Nobody joins a gym in the summer.
You know this. Your members are canceling, your lead flow has dried up, and your costs haven’t moved an inch. It’s the perfect storm, and it almost put me out of business in August 2009.
I had just opened a second facility. Rent was due. Staff pay was due. I didn’t have enough money to buy groceries. I scrambled, made it through barely and immediately promised myself: never again.
Since then, I’ve worked with over 3,000 gym owners worldwide through Two-Brain Business, and I’ve watched the summer slump take down gyms that had everything else going for them.
The good news: It’s preventable.
Here are the four tactics smart gym owners use every summer to protect their revenue and set themselves up for a massive fall.
1. Pre-Sell Your Fall Programs Now
The reason people don’t join gyms in the summer has nothing to do with money. It’s about their schedule. Kids are home from school. Vacations are booked. They want to be at the cottage, not in your gym (and honestly, good for them).
In September, people desperately want to get back on track. Your job is to help them commit before the chaos hits.
Open up your fall on-ramp and invite people to reserve their spot. Take a deposit. $100 is plenty. You get revenue now, and they get a reason to show up in the fall.
You can also pre-sell specialty programs: ski readiness, football conditioning, whatever makes sense for your market.
For years, my gym ran our biggest competition of the year right after Labor Day. People paid $50-$100 in advance, got their T-shirts, had something to train for all summer, and were scared to just walk away from the money. Team formats made it even stickier; nobody wants to let their team down.
2. Add a Seasonal Offer
There are always people in your community who see their friends running 5Ks and think, “I want to do that too.” They’re just a little nervous. They haven’t done it before. They don’t know where to start.
A couch-to-5K program is one of the best summer revenue plays I know of, and it’s incredibly simple to run.
One coach leads the group through two runs per week for six weeks and assigns a little homework between sessions.
Charge $79, call it “Run Your First 5K,” and you’ve got a program that attracts people who would never walk through your door otherwise. Our best year, 34 people signed up, and half of them weren’t members—we worked on converting them all fall.
Look at what’s happening in your community this summer. HYROX events. Local triathlons. Charity cycling rides. Build something that prepares people for what they’re already excited about. That’s an easy sell, and it brings new faces into your building.
3. Capture Off-Season Athletes
What sports do people in your community love but can’t play during the summer?
Hockey is a big one for me in northern Ontario. Downhill skiing is another. There are off-season athletes all around you who need to maintain their fitness and would love a program built specifically for them.
If you work well with teens, an off-season strength and conditioning program for young athletes can be a great fit. If that’s not your thing, build something for adults instead.
Or build your own league from scratch. Six to eight weeks of intramural-style summer competition. Obstacle courses, hill runs, HYROX-style races, team workouts. Things that are different from your normal programming and are more about fun and community than hitting a new PR.
People will pay for that. And they’ll show up every week because they’re competing with friends.
4. Give Clients a Summer Prescription
Before summer hits, sit down with your clients and build a plan.
You’ve put serious work into their fitness. The last thing you want is for them to slide backward because life got busy. And the last thing they want is to lose those gains; they just haven’t figured out how to protect them.
Remind them: You’re a coaching business, not just a gym.
If someone’s heading to the cottage for two weeks, find out if they have a bike, a set of dumbbells or a patch of grass. Build them a plan. Check in by text.
If they’re traveling, get the names of three gyms near their hotel and handle the drop-in yourself. It costs you a little, but it’s worth every penny compared to a cancellation.
If you don’t have time for one-on-one meetings with every client, invite them to opt in. Send out a message that says something like this:
“It’s summer. If you’re going to be traveling or missing more than a week of training, come talk to me. We’ll build you a custom plan so you don’t lose what you’ve worked so hard for.”
The key is getting ahead of this conversation before they come to you with “I need to put my membership on hold.” Once they’re in that mindset, you’re scrambling. When you come to them first with a real plan, you’re a coach. There’s a massive difference.
The Real Killer Isn’t the Summer Slump
Loss of revenue is painful. But what actually kills gyms is loss of hope.
When you have a plan, you know there’s a bright side ahead if you can hold on and execute.
After I made it through August 2009, I sat down and wrote my plan for the following summer: kids programs, sports teams and an event that became the Catalyst Games (which we ran for over a decade).
Sometimes failure is a forcing function. But don’t wait for failure. Copy what’s worked in thousands of gyms already. Build your plan now, and go out there and change some lives.
Want help building a system to protect your gym’s revenue through every season? Book a call.
