Evolve or Die!

Published on 09/01/10 11:55AM by Thomas Plummer

Small business is fascinating. Why do some business concepts work, why do some fail and why does there always seem to be a pattern or path that emerges when you study a business that isn’t performing? Questions like this drive me crazy and I spend too much time trying to figure out why we do the things we do in this industry.

One problem that has particularly caught my attention over the years is why are some owners or club chains successful for a period of times and then all of a sudden fail? It seems like every one that is in business for a while in this industry eventually hits a point where they just can’t keep up the previously successful behavior. Twenty years of success becomes a year of failure in just a heart beat.

One individual club situation I have been watching closely for several years involves an owner in the Northeast that has been in business for over 20 years. He opened his first club in the mid 80s and was very successful. Over the years, he has acquired the real estate, opened three more clubs and just last year he opened his fifth unit. And after 20 years of buying ski condos, property in the islands and great financial success, he is now getting his ass kicked and is losing about $50k per month in this new club with little movement in getting the flood of losses stopped anytime soon.

My theory on this has been that everyone keeps reinvesting and leveraging the previous success into successively bigger and more costly clubs. At some point they all go one unit too far and the last unit brings down all the other ones, as well as taking down the owner individually due to the fact that he had to hock everything he ever acquired to get the bank to do the new deal.

By the time he gets to the last unit, which everyone of these guys always swears will be the last one, because every one of these players just wants that one last big deal and then he will quit, he has everything he owns in the game to secure the bank loans and money needed to do the “big deal.”

My thoughts were that the egos involved at this level of play just force the owners to keep the chips on the table just one more time seeking the big kill. I believed that these owners all eventually fail, or at least go through three or four years of hell on earth, because at some point the clubs are too leveraged and the debt takes them down. It is the same result in the chain clubs. Sooner or later they all build one unit too many spelling the end of a good run.

It is sort of like a bad, but rich, blackjack player in Vegas. He takes out a big credit line that will give him money to get back even after a week of big losses and he just keeps pushing the stakes higher and higher believing that it will only take a few huge hands to get him even. This guy always fails losing everything and I thought that the club owners, and even the big chain guys, are like these players in that the egos and the “I can’t lose because I have always won” mentality hammers them all at the end.

I was wrong about my theory. It is not the egos and the need to keep killing it that results in the failure. It is because they never read Darwin and the theory of evolution.

My latest epiphany on this came while I was discussing the franchise clubs in the industry. I was wondering out loud why they just don’t continue to reinvent themselves like the successful real world franchise or major chains, such as Starbucks or even Denny’s, eventually sliding down a long muddy hill to just becoming a former name that is now nothing but a shadow of its former glory.

For example, what happened to World, Powerhouse, Gold’s (that now has clubs offering $9 memberships), Curves and almost any other name that rose to the top and than began the slide into obscurity? Gold’s for instance still has a recognizable name to the consumer but they used to be, “the name” in fitness.

How can you go from being of the two most recognized names in the history of modern fitness (the other was Nautilus) into a club chain that is now divided into apparently two separate entities with no national direction or sense of continuity? How can some of their clubs charge $9 and others charge $54 and still use the same name and be in the same organization?

My theory was that all these household names in our industry failed or faded because the owners were always driven to open too many units or leverage too big. But my enlightenment points to the real reason they fail is that everyone of these companies, and that includes the small guys like the one mentioned above with five units, just continue to build the same unit over and over again, year after year, until the concept wears out and the consumer walks away.

The guy mentioned above didn’t take the hit because he was over leveraged, although that is a factor that will haunt him as he tries to fix the mess and has no reserves and no ability to raise more money; but rather he is failing because he built the same club last year that he built in 1995. It might be prettier, bigger and better finished, but it is still the same club with the same brands of equipment and same dated concept he has used for all his clubs. The fitness world simply changed but he didn’t.

He is failing because he has proven yet again that you can only take a business concept so far and then you have to reinvent yourself. Every single business idea wears out at some point in time. The consumer grows but the club owner doesn’t, and that is reflected by the naïve thought that I will just build the same club over and over again for the next 20 years and the consumer will continue to buy it forever. I am sure that Ford Motors can give you a lesson on two as to what happens if you don’t reinvent yourself once in awhile.

What happens to these companies now? Where does Curves go once your circuit concept becomes stale? Where does Gold’s go once you are no longer the Mecca of fitness and local training clubs are now fulfilling that mission you owned for over four decades? Where does the local owner go when he leverages everything in his life to build a club that is 20 years out of date, cost almost $5,000,000 to build in rental space and is bleeding him to death? How can he fix something he should have never built in the first place?

Even this decade’s giant gorilla in the room, Planet Fitness, will go through the same growth phases and some day they too will build a new club somewhere that is simply one club too many of the same old idea. The ghosts are already swirling as PF continues to sell the consumer circuit equipment training and limited free weights in the era of functional training and a smarter consumer educated by the Biggest Loser and Men’s Health. We invent, we rise, we reinvent or we fail. Life is that simple in the world of business.

My mental breakthrough comes from realizing that it isn’t the need to gamble everything one more time on the big deal; it’s that all these failures result from simply building the same concept one too many times wearing out the business plan.

The lesson here is change or die. Starbucks, after about 10,000 units, closed 600 or so, dropped an unprofitable food line, added instant coffee and all the cool toys to support the new concept, and restructured their stores, all of which is more change in one year than most owners go through in 20. Evolve or die should be your words to live by in your business.

 

Born to Fail

Published on 08/26/10 01:20PM by Thomas Plummer

Some owners just never had a chance. They opened and were preordained to fail. No clues, no hope, no chance to ever make it. They were the wrong people trying to open a business they didn’t understand and would never grasp and end up burning through a lot of other people’s money before closing their doors.

Years ago I used to be kind and patient with this group, but I realized that I wasn’t helping them by encouraging them to get into the business. Most of these folks had too much to lose, and too little chance to win, and I should have done then what I do now, which is try and warn them away from this business.

Don’t open, get a job, you have no chance at all. It is okay to say this when it is the truth.
The fitness business, and it is a business, is not a business for the weak or the lazy. The business is tough, demands a lot of hours and it also absolutely insists that you have a very thick skin to fend off the vast stupidity of a small group of members that makes you question why you ever opened a club in the first place.

Here are 10 signs you’re doomed as an owner before you even open:

1. You will fail if you don’t know anything about the business yourself, but you have hired a manager to run it and be your partner. This partner, however, failed running her own club but blames unfair competition, or a bank loan that didn’t come through or a bad employee that hurt her business. So the first rule is that if you can’t run it yourself, don’t hire people who failed running their own businesses to take care of yours. This is also true of hiring the professional manager, who has been in the business for 30 years, used to own a club back in the day, and has ran an endless stream of other people’s businesses. Do not hire this crazy bitch. All she can teach you is how she failed for 30 years. We have one of these in our area and she just keeps showing up again. She pays herself big bonuses, runs the club into the dirt, blames the owner for not trusting her, and then moves on to the next victim. If you can’t run your own business, you can’t run mine.

2. You want to open a business but you don’t really work out. It should be obvious that fat people make lousy gym owners, but it comes up often in the workshops. Whenever I hear, “I just thought it looked like a fun business” or “I am really not into working out but I have this partner who can run it” I immediately try and talk the person out of the business. You can’t own it and make money doing it if you don’t know anything about the product you are selling. There are no skinny chefs that are good; there are no fat trainers and owners with credibility

3. You will fail in this business if all you are seeking is a lifestyle. I just recently talked to someone who wanted to open a club because she and her husband ate healthy and she really liked the “lifestyle.” What lifestyle? Eating a dry sandwich at 3:00 in the afternoon because you were eaten alive with member problems when you walked into the door. What lifestyle? Gaining 10 pounds because you can’t work out in your own club. Contrary to popular myth, we don’t sit around all day working out when we want and being on the floor gently guiding our members. See, we can’t do that because we have our heads stuck in a toilet cleaning out four pounds of toilet paper a dumb ass member stuffed down it along with his underwear. And after we fix this, we can do a shift at the counter because it is sunny outside and my new counterperson is “doesn’t feel good,” which is covered well by her new tan when she does show up for work the next day.

4. You will fail if you are the money guy helping the trainer kid. Yes, trainer kids need help and money. But have you as the money guy ever asked the kid if he has a business plan. Money guys get sucked in because they think the kid gives a great work out and all he needs is his own place. Owning his own place means to most trainer kids that he now gets to train people in a bigger room. The trainer does not know how to manage staff, market his business nor is he usually willing to give up his clients to grow his business. Very few money guys ever ask the trainer kid for a business plan and how they will make money and the money guy has to do her own research before she should ever give a trainer money. If you don’t understand how it works, don’t stick your hand in it.

5. You will fail if you have never read a marketing book. How are you going to get new members into this club? The right answer would be to develop a comprehensive marketing plan based upon testimonials or some other tool and budgeting for monthly marketing throughout the year. The wrong answer that I hear too often is, “Well, my club is going to be so different in the market that I won’t have to market. We are going to have great service and I am going to pick out the perfect line of equipment. And our classes will be so much better than everyone else’s because I am taking two of their best instructors.” How will anyone know you are the best if no one ever sets foot in your business to try it out? Build it and they will come is not a business plan; it’s a script for an old Costner baseball movie. Don’t know marketing and don’t read about it? Stay on the porch little dog or the big dogs will eat your butt.

6. You will fail if you can’t sell. If you can’t sell someone a membership, or don’t want to learn, stay out of the business. Ninety-five percent of what we do everyday in this business is sell someone something. If you can’t sell, you can’t produce revenue and if you can’t produce revenue why did you open a business? Most importantly, even if you think you are dependent on managers, you have to learn to sell yourself in your own business. You cannot be held hostage by the one lame salesperson you have who produces 12 memberships per month.

7. You will fail if you like to be home with the kids at 6:00 p.m. Welcome to the fitness business. You now have the right to work about 70-80 hours per week for the first two years you are open, and that includes evenings Monday-Thursday, most of Friday and you will be in your club on Saturday mornings for the first year just to keep control. Not willing to work evenings or over 40 hours a week? Get a job with the city and lean on a shovel for 40 per week because you will never make it in the fitness business.

8. You will fail if you aren’t willing to work out with one of your own trainers. You have to be a workout person. You have to workout every week. You have to workout with your own trainers on a regular basis so you can understand how good, or bad, they are and what they do to your members. You also have to take group classes several times a month so you can see how bad that part of your business is too. You also have to take supplements if you sell them, drink your own smoothies and be a part of all the other stuff you sell because if you don’t do it, you don’t believe in it and you can’t sell it if you don’t understand it.

9. You will fail if you don’t have a partnership agreement in place before you open that clearly states who will do what in this business. Two trainers opening a club isn’t bad. Two trainers opening a club and both thinking they are going to be the head guy is bad. Two trainers opening a club and both taking their own training money instead of running it through the business is really bad because it isn’t a business they own, it is a large room where they hangout and train and don’t trust each other. You will disagree at some point. You will get tired of each other and want to buy each other out of the deal. Someone will get divorced, die or go crazy over a stripper named Vanessa Starlips. You need a strong partnership agreement in place before the first dollar is ever thrown on the table.

10. You will fail if you try and open a business without a dollar of your own money in it. You have nothing to lose so you will never do the work when it comes to the long weeks and tough service. If you have nothing to lose you will walk away when it gets tough. This is why I always tell the money person, or banker, to turn down the project unless the new owner can put something on the line that scares him or her to lose. Borrow the last $50k from your parents, who only have $100k in their life, and you will be there at midnight with your head in that toilet. Without the blood money, you’ll be out with Starlips.

On the other hand, you might make it if you….

• Learn to drink heavily and say, “What the f@#$#! I can fix that.”
• Divorced your last spouse to marry a fitness geek (ran away with a trainer or aerobics queen).
• Own more kettle bells than shoes.
• Can sell a money guy into giving you a lot of money. You can at least sell, which gives you an edge.
• Drink too much Red Bull already and are up a 100 hours week just because you’re crazy.
• You like to train people and were smart enough to marry a businessperson to back you up.
• Think cleaning toilets is kind of fun and better than your last job.
• People shouting in your face, “This place sucks and you’re a crappy owner” doesn’t really bother you much.

And the big reason you might make it…you realize that you can change the world if you take care of your members first and the journey in this wild business is always worth the reward of doing it right.

5 Lessons We Can Learn From Good Training Centers

Published on 08/13/10 02:43PM by Thomas Plummer

My old friend Bobby Cappuccio called the other day to do an interview with me for the new version of PT on the Net. Bobby has been around the industry for a number of years and has been successful doing anything he tries, especially in the realm of training and education. Over the years, Bobby has moved toward motivation and inspiration and works hard to get young trainers to advance their careers through education and self-induced study.

Bobby’s question to me was, “What will the role of the trainer look like in the coming years?” I answered the question then for the interview, but I have been dwelling on it every since we chatted. My thinking on this question took a different path over the last several weeks, especially since I just finished the last Perform Better Summit of the year in Long Beach and spent time with some of the best minds in the training world.

My thoughts on the question have evolved and are now focused on what makes a successful training center work. I define a training center as anywhere from 1500 square feet to about 12,000 depending on the market and the concept. The approach we have taken in mainstream fitness is dying and is not sustainable in the future, as any reader of this blog or attendee in my workshops knows.

The era of the 1995 30,000 square box is dead. And remember, it is not the size but the business approach in the box. We simply can’t keeping building outdated circuit based businesses and expect to make money in the next five years because the training centers are evolving and they are learning to make more profit, in smaller square footage and with about a 20th of the start up cost of a big box. We can, and should, learn from what these people are doing and infuse this information into any size fitness business.

The lessons to explore, of course, are why do these training centers get such good results with the clients, who then stay longer and pay longer, than we can do at the mainstream level? Why can’t we steal their best practices, and therefore, emulate their successful business plans, by virtually picking up the entire training center and imbedding it as the foundation of our business plan in the box? We can, and we will have to if we want to survive against growing competition from this segment.

Here are five things I think we need to steal from the best of the best at that level:

• Strength training rules: This is the contradiction that drives every owner crazy. Cardio attracts, and the number still floating around the industry is that about 73 percent of all members attending a club hit the cardio, but the results and retention comes from strength. In the book, Biomarkers, the 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitality, the authors stress that strength training is the number one priority someone should concentrate on to maintain a highly functioning active life as they age.

Most box clubs have pathetic strength (read too many lines of circuit training here) but adequate cardio. The clubs that will make money in the coming years, emulating the profitability of the better training clubs, will have good cardio but the entire approach to training and the needed equipment to support it will change.

Club cardio freaks reflect this already but we ignore it in the clubs. My mother, God bless her 90-pound soul, just moved. Her neighbor is a woman in her late 60’s who walks four miles a day and who is approaching 800 miles logged. She is somewhat thin but there isn’t a muscle in her body. Her arms and shoulders are flabby and there is no visible tone anywhere. She is thin but still fat. Would she be better served doing some strength training twice a week with some serious cardio attached?

We have these folks in the clubs, illustrated by the woman who walks for an hour slowly on the treads for an hour a week, but the training facilities wouldn’t tolerate her for an hour. In the training centers, she would be strength centric with controlled cardio to support her workouts or she would be gone.

• Everyone gets results: The credo of a good training center is-“I will train you, I will guide your diet, and you will supplement to ensure you are seeking health.” Everyone gets results because that is part of their business plan. They don’t build a giant machine to harvest memberships. These people build a 10,000 square foot box with the only purpose of getting results for their clients. They make business decisions on what it takes to get the best results from the most clients, instead of how to get the highest number of shear members and then figuring out a way to replace them once they fail and leave.

Ask any traditional owner this questions: “Show me anywhere in your business plan where you are totally focused on getting results for a high number of your targeted members?” They can show you high revenue projections based upon sales and internal profit centers but very few have a direct plan for obtaining sustainable results for their clients. Most will tell you they have a plan, but the plan is based upon throwing the largest amount of equipment they can at the membership. I have more equipment than the guy down the street, and then I can get more results for the members.

The successful client is the center of a training facility business plan but is never even mentioned in a box business plan. For example, I had a discussion last year with an owner in New Jersey who was building a 27,000 square foot club that would cost about $4,000,000 to complete in rental space. After looking at the plans, I mentioned that this club was exactly like the one he built in 1995 with even the same brands of equipment in the same lines. Sure, it was prettier and brighter, but it was still nothing more than a membership mill dedicated to attracting members and then replacing those once they were lost. This same owner is the guy who wonders why the $9 club is hurting him so badly. The answer is that our hero here is in the equipment rental business, not the results business, and the member realizes that if all I get from this club is a walk on a tread, I might as well do it at the club down the street that is cheaper.

