I received an important piece of advice from Ben Bergeron that every gym owner needs to hear. It’s the secret to success for growing your gym into a mini fitness nation.
People travel from all over the world, and spend good money to hear Ben’s thoughts on building a successful gym. As a gym owner, how many of these questions can YOU answer with a confident “yes”?
Do you have over 400 members?
Do you have a gym that makes over $1 million a year?
Do you have coaches that make $100,000?
Do you have athletes at the CrossFit Games every year?
Do you have the ability to take a 3-week vacation?
(This is pulled directly from Ben’s Affiliate of Excellence Seminar, to learn more about his training, you can check it out here: [LINK])
Assuming this is on any gym owner’s list of goals, take a second to hear what Ben has to say is at the heart of this kind of success…
Stop and think about it…
The most valuable dollar a gym owner can spend is one that goes to investing in their current membership. Consider the value that comes from pouring into current members rather than pushing resources towards ways to get new ones.
Marketing
There is one lead that’s more valuable than any other, and it comes from customer referrals.
You don’t spend a dime to get them in the door, and it doesn’t demand much time on your part. They walk in the door, looking for a great workout because so-and-so told them they would love it.
Along with being cheap and easy, these are hot leads too.
Think of showing up at a party and not knowing a single soul. It’s an uncomfortable situation to wait for the perfect time to bail. But if you have a wingmate at your side, you’re much more likely to hang out and have a few drinks. It’s the same at the gym, having just one familiar face makes it all the easier to become a part of the community.
Be sure to thank your members who tell their friends, but there’s no need to incentivize these referrals. It only takes building an energetic place that gets results, and people will be happy to share the love.
Longevity
In business, it’s called customer churn.
This is the number of customers that jump ship for another company or a better solution. As a gym owner, who cares if 10 new people enrolled in basecamp, if 20 decided to cancel their membership?
You will never fill a leaky bucket.
It’s no secret that if classes suck and the coaches are jerks, there is going to be a drop in membership. But even with the greatest gym environment, there is one thing that will cause churn despite the best of intentions.
That is injury.
By our research, this is the number one reason an athlete will drop off their membership. Running into pain, despite a love for the gym, will push someone to find another way to get their fitness fix.
It’s not the new member “trying it out” that’s afflicted with injury either. More often it happens at the critical juncture around 9 months, when they are almost hooked for life.
At this point in their fitness journey, movements feel good, performance bumps occur daily, and there is excitement to push the intensity. Although in reality, they are still a novice in training years, and not as strong as they think (or you may think).
If you can keep your members thriving from 9 months to 2 years, you have clearly instilled principles for that athlete to train there forever more.
Making the Investment
It’s a simple equation…
Happy and healthy members build a thriving gym, and that’s without any stress or money spent on marketing. Although, the question of how to make that happen is not as easy to answer.
The first effort should be the investment of your time. This is actually your most valuable resource—you can get more money, but you cannot get more time.
This time investment goes into…
Building up and training coaches.
Researching and developing new knowledge to use and share.
Teaching supplemental classes that help your members.
Precision with programming and workout structure.
And this only names a few ways that your time helps the gym grow. Once you have figured out how to maximize your time investment, it’s time to consider where your money investment will make the greatest impact.
That means buying new equipment, paying for services to free up your time, and finding ways to make your gym unique.
With the goal of keeping members healthy and improving their performance, this is where investing in Crossover Symmetry makes a huge impact.
The “Value Add” to Your Gym
Pre-gaming with the Crossover Symmetry Shoulder System has become a staple among advanced athletes, with a majority of Games competitors using it daily as part of their preparation.
This has permeated the ranks, with athletes around the world showing up early to get their Activation done on the gym’s one Crossover Symmetry station before the workout.
But we challenge that there is a massive return on the investment of making the CS Shoulder and CS Hip & Core System a staple in every athletes warm-up.
It builds in a corrective component to every class to develop pain-free movement. It’s also the easiest path to building the stability and mobility needed for better performance in the daily workouts. This also provides a seamless approach to adding a quality warm-up to every class. This eliminates one of the many priorities on the to-do list for making members happy and healthy.
Making it Work
The Crossover Primers (CS Shoulder + CS Hip and Core System) take about 8 minutes in total total and can easily build into your everyday warm-up.
Sample Crossover Primer Warm-Up:
Teaching your members how to use the equipment will take some focused guidance at first. To streamline this process, send out our training videos, so they can learn with our help too.
In a few weeks time, most of your members will be running through the program by memory. This frees you up to spend more time working with those individuals that need it the most.
That’s right! Your money investment is not only improving your members, but has allowed you to better invest your most valuable resource—time.