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How To Do The Hard Stuff

April 13, 2016 Hiring Staff
If you own a gym, you’re going to have to make hard choices. I’ve missed sleep, meals, training and sanity over the last 11 years, but no longer. Here’s how I deal with the “hard stuff”: Isolate the real problem. Try to remove emotion from the picture. For example: “I have a coach. She’s a close friend, and she’s been helping me out for five years. Lately she seems bored in class, and the members are starting to notice. She’s such a great person, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. What do I do?” Cut out the irrelevant parts of the problem. Your friendship, her history, her feelings…these are all important, but NOT to her performance as a coach. Be a great friend and a great boss, but don’t confuse the two. If she’s an employee, she has to live up to her contract (which you have…right?) Realize it’s a cycle. I don’t believe in metaphysics, Karma or Santa, but I’ve noticed a cyclical pattern to almost all parts of my business. If revenue is the highest its ever been, it will soon go down; if it’s at a low point, it will soon rise. I never let myself get too high OR too low, because my situation will always change. So I make decisions that will keep those cycles trending upward over the long-term, instead of worrying about the micro-shifts. Ask yourself, “What’s best for my BEST clients?” In the words of Sherman Merricks, “I don’t need their $85 clients.” Don’t try to attract everyone, and if you face a tough decision that might alienate some of your fringe clients but improve things for your best clients, the choice is easy. Your duty as a gym owner is to your clients. If they’re negatively affected by a bad coach, it’s more than a good idea to remove the coach: it’s your JOB. Ask yourself, “Will this problem ...
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How To Get OVER It.

April 11, 2016 Hiring Staff
I admit it: I dwell on stuff. I spend too much time counting the sins of others instead of counting my own blessings. I get angry about the wrong stuff sometimes, but I record every lesson and ask, “What can I do to stop this from happening again?” This has turned into three books already. If you’re angry about a coach leaving; pissed at “the competition”; or just plain tired and fed up with the business, think about these things. Even better: read, then mop the floor while you think. Stop being “not them.” You dislike the competition, so you make sure everyone knows how different you are. “We’re like CrossFit, but focused on functional movement” ensures the topic is about CrossFit. “We don’t push you to compete like those jerks over there” makes me think about “those jerks over there.” If you’re writing about a topic because someone ELSE did, or trying to “clear up misconceptions” spread by your competition…stop. Stop thinking about them. They’re not thinking about you (if they are, you’re already winning.)       2. Use it. Sometimes I DO wake up fightin’ mad. When I get a call from a gym owner saying, “These guys are stealing your stuff, bloke!” I don’t take it as a compliment. I use it to find a vein. When my stuff is copied, I write new stuff. When another gym says mine is “too competitive,” I write a lot of happy blog posts. When my neighbor complains about the noise, I deal with it and then write about it to help others.      3.  Get perspective. When your competition undercuts your prices, or an exiting coach bashes you on social media, ask yourself: “Will I even remember this a year from now?” If the answer is no, it’s easy to flush the stressor. But when the answer is “yes,” ask yourself: could something worse be happening? A ...
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Episode 24: Affinity Marketing

April 11, 2016 Gym Marketing Podcast
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Retention strategies centered around automation and innovation

April 5, 2016 Member Retention
By Brian Alexander, Two-Brain Mentor Retention strategies centered around automation and innovation. When it comes to “retention”, there is no silver bullet. Every gym is different, every market is different and sometimes it seems like we as affiliate owners are just unlucky because people cancel, move, quit etc. It happens to all of us. Control what you can control and don’t worry too much about the rest. When I say, “Control what you can control” I am talking about systems, and more specifically retention systems. A brief history of Illumine: We opened our 1,700 sq.-ft. gym in May of 2013 with zero members, just like the rest of you. From the beginning we implemented a group on-ramp program that caught like wildfire and we began to grow rapidly.  I had a full time career in B2B IT Solutions (Sales) and decided to turn my passion into a business. Like many of you, we opened our doors and just let things happen. Essentially we “Winged it,” and it worked. But then this thing kept growing, and within 7 months of opening I moved to a 17,000 sq.-ft. location.  We grew so fast that we didn’t have time to create systems, implement systems, etc. We were just rolling with the punches.It wasn’t until December of 2014 that I tried implementing “Goal Setting” for my members as part of my retention strategy.  I used the standard “Google Docs Spreadsheet,” ran a report in Wodify, created enormous hype around our new “Goal Setting” process and sent forms out for our athletes to fill out. Some bought in right away and filled the forms out, most didn’t take the time to and others never knew an email was sent.  Right from the start the system was flawed.  For those who took advantage of the new “Goal Setting” process, they happily filled out the forms and I entered it into the spreadsheet, wrote it on a “Goals Board” ...
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Sport, Life and Scaling CrossFit Workouts

April 2, 2016 Personal Development
By Ken Andrukow, Two-Brain Mentor In 2015, Reebok CrossFit Ramsay introduced two streams of prescribed WODs – “Life” and “Sport.” There are very few athletes at RCR who can complete every WOD, every day, as Rx’d in the Sport program. Those who do are the competitive athletes  training for local competitions, the Open, and perhaps a trip to Regionals (and beyond). The vast majority of our athletes fall into the “Life” stream, which anyone will tell you, is no walk in the park. I think it’s very cool that all RCR athletes are on a program that is designed to prepare for high-level CrossFit competition – but that everyone completes it at their own level. This scalability is something that is a hallmark of CrossFit, so it’s important to remember that athletes can also still scale either stream to their personal level or to accommodate physical limitations. Like many of the athletes at RCR, I often find myself somewhere between “Sport” and “Life” when looking at a WOD. For example, I can often handle the Sport Rx’d weights for barbell movements, but cannot complete a WOD that has a high number of muscle-ups (I might be able to complete it eventually, but they do need to lock up the gym at some point for the night!).  It is acceptable to take the pieces that I could do from Sport and go with Life for those that I couldn’t. And that leads to my next point: every WOD has a desired stimulus or “dose” for the athlete. When choosing between Life and Sport, or when scaling either stream, you need to consider what the intended stimuli is and make sure your version of the workout matches up. When choosing your weight, if you go too light you’ll finish the workout wondering what all the fuss was about. Too heavy and you’ll still be working when everyone else is finished. Scaling also applies to ...
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Episode 23: How To Raise Rates

March 28, 2016 Podcast Selling Gym Memberships
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