Learn from the trainers. Build clubs designed to get results. Build systems that allow the most members to participate in some type of training. Stay away from renting equipment because the $9 guys do it better and cheaper.

• Members want group dynamics: Everything is better in a pile (read what you want into this). Good training clubs, such as Boyle, Durkin, Cosgrove’s, Mayo, Nash and all the others evolve into training centered on some type of group situation with very little if any done one-on-one. People want group experiences, enjoy group experiences, are motivated by group experiences and get better results training in groups.

In the mainstream world, though, we let the uniformed trainers rule the system so we use archaic systems based upon sessions and packages for just one person at a time. This is why you can have 3000 members and only do $8,000 a month in training, because there is no money, and not enough potential market, to drive higher revenue with the traditional training system used by all chains and most mainstream clubs.

Good training facilities use layered pricing, meaning you offer lower prices for clients who want to share the cost of the trainer/coach. This layered approach would allow a much greater penetration rate in the traditional club, which would result in greater results for more members.

• It’s not the equipment, it’s the coach: I have recently seen trainer kids with not even $5000 in equipment generating $20,000 a month in training revenue. It’s not the norm, but I have seen it enough to know it is not a fluke. The mainstream mindset is to throw more and more equipment at the members instead of customer service and instead of learning a new business approach for the business. Look at the guy in New Jersey again. His idea is that if you get the perfect blend of equipment the members will love you and you will have a competitive edge in the market.

This did work. It worked well in fact in 1995, but this concept is why even the biggest chains are pissing away members like a drunken owner at cheap beer night. It’s the system, fool, and not the equipment. Equipment, such as top of the line treads, will help retain members over time because they simply break less. It’s not the cardio that’s the issue. It’s how we use the cardio in the club. The issue is, however, the fixed equipment we choose, which is nothing more than a reflex order based on what worked 20 years ago. Functional rules and will only get stronger in the coming decade and your layout and equipment choices have to reflect that trend. Training clubs have space for people to move. They have training lanes. They have walls to smash balls against. They have stuff to climb and swing from. They have mastered suspension training. They have more than a pathetic rack of six kettle bells.

• Higher return per client: Training people get more money per client than mainstream guys do. Yes, we will still have memberships, but why we can’t have the best of both: strong memberships with deep penetration into the membership with training and the support systems. Build a strong training department and nutrition goes up, retention goes up and the average sale goes up.

• One bonus point: Every good training club that I could find has a dedicated sales person, usually female, and usually one that was a client and got good results. This person is often in the process of becoming a trainer as well. You can’t sell the Ferrari if you have never driven the Ferrari. Your sales people should be training fools and preferably certified trainers as well.

What did Bobby’s question really mean? Training, and therefore trainers, will rule the industry in the coming years. Your training department should generate more monthly income than your memberships. Your retention should climb above 65% and stay there. If you grasp training, you will have a huge competitive edge over the equipment-renting idiots down the street. It’s all about results and there is only one way to get that for the highest number of clients in your club. And I will give you a hint; it’s not adding another piece of Hammer.

The Top 20% will thrive and the rest will struggle

Published on 08/03/10 01:33PM by Thomas Plummer

The numbers you see in the fitness business are all misleading about success in this business. Look at the national magazines and other blogs and people are ranting about how so many clubs just aren’t making money.

Really? In what industry do all the businesses that comprise that industry make money? Are we special in that we are entitled to be profitable because we are in the fitness business? If there are a 1000 drycleaners in Chicago, are they all entitled to make money and be top performers? As in any field, talent and hard work separates the weak from the strong and our industry is no exception.

In life and business, the best rise to the top of their fields and everyone else settles lower on the scale. For example:

• About 20% of any category of small businesses exceeds the average profit and this profit is what separates this group from the other 80%
• About 60% hit the average for that type of business
• About 20% fall into the lowest performers for that group 

This is true of almost any small business concept you can identify. Look at pizza places, small retail stores, drycleaners, restaurants and most any other business concept and you can break them down into these groupings. The best make money, most people do just enough to stay in business and the bottom 20% are wasting money when they should have jobs working for the city and leaning on a shovel.

This group would go broke in a year or two no matter how much money they started with and no matter where they opened. They are in the bottom 20% because they deserve to be there, no because they are unlucky or surrounded by gifted competitors.

Fitness businesses fall into this same breakdown. For example, if half the clubs in a survey reported flat sales from last year, or declining numbers, is this really unusual or is this report just a verification that the averages are holding. The top 20% will make money in good and bad times and the rest will fall into their respective categories.

Opening a fitness business does not entitle you to make money. This is a fallacy that most new owners have beaten out of them quickly. “I have my life in this club and it is unfair that a new club is moving in and taking my business.”

Putting up the money to open got you into the game, much like an ante into a poker game. It does not, however, entitle you to make money or even survive. That will be up to how hard and smart you work.

The same is also true of individuals. Only 5% of the population in this company makes over $205,000 a year. It is a very sharp point at the top and gets sharper faster when you move up in salaries beyond this number. The best excel and everyone else works for someone else. You are seldom in that group due to luck and you survive there because of many other skills in your life.

The best may get slapped around for a few moments but they always rise again. The talented few that reach the top 5% are hard to kill no matter what they are doing or selling. Your goal, of course, is to prepare your self to be one of the talented folks who figure out money and how to make it in almost any economy or business.

There is a lot of discussion this year on the economy and how it has affected clubs but the theory holds true. The owners who adapted to change, broke away from the 1995 business model and fought back hard by working their collective asses off made money. And lots of money. The good players had a great year.

The middle 60% took a harsh beating and many failed. But the capitalistic system is hard. Adapt, change, grow or die and the market will bear out your decisions. Failure is an option if you refuse to change how you operate because the universe will correct bad business decisions quickly and painfully.

If you set on your ass failing to react to everything and wasting your life and business by complaining about the cheap competitor down the street, you probably didn’t make much last year. You could have beaten him if you would have just shut up and gone to work. He didn’t take your business; you gave it to him by not being aggressive in your own business.

The bottom 20% disappeared in the club market to be replaced by another generation that feels they are guaranteed success because they are great trainers or passionate people who will change the world. Only the market will tell if they have the passion, and the knowledge and work ethic, to succeed.

This is an extremely difficult business to be in, especially now, but you can make money if you are willing to let go of what worked in the 90’s and embrace new ideas. The smaller clubs, which are more agile and more able to change, will lead this charge of new prosperity while the chains will slowly fail because they are not willing to admit that their business models are 30 years or more out of date.

Build the big boxes and stock them full of 1995 circuit stuff and the market will judge you brutally, as it has most of those chains during the last several years. You simply don’t want to be the last guy trying to sell a product that is 20 years out of date. They sell just enough to give themselves hope but the overall picture is grim and getting darker for the membership mills.

So who made money last year and this year? Most of the same people who made money in the good times; they just have to work harder to get it done. Good owners are good owners and will adjust, as needed, buying the tools and education needed to keep moving and growing.

Who got kicked last year? The marginal owners who rode the good times but never really learned how to make money. There are a lot of owners who have been lucky rather than good and the economy and full onslaught of new clubs saturating the market have edited this group down in size. Weak owners are weak owners and while they complain that their numbers are down are we surprised?

Be the best and work it like you never had before and there is still money to be made in this industry.

Why I Need to Retire

Published on 07/26/10 04:12PM by Thomas Plummer

This blog is for all those people who always say, “You have a dream job. Just travel around from city to city, drink good wine and talk to people.” This blog represents the reality of being a traveling speaker these days. This all happened during a recent, supposedly simple trip starting in Boston and ending with a client in upper, western Illinois. My family lives in southern Illinois so I decided to include a drive south for two nights and then a visit to my client in Galesburg, Illinois.

I left my house at 5:00 a.m. on a Tuesday for a 9:00 a.m. out of Boston. It is an hour and a half flight to the airport so I am up at 4:00.

I left a day early to see my family in Southern Illinois, a three-hour drive south of Moline, the closest airport to Galesburg where the client lives. The plan was to fly in to Moline, drive south for two nights, and then drive back for consulting on Thursday morning with a return on Friday to Boston. I should be having a beer with the family by 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday if all goes well, which was my first wrong thought for the day.

When I arrived at the airport and did the kiosk check-in I was rejected and sent to the counter to see an agent. This is never good news. The 9:00 flight was now pushed back to noon because of maintenance issues, which is another way of saying we don’t have enough people to fly just now and since we aren’t making money, we aren’t going.

It is a perfectly sunny day with no weather and this flight is the only one on the entire board with issues. Every businessperson on that flight is furious at the airline since there are no openings on the rest of the oversold flights going to Detroit.

The ticket agent, who has taken a public beating from overly stressed business guys with no where to go, starts crying at the front counter when I list my flight number because she has been yelled at so many times before I actually got to her that she breaks down. She is so pathetic, I just laugh at her, tell her Delta hammers me almost every week, and I get a $100 ticket credit for a future flight. She also spends 10 minutes badmouthing Delta telling me it is now the worst airline in the world and that all the employees hate it and hate working there. These are things you want every employee to be telling your clients, especially the ones who fly so much they have advanced status.

I am still good, though, despite the delay, for the connection in Detroit for Moline and can still get to mom’s by 8:00 p.m. There is still a good meal and beer in my future and I can still see the family

At 11:30, they now announce that the plane won’t be towed to the gate until noon and we will now leave at 12:30. They get everyone on the plane but it takes another half an hour to do the paperwork since the plane had been in maintenance. We take off at 1:00, now four hours later than listed, and land at exactly 3:15, the exact same time as my connection flight is leaving. We of course land at the farthest possible gate from the connection so there is no chance that I can run through two terminals and make the flight.

The connection from Detroit, which would have left at 3:15 p.m. and I missed, is now rescheduled for 7:45 p.m. While I am waiting to rebook the flight, I find a diamond earring, which I offer to the agent in jest as a bribe to get on the flight. She thinks this is funny, but the earring goes into her pocket as we speak and I do get a good seat.

I now have four hours to kill in Detroit Airport, and people wonder why I drink so much wine. There is a nice people-watching seat available and after two glasses of wine I now realize that the Detroit Airport is running about 20 percent higher in obesity. I have been keeping score of fat people, sort of fat people, and average people while I am drinking. I am also keeping a side count of attractive women, which is a small number in that airport.

Obesity is running about 40 percent in Detroit and I am being generous in that number. And no, BMI has nothing to do with this. These are just plain big old Midwest fat people who eat too much lousy food and drink too much cheap beer. I have also mad a startling discovery. Bad hair seems to go hand in hand with a big butt. These needs further research but I may be on to something.

I catch the 7:45 and fly to Moline, an airport I have never been too, which is amazing in itself, but the mystery fades when I land and realize I have never been there because there is nothing but cows and fields in Moline and no sane person would choose to go to Moline unless forced by gunpoint or a need to make consulting money. It is on the far western edge of Illinois and totally isolated farmland.

It is now too late to drive south so my travel agent gets me a reservation at a Hampton Inn, the low end of the hotel food chain. They are understaffed so the woman at the desk says they will send a cab because they have no one on duty to drive the shuttle. I sit for 20 minutes and then start pacing in boredom. I look up and realize that I can see the Hampton Inn from where I was sitting. It is a short walk to a cheap hotel.

Apparently, I am the only person who has ever made the 200-yard walk. Even the kid making cars move along offered to call me a cab because it was quite far and people usually don’t walk there. This might explain the average tonnage per person in this part of the country. It doesn’t, however, explain the bad hair.

The nice hotel next door to where I am staying looks inviting as I enter the barren lobby of the Hampton Inn. The give-away that it is a dump is always the free buffet signs for the all-you-can-eat breakfast. The girl is not at the front desk because she is delivering towels to a room. I should have paid attention to this.

I wait patiently until she returns and then she yells at me for not waiting for the cab to pick me up since the hotel will still have to pay. I am paying $129 a night for a lousy hotel and manage to get yelled at by a 22 year old, $10 an hour employee.

She too starts crying when I say: “Well, I stand corrected and won’t do that again.” She apologizes for being mean to me and states she is having a bad day. She keeps crying and apologizes numerous times. The check-in takes about 20 minutes because now she is afraid I will tell someone she was mean. I let her know she was fine and I completely understand but it still takes 20 minutes to get my room.

I check in and walk back to the front counter to get a recommendation for dinner since the hotel only has snack machine. I am sent to the “best” steak house in Moline, which is called Montana Jacks. It looks like a run down Key West bar from the outside and looks like a beaver lodge on the inside with nothing but raw wood on the walls. My first urge is to flap my tail and chew on a board.

I look into the dining room. All the tables are covered in checkerboard plastic table clothes. The waitresses are wearing matching shirts in the same pattern. I choose the bar. The barmaid is eight and a half months pregnant and she has to sit on the beer cooler to take the order. While we are placing my order, she farts rather loudly telling me that gas is a problem when you are that pregnant and have to stand up so long.

The waitresses, dressed in red and white-checkered shirts like the tables, and with hot pants and gun holsters with wooden guns range from 12 years old to about 60. This would be cute except the girls are bigger than the horses they rode in on. Western themes are bad in a steak house but I would draw the line in matching staff to Herefords.

I choose steak, which comes with a salad bar. The salad bar had jello with carrots, a scary treat from my grandmother’s era and several open cans of beans. The lettuce is white and there is a big bowl of peas and tuna fish, which must be for anyone who thinks he might be a cat. I eat lightly but do notice that the locals are tearing up the white lettuce.

I eat at the bar watching America’s Got Talent with rednecks and an engineer from India, named Ramy of course. “Oh, this is my favorite show. You have no idea how popular this is in India.” We all decide that the dancers didn’t bring it this week and that Lil Chris actually sucks. We all vote for the rock climbing dancers. Draft beer is two for one so the rednecks are defending their position pretty firmly. Ramy and I voted for the guy from LA who knits his own hats for his dancer and sings like he is a fugitive from the King and I but the rednecks think he is gay and refuse to vote.

I return to my room, sweaty from the walk in the Midwestern heat, and jump into the shower. This turns out to be a mistake when I discover there are no towels in my room except for the mat on the floor, which I use for a temporary solution. I go to the desk and the girl that chewed me out feels even more badly, gives me double towels and a $15 ITune card. It was a tough decision on the card. I had to choose between the ITunes or a box of 12 donuts and a gallon of coffee redeemable at the gas station across the street.

There is a big sign in the lobby leading me to their fitness center. I might have time to get a workout before I drive in the morning. The sign is slightly optimistic because the fitness room is one treadmill. No weights, no equipment, just one treadmill and you have to get a key for the treadmill from the woman at the desk since they are afraid kids might kill themselves using it. I decided not to workout that morning.

I called my mom to tell her I would be a day late getting there, not unusual for a road trip these days. I have just wasted an entire day of my life trying to get to Moline, Illinois, somewhere I didn’t really want to visit anyway.

This all means that I sit too much, eat too much and drink too much. This also means that stress is a daily occurrence if you want to travel anywhere this day. By the time I got home I too felt like crying although my client Wil was a pleasure to work with and saved the trip.

Airlines suck.

Next week I will return to educational blogs and less rants, although you out there seem to like side trips more than me trying to teach you something.

Read Dip, by Seth Godin, my recommended read for the week.

The Things You Really Want To Say To Your Employees

Published on 07/20/10 09:40AM by Thomas Plummer

Things have certainly changed throughout the years when it comes to handling employees. In the early years, you could actually correct an employee’s behavior without labor board suits, lawyers and incredibly stupid state laws. Just think, if someone did something stupid, you could say something directly without filling out 14 pages of reports necessary to cover yourself in the coming lawsuit.

Once upon a time for example, one could take an employee aside and clearly explain that showing up 30 minutes late four days in a row is bad form and the sign of a truly lazy ass, irresponsible, worthless person. Today, that employee will walk out crying if you even mention her performance and you will contacted by a lawyer on discrimination and her father will call as well chewing your ass since his precious princess daughter, who is only 24 and who has never been told “no” in her life, can’t yet handle her own life.

And since she still lives at home, you have no leverage on her anyway because all she does is quit the job whenever the spoiled brat doesn’t get her way. Why work when daddy and mommy will take care of her until she can find herself and the perfect job?

Here are the things I would really like to say to all those employees over the years that have felt the world owes them a guaranteed job on their terms and at their convenience:

No, you are not sick. Get your ass to work. You are 25 years old, have been drinking all night and are so hung over you can’t breath, but you are not sick, you are stupid and worthless. And please don’t start the fake, I don’t feel good on Thursday because you are setting me up to call in sick on Friday so you can have a three-day beach weekend. You are young and healthy and are not sick, you are just young, healthy and a pathetic liar who doesn’t want to work.

