Hey, it’s Ben from Business For Unicorns.
I audit gyms a lot. And when I take a look under the hood, here’s what I look for and where I tend to see opportunities.
If I Audited Your Gym, Here’s What I’d Look For
We can break them down into two lists:
TOO LITTLE
1) Prices are too low.
This means the numbers will never work for adequate owner pay and profit. Even with a massive volume of clients, which are usually based on unrealistic projections.
2) Too little time spent on marketing.
“Time spent on marketing” doesn’t guarantee results. But “too little time spent on marketing” will always thwart results. When this happens, the business can’t outsell even modest attrition. So it never grows.
3) Too little MONEY spent on marketing.
To be clear, not every gym needs paid ads. At least at first. But if minimal time AND minimal money is spent on marketing, it’s not reasonable to expect consistent lead flow.
(Not sure what to do to grow your gym? We’ve got a self-paced course for that. To learn more, go HERE.)
4) Too little clarity on how to get started.
Most gyms have a confusing website.
It’s not clear WHO you’re for, what results you create, or what interested parties should do if they want to learn more. AND, because the website is designed poorly, it loads slowly and doesn’t show up in Google searches. Related…
5) Too few pictures of and stories about aspirational and relatable clients.
(And too many pictures of the empty gym). This applies to the website and Instagram and your Google Business Profile.
Once gym owners get leads, more balls get dropped. Specifically…
6) Too little follow-up with hot leads.
When someone reaches out or takes an action towards working with you, they don’t hear from you fast enough OR frequently enough to get them in the door.
7) Too little follow-up with old leads.
If someone doesn’t sign up right away, they get mostly ignored. This is a huge waste of your marketing dollars and effort. And if there IS follow-up happening, it’s erratic, the list is incomplete, and the offers lack urgency.
But of course, a successful gym is about more than marketing and sales. It’s also about delivering a great service. Sadly, most gym owners spend..
8) Too little time developing their team’s skills.
There’s minimal to no training on a weekly and monthly basis. If there are solid SOPs for a consistent experience, they’re not audited and relentlessly drilled. This means the service is just kind of ok. Which in turn hurts organic referrals and retention.
Finally..
9) Too little time thinking strategically about the business.
Lacking a system to review numbers and goals, decisions are made reactively instead of systematically. This inflames all of the above problems, as owners are often working on the wrong things in the wrong order instead of fixing the highest priority problem or capturing the highest leverage opportunity.
TOO MUCH
1) Too much time consuming social media and creating content for Instagram.
Most gym owners don’t spend enough time on impactful marketing activities. But sometimes they DO manage to waste a ton of time, and often their staff’s time, creating massive volumes of meh Instagram content that doesn’t drive business. Unless you have a strategy to start DM convos, this rarely translates into results and actual lead flow.
2) Too much square footage.
Even during the small handful of prime time hours, many gyms could get away with 25-50% less square footage. And most of the 168 hours in a week are nearly empty. This means rent and associated space costs like maintenance, electricity, HVAC, and liability insurance are all needlessly high. Which in turn kills margins.
3) Too many session times.
This means payroll is higher than it needs to be. And/or the owner is working more hours on the floor than needed while servicing poorly attended sessions. PLUS it gives the gym the “almost empty restaurant” vibe that hurts the experience AND sends a bad message about the gym’s desirability.
4) Too many services.
Many gyms offer:
- Classes!
- Small Group Training!
- Youth Athletes!
- 1-on-1 Personal Training!
- Duo Training!
- Challenges!
- Nutrition Coaching!
- Combo Memberships!
- Open Gym!
Offering this many services makes it hard/impossible to staff. Because each service requires different skillsets from your team, and its own system of SOPs, audits, training, and quality control. So instead of being great at just one thing, gyms are “kinda just ok” at a bunch of things.
5) Too many membership terms.
In addition to having to decide between services, prospects ALSO have to decide on multiple frequencies and multiple commitment terms, often including packs and drop-ins. In addition to the fulfillment issues mentioned above, this is a great way to confuse prospects about what you’re great at and what they should do. HINT: They usually look for the cheapest thing.
6) Too much money invested on things that don’t drive value for members.
Examples include fancy equipment that your clients don’t care about, and yet another training certification that’s intellectually fascinating, but will have marginal impact on the quality of service or results for clients. Most gym owners would do best investing in their own skills as a business owner and in paying for leads.
THE COST
Taken together, the impact is:
- Too many hours worked
- Too much stress
- Too few clients
- Too little profit
- Too little income
- Too little freedom
- Too little free time
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are solves for all of the above.
I know this for a fact. Because every single day, we help gym owners fix all of the above problems.
Not too hot, not too cold, just right!
Ben
PS: Interested in a personalized 3-step plan to grow your gym?
We’d love to offer you a complementary 10-minute brainstorm.
If you’re a gym owner with 30 or more clients, you might be just a few strategies away from growing your monthly revenue by $5k-$10k or more. We can help.
Book your call HERE.
Ben Pickard
Coach and COO
Business for Unicorns
