It’s not an uncommon story.

His trainer planned his exit for months.  He had been using the gym’s resources to help give his business a jump start.

He built a website, recruited a couple other trainers at the gym, let all of his closest clients know, started taking clients on the side for cash only, and a lot of other shady things.

Now Jake wants to sue the hell out of his ex-trainer.

While some gym owners have been successful in this approach, most have simply spent way too much money and time fighting this uphill battle.

As s a business owner, and a victim of this myself, I can’t think of a worse feeling than the moment you realize someone you trust is doing things behind your back…then purposely trying to hurt your business in the process.

Where is the respect?  You give them their start…you build up their clientele…you trusted them…and they ruin it all. It’s a horrible feeling.

Two things normally happen.  First you want to seek revenge.  The second thing that happens is that you start looking at your other employees and start distrusting them as well!

While these feelings are natural, I advised Jake to allow himself to breathe for a moment and think about the reality of the situation.

I told him his first action should be to focus on stabilizing the business.  Contact and keep as many of the trainer’s clients as he can.  Then focus on the ones who already left to go with the trainer.

There is such a small window of time to make all clients and other trainers feel comfortable about the big transition.  By beginning that transition with a lawsuit could position YOU as the bad guy.  And don’t start bashing the trainer or getting into a pissing match.  The only thing that is certain to happen is that you’ll both be covered in piss.

The best revenge you as a gym owner could get is to limit the amount of losses the trainer is trying to create for you, thus cutting off his supply of clients.

Then he can consider a lawsuit.  Jake is cash flow positive, so chances are good that he can outlast the trainer in court.  But you never know just how much you’re going to have to spend in court.

In most cases that I’m aware of, when a gym owner sues the former trainer, and they have a solid non-compete in place, the gym owner will win the case.

BUT…by winning they have also cost themselves a lot of revenue.  They’ve taken attention away from the gym.  They’ve wasted loads of time and they have created even more negative energy around the gym.

You may actually have started your business by first being a trainer who took clients and started your own thing.  Now that you’re a business owner, it scares the hell out of you doesn’t it.  Funny how things come full circle

And if you’re a trainer considering doing this…don’t.  It’s perfectly fine if you feel you’re destined for bigger and better than what your gym is providing you.  But integrity is the only thing you have 100% control over.  Lose it once, it’s gone forever. It’s better to have a surplus of savings, then build your business from scratch.

And you never know, if you do it the right way, communicate openly with the gym owner, and don’t directly compete with the gym, he/she might even be willing to help you get started.

No matter what Jake decides to do, he will need to take a long look at his own management style.  He has to take some responsibility for letting himself and his business allow the trainer to put him in this position.

It’s his job to make sure that clients and members are loyal to the gym and not only to the trainer.  They need to inspect what they expect and make sure the clients are receiving a high level of customer service from not only the trainer but from the gym as well.

If the trainers are the clients’ only contact with the gym, that could become a problem.  You as the owner or manager need to touch base with clients on a regular basis as well.

The clients need to know that the gym is looking out for them and that the trainer’s system is in fact the gym’s system.

Had Jake done that, he would have found out much sooner what the trainer was up to and he could have minimized the damage caused when he left the gym.

He can’t go back now and change the past, but at least he can avoid repeating it by taking a few precautionary steps with current and future trainers and clients.

And one last note…if you still have trainers as contractors…you have to make the switch.  They need to be employees and they need to follow your systems and your programming.  Period.

This promotion assumes you have massage or some type of spa treatment at your facility.  You could try this by bundling personal training along with it, but I don’t know many of our significant others who would appreciate “Happy Valentine’s Day…maybe you should go work out”

If you don’t have spa or massage or some other wellness related service, then skip to the bottom of this blog post for an idea on how you can still pull this off….PLUS a cool bonus gift you can give to your clients that they will LOVE.