You are fired because you didn’t do the work. You are not fired because you are black, white, green or red. You are not fired because it is discrimination. You are fired because a drunken monkey is more dependable than you are. Don’t call the labor board, don’t call the state, just realize that you didn’t do what you were paid to do and you are fired because I counted on you to work and you didn’t. It is your fault you are lazy, not mine, and you weren’t fired because of your race, color or sexuality, but because I am in business and you are getting in my way of staying in business.

Don’t ever, ever tell me again that your alarm didn’t go off. You are late because you were too drunk to set the alarm or too drunk to hear it go off.

There is a whole town out there. Do you really have to boink every female member I have in just three months and them piss them all off so they want to quit? Can you not find a way to get laid without costing me money? Do these women know that you still live at home and make $10 per hour?

This is my club and those are my group classes. You will do it my way. You will not use the front of the group room to vent in front of your class how unfair it is that I won’t add 12 more classes because you want to teach jazzerbutt classes or some other nonsense. And sending all the members to the desk to bitch in your behalf does not make me want to give you those classes. It makes me want to throw your lame ass, diva butt out of my club along with your head set and giant cup of Starbucks coffee.

Yes, you are a decent trainer but no, you are not entitled to 80% of all the money I charge for you. You are not a rock star, movie idol, television hero or international celebrity. You are a clipboard cowboy dude, who spends his life rolling around sweaty people on the floor because you don’t know how to be a real coach/trainer and go for the big money. You are using my stuff, in my business, with my members and I am giving you enough already. And yes, you have to sign a non-solicitation agreement because you too will be sleeping with one of your clients who will tell you that you are wonderful and should have your own place and that she will put up the money once her divorce is final.

Shut up, show up, and go to work and then we will discuss more money. I will not discuss a raise with you because you need more money to support your lifestyle and because you can’t live within your budget. The worst employee in the world is the one who is always broke. No matter how much money I pay you it will all be pissed away on crap. You are broke now because you can’t control your own life. You will be broke next year, the year after and broke through three divorces because you will always spend more than you make. It is not my fault you have to have $300 sunglasses when you only make $10 an hour and tap out your credit cards.

You are not my child. I might loan you money to help get a car or improve your life but only after you have worked you ass off in this business proving you deserve a break. I am not a bank or ATM and you are not my obligation.

Here is a concept; try not running out the door three minutes before your shift ends sticking me, the rest of the staff and the members finishing up your work. It is just an idea, but maybe you might run over a few minutes once in awhile and it might take you a few extra seconds to make sure things are right before you leave.

Put your f@#$%&n’ cell phone down and help a member. I am not paying you to Facebook, text people watch Youtube or break up by phone while on duty. I am paying you to help my members. Put the damn phone down and go help someone. It’s what your paid to do bucko. You may use your phone on breaks but never at my front desk. Besides, is any call you might get really that important that it can’t wait until you go to lunch?

We are a lifestyle business. If you smoke or get fat while working for me I have to fire you. You simply don’t understand what we are doing here.

And keeping that theme in mind, no member wants to work out with a fat trainer or group exercise instructor. You don’t have to be Angelina Jolie in shape, but you shouldn’t have a big muffin top hanging over your tights if you are a group exercise person. Here is a break through thought: get your fat ass in shape if you want to work in a gym. And if I fire you for some other reason, know deep in your heart that you were really fired because your ass in those tights looks like a bag of ferrets trying to escape when you teach. This isn’t 1995 and you still aren’t the queen of the class. It is 2010 and you might consider changing your workout and shrinking that monstrous butt a few sizes.

Trainer dudes, if you can’t do it don’t teach it. If you can’t shake a 50’ rope for two minutes don’t stand there laughing at your members while they try. Get in shape, stay in shape and remember that you are a lifestyle role model. This does not mean that you have to workout clients wearing a skintight shirt and shorts that look like you are smuggling bananas out of the country. It does mean that you can demonstrate the exercise and possibly do it as well as your client. If you can’t do the demo, don’t do the move.
Did you not look in the mirror before you left the house this morning? Do you not have any pride about the way you look? Iron your shirt, comb your hair and take a shower. Get up a few minutes earlier so you don’t come slinking in the door with bed head and diesel breath. You are judged as to how you look and if you look like a pile of dog poop ran over by a bicycle tire you are not helping my business or impressing my members.

Notice to all front counter people: you are not dressing to go to a club dancing, you coming to a business to work. Slut clothes, big perfume and bare midriffs are not acceptable at the front counter. And put down your cell phone girl. Play-by-play text messages about how shitty a boss I am because you can’t waste the shift with a phone stuck in your ear can wait until you go home to mamma.
I will listen to your ideas. I will pay you well for the ones I like and use, especially if it improves my business. But this is my business and we will, after a careful discussion and explanation so you understand what I am trying to accomplish, will do it my way. If you don’t agree, ask and I will explain again. If you still don’t agree, quit and go home rather than just acting grumpy and badmouthing me to every member in the club. If you want to do it your way, open your own business and take the beating like every other owner.

Stop showing up to work in a bad mood because you want every person you meet to feel sorry for you. When you come through the door, it is about the members/guests we service. It is not about you and what a miserable bitch you are today. No one cares about your stinking life. We all have problems and yours are no worse than anyone else’s. Stop whining to the members about how sad you are. They don’t feel sorry for you and don’t want to hear your endless stream of self-pity. What they do want to hear, from a cheerful, professional employee, is when the next class starts or if you can help them with a problem. Suck it up girl and stop bitching about your pathetic life to my members.

This could go on and on, but even this much is better than therapy.

Grow Up and Stop Whining!

Published on 07/05/10 02:42PM by Thomas Plummer

Maybe I have just been doing this job too long and maybe I have attempted to help way too many people through the years, but there is little doubt that one of the most irritating things I hear too often these days, often voiced in that whiny, little kid voice, is, “I just don’t know what to do with my life.” This whine is usually said with eyes down accompanied with a little whimper as if this admission should make me feel sorry for you.

I do feel sorry for this person. I feel sorry in about the same way I feel for people who abuse the unemployment check system, who refuse to work because the job isn’t perfect and move home with their parents and the ones who bitch about going to college and then not being able to get a job.
What did you think that four-year degree in psychology was going to get you anyway, $50K a year and a corner office, or is that really the degree you get to waste four years of college and then whine some more about how unfair the job market is? Dudette, if you have the skills you will get hired but all that degree got you was the right to keep going for a lot more years until you get to the point that you are hirable. You made the decision so shut up and go back to school or get a job at Wal-Mart.

This “I don’t know about my life” whine is especially depressing when you hear it from people in their late 20’s and beyond. “I just don’t know what I want to do. It is so hard to make up my mind.” You’re 30 years old. When are you going to commit to something that will take your life forward? If not now, then when? If ever?

Here is hint. Get off your ass and commit to something. Stop whining about your miserable life, make a decision and move forward. And while you’re at it, stop blaming your parents, the schools, your spouse, and system, your current job and anything else you use to prevent you from committing to something besides a lifetime of mediocrity. You’re 30 and working a lousy job because you made decisions yesterday that got you there. No one else made those decisions and if you did let someone else decide, you now qualify as a double dumbass.

Your life has to mean something. You have to constantly be engaged in an epic battle to be the best in the world at what you do. The road is littered with the bodies of a thousand people who flounder for a few years trying job after job and then flash fry themselves in a few split seconds when they realize that everything they have done as made no difference and they are merely filling a terrible job doing work that any trained chimp could knock down with a few lessons.

Life is hard and it is extremely difficult to grow beyond the average. If you want to be the best at what you do then you have to persevere way after others quit. You have to commit to something you love, believe in and want to make your life’s work and stop your whining and whimpering that life is so hard and you can’t get what you want; as if you have ever taken the time to even know what you want?

The world is built for quitters. We make it easy to quit in our culture. This is why there are over 200 hundred certifications for trainers. Instead of focusing your energy on being the best in the world and dedicating your life to one track with a professional company such as ACE, most trainers just float from certification to certification gathering more initials on their business card.

Get more initials and sooner or later you become a super trainer is the theory. Good theory but hopelessly stupid. Yes, education is good if it supports your targeted goal at being the best at what you do. Education for the sake of avoiding building a career, and a life of meaning, is a waste of time. Initials don’t make you the best in the world; it’s the mastery of what you know beyond those around you that makes you a hero.

Everything worth doing is hard by design of the universe. There is always a large barrier that separates the good from the great and this barrier exists because the world recognizes that the truly dedicated and gifted are the people we all want to hangout with and if someone is willing to pay the price to be that superstar, then he must truly be worth knowing. If greatness were easy, everybody you know, including your unfocused butt, would be rock stars, great writers, super trainers, or rich business people.

But in reality, there are a very limited number of the truly great in any of these fields and that few are defined by a narrow focus centered at chasing the one thing that makes them want to get up in the morning and go kick some ass. You have to have a reason to run every morning, to get up and chase the dream of being the best you can be, but most are simply unwilling to do the work it takes to kill their category

Everything you do in your career should have a purpose of moving you ahead, but most people don’t know what they want from their lives, and therefore, get nothing but obscurity and mediocrity for their efforts. Anything is possible if the focus is there and a plan exists to get you to the top

Your life is your life to live it anyway you want, but you only achieve success when you define what you want and then chase it with the heart of a rampaging bull. Being mediocre at something is easy. Simply do as little as possible to improve yourself, let time pass, grow old too quickly in mind and spirit and then wonder why you are wearing an adult diaper and wasted a life unfulfilled.

When was the last time you set in Starbucks with a little notebook and projected your life out five years? Have you asked yourself what you want from your life, your career and the next few years? Or are you doing what you are doing because it is your life’s work, which is noble, or because you are on cruise control wasting your time and everyone else’s that knows you?

Focused, driven people are the only ones worth knowing. People who dedicate their life to being the best in the world at what they do, something almost anyone can achieve but so few are willing to do the work, are the ones who are the most interesting and who are the ones who will change the way we live and work.
Life is too short to waste it by sitting on your ass whining. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life” is a great way to waste your life. If you don’t yet know, then do some deep thinking, commit and seek to be the best there is. But stop using this tired whine as an excuse to do nothing but waste time and burn up your life and money. Get up tomorrow with a purpose and that purpose is to be the best in the world in what you do and be prepared to outwork anyone who gets in your way.

Stop @#$%* Complaining

Published on 06/21/10 08:30PM by Thomas Plummer

Where are all the whiners coming from these days? I see them at the airports. I hear them whine in the workshops. They are on national television whining their little whiny butts off. If you have a shrimp boat covered in oil, you have a real reason to complain but if you are on the Biggest Loser, stop complaining about your giant, white pathetic ass and go work out. Please, oh please, stop the whining.

Here are the ones that really make me what to beat them with a dead chipmunk:

• If you have a job you don’t like, that you feel is unfair and that causes you personal pain to do each day, then stop doing it and by all means stop trying to make the rest of us feel that you are some type of victim we should feel sorry for every day. You are lucky to work. Work is a privilege, not a right of being born and if you hate your job, or hate work, then stop, but it is your choice to do what you do and no one feels sorry for your worthless ass if your job doesn’t fit your grand plan to be a sports agent for a rich superstar.

• If you have a fitness facility, learn to run it. Learn business, learn to sell, learn to train people and figure out how it works. Opening a club means you get to ante up in the game. Risking money doesn’t guarantee success, only that you get to play the game.

• Stop whining about your staff. You hired them, you trained them (probably poorly) you manage them and if they are stupid and don’t work then look in the mirror and blame that fool for poor staff choices. Stop blaming your staff for your inability to hire, fire and manage people.

• The $10 guys, the circuit clubs, the non-profits and every other competitor are not killing you. Poor business skills, a lazy attitude and the fact that you never spent enough time to learn the business is what is hurting your business. Shut up and go to work.

• If you’re fat, it’s your fault. McDonald’s might sell it but no one made you eat it. Too much beer, too much crap food and not enough exercise are the problem not the makers of corn syrup. If you’re wearing it, then you ate it and it ain’t coming off until you move your big ass.

• The average millionaire works about 60-75 hours per week. The average middle class person who constantly complains about how unfair the system is works about 40 hours per week. The only thing unfair is that you live next to motivated people who like their work and enjoy making money doing it.

• Stop bitching about your personal life. Everyone has problems but most motivated, successful people keep their life and their work separated. Stop using your personal life as an excuse to not do the work. You married the stupid bastard but most everyone else married their own version too so stop thinking your messed up life makes you special.

• Here is another point about your business you should consider. How much time did you spend last year working on your business instead of in it as an underpaid employee. When owners tell me they have to train clients, then I know without looking that they are probably losing money because you are spending your time doing the least productive thing in the business. Most owners spend their time working a shift at the desk or doing employee work because they never learned how to lead and create money. Doing this makes a hard business even harder. Owners fail because they spend too much time doing the wrong things and not enough doing the harder, but more productive things that make a business grow. Knowing the difference is the key to success.

• Turn off your f@#$%ing cell phone when you are sitting next to someone at an airport or other public place. No one wants to hear about your suck personal life, your business or ever wants to hear the classic plane line: “we just landed.” Wait until you are at least six feet away from someone before you ask to speak to your kids and no one is impressed by the big business deal you are yelling about on the phone. Phones are nasty and intrusive and no one wants to have their space invaded by your rudeness.

• If you find your world becoming more and more limited, with fewer people in your life, maybe it is you and your toxic attitude. No one wants to hang out with people who hate everyone and blame everyone else for their miserable life.

• I am neither Republican nor Democrat; in fact I hate them all equally, but no matter what you say I still think Sarah Palin is as dumb as a bag of ferret poop and has the depth of a preschooler, which is probably unfair to the preschooler who could find other countries on the map.

• If you haven’t picked up a kettle bell yet, haven’t been to a Perform Better Summit and still do old 1995 Arnold workouts then don’t complain to me when you lose your last members to the competition. You got what you put into it and deserve to get your ass kicked.

• If you are a professional fitness person, then show some pride. Dressing like a homeless person who just scored in a dumpster filled with worn out Nike or Under Armour is not status and doing that makes it harder for the rest of us who seek some level of professional recognition in a field already suspected of harboring meatheads who cry when they miss their two-hour meal and are cranky when the lid on their Tupperware won’t burp.

• If you in your late 20’s, stop hiding behind your parents. Get your own place, get a job and get a life. Working in a club and living at home when you are pushing 30 is pathetic and if your mamma still washes your underwear you really need to get a life first. Do not, by the way, get married because she is not your mamma either.

• If you’re drunk in a bar, do not Facebook the play-by-play, especially if you are over 19. If you’re over 30, is it really necessary to let people know that you are sitting in a bar and that you just ordered food? Get involved with the people you are with and turn off that f%$#&*ing phone for at least an hour. Texting other people constantly while you are with a group tells the group that they are not nearly important as the other people who aren’t there. By the way, if you have more online friends then real friends, you’re a loser. Try spending time with real people, it might change your attitude.

• If you’re not making money, look back and see how much money you spent last year in getting new ideas for your business. You should find that the bigger the loss, the less you spent on new ideas.

• Stop living in the past. Get over Nautilus and HIT. The 80’s are gone and take those leg warmers out of your ass and move on. It is not coming back and no matter how much you argue, there is no pure fitness approach that involves sitting on your ass and going in circles.

• If you work in any aspect of the fitness business, then get your ass in shape. No one wants to buy equipment or services from a fat rep.

Damn I feel better now but I have to get back on the plane this week so this temporary purge shouldn’t last. Step up and stop whining; it’s the only life you are going to get.

Long Time No Write!

Published on 06/07/10 01:45PM by Thomas Plummer

Long time no write. It has been a busy month with more travel than I planned but still necessary. I just watched, “Up In the Air,” the movie with George Clooney and his pursuit of 10 million travel miles and the status that reaching that goal brings to him. For years travel was everything, as it is with George early in the movie, and every year I proclaim that this year there will be less travel, yet I still find myself traveling 45 weeks or so a year. George lived for the travel and his life was planes and the glamour of keeping moving, but even he began to question the journey at the end.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with this blog. The subject I am hitting this week came up during our Perform Better preconference event where we offered a four-hour class on the business of training. We had 20 people for the Providence event and everyone involved was serious about opening or being more effective in their training businesses. One of the side trips we took during that workshop was the role women play in training and why we treat them so badly in most fitness facilities.

