In the world of leading and managing a team, it is inevitable that we will have people on our team that act as little more than dead weight. Sometimes it’s a bad hire. Sometimes, its rooted in people growing disgruntled over time.
Sometimes a management change or change in team dynamics can cause a team member who once was engaged to be disenchanted. Fact is if you lead people over a period of time, you need a degree in psychology as team dynamics and engagement are ever evolving and changing.
In all my travels, one thing remains constant - the work we're doing at AFS and the projects, education, and on-going brand awareness we're creating is making a huge impact in the fitness industry.
With over 60 partnerships both in and outside the fitness industry - AFS' mission to support entrepreneurial fitness professionals and studio/gym owners is alive and well!
The growing aging Boomer population is huge, affluent, well-educated and looking for trainers that can safely and effectively improve their health and fitness. In essence, they are the ideal client group.
However, many fitness marketing messages and strategies that work well with younger adults are ineffective with older adults and may even repel them. It takes more time and effort to move them through the sales process but once they make the decision to train with you they are loyal clients that stay with you for a long time.
Think back to the year 2010: How busy were you? How much free time did you used to have?
Now today: How much busier are you than in 2010? Should I even ask about free time?
Think about it: All the work demands, travel commitments, mindless checking of emails and texts, managing clients, worrying about the future of your business, Facebook updates and Likes, endless Instagram scrolling, driving kids all around town, selfies every 10 minutes, and still, trying to have a normal life in the process - life shows no signs of slowing down.
During the past 12 months AFS has undergone a huge transformation. Within that time frame our growth has been extraordinary. We've added more benefits, more partners, and more value that make up a compelling case for membership, including our ROI calculator.
During these past several months, AFS has also traveled across the country, literally - from being headquartered in Chicago to now the Bay Area.
Whether or not they admit it to you, most clients and club members care about calories. Has someone at your facility ever asked any of the following:
“Are the calories on this treadmill/elliptical/bike accurate?”
“How does this equipment know how many calories I burn during my workout?”
“This piece of equipment says I burned 600 calories. Is that right?”
If so, you know that it can be difficult to explain caloric expenditure to clients and club members.
In the last five years, one in every three deaths in the USA was attributed to Cardiovascular Disease (CVD). The latest statistics have also revealed that 60% of Americans don’t take part in regular physical activity and 25% are not physically active at all.
On a positive note, research tells us that statistics like these could be significantly improved if more people simply started exercising on a regular basis.
We all hope and pray it doesn’t happen at all, let alone to us, but the reality is – bad stuff can happen. It did last year to a Midlothian, VA fitness center, where a 9-year-old girl fell into a swimming pool and drowned.
According to the guidelines on the fitness center’s website, there is no lifeguard on duty at the gym. The guidelines also say "Children 13-and- under require adult supervision; adult must be in wet area at all times."
Technology and fitness are joined at the hip - the best gyms are known for having the best gear. After a while, however, there is only so much gear that a gym can buy! There is another way that you can use technology to differentiate yourself from competition in the fitness world, and it is actually much less expensive than investing in new machines every quarter.
Savvy gym and studio owners are now investing in mobile apps that are geared towards fitness - a high ROI activity that provides a great deal of value to patrons who do not have the money for a personal trainer or the organizational skills to keep up with their own stats.
How do people typically find your fitness studio? Through word-of-mouth? Driving by? What about your website?
If you don’t have a website (no, a Facebook page won’t cut it) or if your site isn’t bringing visitors into your studio, there’s work to be done. There are over 1.17 billion monthly searches on Google. Here are the seven things your site must have to ensure you’re showing up for these searches.
• Trainer, Manager or Owner • Beginner or Veteran • 500-10,000 sq.ft.