand the need to get two sales teams nor do they believe that your training revenue can be bigger than membership. On the training side, they are poor at the induction process, meaning they have terrible systems to effectively get a client into the system. Most do much assessment at the point of sale. Dude, I already know I am fat and out of shape, you don't need to prove it with a full FMS and body composition. They could benefit from an hour structured induction that builds confidence and highlights expertise not humbles someone trying to do business with you. Thanks Ben, Thom ------------------------------------------------------------- Bwiningar- Thanks for the feedback --------------------------------------------------------------- Brian K. O'Rourke- Great content Thom. Thanks for sharing and I hope to see you at your DFW workshop. ------------------------------------------------------------- Info- Hi Thom, I am a student of your books and signed up for the Orlando clinic. I was wondering if you recommend the layered pricing for women only clubs? I am surrounded by low price competitors between $10-$10 mo. My model which includes exercise & nutrition programming at $59 per month is my standard membership (it is essential for women who don't like to exercise) and we sell PT on top of that. We are always over $5 in our usage rate but I am finding it more difficult lately to get members in the door. I am not sure if all the low price TV ads are affecting the perception of what fitness is worth to our potential customers. Do you recommend $10-19 base membership and then ala carte the ancillary services on top of that?? Remember we are women only and am not sure if that makes any difference. I'll see you in Orlando to ask more, thanks. Rocco ----------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- I think this would work very well for any type of women's club. You don't say how big the club is but we are developing women's clubs as big as 15,000 square as training clubs. You can show the low price but you will need to add 3-5 layers on top to make it work since you do not want to compete as just a volume club, especially in Florida. Depending on space, you might go $19 entry level and then $49 for group personal training and then go up from there. The goal in your club is to get your monthly training revenue larger than your monthly dues, which can be done in about a year. Hope to see you in Florida. Thom ----------------------------------------------------------- Info- Thanks Thom. I appreciate your expertise and look forward to meeting you. Rocco ------------------------------------------------------- OJ Flander- Thom, We will be launching 1 out of 5 clubs starting on Monday - every two weeks another Club fill follow. Thanks for all the help and insite. It has been an unbelievable amount of work to get to t his point. We have a few loose ends we are working out but one quick question - how to differiantate group experience with semi-private. We have a few ideas i.e. different tools but as we sell this we want to have something solid. OJ ---------------------------------------------------------- John2011- I dunno how many clubs/companies I have now taken away from packages, yet owners still don't get it. -------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Mainstream fitness owners are in the membership business, not the training/results business. You can't manage something if you don't understand it. Thanks John --------------------------------------------------------- Roy- Perfect example of why I still follow TPlogic after all these years... I will be using a model such as this within my new facility.. Thanks for the years of "makes sense" Roy McIntyre ------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- We are doing the 3-day advanced school on how to implement our system in Atlanta at the end of March for anyone who wants to get a higher level of understanding of our training business model. Roy, thanks for writing and always good to know you are still alive out there. Thom ---------------------------------------------------------- Wade- What are the dates you'll be in Atlanta? --------------------------------------------------------- Jillian Taylor- My name is Jillian and I am with the NFBA - we are going to be in ATL March 31, April 1 and April 2 for our Personal Training Workshop - Let me know if I can get more details! ------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- January 27-28 will be the launch for this year's tour. We will be there again at the end of March for an advanced school for three days of implementing our training business model. ------------------------------------------------------------- Fitness4lifemark- Absolutely love this Tom. Tried to get our club to do this a few years ago, but they never got around to it. We made some positive changes, but it's still me sitting on the bench after showing a few exercises, "wanna sign up for training?" Going to print this out and show to the big wigs at the gym. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Drag the players to a workshop. We are pounding this theme this year and teaching several different price strategies as well. Let me hammer on them for two days and see what happens. Fri, 13 May 2011 20:31:14 -0500 Originally Posted 01/01/11 I like trying to make predictions. Just the process of trying to figure out what might happen next forces me to think, and thinking is a lost art that too many people avoid in their lives, either because they don't remember how (Think about not being able to think. Come on, you have to like this line) or because it is just too painful to deal with the realities that await for those unprepared for changes in their life. So what is going to happen this year in the fitness business and how will it affect you and your life in fitness? Here are a few guesses of mine and don't hesitate to add your own once this is posted: The year of $19: This is perhaps my strongest prediction. I will declare now that 80 percent or more of all mainstream clubs in the country will be priced at $19 by the end of 2013. The trend is already there and we are already on our way. The monstrous mistake we have made during the last few years is to convince ourselves that chains such as Planet Fitness and the economy are forcing the price downwards. The real trend is that we continue to build businesses deemed irrelevant to the consumer. How many 30,000 square foot box clubs, represented by the chains and especially by those guys who build things such as a Gold's with two lines of Hammer down the middle, do we need based upon a failed business plan that hasn't worked since 2000? Build one of these and you suffer from a lack of new members, but why blame the model when you can blame everyone else. The reality is that the model failed and no one knows how to fix it so we lower our price. This is the real reason prices will fall. It is not competition, it is internal failure by guys who build crap and can't figure out why it doesn't work any longer. When all else fails, lower the price. The $19 price does work if you have the volume and sales systems to support it and lowering the price to $19 for many of these clubs is the right thing to do. Knowing how to lower the price is the art form and you will see many owners who appear to just drop pants and run rather than systematically figure out a new business plan. We will, however, see the start of a vicious and business-ending cycle attached to this downturn in price. Take New Jersey for example. You have a saturation of clubs there in all shapes and sizes all heading toward $19 and heading there quickly. But what happens when we all get there at the same time? The $19 model is based upon two things: volume and the ability to continually replace lost members over time. The major point most club owners don't realize is that when you lower your price, the expenses do not go down accordingly. You just need more people to pay the bills and what you are betting is that the $19 price will attract many more members than your $49 price did. But what if every owner is going for the same bet? We now all need more volume and all of our competitors are now dependent on literally thousands more people joining clubs in our marketplace. Planet had an advantage in that they were first into the market at the low price, but now everyone is getting into the game meaning everyone now needs to sign up several hundred members a month and going into year three of that business plan needs to keep signing up several hundred members a month or more to replace the ones that are lost. The industry has been flat for several years stuck at about 42 million people who belong to clubs. If New Jersey goes totally $19, and I think they will be the first state to make the across the market switch, you have to wonder where all these new members are going to come from if everyone lives in the pursuit of volume. The industry is not growing but that is exactly what everyone will expect to happen once the price hits the bottom. The smart owners, of course, will be the ones who use $19 as a base and then chase training revenue as if there is no tomorrow, which there won't be unless you master that component. I don't mind the $19 and will encourage a lot of my clients to go there, but only on the condition that they put the same effort to build a separate sales team and try to grow the monthly training revenue to be larger than the monthly receivable based upon the $19 membership. Layered pricing works but no one should be totally dependent in today's market on just the volume that can be generated off a $19 membership model. The largest failure rate in the last 10 years: We will see the largest closing rate in the last decade starting this year. The signs are there for this one too. Look at Curves, the lack of growth in the big chains and the desperation ads most of them are running. I look for some big closings this year and a lot of them. Keep your eyes open in your market and look for deals, especially in the smaller clubs under 20,000 square feet that can be taken over cheaply. It will be a good year to be a trainer: The trainers in the 6000 square foot class will be the new role model for the industry and it won't be long before everyone starts to write about them and "discover" this class of fitness business. Again, why start a mainstream fitness business for $2-3 million when you can open a training facility and make the same net for only about $250,000? We will lose a few equipment companies: Look for at least two to close or sell this year. You don't want to be the last guy out there selling lines of circuit equipment although the guys with great cardio will stay in the game. The perception of a better economy will mean more start ups, followed by more failures: Most markets seem saturated, but in reality this isn't the truth. The reality is that there are a lot of clubs out there, but not many good ones. It is sort of like a couple of good looking guys going to a computer convention where there are 5000 ugly geeks and 2000 good looking women. Yes, there are a lot of guys there but the only two guys getting some sweaty action are the two newer models. There are a lot of clubs, but most are uglier than the butt crack on a sweaty gym teacher and they merely take up space in the market. Newer more effective business models will send the old players home and it will be ugly. The trade show is dying: There is no legitimate reason to go to a trade show unless you are buying equipment and need to see the stuff, which is not really necessary in the world of Ipad and computers, or if you just like to go to cool cities and get hopelessly drunk away from home. Trade shows are too expensive, feature speakers that have no bearing on your life or business, and do a horrible job of providing any type of true educational experience. The industry has changed more in the last several years than it has during my entire career and ideas we taught just a year or two ago are dated based upon what we see happening in the real business world, and especially in the training segment of the business, yet there are speakers out there who haven't changed their pitch in a decade who are the featured presenters at these dinosaur fests. The consumer is done with them and unless the trade shows develop new educational formats, niche shows such as the Perform Better Summits will start to erode their bases simply due to their ability to provide a more needed offering for the club owner. We even feel this anti-tradeshow lashing in our own workshops, which have shown at least a 20 percent increase during the last 18 months or so. People are looking for new ideas and leadership and the trade show people just don't understand how to deliver, which keeps the door open for us. What does all this mean? Attack, evolve, reposition, be aggressive and take control of your life and your market. It is going to be a good year for those willing to do the work and the rest of you will get rolled under faster than a skinny girl at a Wal-Mart sale. Original Comments: Dave Chesser- "It will be a good year to be a trainer..." Counting on it! We're set to outlast the globogyms as they swallow each other up and then overreach. Looking forward to this year in a big way. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Renee- Thom---I do love you and your wit!! Renee Teller ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Ryan- I have an old friend who was a bodybuilder and powerlifter and owned a 45,000 sq foot club focusing on service and multiple revenue streams for years making a decent living. Then he opened a planet fitness, soon he opened 2 more. I asked him how he could own club like planet fitness with his backround and his words were "I sold out, the $ is to good" His base membership is only $15 and he has about 7000 members at each location with a monthly operation cost of about $65,000 for each location. That is not including what he make with the tanning beds. Do the math. The idea of the low cost gym is it does not cause a red flag when you are going through you credit card statement or checking account history. Most members don't go or go very little because the price is so low they don't think about canceling. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Plummer- Hi Bill, That it is just "$15" and nobody looks in their checking account is old technology and didn't start with PF. Balley's used it for over 40 years with their $5 a year renewals and Lucille Roberts, perhaps the first $8 club who charged that fee in the 70's. It didn't really work out well for any of them over time. It does, in fairness to them, delay the losses for a number of months but if you aren't using it you will eventually cancel. Even $15 a month adds up to the point that someone walks, it just takes a few months longer than normal losses would occur. These guys have losses, but they bet that going into the third year they can sign up 250 members to replace the 250 they lost. What happens if there are five other clubs in the market chasing the same price point? Every body is cool if you are the first or only, but that game is changing and everyone who chases bottom is going to have a crowded field to compete against. The other issue is that there is no perfect system. All chains, including PF, have a strong 20% at the top, a mediocre 50% in the middle that are average and pay the bills and the bottom 20% can screw up anything. If there was a perfect business system that if you just followed it correctly you would be rich hasn't been invented. Ask Starbucks, who just closed almost 1000 stores how perfect works. If low price was perfect Lucille Roberts would have had a 1000 units. Any system works somewhat well for about two years. Every club system, no matter what the price offering, will falter at some time. There is a chain in NC that is doing $3 memberships this month. They get about $90 down and then $3 per month. What if every body in the market did that? Is there enough cheap volume to go around The club market is based upon cycles, and the cheap prices were hot in the 70s and are hot again but everything also cycles down and the low price guys will be no exception. $3? What is next? $2? This is also why training clubs will rule because they can get real money based upon fewer clients over time. How much help will you get for $3, or even $10. The consumer will balk at some point and then it will cycle up again to clubs that chase results for their members, a rather new thing in our industry. Enter the hybrid training club or mainstream club that is training centric. Thank you for writing Thom ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin- I've been open since April of 2009. I live in an area that has a planet fitness, a la fitness just opened and there are some other smaller gyms. From the start I ever bought into the "drop my price" model and based my business on service quality and the facility. I have a 7500 sqft "hybrid" facility which offers functional training and sports performance training along with general quality of life improvement. I offer group classes and pt to my members along with a standard gym membership. I've been able to get through maybe the worst economy I've ever seen. A lot of my philosophy was based on Tom's first book and I've developed my version of it over this crash course in survival. I think we're finally ready to hit 2011 running and see a few of the boxes go under. I've positioned my self with very low overhead so I think we're ready to go. It was great to read Frank Kole's approach. It's similar to what I've done with my pricing structure. Kevin ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Frank and Robin are tough competitors and make it in a low priced market. Price is perception and everyone doesn't have to be a bottom feeder to survive. Training offsets low price. People will pay more for continuous support. That is what Frank, and Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, and Rick Mayo and Frank Nash do so well. It started a trand and it will be fun to watch where it ends. Thanks for the post Kevin Thom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frankkole- The last paragraph is how we hit the new year. Attack,evolve,reposition,be aggressive and take control of your life and your market. We took the layered trainer system from the Newport seminar and put it in place dec. 1 and practice the system just with t he trainers and select members and got it running like a well oiled machine. Jan 1 it went live. General membership for 49. membership 2 H.I.G.H. High Intensity Group Health. Unlimited High Group with gym 149 per month. Membership 3 semi-private personal coaching with gym and high 299 per month. Membership 4 one-on-one PC once a week with high, semi and gym 499 per month. Membership 5 one-on-one Pamper-Me-Membership trainer everytime you come in and protein to go home with and a shake after every workout and high, semi, and gym 999 per month. All of them have a 59 down. And we are selling them. With not one negarive comment because that is what we sell fitness and results. When we were sitting there for the two days I know this would work. Its pretty powerful telling someone we have a system that will get you the results you want. We have been out attacking the all the framers markets around san diego with the system and we are getting good traffic flow from the markets and the display of all the cool tools really make people stop and look and they want to try it. Thanks Thom! Frank and Robin -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Read above Frank. You and Robin are the next generation role model. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- As of Jan 18th 4 brand new people in semi pc. 6 brand new people in H.I.G.H. out of 35 membership sold this month. We have not release this system to the general membership. But the old members are seeing something different and are taking the fundamentals. The new group training schedule is at the front desk and posted on the web site and the old members are seeing it and are not afraid but are pleased and show signs of surprise and a wow about it that they can have help when ever they come in. a couple of old members have purchased ten packs of H.I.G.H. for 15 dollars per group training session. Selling rental space in 80s and 90s was very easy to do. And help was the hard sell then. Help is the easy sale of today. Its so true Thom it is us as owners that need to get over what help cost and just go out there and sell it. This is what my help cost to do and what to buy it? At the lunch at the two day Alwyn Cosgrove was taking questions from us and another gym owner ask him how can you sell your memberships at such a high price. He simple said this is what my help cost and you as an owner need to get over what you want to charge and what help cost in your gym and he told this guy its your gym not the members and this what I charge for help. Well the guy was so scared to go this way Alwyn just told him in front of everyone you might want to stay at 19 a month if you cant get over the fact what help cost. Thanks to Alwyn in that lunch his voice is in my head telling that guy get over it!:) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothyschliebe- Great ideas, where are you in San Diego? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frankkole- We are in North Park. If you are ever in town just stop by. We are here all the time. Frank and Robin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bwiningar- Good post if you want to see some real funny stuff in health clubs you should see the places I have been working out at on vacation. Talk to you soon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mikekalustian- Tom, You finally get it-sort of. You don't need to spend a lot of money on salespeople when you are selling $19 per month. You will save on a lot on expenses- so you are wrong stating the expenses won't go down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Plummer- We did heads up comparisons with guys running full service $19 clubs and the expenses did not drop. I never saw them drop substantially with the $19 PF model either. I of course have not seen them all but comparing box to box they aren't much more efficient than a typical club in that class. It seems the only expense that is saved might be sales, but almost everyone I have seen using this model has a sales team still in place. The other expenses, such as group, were replaced by more equipment and cost of operation, not resulting in any real savings. What is your cost of operation for a typical club? I do understand the model Mike, I just think most guys running it think it is a long-term defensible position because most feel the $19 gives them an edge, which it doesn't if everyone matches price and services and the large majority of the players in that class are just membership mills that do little to enhance the profession. The only $19 model I do like has the layered training model on top, something few operators are doing yet but can be the deciding factor as to whether you survive or not. It is not where the niche is now that is interesting, it is where it will be after the price wars level the field. The big issue is that if a large percentage of operators go that route, there will be warfare over the limited members you can attract in any market and a lot of clubs will fail. The guys that have done it well are the Fitness Edge team in CT. They have the density and management team to make it work and were years ahead of others in mastering the niche. They are also full service as well. The 75 or so (probably more) of the $19 clubs I have been in are usually worn out boxes that are high volume machines very dependent on them being the only guy doing the model in the market. When that changes, the $19 operators will change and we will see a new round of better players in the niche. The price war might actually be a good thing in that it will force everyone in the $19 category to get better or get out. It will be interesting. Thank you for writing Mike and congratulations on your success over the years. Thom ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkG- Hi Thom, Will the anytime fitness and snap fitness models be able to survive at $19? It doesn't seem like they have the capacity to do the volume needed at that price. Thanks, Mark ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Anytime corporate is progressive in that they allow the local guys to adapt as needed. They have created the perfect format for layering in training done on EFT on top of the entry level fee. In 3500-5000 feet, you could do $20K a month in membership and $40K a month in training. Seeking dual income streams where you are treating training revenue as the same equivalent as membership income allows you to more than double your income in the same space. Most clubs, however, still look at training as a small part of their overall income and stay fixated on membership. I have said it a million times, you can't just make it on membership income as your primary drive in today's market. There are just too many clubs fighting at a low price for the same limited amount of people. Mastering layered pricing gives you an edge, that also works in any size club, and you shift your dependency away from membership to developing a second stream that focuses on money from members already in the system. To quote Jeremy Klugerman, a very talented owner in Canada, people will fight you to death over a dollar on a cheap membership, then once they are in the club, won't fight at all over the price of training. I think this is especially true if the training is offered in layers where the lower priced training programs share the cost of the trainer. For example an Anytime might offer a $19 membership but then offer group personal training at $59 per month. For just a little more ($40), you can have a trainer every time you come into the club, which raises the average EFT dramatically. The $19 would be the low entry price bait but the goal is to get at least a third of the clients into a higher priced program. Snap is just a circuit club concept and seems less prepared to fight the wars these days. Anytime has better leadership at the top I think and can lead the market if they desire. Thank you for writing Thom ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MelkaLP- Hey Thom! Great predictions. I see them already. What are you thinking for the really small studios? I have a 2600sqft group/personal training studio in Atlanta. I'm looking forward to discovering a model that will help me grow when you are here later this month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- You are a little small but you are the future of results driven fitness. Thank you for writing Thom --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryankorourke- Hi Thomas and happy new year. Yes, the bifurcation of the bricks and mortar health club market is here and many of your observations are spot on. Another trend is the rise of technology as it relates to training and how trainers will increasingly be able to deliver services both in the bricks and mortar and outside of it. Here is some presentation content if your interested. http://bryankorourke.com/j -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Thank you Bryan for taking the time to write. I went to the link and it is a great site. Tech will definitely give the trainers an edge in the business wars and expand their presence. I also think we will return to the age of group dynamics. People like groups and the era of one-on-one has forced us away from that. It is a shame that so little training is done in a group setting. Thanks for the comment. I know you are a busy man in the consulting world. Thom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt- I wouldn't bet against any of your predictions Thom...I'm sure we will look back and you will have nailed it. I'm not looking forward to $19, but I can see the low price lead IF you can penetrate the value market with services. Do the co exist? It would seem the more volume driven players suck at delivering results and training. I'm ready to work hard and look for a takeover deal in 2011. What's the best way to start looking for takeover targets? Where on the West Coast will we see you this year?? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Plummer- Hi Matt, You can to $19 and still build a strong training business. The $19 doesn't scare me as much as realizing that most guys doing it will be totally dependent on that receivable base as their only income stream, something that is not sustainable when everyone is chasing the bottom. Most of the current $19 guys are terrible players in the training arena choosing to just be the low priced provider in their markets. But when everyone goes there, that will not be a defensible position. Next generation will master the dual income stream concept and will realize at some point that training revenue can exceed membership revenue if you grasp the layered pricing idea. The best takeover idea is an old one. Have your attorney send a letter to every club in your area stating that he represents a qualified and experienced buyer looking for a club in the area and have them respond to him directly keeping your name hidden. The words "qualified" and "experiences" should keep people from throwing stupid deals on the table but ignore whatever they send anyway and look for who is responding. You can make your offer on the reality, not their dream price. SF is it this year in the West. Check the site for more info. Denver too if you need a vacation and we are doing it at a good time of year. Thank you for writing and the comments. T Fri, 13 May 2011 20:23:12 -0500 Originally Posted 12/24/10 Thank you for all the support this year. Everyone out there who invests a little of their time and life with me allows me to keep the mission going. Thanks to you all and I wish all of you a Happy Holiday season and a successful 2011. I hope you enjoy my version of a classic On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... One stinky member on a treadmill On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Eight old guys a bitchin' seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Nine spin bikes breaking eight old guys a bitchin' seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Ten staff so stupid nine spin bikes breaking eight old guys a bitchin' seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Eleven checks a bouncing ten staff so stupid nine spin bikes breaking eight old guys a bitchin' seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... Twelve cheap competitors opening eleven checks a bouncing ten staff so stupid nine spin bikes breaking eight old guys a bitchin' seven queens a dancing six tan room masturbators five busted toilets four cancelled members three farting free weight guys two fatties swimming and a stinky member on a treadmill Do something kind this week and pass your good life forward Fri, 13 May 2011 20:13:07 -0500 Originally Posted 12/03/10 If I had to simplify 30 years of experience working with so many young fitness professionals it would be this: most never succeed because they don't know what they want or where they are going. The Ralph Waldo Emerson line stating that most people live lives of quiet frustration applies to most everyone I talk to who is seeking help and guidance in this industry. This quiet frustration is something in your soul where you know that you should be doing something bigger or more important with your life, but understanding that higher calling is difficult because it appears vague and always seems to be drifting in the shadows just outside your grasp. This failure to understand your destiny is what leaves you somewhat hollow and is what haunts you during those quiet moments when you become angry about the work you are currently doing. Somewhere in your mind, you know that what you are doing is not what you should be doing. My favorite exercise to break through is to take a quarterly Starbucks moment. Every three months for the last 20 years or so I take a notebook to Starbucks and sit quietly for several hours projecting my life ahead. What is next in my life? Am I doing what makes me happy? Am I in balance or more of a lost soul? Where do I want to be in three years, or five? Writing the answer to these questions keeps me in focus and drives away the lost feeling of wasting your life and time doing something that is meaningless. I am doing a lot of personal coaching these days. As I have gotten older and grayer, with the hair remaining, I find myself doing more life coaching than actual business consulting. There are many people out there who just don't have anyone to talk with about their careers and life choices and few parents are even prepared to actually tell a child that what he or she is thinking might be wrong for them and doing the considered action would be a bad choice. I seem to fill that void for a number of people and many of the folks I work with are the seekers who most of you would already consider successful. My guess is that this small dedicated group is successful simply because they never stopped reaching. If you are a person dedicated to constantly expanding your mind there is always another level of growth awaiting you. These people win because they have focus and this is what separates the people you respect from the many others who simply exist until they die doing work that is meaningless to them and that fails to define their life and their dreams. The simple thought is that if you don't know where you are going then no one can help you get there. Your journey should always be open to new adventures but it also should be based upon a constantly expanding plan focused on maximizing every step. If you are feeling that nothingness that comes from a cloudy personal vision, seek change today by sitting for a few hours writing the answers to these questions. These of course aren't the only ones to use, but this is a good first step. And remember, if it isn't in writing, then it isn't real. Keep the notebook and update your focus every three months: *What kind of work do I want to spend my life doing? *Am I doing work that gets me excited everyday? *Where do I want to be in three years? *How much money do I want to make? *Where do I want to live? *Do I want my own business or do I want to keep working for others? Why? *Is my life in balance? *Am I prepared for the future? Am I saving, planning, and preparing for the next five years of my life? *What can I do now to learn more about my life's work? *What personal habits/issues do I have that prevent me from reaching a higher level? *What is holding me back from being more successful? *Am I taking personal responsibility for my own life or blaming others for my problems? Again, these are just a few questions to get you started. There are more you can use and over time you will find the ones that trigger the best responses for your own growth. If you have a spouse/significant other, involve that person in the process as well but make sure you spend time working on your own life privately. It is your life and the canvas is blank. Focus gives you the ability to paint the picture as you want it allowing you to live the life you create rather than merely settling for the life you have. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:33:20 -0500 Originally Posted 11/15/10 I have to admit I never knew that most vampires actually die because their life span is too long and they can't adapt to the vast cultural changes they experience in their current life. Who knew I missed this important fact in all my reading. Yet according to the person sitting next to me on the plane, who was a forty something strange woman (read crazy bitch here) who claims to have read every vampire book in print, vampires born hundreds of years ago, say in the 1700's, can only adapt through the centuries up to a certain level before they simply can't mentally adjust to the current times where they find themselves living. It seems that vampire brains have a set capacity for change in their lives and then they just shut down once this limit is reached. For example, a vampire born in 1750 might be able to adapt through the next few hundred years but then find that the age of computers and high tech is simply more than his 1750 reference might allow and he kills himself by plunging into daylight. He lived too long and he simply couldn't adapt to all the changes he was faced with in his current life compared to the age he was born. Although she made a strong case, and yes I did debate vampires with an insane woman but she was in first class and there was wine involved, I feel she was wrong. The people she is describing aren't vampires, they are gym owners, because it is a proven fact that fitness business owners only have a limited capacity to change and then their little brains shut down and they refuse to allow any new thoughts in their heads. It takes vampires a few hundred years before the current age they find themselves in is simply too much, but the average gym owner can shut his brain down in about eight years, a feat that must astound many a vampire. An old client resurfaced a few weeks ago that I hadn't seen in a number of years. We are doing a workshop in his area soon and I asked if he was coming back this year? His answer was that he had just been to a workshop five years ago and didn't see the need to come this year. I then asked him if he had been to any other workshops or tradeshows in the last few years and he hadn't been to any of those either. This guy has a terminal case of, "What you know is what you know," which is often a fatal disease that can kill a business in a very short period of time. Five years without a new idea is a lifetime in this business, where change is immediate and often driven by the consumer more that the industry itself. Let's see, what has happened in that last five years? Based upon a combination of research and market reality, let's see if our guy has missed anything: · Research by Stuart McGill has ruled that the crunch is harmful. Aerobic queens and crap trainers are in mourning because they can no longer brag that they do a 1000 crunches a day, however they are happy because they might be able to walk again · Curves has imploded and lost almost half its units in just three years · Walking on treadmill at a few miles an hour for an hour has been validated as a complete waste of time if you want to lose weight or get into shape · The functional based training center has emerged and is doing the same annual grosses that a mainstream big box does in most markets · Functional training equipment is in and can be seen even on television. Going around in a circle on 1972 era circuit equipment is dead and the consumer has move on but sadly the owners haven't yet · The last 14 pretend bodybuilders in the world are hunkered down in northern Mississippi wearing Crazy Wear pants, fanny packs and Otomix shoes and wondering where the hell everyone went · The Female Body Breakthrough (R. Cosgrove), Movement (Cook), Advances in Functional Training (Boyle), The Impact Body Plan (Durkin) and The New Rules of Lifting (Cosgrove) have all been published. How much information do you really need to see that things are changing? Don't forget Core Performance (Verstegen) either as a major influence on the public we serve · The cost of money and the exorbitant cost of building one of these units have limited the number of big boxes that will ever be built again. Are the big box chains in trouble? Yes, but it will be years before self realization strikes these guys. Remember, it is easier to think that those loses this year are just part of the economy instead of thinking that your business plan is stupid and left over from Jimmy Carter days · Anybody see kettle bells, giant ropes or suspension training coming? Yet the huge majority of mainstream boxes don't have any of these tools in the club. And we wonder why so many members are leaving us for boot camps and garage guys with cool toys. · All of these have companies were players 10 years ago: Gold's, World's, Powerhouse, 24 Hour, LA Fitness, Crunch, Bally's, Nautilus, Flex, Body Master and Curves. Yes, these are mostly still here, but most are undergoing, or have undergone, major changes in how they operate and who they are to the consumer. Evolve or die applies to their side of the fence too. · Heavy price driven ads, lead boxes, pressure sales, two and three year contracts, sales people cold calling appointments, three workouts and then the member solos, one-on-one training in almost every single club and price wars have all failed or destroyed the markets. When the tools you use are 20 years older than your club, you have issues my friend, you have issues This list could go on and on. I am sure the readers will add a few of their own from the dinosaur pile. The key thought is that if so much has changed, why don't the owners who actually operate the clubs progress? Most owners I have encounter through the years only have about 2-3 reinventions in them over a period of about 10-12 years. They will change their ideas and concept once, and maybe again, but most can't reinvent themselves and their business more than a few times. The reason we seem to get stuck is that we have a very hard time giving up what worked for us once in the past, For example, a guy that wears some funky shirt out on a date, picks up a couple of women for the weekend and has the highlight of his life, is now ruined forever and I guarantee that the shirt he was wearing is his new lucky shirt. The problem is that 10 years later he is still wearing that shirt out on a big night hoping to recreate the magic. He is older and is probably in worse shape, the shirt is no longer stylish but pathetic and this guy couldn't get laid with get out of jail free cards at a women's prison. Times have changed but our hero is locked into the past. Most owners are the same way mentally. This idea worked big for me when I first opened and I don't understand why it doesn't work now 15 years later. Big idea: You hang on to the old ideas too long because you have not done the work to replace the old stuff with new ideas in your head. If the only thing in your head is old crap, then your solution to every problem in your business will be the application of old ideas the technology. You live in the past because you haven't learned anything else. You are a one trick pony that is now too old for the circus. In other words, your little vampire brain has refused to grow and expand to meet the needs of the era you are now operating in. What worked for you so many years ago doesn't work now because every single factor in your market; including the member, the culture, the competition, the current thought process, what's on television and basic business concepts, have changed. The only thing that hasn't changed is you, although in reality you too have change physically but not mentally. You are the roadblock to progress in your own world because a new idea hasn't penetrated your head in a decade. New ideas replace old ones but you have to open your head and chase them. If you're struggling, maybe it's because your tool chest is 20 years out of date. Just because you had group sex when you were 25 doesn't mean that lucky shirt is going to work in the same bar 15 years later. If it still does, maybe it is you and you are a stud and it isn't really the shirt. Maybe that fact you are still in shape, have more money in your pocket, drive a nice car and learned to talk are more important factors these days. Maybe you did change over time to meet the environment and it has nothing to do with what happened to you years ago. Here are a few things to do every year in this industry to keep you head open for change letting in new ideas and forcing the old ones out: 1. Read a business or motivational book a week. Sports Illustrated is not a book 2. Attend one major training function a year, such as the Perform Better Summit, and be a student involved in the learning process. Compare what you see to what you think you believe. Circuit training and bodybuilding is not coming back bucko and if you still do about 20 sets of curls and benches a week to get huge you have problems I probably can't help you with here. See a good psychologist and explore your insecurities 3. Attend a business workshop a year. I can list one if you are freaking clueless 4. Attend a major tradeshow a year. These are beginning to become horrible but IHRSA West Coast is always a good time and safe bet. Most small regional shows are not worth it anymore 5. Join and get involved in a professional organization. ACE for example, offers a lot of ongoing training and support for owners and staff. The Titleist Performance Institute also offers a number of different tracks and it can offer years of professional development that keeps you fresh and thinking. I also think it is mandatory for every owner and manager to get a personal training certification even if you don't train someone. We are in the fitness business, not the membership business, and getting results for the clients who support us will be the key to retention and sales in the next five years. No, just because you used to train a lot of people years ago doesn't mean you know how to train people. Put your lucky shirt away and get certified On another topic: We finished a three-day training implementation school in Chicago and it worked so well we are going to offer another one in Atlanta around the first of April. There has been so much interest and success with our training model that we are offering a complete turnkey workshop so you can get everything you need to be successful in just three days. Call the office if you want more information on the workshop or look for updates on the website and Facebook. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:24:33 -0500 Originally Posted 10/26/10 There are a lot of club owners who pride themselves on hard work. They don't make much money, but they do put the hours in each day and they are willing to tell everyone just how hard they are busting ass. But mostly all this hard work is just putting in ineffective hours leading to meaningless results that could just as easily be accomplished by a bunch of ADD high school kids. Most folks who read this know how to work. Those that don't usually don't last long anyway and fade out of the industry in a quick and ugly manner. Those that survive for a year or two usually know how to go to work each day and put some time into their businesses. Few of these alleged hard workers, though, really make money and even fewer know how money is made in this business. Here is a hint, money is usually not made from the classic hard worker who lives and dies by his 70-hour workweek, although I will contradict that thought later by telling you that if you want to be good you still have to do the work and it takes 60-70 hours a week to get it done. The difference between those who make money and those who don't is the difference between being busy and being effective. Busy is busy and effective is effective and the two hardly ever meet in the middle. In fact, most people are confused by the concept of what effective really is and hide this confusion and lack of results behind the shroud of, "Wow, I really put in the hours today." We recently finished this year's advanced school in Chicago, an event that turned out to be one of the finest three-day schools we have ever offered loaded with a team of solid speakers and a receptive group of owners on the prowl for new ideas. One of new speakers this year was Jeremy Klugerman, an exceptionally talented owner from Canada with five clubs and some extremely high numbers. His strength is that no one can beat him in sales or training and how he gets there is a lesson all of us to learn. First of all, he can generate as much as $150,000 or more a month in training revenue out of a few thousand members. Secondly, he consistently sells big numbers through the door in new sales. He has effectively mastered new sales and retention by his ability to get new people in the door and then keep them longer through his deep penetration rate into training for more members. His philosophy is simple: Does what I am doing add new memberships or does it add more training revenue? If not, he won't do it. Staff has new ideas? Does it add new memberships or more training? If the answer can't meet this criteria, then answer is no. A simple, clean and deadly effective answer to anything or any question that may divert him from the mission. The working definition for the word, "effective" is focus. Do you know what you are trying to accomplish and do you have a plan to get it done? Most owners don't know the answer to these two questions, which regulates them to the busy pile and far, far away from the effective side of the business. Here are a few signs that you are busy but don't understand effective: • You fill shifts in your own club • You're training members in your own business • You don't have time for staff development or training • You can't get away to workshops or seminars because you are simply too busy • If you don't make money in your business, no one does • You work 70 hours or more a week and are still broke • You wait until the end of the month to wait and see if you will make enough money to hang around for another month • A day off is a six pack and a 10 hour nap • Sex was something you once had 10 years ago before you became too tired to give a damn even if the entire Dallas cheerleader squad or Mathew Mcconaughey were naked in front of you • Your trainers make more money in your club than you do • You put in 12 hours, go home, put up your feet and ask yourself, "What the hell happened today. I worked 12 hours and didn't make any money." On the other hand, signs that maybe you are focused and geared for money: • You start the day with a plan to make money • You stay focused on the long-term plan to generate revenue • You start the day by giving each key employee a plan to make money then you run that plan all day • The only training you do is with a trainer on your afternoon break doing your own workout • Staff training and development is planned out for the next six months and takes at least four hours a week to do well • Your training revenue is at least equal to your membership revenue, something that is becoming a key indicator of success for a club owner • You have mastered Jeremy's single mined focus: Is what I am doing driving new sales or driving training revenue? • You actually hooked up with the cheerleaders because they liked your Bentley you bought with all your profits Put the hours in people. Yes, I still believe that if it is worth doing then it is worth overdoing, which means that most people who make money put the time in each week. The difference is between wasting 70 hours a week doing work that doesn't matter and doing 70 hours a week that leads to personal and business growth. Quoting Yoda, you either are, or you are not, there is no trying. This means that there is seldom an in-between murky area in the battle between effective and merely busy. Based upon all of this, here is your five-step plan to convert yourself from worthless to wildly effective: • Focus on just two simple things: Am I getting new members and am I selling more training? • Train your staff weekly for at least four hours on how to make money and be effective • Get your key players focused everyday with an action plan (set, definable goals) and then work the plan for the entire day • Track and react to the key numbers. They should be posted on the wall in your office and kept up to day several times a day. Stay focused on what matters • Train yourself to ask this question: Is what I am doing here making me money or wasting my time. If it has to be done, but doesn't add revenue, why are you doing it? • Bonus thought: The least effective thing you can do in a club is to workout your member instead of getting him a trainer. Even you training club owners need to walk away at some point and start managing instead of doing. If you are not making money, start here and don't believe the self-inflicted bull that they are only there because you train them. Other thoughts: I had a lot of questions on Kym Wimbis and the blog he posted in Australia. Here is some of the note I received back from him in his own words. Email him if you like his stuff and start a dialog. Here is his background in his own words. Graduated from Exercise Science (we call it Human Movements Studies here in Australia) in 1995. Completed a coursework Masters (Masters of Scientific Studies) in Exercise Prescription for Special Population where my focus was on the overweight and obese. Worked for a number of university, corporate, commercial, and non-profit businesses over a about a 12 year period spending a short time in management. However, I got frustrated with the 'narrow thinking' and limited opportunities in the industry. So I left the industry to study a law degree with visions of big bucks, fast cars, and fast women. Graduated law in 2001 but could never really get into the culture and never practiced (also realized that the legal profession was full of lawyers). Spent several years doing real estate renovations (our housing market is crazy in Australia prices just keep going up). Got back into the industry in a small town at a local YMCA and had the worst experience of my professional life dealing with small town, egomaniacal, CEO's and fitness center managers who couldn't find their ass with a flashlight. But I did start conceptualizing ideas and frameworks to make fitness businesses better... mostly because this one was so bad. Once I started thinking about improving fitness businesses I couldn't turn my brain off. I started my blog about two years ago as a means of purging the ideas from my head. As the ideas become more sophisticated I put them into something more substantial (like my think-piece e-book) and put them out there for peer review from people whose opinions I respect (particularly forward thinking people who are challenging the status quo which is why I sent one to you). Basically I am a guy, not unlike yourself I suspect, that likes to know how things work and how they can be made to work better. My next piece (Experiential Health Club Design: Engineering Customer Experience Management into Facility Design) is going to be quite substantial and I am going to put a price on it and sell it on my blog. I (Kym) wouldn't call myself a consultant as such (well maybe an accidental one) but I am an ideas guy who thinks there is always a better way... and I am just arrogant enough to think that I can find it. Here is the link again to his site and his blog. Print out the report. I think it is interesting and worth reading for everyone. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:20:15 -0500 Originally Posted 10/08/10 This single line may be the best advice ever written about how to be a good manager. No one seems sure who might have actually written or spoke these words but lack of attribution doesn't lessen their effect. Most managers/owners in the fitness business usually use one of two styles to manage their businesses. First of all, is the absentee owner-who might actually still be on site but is worthless as an operations manager-who doesn't' know his numbers and normally can be found filling in at the front counter or training someone. This person is always busy and brags about the hours they put in every week but in reality these people can't create revenue or drive numbers. They spend their days working in their business and never working on it as an owner/manager. This type of leadership is easy to spot. One owner in the Midwest would come to the club, which is about 12,000 square feet with a few thousand members, at 5:00 in the morning, train a few clients, do some paperwork and then be out by three in the afternoon hours before the real business in the club started. The evening, and prime production hours, was left to a series of loyal, but ineffective people who showed bursts of energy and then failed quickly. It is worth defining loyal. Employees are employees and should never become friends. We normally define loyalty as someone who never misses a day and does a little extra when needed and who never leaves us for another employer. Another way to look at this is of course they are loyal; you pay decently, they don't have to work hard and you never hold the person accountable for production numbers. They show up, go through the motions, don't really have to perform and then get their check and leave. Of course they are loyal, if they leave you they would actually have to do work at another business. Worry less about loyalty and worry more about paying well for production. Another owner of a moderate sized club who managed by not being there was always frustrated that he had to be in his club. He felt that after a few years he should have staff that can make money without him putting in the long hours it does take to be successful. He too had a series of employees that would show short intense energy and then slowly fail over the next few months. Employees want and need structure, at least the good ones. Neither of these owners provided structure. Many people have a hard time getting a good workout on their own and get more done with a trainer. Most employees are really like this too. They can't, and don't want to, manage themselves. The owner gets a new hire, sets them in motion with a little guidance and structure, and then ignores them. The employee produces for awhile and then fails because the structure was withdrawn. Both clubs never made much money. They broke even, paid a small salary to the owner and just barely stayed in business. These clubs are also the ones that will fail quickly, and ugly, when competition appears. Both owners will, however, sit at the bar and cry about how unfair and nasty the new competition is and how badly the new guys are destroying their business. The other type of owner/manager who is also ineffective is the one who suffers from the, "No one can do it better than me" syndrome. This is the guy who has to make every decision in the business and who is constantly stressed that his staff can't get anything done without him. He is right, they do nothing because he trained them to do nothing. Why make a decision or take responsibility when the owner is just going to come in and change what the employee did. He didn't change it, by the way, because the employee was wrong. He changed it because he can't stand for anyone else to make a decision and that he has to change it because he has to show the staff person who is boss here. I worked for a guy like this during the last real job I ever had, which is why that was the last real job I ever had. Good employees flee from fools like this because you never can become engaged in the business. All that is usually left are the employees too dumb and insecure to work for real bosses that might let you grow and take responsibility for their job. These are also the bosses who define the term, "situational management." Situational management means that there are no set procedures in the business written down in an employee manual or operations manual. Instead, every decision is based upon what is in front of the owner/manager at the time. For example, a former member that has been gone for six months is standing at the front desk. The owner liked the member and let's her back in at her old rate. The employee standing next to the manager says, "Okay, I get it now. Old employees start at their old rates with no membership fee." The next day the employee meets another former employee and lets him in at his old rate. The owner screams at the employee when he finds this out because that guy was someone the owner didn't like much so he should have paid full price with a new membership fee. What does the employee do now when faced with a former member? He does nothing. He simply waits for the manager to talk to the former member at hand and make the deal. There is no rule. There is no system. There is just the situation at hand and a manager that is so insecure he has to make every decision himself. Effective management, defined as the businesses' ability to generate profitable revenue over time, can be explained with the line: gentle pressure applied relentlessly. This means that you create standard procedures, set goals daily and then manage your staff by gently guiding and leading every day. For example, you set a sales number of three new memberships a day. The sales manager knows this number at the end of the month for the coming month. It is clearly defined and tracked on a wall on the manager's office. The sales manager, whose sole job is production and the acquisition of new members, has total responsibility for hitting that goal. The manager manages by asking for a plan everyday as to how we are going to hit that goal today (gentle pressure). Are you on track? How is the new weekend sales person doing? We are behind two sales, what is your plan to catch up? Did you get to the follow up on those five leads that were in yesterday? All these questions are the relentless pressure portion of the statement. Most managers don't manage, they avoid. But it's your club and it has to go in the direction you set even if you have strong managers. It's your business and it's your ass if it fails. Good staff can offer good ideas and take responsibility for getting things done but a good manager has to constantly, relentlessly, thoroughly ask the questions that keep the business moving according to the plan. Failure is your fault. The guy down the street hurt your business because you weren't ready to fight. Most martial artists, for example, spend their life getting ready for something that might never happen, but when it does they are usually ready. One punch thrown by a drunk in a bar could end up as a night in the hospital or as a punch deflected and a drunk sat on his ass. Plan for the best but prepare for the worst is perhaps some of the strongest business advice you could ever get. Failure in the club business is often the lack of preparation. Competition might ding your business a little but if you are ready you should have a chance to fight back. Driving your staff with a plan everyday to succeed is nothing but another version of preparation for the big fight. Gentle leadership applied every day to every employee is your goal for 2011. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:17:03 -0500 Originally Posted 09/27/10 We are definitely in a new era in this industry and as the smaller, training centric facility, usually in the 3000-25,000 square foot club range emerges, we are seeing the end of a six-decade fitness tradition in this industry, the sales dog. There are a few old dogs left at the chain clubs. You know, those guys that can cover every objection with trite 20 year-old lines, write upside down across the desk and are masters of the drop close. There are a few left of these leftovers from the days of the lead box and pressure office sales, but not many. The ones that are around have sold for too many years, abuse the clients, embarrass the clubs and in general give the industry a bad name. The clients are getting more sophisticated and as they gain fitness experience they become much less tolerant of first visit pressure and the inevitable pounding you have to take to explore a typical old style fitness business. The problem is that sales is still a fundamental part of what we do and you still have to convert leads into new business, which is something that most mainstream fitness businesses, and almost all training facility owners, just can't seem to get done these days. It almost seems that there has been such a backlash against the old sales pressure days that we have gone too far and can't even give ourselves a chance to reap the benefits from the inquiries we do get. You still have to sell. You still have to convert at least 60 percent of your leads into new business. You still have to feed your business new blood each month or you will fail. Perhaps the most horrid of all sales people are trainers. I am absolutely convinced that trainers couldn't sell free passes to a super model orgy if their lives depended on it. They have no sales experience, hate the concept, and fail to even learn the basics because that goes against the supposed rules of their training code stated in the trainer creed: "I, as a trainer, swear to be dirt-ass poor for my entire career because I am too stupid to learn even the basic skills of presenting what I do for a living and letting people know how I can help them live a higher quality life. I also swear that I will never ask anyone for money because money is bad and is something only rich people, like my clients, have and I don't want any of that bad money around me." Most current club owners are also on the wrong path. The trend these days is to just let everyone on the staff, which usually means the front counter young pork chops who are pissed about being there anyway and take it out on all members, are the ones presenting the business everyday. They can't sell well because they aren't trained enough, but more importantly, they can't sell because they aren't held accountable for the sales. If these young idiots fail, no one believes it is their fault and they won't be penalized for this failure; hence the national closing rate of about 38 percent. Why try hard when you are paid the same to sell memberships as you are to make a shake, especially when you are not qualified to sell and barely qualified to make the shake? Here are a few rules for selling in a club. If your true conversion rate, meaning how many qualified leads turn into annual members, is less than 60 percent you are failing and will eventually lose your business. You cannot sustain a fitness business over time that cannot convert at least 60 percent of its potential leads into memberships. I hope this scares those 38 percent people: · Get a dedicated sales person. Get one that is in her late 30s or 40s, pay her well and don't let her do anything else in the club but acquire new business. Pay peanuts; get monkeys. Pay well, usually at $14-15 per hour and higher with good commissions and you will get adults who can get it done. And no, you can't find anyone who will work on just heavy commission that is any good. People who have that mindset are selling big ticket items for real money and not club memberships. · If you own a training business, see the point above. Get a dedicated salesperson that can chase down new business for you each month. Training facilities have to add at least 20 new members per month or you will bleed to death over time. · Stop hiring young 25-year-old testosterone monkeys and start hiring patient adults with great communication skills who can explain your programs, their benefits and who can ask for the sale. You do not need slick boys using 1990 sales tactics or macho penises in painted on dress shirts selling for you. You do need adults who can explain things to other adults and who can then ask for the money at the right time. The industry has changed and so has the sales model we need to work in your club. · If you own it, learn to sell it. Every owner, no matter how big or small the business, has to learn to sell memberships. If you can't do it in your own business, how will you ever teach anyone else to do it? Trainers, this means you. All the initials in the world lined up after your name doesn't mean more business unless you can explain to a person how you can help them, ascertain what help they need and ask for the money like any other adult professional. · Redefine what sales means. Sales is not making someone buy something they don't want, which is the big chain way. Selling in the new era is learning to help people get what they want and need by patiently and professionally explaining what you do and how you charge for the service. You then need to ask for the money. · The single biggest mistake every club sales person makes is not saying: Pick the program you want and let's get you started today. It is estimated that 95 percent of the sales people in the clubs never ask for the sale. Remember, "Hey, what do you think dude?" is not asking for the sale. · You can't ask for money dressed like a homeless drug addict. Lose the tee shirt and worn out golf shirt and dress your people like professionals. We change lives and you can 't ask for money wearing a tee shirt with a big logo in the middle of your chest (so 1995). We are not running a goofy golf course and asking for $5 at the window where you pick up your putter and pick golf ball. There the logo cheap tee shirt is very appropriate. We are the same as accountants and lawyers and need to dress better than you think. · If you aren't willing to learn to present your product and ask for money, go home and get out of the business. You need a job where you move piles of s#%&* with a shovel and not pretend to be a professional fitness person. Be proud of what you can do in your place and start asking for the money it takes to run it. There is nothing more important in your business than converting at least 60 percent of your potential business into real people who are paying you each month. · I have never seen one training facility that does over $80,000 a month that doesn't have a dedicated professional sales person in place. Learn from that model. · Twenty and dumb is not a salesperson, it is a clerk at the local ice cream stand. Get adults and stop letting the counter life act like sales people. Other random thoughts this week: The fall selling season is off to a good start. Lousy weather brings everyone home. Start marketing now and be aggressive. We should have a strong September through May run and you have to be prepared to be part of it. Gray Cook has a new book called, Movement, that you need to add to your library if you are a professional in this business. You can get it almost anywhere but try Perform Better or Amazon if you want it fast. The book reflects a lot of Gray's life and took him several years to get done. Buy it now and get it to your trainers. Todd Durkin also has a new book coming out in the consumer market. Keep checking the news blasts for this one. We will carry it in the NFBA store as soon as it is out. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:14:38 -0500 Originally Posted 09/07/10 An intense woman on television was standing on a wind swept beach staring into the camera with wind whipping the waves into a frenzy in the background. The hood on her jacket was caught by the high burst of a strong gust and almost pulled her out of the camera range and drug her down the beach. Reporters in the studio kept saying over and over again in special reports: "Believe it people, Earl is going to be a big storm and you need to be prepared. It is heading toward Cape Cod and it will be strong. Plan for a major hurricane now." So I bought rolls of tape for the windows, checked the generator, put all the outside furniture away, picked up cases of water, put new batteries in the generator, and most importantly, picked up more wine. And then the agonizing waiting began as the storm slowly tracked its way over 12 hours up the coast toward our little island. And then nothing happened. Earl brought rain for a few hours and then passed off coast and just kept on going toward Canada. The only essential purchase I really got any use out of was the wine. The storm was a bust, which was obviously a good thing, but it also was a major letdown if you were barricaded in your house waiting for the finger of God to strike New England. After all the fear, there was nothing but rain. Trite, overused sayings almost always have some grain of truth embedded in their worn out words of wisdom, but we hear these sayings from our grand parents day or earlier so many times in our lives we no longer recognize the lessons we should be learning. While I was putting the furniture back out in the yard, I thought about the old adage you hear so often from so many mediocre motivational speakers throughout the years. "The future will never be as bad as your fears lead you to anticipate and you can't change the past, which means your only choice is live now, in the present, because that is all you can actually control." You hear this so many times you just don't hear it at all, let alone ponder what the words really mean. But there is truth here, and it does affect many of the people I know and work with in this industry. The future is seldom, if ever, as bad as we think it might be. Fear of what might happen often is the reason nothing ever happens in most people's life. Deals are blown, opportunities lost and life is lived at a lesser level because the fear of future that has not yet happened prevents too many people from every reaching for their dreams. There is a young couple that has been in the last few workshops getting ready to open a new training facility. They have the money, are the right age, have real life work experience but just can't get it opened. Each time I talk to them we spend a lot of time discussing all the things that could go wrong. I imagine they must lie awake each night talking to each other and worrying about every conceivable thing that could go wrong in this simple project. Their fear of what hasn't happened, and probably never will happen, will most likely keep them from every opening their business and living their dream. How many people in the fitness business live lesser lives because the fear of what might happen prevents them from ever taking any chance at all? Fear magnifies the possibilities, yet life has taught all of us over and over again that the future is almost never as bad as our imagination creates. It is good to anticipate some reality. Yes, you need a certification if you want to open a training facility. Yes, you should plan for reserve capital if you want to open a mainstream fitness facility and you should look at the demographics and competition too. But you also have to focus only on the reality of what you can control. If it makes sense as a business plan now, then do it and don't let fear get in your way. Risk is part of life. You cannot eliminate all risk in every thing you do. You can live in a cave, avoid people, make no decisions and die a lonely, frustrated person because you sought to live your life risk free; that is if an avalanche doesn't trap you in your cave or a bear doesn't eat your risk phobic ass because you are boarding yourself up in his house. The lesson here is that you should anticipate the future but live in the present. Plan your life, open your new business, go for that new job or just go crazy and take the biggest risk of your life, but base it upon the reality in front of you now and not what might happen, but most likely will never happen, in the future. What if I fail? What if you do? It's just money, go make some more. Plan well; work hard and you lower the chance of not making it immensely. What if I get fired? What if you do? Work hard, learn your new job, quit in two years and go after even a better job. What happens if I take a chance and it doesn't work out? What happens if you do nothing and you stay stuck in your present situation? Not making a choice is making a choice. You made a decision to do nothing, which is still a decision and that non-decision could have a more powerful negative effect on your life than if you would have done something. Do something people, even it is wrong, because wrong at least moves your life ahead. Doing nothing is seldom ever the right decision. The only time I have ever seen doing nothing as a correct decision is in a negotiation where it is part of your strategy to walk away. Some people want to open a club they can't afford. The decision isn't to do nothing; it is to do something different. Buy used, open smaller, change the concept, but the answer is not usually do nothing. True failure is when you become trapped by the fear of the future unknowns and then live a lesser life than you are capable of due to wasting your talent. Your mind will always create the worst-case scenarios. In a void without truth your mind will simply make up its own reality. Being trapped by something that has never yet happened, and won't, may be the biggest waste of your life and your abilities and is something that will haunt you as you age and reflect back on a life unlived. My advice is almost always the same to people weighing the big decisions. Is this something you want with all your heart? Are you prepared to do this? Does this have a high chance of working out financially? If the answer is yes to all of these, simply go do it now and don't wait until everything is perfect. Life is not perfect and never will be, but your future can become something wonderful because it was one you created for yourself. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:12:01 -0500 Originally Posted 09/01/10 Small business is fascinating. Why do some business concepts work, why do some fail and why does there always seem to be a pattern or path that emerges when you study a business that isn't performing? Questions like this drive me crazy and I spend too much time trying to figure out why we do the things we do in this industry. One problem that has particularly caught my attention over the years is why are some owners or club chains successful for a period of times and then all of a sudden fail? It seems like every one that is in business for a while in this industry eventually hits a point where they just can't keep up the previously successful behavior. Twenty years of success becomes a year of failure in just a heart beat. One individual club situation I have been watching closely for several years involves an owner in the Northeast that has been in business for over 20 years. He opened his first club in the mid 80s and was very successful. Over the years, he has acquired the real estate, opened three more clubs and just last year he opened his fifth unit. And after 20 years of buying ski condos, property in the islands and great financial success, he is now getting his ass kicked and is losing about $50k per month in this new club with little movement in getting the flood of losses stopped anytime soon. My theory on this has been that everyone keeps reinvesting and leveraging the previous success into successively bigger and more costly clubs. At some point they all go one unit too far and the last unit brings down all the other ones, as well as taking down the owner individually due to the fact that he had to hock everything he ever acquired to get the bank to do the new deal. By the time he gets to the last unit, which everyone of these guys always swears will be the last one, because every one of these players just wants that one last big deal and then he will quit, he has everything he owns in the game to secure the bank loans and money needed to do the "big deal." My thoughts were that the egos involved at this level of play just force the owners to keep the chips on the table just one more time seeking the big kill. I believed that these owners all eventually fail, or at least go through three or four years of hell on earth, because at some point the clubs are too leveraged and the debt takes them down. It is the same result in the chain clubs. Sooner or later they all build one unit too many spelling the end of a good run. It is sort of like a bad, but rich, blackjack player in Vegas. He takes out a big credit line that will give him money to get back even after a week of big losses and he just keeps pushing the stakes higher and higher believing that it will only take a few huge hands to get him even. This guy always fails losing everything and I thought that the club owners, and even the big chain guys, are like these players in that the egos and the "I can't lose because I have always won" mentality hammers them all at the end. I was wrong about my theory. It is not the egos and the need to keep killing it that results in the failure. It is because they never read Darwin and the theory of evolution. My latest epiphany on this came while I was discussing the franchise clubs in the industry. I was wondering out loud why they just don't continue to reinvent themselves like the successful real world franchise or major chains, such as Starbucks or even Denny's, eventually sliding down a long muddy hill to just becoming a former name that is now nothing but a shadow of its former glory. For example, what happened to World, Powerhouse, Gold's (that now has clubs offering $9 memberships), Curves and almost any other name that rose to the top and than began the slide into obscurity? Gold's for instance still has a recognizable name to the consumer but they used to be, "the name" in fitness. How can you go from being of the two most recognized names in the history of modern fitness (the other was Nautilus) into a club chain that is now divided into apparently two separate entities with no national direction or sense of continuity? How can some of their clubs charge $9 and others charge $54 and still use the same name and be in the same organization? My theory was that all these household names in our industry failed or faded because the owners were always driven to open too many units or leverage too big. But my enlightenment points to the real reason they fail is that everyone of these companies, and that includes the small guys like the one mentioned above with five units, just continue to build the same unit over and over again, year after year, until the concept wears out and the consumer walks away. The guy mentioned above didn't take the hit because he was over leveraged, although that is a factor that will haunt him as he tries to fix the mess and has no reserves and no ability to raise more money; but rather he is failing because he built the same club last year that he built in 1995. It might be prettier, bigger and better finished, but it is still the same club with the same brands of equipment and same dated concept he has used for all his clubs. The fitness world simply changed but he didn't. He is failing because he has proven yet again that you can only take a business concept so far and then you have to reinvent yourself. Every single business idea wears out at some point in time. The consumer grows but the club owner doesn't, and that is reflected by the naïve thought that I will just build the same club over and over again for the next 20 years and the consumer will continue to buy it forever. I am sure that Ford Motors can give you a lesson on two as to what happens if you don't reinvent yourself once in awhile. What happens to these companies now? Where does Curves go once your circuit concept becomes stale? Where does Gold's go once you are no longer the Mecca of fitness and local training clubs are now fulfilling that mission you owned for over four decades? Where does the local owner go when he leverages everything in his life to build a club that is 20 years out of date, cost almost $5,000,000 to build in rental space and is bleeding him to death? How can he fix something he should have never built in the first place? Even this decade's giant gorilla in the room, Planet Fitness, will go through the same growth phases and some day they too will build a new club somewhere that is simply one club too many of the same old idea. The ghosts are already swirling as PF continues to sell the consumer circuit equipment training and limited free weights in the era of functional training and a smarter consumer educated by the Biggest Loser and Men's Health. We invent, we rise, we reinvent or we fail. Life is that simple in the world of business. My mental breakthrough comes from realizing that it isn't the need to gamble everything one more time on the big deal; it's that all these failures result from simply building the same concept one too many times wearing out the business plan. The lesson here is change or die. Starbucks, after about 10,000 units, closed 600 or so, dropped an unprofitable food line, added instant coffee and all the cool toys to support the new concept, and restructured their stores, all of which is more change in one year than most owners go through in 20. Evolve or die should be your words to live by in your business. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:10:06 -0500 Originally Posted 08/26/10 Some owners just never had a chance. They opened and were preordained to fail. No clues, no hope, no chance to ever make it. They were the wrong people trying to open a business they didn't understand and would never grasp and end up burning through a lot of other people's money before closing their doors. Years ago I used to be kind and patient with this group, but I realized that I wasn't helping them by encouraging them to get into the business. Most of these folks had too much to lose, and too little chance to win, and I should have done then what I do now, which is try and warn them away from this business. Don't open, get a job, you have no chance at all. It is okay to say this when it is the truth. The fitness business, and it is a business, is not a business for the weak or the lazy. The business is tough, demands a lot of hours and it also absolutely insists that you have a very thick skin to fend off the vast stupidity of a small group of members that makes you question why you ever opened a club in the first place. Here are 10 signs you're doomed as an owner before you even open: 1. You will fail if you don't know anything about the business yourself, but you have hired a manager to run it and be your partner. This partner, however, failed running her own club but blames unfair competition, or a bank loan that didn't come through or a bad employee that hurt her business. So the first rule is that if you can't run it yourself, don't hire people who failed running their own businesses to take care of yours. This is also true of hiring the professional manager, who has been in the business for 30 years, used to own a club back in the day, and has ran an endless stream of other people's businesses. Do not hire this crazy bitch. All she can teach you is how she failed for 30 years. We have one of these in our area and she just keeps showing up again. She pays herself big bonuses, runs the club into the dirt, blames the owner for not trusting her, and then moves on to the next victim. If you can't run your own business, you can't run mine. 2. You want to open a business but you don't really work out. It should be obvious that fat people make lousy gym owners, but it comes up often in the workshops. Whenever I hear, "I just thought it looked like a fun business" or "I am really not into working out but I have this partner who can run it" I immediately try and talk the person out of the business. You can't own it and make money doing it if you don't know anything about the product you are selling. There are no skinny chefs that are good; there are no fat trainers and owners with credibility 3. You will fail in this business if all you are seeking is a lifestyle. I just recently talked to someone who wanted to open a club because she and her husband ate healthy and she really liked the "lifestyle." What lifestyle? Eating a dry sandwich at 3:00 in the afternoon because you were eaten alive with member problems when you walked into the door. What lifestyle? Gaining 10 pounds because you can't work out in your own club. Contrary to popular myth, we don't sit around all day working out when we want and being on the floor gently guiding our members. See, we can't do that because we have our heads stuck in a toilet cleaning out four pounds of toilet paper a dumb ass member stuffed down it along with his underwear. And after we fix this, we can do a shift at the counter because it is sunny outside and my new counterperson is "doesn't feel good," which is covered well by her new tan when she does show up for work the next day. 4. You will fail if you are the money guy helping the trainer kid. Yes, trainer kids need help and money. But have you as the money guy ever asked the kid if he has a business plan. Money guys get sucked in because they think the kid gives a great work out and all he needs is his own place. Owning his own place means to most trainer kids that he now gets to train people in a bigger room. The trainer does not know how to manage staff, market his business nor is he usually willing to give up his clients to grow his business. Very few money guys ever ask the trainer kid for a business plan and how they will make money and the money guy has to do her own research before she should ever give a trainer money. If you don't understand how it works, don't stick your hand in it. 5. You will fail if you have never read a marketing book. How are you going to get new members into this club? The right answer would be to develop a comprehensive marketing plan based upon testimonials or some other tool and budgeting for monthly marketing throughout the year. The wrong answer that I hear too often is, "Well, my club is going to be so different in the market that I won't have to market. We are going to have great service and I am going to pick out the perfect line of equipment. And our classes will be so much better than everyone else's because I am taking two of their best instructors." How will anyone know you are the best if no one ever sets foot in your business to try it out? Build it and they will come is not a business plan; it's a script for an old Costner baseball movie. Don't know marketing and don't read about it? Stay on the porch little dog or the big dogs will eat your butt. 6. You will fail if you can't sell. If you can't sell someone a membership, or don't want to learn, stay out of the business. Ninety-five percent of what we do everyday in this business is sell someone something. If you can't sell, you can't produce revenue and if you can't produce revenue why did you open a business? Most importantly, even if you think you are dependent on managers, you have to learn to sell yourself in your own business. You cannot be held hostage by the one lame salesperson you have who produces 12 memberships per month. 7. You will fail if you like to be home with the kids at 6:00 p.m. Welcome to the fitness business. You now have the right to work about 70-80 hours per week for the first two years you are open, and that includes evenings Monday-Thursday, most of Friday and you will be in your club on Saturday mornings for the first year just to keep control. Not willing to work evenings or over 40 hours a week? Get a job with the city and lean on a shovel for 40 per week because you will never make it in the fitness business. 8. You will fail if you aren't willing to work out with one of your own trainers. You have to be a workout person. You have to workout every week. You have to workout with your own trainers on a regular basis so you can understand how good, or bad, they are and what they do to your members. You also have to take group classes several times a month so you can see how bad that part of your business is too. You also have to take supplements if you sell them, drink your own smoothies and be a part of all the other stuff you sell because if you don't do it, you don't believe in it and you can't sell it if you don't understand it. 9. You will fail if you don't have a partnership agreement in place before you open that clearly states who will do what in this business. Two trainers opening a club isn't bad. Two trainers opening a club and both thinking they are going to be the head guy is bad. Two trainers opening a club and both taking their own training money instead of running it through the business is really bad because it isn't a business they own, it is a large room where they hangout and train and don't trust each other. You will disagree at some point. You will get tired of each other and want to buy each other out of the deal. Someone will get divorced, die or go crazy over a stripper named Vanessa Starlips. You need a strong partnership agreement in place before the first dollar is ever thrown on the table. 10. You will fail if you try and open a business without a dollar of your own money in it. You have nothing to lose so you will never do the work when it comes to the long weeks and tough service. If you have nothing to lose you will walk away when it gets tough. This is why I always tell the money person, or banker, to turn down the project unless the new owner can put something on the line that scares him or her to lose. Borrow the last $50k from your parents, who only have $100k in their life, and you will be there at midnight with your head in that toilet. Without the blood money, you'll be out with Starlips. On the other hand, you might make it if you.... • Learn to drink heavily and say, "What the f@#$#! I can fix that." • Divorced your last spouse to marry a fitness geek (ran away with a trainer or aerobics queen). • Own more kettle bells than shoes. • Can sell a money guy into giving you a lot of money. You can at least sell, which gives you an edge. • Drink too much Red Bull already and are up a 100 hours week just because you're crazy. • You like to train people and were smart enough to marry a businessperson to back you up. • Think cleaning toilets is kind of fun and better than your last job. • People shouting in your face, "This place sucks and you're a crappy owner" doesn't really bother you much. And the big reason you might make it...you realize that you can change the world if you take care of your members first and the journey in this wild business is always worth the reward of doing it right. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:08:23 -0500 Originally Posted 08/13/10 My old friend Bobby Cappuccio called the other day to do an interview with me for the new version of PT on the Net. Bobby has been around the industry for a number of years and has been successful doing anything he tries, especially in the realm of training and education. Over the years, Bobby has moved toward motivation and inspiration and works hard to get young trainers to advance their careers through education and self-induced study. Bobby's question to me was, "What will the role of the trainer look like in the coming years?" I answered the question then for the interview, but I have been dwelling on it every since we chatted. My thinking on this question took a different path over the last several weeks, especially since I just finished the last Perform Better Summit of the year in Long Beach and spent time with some of the best minds in the training world. My thoughts on the question have evolved and are now focused on what makes a successful training center work. I define a training center as anywhere from 1500 square feet to about 12,000 depending on the market and the concept. The approach we have taken in mainstream fitness is dying and is not sustainable in the future, as any reader of this blog or attendee in my workshops knows. The era of the 1995 30,000 square box is dead. And remember, it is not the size but the business approach in the box. We simply can't keeping building outdated circuit based businesses and expect to make money in the next five years because the training centers are evolving and they are learning to make more profit, in smaller square footage and with about a 20th of the start up cost of a big box. We can, and should, learn from what these people are doing and infuse this information into any size fitness business. The lessons to explore, of course, are why do these training centers get such good results with the clients, who then stay longer and pay longer, than we can do at the mainstream level? Why can't we steal their best practices, and therefore, emulate their successful business plans, by virtually picking up the entire training center and imbedding it as the foundation of our business plan in the box? We can, and we will have to if we want to survive against growing competition from this segment. Here are five things I think we need to steal from the best of the best at that level: • Strength training rules: This is the contradiction that drives every owner crazy. Cardio attracts, and the number still floating around the industry is that about 73 percent of all members attending a club hit the cardio, but the results and retention comes from strength. In the book, Biomarkers, the 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitality, the authors stress that strength training is the number one priority someone should concentrate on to maintain a highly functioning active life as they age. Most box clubs have pathetic strength (read too many lines of circuit training here) but adequate cardio. The clubs that will make money in the coming years, emulating the profitability of the better training clubs, will have good cardio but the entire approach to training and the needed equipment to support it will change. Club cardio freaks reflect this already but we ignore it in the clubs. My mother, God bless her 90-pound soul, just moved. Her neighbor is a woman in her late 60's who walks four miles a day and who is approaching 800 miles logged. She is somewhat thin but there isn't a muscle in her body. Her arms and shoulders are flabby and there is no visible tone anywhere. She is thin but still fat. Would she be better served doing some strength training twice a week with some serious cardio attached? We have these folks in the clubs, illustrated by the woman who walks for an hour slowly on the treads for an hour a week, but the training facilities wouldn't tolerate her for an hour. In the training centers, she would be strength centric with controlled cardio to support her workouts or she would be gone. • Everyone gets results: The credo of a good training center is-"I will train you, I will guide your diet, and you will supplement to ensure you are seeking health." Everyone gets results because that is part of their business plan. They don't build a giant machine to harvest memberships. These people build a 10,000 square foot box with the only purpose of getting results for their clients. They make business decisions on what it takes to get the best results from the most clients, instead of how to get the highest number of shear members and then figuring out a way to replace them once they fail and leave. Ask any traditional owner this questions: "Show me anywhere in your business plan where you are totally focused on getting results for a high number of your targeted members?" They can show you high revenue projections based upon sales and internal profit centers but very few have a direct plan for obtaining sustainable results for their clients. Most will tell you they have a plan, but the plan is based upon throwing the largest amount of equipment they can at the membership. I have more equipment than the guy down the street, and then I can get more results for the members. The successful client is the center of a training facility business plan but is never even mentioned in a box business plan. For example, I had a discussion last year with an owner in New Jersey who was building a 27,000 square foot club that would cost about $4,000,000 to complete in rental space. After looking at the plans, I mentioned that this club was exactly like the one he built in 1995 with even the same brands of equipment in the same lines. Sure, it was prettier and brighter, but it was still nothing more than a membership mill dedicated to attracting members and then replacing those once they were lost. This same owner is the guy who wonders why the $9 club is hurting him so badly. The answer is that our hero here is in the equipment rental business, not the results business, and the member realizes that if all I get from this club is a walk on a tread, I might as well do it at the club down the street that is cheaper. Learn from the trainers. Build clubs designed to get results. Build systems that allow the most members to participate in some type of training. Stay away from renting equipment because the $9 guys do it better and cheaper. • Members want group dynamics: Everything is better in a pile (read what you want into this). Good training clubs, such as Boyle, Durkin, Cosgrove's, Mayo, Nash and all the others evolve into training centered on some type of group situation with very little if any done one-on-one. People want group experiences, enjoy group experiences, are motivated by group experiences and get better results training in groups. In the mainstream world, though, we let the uniformed trainers rule the system so we use archaic systems based upon sessions and packages for just one person at a time. This is why you can have 3000 members and only do $8,000 a month in training, because there is no money, and not enough potential market, to drive higher revenue with the traditional training system used by all chains and most mainstream clubs. Good training facilities use layered pricing, meaning you offer lower prices for clients who want to share the cost of the trainer/coach. This layered approach would allow a much greater penetration rate in the traditional club, which would result in greater results for more members. • It's not the equipment, it's the coach: I have recently seen trainer kids with not even $5000 in equipment generating $20,000 a month in training revenue. It's not the norm, but I have seen it enough to know it is not a fluke. The mainstream mindset is to throw more and more equipment at the members instead of customer service and instead of learning a new business approach for the business. Look at the guy in New Jersey again. His idea is that if you get the perfect blend of equipment the members will love you and you will have a competitive edge in the market. This did work. It worked well in fact in 1995, but this concept is why even the biggest chains are pissing away members like a drunken owner at cheap beer night. It's the system, fool, and not the equipment. Equipment, such as top of the line treads, will help retain members over time because they simply break less. It's not the cardio that's the issue. It's how we use the cardio in the club. The issue is, however, the fixed equipment we choose, which is nothing more than a reflex order based on what worked 20 years ago. Functional rules and will only get stronger in the coming decade and your layout and equipment choices have to reflect that trend. Training clubs have space for people to move. They have training lanes. They have walls to smash balls against. They have stuff to climb and swing from. They have mastered suspension training. They have more than a pathetic rack of six kettle bells. • Higher return per client: Training people get more money per client than mainstream guys do. Yes, we will still have memberships, but why we can't have the best of both: strong memberships with deep penetration into the membership with training and the support systems. Build a strong training department and nutrition goes up, retention goes up and the average sale goes up. • One bonus point: Every good training club that I could find has a dedicated sales person, usually female, and usually one that was a client and got good results. This person is often in the process of becoming a trainer as well. You can't sell the Ferrari if you have never driven the Ferrari. Your sales people should be training fools and preferably certified trainers as well. What did Bobby's question really mean? Training, and therefore trainers, will rule the industry in the coming years. Your training department should generate more monthly income than your memberships. Your retention should climb above 65% and stay there. If you grasp training, you will have a huge competitive edge over the equipment-renting idiots down the street. It's all about results and there is only one way to get that for the highest number of clients in your club. And I will give you a hint; it's not adding another piece of Hammer. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:06:31 -0500 Originally Posted 08/03/10 The numbers you see in the fitness business are all misleading about success in this business. Look at the national magazines and other blogs and people are ranting about how so many clubs just aren't making money. Really? In what industry do all the businesses that comprise that industry make money? Are we special in that we are entitled to be profitable because we are in the fitness business? If there are a 1000 drycleaners in Chicago, are they all entitled to make money and be top performers? As in any field, talent and hard work separates the weak from the strong and our industry is no exception. In life and business, the best rise to the top of their fields and everyone else settles lower on the scale. For example: • About 20% of any category of small businesses exceeds the average profit and this profit is what separates this group from the other 80% • About 60% hit the average for that type of business • About 20% fall into the lowest performers for that group This is true of almost any small business concept you can identify. Look at pizza places, small retail stores, drycleaners, restaurants and most any other business concept and you can break them down into these groupings. The best make money, most people do just enough to stay in business and the bottom 20% are wasting money when they should have jobs working for the city and leaning on a shovel. This group would go broke in a year or two no matter how much money they started with and no matter where they opened. They are in the bottom 20% because they deserve to be there, no because they are unlucky or surrounded by gifted competitors. Fitness businesses fall into this same breakdown. For example, if half the clubs in a survey reported flat sales from last year, or declining numbers, is this really unusual or is this report just a verification that the averages are holding. The top 20% will make money in good and bad times and the rest will fall into their respective categories. Opening a fitness business does not entitle you to make money. This is a fallacy that most new owners have beaten out of them quickly. "I have my life in this club and it is unfair that a new club is moving in and taking my business." Putting up the money to open got you into the game, much like an ante into a poker game. It does not, however, entitle you to make money or even survive. That will be up to how hard and smart you work. The same is also true of individuals. Only 5% of the population in this company makes over $205,000 a year. It is a very sharp point at the top and gets sharper faster when you move up in salaries beyond this number. The best excel and everyone else works for someone else. You are seldom in that group due to luck and you survive there because of many other skills in your life. The best may get slapped around for a few moments but they always rise again. The talented few that reach the top 5% are hard to kill no matter what they are doing or selling. Your goal, of course, is to prepare your self to be one of the talented folks who figure out money and how to make it in almost any economy or business. There is a lot of discussion this year on the economy and how it has affected clubs but the theory holds true. The owners who adapted to change, broke away from the 1995 business model and fought back hard by working their collective asses off made money. And lots of money. The good players had a great year. The middle 60% took a harsh beating and many failed. But the capitalistic system is hard. Adapt, change, grow or die and the market will bear out your decisions. Failure is an option if you refuse to change how you operate because the universe will correct bad business decisions quickly and painfully. If you set on your ass failing to react to everything and wasting your life and business by complaining about the cheap competitor down the street, you probably didn't make much last year. You could have beaten him if you would have just shut up and gone to work. He didn't take your business; you gave it to him by not being aggressive in your own business. The bottom 20% disappeared in the club market to be replaced by another generation that feels they are guaranteed success because they are great trainers or passionate people who will change the world. Only the market will tell if they have the passion, and the knowledge and work ethic, to succeed. This is an extremely difficult business to be in, especially now, but you can make money if you are willing to let go of what worked in the 90's and embrace new ideas. The smaller clubs, which are more agile and more able to change, will lead this charge of new prosperity while the chains will slowly fail because they are not willing to admit that their business models are 30 years or more out of date. Build the big boxes and stock them full of 1995 circuit stuff and the market will judge you brutally, as it has most of those chains during the last several years. You simply don't want to be the last guy trying to sell a product that is 20 years out of date. They sell just enough to give themselves hope but the overall picture is grim and getting darker for the membership mills. So who made money last year and this year? Most of the same people who made money in the good times; they just have to work harder to get it done. Good owners are good owners and will adjust, as needed, buying the tools and education needed to keep moving and growing. Who got kicked last year? The marginal owners who rode the good times but never really learned how to make money. There are a lot of owners who have been lucky rather than good and the economy and full onslaught of new clubs saturating the market have edited this group down in size. Weak owners are weak owners and while they complain that their numbers are down are we surprised? Be the best and work it like you never had before and there is still money to be made in this industry. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:03:44 -0500 Originally Posted 07/26/10 This blog is for all those people who always say, "You have a dream job. Just travel around from city to city, drink good wine and talk to people." This blog represents the reality of being a traveling speaker these days. This all happened during a recent, supposedly simple trip starting in Boston and ending with a client in upper, western Illinois. My family lives in southern Illinois so I decided to include a drive south for two nights and then a visit to my client in Galesburg, Illinois. I left my house at 5:00 a.m. on a Tuesday for a 9:00 a.m. out of Boston. It is an hour and a half flight to the airport so I am up at 4:00. I left a day early to see my family in Southern Illinois, a three-hour drive south of Moline, the closest airport to Galesburg where the client lives. The plan was to fly in to Moline, drive south for two nights, and then drive back for consulting on Thursday morning with a return on Friday to Boston. I should be having a beer with the family by 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday if all goes well, which was my first wrong thought for the day. When I arrived at the airport and did the kiosk check-in I was rejected and sent to the counter to see an agent. This is never good news. The 9:00 flight was now pushed back to noon because of maintenance issues, which is another way of saying we don't have enough people to fly just now and since we aren't making money, we aren't going. It is a perfectly sunny day with no weather and this flight is the only one on the entire board with issues. Every businessperson on that flight is furious at the airline since there are no openings on the rest of the oversold flights going to Detroit. The ticket agent, who has taken a public beating from overly stressed business guys with no where to go, starts crying at the front counter when I list my flight number because she has been yelled at so many times before I actually got to her that she breaks down. She is so pathetic, I just laugh at her, tell her Delta hammers me almost every week, and I get a $100 ticket credit for a future flight. She also spends 10 minutes badmouthing Delta telling me it is now the worst airline in the world and that all the employees hate it and hate working there. These are things you want every employee to be telling your clients, especially the ones who fly so much they have advanced status. I am still good, though, despite the delay, for the connection in Detroit for Moline and can still get to mom's by 8:00 p.m. There is still a good meal and beer in my future and I can still see the family At 11:30, they now announce that the plane won't be towed to the gate until noon and we will now leave at 12:30. They get everyone on the plane but it takes another half an hour to do the paperwork since the plane had been in maintenance. We take off at 1:00, now four hours later than listed, and land at exactly 3:15, the exact same time as my connection flight is leaving. We of course land at the farthest possible gate from the connection so there is no chance that I can run through two terminals and make the flight. The connection from Detroit, which would have left at 3:15 p.m. and I missed, is now rescheduled for 7:45 p.m. While I am waiting to rebook the flight, I find a diamond earring, which I offer to the agent in jest as a bribe to get on the flight. She thinks this is funny, but the earring goes into her pocket as we speak and I do get a good seat. I now have four hours to kill in Detroit Airport, and people wonder why I drink so much wine. There is a nice people-watching seat available and after two glasses of wine I now realize that the Detroit Airport is running about 20 percent higher in obesity. I have been keeping score of fat people, sort of fat people, and average people while I am drinking. I am also keeping a side count of attractive women, which is a small number in that airport. Obesity is running about 40 percent in Detroit and I am being generous in that number. And no, BMI has nothing to do with this. These are just plain big old Midwest fat people who eat too much lousy food and drink too much cheap beer. I have also mad a startling discovery. Bad hair seems to go hand in hand with a big butt. These needs further research but I may be on to something. I catch the 7:45 and fly to Moline, an airport I have never been too, which is amazing in itself, but the mystery fades when I land and realize I have never been there because there is nothing but cows and fields in Moline and no sane person would choose to go to Moline unless forced by gunpoint or a need to make consulting money. It is on the far western edge of Illinois and totally isolated farmland. It is now too late to drive south so my travel agent gets me a reservation at a Hampton Inn, the low end of the hotel food chain. They are understaffed so the woman at the desk says they will send a cab because they have no one on duty to drive the shuttle. I sit for 20 minutes and then start pacing in boredom. I look up and realize that I can see the Hampton Inn from where I was sitting. It is a short walk to a cheap hotel. Apparently, I am the only person who has ever made the 200-yard walk. Even the kid making cars move along offered to call me a cab because it was quite far and people usually don't walk there. This might explain the average tonnage per person in this part of the country. It doesn't, however, explain the bad hair. The nice hotel next door to where I am staying looks inviting as I enter the barren lobby of the Hampton Inn. The give-away that it is a dump is always the free buffet signs for the all-you-can-eat breakfast. The girl is not at the front desk because she is delivering towels to a room. I should have paid attention to this. I wait patiently until she returns and then she yells at me for not waiting for the cab to pick me up since the hotel will still have to pay. I am paying $129 a night for a lousy hotel and manage to get yelled at by a 22 year old, $10 an hour employee. She too starts crying when I say: "Well, I stand corrected and won't do that again." She apologizes for being mean to me and states she is having a bad day. She keeps crying and apologizes numerous times. The check-in takes about 20 minutes because now she is afraid I will tell someone she was mean. I let her know she was fine and I completely understand but it still takes 20 minutes to get my room. I check in and walk back to the front counter to get a recommendation for dinner since the hotel only has snack machine. I am sent to the "best" steak house in Moline, which is called Montana Jacks. It looks like a run down Key West bar from the outside and looks like a beaver lodge on the inside with nothing but raw wood on the walls. My first urge is to flap my tail and chew on a board. I look into the dining room. All the tables are covered in checkerboard plastic table clothes. The waitresses are wearing matching shirts in the same pattern. I choose the bar. The barmaid is eight and a half months pregnant and she has to sit on the beer cooler to take the order. While we are placing my order, she farts rather loudly telling me that gas is a problem when you are that pregnant and have to stand up so long. The waitresses, dressed in red and white-checkered shirts like the tables, and with hot pants and gun holsters with wooden guns range from 12 years old to about 60. This would be cute except the girls are bigger than the horses they rode in on. Western themes are bad in a steak house but I would draw the line in matching staff to Herefords. I choose steak, which comes with a salad bar. The salad bar had jello with carrots, a scary treat from my grandmother's era and several open cans of beans. The lettuce is white and there is a big bowl of peas and tuna fish, which must be for anyone who thinks he might be a cat. I eat lightly but do notice that the locals are tearing up the white lettuce. I eat at the bar watching America's Got Talent with rednecks and an engineer from India, named Ramy of course. "Oh, this is my favorite show. You have no idea how popular this is in India." We all decide that the dancers didn't bring it this week and that Lil Chris actually sucks. We all vote for the rock climbing dancers. Draft beer is two for one so the rednecks are defending their position pretty firmly. Ramy and I voted for the guy from LA who knits his own hats for his dancer and sings like he is a fugitive from the King and I but the rednecks think he is gay and refuse to vote. I return to my room, sweaty from the walk in the Midwestern heat, and jump into the shower. This turns out to be a mistake when I discover there are no towels in my room except for the mat on the floor, which I use for a temporary solution. I go to the desk and the girl that chewed me out feels even more badly, gives me double towels and a $15 ITune card. It was a tough decision on the card. I had to choose between the ITunes or a box of 12 donuts and a gallon of coffee redeemable at the gas station across the street. There is a big sign in the lobby leading me to their fitness center. I might have time to get a workout before I drive in the morning. The sign is slightly optimistic because the fitness room is one treadmill. No weights, no equipment, just one treadmill and you have to get a key for the treadmill from the woman at the desk since they are afraid kids might kill themselves using it. I decided not to workout that morning. I called my mom to tell her I would be a day late getting there, not unusual for a road trip these days. I have just wasted an entire day of my life trying to get to Moline, Illinois, somewhere I didn't really want to visit anyway. This all means that I sit too much, eat too much and drink too much. This also means that stress is a daily occurrence if you want to travel anywhere this day. By the time I got home I too felt like crying although my client Wil was a pleasure to work with and saved the trip. Airlines suck. Next week I will return to educational blogs and less rants, although you out there seem to like side trips more than me trying to teach you something. Read Dip, by Seth Godin, my recommended read for the week. Fri, 13 May 2011 18:00:53 -0500 Originally Posted 07/20/10 Things have certainly changed throughout the years when it comes to handling employees. In the early years, you could actually correct an employee's behavior without labor board suits, lawyers and incredibly stupid state laws. Just think, if someone did something stupid, you could say something directly without filling out 14 pages of reports necessary to cover yourself in the coming lawsuit. Once upon a time for example, one could take an employee aside and clearly explain that showing up 30 minutes late four days in a row is bad form and the sign of a truly lazy ass, irresponsible, worthless person. Today, that employee will walk out crying if you even mention her performance and you will contacted by a lawyer on discrimination and her father will call as well chewing your ass since his precious princess daughter, who is only 24 and who has never been told "no" in her life, can't yet handle her own life. And since she still lives at home, you have no leverage on her anyway because all she does is quit the job whenever the spoiled brat doesn't get her way. Why work when daddy and mommy will take care of her until she can find herself and the perfect job? Here are the things I would really like to say to all those employees over the years that have felt the world owes them a guaranteed job on their terms and at their convenience: No, you are not sick. Get your ass to work. You are 25 years old, have been drinking all night and are so hung over you can't breath, but you are not sick, you are stupid and worthless. And please don't start the fake, I don't feel good on Thursday because you are setting me up to call in sick on Friday so you can have a three-day beach weekend. You are young and healthy and are not sick, you are just young, healthy and a pathetic liar who doesn't want to work. You are fired because you didn't do the work. You are not fired because you are black, white, green or red. You are not fired because it is discrimination. You are fired because a drunken monkey is more dependable than you are. Don't call the labor board, don't call the state, just realize that you didn't do what you were paid to do and you are fired because I counted on you to work and you didn't. It is your fault you are lazy, not mine, and you weren't fired because of your race, color or sexuality, but because I am in business and you are getting in my way of staying in business. Don't ever, ever tell me again that your alarm didn't go off. You are late because you were too drunk to set the alarm or too drunk to hear it go off. There is a whole town out there. Do you really have to boink every female member I have in just three months and them piss them all off so they want to quit? Can you not find a way to get laid without costing me money? Do these women know that you still live at home and make $10 per hour? This is my club and those are my group classes. You will do it my way. You will not use the front of the group room to vent in front of your class how unfair it is that I won't add 12 more classes because you want to teach jazzerbutt classes or some other nonsense. And sending all the members to the desk to bitch in your behalf does not make me want to give you those classes. It makes me want to throw your lame ass, diva butt out of my club along with your head set and giant cup of Starbucks coffee. Yes, you are a decent trainer but no, you are not entitled to 80% of all the money I charge for you. You are not a rock star, movie idol, television hero or international celebrity. You are a clipboard cowboy dude, who spends his life rolling around sweaty people on the floor because you don't know how to be a real coach/trainer and go for the big money. You are using my stuff, in my business, with my members and I am giving you enough already. And yes, you have to sign a non-solicitation agreement because you too will be sleeping with one of your clients who will tell you that you are wonderful and should have your own place and that she will put up the money once her divorce is final. Shut up, show up, and go to work and then we will discuss more money. I will not discuss a raise with you because you need more money to support your lifestyle and because you can't live within your budget. The worst employee in the world is the one who is always broke. No matter how much money I pay you it will all be pissed away on crap. You are broke now because you can't control your own life. You will be broke next year, the year after and broke through three divorces because you will always spend more than you make. It is not my fault you have to have $300 sunglasses when you only make $10 an hour and tap out your credit cards. You are not my child. I might loan you money to help get a car or improve your life but only after you have worked you ass off in this business proving you deserve a break. I am not a bank or ATM and you are not my obligation. Here is a concept; try not running out the door three minutes before your shift ends sticking me, the rest of the staff and the members finishing up your work. It is just an idea, but maybe you might run over a few minutes once in awhile and it might take you a few extra seconds to make sure things are right before you leave. Put your f@#$%&n' cell phone down and help a member. I am not paying you to Facebook, text people watch Youtube or break up by phone while on duty. I am paying you to help my members. Put the damn phone down and go help someone. It's what your paid to do bucko. You may use your phone on breaks but never at my front desk. Besides, is any call you might get really that important that it can't wait until you go to lunch? We are a lifestyle business. If you smoke or get fat while working for me I have to fire you. You simply don't understand what we are doing here. And keeping that theme in mind, no member wants to work out with a fat trainer or group exercise instructor. You don't have to be Angelina Jolie in shape, but you shouldn't have a big muffin top hanging over your tights if you are a group exercise person. Here is a break through thought: get your fat ass in shape if you want to work in a gym. And if I fire you for some other reason, know deep in your heart that you were really fired because your ass in those tights looks like a bag of ferrets trying to escape when you teach. This isn't 1995 and you still aren't the queen of the class. It is 2010 and you might consider changing your workout and shrinking that monstrous butt a few sizes. Trainer dudes, if you can't do it don't teach it. If you can't shake a 50' rope for two minutes don't stand there laughing at your members while they try. Get in shape, stay in shape and remember that you are a lifestyle role model. This does not mean that you have to workout clients wearing a skintight shirt and shorts that look like you are smuggling bananas out of the country. It does mean that you can demonstrate the exercise and possibly do it as well as your client. If you can't do the demo, don't do the move. Did you not look in the mirror before you left the house this morning? Do you not have any pride about the way you look? Iron your shirt, comb your hair and take a shower. Get up a few minutes earlier so you don't come slinking in the door with bed head and diesel breath. You are judged as to how you look and if you look like a pile of dog poop ran over by a bicycle tire you are not helping my business or impressing my members. Notice to all front counter people: you are not dressing to go to a club dancing, you coming to a business to work. Slut clothes, big perfume and bare midriffs are not acceptable at the front counter. And put down your cell phone girl. Play-by-play text messages about