The world may be progressing, but in the fitness industry women are still second-class citizens, something that has happened culturally and in some respects the result of what women have done to themselves. Most of the owners in the fitness business are men, and men have been lying to women since the dawn of time and that isn’t likely to change.

One of the biggest lies ever men tell is that women can’t do fitness. We put them in side rooms, give them cute colored weights or chrome junk equipment and then tell them to rep themselves silly and go for toning.

If they try and venture into the main part of the club, we shuffle them off to group rooms or isolate them in areas that are condescending as well an ineffective. Really, chrome equipment? This is so 1965.

Does group work? Of course it does, but it should be part of an overall program that includes strength training as well or you end up like we did in the 80’s with hundreds of skinny fat women who lost weight doing group but still had body fat north of 25 percent. At least the modern group companies, such as BTS, get that women have to do some strength and build into their concept, such as their Power offerings.

Even today, we lie to women in the clubs. Most trainers are extremely prejudiced toward their personal sport; hence the emphasis on why so many women end up doing bodybuilding exercises better left to the dungeon clubs of the 1990’s. Should a woman really be doing split body part workouts six days a week if her prime purpose in the club is to lose weight and increase her overall health and fitness?

Most clubs are also still designed for the client of 1995 as well. Women, and all of the other smaller people in the club of either sex, are never considered in a club design. The equipment was purchased for bodybuilders and is laid out by body part. The free weights are all in one place intimidating the wee wee out of the average club attendee.

There is also never enough space for the person who wants to do a full body workout using functional tools, because that means the club would actually have to get rid of a few pieces of fixed equipment, such as all their Hammer stuff, that only about eight percent of the members actually use.

Women don’t fit in on the main floor because there is simply no room or any equipment they could or would use. Their preferred stuff, even the functional, is all locked up in the personal training room in the back. We don’t think about these clients because the trainers are only interested in training the athletes, which Mrs. Johnson, the deconditioned mother of two, is thought of as on the other end of the scale and not fun to work with by any trainer standard.

The culture also works against women in fitness. Pick up most popular fitness magazines and they are still advocating high repetition toning workouts, excessive cardio and workouts with weights from the 90’s, accompanied by pictures of models that couldn’t possibly be doing the workouts they are modeling since they could never achieve that fitness level doing sets of 20 with little vinyl dumb bell imitations.

Mainstream fitness centers, as mentioned above, don’t fare much better. Even after all these years, there are still few women in the weight areas of the clubs. Poor design of the weight areas, the intimidation factor from so much stupid testosterone and club trainers who insist that women can’t do weights and should be restricted to the circuit areas also adds to limited female involvement in the one area of the club that might help them the most.

One of the questions that still arise often in the workshops is whether a club owner should add a women’s-only room in his club (it almost always a guy asking this question). The answer is to redesign the rest of the club so that it is not intimidating. You can do this by creating two separate weight areas; one designed for smaller people with limits on dumb bells and kettle bells and more open space for the non-bodybuilding types who want weights but not to be confined like the Monday chest and triceps freaks.

You could also just throw out the dozen or so dumbass members who insist that bodybuilding is a sport and that doing bench presses three times a week ignoring legs that would do any chicken proud is the way to train. Every club has a small group of members who by intent, dress, language, bad manners, loud farts and a religious belief in dated training methods scare the hell of the other 97%.

Owners laughed at Planet Fitness but their elimination of heavy dumb bells and the lunk head rule has made them a place that is safe (except for some of the scary guys with the prison tats who love $10 memberships) and their clubs are many times a less intimidating place than some of the national franchise clubs on a Monday night.

It is a shame that we still insist on creating workouts that automatically place women in the “can’t do it” category in the clubs. The trainer sees a woman in her 40’s and 15 minutes later she is doing reps of 20 while a bored dude with a clipboard is explaining the fine points of setting the seat. A guy comes in, however, and he might end up with a workout that actually works, although sadly he might end up in circuit hell too if he is over 40. Maybe it is a combination of sex and age that is killing us in the club and not just being a woman.

But is the responsibility of this nonsense for this down play of women actually partly their fault? Attend any national convention; from the major trade shows to training conventions, and you will see very few women who have evolved into national level experts. Many of the trade shows still feature women who really perpetuate the belief that women can’t do fitness by discussing workouts and club programming that is often sexists and demeaning to the women they believe they are helping.

Are some there leading the charge? Of course, Kelly Calabrese, Annette Lang, Diane Vives and Rachel Cosgrove are out there pushing hard and educating the rest of us poor training deficient males, but there aren’t many of them compared to the shear number of women participants in the industry. Rachel’s new book is actually years ahead of the technology most trainers use for either sex but light years ahead of the typical trainer head and his approach to women in the club.

Why aren’t more women leading the need for change and becoming these experts? We need them to change the belief systems that still allow for most national chains to sort women by group exercise, day care needs and circuit workouts.

Perhaps the biggest philosophical change we can seek is to start with this basic concept: Train everyone who sets foot in the club as an athlete. Does this mean that Mrs. Johnson will be running wind sprints at the park preparing to get timed in the 40-yard sprint? No, but it does mean that we will train her as a fully functional adult upright and using the same training strategies that we use to get results from alleged male athletes (guys over 40 who used to be someone in high school or Division VIII college sports, which means he pitched for a week at the local community college).

Women also have to step up and complain. If the club can’t properly train you, take your money and go somewhere else. Nothing gets an owner’s attention like a member leaving with money in hand.
There is money to be made with women. Treat them as adults and train them as athletes and they will get results. Get results and you will never have to market that program again. And most importantly, it is just the right thing to do.

Personal Image & Communication Skills

Published on 05/20/10 01:06PM by Thomas Plummer

Nothing brings about more shear terror for most people than speaking in front of a group of other people staring at you at some type of speaking engagement.

Most everyone in the fitness industry speaks in front of groups at some point, or at least should be if you are working to grow your business. Standing in front of a Chamber luncheon talking about the advent of functional training and what it can mean for people over 40 is something every club owner should be doing several times a month. You get more members when you present because you build awareness and recognition for you and your business.

There is also a segment of the fitness business that wants to make standing in front of the group their life’s work. These are the future Todd Durkins of the industry who want to be a guru and influence others as to your thoughts on training and how it should be done. Guys such as Todd, who is one of the best at motivating and conveying his information in the industry, put years into developing their personal philosophy and then more years into getting in front of others to change the thought process of the working fitness professional.

I have made my living speaking for over 30 years and I can bluntly say that you are combination of all your life experiences. My mind was set early that I wanted to be someone who could create change in an industry mired in outdated methods that didn’t work and hurt the very consumer we were supposed to be helping.

But passion and a message don’t make you a great speaker. There are a lot of people out there who have ideas that are needed, but these ideas die a quiet death because no one ever hears the message because the creator can’t communicate. Your ability to communicate, which means you can present yourself well personally, speak in front of others, and write clearly and distinctly, are all much more important skills than most fitness professionals ever realize.

How many fitness professionals, for example, lose money because while they might be solid trainers they don’t have basic personal presentation skills, such knowing how to dress and speak in front of their clients. Many fitness people balk at this stating that training ability should overcome any of those issues but that simply isn’t the case.

You are only as good as your ability to convey your message as a professional and being a professional is a combination of dress, speaking skill and written word. If you aren’t good at these three things, you will never make the money you should no matter how much training information resides in your head.

We call the process of mastering these three skills building your personal brand. For example, if you are a trainer and one of 10 on a staff, why aren’t you working everyday to be the most professional of the group? Are you the best-dressed, best communicator and able to present your ideas clearly? If you aren’t the best, than someone else is and that’s the person who will out earn you during the next 10 years.

I spent my early years in acting school, working with speaking coaches, and paying people to come to my workshops to write painful evaluations about how badly I sucked as a presenter and communicator. And I kept on with this process for over 20 years because I only had one goal: I wanted to be the best in the world at what I do, which is still something I work at endlessly because that goal is a journey and not a destination.

You also have to learn to respect your clients. If someone gives you money to train, money to hear you speak or money to join your club, then you have to respect that relationship and the person. For example, if you are a speaker, you dress for the people who pay to see you out of respect for their time and money. If you are a trainer, you dress well, groom well and speak well out of respect for the people who pay our bills. Information is useless if the delivery system is a distraction.

Building a personal brand means that you control every detail of how you are viewed by your client base. If you are seeking a career beyond your current job and want to be a national presenter, or have dreams of being the next Gray Cook or Alwyn Cosgrove, then understand that careers like those aren’t random.

Speaking careers, and all the books and dvds that go along with it, are planned through years of hard work and that being a speaker is not a random act but learned behavior as part of your long-term personal development.

I get a lot of questions as to how to be a speaker who makes his living doing what I do. Here is the answer to all that ask. We are offering a speaker’s school/personal development course in Providence, RI, on June 1-2, in conjunction with the Titleist Performance Institute (To register go to mytpi.com, look under seminars and go to the end). This course is taught by Greg Rose, the premiere speaker in the industry if golf fitness in the world and co-founder of TPI, and myself, a veteran of 30 years of being the front of the room guy.

This learning experience is for anyone who wants to work on his or her personal presentation skills and who might be seeking to be that person in the front of the room who is changing minds through powerful presentations. Recent attendees have been Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove as well as Gray Cook, who all wanted additional help in becoming a higher-level presenter.

If your career is fitness and you want to be the best you can be, then start with who you are and how you present yourself because you are only as good as your personal image and communication

Results is Retention!

Published on 05/03/10 08:39PM by Thomas Plummer

Most of you who have been through a workshop during the last several years are current on my initiative to add layer pricing, through group-style personal training, into all fitness facilities no matter how big. Layer pricing is nothing more than creating multiple price points so more people can play in the training world.

Results are retention and the only way you get results is to get people actively involved in training that works. The only way to do this is to introduce a wider range of pricing models so that every single member in the club can afford to use a trainer, even if the person has to share the cost of that trainer with others, such as semi-private training and group personal training.

Many of the participants in the workshops need months to get this program going in their businesses. People have to be trained, or fired, equipment ordered and space added within the confines of their existing physical limitations. In the mean time, these owners and managers are losing a great deal of income that could be generated by their existing membership bases. While they are waiting for perfect to happen, they stay mired in the 1995 one-on-one model, which restricts your ability to generate any real revenue from training.

There is a transitional system you can use now that will quickly affect your ability to create new revenue from your existing members in training. This system is based upon offering financing to your members. Perhaps the best practitioner of training financing is Jeremy Klugerman from Toronto. I was so impressed with Jeremy’s system that we have invited him to be a guest speaker at this year’s advanced school in Chicago.

If you have been to a two-day workshop, but not to a school, put it on your list this year. We will have 60 of the best owners and a team of instructors that will get some new ideas into your closed heads. We already have Jeremy booked this year as well as the kettle bell expert from the RKC, Brett Jones, as well as Graham Melstrand from ACE, a 20 plus year veteran in the industry who will talk about trends in specialization for clubs and professional training staff.

The version I am going to give you here is a derivative of Jeremy’s work. What he does is another layer of complexity higher than this but I will give you a basic system here that almost anyone can use and you can get his entire system in Chicago.

Step 1: Set up a system of assessments

Trainers have struggled for years with reaching the existing club membership. One of the reasons trainers fail so often talking to members has been that no matter how the trainer connects, he or she only has one product to sell, which is too expensive for everyone but about five percent of the club’s membership. Financing, which is discussed in the next point, opens up the market to more people who couldn’t normally afford one-on-one giving the club a deeper penetration rate into the membership.

But first, you have to get engaged in a conversation. The preferred opening question, usually directed at members either on a treadmill walking slowly or doing the same old circuit workout, is: “How long have you been a member here?” This question is then followed by: “Are you getting the results you hoped for during your time here?”

We all know that the answer to the second part of this scenario is always going to be no, I am not getting what I hoped for as a member at this club. Walking slowly or doing the same old circuit leads to boredom and adaptation and we know that what they are doing is going to fail in about six weeks.
If the answer is no, we move on to the second major question: “Would you like to do a full assessment and let me see where you are right now in your training and fitness level?”

If they agree, follow these steps:

• Sit the person down and take an ACE exercise experience and goal assessment. Fill out a paper as you do this and take notes. Besides getting good information, you need to put on a show here by asking questions and inquiring as to where this person is in their fitness journey. 

• The three major questions you need to ask again here are:

1. What are you trying to accomplish (goal)?
2. What is your time frame to reach that goal (how much time do you have to get them there)?
3. How many days a week can you commit to reaching this goal?

• Take them through a 5-10 minute dynamic warm up. Nothing illustrates your expertise better than taking somebody through something they have been avoiding since joining the club.

• Introduce the person to 10-15 minutes of strength training introducing a tool that they might now have used before in the club, such as a kettle bell or rope. The goal here is to break the old habits and start a conversation about functional training, getting results and breaking out of their fixed and failing routine.

• Finish big with a 3-5 minutes blow out at the end. Maybe 10 squat jumps with a small medicine ball will get it done. You need to let them know that they need a small challenge each workout to reach those goals. Don’t go silly here and make sure the person can do this but finish strong with a challenge.

• Fill out an assessment form (you need to create one) and sit down for a few minutes while the person is hot and sweaty and give him or her a fair idea of what they would need to do to reach their goal, where they are at now in fitness, and if what they want is reasonable. You should also let the person know that what they are currently doing won’t get them to their goal. Do not discourage the person completely here and make a few recommendations the person can do to improve what they are currently doing, such as adding a workout or two a week based upon interval training on the treadmill.

• Big Idea: Once you have the sheet filled out, tell the person exactly what they need to do to meet their goals. For example, a guy wants to lose 20 pounds during the next three months before going to a class reunion. He is willing to commit to the club twice a week and do some work at home as well. Your conversation with him would be: “Well John, based upon your goal, which is reasonable since losing 1-2 pounds per week is quite doable, I would recommend that you work with a trainer twice week for three months and I also recommend that you spend some time with our weight management specialist and have her review your food intake and supplements.” Tell the person exactly what they need to do even if you know they can’t afford it. Be the professional here and give an opinion.

• The person will usually say, “How much will all of this cost?” This is your cue as a fitness professional to pass the person along to a sales person who specializes in this for the staff. This person should have some training background as well. The trainer here can say, “John, I just talk training. Let me turn you over to Scott, who is also a trainer and sales person for the club and he can tell you what this might cost to meet your goals.” If the trainer has the right sales training, he or she can do both parts but sometimes adding another layer of support looks better.

Step 2: Offer financing

The club’s sales person/trainer can now sit with the person and offer training financing. For example, our trainer recommended to John that he work out for a total 14 workouts to reach his goal (12 training and 2 nutrition). Let’s also assume that the club’s rate is $50 an hour for one-on-one training. Do not discount for packages. Financing covers that much more efficiently.

In this case, John’s bill for training would be $700 (14 sessions x $50). The traditional model fails here. John might have the money, or is willing to give you a credit card, but we know that from 30 years of experience only about five percent of your members will lay out the cash. The number is simply too much for most of your members all at once.

Based upon this, Scott can state; “John, how about we finance this for you to make it easier?” Scott can then take the $700 and finance it as a membership receivable over 3-6 months. For example, $700 divided by six months equals monthly payments of $116. This would be tracked in a separate account outside of the membership receivable. At some point, this number might surpass the club’s membership base.

Scott can ask for $116 down and set up payments at $116 a month for five months. The goal is to keep the payments for John at about $100 per month, which makes it very easy for him to say yes. In John’s case, it is probably not desire that prevents him from using a trainer; it’s the cost and the fact that he has to lay out so much money all at once.

Yes, the training will be over before the money is paid. Get over it; credit is the American way. And yes, you might lose a few points a year, but how much will you increase your total training revenue by over the next 12 months using this system?

Jeremy also refinances when the training is over. In this case, he might have Scott go back to John at the end of the training and ask him if he would like to keep going? John will reply that he still has payments left. Scott will then offer to roll the last payments into a new program and just extend the time out a few more months keeping the goal of making the payment about $100 per month. The new program might include 12 more training sessions but now be financed over nine months.

Consider the NFBA 3 Day Business Workshop in Chicago October 21, 22 and 23, 2010!! The seats are already filling so call the office today to get more information 800-726-3506

Five Brutal Facts of the Fitness Life

Published on 04/13/10 02:20PM by Thomas Plummer

Someone challenged me to write a short blog, which is supposed to be the idea behind these things. So here it is, a look at five nasty facts that are now part of the club culture in this country:

1. Physical plants attract but they don’t do anything for retention: You can build the most incredible physical plant in the industry, but besides keeping it clean there is very little it does to keep members. It is sort of like checking in to a beautiful hotel and finding out over your weekend that the place has lousy service. Or it might be like dating a really good-looking person who also happens to be dumb as a rock (Imagine dating Sarah Palin: “So, how is the fishing today?”. The look may have attracted you but it won’t keep you. As I have mentioned in the last several blogs, it’s all about retention and mediocre clubs that can get results and master service can take on beautiful clubs that have no depth.