This is a simple, low cost strategy that can be marketed to your current patient list via email, a letter mail out, or flyers/handouts/signs at your facility

Here is what you offer as your Valentines Day Package:

A 45 Minute Massage and a Bouquet of flowers that is delivered to recipients door on Valentines Day, complete with a custom card, and gift card for other services at your facility.

Who wouldn’t love a massage treatment and flowers delivered to their door?  And best of all, you’re saving your member the time and trouble of going out and doing the shopping themselves.  (Now that I have all of the mens attention)

What You Need:

Find a local florist that offers delivery on Valentines Day with minimal or low cost, that can supply bouquet of flowers and let you add a custom letter or gift card to the bouquet. Get your clients and members to pre-order this with you, so that you can provide the florist with all of the orders at once, along with your customized cards and giftcards.

Many will even offer you a special rate (yes, even on Valentine’s day) because you’ll be sending them traffic that they didn’t have to spend marketing dollars on, making the bottom line profit the same.

The Pricing:

For the Valentines Day Bouquet and Massage package, go for a price point around $129.  Your market, may be slightly higher or lower. Remember, the customer that is buying this is also buying for the convenience of them not having to go shopping for V-Day.  You can also sweeten the pot by offering the purchaser a free 30 minute PT session or a $25 gift card for themselves.

The Upsell:

This is where you can make some extra money.  You’re certainly not going to make bank off of $129.  Even if you do sell 50 of these, the cost of flowers, your time, and the actual cost of the massage you’re not looking at much margin.  You should have plenty of upsells and downsells you already use daily, so you’ll just follow that same strategy.  Adam and Taylor have had success with upsells such as:

• An extra 30 Minutes of Massage for an additional $2
• A Facial for $17 An Acupuncture Treatment for $47
• An Accupuncture Treatment for $47
• A Chiropractic Exam For $57

If you can reach their same magic number of 50 units sold, you’ll get some good immediate cash, you’ll get some solid upsell revenue…and even more importantly, you’re positioning yourself as indispensable to your members and clients by going above and beyond to make their lives better and easier.  AND when you get their significant others into the gym you have the opportunity to sell them fitness as well!

What if you don’t have spa, massage, or wellness offerings?

Well first, you can always partner with a massage therapist and get them to give you a killer deal on 45-minute massages.  They may even provide them to you for free just so they can have access to some of your members with expendable income to experience their services.  Then pick up the giftcards or certificates from them before you contact the florist.

         >>>>COOL BONUS IDEA TO GIVE YOUR BEST CLIENTS<<<<

This is probably best for your boot campers, training clients, or clients who spend more money with you…probably not for a general gym member necessarily because there is a bit of cost on your part.  So perhaps it’s best as a special reward for those who are willing to invest more in you.

Go to www.MagMyPic.com.  Some of you may remember this as one of my Killer Resources from Fit Biz TV where I put myself on the cover of a magazine.  My mother was very proud of this.

Right now they have some Valentine’s day themes you can create for your members.  Or put them on a funnier, non-VDay magazine.  The point is that for $2.65 they will print your member’s picture on the cover of the magazine and mail them a framed version!

How much fun would it be to present your clients a framed picture of them on the cover of:

•     Sexy Beast Magazine
•     Nerd of the Year Magazine
•     Muscle Magazine
•     Model Magazine
•     Sexy Magazine
•     Teen Diva Magazine
•     The Incredible Bulk Magazine
•     Power Team Magazine

They will love this, and they will love YOU for thinking of them!

Just go on your clients Facebook pages and download your favorite embarrassing picture of them and use it for a magazine cover.  $2.65 later and they’re getting a framed version of their own magazine.  Have them shipped to you so you can present it to them.

Happy Valentines Day Everyone!

Curtis

What do you do if your club is at break-even or below break-even? Do you spend 13% and give up more of your own salary or borrow from other departments or be late on rent? I would hope not. And what if you’re already profitable? By following a pre-determined percentage, you very well could be spending unnecessary profits you could put in your own pocket or redistribute to other projects at your club.