how shitty a boss I am because you can't waste the shift with a phone stuck in your ear can wait until you go home to mamma. I will listen to your ideas. I will pay you well for the ones I like and use, especially if it improves my business. But this is my business and we will, after a careful discussion and explanation so you understand what I am trying to accomplish, will do it my way. If you don't agree, ask and I will explain again. If you still don't agree, quit and go home rather than just acting grumpy and badmouthing me to every member in the club. If you want to do it your way, open your own business and take the beating like every other owner. Stop showing up to work in a bad mood because you want every person you meet to feel sorry for you. When you come through the door, it is about the members/guests we service. It is not about you and what a miserable bitch you are today. No one cares about your stinking life. We all have problems and yours are no worse than anyone else's. Stop whining to the members about how sad you are. They don't feel sorry for you and don't want to hear your endless stream of self-pity. What they do want to hear, from a cheerful, professional employee, is when the next class starts or if you can help them with a problem. Suck it up girl and stop bitching about your pathetic life to my members. This could go on and on, but even this much is better than therapy. Fri, 13 May 2011 17:56:46 -0500 Originally Posted 07/20/10 Maybe I have just been doing this job too long and maybe I have attempted to help way too many people through the years, but there is little doubt that one of the most irritating things I hear too often these days, often voiced in that whiny, little kid voice, is, "I just don't know what to do with my life." This whine is usually said with eyes down accompanied with a little whimper as if this admission should make me feel sorry for you. I do feel sorry for this person. I feel sorry in about the same way I feel for people who abuse the unemployment check system, who refuse to work because the job isn't perfect and move home with their parents and the ones who bitch about going to college and then not being able to get a job. What did you think that four-year degree in psychology was going to get you anyway, $50K a year and a corner office, or is that really the degree you get to waste four years of college and then whine some more about how unfair the job market is? Dudette, if you have the skills you will get hired but all that degree got you was the right to keep going for a lot more years until you get to the point that you are hirable. You made the decision so shut up and go back to school or get a job at Wal-Mart. This "I don't know about my life" whine is especially depressing when you hear it from people in their late 20's and beyond. "I just don't know what I want to do. It is so hard to make up my mind." You're 30 years old. When are you going to commit to something that will take your life forward? If not now, then when? If ever? Here is hint. Get off your ass and commit to something. Stop whining about your miserable life, make a decision and move forward. And while you're at it, stop blaming your parents, the schools, your spouse, and system, your current job and anything else you use to prevent you from committing to something besides a lifetime of mediocrity. You're 30 and working a lousy job because you made decisions yesterday that got you there. No one else made those decisions and if you did let someone else decide, you now qualify as a double dumbass. Your life has to mean something. You have to constantly be engaged in an epic battle to be the best in the world at what you do. The road is littered with the bodies of a thousand people who flounder for a few years trying job after job and then flash fry themselves in a few split seconds when they realize that everything they have done as made no difference and they are merely filling a terrible job doing work that any trained chimp could knock down with a few lessons. Life is hard and it is extremely difficult to grow beyond the average. If you want to be the best at what you do then you have to persevere way after others quit. You have to commit to something you love, believe in and want to make your life's work and stop your whining and whimpering that life is so hard and you can't get what you want; as if you have ever taken the time to even know what you want? The world is built for quitters. We make it easy to quit in our culture. This is why there are over 200 hundred certifications for trainers. Instead of focusing your energy on being the best in the world and dedicating your life to one track with a professional company such as ACE, most trainers just float from certification to certification gathering more initials on their business card. Get more initials and sooner or later you become a super trainer is the theory. Good theory but hopelessly stupid. Yes, education is good if it supports your targeted goal at being the best at what you do. Education for the sake of avoiding building a career, and a life of meaning, is a waste of time. Initials don't make you the best in the world; it's the mastery of what you know beyond those around you that makes you a hero. Everything worth doing is hard by design of the universe. There is always a large barrier that separates the good from the great and this barrier exists because the world recognizes that the truly dedicated and gifted are the people we all want to hangout with and if someone is willing to pay the price to be that superstar, then he must truly be worth knowing. If greatness were easy, everybody you know, including your unfocused butt, would be rock stars, great writers, super trainers, or rich business people. But in reality, there are a very limited number of the truly great in any of these fields and that few are defined by a narrow focus centered at chasing the one thing that makes them want to get up in the morning and go kick some ass. You have to have a reason to run every morning, to get up and chase the dream of being the best you can be, but most are simply unwilling to do the work it takes to kill their category Everything you do in your career should have a purpose of moving you ahead, but most people don't know what they want from their lives, and therefore, get nothing but obscurity and mediocrity for their efforts. Anything is possible if the focus is there and a plan exists to get you to the top Your life is your life to live it anyway you want, but you only achieve success when you define what you want and then chase it with the heart of a rampaging bull. Being mediocre at something is easy. Simply do as little as possible to improve yourself, let time pass, grow old too quickly in mind and spirit and then wonder why you are wearing an adult diaper and wasted a life unfulfilled. When was the last time you set in Starbucks with a little notebook and projected your life out five years? Have you asked yourself what you want from your life, your career and the next few years? Or are you doing what you are doing because it is your life's work, which is noble, or because you are on cruise control wasting your time and everyone else's that knows you? Focused, driven people are the only ones worth knowing. People who dedicate their life to being the best in the world at what they do, something almost anyone can achieve but so few are willing to do the work, are the ones who are the most interesting and who are the ones who will change the way we live and work. Life is too short to waste it by sitting on your ass whining. "I don't know what I want to do with my life" is a great way to waste your life. If you don't yet know, then do some deep thinking, commit and seek to be the best there is. But stop using this tired whine as an excuse to do nothing but waste time and burn up your life and money. Get up tomorrow with a purpose and that purpose is to be the best in the world in what you do and be prepared to outwork anyone who gets in your way. Fri, 13 May 2011 17:33:57 -0500 Originally Posted 07/05/10 Where are all the whiners coming from these days? I see them at the airports. I hear them whine in the workshops. They are on national television whining their little whiny butts off. If you have a shrimp boat covered in oil, you have a real reason to complain but if you are on the Biggest Loser, stop complaining about your giant, white pathetic ass and go work out. Please, oh please, stop the whining. Here are the ones that really make me what to beat them with a dead chipmunk: • If you have a job you don't like, that you feel is unfair and that causes you personal pain to do each day, then stop doing it and by all means stop trying to make the rest of us feel that you are some type of victim we should feel sorry for every day. You are lucky to work. Work is a privilege, not a right of being born and if you hate your job, or hate work, then stop, but it is your choice to do what you do and no one feels sorry for your worthless ass if your job doesn't fit your grand plan to be a sports agent for a rich superstar. • If you have a fitness facility, learn to run it. Learn business, learn to sell, learn to train people and figure out how it works. Opening a club means you get to ante up in the game. Risking money doesn't guarantee success, only that you get to play the game. • Stop whining about your staff. You hired them, you trained them (probably poorly) you manage them and if they are stupid and don't work then look in the mirror and blame that fool for poor staff choices. Stop blaming your staff for your inability to hire, fire and manage people. • The $10 guys, the circuit clubs, the non-profits and every other competitor are not killing you. Poor business skills, a lazy attitude and the fact that you never spent enough time to learn the business is what is hurting your business. Shut up and go to work. • If you're fat, it's your fault. McDonald's might sell it but no one made you eat it. Too much beer, too much crap food and not enough exercise are the problem not the makers of corn syrup. If you're wearing it, then you ate it and it ain't coming off until you move your big ass. • The average millionaire works about 60-75 hours per week. The average middle class person who constantly complains about how unfair the system is works about 40 hours per week. The only thing unfair is that you live next to motivated people who like their work and enjoy making money doing it. • Stop bitching about your personal life. Everyone has problems but most motivated, successful people keep their life and their work separated. Stop using your personal life as an excuse to not do the work. You married the stupid bastard but most everyone else married their own version too so stop thinking your messed up life makes you special. • Here is another point about your business you should consider. How much time did you spend last year working on your business instead of in it as an underpaid employee. When owners tell me they have to train clients, then I know without looking that they are probably losing money because you are spending your time doing the least productive thing in the business. Most owners spend their time working a shift at the desk or doing employee work because they never learned how to lead and create money. Doing this makes a hard business even harder. Owners fail because they spend too much time doing the wrong things and not enough doing the harder, but more productive things that make a business grow. Knowing the difference is the key to success. • Turn off your f@#$%ing cell phone when you are sitting next to someone at an airport or other public place. No one wants to hear about your suck personal life, your business or ever wants to hear the classic plane line: "we just landed." Wait until you are at least six feet away from someone before you ask to speak to your kids and no one is impressed by the big business deal you are yelling about on the phone. Phones are nasty and intrusive and no one wants to have their space invaded by your rudeness. • If you find your world becoming more and more limited, with fewer people in your life, maybe it is you and your toxic attitude. No one wants to hang out with people who hate everyone and blame everyone else for their miserable life. • I am neither Republican nor Democrat; in fact I hate them all equally, but no matter what you say I still think Sarah Palin is as dumb as a bag of ferret poop and has the depth of a preschooler, which is probably unfair to the preschooler who could find other countries on the map. • If you haven't picked up a kettle bell yet, haven't been to a Perform Better Summit and still do old 1995 Arnold workouts then don't complain to me when you lose your last members to the competition. You got what you put into it and deserve to get your ass kicked. • If you are a professional fitness person, then show some pride. Dressing like a homeless person who just scored in a dumpster filled with worn out Nike or Under Armour is not status and doing that makes it harder for the rest of us who seek some level of professional recognition in a field already suspected of harboring meatheads who cry when they miss their two-hour meal and are cranky when the lid on their Tupperware won't burp. • If you in your late 20's, stop hiding behind your parents. Get your own place, get a job and get a life. Working in a club and living at home when you are pushing 30 is pathetic and if your mamma still washes your underwear you really need to get a life first. Do not, by the way, get married because she is not your mamma either. • If you're drunk in a bar, do not Facebook the play-by-play, especially if you are over 19. If you're over 30, is it really necessary to let people know that you are sitting in a bar and that you just ordered food? Get involved with the people you are with and turn off that f%$#&*ing phone for at least an hour. Texting other people constantly while you are with a group tells the group that they are not nearly important as the other people who aren't there. By the way, if you have more online friends then real friends, you're a loser. Try spending time with real people, it might change your attitude. • If you're not making money, look back and see how much money you spent last year in getting new ideas for your business. You should find that the bigger the loss, the less you spent on new ideas. • Stop living in the past. Get over Nautilus and HIT. The 80's are gone and take those leg warmers out of your ass and move on. It is not coming back and no matter how much you argue, there is no pure fitness approach that involves sitting on your ass and going in circles.• If you work in any aspect of the fitness business, then get your ass in shape. No one wants to buy equipment or services from a fat rep. Damn I feel better now but I have to get back on the plane this week so this temporary purge shouldn't last. Step up and stop whining; it's the only life you are going to get. Fri, 13 May 2011 17:29:54 -0500 Originally Posted 06/21/10 Long time no write. It has been a busy month with more travel than I planned but still necessary. I just watched, "Up In the Air," the movie with George Clooney and his pursuit of 10 million travel miles and the status that reaching that goal brings to him. For years travel was everything, as it is with George early in the movie, and every year I proclaim that this year there will be less travel, yet I still find myself traveling 45 weeks or so a year. George lived for the travel and his life was planes and the glamour of keeping moving, but even he began to question the journey at the end. None of this, of course, has anything to do with this blog. The subject I am hitting this week came up during our Perform Better preconference event where we offered a four-hour class on the business of training. We had 20 people for the Providence event and everyone involved was serious about opening or being more effective in their training businesses. One of the side trips we took during that workshop was the role women play in training and why we treat them so badly in most fitness facilities. The world may be progressing, but in the fitness industry women are still second-class citizens, something that has happened culturally and in some respects the result of what women have done to themselves. Most of the owners in the fitness business are men, and men have been lying to women since the dawn of time and that isn't likely to change. One of the biggest lies ever men tell is that women can't do fitness. We put them in side rooms, give them cute colored weights or chrome junk equipment and then tell them to rep themselves silly and go for toning. If they try and venture into the main part of the club, we shuffle them off to group rooms or isolate them in areas that are condescending as well an ineffective. Really, chrome equipment? This is so 1965. Does group work? Of course it does, but it should be part of an overall program that includes strength training as well or you end up like we did in the 80's with hundreds of skinny fat women who lost weight doing group but still had body fat north of 25 percent. At least the modern group companies, such as BTS, get that women have to do some strength and build into their concept, such as their Power offerings. Even today, we lie to women in the clubs. Most trainers are extremely prejudiced toward their personal sport; hence the emphasis on why so many women end up doing bodybuilding exercises better left to the dungeon clubs of the 1990's. Should a woman really be doing split body part workouts six days a week if her prime purpose in the club is to lose weight and increase her overall health and fitness? Most clubs are also still designed for the client of 1995 as well. Women, and all of the other smaller people in the club of either sex, are never considered in a club design. The equipment was purchased for bodybuilders and is laid out by body part. The free weights are all in one place intimidating the wee wee out of the average club attendee. There is also never enough space for the person who wants to do a full body workout using functional tools, because that means the club would actually have to get rid of a few pieces of fixed equipment, such as all their Hammer stuff, that only about eight percent of the members actually use. Women don't fit in on the main floor because there is simply no room or any equipment they could or would use. Their preferred stuff, even the functional, is all locked up in the personal training room in the back. We don't think about these clients because the trainers are only interested in training the athletes, which Mrs. Johnson, the deconditioned mother of two, is thought of as on the other end of the scale and not fun to work with by any trainer standard. The culture also works against women in fitness. Pick up most popular fitness magazines and they are still advocating high repetition toning workouts, excessive cardio and workouts with weights from the 90's, accompanied by pictures of models that couldn't possibly be doing the workouts they are modeling since they could never achieve that fitness level doing sets of 20 with little vinyl dumb bell imitations. Mainstream fitness centers, as mentioned above, don't fare much better. Even after all these years, there are still few women in the weight areas of the clubs. Poor design of the weight areas, the intimidation factor from so much stupid testosterone and club trainers who insist that women can't do weights and should be restricted to the circuit areas also adds to limited female involvement in the one area of the club that might help them the most. One of the questions that still arise often in the workshops is whether a club owner should add a women's-only room in his club (it almost always a guy asking this question). The answer is to redesign the rest of the club so that it is not intimidating. You can do this by creating two separate weight areas; one designed for smaller people with limits on dumb bells and kettle bells and more open space for the non-bodybuilding types who want weights but not to be confined like the Monday chest and triceps freaks. You could also just throw out the dozen or so dumbass members who insist that bodybuilding is a sport and that doing bench presses three times a week ignoring legs that would do any chicken proud is the way to train. Every club has a small group of members who by intent, dress, language, bad manners, loud farts and a religious belief in dated training methods scare the hell of the other 97%. Owners laughed at Planet Fitness but their elimination of heavy dumb bells and the lunk head rule has made them a place that is safe (except for some of the scary guys with the prison tats who love $10 memberships) and their clubs are many times a less intimidating place than some of the national franchise clubs on a Monday night. It is a shame that we still insist on creating workouts that automatically place women in the "can't do it" category in the clubs. The trainer sees a woman in her 40's and 15 minutes later she is doing reps of 20 while a bored dude with a clipboard is explaining the fine points of setting the seat. A guy comes in, however, and he might end up with a workout that actually works, although sadly he might end up in circuit hell too if he is over 40. Maybe it is a combination of sex and age that is killing us in the club and not just being a woman. But is the responsibility of this nonsense for this down play of women actually partly their fault? Attend any national convention; from the major trade shows to training conventions, and you will see very few women who have evolved into national level experts. Many of the trade shows still feature women who really perpetuate the belief that women can't do fitness by discussing workouts and club programming that is often sexists and demeaning to the women they believe they are helping. Are some there leading the charge? Of course, Kelly Calabrese, Annette Lang, Diane Vives and Rachel Cosgrove are out there pushing hard and educating the rest of us poor training deficient males, but there aren't many of them compared to the shear number of women participants in the industry. Rachel's new book is actually years ahead of the technology most trainers use for either sex but light years ahead of the typical trainer head and his approach to women in the club. Why aren't more women leading the need for change and becoming these experts? We need them to change the belief systems that still allow for most national chains to sort women by group exercise, day care needs and circuit workouts. Perhaps the biggest philosophical change we can seek is to start with this basic concept: Train everyone who sets foot in the club as an athlete. Does this mean that Mrs. Johnson will be running wind sprints at the park preparing to get timed in the 40-yard sprint? No, but it does mean that we will train her as a fully functional adult upright and using the same training strategies that we use to get results from alleged male athletes (guys over 40 who used to be someone in high school or Division VIII college sports, which means he pitched for a week at the local community college). Women also have to step up and complain. If the club can't properly train you, take your money and go somewhere else. Nothing gets an owner's attention like a member leaving with money in hand. There is money to be made with women. Treat them as adults and train them as athletes and they will get results. Get results and you will never have to market that program again. And most importantly, it is just the right thing to do. Fri, 13 May 2011 17:21:25 -0500 Originally Posted 05/20/10 Nothing brings about more shear terror for most people than speaking in front of a group of other people staring at you at some type of speaking engagement. Most everyone in the fitness industry speaks in front of groups at some point, or at least should be if you are working to grow your business. Standing in front of a Chamber luncheon talking about the advent of functional training and what it can mean for people over 40 is something every club owner should be doing several times a month. You get more members when you present because you build awareness and recognition for you and your business. There is also a segment of the fitness business that wants to make standing in front of the group their life's work. These are the future Todd Durkins of the industry who want to be a guru and influence others as to your thoughts on training and how it should be done. Guys such as Todd, who is one of the best at motivating and conveying his information in the industry, put years into developing their personal philosophy and then more years into getting in front of others to change the thought process of the working fitness professional. I have made my living speaking for over 30 years and I can bluntly say that you are combination of all your life experiences. My mind was set early that I wanted to be someone who could create change in an industry mired in outdated methods that didn't work and hurt the very consumer we were supposed to be helping. But passion and a message don't make you a great speaker. There are a lot of people out there who have ideas that are needed, but these ideas die a quiet death because no one ever hears the message because the creator can't communicate. Your ability to communicate, which means you can present yourself well personally, speak in front of others, and write clearly and distinctly, are all much more important skills than most fitness professionals ever realize. How many fitness professionals, for example, lose money because while they might be solid trainers they don't have basic personal presentation skills, such knowing how to dress and speak in front of their clients. Many fitness people balk at this stating that training ability should overcome any of those issues but that simply isn't the case. You are only as good as your ability to convey your message as a professional and being a professional is a combination of dress, speaking skill and written word. If you aren't good at these three things, you will never make the money you should no matter how much training information resides in your head. We call the process of mastering these three skills building your personal brand. For example, if you are a trainer and one of 10 on a staff, why aren't you working everyday to be the most professional of the group? Are you the best-dressed, best communicator and able to present your ideas clearly? If you aren't the best, than someone else is and that's the person who will out earn you during the next 10 years. I spent my early years in acting school, working with speaking coaches, and paying people to come to my workshops to write painful evaluations about how badly I sucked as a presenter and communicator. And I kept on with this process for over 20 years because I only had one goal: I wanted to be the best in the world at what I do, which is still something I work at endlessly because that goal is a journey and not a destination. You also have to learn to respect your clients. If someone gives you money to train, money to hear you speak or money to join your club, then you have to respect that relationship and the person. For example, if you are a speaker, you dress for the people who pay to see you out of respect for their time and money. If you are a trainer, you dress well, groom well and speak well out of respect for the people who pay our bills. Information is useless if the delivery system is a distraction. Building a personal brand means that you control every detail of how you are viewed by your client base. If you are seeking a career beyond your current job and want to be a national presenter, or have dreams of being the next Gray Cook or Alwyn Cosgrove, then understand that careers like those aren't random. Speaking careers, and all the books and dvds that go along with it, are planned through years of hard work and that being a speaker is not a random act but learned behavior as part of your long-term personal development. I get a lot of questions as to how to be a speaker who makes his living doing what I do. Here is the answer to all that ask. We are offering a speaker's school/personal development course in Providence, RI, on June 1-2, in conjunction with the Titleist Performance Institute (To register go to mytpi.com, look under seminars and go to the end). This course is taught by Greg Rose, the premiere speaker in the industry if golf fitness in the world and co-founder of TPI, and myself, a veteran of 30 years of being the front of the room guy. This learning experience is for anyone who wants to work on his or her personal presentation skills and who might be seeking to be that person in the front of the room who is changing minds through powerful presentations. Recent attendees have been Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove as well as Gray Cook, who all wanted additional help in becoming a higher-level presenter. If your career is fitness and you want to be the best you can be, then start with who you are and how you present yourself because you are only as good as your personal image and communication Fri, 13 May 2011 17:14:14 -0500 Originally Posted 05/03/10 Most of you who have been through a workshop during the last several years are current on my initiative to add layer pricing, through group-style personal training, into all fitness facilities no matter how big. Layer pricing is nothing more than creating multiple price points so more people can play in the training world. Results are retention and the only way you get results is to get people actively involved in training that works. The only way to do this is to introduce a wider range of pricing models so that every single member in the club can afford to use a trainer, even if the person has to share the cost of that trainer with others, such as semi-private training and group personal training. Many of the participants in the workshops need months to get this program going in their businesses. People have to be trained, or fired, equipment ordered and space added within the confines of their existing physical limitations. In the mean time, these owners and managers are losing a great deal of income that could be generated by their existing membership bases. While they are waiting for perfect to happen, they stay mired in the 1995 one-on-one model, which restricts your ability to generate any real revenue from training. There is a transitional system you can use now that will quickly affect your ability to create new revenue from your existing members in training. This system is based upon offering financing to your members. Perhaps the best practitioner of training financing is Jeremy Klugerman from Toronto. I was so impressed with Jeremy's system that we have invited him to be a guest speaker at this year's advanced school in Chicago. If you have been to a two-day workshop, but not to a school, put it on your list this year. We will have 60 of the best owners and a team of instructors that will get some new ideas into your closed heads. We already have Jeremy booked this year as well as the kettle bell expert from the RKC, Brett Jones, as well as Graham Melstrand from ACE, a 20 plus year veteran in the industry who will talk about trends in specialization for clubs and professional training staff. The version I am going to give you here is a derivative of Jeremy's work. What he does is another layer of complexity higher than this but I will give you a basic system here that almost anyone can use and you can get his entire system in Chicago. Step 1: Set up a system of assessments Trainers have struggled for years with reaching the existing club membership. One of the reasons trainers fail so often talking to members has been that no matter how the trainer connects, he or she only has one product to sell, which is too expensive for everyone but about five percent of the club's membership. Financing, which is discussed in the next point, opens up the market to more people who couldn't normally afford one-on-one giving the club a deeper penetration rate into the membership. But first, you have to get engaged in a conversation. The preferred opening question, usually directed at members either on a treadmill walking slowly or doing the same old circuit workout, is: "How long have you been a member here?" This question is then followed by: "Are you getting the results you hoped for during your time here?" We all know that the answer to the second part of this scenario is always going to be no, I am not getting what I hoped for as a member at this club. Walking slowly or doing the same old circuit leads to boredom and adaptation and we know that what they are doing is going to fail in about six weeks. If the answer is no, we move on to the second major question: "Would you like to do a full assessment and let me see where you are right now in your training and fitness level?" If they agree, follow these steps: • Sit the person down and take an ACE exercise experience and goal assessment. Fill out a paper as you do this and take notes. Besides getting good information, you need to put on a show here by asking questions and inquiring as to where this person is in their fitness journey. • The three major questions you need to ask again here are: 1. What are you trying to accomplish (goal)? 2. What is your time frame to reach that goal (how much time do you have to get them there)? 3. How many days a week can you commit to reaching this goal? • Take them through a 5-10 minute dynamic warm up. Nothing illustrates your expertise better than taking somebody through something they have been avoiding since joining the club. • Introduce the person to 10-15 minutes of strength training introducing a tool that they might now have used before in the club, such as a kettle bell or rope. The goal here is to break the old habits and start a conversation about functional training, getting results and breaking out of their fixed and failing routine. • Finish big with a 3-5 minutes blow out at the end. Maybe 10 squat jumps with a small medicine ball will get it done. You need to let them know that they need a small challenge each workout to reach those goals. Don't go silly here and make sure the person can do this but finish strong with a challenge. • Fill out an assessment form (you need to create one) and sit down for a few minutes while the person is hot and sweaty and give him or her a fair idea of what they would need to do to reach their goal, where they are at now in fitness, and if what they want is reasonable. You should also let the person know that what they are currently doing won't get them to their goal. Do not discourage the person completely here and make a few recommendations the person can do to improve what they are currently doing, such as adding a workout or two a week based upon interval training on the treadmill. • Big Idea: Once you have the sheet filled out, tell the person exactly what they need to do to meet their goals. For example, a guy wants to lose 20 pounds during the next three months before going to a class reunion. He is willing to commit to the club twice a week and do some work at home as well. Your conversation with him would be: "Well John, based upon your goal, which is reasonable since losing 1-2 pounds per week is quite doable, I would recommend that you work with a trainer twice week for three months and I also recommend that you spend some time with our weight management specialist and have her review your food intake and supplements." Tell the person exactly what they need to do even if you know they can't afford it. Be the professional here and give an opinion. • The person will usually say, "How much will all of this cost?" This is your cue as a fitness professional to pass the person along to a sales person who specializes in this for the staff. This person should have some training background as well. The trainer here can say, "John, I just talk training. Let me turn you over to Scott, who is also a trainer and sales person for the club and he can tell you what this might cost to meet your goals." If the trainer has the right sales training, he or she can do both parts but sometimes adding another layer of support looks better. Step 2: Offer financing The club's sales person/trainer can now sit with the person and offer training financing. For example, our trainer recommended to John that he work out for a total 14 workouts to reach his goal (12 training and 2 nutrition). Let's also assume that the club's rate is $50 an hour for one-on-one training. Do not discount for packages. Financing covers that much more efficiently. In this case, John's bill for training would be $700 (14 sessions x $50). The traditional model fails here. John might have the money, or is willing to give you a credit card, but we know that from 30 years of experience only about five percent of your members will lay out the cash. The number is simply too much for most of your members all at once. Based upon this, Scott can state; "John, how about we finance this for you to make it easier?" Scott can then take the $700 and finance it as a membership receivable over 3-6 months. For example, $700 divided by six months equals monthly payments of $116. This would be tracked in a separate account outside of the membership receivable. At some point, this number might surpass the club's membership base. Scott can ask for $116 down and set up payments at $116 a month for five months. The goal is to keep the payments for John at about $100 per month, which makes it very easy for him to say yes. In John's case, it is probably not desire that prevents him from using a trainer; it's the cost and the fact that he has to lay out so much money all at once. Yes, the training will be over before the money is paid. Get over it; credit is the American way. And yes, you might lose a few points a year, but how much will you increase your total training revenue by over the next 12 months using this system? Jeremy also refinances when the training is over. In this case, he might have Scott go back to John at the end of the training and ask him if he would like to keep going? John will reply that he still has payments left. Scott will then offer to roll the last payments into a new program and just extend the time out a few more months keeping the goal of making the payment about $100 per month. The new program might include 12 more training sessions but now be financed over nine months. Consider the NFBA 3 Day Business Workshop in Chicago October 21, 22 and 23, 2010!! The seats are already filling so call the office today to get more information 800-726-3506 Fri, 13 May 2011 17:11:48 -0500 Originally Posted 04/13/10 Someone challenged me to write a short blog, which is supposed to be the idea behind these things. So here it is, a look at five nasty facts that are now part of the club culture in this country: 1. Physical plants attract but they don't do anything for retention: You can build the most incredible physical plant in the industry, but besides keeping it clean there is very little it does to keep members. It is sort of like checking in to a beautiful hotel and finding out over your weekend that the place has lousy service. Or it might be like dating a really good-looking person who also happens to be dumb as a rock (Imagine dating Sarah Palin: "So, how is the fishing today?". The look may have attracted you but it won't keep you. As I have mentioned in the last several blogs, it's all about retention and mediocre clubs that can get results and master service can take on beautiful clubs that have no depth. 2. Marketing sucks and it is just going to get harder: There are simply too many companies screaming to be heard for the average consumer to process. Adapt a delivery theme and consistent look you can live with, couple it with a trial membership of some sort, and pound the message and over and over in your market until the member is forced to recognize you. 3. The client is smarter than we are: There are a number of great fitness books on the market, supported by television shows such as the Biggest Loser, that are arming the consumer with information that puts him ahead of what a typical mainstream club offers these days. I have said for years the most clubs are 5-7 years out of date and we are losing ground. The important note here is that we have given up all of our verticals. This means that the kid in the garage took your young aggressive market and has them doing Crossfit. This means that the neighborhood circuit club took your deconditioned members. This means that the low-priced guys took all your entry-level members. If you want to make money, take back your verticals and recognize that you need to throw out that old line of fixed equipment and move on. 4. Members without a relationship in your club will walk away for a few bucks: They are always going to be loyal to their banks accounts first and if you do nothing but rent equipment and ignore the client, then they will cut your throat for about $10 bucks. 5. Most owners are 20 years or more behind in their personal fitness education: I think it is negligent, criminal, laughable, pathetic and downright bad business that most owners have no understanding of functional fitness and have never tried kettle bells, sleds, dynamic warm ups or any other fitness technique from this century. Circuits with cards, trainers with clipboards, plate loaded bodybuilding equipment, fields of single joint selectorized and ancient aerobic queens still teaching cycle classes in darkened rooms chanting to candles is so last century. Hey, it's short and too the point, but the longer rants are so much more fun. Fri, 13 May 2011 17:09:16 -0500 Originally Posted 04/09/10 There was a lot of response to the last blog about the changes in the market and the total confusion many owners are enduring. Perhaps the most important point I have been emailed about is that a name is no longer a business concept. For example, in the old days of fitness, meaning the 80's and 90's, you could slap Gold's Gym on the front of your building and everyone knew who you were, what you stood for, and what they would find in the business. That simply is no longer true for all the great names of that era including World's Powerhouse and 24-Hour Fitness. Now you can walk into a Gold's and pay $9, $19, $39 or $64 and the clubs might be strong fitness clubs, strong group, or simply horribly out of date. The name no longer has the impact on a national basis because the local owners make their own decisions as to what business concept they choose to run and what price they offer. The challenge for the franchise is to find a way to establish a national brand that has some type of consistency from market-to-market and even neighboring town-to-town. The analogy here would be letting McDonald's franchisers choose what sandwiches to offer in each location and let the individual franchisees make up their own menus, set their own prices and change anything they want in the restaurants while still having the McDonald's sign on the building. That would never happen in the real world but it does happen in the fitness world as most of the last generation franchises let everyone who owns one runs freestyle. As we discussed in the last blog, the newer generation of franchises coming into the fitness world all have a specific delivery system attached to their name. As mentioned for example, Anytime was the first company to own the 24-hour concept and did an amazing job tapping the market. In their case, it will be interesting to see how they evolve as everyone else in the market copies that idea. Even McDonald's comes up with new sandwiches now and then. The point that needs more expansion here is the price you choose in today's market also has to have a concept attached to it. In other words, your price has to dictate how you run your club. Many owners in today's market will radically alter their price but not change their operating system, and this almost always spells doom for that client. Price and operating system have to match to stay in business in tough markets. Look at these prices and some of the specifics you would have to consider if you adopted that price for your business: • The $49 and higher level: This is where a lot of clubs have gotten into trouble in the last several years, especially those that compete against a low-price/value club such as Planet Fitness. Way too many of these owners have nice clubs based upon 1995 reality, meaning that they are large, nicely finished but are just copies of what a top-of-the-line club looked like in 1995. The guys in this group-and this is the harsh reality that most can't accept-are not prepared for business in 2010. They have antiquated sales systems, weak group programs, limited penetration one-on-one training and do nothing more than just rent equipment. These are also the same guys who bitch and moan when Planet Fitness opens and takes all their business. Of course the consumer is going to leave: you charge $49 and the competition charges just $10 to walk on the same brand tread. The consumer has no relationship with the club, only with his favorite treadmill and when that tread is cheaper down the street he is gone. If you charge $49 or higher, you have to master training, group exercise and train your team at least four hours per week in service. You are not entitled to make money because you spent $5,000,000 to open a club. This just gets you in the game; it doesn't guarantee success. This is the classic case of hoping your name becomes your brand, but this old style operator has been beaten by someone who has a specific delivery system geared on their price model. • The $39 price is the alternative to $10 memberships: Full service clubs can directly compete with a price of $39 versus a low-priced guy. Three years ago I would have never said that but that was before low-priced guys, maturing competitive markets, a sick economy and weak operators that live in the past. The $39 price is a must-do for almost any full service club in any market. For example, you might offer $39 for 18 months and $49 for 12 months. This allows you to claim that you have memberships that start as low as $39. The next jump to $29 isn't a good one. If you are going to go that low, just go all the way to $19. • The $19 full service business plan is making a strong comeback although very few have done it well. An exception is the Fitness Edges guys, led by Vinny Sansone and company, that has done well with it in Connecticut. This is a doable model if you have volume potential but would be tough in a smaller market. The goal here is to offer the same offerings as a full service club but at a volume price. This is a hybrid model that only fits certain markets but we will see more of this in the future and I believe it can work with owners who can control expense and generate sales volume. • The $10 generation: This is the most talked about model these days in the industry and the leader here is Planet Fitness. Shear volume, heavy cardio presence, limited expenses and unique marketing are the hallmarks of this brand. The delivery system is the marketing and you just tear it up on volume. The problem here is that when you compete on price, you open the door to guys who copy you and then go under your price. Keep in mind Curves and Anytime, both unique concepts at the time and now both are somewhat diluted by dozens of imitators. • The $8 new guys: Yes, there are clubs now charging $8 as the next, new Planet Fitness and expect more to go after the current leaders in every market. When price is what you are all about, then price is how you live and die and someone more crazy than you can take that away from you by simply charging less. The big picture news here is that if you have the right delivery system, which matches your price structure, you can compete against other price systems in your market. Each one of the price/structures mentioned above captures different clients in the market, if the clients can see the differences between the models. This is where some of the big chains, such as Gold's, are having trouble because the consumer doesn't understand, and the owners haven't established, clubs that truly differentiate from the competitors. By the way, my advice to Gold's on a national level is to establish $39 as the prime price, go full service, and most importantly, become the workout/Mecca of training information in the world again, a position it held for over 30 years before it gave it away to the small training centers. Stop worrying about $10 guys and start fixing your franchise. The issues are within no external. Fri, 13 May 2011 16:38:15 -0500 Originally Posted 03/29/10 There have probably never been stranger market conditions than exist now in the fitness industry. If the old adage is true, that confused markets represent great opportunity, then this must be the decade of vast fortune for those strong enough to take risk. Never has this market confusion been more evident than in the franchise business, once the future hope for the industry and now a highly polarizing segment of the market with wars and issues all their own. There was once a time that the mere name of the club could incite membership and market strength. Remember the early days of the Nautilus Fitness Centers, Gold's Gyms, World Gyms and Powerhouses. All of these were names that once drove market share and made the independents shake from fear. My how things have changed in this segment of the industry. Gold's Gyms now, for example, have clubs charging $9 in some markets, $19 in others and as high as $50 plus in the Northeast. Visit a Gold's and you might find beautiful physical plants designed by Fabiano and just a few miles away find other Gold's that look like relics from the 1990's with a central workout floor crammed with equipment and a huge free weight area pushed up against the wall. In the early days of franchising, the name was the delivery system. Put a recognized name on your building and almost everyone knew what to expect when you walked through the front door. Gold's and World's, for example, represented the 1990's style body building gyms and were known for seas of equipment. The name-only franchise faded, however, to be replaced by the franchise based upon a delivery system. Out went the name-only guys and in came Curves (circuit training), Anytime (first generation 24-hour concept) and Fitness Together (small, multi-room training facilities). Of course the purest form of franchise-based delivery system is Planet Fitness and the low-priced, value model. This new generation of franchises left the previous generation in scramble mode. This is no more evident than the fear that Planet Fitness inspires in most Gold's owners illustrated by the endless meetings they have up and down the east coast focusing on competing against the low priced model. Planet Fitness is a logical concept that plays on the idea that most people just want simple access to equipment and don't want to pay a lot. These same members are also tired of the posturing and insanity that existed in many clubs in the late 1990's. PF is a good model and serves a purpose, but what makes them solid is not so much the concept but the focus on a precise business model and marketing base; something the Gold's guys don't currently have in their organization. Many of the clubs in most of the old-style franchises are nothing more than replicas of the box clubs that existed in 1995. Average locker rooms, average group rooms and as much equipment as can be squeezed into a 5000 square foot training space. In fact, most of the ones opening today seem to be using the exact same equipment lists they used to order in 1995, represented by the huge order of Hammer Strength that most of them install but probably now appeals to about five percent of your membership. This box club, which exists in thousands of more clubs than just in Gold's, has a low penetration rate in its offerings that make if extremely vulnerable. For example, these clubs might break down like this: • 10 percent that just want to be left alone to do their own thing • 10 percent that take part in the club's group exercise programs • Five percent that are one-on-one training clients This totals 25 percent of the club's memberships. This also means that 75 percent are just there walking slowly on a treadmill or going in circles holding a big workout card and doing a circuit. These owners always cite how beautiful their clubs are. Good physical plants attract, but don 't retain, and your highly finished gym really does nothing to keep the members you worked so hard to attract. Even the Lifetime people, who build their new clubs at about $30 million each, have found that they can attract with this magnificent facilities but that they also have retention issues like every other club. See previous blogs for ideas on this as well. This 75 percent represents the members this club could lose if it faces a low-priced value club. If all I am doing is walking on a treadmill, then why pay $49 per month when I can go down the street and pay $10 to walk on the same brand of tread? What these owners fail to realize is that they aren't getting beaten on the price; they are getting beat by the concept and focus. PF and all its new imitators that it is spawning work because they have a defined plan and focused concept and their competitors don't. Without a narrowly defined plan of who you are and what your represent to the consumer, you tend to madly scramble when attacked. This is why you see incredible Gold's Gyms dropping their prices to stupid lows. If I don't have a plan of my own to compete, I will just copy yours. This is not new by the way. This surge and reaction phenomenon has been going on since the 1950's. In those days, someone put in a tiny, kidney-shaped swimming pool and every club then had to have one. Drive by a club and see a full parking lot and the owner thinks: "It must be his pool that is making people crazy?" This owner would of course never think that the reason he is failing is that he is doing something stupid and that it isn't the pool that is killing him but his own dog-poop business plan. Once started, this trend continued during every generation: These are just a few of the stupid things that one guy did, then claimed he made a million with this edge, and then faded. Of course some of these did work well and did give the owner a temporary edge, but the point is that every great idea was copied, diluted and then faded: • The circuit era in the late 60's • The Nautilus era in 70's • The first generation of Gold's guys • Aerobics and all its sub-groups in the 80's • The super-box franchise workout clubs in the 1990's and the fear they spread • The advent of the 24-Hour Fitness chain and the fear it spread • Then came LA Fitness and the fear it spread • Then came Anytime and its revolutionary 24-hour idea and the fear it spread • Then the $19 dollar guys in the late 1990's • Then the $10 guys now All of these confused the market, forced strong reaction, were eventually copied and then diluted, and it will be the same again today. Your defense is know what your about and focus on your own plan. You are hard to hurt if you have a solid plan that is working. You may need to adjust, such as offering a $39 price against a $10 guy, but you have to learn to compete as an alternative rather than just a cheap imitator. Fri, 13 May 2011 16:35:53 -0500 Originally Posted 03/17/10 Many owners are their own worst enemy. No matter what they are told, they always know that there is a "secret" out there that they don't yet possess that will give them the edge in their market and crush the competition. This secret is always the magic combination of words in a sales pitch or that secret piece of equipment that will drive everyone to your business. The secret is out there and if you can only find it you can make money without ever having to work again. Spending your time, and therefore wasting your money, chasing the secret is better than actually doing the work you need to be successful, and the emphasis here is on the word "work." This is why lottery tickets do well. It is easier to dream about being rich than it is to actually get a job and make money the old fashioned way. There was a recent article in Time magazine about the new way people will work in the coming years. Traditional work is dead and is being replaced by people who want to work out of their homes, set their own times and control their own lives. More power to them, but somewhere you have to pay your rent and that is where those who work are separated from those who don't. Everyone wants the magic job where I do everything my way, and if you can create that you have my respect, but most won't be able to accomplish this because they are the ones chasing the easy way out rather than building an income that is dependent on the work they create. Will Smith, the famous actor; gave an interview to Tavis Smiley on success that is floating all over the web. Alwyn Cosgrove did a nice blog on it (alwyncosgrove.com) and has the clip embedded in that particular piece. The gist of the interview is why Will Smith has achieved such success in his career. Paraphrasing here, Will answered that you might be better looking, have more money, more talent or even better skills, but he is willing to die on the treadmill, which is his edge. He said that you may have it all over him in nine different categories, but if you and he got on a treadmill, you would get off first or he would die trying to out work you. Put another way, he is willing to die before you can beat him. His work ethic, an old term that needs to be taught again to anyone who wants to be successful, is what sets him apart from everyone else. His strength is that he never has to get ready for an opportunity because he is always ready. This mindset can be directly applied to why most owners never succeed. The work needed to be successful over time is replaced by the search for the easiest way, or the magic and secret methods, that are always just slightly out of his grasp. This is why owners spend so much money buying magic solutions to their problems. Why work when this software will collect all the money from all the members? Why learn to train your members when this new line of equipment will drive new members to your club? And don't forget to buy that magic group exercise class (pole dancing anyone?) that will line up the new members outside of your door. This is also why so many members fail. What do you mean I need to work out 4-5 days a week forever? I just want the magic workout, coupled with the magic drugs, and get in shape by next week. Keeping it simple is how money is made, coupled with the simple concept that no one, anywhere, and especially in my market, will ever out work me. Here are five rules to keep it simple in your business: 1. Marketing isn't magic, it's consistency: Marketing is being out there every week with a consistent look and image. I ask people if they are marketing (the ones not making money) and the answer is always: "No, marketing just doesn't work for us." You have to learn how to make marketing work or you will fail because there are few clubs where people just walk through the door everyday begging for memberships. Marketing does work, but lazy, cheap owners fail to master the art. Marketing isn't magic, it's work and persistence. 