2. Marketing sucks and it is just going to get harder: There are simply too many companies screaming to be heard for the average consumer to process. Adapt a delivery theme and consistent look you can live with, couple it with a trial membership of some sort, and pound the message and over and over in your market until the member is forced to recognize you.

3. The client is smarter than we are: There are a number of great fitness books on the market, supported by television shows such as the Biggest Loser, that are arming the consumer with information that puts him ahead of what a typical mainstream club offers these days. I have said for years the most clubs are 5-7 years out of date and we are losing ground. The important note here is that we have given up all of our verticals. This means that the kid in the garage took your young aggressive market and has them doing Crossfit. This means that the neighborhood circuit club took your deconditioned members. This means that the low-priced guys took all your entry-level members. If you want to make money, take back your verticals and recognize that you need to throw out that old line of fixed equipment and move on.

4. Members without a relationship in your club will walk away for a few bucks: They are always going to be loyal to their banks accounts first and if you do nothing but rent equipment and ignore the client, then they will cut your throat for about $10 bucks.

5. Most owners are 20 years or more behind in their personal fitness education: I think it is negligent, criminal, laughable, pathetic and downright bad business that most owners have no understanding of functional fitness and have never tried kettle bells, sleds, dynamic warm ups or any other fitness technique from this century. Circuits with cards, trainers with clipboards, plate loaded bodybuilding equipment, fields of single joint selectorized and ancient aerobic queens still teaching cycle classes in darkened rooms chanting to candles is so last century.

Hey, it’s short and too the point, but the longer rants are so much more fun.

Your Price is Your Delivery System

Published on 04/09/10 02:21PM by Thomas Plummer

There was a lot of response to the last blog about the changes in the market and the total confusion many owners are enduring.

Perhaps the most important point I have been emailed about is that a name is no longer a business concept. For example, in the old days of fitness, meaning the 80’s and 90’s, you could slap Gold’s Gym on the front of your building and everyone knew who you were, what you stood for, and what they would find in the business. That simply is no longer true for all the great names of that era including World’s Powerhouse and 24-Hour Fitness.

Now you can walk into a Gold’s and pay $9, $19, $39 or $64 and the clubs might be strong fitness clubs, strong group, or simply horribly out of date. The name no longer has the impact on a national basis because the local owners make their own decisions as to what business concept they choose to run and what price they offer.

The challenge for the franchise is to find a way to establish a national brand that has some type of consistency from market-to-market and even neighboring town-to-town. The analogy here would be letting McDonald’s franchisers choose what sandwiches to offer in each location and let the individual franchisees make up their own menus, set their own prices and change anything they want in the restaurants while still having the McDonald’s sign on the building. That would never happen in the real world but it does happen in the fitness world as most of the last generation franchises let everyone who owns one runs freestyle.

As we discussed in the last blog, the newer generation of franchises coming into the fitness world all have a specific delivery system attached to their name. As mentioned for example, Anytime was the first company to own the 24-hour concept and did an amazing job tapping the market. In their case, it will be interesting to see how they evolve as everyone else in the market copies that idea. Even McDonald’s comes up with new sandwiches now and then.

The point that needs more expansion here is the price you choose in today’s market also has to have a concept attached to it. In other words, your price has to dictate how you run your club. Many owners in today’s market will radically alter their price but not change their operating system, and this almost always spells doom for that client. Price and operating system have to match to stay in business in tough markets.

Look at these prices and some of the specifics you would have to consider if you adopted that price for your business:

• The $49 and higher level: This is where a lot of clubs have gotten into trouble in the last several years, especially those that compete against a low-price/value club such as Planet Fitness. Way too many of these owners have nice clubs based upon 1995 reality, meaning that they are large, nicely finished but are just copies of what a top-of-the-line club looked like in 1995.

The guys in this group-and this is the harsh reality that most can’t accept-are not prepared for business in 2010. They have antiquated sales systems, weak group programs, limited penetration one-on-one training and do nothing more than just rent equipment.

These are also the same guys who bitch and moan when Planet Fitness opens and takes all their business. Of course the consumer is going to leave: you charge $49 and the competition charges just $10 to walk on the same brand tread. The consumer has no relationship with the club, only with his favorite treadmill and when that tread is cheaper down the street he is gone.

If you charge $49 or higher, you have to master training, group exercise and train your team at least four hours per week in service. You are not entitled to make money because you spent $5,000,000 to open a club. This just gets you in the game; it doesn’t guarantee success.

This is the classic case of hoping your name becomes your brand, but this old style operator has been beaten by someone who has a specific delivery system geared on their price model.

• The $39 price is the alternative to $10 memberships: Full service clubs can directly compete with a price of $39 versus a low-priced guy. Three years ago I would have never said that but that was before low-priced guys, maturing competitive markets, a sick economy and weak operators that live in the past.

The $39 price is a must-do for almost any full service club in any market. For example, you might offer $39 for 18 months and $49 for 12 months. This allows you to claim that you have memberships that start as low as $39.

The next jump to $29 isn’t a good one. If you are going to go that low, just go all the way to $19.

• The $19 full service business plan is making a strong comeback although very few have done it well. An exception is the Fitness Edges guys, led by Vinny Sansone and company, that has done well with it in Connecticut.

This is a doable model if you have volume potential but would be tough in a smaller market. The goal here is to offer the same offerings as a full service club but at a volume price. This is a hybrid model that only fits certain markets but we will see more of this in the future and I believe it can work with owners who can control expense and generate sales volume.

• The $10 generation: This is the most talked about model these days in the industry and the leader here is Planet Fitness. Shear volume, heavy cardio presence, limited expenses and unique marketing are the hallmarks of this brand. The delivery system is the marketing and you just tear it up on volume. The problem here is that when you compete on price, you open the door to guys who copy you and then go under your price. Keep in mind Curves and Anytime, both unique concepts at the time and now both are somewhat diluted by dozens of imitators.

• The $8 new guys: Yes, there are clubs now charging $8 as the next, new Planet Fitness and expect more to go after the current leaders in every market. When price is what you are all about, then price is how you live and die and someone more crazy than you can take that away from you by simply charging less.
The big picture news here is that if you have the right delivery system, which matches your price structure, you can compete against other price systems in your market. Each one of the price/structures mentioned above captures different clients in the market, if the clients can see the differences between the models.

This is where some of the big chains, such as Gold’s, are having trouble because the consumer doesn’t understand, and the owners haven’t established, clubs that truly differentiate from the competitors.
By the way, my advice to Gold’s on a national level is to establish $39 as the prime price, go full service, and most importantly, become the workout/Mecca of training information in the world again, a position it held for over 30 years before it gave it away to the small training centers. Stop worrying about $10 guys and start fixing your franchise. The issues are within no external.

The Era of Vast Confusion

Published on 03/29/10 10:24AM by Thomas Plummer

There have probably never been stranger market conditions than exist now in the fitness industry. If the old adage is true, that confused markets represent great opportunity, then this must be the decade of vast fortune for those strong enough to take risk.

Never has this market confusion been more evident than in the franchise business, once the future hope for the industry and now a highly polarizing segment of the market with wars and issues all their own.
There was once a time that the mere name of the club could incite membership and market strength.

Remember the early days of the Nautilus Fitness Centers, Gold’s Gyms, World Gyms and Powerhouses. All of these were names that once drove market share and made the independents shake from fear.
My how things have changed in this segment of the industry. Gold’s Gyms now, for example, have clubs charging $9 in some markets, $19 in others and as high as $50 plus in the Northeast. Visit a Gold’s and you might find beautiful physical plants designed by Fabiano and just a few miles away find other Gold’s that look like relics from the 1990’s with a central workout floor crammed with equipment and a huge free weight area pushed up against the wall.

In the early days of franchising, the name was the delivery system. Put a recognized name on your building and almost everyone knew what to expect when you walked through the front door. Gold’s and World’s, for example, represented the 1990’s style body building gyms and were known for seas of equipment.
The name-only franchise faded, however, to be replaced by the franchise based upon a delivery system. Out went the name-only guys and in came Curves (circuit training), Anytime (first generation 24-hour concept) and Fitness Together (small, multi-room training facilities). Of course the purest form of franchise-based delivery system is Planet Fitness and the low-priced, value model.

This new generation of franchises left the previous generation in scramble mode. This is no more evident than the fear that Planet Fitness inspires in most Gold’s owners illustrated by the endless meetings they have up and down the east coast focusing on competing against the low priced model.

Planet Fitness is a logical concept that plays on the idea that most people just want simple access to equipment and don’t want to pay a lot. These same members are also tired of the posturing and insanity that existed in many clubs in the late 1990’s. PF is a good model and serves a purpose, but what makes them solid is not so much the concept but the focus on a precise business model and marketing base; something the Gold’s guys don’t currently have in their organization.

Many of the clubs in most of the old-style franchises are nothing more than replicas of the box clubs that existed in 1995. Average locker rooms, average group rooms and as much equipment as can be squeezed into a 5000 square foot training space. In fact, most of the ones opening today seem to be using the exact same equipment lists they used to order in 1995, represented by the huge order of Hammer Strength that most of them install but probably now appeals to about five percent of your membership.

This box club, which exists in thousands of more clubs than just in Gold’s, has a low penetration rate in its offerings that make if extremely vulnerable. For example, these clubs might break down like this:
• 10 percent that just want to be left alone to do their own thing
• 10 percent that take part in the club’s group exercise programs
• Five percent that are one-on-one training clients 
This totals 25 percent of the club’s memberships. This also means that 75 percent are just there walking slowly on a treadmill or going in circles holding a big workout card and doing a circuit.

These owners always cite how beautiful their clubs are. Good physical plants attract, but don ‘t retain, and your highly finished gym really does nothing to keep the members you worked so hard to attract. Even the Lifetime people, who build their new clubs at about $30 million each, have found that they can attract with this magnificent facilities but that they also have retention issues like every other club. See previous blogs for ideas on this as well.

This 75 percent represents the members this club could lose if it faces a low-priced value club. If all I am doing is walking on a treadmill, then why pay $49 per month when I can go down the street and pay $10 to walk on the same brand of tread?

What these owners fail to realize is that they aren’t getting beaten on the price; they are getting beat by the concept and focus. PF and all its new imitators that it is spawning work because they have a defined plan and focused concept and their competitors don’t.

Without a narrowly defined plan of who you are and what your represent to the consumer, you tend to madly scramble when attacked. This is why you see incredible Gold’s Gyms dropping their prices to stupid lows. If I don’t have a plan of my own to compete, I will just copy yours.

This is not new by the way. This surge and reaction phenomenon has been going on since the 1950’s. In those days, someone put in a tiny, kidney-shaped swimming pool and every club then had to have one. Drive by a club and see a full parking lot and the owner thinks: “It must be his pool that is making people crazy?”

This owner would of course never think that the reason he is failing is that he is doing something stupid and that it isn’t the pool that is killing him but his own dog-poop business plan.

Once started, this trend continued during every generation: These are just a few of the stupid things that one guy did, then claimed he made a million with this edge, and then faded. Of course some of these did work well and did give the owner a temporary edge, but the point is that every great idea was copied, diluted and then faded:

• The circuit era in the late 60’s
• The Nautilus era in 70’s
• The first generation of Gold’s guys
• Aerobics and all its sub-groups in the 80’s
• The super-box franchise workout clubs in the 1990’s and the fear they spread
• The advent of the 24-Hour Fitness chain and the fear it spread
• Then came LA Fitness and the fear it spread
• Then came Anytime and its revolutionary 24-hour idea and the fear it spread
• Then the $19 dollar guys in the late 1990’s
• Then the $10 guys now

All of these confused the market, forced strong reaction, were eventually copied and then diluted, and it will be the same again today.

Your defense is know what your about and focus on your own plan. You are hard to hurt if you have a solid plan that is working. You may need to adjust, such as offering a $39 price against a $10 guy, but you have to learn to compete as an alternative rather than just a cheap imitator.

The Five Rules of Keeping It Simple

Published on 03/17/10 01:29PM by Thomas Plummer

Many owners are their own worst enemy. No matter what they are told, they always know that there is a “secret” out there that they don’t yet possess that will give them the edge in their market and crush the competition. This secret is always the magic combination of words in a sales pitch or that secret piece of equipment that will drive everyone to your business. The secret is out there and if you can only find it you can make money without ever having to work again.

Spending your time, and therefore wasting your money, chasing the secret is better than actually doing the work you need to be successful, and the emphasis here is on the word “work.” This is why lottery tickets do well. It is easier to dream about being rich than it is to actually get a job and make money the old fashioned way.

There was a recent article in Time magazine about the new way people will work in the coming years. Traditional work is dead and is being replaced by people who want to work out of their homes, set their own times and control their own lives. More power to them, but somewhere you have to pay your rent and that is where those who work are separated from those who don’t. Everyone wants the magic job where I do everything my way, and if you can create that you have my respect, but most won’t be able to accomplish this because they are the ones chasing the easy way out rather than building an income that is dependent on the work they create.

Will Smith, the famous actor; gave an interview to Tavis Smiley on success that is floating all over the web. Alwyn Cosgrove did a nice blog on it (alwyncosgrove.com) and has the clip embedded in that particular piece.

The gist of the interview is why Will Smith has achieved such success in his career. Paraphrasing here, Will answered that you might be better looking, have more money, more talent or even better skills, but he is willing to die on the treadmill, which is his edge. He said that you may have it all over him in nine different categories, but if you and he got on a treadmill, you would get off first or he would die trying to out work you. Put another way, he is willing to die before you can beat him.

His work ethic, an old term that needs to be taught again to anyone who wants to be successful, is what sets him apart from everyone else. His strength is that he never has to get ready for an opportunity because he is always ready.

This mindset can be directly applied to why most owners never succeed. The work needed to be successful over time is replaced by the search for the easiest way, or the magic and secret methods, that are always just slightly out of his grasp.

This is why owners spend so much money buying magic solutions to their problems. Why work when this software will collect all the money from all the members? Why learn to train your members when this new line of equipment will drive new members to your club? And don’t forget to buy that magic group exercise class (pole dancing anyone?) that will line up the new members outside of your door.

This is also why so many members fail. What do you mean I need to work out 4-5 days a week forever? I just want the magic workout, coupled with the magic drugs, and get in shape by next week.

Keeping it simple is how money is made, coupled with the simple concept that no one, anywhere, and especially in my market, will ever out work me. Here are five rules to keep it simple in your business:

1. Marketing isn’t magic, it’s consistency: Marketing is being out there every week with a consistent look and image. I ask people if they are marketing (the ones not making money) and the answer is always: “No, marketing just doesn’t work for us.” You have to learn how to make marketing work or you will fail because there are few clubs where people just walk through the door everyday begging for memberships. Marketing does work, but lazy, cheap owners fail to master the art. Marketing isn’t magic, it’s work and persistence.

2. Everyone has to get results: As cited in the blogs prior to this, if your members don’t get results they walk away. In the past, we didn’t care because we could always replace them. Today, we do care, because we finally learned that we can no longer replace them as easily as we once did. The question to ask yourself is: “Does the highest percentage possible of the members in my club work with a coach of some kind during their visits, such as a trainer or group exercise person?” If the answer is no, you will have a retention issue and you will have a hard time replacing those lost members who fail. We have all kinds of lame excuses as to why people leave, but it is really our fault. People sign up to get results, fail, and then leave. It is simple; we didn’t do our job and we lost money because of it.

3. We have to convert 65% of all leads through the door into memberships: The national average is still below 40%. We get enough leads in most clubs but can’t convert. There are a number of reasons, but the main culprits are: too much pressure on the first visit, no follow up, no ability to train the guests during the first visits, dependency on circuit training as our primary training system and sales people who have no training experience. There is too much competition to survive if you are only achieving 40% or less. Everyone bitches and moans about marketing, but in essence it is almost always a sales issue that is taking them down because you can’t convert the leads you do have.

4. Retention is service and service is retention: I have been asking for years in the workshops about how much training owners do with their staff on a weekly basis. The question always generates sheepish grins, a few shrugs and some quiet laughs. The reality is that most don’t train their front line people more than an hour a week. And we wonder why we lose so many members. Is there anything more important than training your staff to deliver good customer service? Is there anything more important than learning to keep the members you already have fought far in the system? Retention is not about the amount of equipment you own, the number of treads, the number of classes or the hours of the club. Retention is about the relationship between your members and the people who work in your club. Can’t find the time to train your people? You’ll have a lot of time when you lose your club.