And the timeless quandary of whether the chicken or the egg came first. Do you spend marketing dollars you don’t really have, expecting to receive them back from sales…or do you try to make more sales so that you have marketing dollars to spend? All of this makes determining a marketing budget seemingly tricky. I have a solution for you.

Instead of worrying about percentage of revenue, the best way for you to determine your marketing budget is to determine the answer to this question:

How much do you need to spend on marketing in order to reach your revenue/profit goals?

To do that, you need to forget everything you’ve learned from textbooks, and you need to work backwards to determine the optimal amount you need to spend on your marketing efforts. To start the process you need to start with two numbers. You need to know how many leads you need to come through your door and you need to know how much it costs to generate a lead.

Let’s assume your average membership grosses you on average $500. Let’s also assume that you’d like to generate $500,000 in revenue this year. That would mean you need 1,000 sales to reach that goal. If you are closing 70% of the leads that come through your door, that means you need 1,429 leads to come to your business this year (1,000/.70=1,429)

By tracking the total number of leads you generate from your marketing efforts, you will know how much it costs to generate a lead. For example if you run a newspaper ad for $750 and it generates 25 leads, your cost per lead is $30. (forget about actual sales when determining this number, since you already calculated it through your closing percentage above) If you run a direct mail campaign, spend $4,000 and generate 50 leads, your cost per lead on that campaign is $70. If you run a referral campaign, spend $500 and generate 100 leads, your cost per lead = $5. You’ll then tally all marketing dollars spent and divide by the total number of leads and you’ll have your cost per lead. In these two examples $5,250 / 175 leads = $30 lead acquisition cost.

You’ll then multiply the lead acquisition cost by the total number of leads you need to reach your annual revenue goal of $500,000 to determine how much you need to spend on marketing this year ($30 x 1,429 = $42,870). This means that your optimal marketing budget is $3,572 per month or 8.5% of revenues.

Remember however, that we’re just considering membership revenues in this calculation. If you’ve done a good job of implementing a variety of profit centers and upsells, you know that the average lifetime value of a client could be much higher than $500. Conversely, if you’re doing a poor job of retaining members, the loss rate could bring the lifetime value of a client lower. Other things to consider are profit margins, commissions paid to sales people, closing percentage, But the above calculation should give you a good starting point.

The power of working backwards from a lead/sales standpoint rather than simply from a percentage of revenue is that you are focusing on the factors that are responsible for sales and revenue. This is a much better approach to determining your marketing budget. Your investment in marketing will always end up as a percentage of revenue, but it shouldn’t start there. Always begin with the end in mind and you will be more likely to reach your goals.

When was the last time you received flowers or balloons that weren’t from your mom or significant other?

Probably never right?

This strategy is so simple, you’ll kick yourself for not having thought of it sooner. And it is so powerful that you’ll want to implement it beginning today.

When you have a new member join or one of your clients reaches a goal they’ve worked hard for, send them flowers or balloons to their work.

Yes, it might cost you a little bit. Balloon delivery will run you $25-40 and flowers for a decent sized wild flower assortment will probably cost around the same. But the power of this strategy far outweighs the cost.

Think about it.

Aside from the fact that your client is completely thrilled to receive the unexpected gift, what do you think happens to those around them? When someone gets flowers delivered, or someone sees flowers or balloons at their desk, the natural thing that everyone asks is:

Where did you get the flowers?

Think of the response they’re going to get:

“My personal trainer sent them to me because I lost 20 pounds”

“My gym sent them to me as a thank you for signing up for personal training/bootcamp”

Don’t you think that is going to stick in the mind of the co-workers? It will likely get them asking questions right away. They’ll recognize that you aren’t the typical gym or the typical trainer and that you REALLY care about your clients and members.

When your client comes in for their next appointment, you KNOW they’re going to be gushing about it. And they’ll likely say something about how everyone was so jealous that they received the gift.