2. Everyone has to get results: As cited in the blogs prior to this, if your members don't get results they walk away. In the past, we didn't care because we could always replace them. Today, we do care, because we finally learned that we can no longer replace them as easily as we once did. The question to ask yourself is: "Does the highest percentage possible of the members in my club work with a coach of some kind during their visits, such as a trainer or group exercise person?" If the answer is no, you will have a retention issue and you will have a hard time replacing those lost members who fail. We have all kinds of lame excuses as to why people leave, but it is really our fault. People sign up to get results, fail, and then leave. It is simple; we didn't do our job and we lost money because of it. 3. We have to convert 65% of all leads through the door into memberships: The national average is still below 40%. We get enough leads in most clubs but can't convert. There are a number of reasons, but the main culprits are: too much pressure on the first visit, no follow up, no ability to train the guests during the first visits, dependency on circuit training as our primary training system and sales people who have no training experience. There is too much competition to survive if you are only achieving 40% or less. Everyone bitches and moans about marketing, but in essence it is almost always a sales issue that is taking them down because you can't convert the leads you do have. 4. Retention is service and service is retention: I have been asking for years in the workshops about how much training owners do with their staff on a weekly basis. The question always generates sheepish grins, a few shrugs and some quiet laughs. The reality is that most don't train their front line people more than an hour a week. And we wonder why we lose so many members. Is there anything more important than training your staff to deliver good customer service? Is there anything more important than learning to keep the members you already have fought far in the system? Retention is not about the amount of equipment you own, the number of treads, the number of classes or the hours of the club. Retention is about the relationship between your members and the people who work in your club. Can't find the time to train your people? You'll have a lot of time when you lose your club. 5. You have to let go and move on: I saw an honest to God mullet head at the airport last week. The guy was in his 40's and had a giant mullet haircut right out of a 1980's Patrick Swayze movie and it honestly scared the hell out of me. There are many owners still living in the mullet head days and their clubs reflect that era. What we did in the 90's does not work anymore and it is time for everyone to move on. This is the era of retention, getting the member the ultimate results and functional training and it is the end of circuit training, crammed clubs and body builders. Keeping it simple means that your club has to reflect what the member wants to buy, which is easy to recognize if you have ever picked up a Men's Health or been to an advanced training workshop. All of these ideas rest on the concept of working your ass off. Businesses are like four-year-old kids; if you don't watch them all the time they will pee in your sock drawer. If you want to make money, keep it simple and remember the Will Smith interview. You may have a better location, be smarter, have more money but I am willing to die before I will let anyone out work me in this business. Fri, 13 May 2011 16:33:12 -0500 Originally Posted 02/25/10 Here are two things you can start thinking about now to change the culture in your club from that of failure to one of success for every member. As noted in the last blog, change is coming and you will either be part of it or the very power of the change itself will bury you and your business where you stand. Some of this is part of an article that will appear in the next issue of the Club Insider, published by Norm and Justin Cates. Look for the article soon and be sure and subscribe to Norm's mag. During the next six months become a training club: No matter how big you are, and that goes for the 100,000 square foot giants who have always relied on their physical plants as their main retention tool (How would you like to put $25 million into a club and find out that the 3000 square foot guy down the street has a higher retention rate than you do because he gets results for his members and you don't?) you have to put all your efforts into becoming a training-centric business. We simply don't touch enough people and our current training model has failed in most commercial facilities. The training guy down the street is right. He tells his clients what to do, tells them what to eat, and tells them what supplements to take. He then takes them through an amazing workout based on upright functional training and changes their life. The fitness business should be a business of trust. We take money in exchange for the client's belief, and trust, and that he thinks we can help him change his life through our leadership and guidance. The reality in most mainstream clubs, unless this person can ante up the necessary money to declare himself elite, and therefore, buy leadership through personal training, is that the member is left to seek fitness on his own through magazines or help from other lost members. He signed up to get in shape but to us he is nothing more than a replaceable score on that day's sales sheet. Breakdown a typical commercial center and you can easily see that we fail over three quarters of the people who trusted us to help them. Assuming the club has group exercise, you would find that about 3-6 percent of the members are in one-on-one training and about 20 percent take part in the club's group programs. Rounding off, only about 25 percent of the club's membership has any type of ongoing relationship with the business, such as the instructor/client in the group setting, or is getting any type of help and guidance through the trainer/client arrangement. Put another way, 75 percent of the members in this club don't receive any help or have any relationship other than that warm and fuzzy feeling they might get from their favorite treadmill. This is, by the way, the first owner who will complain loudly that the low price guy is killing him or that the non-profit is taking all his business. What he doesn't realize is that he has no relationship with his members and they will quickly leave him for the cheapest club in the neighborhood since fitness to him is all about the treadmill and he will go to whomever can rent it at the lowest price. The members enter the business believing we will help them, but we set them up with antiquated circuit training, including the giant workout card, that fails the client after a few weeks, and then ignore them until we need them again at the end of their membership. If a member wants to get in shape in these clubs, he has to damn well work hard on his own because the club simply won't, or can't, provide the leadership and help he needs to be successful over time. If you have relationships with your members, they will stay longer and pay longer. Without this relationship, you are nothing more than another club that rents equipment by the month, and the lowest priced competitor in the market will own that niche. Leadership sells and people who get results will never leave your business, but most mainstream fitness businesses aren't designed to achieve that level of penetration or success. Even how we layout and design clubs will change in the coming years. Cardio will get even more important, functional equipment, such as Human Sport by Star Trac or Free Motion will rise to another level and you will drain the Perform Better warehouse filling your club with kettles, ropes, medicine balls and other tools that professional sports people have been embracing for years. As a side note, when was the last time you watched a professional athlete go around a circuit as his strength component. You will still always have a core line of single joint stuff, but your functional cable equipment and workout tools will take a higher volume position and you will also reintroduce lifting platforms and other tools that challenge and delight the members. Free weight areas will no longer be designed for bodybuilders but for functional people and the tools we select will change dramatically. This type of training has to be infused throughout your business, not just set aside in one room. Your culture has to change from that of failure to one of success for the most members you can touch. Training is what we do in this business and we have to return to our roots because people who get results are the ones that never leave, which is what retention is all about. The second thing you can do is to begin to teach the fundamentals of fitness during your trial periods or during the first 30 days a person is a member. Somewhere in the past, we made a decision that all new members will be set up on a circuit, given a stupid card that we keep in a huge box on the edge of the floor and then we leave them to their own devices. We don't teach them how to workout, we teach them a simplistic workout that everyone knows will fail the client in about six weeks. Couple fundamental classes with your trial memberships and teach people how to workout. Put about 6-8 fundamental classes on your schedule and teach the basics of getting a good workout. For example, a fundamentals class might be based upon the basics of a dynamic warm up, strength moves, such as a kettle bell swing, a lunge, a body weight squat, some type of pressing movement, a row and a dead lift movement, all considered the essentials of any fitness routine. Without these movements, the person is doomed to machines and the circuit will fail them. If you are more progressive and have functional movement equipment, then teach that as well. Also teach the person cardio. We all know that those members walking endlessly on a tread reading or watching Oprah are failing and we should know that they all will leave us because they are not getting results. Teach effective cardio and teach it early. If members get results, they will stay longer and pay longer. The guests in the trial might be there all month, which is fine, or if they master the basics, they should be sent to other group experiences, which allow you to service the most guest and members at the lowest cost. Do everything in groups if you can and stop isolating the members. Most of us have grown up doing everything in group settings. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, sports teams, band, church groups or anything else you might belong to are all examples of group dynamics, but when you come to the clubs we do everything we can to isolate the person. For example, look at the trend in cardio. When we added the televisions, we essentially locked the person out of the group dynamics in the club. The members don't talk to each other, don't look around and don't get involved. You would be better to not buy the televisions and just to order more cardio in your club. Everything we do in the real world is about social groups, but everything we do in the club world is about isolating the member from all the others. Again, if my only relationship in the club is with a small television and treadmill, why would I not simply go to the lowest bidder in the market? Your club has to become nothing more than a large training facility. We forget that people come to us to change their lives, but because our businesses were designed for nothing but the acquisition of new members, we fail over 75 percent of our members. Get results from the most people possible and you will have the highest retention rate you have ever achieved. What I am reading this week: Stop Acting Rich, by Stanley. This is a great read for anyone trying to build wealth in his or her life. It is a little redundant if you have read the Millionaire Mind, but it is still a decent read. Tip of the week: Seek advanced education for your team. Your sales people should all be ACE certified trainers, your lead trainers should have at least one kettle bell certification or advanced education experience, you should master suspension training, which appears to be the big thing now, and if you live in a golf community, you should seek out advanced education from the Titleist Golf Institute (mytpi.com). New Book Alert: My new book, Where Did that Member Go? Rediscovering the Lost Art of Customer Service, will be released at IHRSA by Healthy Learning in early March.The NFBA is currently pre-selling this book on their website: www.jointhenfba.com. This is number six and the last in the club series. Fri, 13 May 2011 16:29:57 -0500 Originally Posted 02/15/09 If you are seeking change, it always seems to come too slow. If you are fighting change, it seems to come at you at the speed of a hangover after too much cheap tequila. You wake up, open your eyes, and then roll onto the floor crying in agony as the burst of pain, accompanied by starbursts of crazy colors, shoots through your forehead just behind your eyes. The hangover is coming, and coming fast, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it but whimper like a beaten dog. There was a photographer named Galen Rowell, who died a few years ago in an airplane crash returning from a workshop he had just given that broke exciting ground with his work. He captured landscapes, people, cityscapes and just about anything else he chose at a level of intensity that few people ever accomplished before or since. He was a film guy who clung to that medium. One of his quotes, paraphrased here, stated that yes, digital photography was coming but it would still be years before it affected any of the work that a serious photographer was doing. He knew digital was there, knew it was coming, yet thought it wouldn't affect the market for years into the future. He was a brilliant film guy and just didn't believe that anything could replace that delivery system quickly. About two years after he said that, he became a master of the digital camera and photography itself changed forever. Now it is almost impossible to find a lab, or even a store, that still sells film or a film camera. Change happened, and when it came no one had any idea how fast it could hit. The fitness industry is now poised upon that same ledge. Change is coming, and it is happening faster than many people want it to come. The resisters fight to the last breath but change still comes anyway once a critical mass is achieved, and we have arrived at the specific point in time. Another example is the publishing world. The big publishers can fight as hard as they want, and perhaps slow down the change slightly, but the consumer wants downloadable books, offered at a reasonable price, and they will get what they want. You can fight, and eventually be left out of the victory spoils, or you can adapt and make money with the world as it is becoming. In our industry, the death of the single joint fixed plane equipment circuit is upon us and there is nothing anyone can do to stop the transition. Yes, we will still be buying a line of fixed equipment for most mainstream commercial clubs in the coming years, but that purchase will be a lot less than it was just a few years ago and the new emphasis will be upon functional cable equipment, functional toys and a whole lot more cardio. Weirdly, this change is being driven by unlikely sources. Watch the Biggest Loser, get excited and then go to a local club and try to find any of the equipment or type of training they use on the show. You can't yet in most clubs, but the early adapters will fulfill the need while the rest fight back that the old way is still the best way. I was talking to Robert Creech, a talented owner, who along with his brother David, run a chain of clubs that are setting new standards in their part of the country (northern Mississippi). Robert was on vacation and visited a local national franchise club that was about 70,000 square feet and said he had a hard time getting a workout. He went from room-to-room looking for functional equipment, such as kettle bells, but the club just didn't have any functional equipment at all. It did have acres of fixed equipment and you could do leg extensions with four different types of equipment, but you couldn't do a simple workout using the equipment most training clubs have been using for several years. The sad thing was that this club was only a few years old. Fight all you want, and claim that the old guys (the owners in the 90's) had it right, but those members doing chest and triceps on Mondays will be extinct in the next couple of years. The club above was beautiful, big and a great museum to 1995, but it is overbuilt and a waste in today' market. The consumer wants to train differently. He or she reads the latest books, such as Rachel Cosgrove's recent training book, they read Men's Health, they watch the big loser shows, go to boot camps in the parks and they see the infomercials, such as P90X and Insanity, and simply want something different. The consumer is driving this change, just as they did with digital cameras, the music world and publishing. The consumer always gets what he wants because he is the one writing the checks. Fight all you want, but you can't fight this trend away from going around in circles doing circuit training. You adapt, or you die. Change is coming in how we train people, and how we even design clubs, and it is coming so much faster than the existing mainstream clubs, and equipment companies, want it happen. Your future will be big cardio, lots of functional driven equipment and toys and a lot open space where the members and trainers can move in groups. Your training revenue will far exceed your membership revenue if you grasp offering multiple levels of pricing and training. You can compete against any big box club by simply designing your place to get results. You will need more and creative trainers. You will need a lot of open space. You will not need seas of equipment cramming every usable space. You will not need weight loaded fixed equipment unless you are still catering to the last 12 wannabe bodybuilders on the planet. You will need lifting platforms, but not for the power guys. It will be Mrs. Johnson out there doing those cleans and presses with her personal coach. You will need sleds, 50' ropes, suspension training and most everything that mainstream guys think about buying and then ruin by sticking it all in one small room because by all that is holy you will use those 80 pieces of circuit equipment since someone accidently got in shape in 2002 using that stuff. The client is bored and wants new stuff and the last thing he will pay for in the future is a bored trainer setting him up on a 12 piece circuit that feels like a short, boring trip on the road to hell. Watch for the next blogs. I will start to discuss things you can do now to implement some of these changes. Fri, 13 May 2011 15:02:25 -0500 Originally Posted 02/08/10 The copy in this blog is an excerpt from my newest book, tentatively called: Where Did that Member Go? Rediscovering the Lost Art of Customer Service. The book is due out in March and will again be published by Jim Petersen and his team at Healthy Learning, perhaps the most patient people in the publishing business. My theme of the year in the workshops is that we fail the members by not getting enough people in the clubs enough help and then that mistake punishes us when it comes to low retention in our businesses. The shear number of competitors should be forcing you to rethink this issue. We need to move away from a culture of failure, where just a few members willing to pay for one-on-one training ever had a chance to succeed, to a culture of success where we can create systems that allow us to help the biggest percentage of members and still make money. The entire book is really about retention, but the bigger issue lies underneath and that is our inability to help the members get in shape and stay in shape. Start with this brief rant and start to think about how you support the members you have in your club. You will probably find that few truly get the help they want and deserve for the money spent. Create a Membership System That Has Many Layers and Options Where Everyone Who Wants Help Can Get It at a Price They Can Afford We exist to change lives and any fitness business should be nothing more than a delivery system designed to change as many lives as possible. Change lives, and people stay longer and pay longer, which results in more income for the business, usually more profitability, and a chance to change more lives in the future. The tool that enhances this mission to change as many lives as possible is customer service. Every member who pays us each month to belong to the club in essence trusts us to facilitate this change, and every member who pays deserves some respect from the club and its team. This glowing and somewhat simplistic business idea breaks down, however, when it comes to the direct application in most fitness businesses. In most clubs, there are usually two distinct classes of members. There are the ones who have the money to purchase one-on-one help, and therefore get the best results from their membership, and then there is everyone else going through the motions practicing self-inflicted fitness. Everyone else is defined as all the other members still doing their original circuit workout from the day they started, the members carrying sweat stained copies of Men's Health, and the wannabe bodybuilders still carrying around Arnold's 1977 hardcover edition of The Education of a Bodybuilder. All of these people are seekers of a more fit life, but almost all will be failures since the club simply doesn't have a system to help them that isn't restrictive and expensive. If we want to keep more members staying longer and paying longer, then we have to design a membership system that allows everyone to get help at a rate they can afford. Doing this requires that you stop copying the traditional one-on-one business model and move to a system that is more inclusive for more members, yet more financially successful for the club due to a much higher percentage of your members paying a fee monthly that is higher than your rate for just a simple access membership. The Current System Only Serves One Type of Client The traditional training model only serves one type of client. If you are on the average a middle-aged, fat, white guy and have money, you get a trainer. If you're not, then you are much less likely to seek out the services of the club's training department. The club loses money, and fails to deliver great service, by limiting its business plan to only a single user group. If you want to generate the highest revenue possible from the most members, and deliver service to the widest range of clients, then you need to expand your model to seek out the other types of clientele who are waiting for you, but are untapped because your model fails to serve them. Following are all of the categories you could be serving in your business by expanding your current training model and by making it more inclusive. The deconditioned people This group, defined by the statistic that about 63 percent of the people in this country are either overweight or obese, really doesn't do well in a mainstream fitness facility. Unless the deconditioned person can come up with money for one-on-one training, he is pretty much underserved by most clubs. These people simply need much more help during their first 30 days than most clubs can afford to give using the one-on-one format. It is interesting to note that most clubs fail these clients, due to the limits and restrictions of their business model, and not because of the owner's or manager's lack of awareness that these folks need more help or because the club's management doesn't care. The model itself is wrong, and is where the barrier exists, because most owners just can't afford to throw that much one-on-one help at people who need constant attention during their first 30-days. The traditional one-on-one clients This is the standard client serviced by the standard model. This is a failing model in most clubs, however, if you look at the numbers. One-on-one training usually only has a penetration rate of about 3 to 6 percent of the club's membership. Penetration rate is again defined as how many people in the club's total membership are involved in a given program. In this example, a club with 1,000 members, and a penetration rate of five percent with one-on-one training, would only have 50 consistent training clients. Some clubs try to compensate for this by showing a higher rate of training, using $75 per session for example, and then discounting for anyone who buys more sessions, or packages. In this instance, the club might offer five sessions at $250 (now $50 each) or 10 sessions at $400 (now dropped to only $40 each). Besides killing the credibility of your trainers, who started out as $75-per-hour trainers, but are now worth only $40 per hour, you are still limiting your program to only a single type of client. Most one-on-one training clients like the pampering and the status that comes with having a personal trainer. These people seek this out because of the results they get, the guidance they receive, but as equally important to many of them is that fact that they can afford it and the other members can't. It is elitist, it has status for some, and this type of training was always designed to be that way. The trainers themselves perpetuate this by fighting for bragging rights on who can get the most per hour, therefore, continually seeking to drive up the training rates in the market. These elite clients have a place in the club, and if a member drives up in a Bentley and wants to train, take a lot of his money and give him the training. But there are other types of clients, in much larger numbers, who are not being serviced by this model you need to chase as well. The social dynamic/group dynamic category These are the clients that prefer to do things in groups and who seek the energy and fun from doing things they like with a lot of other people pursuing the same activity and goals. The business concept behind attracting these people is that they can share the cost of the trainer. People need access to more information to make change in fitness, because most people just can't figure it out by themselves. Training in a group allows a wider range of people, who understand they need help, to get this information at a reduced rate by going through the process with others and sharing the cost of that education. People grow up doing things in groups. If you were an athlete, you grew up on a team. Even if you were an individual-pursuit athlete, such as a track person or played golf, you were still part of a team and trained and travelled together. If you weren't into sports, you might have been a Boy Scout, Girl Scout, in the chess club, or somehow involved in doing something with a group of people. Even the guys in the computer clubs still get together to exchange tips and combine expertise. We have killed the group dynamic in most clubs. Training is done one-on-one, the cardio equipment has personal televisions, and we encourage members to bring their mp3 players. We not only limit the personal connection, we strongly discourage it in most clubs. Except for clubs who have vital group-exercise programs, there is nowhere in most facilities to meet and interact with other members, especially since many clubs don't have stretching areas or any type of socialization node, such as a sports bar. Training in a group is more fun, you will get better results because of the peer pressure, and you can save money if you share the cost of the trainer. The club also benefits more by being able to generate a higher return-per-session. For example, if your best trainer can get $75 per hour, then that is your ceiling for her for every hour she works. You simply can't get more than the proven maximum of $75. But if you think about creating the group dynamic experience, you can now raise your return-per-hour. For example, you might charge $75 for one person, but you can charge $40 per workout for four different people in a semi-private environment; therefore, generating $160 for the same length of time. It is important to understand that you can add this layer without cannibalizing your one-on-one business. The people who do one-on-one are not the same people who seek the group experience, and the majority of your existing one-on-one clients will prefer to just keep doing what they are doing if you do add the semi-private option to your training business. Most semi-private training would be done in groups of two to four people, but experienced trainers can sometimes manage groups as big as six people. One of the false assumptions that prevent many club owners from trying this model is that they believe--usually through the influence of the trainers--that everyone has to have their own individualized workout. Unless the person is injured, or needs sports-specific training, such as someone getting ready to do a marathon, then the rest of the members can do things in groups, sharing a common workout. For example, the head trainer might post the workout of the day for the semi-private clients listing kettlebell swings, clean and presses, squats, pull-ups, and dead lifts. An experienced trainer might have a member who has been training for a while do two minutes of swings with a 53-pound bell and the new guy might do 30 seconds with a 35-pounder. Everyone can get individual help and guidance that suits that member within the confines of the group, but everyone still does the same basic workout. The Challenge Seekers (those who simply can't find a hard enough challenge in most mainstream fitness businesses) This is the group most clubs never see and wouldn't know how to service if they did appear. These people are in the 25- to 45-year-old age group and are the ones who are doing radical training in their garages, doing the cult workout of the year. These are also the same people who would be bored to tears working with a traditional trainer by themselves. This group wants a challenge, wants to do the training that their favorite athletes are doing, and are concerned not only with looking good, but with functioning well as a skier, bike rider, hiker, kayaker, or any other weekend lifestyle sport. These people almost always train in groups, because the peer pressure drives the results and helps take every workout to the next higher level. These are also the people who usually know a lot about training since they read all the hot fitness publications, explore fitness online, and read the training books. We usually call this group the "badass" fitness group, because they are seeking the badass, make-it-hard, challenge-me-as-much-as-you-can workout, and have no interest in traditional fixed-equipment circuits or body-split bodybuilding workouts done 1972-style. This group thrives in group personal training/coaching with groups of a trainer and up to 10 members. The group training sessions should be very aggressive and would be structured consisting of a program that is usually done for a full month before being changed. This should not be called a class, because that term forces a comparison between the club's group personal training and its group exercise program. Group exercise is generally included as part of a simple access membership to the club, but you want to charge for group personal training. There is a sample pricing structure later in this chapter. The key point is that there are really four types of clients that need, or who are seeking, help beyond the most basic information that most clubs offer, but most clubs merely offer help to the traditional one-on-one client. By limiting your help to just the 3 to 6 percent of the people who can afford training, or like that type of training relationship, you are in effect neglecting the other 94 to 97 percent of the members who can't afford, or who simply don't like, that type of working out. The interesting thing to note is that when asked directly, most owners cite that almost everybody coming through the door, which stated statistically might be as high as 95 percent in most clubs, needs help of some type and can't get started on their own. Even the folks from other gyms and who have been working out are often doing homemade or dated workouts that are ineffective or dangerous. Yet knowing this hasn't led to any changes in the training model for most clubs. The clubs simply don't change, or can't afford to change, the current model that limits help and service to the majority of their members. Building a Price Model That Can Service a Deeper Penetration Rate in Your Membership Following is a sample model that is designed to touch the largest number of members in any given club. When you add layers, you are really adding a variety of different price points that will appeal to a wider range of clients. This model is also based upon the assumption that the one-on-one training model is not effective in most clubs. The traditional model only generates restricted income from the entire membership base and also restricts the return-per-hour the club can obtain. Done correctly, most clubs should only have about 10 percent of its training revenue come from the traditional model. Most clubs could in fact benefit from charging more for one-on-one training and making it more elite for its membership and for its image in the marketplace. Setting a higher standard with your one-on-one price would also guide more members toward the semi-private and group models where the club can reap a higher profit margin and serve more members. Important note: Do not panic by trying to force your existing members into a new system. If you use this model, you would do it for new members forward. Most owners balk at using a newer model, because they always relate change back to the members they already have in the program: "I know Joe, and Joe won't do any of this new stuff, and he sure won't pay more." Leave Joe alone. Don't mess with your current members in the model you are using. If they want to keep buying sessions, then sell them the sessions, but stop failing to grow your business because you are afraid of a bunch of members holding you hostage. Honor the deals you have made, but move forward from there. This model is also based upon the assumption that you will at some point stop selling sessions and packages and move to an EFT model (members are drafted monthly for their training directly from a credit-card or bank account). Sessions and packages are weak tools, because the cash flow is so inconsistent. You sell a package, get the cash today, which is nice, but then you have to service the person for several more months without any matching influx of money. Your goal in this more advanced business model is to: • Offer a system that allows a wider range of members, as defined by workout type and price sensitivity, to become active in your business. • Stabilize your cash flow by switching away from short-term packages and sessions to 12-month training programs based upon a monthly EFT. The training clubs have long suffered from having all of their membership based upon short-term tools, such as packages, and the mainstream fitness clubs have based their memberships upon longer tools, such as a 12-month term. Both businesses could benefit from combining these memberships into one model. The training clubs could develop a large receivable base, which is the combined total of all their members paying monthly for their training. This eliminates the inconsistent cash flow that is so detrimental to these small businesses. The mainstream people should strive to get the highest number of members possible into a larger monthly payment and include the membership to the club as part of the training membership. One of the biggest changes in the industry during the first decade of the new century, and maybe one of the biggest changes in the last 30 years or so in the business, was the necessity to show the lowest entry point/membership price possible in order to get as many members as possible into the club, and then work hard to drive up the average EFT sale. In the past, clubs have been able to hold the line and not drop their single-person rate, but the combination of the economy, the maturing of the marketplace with more competitors than ever before, the advent of the lower priced club model, and a more astute clientele looking for more options is forcing everyone else to change. This change will drastically affect all mainstream fitness clubs for the next decade, and all owners and managers need to tweak their current price models before falling sales and declining revenues force you to change what you are currently doing. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:59:35 -0500 Originally Posted 01/25/10 I met a guy at a party whose year was 1986. That was the year that he still believes was the most important year of his life, and he still clings to that era like stink on a fat bowler. He refuses to listen to any music recorded later than 1986 (Journey, Huey Lewis and Survivor still rock his world), lives as a low-tech contrarian and is in essence frozen in the past. This would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that I have to deal with this every single workshop we offer. Most owners are frozen somewhere in the past and just refuse to evolve no matter what is happening in today's market. For example, look at the industry through the recent years: • 60's: Some of these guys are still around and in the business. These were the years of the first hard pressure sales, nasty sales tactics and offensive marketing. Whether we like it or not, this is part of our past and these guys and their business practices are why the industry has such a low image with the public, because so many next generation people in the industry emulated these early guys. These guys are characterized by the question, "What do you mean lead boxes don't work? Why I did 221 sales one month (November, 1966) out of lead boxes," • 70's: Arnold says it all. This decade is why every Monday in America is national bench press and arm day in most clubs thanks to, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder." This is also the decade that still dictates training philosophy in the clubs and why we fail the clients so often. Mrs. Johnson, that sweet little member who wants to lose 25 pounds, finds herself with a trainer who weighs about 260 and wonders why she is on a four-day split routine doing bench presses with tiny, pink dumb bells. This decade and all its madness took us away from full body functional workouts to isolation and routines that about 2% of the gym populations can do or really needs. Owners who worked in clubs in these days, as young employees, are now the ones building their club just like a Gold's Gym from the early days. These guys are characterized by the statement, "You just can't build a club without Hammer equipment and you have to have dumb bells that go up to 200 pounds or you will lose members." • 80's: There were actually two groups that emerged from this decade, and both are still around and as bizarre as ever. The first group is still rampant in the clubs and still has hot debates online. This is the HIT group, or high intensity-training fan club of the glory days of Nautilus. Do one set, do it to your max, follow the circuit for 12 pieces of equipment and go home. Give it up people, no one wants to do that anymore and it has proven to fail. You may not even know you are one of these guys, but if you put your new members on a circuit and give them a workout card with the pieces of equipment, seat adjustments and a place for weight and reps, congratulations, you are frozen in time and it was a butt ugly year to choose. This is why members quit you fools. You can't sign up a member and never help him again, and you can't in good business, or good conscious, advocate something we know will fail for the client, therefore, he will leave us. You only make money if someone stays longer and pays longer and the days of chasing endless replacements for lost members are so long gone. This guy is characterized by the statement, "If you can't get it done in one set, then you didn't do the one set hard enough. And yes, I do have a shrine in my office to Ellington Darden, so what?" The other group from this decade is also still haunting us. The 80's were the glory years for aerobics (not to be confused with the advent of modern group exercise), and any group person who was working in a club during the later part of that decade, or into the first few years of the 90's, still believes that you have to change your class every week, that the instructor is the star, and that a microphone hanging off the side of the head is status. These ancient divas destroy group programs, because they just can't stop being the star and can't let go of the programs. This diva is known by the statement, "Workout music hasn't been the same since Donna Summer retired," but they can also be heard saying, "I think I still look good for a forty five year old woman without a single muscle in my body from all this cardio." • 90's: This was the era of the first super Gold's and World's Gyms. These big boxes were quite something in the day and each one grew bigger as the owners all tried to out do each other. Fields of equipment stuffed tightly in one big room, cardio inches apart and free weights that would make a bodybuilder wish he could still get an erection. The clubs were all about whoever had the most equipment would win and it was bodybuilding heaven and circuit city all rolled into one. Even the national chains jumped in and you still find the chains building clubs that are way to big to deliver service, but egos demand that the product has to be built big and expensive, even though the member simply doesn't care anymore and there is too much competition to make the big pigs profitable. Anyone who was working in this era still says, "You just can't build a smaller club. It has to be 40,000 square feet or you can't compete. Besides, a smaller club would restrict your income." This is, by the way, the same guy who is now competing against a 6,000 square foot hybrid-training club that is generating over $100,000 a month and kicking his over-leveraged ass. • 2000: This was the decade of the reinvention of the low price/value club, the advent of the small town 5000 square foot model and the end of the 1500 circuit model. More happened in this decade than in the past 60 years in fitness, and some of it was even good. The low priced guys weeded out the marginal mainstream players, which was good for everyone else. The functional guys brought in a new era of fitness that is based upon individual results for the client and the end of equipment as service. The dysfunction of the economy validated whether the big chains really had a viable business plan, or were just coasting along with the endless supply of cheap capital stemming from desperate investors looking for an easy score. The economy won and proved that many of the guys with more than 20 clubs never had a frickin' clue about what is really happening in the industry and they paid the price. Everyone had a comment from this decade. The 1500 square foot circuit people cried because no one could believe that losing twenty pounds did not make you a successful business owner. The big guys blamed the economy, but the reality is that no matter how big your club is, or how much equipment you have, you still have to get results for your members and deliver customer service; something few if any of the bigger organizations can accomplish. • The next step: Build clubs with one purpose: you have to get your clients results so they will stay longer and pay longer. This will be the decade where we finally realize that there is not an endless supply of new members, because there is simply too much competition. The look of clubs will change. The size of clubs will change. What is in clubs will change. The equipment companies will change their offerings or perish. Fixed equipment will become a small part of your offering. More will change in the next few years than in the last 30. Are you ready, or are you still stuck in the past listening to Metallica and wondering if your hair is big enough? What I just read: Mike Boyle, the Boston bad boy of banging metal and functional guru to the rest of us mere workout mortals, just released a long over due new book, "Advances in Functional Training." Mike's new release is a combination of some of his best writing over the years infused with some of his current thoughts on training. This is a must have for any owner's bookshelf and should be mandatory reading for all head trainers. You can get this book from Perform Better now. Mike will also be on the road at this year's Perform Better Summits, which every owner and head trainer should attend. Many of you owners are out of date and need new ideas for training in your club. Don't be frozen: go get some new info and see Mike. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:55:59 -0500 Originally Posted 01/08/10 This question appeared as an email I received around Christmas. The short answer, followed by the long answer later in this blog, is why didn't you react to this about a year or two before they opened in your market. It's a little late to take boxing lessons after somebody in the bar took your girlfriend, kicked your ass and called your mama a bad name: What do you do when Planet Fitness moves next to you? They have sold over 6,000 memberships at $10 per month with upgrades of $19 per month. They killed everyone....... Mike T. The following is a Seth Godin blog, which partially answers this question. Seth Godin is the guy who wrote Purple Cow, and about a dozen other books. I highly recommend you sign up for his blog and make it part of your business education each week. In this blog, he talks about what happens when a generalist business gets hurt in the market, by someone delivering the same service, but now doing it cheaper and disrupting the market. This is the same situation that many mainstream fitness centers that are dated and using business plans from the 1990's find themselves in when a low price club, such as Planet Fitness, comes to town. The important thing to learn here is that this blog only applies to generic box clubs and not niche specialists. What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, "We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We're well regarded, we're talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?" Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn care services, accounting services, tailoring services, consulting... all they want is the cheapest. The masses don't want a better PC laptop. They just want the one with the right specs at the right price. It's not because people are selfish (though they are) or shortsighted (though they are). It's because in this market, right now, they're not listening. They've been seduced into believing that all options are the same, and they're only seeing price. In terms of educating the masses to differentiate yourself, the market is broken. Fixing this is almost always a losing battle. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean the market cares any longer. The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn't complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies. Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn't start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative). It's extremely difficult to repair the market. It's a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must. If Wal-Mart or some cultural shift has turned what you do into a commodity, don't argue. Find a new place before the competition does. It's not easy or fair, but it's true. You bet your life. [Please note that nothing I wrote above applies to niche businesses. In fact, exactly the opposite does. You can make a good living selling bespoke PC laptops or doing vaudeville today, even though the mass of the market couldn't care a bit. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know...] The market has changed, have you? If you have been following my blogs for the last year, or if you have ever been in one of our workshops, you know that I have been screaming for years that you have to find a niche in the market and own that niche. Without a clearly defined niche, you are at the mercy of the next low price guy providing the same service at a substantially lower rate. Planet Fitness (PF) has been around for a while and has appeared in a lot of markets. Some clubs survive nicely against them and often even thrive, while others get pounded into submission is less than a year and then are gone. PF was created by Mike Grondahl. He has two talented partners, but Mike is the creative force behind the organization. He took an old idea, which was to drop the price, and repackaged it into something new and exciting. He then wrapped a solid marketing concept, the Judgment Free Zone, around the $10 model. In other words, he created a niche for his company that competes on price, but is seen by the public as a place where everyone fits in and you can avoid the traditional meatheads and other less desirables that haunt the typical clubs. These bodybuilders and "so into myself" people are the ones, that in many consumers minds, are the people who use mainstream fitness and who intimidate so many regular people who want to work out, but are afraid of hanging out with idiots. One of Mike's classic quotes, brought out by a vodka or two, is that PF is a niche player and that many different types of clubs could all coexist in the same market, if those club owners weren't so damn stupid. I actually think this quote is rather brilliant and sums up many of the problems we have in mainstream fitness today. For example, if I run an old style box club, meaning I try to be everything to everyone, have a large workout floor, mediocre locker rooms, about 60 pieces of four-year-old cardio, and the traditional white walled group room with the eight foot mirrors turned sideways and the baskets of crap up against the wall, I deserve to get my ass kicked. This type of club charges about $39-49 per month, gives the consumer three workouts with a trainer that is totally disinterested, sets the member up on a failure track of doing a circuit with a big stupid workout card and then the club forgets the person even exists. All this club does is rent equipment. The owner puts just enough money into the club to keep it open, is years behind in programming and training, and has a physical plant that is decades out of date. A fresh PF comes into town and this same guy bitches that the competition is unfair, but in reality, he doesn't really give a crap about his members or he would have been more up-to-date and would have specialized in a very specific niche in his business, such as family or upscale. The ear of the generic box is gone and you either change or you get ran over by someone that is fresh and exciting The new player with fresh equipment and a clean club, and who is renting newer models of the same treads that the old guy owns, offers a price of $10. The existing owner has to deal with the issue that he is not in the member retention business, has no niche to protect his business and all he really does is sell memberships. Now, however, there is a new club that does everything he does for about a fourth of the cost. No matter how long you have been in business, or how much money you have invested in your business, you are not entitled to success. If you can't compete as a generalist (see Godin above), then you have to move on, because someone took your market and is doing a better job of it than you are. Many good clubs compete well against a PF. The ones that are fresh, priced appropriately and are full service do well and can share the market. Where PF gets you is the Darwin thing; only the strongest, and in this case most prepared for battle, survive. If you run a good business based upon seeking a specific niche in the market, you will have a chance. Run a dated box concept from the 90's and kiss your club goodbye. It is also relevant here to mention the two management styles I mentioned in an earlier blog. About 90% of the owners in this industry are maintenance people, meaning all they do is try to maintain the flow. These owners are happy to hit last year's numbers, hang on to equipment a year too long because it still works, won't reinvest in the club except to keep it open and in essence makes every decision based upon the idea of protecting what they have. These are also the first guys that get destroyed by a new, fresh competitor doing the same thing in the market. The other 10% are the growth guys. Their mission in life is to take a little risk and just keep pushing. Their clubs are current, they reinvest heavily about every 4-5 years in building a fresh physical plant, their equipment and training is relative to what is happening in the training world, and most importantly, they hire talent instead of settling for young dumb asses who work cheap and just fill slots at the front desk. If they get competition, they seldom hurt, because they have a niche membership and they are the source in that market for that type of club. There will always be a new, fresh player coming in the market. Before PF and Mike Grondahl, there was the fear of LA Fitness, the fear of 24-Hour, the fear of Gold's, the fear of Bally's and dozens of others. There is always a new hot player, and there will always be a new hot player, in the market. If you want to know how it all turns out, read Darwin, because only the strongest and fittest for survival will survive. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:54:21 -0500 Orginally Posted 12/05/09 When you spend your life fixing all kind of businesses, you come to realize that there are really just a few fundamental laws that govern whether a business owner will succeed or not. Even if you read endless business books, and limit yourself to just the literally thousands released during the last few years, you will find that most of these books can be boiled down to the same key points buried in a lot of fluff and filler that makes that book unique. One of these basic elements that is recurring in all the good books that you must seek the foundational truth of your business. I was in Orlando last week to do a few hours of management training with about 70 of the senior staff people from many of the YMCA's in central Florida. It was a very motivated and talented group but most of the room had never been in a NFBA workshop before and had no idea what would really be taught. As with most groups, they initially requested me to do what most all groups want and that is for all outsiders to come and do training that supports their existing belief system, even when those systems might be dated or based upon false assumptions born from just too much of believing your own brochures and from too much inbreeding of ideas instead of seeking outside challenges that we all know force growth. Where the Y's could be more effective, and where almost all small business get in trouble, is finding the way back to the foundational truth of that business. The foundational truth is usually a single sentence that defines the business and why it exists. Stray from your foundational truth and you will usually fail at some point. For example, one of my good friends in the industry, Norm Cates, co-founder of IHRSA and 1st President some 30 years ago and current publisher of the Club Insider, and I were having lunch in Atlanta and were discussing IHRSA and its current financial issues and image problems. The surface reason why a company such as IHRSA would be down in revenues and losing membership would be to blame it on the economy, but that is just too easy and doesn't address the major foundational issues that will affect it as a viable force in the industry for years to come. I believe IHRSA has simply strayed from its foundational truth and that it can't be fixed until everyone recognizes why it is broken and why it can't be merely patched. The foundational truth for IHRSA is that it is a trade organization that exists to help all fitness facilities of any size or function to be more financially successful. If this foundational truth is correct, then almost everything they are currently doing is wrong. For instance, why pay Bill Clinton an enormous sum of money to speak for an hour and a half at a national convention? How does that match the foundational truth of the organization if they exist for the sole purpose of helping fitness businesses become more successful? This decision doesn't work with the foundational truth because Bill Clinton does not help any fitness business become more financially successful; therefore, there is no valid reason to pay him huge money merely to entertain fitness people. The membership of the IHRSA trade association would be better served, and the money better spent on that membership, by bringing in as many small business gurus, such as Larry Winget, Jeff Gitomer, Tim Ferris or Paco Underhill, as they can afford and let these guys all do three-hour workshops. Sadly, you could probably get all these guys and more for what they wasted on Clinton, but when you forget why you exist then there are no guidelines to follow and everything you do becomes a disassociated random event. In this example, the foundational truth, to help every fitness business of any kind become more financially successful, wasn't serviced by that choice of speaker. Either what you do enhances the foundational truth of the business or it violates that truth and should not be done. Another example by IHRSA is CBI Magazine, which is a slick piece that is almost totally irrelevant to any owner looking for ideas and leadership that should come from a national trade association dedicated to my business' success. The magazine is a great magazine but it is not designed to support a trade association whose purpose is to help its members become more successful, therefore, it should be radically changed to meet the foundational truth. The Y's, which are as far from IHRSA as you can get philosophically, also suffer from a disassociation from why they exist. Remember, Y's are one of the oldest fitness organizations in the country and the longer you in exist in business the more likely you are to stray from your foundational truth. Y's have been helping people longer than every other chain in the country has existed and the Y's deserve our respect even if you don't agree with how they function. To me, the Y's have a very self-evident foundational truth: Y's exist to change as many lives as possible in their competitive market. They don't exist to service the community. They don't exist to provide family fitness to those in their neighborhoods. And certainly not to for the vague reason, as the YMCA national website claims: The nation's 2,686 YMCAs respond to critical social needs by drawing on our collective strength as of one of the largest not-for-profit community service organizations in the United States. This is a noble statement, but how do you lead hundreds of staff and project change into the future with such a broad, hard to intercept claim? Y's do great work, and yes, I acknowledge the tax issue that has been debated ad nauseam, but setting that issue aside, Y's fill a family gap that is lost in most markets. Orlando, for example, is flooded with almost every national brand, but the Y's are the only organization that is truly embracing families in that market. They do a great job but all Y's could do better if they return to the foundational truth, which again should be to change lives. For example, most Y's are truly lousy at sales and many directors feel that even the word "sales" is almost evil in intent. And if the Y people use the traditional definition of sales in this industry they are right. Sales, as done by many of the big chains, are harmful and degrading to the client and all of those dated tactics should be avoided at all cost in mainstream clubs and Y's alike. But Y's exist to change lives, or at least should if that is the foundational truth. If someone visits a Y and is handed a brochure and left to do their own tour, or simply walks around with a young counter kid, then the Y's have failed that person and have failed the foundational truth. Someone came into a Y for help and the Y staff, in a knee-jerk overreaction to the mainstream sales systems used by the nasty big chains (we're not like those bad people), often goes too far the other way and doesn't even have competent people to explain the prices and the many, many options a typical Y offers. The Y failed the client because the client came in for help, was ignored beyond a "hello and here is the brochure," and left to do their own tour or perhaps spent a few minutes with a undertrained counter kid, and then after wandering through a large and confusing physical plant, walked out because fitness is not rooms of equipment, it is a support system, and you can't understand that with a quick walk through in a vast building. This potential member might then sign up at another club and we all know that if a de-conditioned person that becomes a member at some of the big, sales driven chains, will be eaten up as a sales number and left on the floor to die. He will fail because those clubs exist to get sales numbers, not change lives. The Y, because of a dated and misguided sales belief, actually hurt someone here because the person trusted a Y for help and guidance and no one developed any type of system that could powerfully help the guest realize the true difference of working out in such a family driven and supportive culture. In this case, the Y's forget the foundational truth: we exist to change lives and we have to start that process when the person first inquires. If your foundational truth were to change lives, then the Y's would have to change their definition of sales. Sales could be redefined as: helping people get the help and information that they trust the Y's to provide. Again, if the foundational truth is correct, then how most Y's sell is wrong, because you can't change a life if you can't get the person into your system. Remember, the anti-sales belief sent this guy down the road to another club, which goes totally against the culture of caring and family that the Y's own and do so well and against the truth of changing lives. We forget, as do our Y friends, that most people who inquire about fitness at a family style club are often confused and frustrated with fitness and many are scared or had bad experiences somewhere else. The sales encounter is exactly the place you would want to have your best and most highly trained people, meaning the ones who are patient and understanding, meet all potential members and to spend a lot of time answering questions and making sure the person understands the Y's culture and sense of family, two of the things the national Y's do better than most other mainstream clubs. You just can't do that with a cheap brochure and a guided tour by a young, inexperienced kid. Drifting from the foundational truth affects all businesses, no matter how big or small. If you can't define your business, and the purpose of that business, in one sentence, then you can't make the decisions you need to make, train your staff, or even market your business because you don't know what the hell you are trying to accomplish. When you explore your own foundational truth, start with the question, "Why do we exist?" Then ask, "What are we trying to accomplish with this business?" Avoid the trite making money statement. Making money is what happens if the foundational truth is correct for your business. If your business isn't performing the way you expect, then always return to the foundational truth first. If you can't define your business simply, and what you are trying to accomplish with that business, then how do you train staff, market, and even paint the place because you are making random decisions based upon the situation at hand, rather than informed choices based upon fulfilling your truth. Most importantly, you sometimes have to realize that you are so far away from your foundational truth that you have to tear it down and start again rather than patch and keep following the same flawed rules that are destroying you, such as IHRSA tries to do. In many ways, IHRSA is the same as the Y's with a lot of good people who need to return to the truth that created both of their organizations. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:50:22 -0500 Originally Posted 11/23/09 Darwin had it right: people who evolve progress and those who don't die. It is no different in the fitness industry. Those who are evolving make money and those who don't fade away. This is true for not only the club side but for the vendor side as well. Many companies out there are hurt now, and most blame the economy, but if you look at their product lines and sale forces, you understand that saying, "You just can't fix stupid." Here is my list of what's stupid in the business today. These are just opinions based upon what I see in the industry but if I can figure this out so can the consumer. It's also the list of things that probably won't change because those doing these things don't understand that these are the things that are killing their businesses. Oh well, stupid is as stupid does, to quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump: • How many times does the market have to demonstrate to Nautilus that their products are not salable except to trainers who grew up in the 70's and still believe one set to failure is the hottest trend in training? • Bally Total Fitness seems to build a culture of failure into its business model. High-pressure sales, little help for the new member, price-driven marketing and dated clubs full of dated equipment make up their plan. Life Time Fitness strives for a culture of success. One company goes bankrupt several times and the other has become the big chain role model. Are they even in the same industry? • Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't realize that giving a member a 12-piece circuit workout written on a big card and kept in a box on the side of the floor is just bad business? The circuit doesn't work. The equipment doesn't provide service. The member fails and goes home feeling like the club let him down. • When will we realize that bigger is not always better (easy now)? It is virtually impossible to provide service in a huge box, even if you have the right intent. As clubs embrace more functional equipment, while cardio remains strong, the clubs themselves will become smaller because we just need less space. Who is going first? • When will we realize that it is hard to run a financially successful fitness facility if you're fat? If you want to make money, you have to embrace business management, weight management and training. You can't just decide to be a businessperson and ignore the foundation of our business. If you don't workout, go sell cars and get out of the industry because you are a bad role model. • I respect IHRSA but when are they going to understand that if they don't return to their foundational truth--that their sole purpose is to be a trade association dedicated to making every club financially successful--they will never penetrate the industry in this country much beyond 10 points are so? • One of the single biggest mistakes owners make year-after-year is that they will not learn how to hire and train people. If you hire stupid, you get stupid, and if you are leaking members away each month then why would you not start with the simplest thing to fix, which is customer service? • White is not a color. Color through paint is a cheap way to change the energy in your business. Call someone like Rudy Fabiano and invest in getting good colors in your club. It's cheaper than you think and you need it • Who will be the last gym owner in the industry that still believes knocking off a fake $100 if you join today works in today's market? If the client does believe it, he is too young and dumb to be a member • Yes, there is something to that whole karma thing. Owners who continually screw their members and vendors end up losing everything at some point and this makes the universe very happy, and puts a smile on the rest of us too. • All the innovation in training is coming from the training clubs and the functional gurus, such as Durkin, Boyle and Cook. The training clubs are the cavemen with very sharp spears and the old box clubs are the mammoths with nothing but a cliff behind them and no place to run. • Good business is good business and the basics are the same for any fitness business no matter how big or small. Create a concept, market it to the public, convert the leads into sales, service the members you do get, train your staff daily and work on retaining the ones you did get. It is that easy and the only difference between a big club and a small one is how the rules are applied. • Nonprofits have to stop thinking that they are so radically different. The fitness member who stopped at your club, but signed up at the nonprofit down the street, is the same person with the same service needs and the same issues. These nonprofits are just as likely to make the same mistakes as the for-profit guy but they always claim the higher ground that they are morally superior because they aren't in it for the money. You still have to change lives and get results and the old technology and philosophy that the nonprofits taut can't be overcome by thinking you are working from a higher plane of existence because the mainstream club is trying to make a living doing what he loves. Working for a profit might actually make you more efficient and you might get better results, but not always. • Trainers that still put clients on split workouts with Monday as chest and triceps day need to go home now. Your day is over and the adults need the floor • You have to stop letting your staff dress like a bunch of homeless people. People don't trust you with their money when you are wearing a tee shirt and baggy jeans. Get a life and get some uniforms. • Why are some of the national equipment guys, such as Star Trac, so progressive and build for the future and others still are selling equipment that was out of style in the 90's? • Why do the writers in Men's Health know more about fitness than the average owner who has a fitness center? • Young is cheap but it isn't usually smart. That goes for dating and hiring staff. • Here is yet another point on the medical community. Someone asked me how to build rapport with doctors in order to get referrals. How many doctors actually work out? Why would they refer something they don't do? If you want to penetrate that market, give a bunch of doctors a free year, hook them up with a trainer and change their lives. It is easy to get referrals from someone who just lost 10 pounds. • Call your mama and ask her if you were dumb as a child. If she says yes, you might be overachieving, which makes you even better than you thought • Why do owners have group programs and then never do the classes? These owners have no idea how badly they might be represented by a whole bunch of people who hold you hostage by doing something you won't take the time to understand or control • Why is it that every successful owner I talk to can show me a written business plan as to how he will make money and every one that isn't making money can't show me any type of plan except for a bull.... plan they had their accountant do for the first business loan? • How much time did you spend last month looking for good staff? If it is under an hour or two, you probably own what you deserve. • If your staff is always showing up late because they were out late and partying big then fire them and stop hiring stupid young kids who stay out late partying and think that is an excuse to come in late. Again, you got what you deserved. • Spending more than you make builds a great, lost decade of your life but it doesn't build a life. • Why do owners look so surprised when they lose half of everything to a spouse who did nothing more than stay home while you tore it up with one of your employees and then got caught in your own business? This list could go on forever, because stupid has no limits. Progress is slow but by refusing to be dumb you can accelerate the game. If you are not making the money you expect, always, always return to the fact that what you're doing isn't working and the only way to change the results is to change the action. We just came out of Atlanta and it might have been the best of the year with over 130 people. Our last gig of the year is in Phoenix and then it is off to 2010. Get your people trained and be ready for a great January-May. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:57 -0500 Originally Posted 11/12/09 Literally thousands of people have passed through our workshops over the years. If you do something like this long enough, you eventually encounter almost every type of personality, mindset and intelligence level imaginable all seeking information that they hope will change their lives and their businesses. I strongly believe in the foundational truth that everyone, no matter what they do for a living, how much money they might have, or how successful they are, deserves some respect. The exceptions to that rule are the people who spend their life wasting their life by refusing to accept personal responsibility for their current condition. Through the years I have noticed a certain small percentage of folks who are a little more driven than the rest, a little more personally motivated and perhaps a little more intense when it comes to defining how they want to live their life and the standards they are willing to live with in their quest for something more. As I have aged, and gained a little more gray around the edges, a few of the people who find our workshops seek me out for coaching in their lives on a personal basis. In the earlier years, the coaching was always about business and money but as I have gotten older, and gained more of a father type figure look, the seekers are now looking for answers to life issues and personal coaching as to how to get the most out of what they have and how to live their dream. This responsibility and opportunity to work with young, talented people has given me a viewpoint from which to comment on what it takes to rise to another level in your life and to achieve personal success no matter where you are at now or what you started with on the journey. It would be easy here to throw out a few trite sayings about success. We could always use that successful people are great goal setters. We could also mention that people who achieve a certain level of personal growth were never quitters. And there are always endless other words, such as "motivated," "determined" and "winner" that always appears in the success literature. But after watching for years I don't believe these words are always the right ones to predict who will rise and who will simply maintain. About 12 years ago, two young trainers set in the front row of a workshop, one furiously taking notes and the other rubbing his head with his hands and quietly swearing in Scottish under his breath. The information they were hearing was challenging their belief system but both understood that what they were doing wasn't working as well as they hoped so they were open to new ideas. These two students, Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, have gone on to be two of the most recognized names in fitness in the world and have changed a lot of how the rest of us think about how to train people. They have also built a wildly successful training facility and are now mentoring others on how to succeed in such a competitive business. If you've read any of my other stuff, or have been to a workshop or advanced school in the last several years, you have heard me mention Alwyn and his rise to international guru, but this blog is really about Rachel and her success, especially with her new book that just came out this week. Me being me, I would love to take credit for their success but these two would have been out of control and crazy successful if they simply lived in a closet and only came out occasionally to publish something new or to make money for a while. Their success was not derived from outside sources but from within, which is the whole point of this blog. It has been a pleasure to watch them grow over the years but it has been Rachel that has been the model of success worth noting and studying. Many spouses, especially those living with an already recognized guru type, never achieve their own level of success because the other spouse cuts off the light and you never really get a chance to live your own life. Rachel has gone from great trainer, to financially successful business owner, to dedicated mentor for women and now to nationally known author. Her new book, The Female Body Breakthrough, was just released this week after a long journey and I think it is one of the best training books I have ever read or has been written. As I mentioned above, when you get a chance to watch someone develop over a number of years, many of the traditional trite words that define success simply don't apply. What has made Rachel successful and what can the rest of us learn from her personal journey. When I think of Rachel, several things pop into my head. The first word is "discipline." The act of writing a book, while running a business and living a full life, is mindboggling. Rachel emails me so early that I am barely awake on the East Coast and she is three hours earlier on the West Coast, which puts that email at about the, "What, she is up writing already?" hour. Personal discipline is a lost act in most lives. We encounter clients who lie about what they eat because they know they are out of control. I have consulting clients who set out with a plan and good intentions but weeks go by with very little being accomplished because they can't find the time, or the discipline in their life, to get things done. Discipline means being able to set priorities, which might get us back to the old goal setting concept. Decide what you want, and then arranging your life so you can achieve it is rare and maybe one of the key talents Rachel has mastered in her life. Another unique thing about how Rachel achieves is that I have never, ever heard her say, "I don't know if I can really do that?" One of the things I admire about her, and that I see in other successful people I respect, such as Greg Rose from Titleist or Todd Durkin, is that she lives by the concept that anything is possible if that is what you want to do. Write a book? I can do that. Build a successful business from the ground up and reinvent the business concept along the way? When do we start? Hang on to that business while my husband is locked in a hospital for two years fighting for his life? Sure, if that is what it takes to be successful then bring it on and more after that. No limit people are often the most exciting people to hang out with at a bar? Sit around a table with Rachel, Alwyn and some of the other notables in our fitness world and you never hear anyone question the ability to get anything done. People are writing books, building new businesses and offering radical new thoughts on their DVDs about the evolution of fitness but no one questions if they can do it. They simply get up in the morning, follow the plan and then change the world. Rachel has also taught me one more thing about success. I've noticed in her the personal belief that what she is doing is the right thing for her. If the thought above was no limits, maybe we can define this one as no doubts. She has found her personal mission and is prepared to live her life on that path. Each step leads to the next and her belief in mentoring women and defining fitness for women has created a rich and full life for her with so many years of success yet to come. I think one of the richest moments in life is when you learn to celebrate someone else's success. I am proud of having Rachel as a friend and I admire her journey more than most because of what she has gone through to achieve that success. I hope everyone buys her book and if you are in a training studio I highly suggest you buy many and give one to every female client that comes through the door. It is not only a way to train for you but a motivational tool for your clients.You can order the book at www.orderthefemalebodybreakthroughtoday.com Fri, 13 May 2011 14:45:05 -0500 Originally Posted 11/04/09 Most web pages in the club industry are just short of so worthless why bother. I am asked often, however, if there are any good ones out there worth looking at and is there any thing you can learn from these sites. The best site live site right now by my judgment is Goperformanceandfitness.com, a site developed by Jared Kuka for his Go Performance club in Nashville. I often use clips from Jared's club in this year's workshop because I feel he has created the next generation training facility that almost any trainer could own in almost any market. The club is 5000 square feet and embraces many of the principles I think are important in a club, including training men and women the same as athletes, fully functional equipment and performance training, and trainers who are more coach than clip board cowgirl. The thing that makes his web site so powerful is that it almost entirely video driven, which is a huge step beyond endless copy and still photos. In the world of instant gratification where most people live engrossed in Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, video is the tool of choice and of getting and keeping attention. The video that is attached to this blog is a strong sample of how good a site can be. The production quality is fantastic, the testimonial aspect is extremely strong (see the last blog on marketing) and most of all who see is and what she is doing is completely believable. Watch her do this and you think immediately that hey, I want to do this too and most importantly, watching her do it proves that a slug like myself, sitting at home eating bags of nasty chips, can get off the couch and get my fat ass moving as well. One of the common pushbacks I get in the workshops when we discuss group personal training and semi-private training is that this type of workout is fine for someone already in shape but no average person would do this. That is when I show the Sally H. clip and prove that if she can do it, and is happy doing it, then any of your members can do it as well. Another strong aspect of the site is that the first thing you see is a video that appears in the center of the screen. Immediately you get sucked into the site and the large buttons and mostly video content keep you there. Remember, the longer you stay on the site the more likely you are to take some type of action. This is also why guys such as Anthony Diluglio do so well with their web sites. He currently has well over a 100 videos on his site and once you get there you need a six-pack of beer and a yellow pad because you will be there for at least an hour and want to take notes. Of course, the longer you stay the more likely you are to buy, which is the whole point of keeping you trapped with great video. You can also use this type of video in your club at point of sale. For example, you could have a 32" flat screen near your sales area and introduce your prospect to a few of you members by video before you tour. These videos induce the need to move and once you watch a few you will probably tour the club with an entirely different perspective. Costs vary on these shoots and Jared shot several at once keeping the cost down. If you're going to shoot these for your club, make sure your folks start with Jared's site because this is the quality you should be striving for in your work. Another aspect worth exploring is how Jared does the montage clips of a lot of things going on in his club. These short bursts can get you fired up about working out, introduce you to an entire style of training you might not have ever even seen and the music gets you inspired to watch the clips several times. These clips should also be part of your Youtube presence and at some point you want to get your own camera and start posting short 30-second clips daily from workouts or other high-energy activities in your club. One other point about these clips is that if someone goes to your site and sees this type of clip and workout and then visits another club's typical website, you will win the battle to get someone to visit you first. Keeping this in mind, you should have a large capture on your site, meaning a button that says, "Try us risk free." The capture is simply a way to get someone to fill out some information in exchange for a guest pass to the club that the potential member can print out himself and bring with him. Don't worry, I am back I received a number of emails concerned that I haven't blogged in a few weeks. October is typically our worst month when it comes to travel and being out of town and this year was no different with me being home for only about four days. The blogs will resume weekly as always starting with this one. If you have any ideas or questions, post them at the end of this blog and I will start to address the ones that might work for the large group. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:40:41 -0500 Originally Posted 10/14/09 Most of your marketing is a waste of money because many of you forget what marketing is actually supposed to do. Marketing, done correctly, is supposed to drive someone to take action. This action might be to buy your product directly or to respond through a call or visit to the business where a waiting sales person who has the skill will get you to part with your money. This urge to respond can only happen if there is an emotional response to the advertising. We buy because we become emotionally connected to the story or ad content and we don't buy if there is no tapping of our emotional keys. We buy Volvos because we want our kids to be safe. We buy Pillsbury products because they remind us of life we might have never even had. We buy expensive alcohol products because we want to be beautiful and successful like the people drinking them on television. Every good ad has reached our soul yet in our industry we are still years and years behind. Most club marketing fails because it is void of an emotional content. If you look at a typical ad in our industry, you find almost the direct opposite of emotion. Most ads are boring, lame and a pathetic waste of money because the owner left the design of the ad up to the sales person that sold him the ad. The goal was to get something out quickly, throw in a few stock photos and add a price discount of some type and let it go. This is why you find ads with headlines such as, "Fitness for everybody!" or "Where fit happens!" These generic masterpieces are then followed by a standard stock photo of an impossibly fit person leading to bullet points listing everything the club offers. For example, here are the bullet points from a club I just visited that are listed in their brochure and in their local ad in the paper. The headline read, "You will see and feel the difference." • Marble counter tops in the locker rooms • Super clean • State-of-the-art equipment • Granite steam rooms • Over fifty treadmills • Lots of free weights • Tile entryways • High ceilings • Trainers on staff at all times You can't make stuff like this up and I would have never listed marble as a point even if I owned the business. What purpose does a list like this serve? Doesn't every fitness center have fitness equipment? Is marble going to make me run to the club for the deal of the day? What a waste of money and energy to produce such worthless advertising that does nothing but devalue your brand. The question is who is the target of this ad and what is the expected response? Marketing theory is as old as marketing itself but we forget the basic tenets. Rule one is always remember that features don't sell; benefits do. This ad lists all the features of the club, or the things that you will see if you visit the business. Rule two is what is in it for me the consumer. I don't care what kind of equipment you have as long as you can get my fat ass in shape. It's not the tools (or features) it is what you do with them that is important to the consumer. But every owner breaks this rule because if I paid for marble and high ceilings I am going to tell someone about how much I spent even if it doesn't bring anyone in to my business. This guy paid big bucks for the marble and someone is going to hear about it. The emotion here is loaded on the wrong side. The owner is emotional about what he owns because of pride and cost but the potential member just sees it as another fitness facility with another long list of fitness stuff that is really no different from any other of the large number of clubs in the same town that by the way, just list all of their stuff too. There is no response without an emotional driver and without answering what is in if for me as the consumer. Fitness marketing fails because it is always unemotional centering on lists of stuff rather than trying to touch the consumer's soul. But what about running price in our ads? Doesn't a deal or discount answer the question of what is in it for the consumer? Price is based upon a wrong assumption. When you run price you are assuming that everyone in the community has already made up their mind to join a fitness facility (prior interest) but they are hanging at home anxiously waiting for the local club to drop their pants, and price, low enough to move them off the proverbial couch. The fallacy is that only about 16% of the people in this country belong, or have ever been in, a fitness facility. The ones that have experience and are fitness practitioners know where the clubs are in their towns and have already tried most of them. Price ads do burn up the folks with previous experience when first introduced into a market but after a while these ads become more and more ineffective because price ads do nothing to create new business merely drawing from a base that already had experience. The logical thing to do here of course if you own a fitness business would be to chase the other 84% that have never set foot in a club. Why fight for crumbs when you can eat cakes. The ad copy above, for example, only chases people with some type of preexisting fitness experience. They are the ones who do have basic expectations about a club and who might be looking for specific equipment or services. But the bad news is that fitness people are already in the club so why are we constantly advertising to people who already get what we do? It's kind of like advertising giant burgers to fat people. They have already bought and are proudly displaying your product over the top of their pants. These people have tried all of the burgers, selected the one they deem best, and eat there a number of times a week, hence the problem but you don't have to advertise to this group to get them to buy. The real money here is in chasing the casual diner or perhaps one who doesn't have experience with your product. The opposite is to focus on developing new interest in the 84% who have not yet made a leap into fitness and not cater to people who already have fitness experience. In other words, all your marketing should be centered on developing interest and future business. If you get this, then the types of ads you would run would be totally different than a typical naked model/bullet point hell ad. Developing interest is a completely different mindset than trying to attract fitness experience people. Instead of price as your main attraction, you would first have to create a new awareness and need in someone who has no experience or any reference point about what you offer. Keeping this in mind, most of what we do won't work. Hard body fitness models become the enemy and entry barriers to that deconditioned female, rather than a role model. Price discounts and specials are meaningless since those in the 84% have no reference point to compare against since they don't have club fitness experience. Bullet points are also ineffective because they list items and services that are assumed to be part of any fitness facility. I have said it before too many times, but you never see an ad for a hotel that states: Stay in our Sheraton, we have beds. Beds, and fitness equipment, are nothing more than presumptive things any good hotel or club would offer. Again, if we want to tap the 84% we need to tap the emotion. The only way to do this is through the use of testimonial ads. Emotion is the last, great, unexplored region in fitness business marketing. We sometimes allude to emotion, such as an ad that gives reasons to workout. Feeling better about yourself, or looking better in your clothes, are the by product of fitness, however, and not the direct reason someone goes to a club. It's what drove the person to join in the first place that is the source of the emotion. Feeling better about who you are is a noble ambition, but it is not what makes people get off their butts and change behavior. Sitting in the dark crying about your weight because of fear and loneliness is the driving emotion and that is the one that needs to be tapped if we want to develop future business. This person joins a gym because of the avoidance of pain and not just to look better in a mirror. Emotion is often dark and intrusive, which is why we haven't yet used it as a tool in our industry marketing. But the rules are changing, especially when we are faced with 63% of the people in this county either obese or just plain fat. When you're in a fight with a tougher opponent, why fight fair? If you're losing hit him with a car jack, run over him with your truck, or in the worse case, force him to watch a Sarah Palin speech. You're losing the battle so fight dirty to win. I wrote in my latest book, Naked Woman at My Door, that many people would rather die than change. Smokers know it is killing them yet they can't stop. Obese people in their 30's who already have medical issues know the weight is going to kill them but it is harder to admit your dying and change than it is to order a double cheese burger with a diet Coke. Testimonials are the only tool we have at our disposal that can begin to reach this level of emotionalism needed to get someone to try fitness. Testimonials done correctly are your tool to place the prospective member into your business and associated with the struggles and success of the member you highlighted. "If he can lose 20 pounds so can." "If she can come back after three kids and look that good then I can do it because she is just like me." "Wow, I know that guy and if he can do it then I can too." All of these are responses that should be elicited by a strong testimonial. Good testimonials are about normal people making change. They give people hope and a role model for success. Testimonials also prove that you have normal people in your club and that you are not filled with just fitness freaks that were born and will die in outrageous shape. The Susan K. Bailey Company, based in Canada and which is the largest full service ad agency in the industry, developed the attached testimonial. The "Find Your Reason" idea was something we trademarked through the NFBA several years ago with the hope of someday doing a supportive web site and national campaign. The idea behind this campaign was to force the person to admit that you may not want to exercise for yourself but there might be others, such as your children, who may be the driver that finally gets you moving. I believe it represents the first generation of ads that targets the 84%. It was carefully aimed at people who have never been in a club before and who haven't yet realized fitness is going to be in their life. Start your thinking now for next year's ads and realize that lists of fitness crap is really just that and isn't the tool you need to attract people to your business. Tap the emotion and you will find more members and for most of you testimonials are the only ads you should ever run. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:34:21 -0500 Originally Posted 09/29/09 Sooner or later, the pendulum has to swing back in our favor. Everything that is bad for us in this country eventually becomes viewed as nasty, a backlash forms, and we revolt against what is hurting us and move ahead. Cigarettes peaked several decades ago and now you are morally a bad person if you smoke. The judgment zone went from socially cool and featured in the movies, then came the first levels of being unacceptable, to yucky, to socially unacceptable, to you must have a rotten soul if you smoke. The pendulum swung from glamorous all the way back to deviant in just a matter of years. Fitness, and especially weight management, has to swing our way because we just can't get that much fatter. We are slow learners in this country but when we do get pissed we have the brain trust and the resources to declare war on any issue that really pisses us off. Right now, we are just at the point where the pendulum has swung all the way out and is hanging at that weightless point before plunging back toward what we all know and believe: fitness matters and a healthier lifestyle is relevant in this county. We are also in the stage where we do know what has to happen and we are learning how to get people fit. What we can never agree upon, however, is how to eat. One man's healthy feast is another's source of fat gain and until we get a little more unified in our beliefs, we might be doing more harm to the clients than good. Here are a few examples of the more we learn the less we know: • Why is every recommended diet result in one third losing weight, one third staying the same and one third gaining weight? • Why do fitness centers, the alleged source of the fountain of youth, suck so badly at even delivering the most basic of weight management information and support? • Dieting is nothing more than the absence of the crap food you were eating on a temporary basis. You lose a few pounds then eat the crap again and get fat again. Until we teach people how to eat healthy nothing will really change. • Why are most nutritionists so out of touch with people that move everyday? Why can't they understand the difference between an active adult and one who has never moved? • How come drug ads on television are now trying to make taking drugs a badge of honor? The drug makers make having a perceived illness as something that makes you unique and something you can flaunt to your friends. • If you don't fix the children, you will never change the adults. Most adults over 30 that are really out of shape won't change and we shouldn't even bother trying to change them. The ones who seek change will find us but most will be locked in for life because the habit of being fat is too much to change if you haven't seen the importance of fitness by that time in your life. Change the kids and how they think about fitness and you will change the future. • Any woman under 30 with low cut jeans, a short top and a roll of fat hanging over the side should do prison time. Any guy over 30 with a wife beater shirt and hat on backwards should be sent to Iraq as an Al Qaeda practice dummy. These two points have nothing to do with the blog but I feel better venting. • Why hasn't mainstream medicine explored metabolic typing as the only form of diet? It just has to be common sense that a person is an individual and that there is no one diet that fits their age, metabolic makeup and current health condition. Read William Wolcott if you don't know what I am referring to here. Individualizing food and diet has to be the only thing we haven't tried yet. • Most trainers are too extreme in the eating suggestions. What person is going to eat dried chicken, white rice and broccoli out of Tupperware for the rest of their life and be happy about it? Because we don't know how to eat we suggest extremes for everyone, which helps no one. • Keeping the last two blogs in mind, how come I have only met one doctor in 30 years that starts with lifestyle as a treatment rather than just suggesting side effect inducing drugs for life? Exercise and healthy food can cure more disease than the drugs that do nothing but mask the symptoms neglecting the origin of the disease itself. • Whole, fresh and natural are words never used by anyone who orders food for an airport. • Most of us believe that getting in shape is about 85% of what goes in your mouth and about 15% of how you move. How come the vast majority of fitness facilities only sell the 15%? • It is scary to see heavy women in their 30's with mobility problems. Where will it end and who will pay for her lifetime medical conditions? • The better the running shoe, the more likely you are to get hurt. If you love running and run for the shear joy of getting away from everything read, Born to Run, by Chris McDougall. It debunks running shoes as the solution to injuries and makes you want to get out the door and move. This guy might single-handed bring back the running craze and get people moving again. • Why can't we just admit we are wrong and simplify fitness again? Dan John is still right. Fitness is as simple as picking up something off the floor and putting it over your head. We make training too complicated for most people. Simple is good and simple gets results. If you own a club or are a trainer, read his book, Never Let Go. We have some of the few copies you can still get through the NFBA. It is a must read if you are in this business. Also look at guys like Anthony Dilugio and his Art of Strength site. There is no simpler approach to fitness than one person and a couple of kettle bells in the back yard. We should be the ones teaching simple in the clubs and by the way, anyone spending an hour walking aimlessly on a tread in your club to lose weight isn't going to get there. We can't change them all but most members would really like to understand that hours on a tread don't lead to weight loss. If you can't explain HIIT then see Alwyn Cosgrove's site. • We have 40,000 fitness centers in this country and yet we are still getting fatter as a nation. Maybe it's us? Maybe we just aren't helping as much as we think. Maybe we need to rethink fitness and how we teach it in the clubs. • Get results with your members and you will never have to advertise again. Do you think that the guy who invents stuff that will really grow hair will ever have to advertise it? • Supplements are great. Supplements kill you. I am going with great because I know what's in that McDonald's crap. Your higher income members are looking for guidance in supplements and you should be offering that information. • If you are wearing it, you ate it. Shut up, workout and stop blaming someone else. It's your fault you're fat and nothing changes until the fat in your head understands the fat on your butt. Wouldn't you like to say this to a bunch of whinny members? • The pendulum will change when the politicians get involved but they are mostly so out of shape that we may have to wait a while for anything to happen there. • I don't understand why movie stars are in shape but their fans aren't? The teenagers think just starving gets you there but tell that to Angelina Jolie or Beyonce: fit freaks who get it done. I wish they would share the work they do to get the bodies they have-it might change how others think about fitness and dieting. • How can fitness be done sitting down? Everything we have done since the beginning of time has been chase stuff, catch stuff and eat stuff but we take a deconditioned (nice word for too fat to move) person and immediately sit them on a recumbent, then move them to a row of machines where they sit or lay down while exercising and then we have them sit at the juice bar. What in hell are we thinking here? The last thing a struggling overweight person needs to do is sit more. Don't be the club that has mastered the art of ass sitting. Embrace movement and all the training that goes with it. • Why are guys like Mike Boyle, Gray Cook and Todd Durkin so right and yet so few hear and learn? There are gurus out there talking about how to do it right but mainstream owners are very late to that dance. If your business is flat, one reason might be that you are selling pagers in the age of IPhones. This list could go on for quite awhile because the more I learn the less I know and I want answers. This is a glorious business that changes lives but we could do so much more if we can simply move ahead in our thinking and stop doing fitness by old habit. The pendulum is coming our way but I am afraid it will just smack us on the ass. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:32:13 -0500 Originally Posted 09/24/09 The last blog on personal responsibility triggered a small debate concerning how we as an industry can induce a tighter bond between the fitness world and the medical community. We all dream of this partnership and the money it can provide, but there are huge barriers that are preventing this with both sides unable to solve the issues that could bring us together. Paul Grymkowski, one of the legends in this business who was instrumental in building the Gold's gym brand into an international presence, asked in his response to my last blog how we can get both sides to understand and build a continuum of care that would benefit both the fitness world and the national health of this country. First of all, the new generation of fitness professional is seeking a wellness solution for their members, which is something the chains have been unable or unwilling to go after in the clubs. This total fitness and wellness solution often contains total body functional training, nutrition guidance and weight management, supplement support, and other keys to a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Our weakness is that few clubs have all these components as part of their normal offering but that is changing, especially in the smaller clubs (3000-12,000 square feet) built upon the premise of providing a complete solution to living a healthier lifestyle. On the other hand are the clubs that work against almost everything that is right for the client. These membership mills do nothing more than take membership money, turn numbers and rent equipment. Sadly, we are more known for these clubs in the industry instead of the ones trying to move us into this century. In most clubs, if you actually get in shape walking on a treadmill by yourself a few nights a week after work it is more likely an act of God feeling sorry for your fat ass and lack of social life rather than a solid fitness program. The large majority of people left to their own devices do not understand fitness and simply push a few machines and spend an hour at a very slow pace walking on a tread and watching Oprah. You might feel a little better compared to sitting at home staring at a mind numbing television show but nothing is happening to that forty-pound bag of donuts hanging off your ass and there is definitely nothing happening that would excite a major health insurer enough to pay for you to be there. But again, we know how to provide fitness today and many clubs are providing a complete solution although it is seldom sold that way to the members. We still do nothing more in most fitness facilities than push low intensity, self-directed activity to lose weight and manage health and don't offer any type of real health and wellness support. Most clubs shy away from this level of sophistication because they simply don't have the skilled personnel to provide this help and others fail the consumer because they are too cheap and can't charge for the service. What all this means is that while we are weak at offering total support for a healthy lifestyle at many clubs there are a rising number of smaller facilities that would qualify for an insurance boost because they can track attendance, offer weight management, and talk about lifestyle changes that negate fitness in the real world and these clubs would be an ideal blend with the insurance world. On the other side of the debate, medical people don't get fitness. I was recently diagnosed with a mild case of atrial fibrillation and then sent into the equivalent of medical purgatory, where I have been tested, probed, received three cardioversions, and put on medicine that was supposed to improve my health but did nothing more than make me want to lay under my desk and sleep. After almost a year of chasing rhythm my doctors have decided that maybe all that wasn't really necessary and maybe just an aspirin a day is all I really need. I did, however, learn things along the journey. First of all, some of the fattest people, most out of shape people I have seen work in the largest cardio specialty clinic on Cape Cod. Out of the large number of staff wandering the halls supporting at least 10 doctors only three would qualify as in shape and the rest would fall into the Wal-Mart Saturday morning Little Debbie crowd. There is also a small percentage of the doctors that are in horrible shape, which you might consider ironic considering their specialty. Obviously most live in the world of "do as I say not as I do". The second more frightening thing is their willingness to just prescribe drugs to everyone they meet as patients and most of these drugs are things that they casually prescribe for the rest of your life. This shouldn't surprise me, however, since the calendars in the offices were all furnished by drug companies, the check out person was drinking coffee out of a large cup with the name of a drug on the side and many of the other charts and illustrations on most of the walls were proudly provided by drug companies who splashed their names prominently on each piece. Lifetime drugs mean lifetime patients and while the doctors may not be thinking that way visiting their offices is sort of like going to a PGA event where the average player has about 7-8 different logos on his shirt. If you are displaying that many logos the perception is that someone must be paying you. We discussed drugs often but we spent very little time on health and wellness. I was by far one of the youngest patients through their clinic, which is quite amazing at 56, but sadly every solution was a drug to take the rest of your life with a minimal discussion of what those drugs might do to you and the quality of your life. My experience highlights why we will find it so difficult to build a bond between what we do and what the belief system of a doctor in our country is taught to do. Doctors don't understand fitness, few proscribe anything beyond walking a little and cutting back on whatever is considered bad food in the press, and lifestyle is vaguely discussed because if the doctor learns too much it might get in the way of presecribing the drugs. In our world, we want to prevent illness. In their world, they only treat symptoms and most doctors don't seem to have the time to find out why things are going bad and how to change things further up the line that might be causing those symptoms. Every insurance company in the country should be paying for a fitness membership, but how do you verify compliance? Every insurance company should be offering weight management help but no one can agree on what we should be eating or which diet we should be on although why we don't at least go after soft drinks, junk food and high fructose corn syrup is beyond my limited wisdom. We should also build a new version of BMI and reward people who maintain a lower, healthier weight instead of telling a professional athlete that according to the current system he has an index of 30 and is obese though he is as healthy as he will ever be in his life. We should be the first thing a doctor prescribes to any patient if we can live up to that responsibility by providing a solid product and support that really works. At this point, too few of us in the industry can provide the verification that fitness as practiced in this specific facility can make a difference in someone's life. The good news is while not now then soon. The old dogs are dying and the new owners are rising and may they howl at the moon for the next ten years. Modern fitness works, is verifiable and there are owners who provide total support for a lifestyle change. Our time is coming but we have a little dead weight to get off our shoulders first. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:29:46 -0500 Originally Posted: 09/10/09 One of the most culturally defining shifts I have witnessed during the last 10 years or so in this industry is the trend by the professionals in our industry toward blaming others for lack of success in their business or for their personal failure. As I have said many times, the industry as a whole is in the middle of its biggest shift ever away from many of the old practices that sustained us in the 80's and 90's. Many of these fundamentally flawed, and in many cases outright sleazy practices, such as high pressure sales or draw boxes, simply reached their expiration limit and don't work anymore. Other trends, such as the shift away from circuit equipment toward results driven functional training, are more positive and reflect an industry moving in the right direction. You may not agree with these examples or the others I have used in recent blogs, but hardly anyone will disagree that things aren't what they use to be. Change also leads to extreme success for some and hopeless failure for others. Change happens whether you want it to or not and right now we are in the middle of the fastest period of change since the late 70's and early 80's when the entire industry was beaten back to its roots by the emergence of the first franchise clubs such as Gold's, group exercise was rising, cardio driven by electronic function appeared and the peak and slow fade of Nautilus. But as we say, with changes come those folks who don't adapt and this lack of adaptation to what is really happening in your world brings failure. Owners who don't reach their expected success often don't admit that maybe their dream business was nothing more than an abrupt nightmare that drained their money and left them crying on the curb. Something caused them to fail and that force had to be something else beyond their control. This lack of personal responsibility is not only disgusting, but it is often that thing that prevents anyone from fixing the business. If you are the source of failure, but spend all your time blaming the market, the economy, the competitor, your spouse, your dumb ass staff (that you hired and trained), and anyone or anything else you can find, then you will never really address the issues that often can be fixed and the business saved. An owner that blames his staff for his lack of success in the club is often the one that hires the cheapest people he can find, refuses to learn how to train and motivate, and then fires often because, "they don't get it". The issue is not the staff but who hired them and trained them. If the owner adapts and changes rising to meet his weakness, he will prosper. If he doesn't he will fail, but nothing changes until he realizes they are his staff and it's his fault they are worthless employees. Personal responsibility assumes the owner will look within first. Most don't because it is so much easier to blame someone else for your misery and stupidity than admitting you might not be doing a great job with your people. But it isn't just the owners who suffer from this personal flaw. Many companies in our industry refuse to look inward as well and many individuals depicted on the news also avoid starting within as the root of their personal evil. Eat too many big burgers and then sue the company for selling them to you might be the ultimate example of the mixture of lousy personal values and a lack of personal responsibility in your life. Based upon the assumption that refusing to be responsible for your own life is cultural and beyond just our industry, here are some things worth mentioning: • If you are wearing it around your fat ass or gut, you ate it. It's not water weight. It's not bloat. It's not pretty. It is impossible for anything to get to your ass that didn't go through the lips first. • If you are not projecting a curve toward being profitable by the end of your first six months in business, your business plan doesn't work and probably won't. Change the plan and stop blaming the competition. • The Y's are a fact of life Get over it. If a Y is hurting you look at what you own. Is it a niche? Is it up-to-date? Have you even painted the pig in the last several years? You do not have a right to make money just because you opened a club. You do have the ability to run a competitive business, but most of the clubs that fail against Y's are way beyond their competitive years and often deserve the beating. • If major equipment companies continue to develop endless lines of fixed equipment they will fail. It is not the economy, it's the fact that going around in circles with a giant card doesn't work anymore and the members know it. • Trade shows in our industry are not relevant. The speakers are seldom relevant, the format is worn out and fewer owners are going because of the expense. It's not the economy; it's the fact that your product is no longer relevant to the consumer. Change it or close it but deal with it. • If you are being drained of members it's not the club down the street that is killing you, it's the fact that you can't even spell customer service. Members just want you to be nice and appreciate their business but most clubs won't even greet their members or thank them when they leave. Look at your staff and if they are dumber than a Jerry Springer audience fire them all, learn customer service and get new ones. Members leave for two reasons: you don't appreciate their business and show this appreciation every day and they don't get results because your training is 20 years out of date. The new guy gets them but you drove them out and it is your fault. • I don't care how many kids you have, how many years you have worked or how burned you are, if you own a single facility and go home at five on Monday afternoon, you deserve to have your ass kicked. • If your spouse is making you miserable get a new spouse. Many owners I talk to spend hours blaming their spouse for their failure. If you are that miserable either get professional help and fix it or move on. If you let someone else ruin your life it is your fault and not theirs. Stop bitching about it and get on with your life. • You are not entitled to make money because you had what you thought was a good idea. Good ideas are cheap and everyone thinks they have one but the ability to turn a good idea into money is very rare. Good ideas are the first brick in your success but it is only one brick and it is a very big house. • Putting everything you have into your club to get started gives you the right to play but doesn't guarantee you will win. You have the right to get your ass kicked like everyone else but you also have the right to work harder and master what it takes to make money in this business. • If you are blessed by being successful, the rules of the universe then don't guarantee that you will be successful forever. Many big companies in our industry have failed, and are failing, because they don't realize that what made you successful seldom keeps you that way. The client changes but many companies don't. What ever happened to Stairmaster, Nautilus, Body Master, Flex, Ezone and so many more? Where is Universal now? How about Icarian? Where is Living Well and International Fitness? What happened to Spa Lady? Where are all of the circuit knockoffs that were ripping the last few years? All merged, sold, closed or are lesser versions of past success. The foundational truth of the universe is that everything changes and you change or die because the client no longer wants what you have to sell. There is not a single idea in this industry that hasn't been disputed and resurrected. Look at strength training. We are now back to the basics because the members want success and won't settle for anything else. You change willingly by accepting the rule of change or you change unwillingly because the laws of the universe dictate that your business plan is no longer relevant in the real business world. • Stop bitching; no one cares. If you are unhappy, keep it to yourself. Endless complaining, especially to your staff, leads nowhere except to a miserable staff. No one cares your broke. No one cares your fat, unless you have a skinny spouse. No one cares your business doesn't work unless it is someone like me who gets paid to clean it up. Stop being a victim, get off your ass and go to work. It really is that simple. • To quote Larry Winget, you're broke because you want to be. You don't need that big ass truck while you are barely making your rent. Your kids don't need all that new kid crap when you are just getting started. You don't need to eat out every night and you don't need to get away this weekend. Look in the mirror if you are broke and blame that guy if you want to blame someone, because it is the guy looking back at you who is spending you into financial oblivion. • Most stupid kids have stupid parents. • You can't save yourself into profitability. Cutting your expenses down to nothing and hiring children as staff gets you nowhere. Your goal is to generate revenue everyday you are in the business and if you aren't generating enough revenue then learn how. • Smoking might be the all time dumbest thing you can do. If you smoke and are in the fitness business then get out of the fitness business because you giving the rest of us a bad name and you are definitely not a role model for a healthy lifestyle. • With all the books, workshops, online training and consulting help in the industry there is no reason to be an unsuccessful owner unless you are uncoachable, hardheaded or don't understand that your lack of knowledge is why your business doesn't work. The funny thing is that you don't know how to fix it but you won't let anyone else fix it either. • If you own your own business and aren't working about 70 hours a week then you are probably getting what you put into it. • There is enough time to do it all. Turn off your television and play with the kids or better yet take your significant other and a good bottle of wine to your room and embarrass your kids. Turn off the television, back away from the computer, put down the crackberry and you will find a lot more hours in your day. Stop bitching about not enough time and start valuing the time you do have. So many people make their lives harder than they need to be. Once you realize that you are the one responsible for your own life, miracles can happen. You can learn new tricks, make money, have a life and be productive but you first have to escape "poor, poor, me" trap and be able to acknowledge that you don't always have the answer and that it isn't someone else's responsibility to make sure you are happy in the world. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:23:46 -0500 Originally Posted: 09/01/09 Most owners make very emotional decisions, and often ones that are right for their businesses, based upon a situational management style. Situational management means you base your decision on what is in front of you at the moment, and if that something is causing you a little pain at the time, the reaction, and the decision, is often emotional rather than what is best for the business. Effective management is always number based. If you track the right numbers, and understand what the numbers mean in relationship to your business, then you will make better decisions that will improve your business because the numbers never lie and will always point you to the decision you need to make to help the business grow. For example, a typical owner who is not numbers driven has a poor and extremely stressful sales month. He is sitting in his office when his local newspaper sales rep drops by to check in to see if he needs to run an ad. Our owner, who is frustrated that sales are slow, listens closely as the newspaper person paints a great picture of a new section coming out in the paper next week on brides and summer weddings. The newspaper person tells him he has to be in this section because it will be the best read special issue of the summer and if he isn't he will miss out big time on a chance to get great exposure. Our hardworking owner, but dumb as a kettle bell, slaps together a special for a bride's boot camp, the paper designs the ad in about an hour with no thought to the club's brand or marketing look, and a few people drift in when the ad appears, but not nearly enough to justify the ad. The owner had a frustrating day, makes a quick decision to solve that frustration, wastes some money in the process and still hasn't helped the business. This is situational management at it's worst because the decision was made through emotion and the day's frustration and not based upon any real numbers that reflect the true financial situation of the club. Most owners claim they track all leads, for example, and most owners lie in this case. Few owners really know the amount of qualified leads through the club over a typical 30-day period because they simply don't have a system in place that forces the staff to report correctly, therefore, the owner always thinks he knows but seldom has a tight number. In the case of our kettle bell head, he made the decision based upon frustration and not real numbers because first of all, he doesn't know how to gather real numbers, and secondly, he doesn't know what to do with them if he did have them. In his case, if he would have looked at his numbers closely he might have found something like this, which is often the case in a typical club. If he had control of his leads he would have found out he really had 80 leads through the door and not the 60 the staff reported because there is really no incentive, or punishment, for not reporting true numbers everyday. He would have also found out that he only converts 35% of his total leads each month and not the 60% and higher his staff reports because they drop the amount of leads to look better. They aren't trying to cheat, but they do find many reasons a person wasn't really qualified and dropped from the potential lead list and that eventually raises their closing percentage much higher than it should be. If kettle head was really in the game, he would track his numbers every day for his team, and for each sales person, and find out he doesn't have a marketing problem, he has a sales training issue since the numbers would have shown him that he is really closing less than 40% and no amount of marketing money can overcome a bad sales effort. Training his staff would be far more effective than blowing senseless money on an ad. If he really wanted to do the ad, he should have his ad company do a real ad for the paper that reflects a thought out special reflecting the club's brand, meaning the ad perpetuates the club's image in the market. A bride's boot camp might have been a good idea, but it has to fit the overall marketing plan for the business and the ad has to build a recognition factor in the marketplace. The most important number you aren't tracking The most important number you aren't tracking right now is your average EFT payment. Typically, a club might have a monthly rate of $39 for one person. If you break couples (two people at same address) into separate agreements, you will find that if the club sold seven memberships on a Monday, the average EFT is always going to be lower than the single rate of $39. For example (ignore the membership fees here): Monday sales $39 x 12 $34 x 12 (second person) $29 x 12 (student) $39 x 12 $29 x 12 (senior) $39 x 12 $29 x 12 (corporate) The average EFT payment is $34 ($238/7 = 34) In our business, the average EFT has always been lower than the stated monthly single rate, which makes it hard to run a business over time since most owners base their success on the higher number. If you factor in all of your discounts, you'll probably find that your number is actually lower than this example. This lower number is what makes you so vulnerable in the market place to the lower priced competitors, because whether you want to or not, you are competing head-to-head on price. If the guy down the street is at $19 a month, and your true average is only about $29-32 in this example, you are in the same price game he is except you are losing. Your price is high enough to differentiate or high enough to protect your business. Your discounts reflect the only way most owners know to generate more volume in their clubs. You simply drop your price for every exception to the rule. Couples get discounts. Kids get discount. Seniors get discounts. Corporate people get discounts. Your business plan is to figure out a way to give everybody a discount. What you should be working on is how can you raise your EFT average not lower it. You can generate a higher monthly EFT average, especially if you switch your training away from session driven to monthly EFT, something we have been teaching this year in the workshops and that has proven to be a very successful plan in the clubs. Other clubs have also added weight management programs based upon 12 weeks that is also EFT driven. Yet others have added programs such as a Parisi sports performance school that allows the club to drive more memberships by adding the children for just $15 per month per child and then upgrading the kids from that point into higher priced sports performance training or one-on-one. Once your number goes higher than the one person price, your vulnerability in the market drops because you are now making a much higher return per sale, or in other words, you are now making more money per club client. Here is what your sales for the day should look like: Monday sales $39 x 12 $89 x 12 (group personal training) $150 x 3 (weight management) $54 x 12 (one parent with one $15 add-on for the Parisi program) $39 x 12 $39 x 12 $39 x 12 The average EFT for this club is $449/7 = $64 Couple this with a low entry price, such as value pricing members using the 18 month tool at $29, and you have the best of all possible worlds: you can show a low entry into the club at $29, which allows a higher monthly membership conversion but you also get a higher EFT average from all members you do sign up increasing your return-per-member. Track this number every day and also get a monthly total. Your goal is to create programs in the club that allows you to seek a higher return-per-member and still get the highest number of new members possible each month. This is just one of the numbers you should be tracking each month or each day. The secret here is to track the right numbers and then learn how to react to what you learn from these numbers. The numbers don't lie and keep you from making kettle bell head emotional decisions based upon situational management. If you want more about numbers, try and get into the last few seats for the Chicago three-day advanced workshop in October. Most of the first day will focus on numbers and how to use them to make better decisions in your business. Special note: The NFBA has Dan John's new book, Never Let Go, in stock. This book is only for people who are fascinated with the essence of what we do in this business, and the theory about how we should train clients on the floor, which should be providing our clients with the information and leadership to get in the best shape of your life. This book might be the anti-gym book but what he discusses is what most of the real training clubs are returning to for their clients. It is not a business book but if you love training and working out it will get you to think about what we do in the club and how we train our clients in a different way. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:22:04 -0500 Originally Posted: 08/26/09 This year has been totally flat out with more teaching and more workshops than we have done in years. During a brief respite, I was sitting with the famous singing insurance guy, Ken Reinig, talking about life and business. One of our constant sources of amazement is that we have been on the road for over 20 years as friends and that I have been out doing some sort of seminar somewhere for almost 30 years. Thirty years on the road translates into thousands and thousands of students passing through your life. For example we just finished a workshop last week in Chicago with about 100 students in attendance representing about 170 clubs. If you figure a slightly smaller average and take it times the amount of work we do through the NFBA and that I have done in the past, you can guess that about 60,000 people have passed through our business not counting outside events or speaking engagement. One of my most sacred personal beliefs derived from years on the road is something I found written better than I could have ever done it in a Hugh Macleod cartoon: Stay ahead of the culture by creating the culture I have worked to do this by watching the industry carefully; stripping out what doesn't work and replacing these dated ideas with practices that better represent what any small business should be doing to make money. Small business is defined here as any single business that has less than 100 employees and does less than three million a year in revenue. Get bigger than that and the rules do change slightly. We have been on such a mission for all these years to change the industry from sleazy business practices designed to punish those who trust us to ones that allow a young owner to make a lot of money ethically and professionally while still helping the clients who trust us with their money. The speed of change in this industry has been painfully slow but in recent years things are picking up as the practitioners of the old methods begin to fade. Still, there is huge pressure for a new owner to question his processes, especially if faced with a competitor that is doing many things most of us think is wrong and ineffective. The following is a letter I just received questioning the system and even my sanity. Although I thankfully don't receive letters like this one too often anymore, I respect Pete and think his inquiry is worth an in-depth answer, perhaps with more information than he really asked for when he sat to write me this email. Thom, I hope this email finds you well. I recently joined the NFBA and I have been enjoying the benefits of my membership. I have been reading all of your stuff and I have put many of your ideas into practice. I have certainly benefitted from your expertise but I have to ask you a blunt question. Thom, what if you're wrong? I strongly agree with your methodology regarding marketing and membership sales. That is probably because it resonates with my own values and philosophy. However, it is challenging to maintain the proper course when I see competitors doing ALL OF THE THINGS THAT YOU SAY NOT TO DO and packing the house with members. These things include: • "Insulting" marketing images • Price ads • Misleading advertising-baiting with a low price(only good for limited hours) and then switching to a higher priced membership • Warehousing rows and rows of fixed joint equipment • Drop Closing • Pressure sales It is sincerely like someone attended a Thom Plummer seminar and then did everything that you say not to do! The frustrating thing is that IT IS WORKING!!! So the logical questions is why should I stick with the Thom Plummer way if the BS works? Maybe people are not as sophisticated as you give them credit for? Thom, I'm sticking with your way but I thought that this was a fair and interesting question that many of your clients and seminar participants likely also have. Sincerely, Pete Longo - Owner Anytime Fitness of Asheville P.S. I've copied my business partners on this. You come up quite a bit in our conversations and this is a question that we struggle with in both of our respective markets. First of all, I can never answer this question in a way that will give a young owner an answer he will feel secure with in his business, but I will try here to at least lay a foundation for future growth by asking a few questions myself. Why do you think everyone else makes money? Since this business began in the modern era, usually assumed to be about 1945, someone has done something and everyone else copies that person assuming that the other guy must be making money. In the 60's, we all copied long-term memberships because the chains did it that way. In the late 60's and early 70's, we all bought Nautilus and practiced High Intensity Training. Everyone had to have the stuff and everyone finally realized that if doesn't work over time. Imagine today telling our members that we have equipment where one size fits everyone. We have grown and stability, total body strength, and agility are more important as fitness research progresses. We keep trying it, or some form of circuit training, in the industry. It doesn't work but people still buy it because they trust us to provide the answers they need to reach their goals. We sell it because it is cheap to offer in a business and questionable owners always think there is always another stupid person who will replace this one once they realize that going in a circle only works for six weeks and then fails the consumer. We copied it, and had to have it although, and while it was a break through at the time it eventually failed. In the 80's everyone jumped on group and priced their memberships with a group upgrade. Sounded good but didn't work. And let's not forget the first generation of semi-naked model ads that appeared in these years. Looked good and we all did it but how well did it really work? In the 90's we all copied the guy who sold memberships on a bi-weekly plan so he could rip the consumer for an extra payment a year. Sounded good but where was the ethics in this one? This year we are all copying the enhancement fee because someone claims, usually in a bar, that he made a ton of money and got no complaints from his members. He lied but we copied it anyway. Why do we copy? We copy because we are always looking for the easy way. This business is hard. It is service intensive. It is capital intensive. It has staff turnover that rivals banks, which has the highest turnover in the service sector. But the guy down the street, and he swore to me in the bar that it worked, tried this cool price sheet and it worked. In fact, he is opening more clubs now based on that damned sheet. I even copied this in my own career. For years I believed that there had to be a magic combination of words that would lead to a higher sales percentage. Once I threw that crap away and spent time getting to know the client and what she wanted my sales did go up. I stopped copying sales people in our industry and started following Xerox sales practices. Huh, a lesson there? Important fact The bastards are lying. They lie in the magazines. They lie to their board of directors. They lie in the bar. They lie to their spouses. They lie because statistically they can't be telling the truth. Everyone claims to have found the magic but if it is too easy, and too perfect, and you don't have to do any work, then start with the assumption that the bastards are lying. Here is how real life looks in all small business, including the fitness industry. Remember here that his is true for the chains as well. At any one time, they are fighting these numbers in their pile of clubs along with the independent guy: 20% make money and show a profit of about 15-20% pre-tax net 50% make a little; lose a little, and run average businesses that can go on for a long time 30% are too stupid to own their own businesses and never will make money burning up their money, their parent's money and the bank's money along the way. These people are in it for the wrong reasons and simply can't figure it out The guy down the street has the same issues you have. If you think running a single business is hard, imagine running 300. Your morning person didn't show? Now take that times 300 hundred units. Your club is worn out but you don't want to spend $500,000 to make it competitive. Take that times 300 clubs and see where you are, especially using the numbers above that reflect the true state of small businesses everywhere in the country. Another factor to keep in mind is that the chains are mostly in the going public business. They are not, and never will be, in the same business you are. Their goal is to show little debt, high revenues and sales and hope they can go public before they have to reinvest in their clubs. To do this you have to constantly open new clubs that are fresh and generate cash to feed the dogs that have reached the two-year plateau where they are flat. You can as an independent, keep growing almost forever, but the chains don't seem to work that way. I believe they get flat because they use such aggressive price driven marketing when they open that they burn down the market and do little to create new customers in their marketplaces. The rules are the same for all of us There are things call foundational truths that are the same for all of us. These are the basic rules of running any small business and have to be followed to make money. If you aren't making the money you want, check your practices against this list. • You have to develop a product that differentiates you from your competitors. For example, one of the worst things you can do in a market as an independent is to become nothing more than a shrunken version of a big chain club. Keep in mind that, "The same but smaller" is not a good business plan and also kind of sucks if your girlfriend is using this line on you comparing you to her last boyfriend • You have to develop a marketing system that creates enough leads to feed your business. Most owners won't budget to get leads, won't do the guerilla stuff to drive in new business and just wait for people to come through. Marketing is so hard that most owners just refuse to play beyond sending a few cheap mailers once in a while. They never master the art of lead generation and just blame the guy down the street for draining leads • You have to train your staff to convert these leads, at least 60% in our businesses, or your marketing is wasted. The national average for sales conversions is 38% meaning that the typical owner doesn't have enough money for marketing to cover a lousy sales effort • You have to create a system that allows you to collect the most money from the most members, meaning using a third-party financial service specialist • You have to master service/retention because competitive markets force us to keep the ones we have. There is a limit to new business in a competitive market. The tactics listed in the letter are the ones we have used for 40 years in the business. Why do we assume they still work when there have been so many failures using those tools? If this nonsense still works, why don't we have more than four public companies in this industry? If this out of date garbage worked why do so many chains post such big losses annually? Why are the investment people trapped in club chains when VC guys have to flip in three years or they never get their money back? Why are there so many local failures, using these same mentioned tools, if running a club was as easy as using a picture of a big chested model in a skimpy outfit and running a two-for-one price special? Most importantly, if drop closing, pressure sales, bait-and-switch tactics and sleazy marketing worked so well why is it that after over 60 years in the modern fitness era do we only have 16% of the total population in this country as members of gyms? The number is low because we have created an industry that insults the consumer and then can't get him in shape once he is in the door. In other words, that guy down the street looks good but if he were really tearing up the market every investment guy in the country would be funding clubs and the members would find us without marketing. Think about it, if someone really had a cure for baldness do you think you would have to advertise it on TV? If we had the cure for a bad case of fat ass, you wouldn't have to market and beat people so badly when they do come through the door. Fitness was, and will still be, a local affair based upon servicing clients that live three miles or so from your business. How do you stand out and how you are different are still the foundational truths of our business and these rules apply to the guy down the street too. Don't assume he is making money and that what he is doing makes your life easier. We have proven our system works for over 20 years and we have literally thousands of clients making money using our ideas. But what makes one client successful and the next, using the same stuff, less successful. The key is execution. Good owners simply get more done and more effective in their businesses. They set a plan, follow it, and ignore the competition to a certain extent, especially if it interferes with their plan. Good owners are driven business people first and fitness people second because they are in it to make money while providing a needed and ethical product. Most owners who are not as efficient as they hope can't sell memberships, don't practice modern training systems, won't spend money on marketing and won't study best practices in the industry, meaning the ones that do work with the numbers to back up the bull. We begged an owner who was failing last year to get out and at least do door hangers near the club. She refused saying that there was more important things, like paperwork, to do in the business. She rode it down because she felt that since she opened her business she had a right to make money. Good owners simply make business happen compared to bad owners who wait for business to come to them. If you don't know the difference then you are not in the 20% who is making real money in your business. What all this means is that you can only master and run your business. You are responsible for your own success and failure but the grass is always greener in the next yard and it is so tempting to seek the fast way to success. There was a famous columnist in San Francisco named Herb Caen. When I lived there a local radio station ran a billboard of one of the most beautiful women in the world. Herb received over 4500 letters from readers wanting him to research her. Who was she? Where did she live? Why was she not more famous? He ran about 30 of the letters in his column selecting the best lines from a lot of letters. His answer was simple: Your fantasy is someone else's pain in the ass. In the end, though, it doesn't really matter because Pete, it's your business and you should try all those things to see if they work for you. There are no absolutes and there are many ways to make money in the world beyond what I teach. Experiment and see if these things will draw the way you think they will for your business but always return to the foundational truths because they are the only things that will determine your success in this business. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:19:29 -0500 Originally Posted: 08/17/09 This is sort of a random blog based upon a number of calls and contacts that happened this week. Todd Durkin, one of the rising stars in the industry in training theory, sports performance and the actual business of training, ask me to do a phone in with his mentorship master mind group this week (Todddurkin.com). One of Todd's questions, and one that I also received from several other callers this week, is where are we and where are going as an industry? Most of the calls revolve on what is new in the industry? What is coming next? Where will we be in the next five years? If I knew the answer to this exactly I would charge a lot more for this blog but I do think there are some interesting trends underway that will dramatically change how we do business in the coming decade. Here are some thoughts in no particular order: • Circuits and single joint fixed plane equipment are dead: The consumer is bored. The equipment doesn't work. Isolation works against an active lifestyle. The consumer has been there and done that is ready for more than rows of equipment and no help • The industry will return to what works, which is total body authentic fitness, a term I borrowed from Anthony Diluglio (artofstrength.com), the guy who has led this trend for a number of years. Using 50 foot ropes, kettle bells, medicine balls, flipping tires and pulling sleds is exciting for the consumer, allows trainers to become coaches rather than rep counters with clipboards, and cuts the cost of equipping a new facility • The 3000-7500 square foot club will be the club of the future. These clubs can be situated in almost any neighborhood, are cost efficient to open, are based upon what works (at least they should be) and can turn out a lot of profit with a relatively low risk. Every guy at home watching the P90X infomercial and Googling Crossfit wants to do cool stuff and most mainstream commercial clubs simply don't offer the option. The consumer will keep looking until he finds someone who can help him and that person works in this new club model • Innovation in training always starts at athlete end and works slowly back to the club. Here is the sequence: athletes seek performance and embrace what works and discard what doesn't; trainers working with successful athletes share this information with the training population through educational events, blogs and dvds; these trainers incorporate these new ideas into their individual businesses and clients at the local level; trainers in mainstream fitness businesses eventually get the information and bring it into the commercial world, usually several years after the athletes grasp the newer training methods; the general population, the ones who follow the athletes and who read the fitness magazines, pressure the commercial clubs to make change. Most commercial clubs are at least five years behind what is happening in the fitness magazines and with current training thought. Innovation comes from the bottom up, which is why so many clubs still tout the benefits of going in circles with a workout card • The large chain clubs will continue to decline because their approach to fitness is so dated. It won't be tomorrow, but it will be obvious over the next several years as the consumer seeks fitness at a more effective level, something chain clubs full of dated equipment and cheap trainers simply can't provide. These ships are too big to turn and most will fight the change believing that just adding more lines of equipment is the answer. The more progressive chain clubs will eventually be smart enough to start adding large amounts of strong functional equipment, such as Human Sport from Star Trac replacing the old single joint fixed plane equipment over time • Cardio still rules in the commercial club setting and that won't change much. Entertainment systems still won't add much and the consumer would always pick more working pieces of cardio where you don't have to wait over less cardio loaded with small viewing screens • Somewhere, at sometime, a commercial owner will read Dan John's new book, Never Let Go, and realize that effective fitness is simply total body conditioning done the retro way by picking stuff up off the floor and putting it over your head. This owner will then look at his 80 pieces of equipment and realize that he could have cut that order in half by buying just functional equipment and a bunch of kettle bells, ropes and suspension trainers. This guys next gym will be half the size and much more effective • The low price/value guys will also feel the trend back to vintage/retro fitness because their entire business plan is based upon just equipment, light dumb bells and no support. You still have to get results to stay involved and the consumer, who is now at the most sophisticated level of training knowledge in our history, will quickly reject what doesn't work even if it is cheap. • Marketing will also change, but not as fast as you would like it too. Electronic marketing will someday rule the club world but not for at least another five years. As of now, your clients still find you mostly through referrals, convenience and traditional awareness marketing. The reason electronic marketing doesn't work now as well as it should is the fact that there is a total disconnect between the cutting edge technology of electronic marketing and the extremely dated clubs trying to attract a younger, more sophisticated consumer. In other words, high tech marketing attracts a person who just read Outdoor magazine or Men's Health and wants a fully functional workout to get him ready for ski season. He gets hit with an electronic message through a social network site, visits the gym and finds out it is 20 years out of date and couldn't get his mother ready for ski season. But, by the mercy of the universe, the trainers all have clipboards and can count to 12. The club has to equal the expectations and until that happens we will still be minor players in the electronic marketing arena • Clubs will have to be smaller. There will still be large clubs built in certain markets, meaning those over 30,000 square feet, but you will see fewer and fewer as the cost outweighs the possible return on investment. If owners embrace functional/effective fitness, then the clubs will naturally shrink because what is in the club will take up for less space and service far more members. Look for clubs in the 15,000 square foot range doing the work of what use to take 25,000 • The club business will get hot in the next five years and you will make a lot of money if you are ready. The consumer has moved from fitness to lose ten pounds for a wedding to a lifetime journey to feel and look good. The clubs are lagging behind, however, in the fact that the consumer wants leadership and coaching. Clubs that figure out semiprivate group training, personal group training and updated group exercise and other revenue generating machines that service large numbers of clients at the same time will be the ones to most benefit in the coming years • You will have to understand weight management in the next five years. Our country has 63 percent of its citizens either overweight or obese. Where are these people going to go for help and why shouldn't we be providing the answers they need? • Traditional marketing will have to change. How many of you believe that a club that offers 50 percent off a membership fee to get started is believable. Percentage discounts must be the most mistrusted of all advertising gimmicks and most clubs running these fail with them. Due to all the competition, you must practice this motto: To know me is to love me. This means that fitness is complicated and you have to get someone into your business at a low risk and let him or her experience your business for a few weeks before he or she can commit. To know me is to love me and spend time in my business and you will buy at some point. Embrace the trial/30 days for $19 or some version and get people into your culture. These are just a few random thoughts we might continue at some time in the future. Project your business into the future. Are you ready for the changing market and changing consumer? Are you different than your competitors, not just self-deluded as better? Are you ready to own your marketplace through ongoing marketing each week? Fri, 13 May 2011 14:17:25 -0500 Originally Posted: 08/05/09 Sometimes the clients bring me back to the simple issues that help drive success in a fitness business. This week I was talking to a guy who is trying to buy an existing fitness business. The club he wants is in a southern state and has been in business for a number of years. The client does not have fitness business experience but is an experienced businessperson who also has some real estate. He surprised me with his thought process in that he had already figured out many of the cash flow questions, understood debt, calculated the free cash he would have after the current owner stopped running everything through the business, including payments for the dog house in his yard, and in general was able to analyze the business that you can only do when you have real life business experience. The big thing he missed, however, was the receivable base. The current owner is collecting his own receivables, which for most owners is a foolish choice. Collecting your own memberships means that you now have to create a separate business within your business to manage, but most fitness owners don't have the skill set to manage a full blown and effective payment servicing /collection department. There is also the issue of waste when you collect your own memberships. Most in-house collection situations usually cream their own memberships, which means you easily collect the money from the good people but take a higher level of loss from people that you should have collected from over time. There are three classes of clients that affect how much you really get from the memberships you sell. I think they group like this: • The top 60 percent, who pay no matter what you do because they are good, honest people, who keep their word and pay their bills on time. These are the ones that are easy to collect and are also the ones where low-end third party financial service companies make their money. These are easy and if you don't want to work hard you collect these memberships first and then send everything else back to the club to handle • The next 30 percent are the members who have to be taught to pay. This group can go either way, test you when they can, and will pay you less often if they can get away with it. This is also where a high-end third-party financial service company, such as ASF out of Denver, the largest company of its kind in the world, earns it money. The members in this category can be taught to be good payers if they are approached aggressively early if they have issues. In other words, some young knucklehead doesn't pay on time, gets called immediately and he has now learned that he can't get away with that. This is the group where a good service company can make your club but it is also the group where the do-it-yourself guys at the club level get beaten so badly because they aren't aggressive enough or timely enough to get the job done. Collecting from this group take advanced systems and one old lady sitting in an office pounding your members just can't get it done. • The bottom 10 percent is the chronic never pays and need to be beaten just for principle. If you use 12-month contracts, coupled with a third-party service company that is good, you can keep these loses in this category to 10 percent or less of your total outstanding, or less than a point per month of loss. This is a good number you can live with, but keep in mind that if you are driven to do it yourself, this number will be higher because people from the category above will drift down because they have never been taught to be good payers from the start. Remember, it's like getting a dog. If you teach the dog right from the beginning you end up with a good, well-trained member of the family. Wait too long and it is hard to correct mistakes, such as eating your shoes or peeing on your carpet. Start early and train correctly and you will get more money from the same amount of sales. Collecting your own memberships also raises the question at time of sale of the club as to how good is this paper and how much will I collect if I take over the business? I have only seen a hand full of embezzlements over the years in this business but every single one was from a person who collected the club's membership payments. Collecting a large number of payments and running a large amount of cash through the business daily is just an invitation to take the money and run, especially when you are totally dependent on just one person collecting your money rather than a specialist that has many safeguards in place. We usually coach new owners to expect at least 20 percent less per month than they think they will receive when they take over. Most existing owners just turn out to be wrong in what they think they are collecting from their membership and the new owner will be the one to take the beating. Another factor is most sellers sabotage the new owner by cashing out a lot of members on the way out the door to increase portable cash, which will drop the monthly return from the receivable base. Another interesting question from the new buyer was, "How can you help me?" This sort of goes back to the point in the last blog of using a business coach, but the issue here is that most owners don't know what they don't know. I was sitting in a doctor's exam room recently for a routine visit and the doctor asked me what I do for a living. I told him that I am a business consultant. He kind of laughed and asked me what that really meant. I answered that I tell people things they don't want to hear about the businesses they own. His response was, "Well, what do you see here?" It was just too easy. First of all, the exam rooms are painted a yucky yellow including all the walls and even the counters and cabinets. This makes the room feel really claustrophobic and I guessed that his older patients would fee really uncomfortable in this room. I also pointed out the open wastebasket (low-end and unprofessional and actually disgusting too) and how he could fix his entry area to service more people, dress his staff better to give the image of professionals, and that his customer service sucked since no one on his staff of 50 or so ever acknowledged you as you passed room-to-room. It's what I have done for a living for 30 years and sometimes you just can't turn it off. Good coaches find the flaws in your business but most owners don't want to really hear it. It's sort of answering the questions, "Does this dress make my butt look fat?" If you are married, and want to stay that way, you always answer, "No, I really love that color honey." If you are a consultant by trade, however, you answer, "No, that dress doesn't make your butt look fat, it's your fat butt that makes your butt look fat." This is also probably why most consultants are single and drink a lot alone. Coaches find the flaws and show you how to fix them appropriately for your business, location, time of your career and competition. There is never one answer that can apply to every club. There are rules to start with, many of which I might have wrote, but even these might have to be broken depending on the situation. There are exceptions, but always remember that good business is good business no matter where you live and work. Next stop-Chicago: Come see us this month in Chicago (the regular NFBA workshop) or in Nashville next month. Get you butts moving and be aggressive in the fall. Now is the time to make some money. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:13:49 -0500 Originally Posted: 07/29/09 "You know Thom, those are good ideas in the workshops but you see, my club is a little different and I don't know if what you teach will work for me." The fundamentals you need to make money in this business are just about the same for any size facility you might own. If you own a 100,000 square foot club, or a 1500 square foot training facility, how money is made doesn't really differ that much. You obviously have more staff at the larger club, and more risk, but the fundamental business skills you need to make money are the same. The reality is that most owners are comfortable doing what they are doing, even though what they are doing isn't often making them the money they want. A little money, however, tied with no change, is often preferable to change, which is often painful for a few months no matter how much money you might make later. We recently had a workshop in Hartford, CT, and after two full days a trainer dude who owned his own club came up and said as he left, "I just don't think this information is for me. You see, I have all these one-on-one training clients and I don't think they will change." I asked him where he had been the last two days. Everything we talked about was centered on information gathered from training clubs, usually the source of most new ideas in the fitness industry for working people out, and the information ranged from adding semi-private workouts and group personal coaching to marketing. We even discussed the need to leave existing clients alone and just focus on news business forward. After I asked him a few more questions we came upon the real answer: he was happy doing what he was doing and all these changes were just too much for him. He wasn't the brightest dumb bell on the rack but we sat and deconstructed the entire workshop into small, easily digested segments he could use now, in his business. These are the foundational truths for our industry and if all else is failing in your business, start here to rebuild or grow. A few foundational truths You have to get control of your money first: • Set a price that reflects your current club and competition and then be willing to reset it every two years • Use a third-party financial service company to secure your revenue stream from your member payments and so you can focus on revenue generation • Use a 12-month membership as the foundation of your memberships, although you may use other tools to enhance your club • You must learn to drive your average EFT payment per membership higher than what you charge for a single member per month. For example, if you charge $49 per month per member, you must learn to get a higher average payment than $49. You can only do this if you learn to base your training revenue on monthly EFT and not sessions. This might be the biggest thing we are teaching this year You have to market every week • You have to have something going out every week, every month, every year until you die or someone takes the club away from you. Fire your staff, sell your car, move in with your mother but never stop marketing • Use a paid trial as your base driver, such as 30 days for $19 (up or down depending on the market). We do this to take leads away from the competitor and to keep the club full of leads • Use a risk free trial every three or four months as an alternative to the paid trial. Try 21 days risk free if you are using the 30 days for $19 • Master electronic marketing. You must have a decent web page that captures leads that you can use, you must have Facebook and you must Twitter, at least this week. Look up Casey Conrad and her new series on adding electronic mastery to your club's marketing plan. She has been around a long time and she is one of the most ethical people in the business You have to get control of your leads Very few clubs truly know how many qualified leads they have coming through the door each month. If you can't get control of the leads, you will never know how well your marketing is working. • Every phone call and walk-in, qualified or not, must have a matching inquiry sheet at the end of the workday. If your staff isn't comfortable doing this, get a new staff because the ones you have are killing you You have to learn to sell • You need a dedicated salesperson, no matter how small your club is you training fools out there, that has the sole responsibility for the acquisition of new business each month • You have to do sales training daily for at least 30 minutes with everyone who sells memberships. Too much? Sell your club and deliver pizzas because you will never make the money you want from this business • Learn to convert at least 60 percent of all qualified leads over a 30-day period. You also need to track first visit closes as well. For example, if you get 100 qualified leads into the club, you should convert at least 60 to some type of membership and of the 60, 30 percent, or about 18, were first visit sales. Train on service every day with every staff person Service can be taught, but it has to be taught daily person-by-person in the club. • Teach your people to greet every person through the door with a strong welcome statement, such as "We're having a great day at the Workout Company." If your staff can't say that, or are embarrassed, fire them and reload • Learn names. Nothing is sweeter than someone recognizing you by name at the club • Thank every member every time they leave the club. "Thank you for stopping by today, we appreciate your business." It just isn't that hard to deliver good service and good service in a mediocre club will beat bad service in a new club everyday • Clean the club more than you think. There isn't a club in America as clean as you think it is. Clean it everyday; let the members see you cleaning, and remember that it still isn't enough. You lose more members because your club is dirty than you do through any other reason If none of this makes sense then come to a workshop. Our focus is to always return to good business skills. Many owners just get involved doing other things in the business and you have so take time to find your way back to the foundational things that will allow you to make the most money. This year we are also highlighting the changes in training in the clubs, perhaps the biggest changes I have seen in all the years I have been doing this. Remember that making money has to be made simple but most owners fight change rather than take risk. Most feel that what they are doing got them this far then why take any risk, even though a lot more money could be made. Most of what we do at the NFBA involves getting owners to simplify and learn the foundational truths of the business. You would be surprised at how many owners get frustrated with their business and revenue, yet haven't marketed in the last three months. Consider business coaching. We do a lot of it and you may need it to help you find your fundamental truths in our business. Call the office and talk to someone as to what it takes to work with a coach to keep you on track and growing and who can help you fight through the fear of change. Call us at 800-726-3506. We can and will help your grow your business. What I am reading this week: It's a weird week in the book nook. This week I am reading Dave Draper's, Brother Iron Sister Steel, and Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Draper's is a must read for anyone who plans to make the fitness business your business for life and if you actually think outside the gym, try the other book for a unique look at how the bible came to be. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:12:24 -0500 Originally Posted: 7/20/09 Much of what we accept as business experience in this industry is worthless. Many owners pride themselves on longevity in this business, and if you have survived over eight years doing this for a living, I congratulate you on a rare feat of magic in an otherwise unforgiving business. But often, this shield of experience is what keeps you from performing at a higher level in your business. Experience is usually equated with survival. I learn to cut corners, manage expenses, do a little marketing and survive a few attempts at my market from other, persistent, but equally business-sense deprived competitors and; therefore, get to stay in business another year. I haven't learned to make money, but I have, through experience, learned to just do what it takes to stay in business longer than the other people who have tried this business in my market. Although I have said it before, it is worth saying often: a typical owner who has been in business for 20 years usually has one year of real experience and 19 years of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. These owners surface often at conventions standing in the isles but never in a seminar or during phone calls to get them into a workshop. The standard response is always, "Why do I need a workshop? I have 20 years of experience and I don't think there is anything out there worth knowing or anything new someone can teach me." This guy is right, there isn't much anyone can teach him. And I am sure his wife would agree as well that he never changes, and all the talented employees that have left this closed minded idiot over the years because their ideas were never heard also would probably add an amen brother too. Locked, rigid minds isolate you from almost everyone who want to help you mover forward in your life and your business. You can also see that change eludes this owner by just looking at his business. Nothing has changed in years including the colors. The equipment is dated and hasn't been moved in the club since Carter was president, the walls are white with the traditional stripe around the top, and group rooms are clusters and piles of never used crap in the corners and the club has a total feeling of stepping back into the 1990s. This is also the first person to complain about how unfair it is that a nonprofit is coming to his town or that a low priced competitor is hurting his business. This owner deserves to get his ass kicked because he has failed to keep his business viable in the marketplace. Why? Because this is the way he made money 15 years ago and he isn't going to change because he doesn't know any other way to function. Experience as we define it in the industry is what actually insures that you will perform at a lower level in your club. Experience should not be defined by longevity but by adaptability. Personal growth, change in your business and adaptation to trends and member desires are all more important than still trying to force ideas that are 15 or more years out of date. Change happens, with or without you and failing to adapt and keep moving forward becomes your limiter, not just in your business but in your life too. We recently interviewed a guy in his late 50s for a phone job. The NFBA is a tough business in that it requires a certain skill and persistence to penetrate the screens most owners have set in their businesses. Our goal is to talk to someone who can make a decision about attending a workshop and it is difficult getting an owner to take a few minutes to sit and chat about something she may never of heard about previously. The person we interviewed stated quickly that he had experience on the phone but he wasn't really good with a computer. Much of what the NFBA does is based upon a database, emails, finding websites, Facebook and every other electronic way imaginable to get information to people who we hope come to see us. This guy had failed to change, failed to keep up with the real world, or in other words, he failed to adapt to the way the world is now, preferring to remain stuck somewhere in his past experience. He had work experience; it just wasn't enough without the other skills. Way too many owners in this industry are like the guy we interviewed. Their skill development simply stopped at some point in history and they have failed to adapt, grow and change to the way things are now in the market. For example, drop closing worked many years ago. Drop closing, for you precious few not attuned to this part of our industry history, means that you show the potential member a price during his first visit and then you knock-off a $100 if he goes today. "Normally our money due today for joining is $150, but if you're willing to get started today, and I know you're serious or you wouldn't have stopped by, I will knock off $100 and you can get started for just $50, but you have to get going today because this won't be here tomorrow." This is insulting. The potential member isn't as dumb as you hope. This person has so much more sales exposure than the kids we pitched with this nonsense 20 years ago. All this, and yet we can't get owners to stop drop closing in their business because that's how they made all their big sales 15 years ago working at a nasty chain club. The most successful owners in today's market are the ones constantly willing to move their business ahead. To quote Alwyn Cosgrove channeling Bruce Lee, only keep what works and discard the rest. Business changes. Life changes, and what made you successful even a few years ago will not keep you successful in this business. We are in a lot of ways like modern medicine. Research brings forth a new concept that save lives almost daily. We are in that same fast forward mode in this industry. Change is happening but most owners hide behind the "I have experience and know how this business works" mode rather than admitting that what they do doesn't always work anymore and that they haven't had a new idea since they were 19 and discovered pot in college, and the ideas they generated then after four bongs and two dozen chocolate chip cookies are maybe not the ones that were so good anyway.What I am reading: Dan John's book, Never Let Go, for a second go around. I read it on the plane for the first time a few weeks ago and picked it up again when I got home and found myself reading the entire thing again. This of course, led me to Dave Draper's book, Brother Iron, Sister Steel, which is a great read about the start of the modern era in fitness. Both books lend strong but different perspectives to what we do in today's clubs and are worth the read. Experience is also the gathering of different ideas and these books are a must read if you own any type of fitness business. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:10:33 -0500 Originally Posted: 07/07/09 Retention in the fitness industry is like your Uncle Bob, the one who comes to the family gatherings with a bottle of Canadian Club, terrifies the little kids with his bad breath, falls asleep in the living room, farts loudly whenever he can then giggles, and generally embarrasses the entire family. Like retention, you know he is there but no one wants to deal with him since he only surfaces once a year or so. Most owners define the word "retention" as, "What ever happened to that guy, you know, he joined in January and was always on treadmill three at about 4:00?" Retention is not proactive to most us but rather reactive in that we assess the damage but fail to do anything to prevent it. Your jeans are too tight, you're just getting fatter, but it is easier to eat that next donut than it is to adjust your life. You live with the fat rolling over the top of your pants just like most owners live with large membership losses. First of all, let's start with what is real when it comes to retention. Owners who claim they renew, or retain, 85 percent of their members on a year-to-year basis, always amaze me because I know they are lying but they feel the need to exaggerate their numbers for personal gain. If you want to be the president of some organization, and you're a local club owner reaching for national fame, then you stretch the facts to build the case that you are indeed legendary at retention. Retention is what happens after you adjust for losses. For example, let's look at a club who signs up a 100 new members in a month, uses 12-month memberships and a strong, third party financial service company. Losses for 12-month memberships as a tool are about one percent per month (12% annual) and most clubs will lose about one percent per month from members who simply move away or have permanent physical issues (12% annual). The total for these two categories is 24 percent losses as reflected by the .76 collection rate below. Every club should target 60 percent of possible renewals as its goal: (100 x .76) x .60 = 45.6 This represents a good club with low losses, a strong collection effort and a higher than industry average renewal rate and it still only retains about 46 members out of every 100 new at the end of 12 months. This single fact is what makes the fitness industry so difficult but it is our own fault. We have built failure into almost everything we do, from our training systems to the quality and dumbass level of our front counter kids. A few things any fitness fool can do to help increase retention over time Here are a few things any person crazy enough to own a fitness business can do now, cheaply, to increase retention over the next 12 months. Remember, everyone you save is one you don't have to pay a lot more to buy new in the market. 1. Thank every member every time they buy something or when they leave the club: Yes, I have mentioned this before and it still makes me angry. I support your business through my membership and through purchases made on site. Say thank you each time I leave. Be grateful. Be kind. And whatever you do, don't tell me to have a nice day. 2. Contact me once a week: Email me some motivating articles to inspire me. Take me to You Tube or Facebook for something to get me excited about fitness when I am sitting at my desk thinking about a beer rather than a workout. Let me know I belong to something bigger and that the club cares that I come and sends me stuff that makes me want to stay involved. 3. Twitter me: If I work with a trainer or nutrition person, send me something a few times a week to keep me involved with that department and person. Short sweet and learn to tweet. 4. Start a boot camp if you can: Going to a gym sucks when it is nice out. Offer a boot camp outside every Tuesday and Friday morning in a park near the club. Let members go for free. Charge guests $10 to do it for one workout. Advertise to secondary ad sources, such as church flyers or the shoppers. Remember that a guest paying a daily fee is nothing more than someone willing to pay to get pitched by my sales force. Keep the camp going year round. Use props and have adventures in fitness. Do anything to keep me from getting bored. Think of it as fitness without borders. 5. Every year validate the sale: I paid you for a year so send me a gift. If you are using open end, auto renewals, send me something I can use in the club, such as a smoothie card or usage package for something like tanning. If you are using closed ended 12-month renewals, which you should be using, then give a cool messenger bag or other gift that lets me know that my business was noticed and appreciated for the year. 6. When I sign up at least give me a stinking tee shirt: I drove past four gyms to get to yours. When I choose you give me something that proves I made the right choice and that you appreciate my business. If you can, give me a tee shirt, workout bag, water bottles and other goodies. My decision to stay at the end of my membership might be determined by how much you appreciate my business in the beginning. 7. If you want my guests, pay me: We will pay $5000 per month in the hopes that we get guests through the door. Buy 50 IPods instead and give one to everyone who brings a new member in that month. Don't give me a stupid ball cap to me to buy my guests. You want my friends, pay me; which again proves you love me and appreciate my support of your business. 8. If I last three years, make me even more special: It is an old idea, but revisit the VIP card program. Give every person who finishes three years with you a black VIP card that allows me to get anything in the club for 10 percent off and also allows me to bring in a guest who can sign up with no membership fee. I paid you for three years. Doesn't that merit some recognition in your business? 9. Clean and paint your place: Your club should be the best part of my day but most likely spend more time there than you do at home so you stop seeing what the club has become. Clean it every day and clean it while I am in the club, expect for the vacuum. Bring in a big crew annually and take it back to the way it was the day you opened it. Paint something every month to give me the impression that you reinvesting and that you are into details. Don't assume new equipment buys me off as service, as most lousy owners do. New programs are more important and that fact that what you do reflects real world fitness and not fitness that is 10 years out of date and based upon going around in circles on fixed equipment. 10. Answer the phone live and with three rings: Nothing, and I mean nothing, pisses off the customers off more, and especially the members at the club, then calling for help and getting dumped into an automated hell by electronics. No matter how small, or how big, your business is pick up the phone and answer live and within three rings. We have people paying us so treat them with respect and answer the phone with courtesy and energy. This list could go on and on but the foundational element is the same. They pay so we should show them respect. Visit other clubs in your area where you aren't emotionally attached and hang near the front as you fake your workout. How many of their members walk by the counter without getting acknowledged as they enter and how many get ignored as they leave? The difference between your business and theirs is how you treat the people who are paying and the difference between high retention rates and lousy retention stems upon those same actions. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:09:05 -0500 Originally Posted: 06/30/09 The essence of fitness is that somewhere, somehow, someone still has to get in shape. We forget this in the current fitness business model. We package the clubs well, rent vast fields of equipment to the client economically, decorate and showcase our products and work on our ability to generate new sales, but we have drifted from the essence of what our business is all about, and because of this drift from our roots the member has suffered and our businesses have lost money and direction. There is heavy buzz in the industry about the word, "retention." Simply defined, we discuss how to attract new members into our system and then keep them staying and paying longer than we now average. Most clubs, despite huge claims, only keep a new person actively working out in the clubs for about 7-9 months on average. Members trust us with their most precious asset, their fitness and health, and then leave after a short period of time. Mostly we blame them. They aren't motivated, didn't make the commitment, weren't ever really serious or just didn't get "it", with it meaning the culture of we know how to get you into shape and how dare you not listen to us. Maybe there is another reason they fail. Maybe it's us. Maybe we don't really know how to get people in shape. Laree Draper, the business mind behind the legend Dave Draper, perhaps the classiest body builder ever to stand in posing trunks, just sent me a book to review: Never Let Go, by Dan John. The book is a collection of articles and blogs by Dan edited in a well written and motivational read. The book wanders from Dan's training philosophy, honed after decades of working with thousands of students and athletes, personal philosophy and a unique look at what fitness really is and how to achieve it. His personal story makes it a good read and his trials and tribulations make it funny as well. My take, however, is that the book also points out why and how we fail the average consumer who comes to our clubs. Dan talks about pure fitness, meaning doing things that actually get people into shape, as opposed to main stream fitness where everything is pretty and convenient and nothing really works for long. In other words, because of how we train members we actually build failure into the workout because after about 6-8 weeks the person doesn't progress, gets frustrated and eventually leaves. Here is Dan's list of tips for athletes. Read and figure out how we so radically differ what actually getting this done in most clubs: 1. Use whole body lifts: rarely isolate a muscle 2. Constantly strive to add weight to the bar, and move it faster 3. The best anabolic is water 4. Did you eat breakfast? It not, don't ask me anything about nutrition 5. If you smoke or don't wear seatbelts, please don't tell me the quick lifts are dangerous 6. Go heavy, go hard 7. Keep it simple. Less is more 8. You have to put the bar over your head 9. Put the bar on the floor and pick it up a bunch of different ways 10. Know and love the roots of your sport This is from one of the older articles in the book and he expands on these and other core ideas as the book progresses. Read these carefully and you find out that most fitness members don't do much of these during their average workout. Most don't do anything whole-body but instead rely on machines to isolate everything. Most don't add weight unless forced and then not enough to keep the challenge. Most are fat because of the 10 sports and soft drinks they had that day. Few understand free weights and use them only as extreme isolation tools and very few would know Bill Pearl, Dave Draper, Bruce Jenner or any other person who helped moved training ahead over the years if they worked out next to them in a club. We have made fitness accessible, convenient as to number of clubs, affordable and attractive. We haven't, however, done much to make it more effective. To paraphrase another Dan John quote, can you imagine any real athlete coming to the gym, jumping on a treadmill for an hour and plugging in Brittany Spears? If you don't get into shape, you leave and we structure entire fitness businesses around the premise that working out without sweating is your goal for the membership. People always ask about what the next big thing is going to be in fitness. I think one of the next big mind shifts is when we stop training a very limited number of our members like spoiled clients (one-on-one fitness) and start training bigger numbers like athletes at a lower cost and with better results. Group personal training, extended boot camp cultures, a return to full body workouts three times a week and the emphasis of getting people up and moving is all returning to our business plans. The sports world has already returned to simple fitness, and many of the teams, such as the Tennessee Titans, have returned to fundamental fitness in the form of even kettle bells, ropes and logs (go to artofstrength.com). Most change starts with athletes, then trainers and eventually winds back to the mainstream fitness world. If we embrace fitness at the base level again, and perhaps return to some of Dan's insight from above, we can get members results and they will stay with us longer and pay us longer. My thanks to Dan John and Dave Draper who have made the fitness world a better place because of who they are and what they share. To order the book go to Amazon.com and it is about $16. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:06:44 -0500 Originally Posted: 06/22/09 It has been one of those summers. Each year I swear I will travel less but I always seem to end up doing even more. This week I just finished a few days with a Gold's Gym Alliance Group comprised of a few guys who have been successful for over twenty years and a handful of newer guys just making their way in the business. One of the key points worth mentioning that emerged from the group was the constant urge for experienced owners to overreact to market conditions. Over reactive is when you respond to competition, or to market factors, too aggressively instead of applying the appropriate response that would protect your business. Too much too soon can often weaken the business instead of providing the stability and protection you are seeking. There is an old adage that is very important to consider here: your perceived fears are usually worse than what actually happens. Put another way, the more you think about how bad it could be seldom matches the reality because your mind almost always comes up with the worse case scenario. An owner especially magnifies the possible horror when he starts using absolutes, such as, "That new guy will take all of my business," or if I rewrite my memberships and adjust the price I will lose money because everyone will want to do that." Someone usually overreacts to a situation when he or she is running the business in a totally reactive mode instead of driving the business to dominate the market. For example, if I constantly react to a competitor I will make mistakes. Reacting to his plan, rather than trying to run my own business dictated by running my own business plan, forces me to make short-term reactive decisions based upon something that is happening today, rather than trying to set my business in motion over time to weather anything that might come my way. One of the owners in the meeting is a very sophisticated businessperson in other businesses but runs his club in a totally reactive mode. When he encountered his first batch of low price competitors, he immediately lowered his price to meet theirs. At first this seems to make sense, but in reality you have now changed your business plan to match theirs, and in this particular case, the owner's facility and type of club didn't warrant the over reaction to the market. Keep in mind that price is the last thing you should adjust but it's usually the first for owners who don't have a tight plan in place to grow the business. If all you do is worry about maintaining your business, then you make mistakes because every decision is based upon doing what you cannot to lose business. If you focus on growth as the core of your plan, you make decisions based upon constantly trying to increase market share and keep competitors locked into their own niches and out of yours. If you are running a proactive business, you may still get rocked temporarily by a new competitor but the damage is usually less significant and, most importantly, you have time to react without panic. Proactive business management is defined as building a plan and then driving revenue and the business every single day based upon that plan. For example, if you have a four million dollar investment in your club, you should be running that business very aggressively. Aggressively means you are marketing every week, you continually work to develop the club's money zones (see previous blogs), you adjust the prices as needed every two years, you train and develop staff daily and in other words, you run your business as a business driving the market rather than reacting to others in the market. Most owners don't do any of these things and then seemed shocked that they get their ass kicked by a new player in their game. Staffing may be the biggest indicator. Most owners pay too little for desk staff attracting idiots, try to use too many part timers instead of trying to hired a few skilled full time people, and then only train their team a few hours a month. Let's see, I hire stupid kids, pay them little, offer them part time so they don't have any real loyalty to my business and then don't train them. Then let's bitch a lot about how unfair it is when a low price guy moves in and takes my members. Proactive assumes there is always a competitor coming and that he will be good. Preparing your staff to retain your members is a fundamental truth of business. Hiring idiots and not training them is what you do when you want your members to leave you. Miss your spouse's birthday a few times and blow off your anniversary to go out with your friends and you'll see first hand what happens when you don't work on retention in a relationship, which is all a club really is if your price is $39 a month or higher. Why should a member stay when you offer weak service and rent the same brand of treadmill for $30 more a month than the guy down the street? You can't compete on fields of equipment based upon price. You can run a proactive business and dominate a market based upon differentiation, constant service, and a better club, but it is harder, which is probably why most owners prefer to bitch about how easy it was in the early days and how hard it is now to make money. They are right, it is harder, but that is the new reality that drives the current market. Other things of note Do what you can now to get ready for September forward. Remodel and paint, add equipment, convert to functional and gear up for heavy marketing through the entire remainder of the year. Run hard and fight for every member. If you need help with your physical plant, call Rudy Fabiano's team. He is adding new people on his staff allowing him to help smaller owners with colors and economical remodels. Get to a seminar. We have updated the material in the workshop this year to reflect what is going on with pricing and most importantly, the shift in the market toward a more functional driven business plan. If you don't know what I am talking about, you should come see us soon. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:05:11 -0500 Originally Posted: 06/01/09 All laws of predictability are now suspended in the fitness business world. The fitness business used to be a business where you could actually project your numbers ahead for six months or a year and then come fairly close to achieving those numbers. Members worked out everyday as usual, the typical number of new sales signed up this year compared to last year, and cash flow stayed about the same with a consistent EFT draft and in-house money. If there is one effect, however, from the current economy it is this: predictability is gone and managing cash flow on a daily basis is the new ground rule of a successful small business. I was talking to Robert Creech, who with his brother David own and operate a number of clubs in Mississippi including a 40,000 square foot flagship. They are two of the more talented owners we see through the NFBA and they are also those rare breeds that understand the deep numbers in the fitness business and how to manage their businesses using these numbers each day. Robert told me that his total club workouts were solid comparable to last year but it was becoming almost impossible to predict revenue over even a short period of time. Keep in mind that these are guys who look at their business a year in advance, as we all should, and make plans accordingly for reinvestment or acquisition of new clubs. In response to this inability to know how and when the money is going to arrive, he and David are now concentrating through the end of the summer on just generating and managing daily cash flow. This lack of predictability stems from more members paying later than usual, or not at all, and fluctuations in the renewals, which arrive later than expected. The Creech brothers also had an unusual take on their business. About a year ago, they spent over a million with Rudy Fabiano to redesign their main club. The purpose of the redesign was to create new revenue sources in the business. At the time, the total number and project seemed overwhelming. Now, according to Robert, the remodel is adding over $400,000 a year in revenue because as noted above the members are still working out in large numbers and buying a lot of in-house purchases while there, such as training, sports bar and tanning. The significant point here is that we actually see this lack of business predictability in our own company. The NFBA has been located on Cape Cod since January 2004, and it's predecessor, the Thomas Plummer Company, was founded in 1991. During all those years, this is the first year where we have looked at our income stream, which has existed in almost the same form for about 20 years, and not been able to accurately predict monthly income. We too are just managing daily cash flow and working with the people who owe us money to help get them stabilized as a receivable again. The new reality is that the income is still there but for small businesses the importance of managing cash flow on a daily basis, meaning paying bills almost daily, setting aside money now to cover payroll, and hoarding cash for those big hits such as ordering new high dollar supplies, is now the business skill of the moment. The lesson to be learned from the good operators, such as the Creech brothers, is that a modern fitness business develops more than one revenue stream. In the old days, meaning about three months ago, most of the industry lived from the proceeds of their EFT draft and new sales money. In an unpredictable economy, we now live have to seek cash flow from at least 4-5 different profit centers in any fitness business to keep the total cash flow sustainable on a daily basis. Bills have to be paid, staff has to eat and the only predictable income you have these days is what you made today. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:03:52 -0500 Originally Posted: 05/27/09 This would be a great business if it weren't for the damn members. Anyone who has been in this business for at least a few years has said this at least once and the longer you own a fitness business the more often you mumble this to yourself during the day. At some point, however, these personal rantings somehow make us lose the proper moneymaking perspective. One of my good friends was bitching over a beer at a workshop to me that he went into the club and it took him four hours to make a deposit because the members kept interrupting him. He had stories about how rude the members were to just walk into his office (the door was open) and how inconsiderate it was to just interrupt him while he was trying to work. My response was to just laugh at the owner. Think about this for a few minutes. The members, who are paying monthly to belong to the club, see the owner sitting at his desk doing a little paperwork and want a question answered or a problem solved. These members are the clients/customers and they are expecting service for the money spent. As they see it, they pay and you help, which is not an unreasonable assumption. What we have to question is at what point did we lose sight of the important issue that these members are right in their expectation of service and the owner who feels they are intruding in his day is wrong? My advice is simple. Do all you're real work at home or some ungodly early time in the morning and then work under the assumption that if you are in the club you are fair game. In the case of the owner mentioned earlier, my advice to him was to build a real office in his house, do all of his critical work at home, and then go to the club and focus on making money and making members happy. He tried this solution with decent results. He started work at about 7:00 at home and worked until late morning and then headed to the gym. All his real work, such as financial stuff and marketing, was done uninterrupted before he left the house. Once in the club, he jumped in with this counter staff or worked with member problems, sold the occasional membership and concentrated on other things that grew his business. By getting stuff done at home (the maintenance side of the business) he was free to spend time at the club generating income all day (the income producing side of the business side). Many owners waste their day doing things that don't really make a lot of money but it is the age-old argument of being busy instead of being effective. Most owners are very busy. Few owners are effective at making money during the hours they are in the club. Here are four things you can do now to shift the focus away from a busy day to an effective day: • Start early in a quiet place: Work from home, or an outside office, turn off your phones and crackberry, and concentrate on getting things done that have to be done to maintain your business. If you really embrace this thought you would also find time to read for 30 minutes in the morning as well. • Spend your day doing the things that matter and delegate everything else: If it doesn't make you money, pay someone else to do it and you work on the things that will lead to more money for your business. This is why you shouldn't do your own payroll, service your own receivables or write checks everyday. These things are important but don't make you money. Do them at home or farm them out and only do the things that increase your revenue. • Eliminate the distractions in your workplace: This is the work at home in a quiet room theory. Turn off the television and music and just work for a few hours. I have actually watched people work to see how they function and most end up doing so much less work than they realize because of answering emails, quick phone messages, spouses asking questions or kids. Two hours without disruptions is more time than you realize if you can focus on the task at hand. • Manage the phones and be very afraid of the crackberries: One of the most powerful things I can teach you is to stop getting addicted to instant response management. Phones and crackberries are supposed to make us more productive but I believe they do more harm than good for most owners. The harm comes from making a dozen or more decisions instantaneously throughout your day without a lot of thought. When you answer the phone, blast out a response and then move on, you are more into reactionary management instead of proactive management. This means your decision was quick, not thought out, and too short. Instead of quick responses, you would make better decisions, and free up your day to grow your business, if you only returned calls during certain hours and only returned emails once or twice per day. If your car is on fire or your dog was just pancaked by a truck someone will find you but otherwise, work on growing your business and return calls when nothing else important is going on at the club. We make money in this business through the development of relationships on a day-to-day basis. People are more important in the club than making deposits. Making money today is more important than trying to design your own add. Managing your receivables is more important than collecting your own money. Work on people and production and everything Fri, 13 May 2011 14:02:39 -0500 Originally Posted: 05/20/09 Life on the road is a mystery in itself. Why are people always so angry at airports? How can airlines claim to be in the service business and yet still be so rude? At what point does someone just give up and decide to be really fat and not even try. I came to this particular question after watching two really big women order triple scoops of ice cream with Coke chasers at the Atlanta airport. Life does confuse me by its weirdness and entrances me by its vast array of characters so, based upon too much time sitting in an airport bar, here are about 20 things that still amaze me in the fitness business and in life. 1) That equipment companies spend so much money at trade shows (a million dollars per show for the big companies) and get so little out of the events. Massive trade shows actually seem to work against the large companies in that you have so little time to build relationships with the very customer you are seeking. All those companies would make more money if they go back to their roots and put more money into the face-to-face relationships and less on trying to impress other vendors at the big shows. They all suffer from the fear that if we aren't doing a big booth at the show, then the other competitors will tell everyone we have financial problems. Tell who? Not many people go to those shows anyway these days. Smaller booths you equipment people and more money in building relationships at the line level where the deals are really done. 2) I am dumb founded that we still design clubs exactly the way we did in the 90s, yet the client doesn't train that way anymore. Vast fields of equipment designed for the smallest segment in the clubs-the bodybuilder-isn't productive. The consumer wants functional/lifestyle training but we still just throw him another circuit line. We lie to the clients when we tell them that going around in a circle will get you into shape. We do this because it is easier to let the equipment provide the service instead of us actually learning how to train people into a higher level of fitness. 3) Getting into shape and losing weight is the goal for the largest majority of our clients. If results are truly what you are after as a member at a club, then training with someone like Alwyn or Rachel Cosgrove, Rick Mayo, Rod Steward or Frank Nash will get you better results more quickly in their small specialty clubs then you will achieve at a 20 million dollar massive structure with 100,000 square feet. Why is it that you always see real fitness people, defined as those involved in an athletic endeavor, always training in the small specialty clubs and never using the mainstream fitness facilities even if they are as big as a small town in Iowa? Because it's the expertise, not the shear amount of equipment, that gets you to the next level. 4) It amazes me every week that a hotel in almost any city in America can take the same level of employee we use and turn them into customer service machines and we aren't even smart enough to tell our employees to take the damn gum out of their mouths at the front desk. 5) I find it sad that so many owners still drop close the potential member (knocking off $100 if you sign up today and today only) insulting him, giving the industry a bad name and still expecting it to work. Drop closing is a perfect example of how bad this industry still is. 6) I use to worry about it more but I have aged and become jaded when it comes to consulting. Why do so many people go so far out of their way with time and expense to ask me questions and advice and then do something different that has been proven to hurt other businesses just like theirs? 7) Why are there still women bodybuilders? What a demeaning sport for women although I do admit that the women's fitness contests are like watching a happy hour at Hooters gone bad and are equally scary. 8) Why can one trainer with a few kettle bells and medicine balls get you in better shape than the large majority of trainers working in a commercial gym? 9) Is the golf swing the single most difficult move in sports? Greg Rose at TPI (mytpi.com) says so and I think he is right, especially when you see so many athletes from other sports get so humbled. 10) It is amazing that owners spend so little money to hire staff, train them for about an hour, throw them at the front desk and then bitch about how bad staff is these days. Hire better people and put a lot of training into them and stop being a staff moron. 11) Why is it more important for most owners to prove that something they learned from another club owner 10 years ago in a different market, different time and different culture still works and that a worthless idea from a decade ago is more important than making money in today's market. Very little from our past still works with today's more sophisticated buyer, yet we refuse to embrace new tech and new ideas built for today's market. 12) Why would someone still smoke after the millions of pages of research available that tells you it is one of the dumbest things anyone on the planet can do? And this goes for fat people too. When you struggle hauling your fat ass up stairs (assuming the elevator is broken) it is God telling you to drop the donut and get your ass moving. Why would most people rather die than change? 13) Why do most owners insist on making up crap, such as programming and software solutions, instead of buying something proven at hundreds of clubs? Buying off the shelf makes more sense than endlessly trying to rip off programs because you are cheap or egotistical. 14) It is frustrating to watch an owner let staff make decisions he or she should be making, such as an old aerobic queen who refuses to bring in a proven national program or the book keeper that fights getting a national third-party financial service company to handle the receivables. We know these people are fighting for their jobs and will make decisions they perceive to protect themselves but why does an owner listen to these people? 15) It was interesting to see a new start up company at the IHRSA show that obviously spent big money on getting new equipment to the market. The equipment-stuff that simulates working out with free weights. Why not just save $75,000 and buy the free weights instead? 16) It amazes me that people still buy Nautilus. It proves that the equipment had brand power but after all these years it is just another line of fixed plane stuff and the fitness world doesn't really need that much more fixed equipment even if you were the first. 17) I have lost a lot of sleep over the years wondering why owners refuse to learn about marketing, don't market regularly and then die from no leads. What is more important to a fitness business than leads? Why would you cut marketing first and guarantee the death of your business? 18) Why are there owners in this industry who couldn't do 25 pushups to win a thousand dollar bet? Hey you knucklehead, Pizza Hut is hiring. 19) Why don't people who open gyms understand that it is an 80 a week job and you work a lot of nights? Why would you think you can build an expensive business and then go home at 5:00 and turn it over to kids working for $8 an hour? 20) It should be law and it should be part of every owner's mandatory read before they open: You can't fix stupid no matter how much money your daddy has? And a bonus 21) Why don't you bring your staff once a year to our workshops, get new ideas because we do change every year, and write a business plan during the workshop that you can install as soon as you get home? When was the last time you got out of the club and spent three days working on fixing what is wrong and seeking new ideas that will take you to a higher financial level? And why we are at it, why don't you go to other seminars and get new ideas from guys like Perform Better or Titleist Performance Institute? Thought for the week: Get your butt moving. You should be working on a total relaunch for September to take advantage of the rising markets and improving economy. Only the aggressive will dominate a market and it is your time to move fast and capture share. Fri, 13 May 2011 14:01:03 -0500 Originally Posted: 05/05/09 Every person that has ever suffered from a drinking problem knows the old adage that there is never change until you hit bottom. Then, and only then, can you admit you have an issue and rebuild your life. In this industry, we have hit bottom and we're floundering on the floor like a bunch of wet monkeys in a hot tub. We have found the bottom and we now have no way to go but up. How do you define bottom in the fitness business? We as an industry track the national membership numbers every year and then we bend them until they break and we still show flat growth. We track new clubs opening, and when the truth finally emerges from this recent alleged recession, we will find that we probably shrunk in total club numbers with the biggest hits occurring in the circuit club and dinosaur classes (dinosaurs are generic box clubs left over from the 80's who still have the same old business practices, and probably the same original equipment, that give us all such a bad name in this industry). We don't have any exciting new business models, and despite the success of the small training club segment, sports performance centers and the rare chain showing growth, such as Planet Fitness, we seem to be more in a retraction mode than growth mode. We're trapped by 50 years of bad mistakes and we just can't seem to break into the next generation of fitness that will feed the industry for the coming decade. I think the revelation for all of us is that this needed breakthrough won't come in the equipment or workout concept segments, but rather in the industry's maturity in our business practices. This much anticipated awakening, when it comes, will be in our selection and management of the people who work in our clubs. So far in the history of this industry, we have been horrible in this portion of the business, yet this where we have to target to get to the next level of growth in members and new clubs. In the fitness business, we spend most of our time as owners and managers managing the business and very little actual time managing our people. We market, we manage processes such as receivables, we pick the perfect, yet out-of-date equipment line, and we keep our clubs open for business. We also spend an inordinate amount of time looking for the next gizmo or class that will drive millions of new members to the club. Perhaps we are so overwhelmed by infomercials about fitness that we really do believe that there is one class DVD or unique piece of equipment (maybe Tony Little and the Gazelle) that makes millions of people instantly and forever in shape. The reality is that we have made fitness a horrible experience for the average person. We put them on routines designed for 1970's bodybuilders, we teach them to go around in circles on the same equipment week after week and we believe that equipment and acreage makes up for horrendous service and young dumbasses working the front counters. Fitness clubs aren't fun and over the years we have progressed away from being a service and people driven business to becoming nothing more than a vast floor of equipment that is several decades out of work and was never designed for a functional fitness approach to life. One of the jaw on the floor moments from our workshops over the years has been the question, "How much time do you spend a week training your staff?" The average fitness business owner in this country, despite about 60 years of collective experience, only works with his staff for an hour or less a week. Despite what you hear at a trade show, we are in the experience/service business and not the equipment business. We have, however, become extremely dependent on equipment and other amenities in the club to do the job we are supposed to do, which is to build strong relationships with the people who depend on us to help them change their lives. Another way to look at it is we are in the service business dependent on a large number of young people providing service to our most valuable asset, which is represented by the members and their monthly payments. The powerful point to consider here is that the average person working in our club, standing in front of the largest number of customers per week, is trained for that job less than one hour per week. Compare your staff to a person the same age working at Starbucks. How does your staff handle the customers compared to those employees? Compare your staff to the average nice hotel check-in staff. These hotel people, by the way, make about the same money as most club people. How are the hotel people dressed? How are they trained to handle service? How well mannered and well spoken are they as a whole? Even you reading this who are nodding your heads and saying your staff can hold its own against other service people are suffering from delusions. Having a body at the front counter with a tee shirt tucked in is not staff training and it is definitely not customer service. Staff training should be our biggest concern for the week, not something we do after everything else is done. Staffing, relationship building, real customer service, member retention and other industry defining issues are something we haven't even stumbled upon yet, even by accident or even as practiced by a small number of owners who are trying to create a business that is people dependent and not equipment dependent. What I am reading again: This week I am reading, The Simple Truth, by Alex Brennan-Martin. It is a small, but powerful read, that I find myself picking up at least once a year. It is important to help you focus on what is the true focus of your business. Fri, 13 May 2011 13:58:30 -0500 Originally Posted: 04/28/09 Perhaps the most common owner rant, usually preceded by a few beers, is about staff and how truly stupid they are. The staff doesn't take responsibility for their jobs, they can't, or won't perform the duties we pay them for, and just when your club is really doing nice numbers your best employee leaves and you have to start all over again. Blah, blah, blah and more blah. Whine, whine, whine. Keep blaming the staff if it makes you feel better but the reality is that most of this is your fault. The good news though is that, through the combination of heavy reading, divine intervention, a little trial and error and a good bottle of wine you can sort out these issues and move your business forward. Most owners get out of their staff exactly what they put into them. You have crappy people working for you because you hired crappy people, didn't train them well, and then you get mad at them when they don't perform to some high level that really doesn't have any relationship to the business except you need the that much money and they have to go make it today. One of the most true staff adages is that you get what you buy. Pay peanuts and get stupid monkeys. Many owners are so cheap they only get young, very stupid people who work for them. If you pay a low number for your area and attract a nineteen-year-old person who has no real business experience, or maybe you are her first job, then unless you are willing to put a lot of hours into this person nothing will change. You just can't fix stupid and you shouldn't spend a lot of time trying. The magic number for most areas of the country that separates talent from just a dumbass filling a time slot is about $2-3 per hour. For example, local minimum wage is what it costs you to get someone to show up for a front counter position. Let's say you are in a market where you have to advertise and pay $8 per hour to get anyone to apply for the front counter position. How good is this person? How old will he or she be? How much work experience in the real world does this person possess? Advertising a rate at $2-3 more per hour will attract a higher quality person to the job as compared to what the scenario above usually brings through the door. Although it sounds like a lot of money, a few bucks more an hour, or about $360 per month, isn't much if the person can produce and has some real business experience. Production-based people earn their money back in 60 days or less while young dummies never justify even the $8 you pay them. Another way to look at this is that you hire lousy people to do a customer service driven job, which they don't have the maturity or experience to do, and when that doesn't work you end up throwing more stupid kids in the pile. The thing to keep in mind is that a full time person with business experience in customer service or retail working 40 hours per week can do more than 60 hours of untrained, immature rookies. You then compound matters by poorly training the people you do hire. Think here deeply for a moment. You hire people with no experience in anything, and then don't train them once you get them, but still expect the person to perform at a very high level. Maybe the person you hired isn't the real dumbass here? Training any staff, even one with maturity and some talent, takes about 4-6 hours per week. Put in less you get less. Put in more you might make more money over time. But most owners don't know how to train staff. They know how to do a curl, which by the way is also outdated and useless technology, but you haven't read a business book or attended a staff training workshop in a year. The staff only gets better if you are willing to get better, but most owners bluntly won't do the work because it is too hard. If this is you, stop bitching about your staff because you are getting exactly what you put into them, which is very little at a big expense. Another issue is setting expectations. Most owners create situational, and often unreal expectations, for their staff. For example, I was working with an owner who was doing a sales meeting. She puts up a flipchart and writes 100 new memberships, 70 renewals and $10,000 in new sales cash on a sheet and then tells the team these are the numbers for the coming month. After the group left, I asked her how she came up with those numbers? "This is what I need to make this month to pay the bills and buy two new treads" What did you base those numbers on? "You don't understand me. Those are the numbers I need this month to pay bills." After pounding her for a little while longer we established that she had about the same chance of making those numbers as I have of playing golf on the PGA tour, which is beyond a physicists ability to calculate below zero. The most she had ever done in that same month was about 80. Her renewals had been down and she had only hit this number once in the last 12 months and that was in a month where a much larger number of members had signed up the year before. She also had only been averaging about $7000 in new sales money in that target month. In other words, where in the wide expanses of hell did she come up with such donkey poo poo numbers? She mad them up and the staff knows they aren't realistic so how hard will someone chase a figment of the owners imagination? Your staff can deal with expectations and in fact want numbers they can chase each month. Using more realistic numbers, and then showing the team how she came up with them and that each category was realistic for the coming month, would have better served this owner. If you don't know how to project, see my books because I do talk a lot about history and time line projections and how to do them each month. Everyone, everyday, needs a realistic target to chase. Even the front counter kids need a daily goal to go after on their shift. Realistic expectations and goals are a motivator but fake numbers pulled out the magical butt demotivates a staff person over time because no matter how hard they work it is almost impossible to hit numbers that have no reality tie to the business. Staff training isn't hard, especially if you stick to the basics of the business. How to greet people at the door, how to answer the phone, basic sales and basic courtesy, and other simple tasks that lead to high member retention and increased sales are all things that should be talked about weekly. Friday afternoons are still the best time to train staff and every owner should block out at least four hours every single week to get the staff moving. Also consider bringing in outside people to train, such as your local real estate person or banker who might have the skills you lack to start basic customer service or sales training. You might also keep in mind that many of the equipment companies you deal with can do excellent training not only on their stuff but also with fitness in general. Aaron Moser from Perform Better, for example, has been know to do a four hour install that gets rave reviews from the owners and staff and brings everyone up to date in some of the newer functional aspects of fitness. One of the funniest things the NFBA staff hears on the phone is the owner who states, "I don't want to bring any of my staff to the workshop because what happens if I spend that money and then they quit?" Good question, but I would be more concerned if I didn't train the person and they stayed for another year. Keeping people on the job too long because they are nice is a curse. Nice people simple fly low under the kick-their-ass-out-radar and always get a longer break. I am especially concerned with employees who have been around for just too long. During the last year, I have worked with a number of owners who brag because they have people on the staff that has been with them for over 10 years and in one case the owner had three staff people who had been with her for over 15 years. The first thing to ask here is do these people still produce any revenue for the company? Not surprisingly, none of the five people in questions really did anything at the club. One worked the counter but had no accountability for dollars on her shift. One was sort of a manager but wasn't held accountable if the clubs she controlled didn't hit target deposit and the rest were equally as worthless. There is no production without individual accountability. All of these people were deemed loyal employees and all should have been put on a 30-day probation period, given goals to hit and then fired if they failed. Work is a privilege you get only if you perform. This group cost the owners a lot of money because each one got a raise every year and were now making several dollars more and hour than the job was worth. What happened here, and is an important lesson to learn, is that your best people will leave after three years or so while the laziest and lowest performers will stay as along as you pay them. Accountability weeds out the weak and people who just show up year-after-year will eventually leave on their own if there are numbers that have to be made each month. The final point to note about most owners and their staff is that they become personality dependent. "I just lost Sarah and it is crushing me this month." Personality dependent means you make money when you have workers who work and you lose money when you are between employees that perform. You have no systems in place; you simply go from highs and lows dependent on whom you have working for you at the time. System dependent means you create systems in your business that allow lesser employees to perform at a higher level, yet the better and more skilled people will even get more done. The vast majority of clubs are simply held hostage by the people they hire and get beaten if a key employee walks out the door because there are no systems in place to guide the staff; simply a little training that gets the staff moving and then abandons them to the day-to-day routine. A website worth looking at: Warrior X-Fit, functional driven site done by Bill Clark of the ATA, or American Taekwondo Association. The site has a free membership and a workout of the day and if you get involved you can take part in the ranking system. Bill Clark is a legend in martial arts world creating a lot of the business systems in the ATA and influencing a lot of the fighters and early MMA training. What I am reading: Made to Stick, by Heath and Heath, a book on marketing that will help you start to develop a different thought process for promoting your business in the next few years. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:52:50 -0500 Originally Posted: 04/22/09 Generalists are people who provide the same services as other people and then try to compete on price. Generalists are chosen by convenience. For example, if there are five training studios in my neighborhood all providing training designed for anyone who comes through the door, then the one closest to my house will win. Specialists are people who possess specific skills and apply those skills to different segments of the population. Specialists are sought out by consumers looking for a specific skill set or talent. Specialists make more money than generalists. Almost every business in the world, such as the auto industry or medicine, has progressed over time from generalists trying to please everyone to specialists who target varying segments of the population. Look at the typical Jetta and its under 30 market or your corporate attorney for validation. This simple progression is a fact of business, yet we in the fitness business seem to be late to this dance. Many of us still fight to build the perfect club that has everything for everyone so no single member of the community feels excluded. The problem here is that the old adage applies: those who strive to be everything to everyone are usually nothing to anyone. Even the ultimate perceived generalist Wal-Mart, who in reality is a targeted specialist seeking the low end bargain hunter more interested in price than quality, and who put most other generalists, such as Woolworth's, out of business, suffers from lost market share to the small specialists that surround the bigger stores. Gourmet food stores, shoe stores and lawn and garden stores all do well located near the giant boxes. In our world, we are now seeing the first inkling of specialists emerging. Planet Fitness is looking for the buyer who wants minimal service and a clean club for about $10 a month. Anytime Fitness created a solid model for the secondary markets and can insert a financially successful model into a town of 25,000 people. There are a few other exceptions but the bulk of our industry is still an ill-defined mess applying a generic model of fitness to an increasingly specialist world. Walk through almost any town in America and you will stumble into a 20,000 square foot box with a bunch of cardio too close together, too much fixed equipment few people use anymore, one or two badly decorated group rooms, poorly finished locker rooms and an ugly front counter that looks like it came out of a closeout sale for unsold Formica. All the same and all claiming to be the fitness answer for everyone in that community. Learn this now and learn it well. You have to become a specialist in the coming years if you want to survive in this industry. And this just isn't limited to clubs either but pertains to everyone who works in the industry as well. Trainers need to stop being the guy or girl that works with everyone and start specializing in something that excites them and where there is more money. Be a youth specialist, sports performance person or the one person in town that knows more about training women over 50 than any other trainer. Find one thing you care about and then learn more about it than any other person and you will always make more money than the poor generalists. Kill the category and become the person who is known as the source for that information in your market. Training clubs need to evolve. Mainstream fitness facilities need to declare and go after specific markets. Franchises need to carve out a niche and let it evolve instead of failing to reinvent the concept as time passes. Nothing is deader in this industry than an old franchise concept locked into the first year it opened and still using the same marketing tools and ideas. Everything changes and everything moves from large groups to smaller target groups. The barrier to change is that this concept is so hard to understand for most novice owners. Let me get this right, you want me to turn away clients because they aren't my specialty? Won't I lose business, and decrease my potential market share, by eliminating large segments of the population as possible members? As strange as it sounds, the narrower the niche the larger the market because likes attract likes. Upscale clubs attract upscale members because people with money hate to hang out with poor people. Mixed martial arts centers will do better than generalist martial arts that teach adults and kids together. Trainers with a specialization in golf swing efficiency will draw golfers, and their friends, who want a trainer who does nothing but work with golf people. Remember, generalists are chosen for convenience, but specialists are sought out for their specific skills. So where does this leave the fitness industry? Some theorists state that the industry will come down to nothing but a few large chains that dominate all the level one markets. Eventually, they claim, everything will be like the drug store business that has seen the end of the family owned store and the evolution of the chain takeover during the last 10 years. Not in this industry. Even the super franchises, such as Gold's and Anytime, still allow the local guys to make many of their own decisions as how to operate in their markets. They make their own choices about pricing, offerings and marketing. The true chains, such as 24 Hour (company stores) or Planet Fitness (franchise), exert more control over their clubs but out of all of the chain strategies, only PF shows sign of life a progression in the marketplace. Most other groups, no matter how large the reputation or number of clubs, reach a point of no return where the ability to develop new clubs and profit from the ones already opened stalls. The question for all owners in the field is who specifically is your target market and how do you go after those people. By using generic ads with stock photos? By running 1980's price specials? By trying to house 20 or so unfinished parts of your business under one roof because you try to offer everything but really finish nothing? Choose a specific target market and master that segment. Advertise to them. Talk to them. Design your facility to meet their needs. Evolve, grow and specialize and the future will be yours in this industry. Hot topic: One of the hot topics popping up through emails right now is the $1 down special that Planet Fitness ran this winter with such strong results. We ran $1 a number of years ago in about 300 martial arts schools, and in about 70 fitness centers, and we put big numbers on the board. In fact, it was probably the single most effective promotion we ever ran during our years as consultants for that group. And then reality hit the proverbial fan. During the next 120 days, the losses for those memberships were staggering often exceeding over 60 percent in many of the facilities. We wrote a lot of paper but it turned out to be extremely difficult to collect. Memberships are only as good as what the person has invested up front. If you have little invested, the perceived value, and ultimate personal loss if you don't pay, is small. Most memberships gain collectability when the buyer puts at least the equivalent of 10 percent down of the total value of the membership when he buys. Planet Fitness is getting a buck down and $10 to join. The volume is there but the losses over the next six months on that paper will be interesting to track. Could we do this in the mainstream world? You could try the $1 but make sure you get the first month's payment as well or you will be writing a lot of lost opportunity in the future. Think Chicago: We are having our advanced workshop in Chicago again this year. We sold out last year and will do so again this year. This is our owner and manager's retreat for three days to discuss topics related to owners trying to get new ideas to keep their business vital and growing in the future. We also have great guest speakers at these events as well. For this year we already have Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, the functional training gurus and successful training club operators as well as Dana Anspach, an investment brain who talked last year about building wealth in your life. If you want in for this book soon and check the website for additional speakers as we add them. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:51:09 -0500 Originally Posted: 04/13/09 You would think that after over 60 years of sales training in this industry we would be good at converting potential leads into new members but the reality is that we are probably getting worse as time goes by. The reversal of skills comes because how we sell, and the potential member's sophistication and expectations, have changed over the last few years. In the olden days of the fitness industry, meaning just last week because we still insist on using technology that is five decades out of date, we lived and died in this business by the pressure sale. Get a lead in the door, drop close aggressively and move on to the next lead. Drop closing for you youngsters without psychotic experience in this business means you set a stupid price, such as $150, as your down payment and then leverage the sale by dropping the number to $50 or so if you sign today. This still works if your client is as stupid as a pile of mud laying in the middle of the road but for the most part no one with an IQ over that of your average hamster believes anyone ever really paid the full $150. This degrading system is failing and the industry is in a transitional period right now that is quickly forcing many owners to adjust their practices to more ethical yet still effective methods. We still have to convert leads into members but how we do it is rapidly changing due to the more sales experienced member and the amount of competition a typical club now has. The gold standard of sales is do you have the ability to convert at least 60 percent of your qualified leads into real members? The answer based upon national averages, which hovers below 40 percent, is no, we can't convert enough leads monthly to support most of the clubs in the market. Put another way, most clubs do get enough leads through the door each month, if they can accurately control and count the leads, to make that club profitable over time, but the owner simply doesn't have the skills to develop a staff that can effectively close those same leads. This failure to close puts pressure on the entire club business system. If you can't close over 40 percent of your leads, then you have to spend more on marketing to buy a greater number of leads, or misses in your case if you are holding at the 38 percent national average and just keep walking those prospects to the door, which most clubs just can't afford to do. If you can't close, something else usually has to give and that is almost always customer service because all your money goes into sales people who can't get the job done leaving very little left for hiring decent service staff. You can rebuild, however, if you are tired of living at the bottom of the fitness food chain. Here are a few ideas we discussed in our recent sales workshop in Charleston, SC, that any club could do to make a difference immediately in your business. These are not those brilliant, write it down on a napkin at the bar ideas, but most good business is really nothing more than mastering the basic skills anyway. Get control of your leads: How many qualified leads do you get through the door each month, on an average Monday, on Saturday morning or on any other day of the week? Most owners can't honestly answer that question. Ask a McDonald's manager, however, what his average ticket sale is and he can answer that in about three seconds. There are fundamental numbers every successful owner has to know and how many leads through the door during the month and prime times is one of the most important. Use a basic inquiry sheet but start here to fix your sales effort. If you don't know how many leads you have, then you can't determine your true closing rate, which means you can't tell how effective your sales effort is over time. Do sales training daily: Even if you are the only employee in your club, sit down at least once a day and read and study about how to properly present your business to a prospective client. Keep in mind that in today's market, sales are defined as the simple skill of helping people get what they came in for. We don't have to pressure or hurt people to be effective at sales but we do have to learn how to help people take the first step on their fitness journey and that often means we have to spend a lot of time practicing how we present the club and its services. If you have a larger staff, go back to a 30-minute sales meeting every day to focus on numbers and short training efforts. Train every single day on how you can be more effective on helping your clients get involved in your business. Hire adults for the job: Stop hiring young, stupid male salespeople. The trend has always been to hire the stereotypical sales person from the chain clubs. He is young, a killer at the drop close, and knows every Tom Hopkins sales pitch in the book. He is also disruptive to your system, high maintenance, dates all your members and can't be coached because he only knows one way to sell, which is far too dated and aggressive for today's market. Hire adults and usually look for that plus 30 female who has customer service experience. Her communications skills are better, she presents a better first image, she can relate to a wider range of people, she will sell from a position of helping rather than forcing and she will often stay longer in your business. Start a basic follow up system that you can maintain over time: Phone calls are not follow up. Phone calls are what you do when you don't train your staff on how to properly follow up a sales lead because no one answers their phone anymore. Use emails, use handwritten thank you notes, leave encouraging messages to get involved but do not depend on harassing clients on the phone until they give up and join. You should have at least a three step follow up system in place and most clubs should have at least five steps over 30 days to be effective. Calling people at home and begging them to come back is not one of these steps. Get a dedicated sales person: You can't use multitaskers and expect to be effective. Get a dedicated salesperson whose sole job is new member acquisition and then pay that person well for the work. In most markets, you have to pay at least $12-15 per hour and commissions of at least $15-25 per sale to get anyone decent. Pay peanuts and get monkeys. Don't believe me? How did your staff of monkeys making $7 and hour do last month? Owners need to learn to sell as well. If you own only one club, then you should still do the majority of sales in your business each month. There is nothing more important than generating new memberships for your business. If you aren't any good at it yet, keep practicing because you can't teach it if you have never done it. If you have no idea where to start, check out my book, Anyone Can Sell. The title says it all. Thought of the week: The economy is already coming back and club sales, except for the first two weeks of February, have been decent. Get off your ass and attack. Market, train your staff in sales, go to a Perform Better Summit and get some new ideas but don't just sit there waiting for business to happen. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:48:47 -0500 Originally Posted: 03/31/09 The public's perception of your business is far more important than just plain traditional advertising. When you get a positive public perception, you have to earn it. Most owners skip this process and just focus on traditional ad campaigns, such as direct mail, to try and buy an image. Successful businesses work hard on both because without a positive image in your marketplace all the ads in the world won't do much to help you get new business. Most owners just don't worry enough as to how their business is perceived by the marketplace they seek to serve. Maybe this comes from the wrong perception that they think their business has its own personality, like a puppy or favorite grandparent, and is something all the members love and enjoy. You can tell when owners think of their business as something with a living personality when they tell everyone, "Oh, the members love my business. They tell me they couldn't live without us." Personality is defined as something that has human traits, such as, "I put my life into that business. It's almost like my baby." This emotional perception is what gets most owners into trouble because it clouds your judgment as to what is really going on in your business. Your business doesn't have a personality, but it does have an image in your community. This image is something you craft slowly over time member-by-member and through the constant flow of advertising and public relations you generate for your business. Signs of a good image are when customers say things such as, "They really take care of their members at that club" or "I think that is the cleanest club I have ever worked out in". Image is everything and nothing establishes your image, or damages it, in your community more than your staff choices and customer service training. You are only as good as your people and the training they receive, which means for most owners who only train their staff a few hours a month, your image in your market is weak. Your staff does not just spontaneously combust one day and become excellent delivers of customer service. If you're not training your staff at least four hours a week on service, then the people who work for you are making things up on their own and their definition of customer service probably isn't going to match the image you want to build and project over time. How good is your image? If you have to beat members for referrals then you have a lousy image in your market. In other words, if you have to ask for a referral then you are doing something really wrong in your business. Happy customers bring in friends and relatives because they wish to share an exceptional experience with others. Think about your experience at a new restaurant and how willing you are to share your opinion, good or bad, with anyone who asks. If it is good, you're going to tell someone even if the restaurant isn't paying you somehow to do so. If someone is happy with what they bought you can be guaranteed that person will be telling others about the product or service because they look brighter because of the choice they made. "Hey, you have to check out this club I found. It might be the best in town and you just have to come with me to see for yourself." This person wants to flaunt what he found because it makes him look smarter. No one wants to bring a friend to a club that is a dump with a young and stupid front counter staff. "Hey, you have to check this new club I stupidly joined. Just wait and see how badly they beat you in the sales office." Customer service is the first line of image building. Even if you have a mediocre physical plant and equipment you can still compete on a higher level if you can deliver strong customer service over time. Service beats new and flashy with a below average staff every time. Keep in mind that I visit a large number of clubs per year and even some of the perceived best struggle with basic customer service. Customer service isn't hard, which is why it's probably ignored as too basic for someone to care who is fighting through all the other recurring issues we deal with in this business. Remember how much you paid to buy that member initially and then put a little effort into all of your front line people to train them to provide an experience that will keep your members staying longer and paying longer in the system. Here are a few key points of service we are discussing in this year's workshops. Try these and start training your staff aggressively now to deliver the best service you can in your market. I have also written these from the perspective of a pissed off member. If I pay, I expect you to provide a decent service, even if my payment isn't all that big. Answer the damn phone Answer the phone within three rings. No exception. That also means you small training clubs too. Answer it live with no machines and with a voice that is professional and is trained to provide service. Use a strong welcoming statement on the phone: "Hello, we're having a great day at the Workout Company. Make it strong and positive. Eliminate the weak retail greeting: Hello, thank you for calling the Workout Company. My name is Sarah, how may I help you?" This is boring, weak and has no energy. We are in the energy business people and it starts on the phone. Use a strong welcoming statement every time I walk through the door Act like you're happy to see me every day. You know, sort of like you recognize the fact that I haven't missed a payment in two years and support the place (at least in my mind). Try the same one as above: Hello, we're having a great day at the Workout Company. Is it repetitive? Yes! Do the member's love it? Yes, because it creates the illusion that you're coming home to your gym everyday. If I am paying you, at least know my name I still find it amazing after all these years in the business that owners put so little time into knowing the names of the people who make their business possible. Reward your staff for knowing names. Give bonuses for a staff person who can name 50 members at the door before they get to the computer. Make sure your third-party software system has an option to get member pictures and that flashes names when people check in and then use those names every chance you get. It is outrageous that you take someone's money and then don't know the names of the people who make your life possible. Thank me for my business Thank me for coming by the club to day as I leave. Thank me when I buy a bottle of water. Thank me with something unexpected if I bring a friend. Be grateful for the money I supply. Thank everyone every single time they visit your club as they leave for the day. Clean this place better than you ever imagined Your club is never as clean as you think it is. Never! The members want clean but many owners, even with the best intentions and who think it is clean, just miss too many things. Because of the size and weight of our stuff in the clubs, we never really clean the place. We usually only surface wipe, which means you wipe down the surfaces of everything. That is what most cleaning services provide and for most owners this is enough. The problem, however, is that this isn't nearly enough for the members. You have to go beyond surface wipes to get a really clean club. You have to move stuff, clean behind stuff, disinfect things like lockers and do the ugly stuff that is the difference between what you will accept as clean and what the members really want as clean. Where we have been these days: The NFBA Orlando workshop turned out to be the best workshop we have ever had in Florida. We had about 80 participants, including a number who had just done our IHRSA one-day the week before in San Francisco and then followed us to Florida. We also had a number of Titleist Performance Institute (mytpi.com) certified professionals attend during the last few workshops. This specialization might one of the fastest growing segments, along with kettle bell certification, in the industry. Anthony is out of his mind: Anthony Diluglio, the vintage fitness guru and kettle bell innovator, is making a statement with his new program to push youth fitness into the schools. He is giving any school, through local trainers and with a letter certifying that there is an educator at the school accepting the program, a free rope and workout dvd designed for the youth market. Again, this is absolutely free. The trainer just needs to make contact with a school and be willing to donate the necessary time to go teach the classes as the program develops. Kudos to Anthony for putting his money where most people's mouth is and for the huge investment he is making toward this effort. Find him and the program at www.artofstrength.com. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:46:42 -0500 Originally Posted: 03/18/09 Marketing questions are still come up frequently in any discussions with a fitness facility owner. Most of these questions, however, are usually preceded by the comments, "Marketing doesn't work in our area" or "That may work back East (or up North, down south or out West, really anywhere but here) but it just doesn't work here." Most marketing in clubs fails because the owners don't have any type of plan in place over time or any set expected outcome. There is also an issue for most that the expected results are so unreasonable that the marketing is doomed to fail no matter what it might bring through the door. The key thing to remember with marketing is that even mediocre marketing will work if you practice two basic rules. First of all, you must market weekly for the rest of your life. Secondly, you must send a consistent message to the consumers in your target market over time. Mike Grondahl, one of the founders of Planet Fitness, is probably one of the best marketing guys to ever work in the industry and even he gets frustrated with the guys in his franchise because they simply won't stick to the plan of getting a large number of economical images in front of your target market each month. During one of my past chats with Mike, he stressed that he taught the new franchisees to get out about 35,000 low cost, oversized post cards per month, every month, and to run the same offer, with a strong call to action (expiration date) on every card, until you simply wore the market out over time. After you wore out that offer, you chose another and then repeated the process. The concept to learn here is to get out a large number of images (cards, flyers, door hangers) each month until you develop a strong recognition factor in your target market. The sad part is that for most owners in this industry, 35,000 postcards represents about two years worth of mailings, not one month. The majority of owners will cut marketing before they cut any other expense and marketing should be the last thing you cut back on if times are tough. Cut your staff, sell your car, work more hours but without consistent marketing there is no hope for your business. Marketing done correctly should accomplish a list of things to help your business grow: • Marketing should be based upon an offer that gets you the biggest capture over the longest period of time • Marketing should strangle your competition • Marketing should lower or eliminate the perceived risk of trying the club for the consumer • Marketing should develop new markets rather than constantly tapping into the existing fitness member pools. For example, only 16% of the people in this country have ever set foot in a fitness center. Market to the 84% that haven't been in clubs; because the 16%, or consistent fitness people, have already been in your club because they check out all the clubs near their home before they join any of them The offer we have been recommending, based upon the clubs we tested it in last year, is the 30-day for $19 risk free trial membership. If you have a training club, we have been offering 30 days for $89 or if you are in a competitive, low priced market, we tweak it to 30 days for $9.95. Many of the clubs running this offer have had a great deal of success although we did discover an odd result in certain markets. A small percentage of our clients who have been running the risk free 14-day trial over the last several years switched to the 30-day for $19 offer and it didn't work. They then switched back to the 14-day and it brought a lot of leads through the door again. We don't know why this happens but it has happened for a significant number of units and it is worth keeping an eye on when your try this offer. Risk free trials also draw the biggest capture over the longest period of time. This concept also accomplished the second major expectation, which is to strangle your competition. If you are taking leads out of the market for 30 days at a time, you are hurting your competition over time by keeping qualified leads out of their clubs and in yours. After 30 days, either you get them or no one does because the potential member either joins or walks away, which also means he seldom joins another club because of his 30 days of experience with you. Risk is still the biggest barrier to entry for most potential members. What if I join and then don't like it? What if I lose my job? Am I going to be stuck? All these rattle around a potential member's head and cost you new sales over time. The words, "risk free trial" softens the first level of entry for most people, if you clearly explain how the trial works, which most owners miss when they put together their marketing pieces. Most just list the trial and then assume the marketplace understands what it means and how to take advantage of it. If a potential member takes the 30 days for $19, the most he would risk is just the $19. He can try it and then walk away at the end of 30 days losing just a few bucks. The current economy, along with the endless stream of media fear mongering, has also made the consumer much more cautious. The risk free trial softens this too but many clubs need to do additional steps to cover the person who is afraid of joining the club and then losing their job. You can cover these folks by simply adding an addendum to your membership agreement that states with proof of loss of job you will cancel the membership immediately. Make sure you run this by your third-party financial service company before you launch this but it will help you make more sales if done properly. I have talked to a number of owners in recent weeks that are still hesitant to commit to a full marketing program this year. What are you waiting for? You still own the business and still have bills to pay. Start now and start aggressively. Another important point here is to find a consistent image you can live with over time. Perhaps one of the biggest rookie mistakes is to change your look, or delivery system, every time a new ad comes out. Find a series of ads you really like and then commit to that look in your ads for the next five years. Yes, you will get bored, your members will get bored and your spouse will get bored but consistency builds brand recognition and that is what you're really after in your market. I am sure that the management team sits around Pillsbury going, "Are we still running those damn ads with the doughboy?" The doughboy, one of the most recognized symbols in the world, was built one ad at a time over a 40-year time span. Be patient and be bored but build a name in your community over time. The last point is that sometimes ads work immediately, and sometimes they don't, but almost all ads work over time. This means that the longer you run ads the more they will draw if you are using a consistent theme, market every week, and use a risk free offer. Couple these things with a valid testimonial and you have a complete ad campaign. Words of Caution: Attack now, attack often and make business happen. Clubs are making money but if you sit and wait you will fail. If there is less business coming through the door this year, you can at least get out 500 door hangers within a mile of your club every Saturday. If you need new members, run a solid membership referral program (call us if you need help) but do something now to make the business grow. If you need help: We have consulting available by phone and can help you manage your business and train your staff. The NFBA has solutions ranging from a single phone call to weekly set phone time if you need guidance to keep you focused. Call us if you need 800-726-3506 Fri, 13 May 2011 12:44:23 -0500 Originally Posted: 03/02/09 There is a unique way to look at your personal management style that I have noticed is a strong indicator of how successful you will be in this business: you either manage by fear of failure or you manage by pursuit of success. Every owner approaches his business armed with one of these two styles. Each decision you make in your business, from simple day-to-day operation decisions to big picture strategy issues, such as the acquisition of your property, is governed by your individual style. Most owners, however, aren't really aware of the perspective they bring to their business. They are who they are and they seldom question why they make the decisions they do. The fear of failure management style is by far the most prevalent, which also correlates as to why so many owners are just average financially in their businesses. The old 20/60/20 rule does definitely apply to our industry as it does to almost every other small business. In this rule, 20% of the owners will make money beyond the norm, 60% are average and the bottom 20% should get jobs and stay away from owning anything. Someday we will talk separately about the bottom 20% and why that happens. For now, let's concentrate on the other two categories. The 60%, or eternally average group, hardly ever escapes being mediocre because of their choice of management style, in this case the fear of failure mind set. If you are a fear of failure manager, you make every decision, no matter how big or small, based upon protecting or maintaining what you have, not on growing or increasing your business. All decisions are made to simply keep what you have going a little longer. You don't buy enough new equipment because you might fail next year. You don't spend to train your staff because you might train them and then they will leave you, not thinking about what happens if you don't train them and they stay with you for another year. These owners don't seek new information because they are afraid change will lead to loss. They don't paint because a member might complain and leave. These owners won't risk buying a building because you never know when the next big crash will come and they might lose some equity for a year or two. They don't market because they tried it once and it failed to flood the club the first day and the owner didn't get his money back today. Most everything fails for these owners because they never commit and finish anything completely. I tried a juice bar, they claim, but because he never committed to the project fully it did fail; but it wasn't the concept that failed, it was the owner who was so afraid to spend the money and do it right the first time that the bar was doomed from the first blend. Loss dictates every decision these people make and leads to a constant pulling in or shrinking of the business. Over time, your business gets worn out and less successful because the members will go somewhere new where the owner is responsive and not afraid to innovate. Here are a few cues you might be a fear of failure manager. You operate in fear of failure if you can't stop training clients because you are afraid you will lose income. In this case, you also have an ego issue because you believe everyone asks for you because you are the best. Because you are afraid your income will suffer, or the clients will leave for other facilities if you don't personally train everyone yourself, you continue to train clients instead of learning to manage and operate your business at a higher level. Many of you also believe you are over thinkers, meaning you believe you like to take your time and make slow, agonizing decisions. The process is slow and frustrating, but not because you are a person who over thinks. This person is slow to react because he or she is so afraid of making the wrong decision and perhaps losing a few dollars or a member or two that they do everything they can to slow the process down and not make any decision at all. This group is the one who is very slow to react to market conditions. I am currently working with two owners in this subgroup who has intense competition coming into their markets but just will not react fast enough to protect their businesses. Each owner is so afraid of making a decision that will hurt their business (fear of failure) that they just keep putting off the important things in their businesses to some point in the future. At this stage, each one of them should be painting, increasing their marketing, buying new equipment and reworking their price structures to anticipate what the new market will bring. Always remember that no decision is a decision: you decided to do nothing. Doing nothing is occasionally the correct thing to do, but in the very fast pace of independently owned fitness businesses, doing nothing is the same as standing on the road with your eyes wide open in disbelief waiting for the car to run over your nonresponsive ass. The car is coming and you either react or you get crushed. Competition is coming for these two and the choices are the same; fight or wait until the auction to see how much you will get for your stuff when the club closes. The top 20% of the owners live by a different creed. These owners manage by the constant pursuit of success. Each decision is made to either grow the business or project it into the future. All decisions are important and are made by constantly responding to trends, market conditions and your ever-changing club population. For example, a club owner who only has a few hundred members but signs on with a third-party financial service company is an owner who is projecting her business forward and building a foundation for future growth. Instead of fearing loss of control, she seeks a business partner that can help her focus on growing the business instead of protecting pennies by having her mama do the memberships in the back office. One owner projects by hiring a third-party firm, such as ASF, and the other saves a few bucks by doing it herself. One manages by fear and the other anticipated success. You can also get a clue if you might be one of these more aggressive owners, which includes anyone who practices business by the pursuit of success, by how you react to marketing in your area by your competitors. You practice fear of failure management if you wait and react to the competitor's ads and offers but you practice pursuit of success if you market every single week year round forcing the competitors to react to you. The types of long-term positioning strategies you make are also a reflection of the type of management you believe in for your business. For example, if you are a full service club with group exercise and you still let your old aerobics director manage your program (I might lose members if I let her go) then you are living the fear of failure nightmare. On the other hand, if you use a national group exercise development company, such as Body Training Systems, then you are adding another layer of quality service to your business and setting your business up not to be held hostage by a single person, such as your current group director who threatens to leave you and take all the instructors unless you let her do exactly what she wants you to do. In these two examples, one owner lives in fear something might be lost and the other makes decisions that are best for the business over time. Sure, you might make change and lose a few members but the pursuit of success manager understands that losing 10 now, along with the old aerobics' diva, might lead to 200 new members in the future. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two management styles is who innovates and who doesn't in their business. Fear of failure clubs are always years behind in their offerings and business plan and make do with what they currently own or offer because they are afraid if they change all might be lost. These people are also usually extremists as well. "How many will I lose if she leaves?" Everyone! "What if I start to change my training program?" All the trainers will leave taking all my members. Innovators, or pursuit of success people, are usually the ones offering what is new and relevant to the members. These are the people who adapt to EFT training rather than sticking to endless packages or sessions. These are the owners who are in Perform Better Summits or are at an Anthony Diluglio certification getting new ideas and equipment for their business before anyone else in the area does. The failure thought is what will I lose if I change? The success thought is what will I gain if I do and how can I position my business for success during the next 10 years? If you are a fear of failure manager you can change. Every time you make a decision and worry about what you will lose, simply add the other thought; what will I gain long-term if I do this. You will find that the long-term benefit often offsets the short-term pain. On the road: We just finished Philadelphia and it was one of the largest workshops we have ever had with about 170 students at final count and another 30 or so alliance team members hanging around. This was also our first morning workout that topped over 100 people. My special thanks to Aaron Moser and the rest of the morning gang who managed to give that many people something exciting to take home. Next stop Orlando. I am teaching the new training and point-of-sale selling system and it has been nicely received. We will even be more prepared by Orlando to put on a powerful show. And a special thank you to Jill and our NFBA staff for the hard work to fill this event. Nicely done everyone and thank you for the amazing group. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:42:35 -0500 Originally Posted: 02/24/09 One idea that has been getting the most comments from our seminars during the last six months is the one about offering a value membership to your new potential members as well as offering it to your existing membership at the same time. A value membership, using a term that is appropriate for the perception of today's economy, is where you adjust your price structure to demonstrate that you are trying to accommodate the need for your members, and potential members, to get fitness at a lower price. I discussed this in an earlier blog but we can detail it here since I have been receiving a number of emails wanting more information. For example, let's say you now offer a $49 per month membership for 12 months. In today's whacked out financial mess, many of your good members walk away from their memberships at the end of their term thinking they are going to save money. A member with four payments left of $49, for instance, might just quietly go away at the end of his term with the justification that his membership is a payment he doesn't want to make for awhile. Keep in mind, in his head he didn't quit the club, he is just taking a little time away until things change and he is planning on coming back. Adding a vale membership is a way of keeping this member in the system and stabilizing your receivable base during perceived tough times. The value membership in this case would be adding an 18-month membership for $39 a month. New prospects would be presented with an opportunity to sign up for the club's regular membership, but if saving money is the key for him, then the club also has a value membership that is $120 per year cheaper. Look for about 70% of your new sales to go for the $39 month option because it is lower although for a longer term. I also think you need to reach out to all existing members and offer them the same deal. Many owners balk at this idea at first for two reasons. First of all, they believe that lowering the price at point of sale hurts the image of the club and will lower their total receivables. The other issue is what happens if all my members trade their memberships down $10? What happens to my cash flow in this cash? The first point actually reflects what is happening in the markets these days, and especially matches the way I feel memberships will be structured during the next 10 years. Most owners need to show a lower price at point of sale and then work very hard to drive their average monthly EFT up with additional services, such as EFT 12-month training, which is working very well around the country, and other profit areas including 12-week weight management programs. If you are in a very competitive market, this strategy is especially important for you to consider. Many of our low price competitors have created a new market reality where the average price perception has dropped. Offering a value membership allows you to show a lower price in the market so you can still retain market share. If all you sell is memberships, however, lowering your price had better result in a much higher volume. Most clubs don't see big increases in volume until they drop to $19 per month, which is not realistic for most full service facilities. The compromise position is to offer a perceived lower price and then work on driving your average EFT number up for the month. For example, you might sell 50 memberships for the month showing a $39 per month value membership price at point of sale, but still have an average EFT monthly price of over $80 if you can convert about 20% of your new members into training EFT and weight management programs. In this case, you have the best of both competitive worlds. You show a lower price to attract new members, but your average EFT is higher because internal programming keeps your total average higher. The second concern mentioned above also has a surprising twist. What would happen to me if all my members came in and converted their memberships to a lower price? Surprisingly, you would make more money during the next year. Go back to the member who has four payments left of $49. He wants to save money and will quietly get lost when is membership is up. If this guy is offered a chance to save $120 per year voluntarily, and by trading the four remaining payments for a fresh 18-month membership, the club owner will actually make more money over time. The key is that the lower price/longer term adds more money to the EFT compared to the guy paying just four more payments and leaving. It's retention people, and if members have a chance to trade for a lower payment versus leaving the club, then the key phrase, as it always is in this industry, is whomever has the highest retention will win the club wars. What does this mean in simple terms? Adding a value membership and then letting your existing members have access to it will actually increase your EFT over 12 months. Go back to the guy with four payments one more time. He can go home and tell his spouse that he just saved the family $120 a year by renegotiating his fitness membership. He will stay, and he will pay longer, because he was in control, something most owners take away from the membership, which leads to higher losses in the retention area. Implementing this is easy but there are a few keys points that will make it easier for you to get it done. First of all, send your members a letter before you start using value pricing in the club. No one is madder than a member who feels cheated by the people he trusted. The letter should say something like this: Dear Members, Thank you for all your suggestions. We are listening to our members, and to our guests, and we understand that for many of you staying at the club is important but you would still like to save money right now in your life. Therefore, we will immediately offer a value membership on a temporary basis through the end of the summer. We will make a decision then if we need to continue value membership pricing beyond that point. As you know, most of you are paying about $49 per month for a 12-month membership. Our new value membership will be offered at $39 per month for an 18-month term saving you $120 per year. Any existing member can simply stop by the desk during your next visit and rewrite your existing membership to a lower monthly fee with no questions asked. And as always, we will honor whatever rate you have with us for any successive years you wish to be a member as long as you stay current or renew within 30 stays of expiration. This value option, therefore, gives all of our members a chance to lock in a lower rate for the duration of your membership. Thank you for all your support through the years and please feel free to call or stop by if you would like more information about this new membership option. The Club The important term is "temporary". This letter demonstrates that you understand that the people in your community may be having tough times and you care and wish to help with this offer. Keep in mind, if you are losing memberships to a competitor this option may help you stop the leakage by allowing the members to stay and save money. It is all a numbers game and your goal is to keep the most members you can for the longest period you can and this option helps get that done. Something important to check out: If you have an interest in golf performance training, and live in a community that has a large golf population, look into the Titleist Performance Institute, created by Dr. Greg Rose and teaching professional Dave Phillips. They offer economical certification programs in three different tracks including trainers, med-based people and teaching professionals. This type of certification can add another dimension to your training programs, and more revenue over time. Thank you to Body Training Systems. We just did a team webinar that was very successful. If you would like to listen, paste and insert this link into your browser. http://www.bodytrainingsystems.com/pages/management/TP_Webinar/default.html Fri, 13 May 2011 12:40:43 -0500 Originally Posted: 02/15/09 I have sat in a lot of clubs this year and it is disgusting how most owners and their staff people treat their customers. We want so much from these people yet we offer them so little. No wonder we lose so many members in our clubs; if the members wanted to be treated badly they would just have stayed at home with their spouses and teenagers. Common courtesy, the heart of customer service, is dead in the fitness business. Members, who pay us anywhere from $9 a month to as much as $2500 per month in our training centers, can actually spend hours in the club and never even be acknowledged by anyone who works in the club. It is actually quite funny to watch the antics staff goes through to actually avoid the members, especially those not deemed the "good or beautiful members". If you're leaking members to the competition, or just driving large numbers out on your own without any outside help, you can ease the outward flow if you just practice the most base levels of service in your club. Customer service is an art form that can be practiced at a high level of play, but to make a difference in most clubs art is less important than establishing a few basics that even your dumbest staff (still hiring those relatives and friends are we) can deliver. Start with a little mental imagery. The club is your house and the members are guests that are invited on a regular basis to a party at your place. My house and my guests are much more important than my staff and remember, it is much easier to replace badly mannered and poorly dressed staff than it is to replace good members. Ignore my guests, who are the ones paying for this party through their monthly dues and other fees by the way, and you won't work here anymore. You will be kind to my guests. You will acknowledge my guests. You will be courteous to my guests in my house. If you don't, you go and the guest will stay. As a guest in my house I promise at least these few kernels of common courtesy will happen each time you visit us: I promise to greet you each time you visit my house as an honored friend and guest "Hello, welcome to the club today. It's good to see you". Not "hey". Not, "what's up man?" Not "Whatssup?" Stop what you're doing at the counter and greet our guests in our house. I don't care if you have 50 members or 5000 and can't even breath on a Monday night. Your guests, your house, and we always respect that relationship. I promise to know your name We will learn your name. We will use a computerized check-in system with your picture and name displayed prominently so we can cheat, but we will use your name. And we will find you on the floor and use your name. And our group exercise instructors and trainers will learn your name. Joe Millet, a name I have mentioned before in other writings, has a club with about 3500 members. During a club visit, he used a first name with every, single member we encountered throughout the entire day. Joe, along with his partner Mike, are some of the best club owners I have ever worked with, and who run several other fitness businesses too, but Joe still took the time to acknowledge the guests in his house that day. I promise to show my thanks for your support Every single member is thanked every single time they leave the house. "Thank you for coming in today. We appreciate your business". It doesn't have to be harder than this. Use these words exactly. Don't use, "thanks man". Don't just nod and wave. Say thank you like you understand who really does pay for the bills in this house. If you have staff that can't do this, or who find it embarrassing, fire those people and get new staff. The guests in this house are far more important than a few self-conscious staff idiots with social issues. I promise to keep my house clean so your visit is a pleasant one Your club is never as clean as you think it is. Get a cleaning staff that can get it done but keep the staff moving during their shifts. I don't expect the staff to stay after work cleaning this place. We will get a professional crew, or simply a retired couple, to clean, but I do expect all staff to walk through the club throughout the day keeping the house clean for our guests. We will give equipment a quick wipe. We will pick up crap off the floor. We will take care of the locker rooms every 30 minutes. Our house is always clean because it is one of the main reasons our guests quit us for other clubs in the area. Customer service really isn't that hard. Say hello, know a name, say goodbye and keep your house clean. Visit a typical club and you see members walk by the check-in without an acknowledgment. Walk through almost any club and see litter on the floor. Watch a member leave and the staff is too busy to say thank you as he quietly walks past the desk and three staff people leaning on the counter. Many club owners complain about competition, but most of you would be better off buying a big mirror and hang it on the wall across from your desk. Sit at your desk and look up. There, in the mirror, that is the rat bastard (skinny bitch?) that is crushing your business. If you want more money, and want to keep more members, remember that your members are guests in your house and not a number in a business that can easily be replaced if lost. What I read this week: There was a great article by Martin Rooney, the resident genius for Bill Parisi, in Men's Health, centered on some of the training he does with his athletes. Martin is a talented writer as well and has a best selling book on mixed martial arts fitness training. See Martin speak if you get a chance this year. His hands-on workshops at the Perform Better Summits are hugely popular. An interesting side note: One of my friends just attended a mentorship at Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove's club in California. He said he was stunned to see their trainers working all of their clients out using the same training techniques that guys like Martin Rooney do with their athletes. He was especially amazed to see a woman in her 50's doing dead lifts and one-legged squats. Probably one of the biggest mistakes we make in the business is that we believe serious people need serious training and mainstream people need to be locked into fixed equipment and use stupid little shinny weights. Alwyn and Martin have been training real people as athletes for years no matter what age or sex they are. Use the techniques that get results in athletes and you might get results from your other clients as well. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:37:54 -0500 Originally Posted: 02/13/09 I recently visited an old friend and client, Todd Levine, from Rochester, New York. He is a really good owner when he feels like it, and an average one during golf season, but last year, despite all the negative images about the economy and what is happening financially in the world, Todd had a record year. He operates a couple of Gold's Gyms. His flagship club his about 25,000 square and represents a lot of forward thinking compared to many other owners in the industry, and especially in that franchise which often bases a new club on the amount of equipment it can hold. Todd's isn't a particularly beautiful club, but it is a very effective business, and I got a fresh perspective after spending a few days with Todd and his young business partner, George. When I walked into the club on a Wednesday evening, Todd and George had over a 100 members working with a team of trainers doing group functional. It was sold as a weight loss challenge but the reality was that is was functional training in motion. The members were smiling, screaming and having fun all over the club and the energy was as good as it can get on a frigid night in Rochester. The interesting thing to me as I sat and watched was that the trainers were stuck in holes all around the club. They were using the walkways, the group room, a small, dedicated functional area and just about any other space they could find that was open. The bobbed, weaved and leaped around all the traditional equipment that sat empty in the middle of the club. This started a discussion about what is called money zones. Money zones are areas in the club that derive the most income over a year's period of time. Todd calls them touch zones in his club. He recently has a couple of owners from another club visit him on a Saturday and he took them through his place at the peak Saturday morning traffic hour. According to Todd, the group rooms were packed, the functional area was filled, and he admits that this area is currently weak in relationship to the rest of the place, and the free weight area was filled, the cardio was going and members and trainers were using all the rest of the space that was open. The epiphany moment for the guests was the fact that the fixed equipment was deserted. As Todd described it, the club was running at a high capacity and it seemed that the members were actually working around the fixed equipment. The working areas that were filled are called the touch zones. These are the areas of the club where members interact with each other and a staff person rather than being on their own just using the equipment. Group exercise is a touch zone because of the group dynamics. Group personal training is a touch zone because of the relationship with the trainer and the group. Even your front counter is a touch zone because that is where you have a chance to demonstrate customer service to every member as they enter and leave your business. I call these money zones because touches equal member retention. Keep in mind that Todd was one of the original Gold's Gyms in the country and he was showing me that his single joint fixed equipment had that lowest use of anything in his business. The money zones made his business and he credits his success on how well he and George get their members involved in anything besides just sitting on a piece of fixed stuff that is 30 years out of date. As a result of this discussion, we redesigned his club during my visit. We eliminated about 15% of his fixed stuff, opened up designated areas in the club for functional space, ordered about $4000 worth of new functional tools, which represents a very large number of new toys for your trainers and members, and reset his membership to reflect group personal training. The lesson to learn here is that during a flat year for many this guy had a record year, and he did it using a simple approach. His focus, and yours should be for this year, was on working toward maximizing your strengths. Most of you will find that you have these money zones in your club, and most of your clubs will have almost the exact same areas that are full as Todd does in his club. During 2009, exploit your money zones and kill your black holes. If your members and trainers are working around your field of fixed equipment, get rid of some of it and open up some training space. If you don't know what to do in that space, come see me in a seminar this year. We are showing clips and actually doing workouts illustrating what should happen in your businesses. And don't forget that the Perform Better Summits are just beginning for the year and you can experience some of the magic there that you need to take back to your club. We have come to think over the years of the equipment in the club as our product, and we were wrong. Your staff, the energy in the club and your ability to touch people each day is what people want and is what we should sell. We have become lazy and just buy more and more equipment thinking that our purchases represents service. It doesn't and the member knows that, which is why you lose so many members to fresh competitors. If all you sell is the right to use a giant field of outdated crap, then you deserve to lose your members to a guy with a bigger and better field of crap. If you don't relate and service your members, then they have no reason to stay with you since it is all about the equipment and not the relationship People involved in relationships don't leave your business. People who are touched stay longer and pay longer, something Todd and his team proved during a tough year. And keep in mind; he did it in Rochester, which is not exactly the club capital of the world. 2009, The Year of the Money Zone I like it, and I hope you spend the year building your zones and killing those nasty black holes. What I am reading now: Beyond Bullet Points, by Cliff Atkinson. This is a good book if you have to do any type of presentations in your business. My friend Ernst from Austria recommended it and it is a good read for someone who has to sway an opinion or keep people entertained for a few hours. We have changed the format of our seminars for 2009. The entire first day is dedicated to changing the culture of your club into a functional driven business and then how to support this change through stronger point-of-sale memberships. We have gotten solid feedback on shifting training to EFT based over 12 months and on the 30-day membership for $19. If you haven't been in awhile, we have a lot new to share with you. We are also only doing two sales gigs this year, which will be based on doing more sales at point-of-sale. We are using a new price structure for those as well based upon training more of your people more cheaply. This year's price will be just $89 per person for the entire two-day seminar with a lot of customer service too. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:34:59 -0500 Originally Posted: 02/04/09 One of the funniest things in this industry is to go to a major tradeshow and see some company proudly flaunting their newest line of fixed equipment, which is really another redo of 1969 Nautilus. We need a lot of things in this industry, but we don't need another startup company basing their entire investment on a line of equipment that was out of date 20 years prior to the show. There have been breakthroughs in equipment. Functional equipment, such as Human Sport by Star Trac, FreeMotion, and Kinesis by Technogym, are progressions on the evolutionary scale representing thought at the next level, and you will see many more club owners convert completely to a functional culture during the next five years. Costs go down for the owner and the member actually gets results leading to morepeople staying longer and paying longer. It's progress but not the total solution. Perhaps the questions I get asked the most often by reporters, or club owners bored out of their minds, is what is going to be the next big thing in this industry? In my opinion, the next big breakthrough won't be equipment driven. The next big breakthrough that will drive us from 41 million members (IHRSA numbers) currently in clubs in this country to 80 million and beyond will be the development of a nutrition component that individualizes the process for our members and can be sold and serviced at the club level. We have gone about as far as we can on the fitness trail. Pioneers are still out there and people like Gray Cook, Bill Parisi, Mike Boyle, Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, Anthony Diluglio, and some of the other great minds in our industry, will continue to take us to a higher level of results-driven fitness that is possible to deliver on a broad scale in commercial fitness settings. But even this steadily increasing knowledge is just a step along the evolutionary trail. In our world, more efficient ways to train people is much like the first functional machines. These machines took us further along, but you can still turn around and see where we came from last week. It's a step, not a leap. Nutritional knowledge that isn't controversial, that can be individualized and that can be scaled to the typical club will be the key that drives revenue in the fitness industry during the next decade. Nutritional support is where we have failed the consumer and this lack of support and guidance is the block to long-term sustainable growth in the fitness business. Provide a solution the millions of fat people tired of their bodies and the client will find us instead of us begging for more members. In other words, we may get from 41 million members to 45 million members in the next few years by just maintaining our current percentage as the population continues to expand in this country. But if we want to get big numbers, and the even bigger revenues, by doubling our current penetration rate in our national population, we must finally bring to market a way to drive weight loss consistently for the average person. Fitness sucks. It is hard, no fun, repetitious, boring, endless, frustrating, time consuming, mind numbing, ego driven (in the mind of someone who doesn't yet do fitness but who is contemplating it) and why should I even do fitness when all I want to really do is lose 15 pounds and finally get laid this weekend. Weight loss sells, and yet we don't sell it in commercial clubs in any scale at all. Over 60% of the population is overweight and obese, yet we still don't sell weight management in the clubs. Many of our club owners are overweight, not because they don't work out, but because they are confused as the consumer on what constitutes efficient nutrition. The biggest pioneer in nutrition in this industry, and one who should be remembered as one of the four or five most influential people in the history of the fitness industry, Neal Spruce, was right 20 years ago when he first introduced a basic metabolic typing diet into mainstream fitness, but we still only practice nutrition at a very basic level in our industry and in very few clubs as a national percentage. Most of us believe that the equation for getting in shape is about 15% of what you do and about 85% of what you eat. We have reached 41 million members by selling a solution for the smallest percentage of the equation. Just think what is possible if we finally sold the entire package. There is a first generation of new super heroes practicing nutrition at the club level. Guys like Robert Yang, Dr. Mark Smith and John Berardi are years ahead of what the typical club offers. Paul Chek was years ahead of his time in the application of nutrition at the fitness consumer level. And Neal Spruce is still creating new tools through his new company to provide a solution. It's coming, and we will get there, but there will never be 80 million fitness members until we can make big asses smaller and get paid well for the process. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:32:57 -0500 Originally Posted: 01/31/09 What we do matters. Helping people find a better quality of life makes a difference. Why discuss these things? Because when times get a little tough and we all get a little frustrated with our businesses, we start dwelling on the negative aspects of the fitness business, such as how much we hate the pain-in-the-ass members, the never ending parade of stupid employees and the constant struggle to grow a business we once cared deeply about. Many owners got into fitness for a very simple, almost embarrassing to actually say, idea. Most of us started on this path because we wanted to somehow make a difference. It's soft. It's not easy party talk, but for most of us, we chose fitness because improving people seems like a noble way of making a living. Having the ability, willingness and talent to help people lead better lives through fitness should be accepted as a humbling gift for those who have possess these rare talents. In our world today, it seems far more people lead lives of destruction or irrelevance instead of exploiting the ability to change the world they live in. You chose in life but most chose the easy path that seldom leads to any long-term benefit to anyone, including the person who made the decision. We see people like Bill Gates, who literally donates billions of dollars a year through his foundation to change everything he sees needs fixing, from the ability of a poor child to gain access to education through computers, to fighting horrible diseases that cause the death of millions of people somewhere in the world. Because of the scale at which he operates, we believe that what he, and other like-minded good souls do is something beyond our grasp. But it isn't. Changing one single person who, through your patience as a trainer or dedication as an owner, leads a quietly better life because they are healthier, more productive and happier, impacts the world around you just as deeply as a gift of a million dollars to a worthy cause. In some ways, this change might be viewed as more important because if happened in your world, in your community and in your club. You did it, and you did it yourself. It is easy to hate this business because of the constant need for customer service and new customers. It is also easy to become the walking dead who does nothing but spend all of his hours trying desperately to avoid going into his own business. When money is hard and the world around you seems like it's collapsing, it also becomes overwhelming to think that we actually have to fight so hard to keep doing what we do. Why not just sell it, close it or get out of it and get on with a life that is less stressful? Because then what would you do? Would you then become one of the millions of people who work for the money but don't contribute anything to their world or local community? Would you become a person trapped in job that requires nothing more than moving paper around an office or a number on a screen, needed work perhaps but seldom satisfying in world changing view? The fitness world gives you both: the chance to make a lot of money if you learn to finish things and run a good business and the chance to change lives. We change lives. We as an industry change a lot of lives. You as a local owner can change your community and the people who trust you with the care of their not-so-perfect bodies, every single day you are in business. Sit somewhere quietly and find that reason that inspired you to start your business or dedicate your life to fitness. That reason, and your belief that you can make a difference, should give you a motivation to get up in the morning and go to work. Find your reason to live up to your talent and passion. What you do is important, even if I am the only one reminding you. Report from Charlotte: We just finished our first seminar of the year. Good owners are still making money and ineffective owners are still looking for answers. This was the largest seminar we have ever had in this market and perhaps the best collection of owners and staff we have ever had in that area. Special note: You have four good months in front of you. Work it harder than you have ever worked in your life and you will make money this spring. The clients are there but service, marketing and sales are more important than ever. Remember, good owners can still not be successful because the tools they use don't work. Drop by a seminar and let's discuss more efficient ways to make money this year. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:30:08 -0500 Originally Posted 01/21/09 One of the negative parts about being a consultant is that the more experience you get the easier it is to smell death. I think it might happen when you get to visit maybe 500 clubs or so and realize that there just aren't that many creative ways to build a club, or anything really particularly new or innovating, out there in the fitness world. Every once in awhile I get shocked and see something fresh and effective, but mostly it's the same things done over and over again. Fields of equipment, cardio too close together, locker rooms that are never quite finished and colors picked out by blind, old Republicans (conservative to the extreme with white, beige or the occasional ugly yellow, red or cheap plastic blue). At some point, however, you stop seeing the physical plants for what they are and you start looking for the signs that the business is making money. It gets so weird that you eventually get to the point where you can actually tell how much the club is generating and how many members it has. Businesses that are successful have a definite look that is easy to see when you get used to what you're looking for in the club. The painful thing is that you can't hide failure. Failure stinks and all the paint and equipment in the world won't cover the smell of a business that is failing and an owner that is scared and who has given up. It's a lot like really obese people or heavy smokers who won't change; they are already dead but they just won't lie down. They quit trying and become passive passengers in life, unable to enjoy the finer moments of a long walk, ski vacation, sex or anything else that might interfere with a destructive lifestyle. Can you come back from the dead? It's possible, but it takes some type of life altering circumstance to force change. In fact, if you notice, few people make any major change in their life unless they are forced to by circumstances outside of their control. The drunk quits when he ends up wrecked at the bottom. The overweight person only loses weight when his wife leaves him for someone who is willing to walk on the beach instead of sitting in front of the idiot screen. And the failed businessperson will only learn business skills after he has lost one business already and is now finally open to the thought that he doesn't know everything. Here are a few signs I've seen in the last year in clients who are near the end of their careers, whether they want to be or not. If you see yourself in here, remember that self-awareness is the first step toward changing a behavior that is killing you or your business: • You don't market: You have every excuse, from too expensive to it doesn't work in my market, but there is nothing more important than chasing new leads. If you're not marketing every week, every year, and if marketing is not your full-time job, you are failing and don't even know it. Marketing is not a person or a department; it is your purpose in life if you own a small business. Any business, anywhere, can do some type of marketing each week no matter how broke you are. Stop whining and do some door hangers if nothing else. • Your lack of success is some else's fault: The economy, your competition, the new guy your wife is dating or any other excuse is just that, an excuse to fail. It's your life and it's your fault if it turns out like poodle crap. • You go home at 5:00: This one is a major indicator of a club on the way down. If you own one club, you have to be there working where people can see you, such as selling memberships or working with your counter staff, when the majority of the members are in the club. Tony DeLeede, perhaps one of the most talented club owners in modern club history, would often just drop into a club and teach a class that night to get a feel of what was going on, and he had 25 clubs at the time. The 5:00 owners are the ones who believe that being busy means something. It does. It means you're busy. But it does not mean you're effective. Busy is busy but it isn't always effective. Is what you're doing now, at this moment, making money for your business. If not, don't do it. Only do the things that make your business grow. • You're training clients: Training clients is the least effective thing you can do in your business, even if you own a personal training business. Sell memberships, speak to business groups, teach a group exercise class once a week or so (touch bigger numbers) or hand out flyers. All of these money-producing things are more important in your business, and more effective at generating money, then training a member one-on-one. No, you can't keep that favorite member you love to train three mornings a week because then you want to go home early because you feel you've been there all day. • You own a club, or a small chain, and you haven't sold a membership yourself in months: You have to sell memberships to stay in touch with your potential clients. The look on their face when you show them around, the questions they raise about your business offerings or the concerns they express about your competition are things you need to hear personally to keep in the game. Name anything you do, or think you do; that is more important than generating new income for your business? And you can't teach it if you don't know how to do it. • You don't know your numbers: How many tours last month? What is the closing percentage for your team and for each individual salesperson? How many check-ins do you average on a Monday? It's the 15th of the month, how much do you need to average per day for the rest of the month to be profitable for that month? If you don't know your numbers, you are not involved in your business and you will die a painful and ugly business death. • You micro-manage: You don't train people well, and don't have systems in place, both of which take work, so you just hang around the club irritating the staff and getting in the way. Micromanaging is often a sign that you are a situational manager, meaning nothing is written down and you just make stuff up as you go along driving your good staff away and making the dummies who stay worthless. Involved owners build systems and teach from those systems. They have procedure manuals, training courses, customer service and sales training and everything else a small business needs to be healthy. If you don't have systems, you are simply making up nonsense as you go along. Chose life. Learn new ideas. Challenge yourself. Come to a seminar if for no other reason to have some yell at you and get you moving. Change is painful but life on the other side is worth it. What I am reading this week: I just bought, "People Are Idiots And I Can Prove It", by Larry Winget. I buy all his stuff and laugh my way through it. Give your staff his book, "It's Called Work For A Reason" to get them thinking about how they work and why (hint: we carry and sell this one). Final thought of the day: It doesn't matter whose side you are on. President Obama is the elected choice and we need this guy to get it done. Do something this week to make a difference. Buy a car, buy cheap stock, or get a house at half off. We're coming back but do something to help besides whining because your guy didn't win. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:23:06 -0500 Originally Posted 01/17/09 No concept in the fitness business is deader than opening a new club with a giant room full of fixed equipment. The more is better concept is dead and the more educated member has a totally different expectation about he or she wants from their fitness center, even the deconditioned members who watch the women's shows and read the chick magazines. Why do think it is so hard to make money in this business? Consider the fact the product we are selling isn't what the member wants. They read the magazines, get pumped for a new workout and body, and the local fitness center then straps the person into a time machine (read single joint fixed equipment here, such as ab piece, adductor/abductor or the classic leg extension) and takes the person back to the 80's. The client expects cool moves like television shows and internet workouts but ends up sitting on their ass wondering why this workout doesn't match what everything they just read. The member, or potential member, is here because he just picked up Men's Health, the new source for the consumer by the way, reads about a workout involving plyo boxes, kettle bells, sand bags and other exciting toys and heads to the local club to get signed up. But 30 minutes into the tour, he realizes that the club doesn't have any of this stuff, or if it does it's a very poor selection stuck in a corner. My favorite is the club that has the traditional one rack of med balls that tops out at 12 pounds mostly covered in duct tape. This guy will not join because you don't have what he wants. You might have an acre of equipment with two of everything or more but fixed equipment only sells memberships to a very limited group, mostly the gym rats that typically comprise about eight percent of a club's membership. That is how we used to do it. Big rooms, covered in equipment and we bragged that we had more than the other guy (big surprise here, a guy bragging that he has more, is bigger than the other guy, or does it better). Watch the trainers in a good club and you'll see that the business has evolved. I was standing in a club that was about 20,000 square feet this month and there were six trainers in action. Every trainer was working with their clients in a corner or any open space they could find using bands, dumb bells, a few old medicine balls and whatever else they could scrounge. One trainer had a huge nylon bag he brought himself stuffed with his own toys for his clients. Take a hint here you club owners. What kind of message does that send to the clients when the trainer owns better stuff than the club does? The fascinating part was that the trainers were completely avoiding the club's fixed equipment. Not one trainer in an hour put a single client on a piece of fixed equipment. The club did have some functional equipment (Human Sport by Star Trac and a FreeMotion piece) that the trainers worked into their workouts but the regular fixed was ignored. Visit any of the gurus in training, such as Mike Boyle (http://www.bodybyboyle.com/), and you'll see every client, no matter what age, up and moving on the floor, throwing balls against a wall and doing agility work on the floor. And this is not restricted to just performance clients. Even the personal training clients do the same things the athletes do. Get results and you stay longer and pay longer, the new mantra for member retention. People want results from their workouts. They don't want to keep going around a circle because the club has taken the easy way out, which is to become equipment dependent. Why learn how to train clients and build a system when it is so much easier to just let the equipment babysit the members? We need to change because the members have had enough of no results for $49 per month and want more from their club then being ignored. The sad thing is that a club can cure this cheaply. About $4000 will give provide a complete trainer's toy fantasy including full sets of kettle bells, and if you throw in your first functional equipment, you're in for not much more compared to trying to throw six different leg machines at the members. Functional equipment is cheap and is a great investment because you can do so much per piece compared to a simple chest press limited to one exercise. Members also want expertise and leadership, something a club that is equipment centric seldom provides. Trainers become rep counters and ruined in a equipment driven club because they are taught to let the equipment do the work. A perfect example here is the "three workouts with a trainer and then you are on your own" approach to fitness. If this is how your club works I can guarantee you have a lot of retention losses and it simply gets harder every year to replace the members you lose due to neglect. The trainers and the workouts in the three and you're done environment suck because they know in five minutes if that person will buy personal training packages. If the new members aren't going to buy, how good do you think that workout is going to be? Teach them a circuit, get them out of the way, and they will be quickly forgotten by the club ultimately ending up as a retention failure is a few months. There is a new generation of owners coming into the field, such as a young friend named JC Chlubna in California, that knows the difference between 1980's training and effective workouts, yet his club didn't match his personal philosophy. He does his own workouts powered by functional methods, yet his club is filled full of fixed stuff. It's hard businesswise for him to change because many of his members still are doing old body part splits and other Arnold era training methods but if you don't change your business won't grow and you become less competitive in the market each year. The hard part is can you educate these members and keep them and still change the culture in the club and attract a newer breed of member. The key here is to remember that our clients read the magazines, watch movies such as The 300, and are more current on what's happening in training than most of our club owners. If you want to make money, which is what this blog is really about, then toss a lot of your fixed stuff and start building a club culture based upon functional, results driven training. And yes, you will probably have to fire a whole bunch of your out-of-date trainers and send them off to Jurassic Park with the other dinosaurs but evolve or die in nature as in small business. What I am reading this week: Skinny Bitch, perhaps the worst alleged fitness book ever written. A friend recommended it, or he is a friend at least for now. Don't read it, buy it or let your client's near it. I consider this one of the worst books I have ever read, and I have read pure garbage more than once. Fri, 13 May 2011 12:07:07 -0500 Originally Posted 01/13/09 Most owners are so busy being busy that they fail to do the things that make money in the business. If you are not making the money you want from your business, step away from the endless action and make sure you are doing what is important in your business. Here is a short list, meaning you concentrate on a limited number of things to do to make a difference. These are also the things you should be doing if you think the economy is hurting your business, although when I consult, I usually find that the club owner is hurting his own business far worse than outside influences by failure to execute the basic skills in the business. This edition also will answer an email I received from Pitaron Health Club Consulting in Israel. Avi, Asaf and Sharon asked if I could give them some solutions for clubs in hard times. Here are the things you should be doing right now in your business: Run a 30-day trial for $19: You need to get as many people into the system as possible at the lowest risk factor (we call this a risk free trial membership) for the potential client. This version of the trial membership is more powerful than a traditional trial, such as 14 days free, and attracts a different clientele. Your goal with this tool is to fill your own club with potential members while keeping as many prospects as possible away from your competitors. This trial also works quite well if you are in a market competing against low price/value competitors. Run this until the end of May and make sure you put a strong call to action on each piece (offer expires two weeks from the date of delivery). Train your staff on sales: Train everyone, including the childcare people and janitors, in basic sales. Train everyday in sales with your team. If you have lousy sales people, sell all memberships yourself through the end of May. Get sales help, coaching, tools (we offer all of these through the NFBA) and be ready to do business. Your target conversion rate has to be at least 60% of all qualified leads convert into some type of annual membership over 30 days. The national average is about 35-38%, which means your competitor isn't hurting you, you just can't do business and deserved to get smacked down because you can't execute one of the most basic skills of any small business, which is the ability to convert potential business into real business. Offer a value membership: Acknowledge that times are time and offer a value membership. For example, let's say that you currently offer a $49 a month membership for 14 months using a membership contract. Send a letter to all your members stating that you realize times are tough and that the economy is affecting their lives so you are going to respond to this by offering temporarily a value membership of $39 for 18 months. This is open to all existing members. And no, if they all sign up your monthly EFT draft will not go down. In fact, it will go up. What most owners fail to consider is that if someone has a money issue and has four payments left on his membership of $49, when he gets to the end of the membership he will walk away. If he has a chance, however, to resign for a fresh 18 months for only $39 he might stay. The increase retention rate will offset the lower payment and in fact should far exceed what you are collecting now. In other words, you should make more money from fewer people because members you would have lost will stay at the lower rate. The letter is important because it shows you are feeling their pain and reacting to it and keep is on a temporary basis until at least the end of May. If it works well, keep it going, but if you don't like it you at least stabilize your business and increase retention. These three things should have an immediate affect on your business. If you're scared and nervous, stop watching television and stop reading the newspapers and go to work. You cannot change the past and if you think deeply about it, very few of your fears of the future ever really turn out to be as bad as you anticipate. Sure the housing market is flat, but what a wonderful time to buy a house as a great discount, and there is money out there but it is loaned on more traditional terms instead of crazy deals. Sure the stock market is down, but now is the time to get in and buy deals rather than getting out and following the terrified herd. When times seem tough in the fitness business, attack hard with trial marketing and member retention. Your competition is sitting under their desks crying too chugging on that bottle of cheap whiskey. Now is the time to go hard in the market and buy market share from other owners who sit waiting for things to change. Things only change if you are willing to change them, and now is the time to seek change in your market. What I amreading this week: I am rereading Paul Chek's book, "How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy". It's been around for a while and is still an interesting read. Things to Check Out: Alwyn Cosgrove's website (http://www.alwyncosgrove.com/) and the Art of Strength website (http://www.artofstrength.com/). Both of these website will show you the future of the fitness industry. If you haven't been to a Perfom Better Summit-You need too! Check out more details at http://www.performbetter.com/ Fri, 13 May 2011 12:03:07 -0500 Originally Posted 01/07/09 I've tried to avoid this, and avoid this and avoid this yet some more but here it is, the first Plummer blog. I saw blogging coming, and refused to get involved. I saw blogs become great Internet tools to change thought and get information to masses of people and still didn't want to do it. And now, even though blogs are fading for the truly avant-garde in tech, here I am launching my first online attempt at spreading the word. The main reason I haven't written a blog earlier is that most of what I have to say about the business of fitness was being said in the seminars or through my books and I haven't felt the need to try to get much more information out than that. Then two important changes happened that made me want to rethink the need to get information out more frequently. First of all, what is happening in the economy has accelerated the need to get ideas and information out more quickly to our friends and clients. Secondly, the volume of emails I am receiving has dramatically increased over the last year with more people seeking not only information about their particular business but seeking my thoughts on major issues in the world of fitness. The volume simply increased to the point that I could not answer each one individually as I have done in past years. I want to start this new adventure with an important thought; the fitness world is not ending by death due to bad economy. Stop listening to anyone telling you that you will fail due to economy. You might fail because you can't sell. You might fail because your brother-in-law is a dog poop trainer and you should have never hired him anyway. You might fail because you never learned any of the most basic concepts of business and are still unwilling to learn. And you might fail because you already think you know everything because you have been in business for a long time. Remember, you might be one of those people with one year of experience repeated 20 times without every learning anything new. Fri, 13 May 2011 11:19:31 -0500