5. You have to let go and move on: I saw an honest to God mullet head at the airport last week. The guy was in his 40’s and had a giant mullet haircut right out of a 1980’s Patrick Swayze movie and it honestly scared the hell out of me. There are many owners still living in the mullet head days and their clubs reflect that era. What we did in the 90’s does not work anymore and it is time for everyone to move on. This is the era of retention, getting the member the ultimate results and functional training and it is the end of circuit training, crammed clubs and body builders. Keeping it simple means that your club has to reflect what the member wants to buy, which is easy to recognize if you have ever picked up a Men’s Health or been to an advanced training workshop.

All of these ideas rest on the concept of working your ass off. Businesses are like four-year-old kids; if you don’t watch them all the time they will pee in your sock drawer. If you want to make money, keep it simple and remember the Will Smith interview. You may have a better location, be smarter, have more money but I am willing to die before I will let anyone out work me in this business.

Changing the Culture in your Club

Published on 02/25/10 03:29PM by Thomas Plummer

Here are two things you can start thinking about now to change the culture in your club from that of failure to one of success for every member. As noted in the last blog, change is coming and you will either be part of it or the very power of the change itself will bury you and your business where you stand. Some of this is part of an article that will appear in the next issue of the Club Insider, published by Norm and Justin Cates. Look for the article soon and be sure and subscribe to Norm’s mag.

During the next six months become a training club: No matter how big you are, and that goes for the 100,000 square foot giants who have always relied on their physical plants as their main retention tool (How would you like to put $25 million into a club and find out that the 3000 square foot guy down the street has a higher retention rate than you do because he gets results for his members and you don’t?) you have to put all your efforts into becoming a training-centric business. We simply don’t touch enough people and our current training model has failed in most commercial facilities. The training guy down the street is right. He tells his clients what to do, tells them what to eat, and tells them what supplements to take. He then takes them through an amazing workout based on upright functional training and changes their life.

The fitness business should be a business of trust. We take money in exchange for the client’s belief, and trust, and that he thinks we can help him change his life through our leadership and guidance. The reality in most mainstream clubs, unless this person can ante up the necessary money to declare himself elite, and therefore, buy leadership through personal training, is that the member is left to seek fitness on his own through magazines or help from other lost members. He signed up to get in shape but to us he is nothing more than a replaceable score on that day’s sales sheet.

Breakdown a typical commercial center and you can easily see that we fail over three quarters of the people who trusted us to help them. Assuming the club has group exercise, you would find that about 3-6 percent of the members are in one-on-one training and about 20 percent take part in the club’s group programs. Rounding off, only about 25 percent of the club’s membership has any type of ongoing relationship with the business, such as the instructor/client in the group setting, or is getting any type of help and guidance through the trainer/client arrangement.

Put another way, 75 percent of the members in this club don’t receive any help or have any relationship other than that warm and fuzzy feeling they might get from their favorite treadmill. This is, by the way, the first owner who will complain loudly that the low price guy is killing him or that the non-profit is taking all his business. What he doesn’t realize is that he has no relationship with his members and they will quickly leave him for the cheapest club in the neighborhood since fitness to him is all about the treadmill and he will go to whomever can rent it at the lowest price.

The members enter the business believing we will help them, but we set them up with antiquated circuit training, including the giant workout card, that fails the client after a few weeks, and then ignore them until we need them again at the end of their membership. If a member wants to get in shape in these clubs, he has to damn well work hard on his own because the club simply won’t, or can’t, provide the leadership and help he needs to be successful over time.

If you have relationships with your members, they will stay longer and pay longer. Without this relationship, you are nothing more than another club that rents equipment by the month, and the lowest priced competitor in the market will own that niche.

Leadership sells and people who get results will never leave your business, but most mainstream fitness businesses aren’t designed to achieve that level of penetration or success.

Even how we layout and design clubs will change in the coming years. Cardio will get even more important, functional equipment, such as Human Sport by Star Trac or Free Motion will rise to another level and you will drain the Perform Better warehouse filling your club with kettles, ropes, medicine balls and other tools that professional sports people have been embracing for years. As a side note, when was the last time you watched a professional athlete go around a circuit as his strength component.

You will still always have a core line of single joint stuff, but your functional cable equipment and workout tools will take a higher volume position and you will also reintroduce lifting platforms and other tools that challenge and delight the members. Free weight areas will no longer be designed for bodybuilders but for functional people and the tools we select will change dramatically.

This type of training has to be infused throughout your business, not just set aside in one room. Your culture has to change from that of failure to one of success for the most members you can touch. Training is what we do in this business and we have to return to our roots because people who get results are the ones that never leave, which is what retention is all about.

The second thing you can do is to begin to teach the fundamentals of fitness during your trial periods or during the first 30 days a person is a member. Somewhere in the past, we made a decision that all new members will be set up on a circuit, given a stupid card that we keep in a huge box on the edge of the floor and then we leave them to their own devices. We don’t teach them how to workout, we teach them a simplistic workout that everyone knows will fail the client in about six weeks.

Couple fundamental classes with your trial memberships and teach people how to workout. Put about 6-8 fundamental classes on your schedule and teach the basics of getting a good workout. For example, a fundamentals class might be based upon the basics of a dynamic warm up, strength moves, such as a kettle bell swing, a lunge, a body weight squat, some type of pressing movement, a row and a dead lift movement, all considered the essentials of any fitness routine. Without these movements, the person is doomed to machines and the circuit will fail them. If you are more progressive and have functional movement equipment, then teach that as well.

Also teach the person cardio. We all know that those members walking endlessly on a tread reading or watching Oprah are failing and we should know that they all will leave us because they are not getting results. Teach effective cardio and teach it early. If members get results, they will stay longer and pay longer.

The guests in the trial might be there all month, which is fine, or if they master the basics, they should be sent to other group experiences, which allow you to service the most guest and members at the lowest cost. Do everything in groups if you can and stop isolating the members. Most of us have grown up doing everything in group settings. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, sports teams, band, church groups or anything else you might belong to are all examples of group dynamics, but when you come to the clubs we do everything we can to isolate the person.

For example, look at the trend in cardio. When we added the televisions, we essentially locked the person out of the group dynamics in the club. The members don’t talk to each other, don’t look around and don’t get involved. You would be better to not buy the televisions and just to order more cardio in your club.
Everything we do in the real world is about social groups, but everything we do in the club world is about isolating the member from all the others. Again, if my only relationship in the club is with a small television and treadmill, why would I not simply go to the lowest bidder in the market?

Your club has to become nothing more than a large training facility. We forget that people come to us to change their lives, but because our businesses were designed for nothing but the acquisition of new members, we fail over 75 percent of our members. Get results from the most people possible and you will have the highest retention rate you have ever achieved.

What I am reading this week: Stop Acting Rich, by Stanley. This is a great read for anyone trying to build wealth in his or her life. It is a little redundant if you have read the Millionaire Mind, but it is still a decent read.

Tip of the week: Seek advanced education for your team. Your sales people should all be ACE certified trainers, your lead trainers should have at least one kettle bell certification or advanced education experience, you should master suspension training, which appears to be the big thing now, and if you live in a golf community, you should seek out advanced education from the Titleist Golf Institute (mytpi.com).

New Book Alert: My new book, Where Did that Member Go? Rediscovering the Lost Art of Customer Service, will be released at IHRSA by Healthy Learning in early March. The NFBA is currently pre-selling this book on their website: www.jointhenfba.com.  This is number six and the last in the club series.

Change Always Comes Faster to Those Who Fight it the Hardest

Published on 02/15/10 10:23AM by Thomas Plummer

If you are seeking change, it always seems to come too slow. If you are fighting change, it seems to come at you at the speed of a hangover after too much cheap tequila. You wake up, open your eyes, and then roll onto the floor crying in agony as the burst of pain, accompanied by starbursts of crazy colors, shoots through your forehead just behind your eyes. The hangover is coming, and coming fast, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it but whimper like a beaten dog.

There was a photographer named Galen Rowell, who died a few years ago in an airplane crash returning from a workshop he had just given that broke exciting ground with his work. He captured landscapes, people, cityscapes and just about anything else he chose at a level of intensity that few people ever accomplished before or since.

He was a film guy who clung to that medium. One of his quotes, paraphrased here, stated that yes, digital photography was coming but it would still be years before it affected any of the work that a serious photographer was doing. He knew digital was there, knew it was coming, yet thought it wouldn’t affect the market for years into the future. He was a brilliant film guy and just didn’t believe that anything could replace that delivery system quickly.

About two years after he said that, he became a master of the digital camera and photography itself changed forever. Now it is almost impossible to find a lab, or even a store, that still sells film or a film camera. Change happened, and when it came no one had any idea how fast it could hit.

The fitness industry is now poised upon that same ledge. Change is coming, and it is happening faster than many people want it to come. The resisters fight to the last breath but change still comes anyway once a critical mass is achieved, and we have arrived at the specific point in time.

Another example is the publishing world. The big publishers can fight as hard as they want, and perhaps slow down the change slightly, but the consumer wants downloadable books, offered at a reasonable price, and they will get what they want. You can fight, and eventually be left out of the victory spoils, or you can adapt and make money with the world as it is becoming.

In our industry, the death of the single joint fixed plane equipment circuit is upon us and there is nothing anyone can do to stop the transition. Yes, we will still be buying a line of fixed equipment for most mainstream commercial clubs in the coming years, but that purchase will be a lot less than it was just a few years ago and the new emphasis will be upon functional cable equipment, functional toys and a whole lot more cardio.

Weirdly, this change is being driven by unlikely sources. Watch the Biggest Loser, get excited and then go to a local club and try to find any of the equipment or type of training they use on the show. You can’t yet in most clubs, but the early adapters will fulfill the need while the rest fight back that the old way is still the best way.

I was talking to Robert Creech, a talented owner, who along with his brother David, run a chain of clubs that are setting new standards in their part of the country (northern Mississippi). Robert was on vacation and visited a local national franchise club that was about 70,000 square feet and said he had a hard time getting a workout. He went from room-to-room looking for functional equipment, such as kettle bells, but the club just didn’t have any functional equipment at all. It did have acres of fixed equipment and you could do leg extensions with four different types of equipment, but you couldn’t do a simple workout using the equipment most training clubs have been using for several years. The sad thing was that this club was only a few years old.

Fight all you want, and claim that the old guys (the owners in the 90’s) had it right, but those members doing chest and triceps on Mondays will be extinct in the next couple of years. The club above was beautiful, big and a great museum to 1995, but it is overbuilt and a waste in today’ market.

The consumer wants to train differently. He or she reads the latest books, such as Rachel Cosgrove’s recent training book, they read Men’s Health, they watch the big loser shows, go to boot camps in the parks and they see the infomercials, such as P90X and Insanity, and simply want something different. The consumer is driving this change, just as they did with digital cameras, the music world and publishing. The consumer always gets what he wants because he is the one writing the checks. Fight all you want, but you can’t fight this trend away from going around in circles doing circuit training.

You adapt, or you die. Change is coming in how we train people, and how we even design clubs, and it is coming so much faster than the existing mainstream clubs, and equipment companies, want it happen.
Your future will be big cardio, lots of functional driven equipment and toys and a lot open space where the members and trainers can move in groups. Your training revenue will far exceed your membership revenue if you grasp offering multiple levels of pricing and training. You can compete against any big box club by simply designing your place to get results. You will need more and creative trainers. You will need a lot of open space.

You will not need seas of equipment cramming every usable space. You will not need weight loaded fixed equipment unless you are still catering to the last 12 wannabe bodybuilders on the planet. You will need lifting platforms, but not for the power guys. It will be Mrs. Johnson out there doing those cleans and presses with her personal coach. You will need sleds, 50’ ropes, suspension training and most everything that mainstream guys think about buying and then ruin by sticking it all in one small room because by all that is holy you will use those 80 pieces of circuit equipment since someone accidently got in shape in 2002 using that stuff.

The client is bored and wants new stuff and the last thing he will pay for in the future is a bored trainer setting him up on a 12 piece circuit that feels like a short, boring trip on the road to hell.

Watch for the next blogs. I will start to discuss things you can do now to implement some of these changes.

Where did that Member go? Rediscovering the Lost Art of Customer Service

Published on 02/08/10 10:26AM by Thomas Plummer

The copy in this blog is an excerpt from my newest book, tentatively called: Where Did that Member Go? Rediscovering the Lost Art of Customer Service. The book is due out in March and will again be published by Jim Petersen and his team at Healthy Learning, perhaps the most patient people in the publishing business.

My theme of the year in the workshops is that we fail the members by not getting enough people in the clubs enough help and then that mistake punishes us when it comes to low retention in our businesses.
The shear number of competitors should be forcing you to rethink this issue. We need to move away from a culture of failure, where just a few members willing to pay for one-on-one training ever had a chance to succeed, to a culture of success where we can create systems that allow us to help the biggest percentage of members and still make money.

The entire book is really about retention, but the bigger issue lies underneath and that is our inability to help the members get in shape and stay in shape. Start with this brief rant and start to think about how you support the members you have in your club. You will probably find that few truly get the help they want and deserve for the money spent.

Create a Membership System That Has Many Layers and Options Where Everyone Who Wants Help Can Get It at a Price They Can Afford

We exist to change lives and any fitness business should be nothing more than a delivery system designed to change as many lives as possible.

Change lives, and people stay longer and pay longer, which results in more income for the business, usually more profitability, and a chance to change more lives in the future.

The tool that enhances this mission to change as many lives as possible is customer service. Every member who pays us each month to belong to the club in essence trusts us to facilitate this change, and every member who pays deserves some respect from the club and its team. This glowing and somewhat simplistic business idea breaks down, however, when it comes to the direct application in most fitness businesses.

In most clubs, there are usually two distinct classes of members. There are the ones who have the money to purchase one-on-one help, and therefore get the best results from their membership, and then there is everyone else going through the motions practicing self-inflicted fitness.

Everyone else is defined as all the other members still doing their original circuit workout from the day they started, the members carrying sweat stained copies of Men’s Health, and the wannabe bodybuilders still carrying around Arnold’s 1977 hardcover edition of The Education of a Bodybuilder. All of these people are seekers of a more fit life, but almost all will be failures since the club simply doesn’t have a system to help them that isn’t restrictive and expensive.

If we want to keep more members staying longer and paying longer, then we have to design a membership system that allows everyone to get help at a rate they can afford.

Doing this requires that you stop copying the traditional one-on-one business model and move to a system that is more inclusive for more members, yet more financially successful for the club due to a much higher percentage of your members paying a fee monthly that is higher than your rate for just a simple access membership.

The Current System Only Serves One Type of Client

The traditional training model only serves one type of client. If you are on the average a middle-aged, fat, white guy and have money, you get a trainer. If you’re not, then you are much less likely to seek out the services of the club’s training department.

The club loses money, and fails to deliver great service, by limiting its business plan to only a single user group. If you want to generate the highest revenue possible from the most members, and deliver service to the widest range of clients, then you need to expand your model to seek out the other types of clientele who are waiting for you, but are untapped because your model fails to serve them.

Following are all of the categories you could be serving in your business by expanding your current training model and by making it more inclusive.

The deconditioned people

This group, defined by the statistic that about 63 percent of the people in this country are either overweight or obese, really doesn’t do well in a mainstream fitness facility. Unless the deconditioned person can come up with money for one-on-one training, he is pretty much underserved by most clubs. These people simply need much more help during their first 30 days than most clubs can afford to give using the one-on-one format.

It is interesting to note that most clubs fail these clients, due to the limits and restrictions of their business model, and not because of the owner’s or manager’s lack of awareness that these folks need more help or because the club’s management doesn’t care. The model itself is wrong, and is where the barrier exists, because most owners just can’t afford to throw that much one-on-one help at people who need constant attention during their first 30-days.

The traditional one-on-one clients

This is the standard client serviced by the standard model. This is a failing model in most clubs, however, if you look at the numbers. One-on-one training usually only has a penetration rate of about 3 to 6 percent of the club’s membership. Penetration rate is again defined as how many people in the club’s total membership are involved in a given program. In this example, a club with 1,000 members, and a penetration rate of five percent with one-on-one training, would only have 50 consistent training clients.

Some clubs try to compensate for this by showing a higher rate of training, using $75 per session for example, and then discounting for anyone who buys more sessions, or packages. In this instance, the club might offer five sessions at $250 (now $50 each) or 10 sessions at $400 (now dropped to only $40 each). Besides killing the credibility of your trainers, who started out as $75-per-hour trainers, but are now worth only $40 per hour, you are still limiting your program to only a single type of client.