That’s when you can either A) Give your member some gift cards to hand out to their co-workers, or B) Get the name of a manager or owner who you can work with to set up a group membership offer.

Even if nothing comes of the referral initially, you have now planted a seed in the mind of every co-worker that you are serious about your clients’ goals. When the time does come for them to find a fitness provider, they will start with YOU!

To all my Hulkamaniacs out there…

Curtis Mock

Websites and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• www.ClubSolutionsMagazine.com (The best damn health club magazine in the land)
• www.GymMarketing.com (Fitness Marketing Group corporate website for health club consulting and campaigns)
• www.prlog.org(My favorite online press release website for fitness businesses)
• Health Club Marketing with GymSuccess.com, the most complete resource center for gyms

—————————-

ANNOUNCEMENT:  First off, you are doing yourself an injustice for not leaving a comment on the show.  Every time you do, that gives you an inbound link to your website…which GOOGLE LOVES!  So far this is episode 24.  You could make a comment on all 24 shows and have 24 inbound links coming to your site!!!  That is huge!  Especially since we had just over 2,300 visits to this website LAST WEEK!   Google gives more weight to YOUR website when a high traffic website is linking to it.  So do yourself a favor, even if you don’t have time to watch the entire episode.  MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE  A COMMENT EACH WEEK!  It is the absolute easiest way you can take action once a week.

Who doesn’t love saving money?  I see no one raised their hands.  We like saving money almost as much as we like MAKING MONEY!  Well I’ve got a fun little tip for you that could save you hundreds of dollars a month with your thermostat!  That’s right, your thermostat…

Press releases are very powerful, both in print locally and online.  The big difference is that online press releases don’t really have to say anything special, and they certainly don’t have to be written well…they just need to be posted….along with a few keywords that I talk about on this week’s Killer Resource segment of the show.

Summertime.  A time of flip flops, bikinis (meow), and unfortunately slow sales.  I have one marketing message that has proven time and time again, year after year, to generate consistent membership sales during the month of June.  You’ll want to watch this!

As always your thoughts are appreciated. Please leave a comment below that will benefit the other viewers AND will get you noticed by Google. Enjoy the show!

I’m tired of this humidity already,

Websites and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• www.fitbusinessinsider.com/multiple-streams-of-income (Sweet video released by Pat Rigsby)
• Health Club Marketing with GymSuccess.com, the most complete resource center for gyms
• www.ezinearticles.com (killer resource where you can post articles that lead back to your fitness website)
• Setting Membership Prices (a link to the example of a new pricing model…note: this link is current as of 4/7/10

—————————-

Is it the right time to start a fitness boot camp business?  Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle????  It is absolutely the best time to build a fitness bootcamp, either as part of your existing health club or gym, or as a standalone business.  The profitability of this business is staggering.  I share with you the strategies of some of the most successful fitness bootcamp owners.

You may not like to write, but surely after listening to me drone on and on about “Google Juice”, you understand the importance of keyword rich articles and backlinks to your site.  This week’s Killer Resource is the absolute best place for you to submit your fitness articles.

What a great little gem I stumbled upon as far as pricing is concerned.  I shared with you the results of an online survey I did a few months ago, well in this week’s episode I reveal the results of two real-world strategies utilizing the pricing model.  You might want to test this out in your price presentation as well because you may be leaving lots of money on the table otherwise!

As always your thoughts are appreciated. Please leave a comment below that will benefit the other viewers AND will get you noticed by Google. Enjoy the show!

Bread and Butter Budnut Booty Draterty…

Websites and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• www.GymMarketing.com (Fitness Marketing Group: The best damn health club marketing company period)
• www.HealthClubProfile.com (A direct link to a free health club consultation with Fitness Marketing Group)
• www.EmailSlideup.com (The cool sign up form you see slide into place at the bottom of www.fitbiz.tv)
• Health Club Marketing with GymSuccess.com, the most complete resource center for gyms
• www.TubeMogul.com (A killer resource that submits a video to dozens of video sites automatically)

—————————-

So you have a website, and it has a newsletter subscription form on it….then why isn’t anyone signing up for it??  You know that you have information that will help them, and you also know that if you can communicate with your prospects and clients on a regular basis, they are likely to start paying you, or KEEP paying you.  I explain a few ways to get more subscribers.