Most one-on-one training clients like the pampering and the status that comes with having a personal trainer. These people seek this out because of the results they get, the guidance they receive, but as equally important to many of them is that fact that they can afford it and the other members can’t. It is elitist, it has status for some, and this type of training was always designed to be that way. The trainers themselves perpetuate this by fighting for bragging rights on who can get the most per hour, therefore, continually seeking to drive up the training rates in the market.

These elite clients have a place in the club, and if a member drives up in a Bentley and wants to train, take a lot of his money and give him the training. But there are other types of clients, in much larger numbers, who are not being serviced by this model you need to chase as well.

The social dynamic/group dynamic category

These are the clients that prefer to do things in groups and who seek the energy and fun from doing things they like with a lot of other people pursuing the same activity and goals.

The business concept behind attracting these people is that they can share the cost of the trainer. People need access to more information to make change in fitness, because most people just can’t figure it out by themselves. Training in a group allows a wider range of people, who understand they need help, to get this information at a reduced rate by going through the process with others and sharing the cost of that education.

People grow up doing things in groups. If you were an athlete, you grew up on a team. Even if you were an individual-pursuit athlete, such as a track person or played golf, you were still part of a team and trained and travelled together. If you weren’t into sports, you might have been a Boy Scout, Girl Scout, in the chess club, or somehow involved in doing something with a group of people. Even the guys in the computer clubs still get together to exchange tips and combine expertise.

We have killed the group dynamic in most clubs. Training is done one-on-one, the cardio equipment has personal televisions, and we encourage members to bring their mp3 players. We not only limit the personal connection, we strongly discourage it in most clubs. Except for clubs who have vital group-exercise programs, there is nowhere in most facilities to meet and interact with other members, especially since many clubs don’t have stretching areas or any type of socialization node, such as a sports bar.

Training in a group is more fun, you will get better results because of the peer pressure, and you can save money if you share the cost of the trainer. The club also benefits more by being able to generate a higher return-per-session. For example, if your best trainer can get $75 per hour, then that is your ceiling for her for every hour she works. You simply can’t get more than the proven maximum of $75. But if you think about creating the group dynamic experience, you can now raise your return-per-hour. For example, you might charge $75 for one person, but you can charge $40 per workout for four different people in a semi-private environment; therefore, generating $160 for the same length of time.

It is important to understand that you can add this layer without cannibalizing your one-on-one business. The people who do one-on-one are not the same people who seek the group experience, and the majority of your existing one-on-one clients will prefer to just keep doing what they are doing if you do add the semi-private option to your training business. Most semi-private training would be done in groups of two to four people, but experienced trainers can sometimes manage groups as big as six people.

One of the false assumptions that prevent many club owners from trying this model is that they believe--usually through the influence of the trainers--that everyone has to have their own individualized workout. Unless the person is injured, or needs sports-specific training, such as someone getting ready to do a marathon, then the rest of the members can do things in groups, sharing a common workout. For example, the head trainer might post the workout of the day for the semi-private clients listing kettlebell swings, clean and presses, squats, pull-ups, and dead lifts. An experienced trainer might have a member who has been training for a while do two minutes of swings with a 53-pound bell and the new guy might do 30 seconds with a 35-pounder. Everyone can get individual help and guidance that suits that member within the confines of the group, but everyone still does the same basic workout.

The Challenge Seekers (those who simply can't find a hard enough challenge in most mainstream fitness businesses)

This is the group most clubs never see and wouldn’t know how to service if they did appear. These people are in the 25- to 45-year-old age group and are the ones who are doing radical training in their garages, doing the cult workout of the year. These are also the same people who would be bored to tears working with a traditional trainer by themselves. This group wants a challenge, wants to do the training that their favorite athletes are doing, and are concerned not only with looking good, but with functioning well as a skier, bike rider, hiker, kayaker, or any other weekend lifestyle sport. These people almost always train in groups, because the peer pressure drives the results and helps take every workout to the next higher level.

These are also the people who usually know a lot about training since they read all the hot fitness publications, explore fitness online, and read the training books. We usually call this group the “badass” fitness group, because they are seeking the badass, make-it-hard, challenge-me-as-much-as-you-can workout, and have no interest in traditional fixed-equipment circuits or body-split bodybuilding workouts done 1972-style.

This group thrives in group personal training/coaching with groups of a trainer and up to 10 members. The group training sessions should be very aggressive and would be structured consisting of a program that is usually done for a full month before being changed. This should not be called a class, because that term forces a comparison between the club’s group personal training and its group exercise program.
Group exercise is generally included as part of a simple access membership to the club, but you want to charge for group personal training. There is a sample pricing structure later in this chapter.

The key point is that there are really four types of clients that need, or who are seeking, help beyond the most basic information that most clubs offer, but most clubs merely offer help to the traditional one-on-one client. By limiting your help to just the 3 to 6 percent of the people who can afford training, or like that type of training relationship, you are in effect neglecting the other 94 to 97 percent of the members who can’t afford, or who simply don’t like, that type of working out.

The interesting thing to note is that when asked directly, most owners cite that almost everybody coming through the door, which stated statistically might be as high as 95 percent in most clubs, needs help of some type and can’t get started on their own. Even the folks from other gyms and who have been working out are often doing homemade or dated workouts that are ineffective or dangerous.

Yet knowing this hasn’t led to any changes in the training model for most clubs. The clubs simply don’t change, or can’t afford to change, the current model that limits help and service to the majority of their members.

Building a Price Model That Can Service a Deeper Penetration Rate in Your Membership

Following is a sample model that is designed to touch the largest number of members in any given club. When you add layers, you are really adding a variety of different price points that will appeal to a wider range of clients. This model is also based upon the assumption that the one-on-one training model is not effective in most clubs. The traditional model only generates restricted income from the entire membership base and also restricts the return-per-hour the club can obtain.

Done correctly, most clubs should only have about 10 percent of its training revenue come from the traditional model. Most clubs could in fact benefit from charging more for one-on-one training and making it more elite for its membership and for its image in the marketplace. Setting a higher standard with your one-on-one price would also guide more members toward the semi-private and group models where the club can reap a higher profit margin and serve more members.

Important note: Do not panic by trying to force your existing members into a new system. If you use this model, you would do it for new members forward. Most owners balk at using a newer model, because they always relate change back to the members they already have in the program: “I know Joe, and Joe won’t do any of this new stuff, and he sure won’t pay more.” Leave Joe alone. Don’t mess with your current members in the model you are using. If they want to keep buying sessions, then sell them the sessions, but stop failing to grow your business because you are afraid of a bunch of members holding you hostage. Honor the deals you have made, but move forward from there.

This model is also based upon the assumption that you will at some point stop selling sessions and packages and move to an EFT model (members are drafted monthly for their training directly from a credit-card or bank account). Sessions and packages are weak tools, because the cash flow is so inconsistent. You sell a package, get the cash today, which is nice, but then you have to service the person for several more months without any matching influx of money.

Your goal in this more advanced business model is to:

 
• Offer a system that allows a wider range of members, as defined by workout type and price sensitivity, to become active in your business.
• Stabilize your cash flow by switching away from short-term packages and sessions to 12-month training programs based upon a monthly EFT.
The training clubs have long suffered from having all of their membership based upon short-term tools, such as packages, and the mainstream fitness clubs have based their memberships upon longer tools, such as a 12-month term.

Both businesses could benefit from combining these memberships into one model. The training clubs could develop a large receivable base, which is the combined total of all their members paying monthly for their training. This eliminates the inconsistent cash flow that is so detrimental to these small businesses.

The mainstream people should strive to get the highest number of members possible into a larger monthly payment and include the membership to the club as part of the training membership.

One of the biggest changes in the industry during the first decade of the new century, and maybe one of the biggest changes in the last 30 years or so in the business, was the necessity to show the lowest entry point/membership price possible in order to get as many members as possible into the club, and then work hard to drive up the average EFT sale.

In the past, clubs have been able to hold the line and not drop their single-person rate, but the combination of the economy, the maturing of the marketplace with more competitors than ever before, the advent of the lower priced club model, and a more astute clientele looking for more options is forcing everyone else to change. This change will drastically affect all mainstream fitness clubs for the next decade, and all owners and managers need to tweak their current price models before falling sales and declining revenues force you to change what you are currently doing.

When was the Decade You Personally Stopped Evolving?

Published on 01/25/10 11:39AM by Thomas Plummer

I met a guy at a party whose year was 1986. That was the year that he still believes was the most important year of his life, and he still clings to that era like stink on a fat bowler. He refuses to listen to any music recorded later than 1986 (Journey, Huey Lewis and Survivor still rock his world), lives as a low-tech contrarian and is in essence frozen in the past.

This would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that I have to deal with this every single workshop we offer. Most owners are frozen somewhere in the past and just refuse to evolve no matter what is happening in today’s market. For example, look at the industry through the recent years:

• 60’s: Some of these guys are still around and in the business. These were the years of the first hard pressure sales, nasty sales tactics and offensive marketing. Whether we like it or not, this is part of our past and these guys and their business practices are why the industry has such a low image with the public, because so many next generation people in the industry emulated these early guys. These guys are characterized by the question, “What do you mean lead boxes don’t work? Why I did 221 sales one month (November, 1966) out of lead boxes,”

• 70’s: Arnold says it all. This decade is why every Monday in America is national bench press and arm day in most clubs thanks to, “Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder.” This is also the decade that still dictates training philosophy in the clubs and why we fail the clients so often. Mrs. Johnson, that sweet little member who wants to lose 25 pounds, finds herself with a trainer who weighs about 260 and wonders why she is on a four-day split routine doing bench presses with tiny, pink dumb bells. This decade and all its madness took us away from full body functional workouts to isolation and routines that about 2% of the gym populations can do or really needs.

Owners who worked in clubs in these days, as young employees, are now the ones building their club just like a Gold’s Gym from the early days. These guys are characterized by the statement, “You just can’t build a club without Hammer equipment and you have to have dumb bells that go up to 200 pounds or you will lose members.”

• 80’s: There were actually two groups that emerged from this decade, and both are still around and as bizarre as ever. The first group is still rampant in the clubs and still has hot debates online. This is the HIT group, or high intensity-training fan club of the glory days of Nautilus. Do one set, do it to your max, follow the circuit for 12 pieces of equipment and go home. Give it up people, no one wants to do that anymore and it has proven to fail. You may not even know you are one of these guys, but if you put your new members on a circuit and give them a workout card with the pieces of equipment, seat adjustments and a place for weight and reps, congratulations, you are frozen in time and it was a butt ugly year to choose.

This is why members quit you fools. You can’t sign up a member and never help him again, and you can’t in good business, or good conscious, advocate something we know will fail for the client, therefore, he will leave us. You only make money if someone stays longer and pays longer and the days of chasing endless replacements for lost members are so long gone. This guy is characterized by the statement, “If you can’t get it done in one set, then you didn’t do the one set hard enough. And yes, I do have a shrine in my office to Ellington Darden, so what?”

The other group from this decade is also still haunting us. The 80’s were the glory years for aerobics (not to be confused with the advent of modern group exercise), and any group person who was working in a club during the later part of that decade, or into the first few years of the 90’s, still believes that you have to change your class every week, that the instructor is the star, and that a microphone hanging off the side of the head is status. These ancient divas destroy group programs, because they just can’t stop being the star and can’t let go of the programs. This diva is known by the statement, “Workout music hasn’t been the same since Donna Summer retired,” but they can also be heard saying, “I think I still look good for a forty five year old woman without a single muscle in my body from all this cardio.”

• 90’s: This was the era of the first super Gold’s and World’s Gyms. These big boxes were quite something in the day and each one grew bigger as the owners all tried to out do each other. Fields of equipment stuffed tightly in one big room, cardio inches apart and free weights that would make a bodybuilder wish he could still get an erection. The clubs were all about whoever had the most equipment would win and it was bodybuilding heaven and circuit city all rolled into one.

Even the national chains jumped in and you still find the chains building clubs that are way to big to deliver service, but egos demand that the product has to be built big and expensive, even though the member simply doesn’t care anymore and there is too much competition to make the big pigs profitable. Anyone who was working in this era still says, “You just can’t build a smaller club. It has to be 40,000 square feet or you can’t compete. Besides, a smaller club would restrict your income.” This is, by the way, the same guy who is now competing against a 6,000 square foot hybrid-training club that is generating over $100,000 a month and kicking his over-leveraged ass.

• 2000: This was the decade of the reinvention of the low price/value club, the advent of the small town 5000 square foot model and the end of the 1500 circuit model. More happened in this decade than in the past 60 years in fitness, and some of it was even good. The low priced guys weeded out the marginal mainstream players, which was good for everyone else. The functional guys brought in a new era of fitness that is based upon individual results for the client and the end of equipment as service. The dysfunction of the economy validated whether the big chains really had a viable business plan, or were just coasting along with the endless supply of cheap capital stemming from desperate investors looking for an easy score. The economy won and proved that many of the guys with more than 20 clubs never had a frickin’ clue about what is really happening in the industry and they paid the price.

Everyone had a comment from this decade. The 1500 square foot circuit people cried because no one could believe that losing twenty pounds did not make you a successful business owner. The big guys blamed the economy, but the reality is that no matter how big your club is, or how much equipment you have, you still have to get results for your members and deliver customer service; something few if any of the bigger organizations can accomplish.

• The next step: Build clubs with one purpose: you have to get your clients results so they will stay longer and pay longer. This will be the decade where we finally realize that there is not an endless supply of new members, because there is simply too much competition. The look of clubs will change. The size of clubs will change. What is in clubs will change. The equipment companies will change their offerings or perish. Fixed equipment will become a small part of your offering. More will change in the next few years than in the last 30. Are you ready, or are you still stuck in the past listening to Metallica and wondering if your hair is big enough?

What I just read: Mike Boyle, the Boston bad boy of banging metal and functional guru to the rest of us mere workout mortals, just released a long over due new book, “Advances in Functional Training.” Mike’s new release is a combination of some of his best writing over the years infused with some of his current thoughts on training. This is a must have for any owner’s bookshelf and should be mandatory reading for all head trainers. You can get this book from Perform Better now. Mike will also be on the road at this year’s Perform Better Summits, which every owner and head trainer should attend. Many of you owners are out of date and need new ideas for training in your club. Don’t be frozen: go get some new info and see Mike.

If it's Too Late, Then it's Too Late

Published on 01/08/10 11:12AM by Thomas Plummer

This question appeared as an email I received around Christmas. The short answer, followed by the long answer later in this blog, is why didn’t you react to this about a year or two before they opened in your market. It’s a little late to take boxing lessons after somebody in the bar took your girlfriend, kicked your ass and called your mama a bad name:

What do you do when Planet Fitness moves next to you?

They have sold over 6,000 memberships at $10 per month with upgrades of $19 per month.
They killed everyone……. Mike T.

The following is a Seth Godin blog, which partially answers this question. Seth Godin is the guy who wrote Purple Cow, and about a dozen other books. I highly recommend you sign up for his blog and make it part of your business education each week.

In this blog, he talks about what happens when a generalist business gets hurt in the market, by someone delivering the same service, but now doing it cheaper and disrupting the market. This is the same situation that many mainstream fitness centers that are dated and using business plans from the 1990’s find themselves in when a low price club, such as Planet Fitness, comes to town. The important thing to learn here is that this blog only applies to generic box clubs and not niche specialists.

What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, "We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We're well regarded, we're talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?"
Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn care services, accounting services, tailoring services, consulting... all they want is the cheapest. The masses don't want a better PC laptop. They just want the one with the right specs at the right price. It's not because people are selfish (though they are) or shortsighted (though they are). It's because in this market, right now, they're not listening. They've been seduced into believing that all options are the same, and they're only seeing price. In terms of educating the masses to differentiate yourself, the market is broken.
Fixing this is almost always a losing battle. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean the market cares any longer.

The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn't complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.

Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn't start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).

It's extremely difficult to repair the market.

It's a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.

If Wal-Mart or some cultural shift has turned what you do into a commodity, don't argue. Find a new place before the competition does. It's not easy or fair, but it's true. You bet your life.

[Please note that nothing I wrote above applies to niche businesses. In fact, exactly the opposite does. You can make a good living selling bespoke PC laptops or doing vaudeville today, even though the mass of the market couldn't care a bit. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know...]

The market has changed, have you?

If you have been following my blogs for the last year, or if you have ever been in one of our workshops, you know that I have been screaming for years that you have to find a niche in the market and own that niche. Without a clearly defined niche, you are at the mercy of the next low price guy providing the same service at a substantially lower rate.