Youtube is king of videos…Or is it?  Youtube might be the largest video sharing site, but there are dozens of others.  Learn how to submit your video to dozens of video sharing sites in the same amount of time it takes to upload to youtube!

The age old dilemma.  Should your staff wear uniforms?  They want to wear cargo shorts and flip flops, you’re happy in blue jeans and a hat.  But what do your members and clients expect?  There is definitely a happy medium between business casual, and beach casual, and that is what I recommend your staff to wear.  I share my thoughts on what is the best way for your staff to dress while at the gym.

As always your thoughts are appreciated.  Please leave a comment below that will benefit the other viewers AND will get you noticed by Google.  Enjoy the show!

I hate Kansas…

Websites and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• www.clubindustryshow.com (Health Club Industry conference in New York)
• Health Club Marketing with GymSuccess.com, the most complete resource center for gyms
• www.99designs.com (A web design service that has web designers competing to create your fitness website)

—————————-

The Club Industry East Show is fast approaching.  If you don’t have tickets yet, you’d better get on it!

Are you tired of having a ceiling on the amount of money you can earn from one-on-one personal training?  There are only so many hours in a day your trainers can train, so the obvious solution is group personal training and fitness bootcamps.  I discuss how you can make the transition now.

Many of you have experienced the headache of creating your fitness website.  You and a designer (possibly not native English speaking) go back and forth…you trying to explain your vision, he/she trying to create that vision as a website.  It’s a frustrating process.  Well now there is a resource that allows you to have dozens of web designers creating your fitness website, increasing the chances of someone creating your vision perfectly.

I also go over some of the most important things you need on your fitness website.  Whether you have an existing website or you plan to create one soon, I share a number of things you absolutely must have on your fitness website to make it more effective.

As always your thoughts are appreciated.  Please leave a comment below that will benefit the other viewers.

Enjoy!

May the force be with you…

In this week’s episode I share with you what you can learn from a gas station attendant, how a personal trainer can help set themselves apart from the other trainers in the gym, a killer resource that will help you capture twice as many emails when someone visits your website, and some methods to get your website listed at the top of Google, that will take you less than 5 minutes

Websites and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• www.ClubSolutionsMagazine.com (health club industry magazine subscription)
• www.JillianMichaels.com (Great example of someone branding themselves)
• www.EmailSlideup.com (A resource that captures more email addresses from website visitors)
• Health club marketing with GymSuccess.com
• www.google.com/addurl (Get your fitness business recognized by Google)
• www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit (Get your fitness business recognized by Yahoo)
• www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx (Get your fitness business recognized by MSN Bing)
• www.google.com/local/add
• www.listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
• www.dmoz.com (A great resource to get indexed by the search engines faster)

It never ceases to amaze me the lack of customer service, and the abundance of missed opportunities people have for making sales.  But you won’t have to worry about that if you’re the owner of the Gate Station in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.  They have their front desk staff trained according to a system and fitness business owners can learn a lot from the lady I came in contact with this week.

If you’re competing against other trainers in your facility, you need to be able to stand out from the crowd.  Branding yourself and becoming a local celebrity personal trainer is hands down the best way to differentiate yourself.

It’s hard enough to get people to visit your website, even harder to convince them to give up their contact information in the short time they spend there.  This week’s killer resource will immediately increase the number of prospects opting into your list.

Google is tough to figure out.  I don’t even think Google knows how to get ranked on Google they’ve made it so complicated.  But to get on the process of being ranked, you need to let Google know you exist.  In the show I share 6 resources to speed up the process.

Don’t forget to leave a helpful comment and you will receive the book I present on the show!

Enjoy the show!

Dedicated to Your Success…