Planet Fitness (PF) has been around for a while and has appeared in a lot of markets. Some clubs survive nicely against them and often even thrive, while others get pounded into submission is less than a year and then are gone.

PF was created by Mike Grondahl. He has two talented partners, but Mike is the creative force behind the organization. He took an old idea, which was to drop the price, and repackaged it into something new and exciting. He then wrapped a solid marketing concept, the Judgment Free Zone™, around the $10 model.
In other words, he created a niche for his company that competes on price, but is seen by the public as a place where everyone fits in and you can avoid the traditional meatheads and other less desirables that haunt the typical clubs. These bodybuilders and “so into myself” people are the ones, that in many consumers minds, are the people who use mainstream fitness and who intimidate so many regular people who want to work out, but are afraid of hanging out with idiots.

One of Mike’s classic quotes, brought out by a vodka or two, is that PF is a niche player and that many different types of clubs could all coexist in the same market, if those club owners weren’t so damn stupid. I actually think this quote is rather brilliant and sums up many of the problems we have in mainstream fitness today.

For example, if I run an old style box club, meaning I try to be everything to everyone, have a large workout floor, mediocre locker rooms, about 60 pieces of four-year-old cardio, and the traditional white walled group room with the eight foot mirrors turned sideways and the baskets of crap up against the wall, I deserve to get my ass kicked.

This type of club charges about $39-49 per month, gives the consumer three workouts with a trainer that is totally disinterested, sets the member up on a failure track of doing a circuit with a big stupid workout card and then the club forgets the person even exists. All this club does is rent equipment. The owner puts just enough money into the club to keep it open, is years behind in programming and training, and has a physical plant that is decades out of date.

A fresh PF comes into town and this same guy bitches that the competition is unfair, but in reality, he doesn’t really give a crap about his members or he would have been more up-to-date and would have specialized in a very specific niche in his business, such as family or upscale. The ear of the generic box is gone and you either change or you get ran over by someone that is fresh and exciting

The new player with fresh equipment and a clean club, and who is renting newer models of the same treads that the old guy owns, offers a price of $10. The existing owner has to deal with the issue that he is not in the member retention business, has no niche to protect his business and all he really does is sell memberships. Now, however, there is a new club that does everything he does for about a fourth of the cost.

No matter how long you have been in business, or how much money you have invested in your business, you are not entitled to success. If you can’t compete as a generalist (see Godin above), then you have to move on, because someone took your market and is doing a better job of it than you are.

Many good clubs compete well against a PF. The ones that are fresh, priced appropriately and are full service do well and can share the market. Where PF gets you is the Darwin thing; only the strongest, and in this case most prepared for battle, survive. If you run a good business based upon seeking a specific niche in the market, you will have a chance. Run a dated box concept from the 90’s and kiss your club goodbye.

It is also relevant here to mention the two management styles I mentioned in an earlier blog. About 90% of the owners in this industry are maintenance people, meaning all they do is try to maintain the flow. These owners are happy to hit last year’s numbers, hang on to equipment a year too long because it still works, won’t reinvest in the club except to keep it open and in essence makes every decision based upon the idea of protecting what they have. These are also the first guys that get destroyed by a new, fresh competitor doing the same thing in the market.

The other 10% are the growth guys. Their mission in life is to take a little risk and just keep pushing. Their clubs are current, they reinvest heavily about every 4-5 years in building a fresh physical plant, their equipment and training is relative to what is happening in the training world, and most importantly, they hire talent instead of settling for young dumb asses who work cheap and just fill slots at the front desk. If they get competition, they seldom hurt, because they have a niche membership and they are the source in that market for that type of club.

There will always be a new, fresh player coming in the market. Before PF and Mike Grondahl, there was the fear of LA Fitness, the fear of 24-Hour, the fear of Gold’s, the fear of Bally’s and dozens of others. There is always a new hot player, and there will always be a new hot player, in the market. If you want to know how it all turns out, read Darwin, because only the strongest and fittest for survival will survive.

The Foundational Truth will Set You Free!

Published on 12/05/09 09:44PM by Thomas Plummer

When you spend your life fixing all kind of businesses, you come to realize that there are really just a few fundamental laws that govern whether a business owner will succeed or not. Even if you read endless business books, and limit yourself to just the literally thousands released during the last few years, you will find that most of these books can be boiled down to the same key points buried in a lot of fluff and filler that makes that book unique. One of these basic elements that is recurring in all the good books that you must seek the foundational truth of your business.

I was in Orlando last week to do a few hours of management training with about 70 of the senior staff people from many of the YMCA’s in central Florida. It was a very motivated and talented group but most of the room had never been in a NFBA workshop before and had no idea what would really be taught. As with most groups, they initially requested me to do what most all groups want and that is for all outsiders to come and do training that supports their existing belief system, even when those systems might be dated or based upon false assumptions born from just too much of believing your own brochures and from too much inbreeding of ideas instead of seeking outside challenges that we all know force growth.

Where the Y’s could be more effective, and where almost all small business get in trouble, is finding the way back to the foundational truth of that business. The foundational truth is usually a single sentence that defines the business and why it exists. Stray from your foundational truth and you will usually fail at some point.

For example, one of my good friends in the industry, Norm Cates, co-founder of IHRSA and 1st President some 30 years ago and current publisher of the Club Insider, and I were having lunch in Atlanta and were discussing IHRSA and its current financial issues and image problems. The surface reason why a company such as IHRSA would be down in revenues and losing membership would be to blame it on the economy, but that is just too easy and doesn’t address the major foundational issues that will affect it as a viable force in the industry for years to come.

I believe IHRSA has simply strayed from its foundational truth and that it can’t be fixed until everyone recognizes why it is broken and why it can’t be merely patched. The foundational truth for IHRSA is that it is a trade organization that exists to help all fitness facilities of any size or function to be more financially successful. If this foundational truth is correct, then almost everything they are currently doing is wrong.

For instance, why pay Bill Clinton an enormous sum of money to speak for an hour and a half at a national convention? How does that match the foundational truth of the organization if they exist for the sole purpose of helping fitness businesses become more successful? This decision doesn’t work with the foundational truth because Bill Clinton does not help any fitness business become more financially successful; therefore, there is no valid reason to pay him huge money merely to entertain fitness people.

The membership of the IHRSA trade association would be better served, and the money better spent on that membership, by bringing in as many small business gurus, such as Larry Winget, Jeff Gitomer, Tim Ferris or Paco Underhill, as they can afford and let these guys all do three-hour workshops. Sadly, you could probably get all these guys and more for what they wasted on Clinton, but when you forget why you exist then there are no guidelines to follow and everything you do becomes a disassociated random event.

In this example, the foundational truth, to help every fitness business of any kind become more financially successful, wasn’t serviced by that choice of speaker. Either what you do enhances the foundational truth of the business or it violates that truth and should not be done. Another example by IHRSA is CBI Magazine, which is a slick piece that is almost totally irrelevant to any owner looking for ideas and leadership that should come from a national trade association dedicated to my business’ success. The magazine is a great magazine but it is not designed to support a trade association whose purpose is to help its members become more successful, therefore, it should be radically changed to meet the foundational truth.

The Y’s, which are as far from IHRSA as you can get philosophically, also suffer from a disassociation from why they exist. Remember, Y’s are one of the oldest fitness organizations in the country and the longer you in exist in business the more likely you are to stray from your foundational truth. Y’s have been helping people longer than every other chain in the country has existed and the Y’s deserve our respect even if you don’t agree with how they function.

To me, the Y’s have a very self-evident foundational truth: Y’s exist to change as many lives as possible in their competitive market. They don’t exist to service the community. They don’t exist to provide family fitness to those in their neighborhoods. And certainly not to for the vague reason, as the YMCA national website claims: The nation’s 2,686 YMCAs respond to critical social needs by drawing on our collective strength as of one of the largest not-for-profit community service organizations in the United States. This is a noble statement, but how do you lead hundreds of staff and project change into the future with such a broad, hard to intercept claim?

Y’s do great work, and yes, I acknowledge the tax issue that has been debated ad nauseam, but setting that issue aside, Y’s fill a family gap that is lost in most markets. Orlando, for example, is flooded with almost every national brand, but the Y’s are the only organization that is truly embracing families in that market. They do a great job but all Y’s could do better if they return to the foundational truth, which again should be to change lives.

For example, most Y’s are truly lousy at sales and many directors feel that even the word “sales” is almost evil in intent. And if the Y people use the traditional definition of sales in this industry they are right. Sales, as done by many of the big chains, are harmful and degrading to the client and all of those dated tactics should be avoided at all cost in mainstream clubs and Y’s alike.

But Y’s exist to change lives, or at least should if that is the foundational truth. If someone visits a Y and is handed a brochure and left to do their own tour, or simply walks around with a young counter kid, then the Y’s have failed that person and have failed the foundational truth. Someone came into a Y for help and the Y staff, in a knee-jerk overreaction to the mainstream sales systems used by the nasty big chains (we’re not like those bad people), often goes too far the other way and doesn’t even have competent people to explain the prices and the many, many options a typical Y offers.

The Y failed the client because the client came in for help, was ignored beyond a “hello and here is the brochure,” and left to do their own tour or perhaps spent a few minutes with a undertrained counter kid, and then after wandering through a large and confusing physical plant, walked out because fitness is not rooms of equipment, it is a support system, and you can’t understand that with a quick walk through in a vast building.

This potential member might then sign up at another club and we all know that if a de-conditioned person that becomes a member at some of the big, sales driven chains, will be eaten up as a sales number and left on the floor to die. He will fail because those clubs exist to get sales numbers, not change lives. The Y, because of a dated and misguided sales belief, actually hurt someone here because the person trusted a Y for help and guidance and no one developed any type of system that could powerfully help the guest realize the true difference of working out in such a family driven and supportive culture. In this case, the Y’s forget the foundational truth: we exist to change lives and we have to start that process when the person first inquires.

If your foundational truth were to change lives, then the Y’s would have to change their definition of sales. Sales could be redefined as: helping people get the help and information that they trust the Y’s to provide. Again, if the foundational truth is correct, then how most Y’s sell is wrong, because you can’t change a life if you can’t get the person into your system. Remember, the anti-sales belief sent this guy down the road to another club, which goes totally against the culture of caring and family that the Y’s own and do so well and against the truth of changing lives.

We forget, as do our Y friends, that most people who inquire about fitness at a family style club are often confused and frustrated with fitness and many are scared or had bad experiences somewhere else. The sales encounter is exactly the place you would want to have your best and most highly trained people, meaning the ones who are patient and understanding, meet all potential members and to spend a lot of time answering questions and making sure the person understands the Y’s culture and sense of family, two of the things the national Y’s do better than most other mainstream clubs. You just can’t do that with a cheap brochure and a guided tour by a young, inexperienced kid.

Drifting from the foundational truth affects all businesses, no matter how big or small. If you can’t define your business, and the purpose of that business, in one sentence, then you can’t make the decisions you need to make, train your staff, or even market your business because you don’t know what the hell you are trying to accomplish.

When you explore your own foundational truth, start with the question, “Why do we exist?” Then ask, “What are we trying to accomplish with this business?” Avoid the trite making money statement. Making money is what happens if the foundational truth is correct for your business.

If your business isn’t performing the way you expect, then always return to the foundational truth first. If you can’t define your business simply, and what you are trying to accomplish with that business, then how do you train staff, market, and even paint the place because you are making random decisions based upon the situation at hand, rather than informed choices based upon fulfilling your truth.

Most importantly, you sometimes have to realize that you are so far away from your foundational truth that you have to tear it down and start again rather than patch and keep following the same flawed rules that are destroying you, such as IHRSA tries to do. In many ways, IHRSA is the same as the Y’s with a lot of good people who need to return to the truth that created both of their organizations.

You Can't Fix Stupid

Published on 11/23/09 02:56PM by Thomas Plummer

Darwin had it right: people who evolve progress and those who don’t die.

It is no different in the fitness industry. Those who are evolving make money and those who don’t fade away. This is true for not only the club side but for the vendor side as well. Many companies out there are hurt now, and most blame the economy, but if you look at their product lines and sale forces, you understand that saying, “You just can’t fix stupid.”

Here is my list of what’s stupid in the business today. These are just opinions based upon what I see in the industry but if I can figure this out so can the consumer. It’s also the list of things that probably won’t change because those doing these things don’t understand that these are the things that are killing their businesses. Oh well, stupid is as stupid does, to quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump:

• How many times does the market have to demonstrate to Nautilus that their products are not salable except to trainers who grew up in the 70’s and still believe one set to failure is the hottest trend in training?

• Bally Total Fitness seems to build a culture of failure into its business model. High-pressure sales, little help for the new member, price-driven marketing and dated clubs full of dated equipment make up their plan. Life Time Fitness strives for a culture of success. One company goes bankrupt several times and the other has become the big chain role model. Are they even in the same industry?

• Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t realize that giving a member a 12-piece circuit workout written on a big card and kept in a box on the side of the floor is just bad business? The circuit doesn’t work. The equipment doesn’t provide service. The member fails and goes home feeling like the club let him down.

• When will we realize that bigger is not always better (easy now)? It is virtually impossible to provide service in a huge box, even if you have the right intent. As clubs embrace more functional equipment, while cardio remains strong, the clubs themselves will become smaller because we just need less space. Who is going first?

• When will we realize that it is hard to run a financially successful fitness facility if you’re fat? If you want to make money, you have to embrace business management, weight management and training. You can’t just decide to be a businessperson and ignore the foundation of our business. If you don’t workout, go sell cars and get out of the industry because you are a bad role model.

• I respect IHRSA but when are they going to understand that if they don’t return to their foundational truth--that their sole purpose is to be a trade association dedicated to making every club financially successful--they will never penetrate the industry in this country much beyond 10 points are so?

• One of the single biggest mistakes owners make year-after-year is that they will not learn how to hire and train people. If you hire stupid, you get stupid, and if you are leaking members away each month then why would you not start with the simplest thing to fix, which is customer service?

• White is not a color. Color through paint is a cheap way to change the energy in your business. Call someone like Rudy Fabiano and invest in getting good colors in your club. It’s cheaper than you think and you need it

• Who will be the last gym owner in the industry that still believes knocking off a fake $100 if you join today works in today’s market? If the client does believe it, he is too young and dumb to be a member

• Yes, there is something to that whole karma thing. Owners who continually screw their members and vendors end up losing everything at some point and this makes the universe very happy, and puts a smile on the rest of us too.

• All the innovation in training is coming from the training clubs and the functional gurus, such as Durkin, Boyle and Cook. The training clubs are the cavemen with very sharp spears and the old box clubs are the mammoths with nothing but a cliff behind them and no place to run.

• Good business is good business and the basics are the same for any fitness business no matter how big or small. Create a concept, market it to the public, convert the leads into sales, service the members you do get, train your staff daily and work on retaining the ones you did get. It is that easy and the only difference between a big club and a small one is how the rules are applied.

• Nonprofits have to stop thinking that they are so radically different. The fitness member who stopped at your club, but signed up at the nonprofit down the street, is the same person with the same service needs and the same issues. These nonprofits are just as likely to make the same mistakes as the for-profit guy but they always claim the higher ground that they are morally superior because they aren’t in it for the money. You still have to change lives and get results and the old technology and philosophy that the nonprofits taut can’t be overcome by thinking you are working from a higher plane of existence because the mainstream club is trying to make a living doing what he loves. Working for a profit might actually make you more efficient and you might get better results, but not always.

• Trainers that still put clients on split workouts with Monday as chest and triceps day need to go home now. Your day is over and the adults need the floor

• You have to stop letting your staff dress like a bunch of homeless people. People don’t trust you with their money when you are wearing a tee shirt and baggy jeans. Get a life and get some uniforms.

• Why are some of the national equipment guys, such as Star Trac, so progressive and build for the future and others still are selling equipment that was out of style in the 90’s?

• Why do the writers in Men’s Health know more about fitness than the average owner who has a fitness center?

• Young is cheap but it isn’t usually smart. That goes for dating and hiring staff.

• Here is yet another point on the medical community. Someone asked me how to build rapport with doctors in order to get referrals. How many doctors actually work out? Why would they refer something they don’t do? If you want to penetrate that market, give a bunch of doctors a free year, hook them up with a trainer and change their lives. It is easy to get referrals from someone who just lost 10 pounds.

• Call your mama and ask her if you were dumb as a child. If she says yes, you might be overachieving, which makes you even better than you thought

• Why do owners have group programs and then never do the classes? These owners have no idea how badly they might be represented by a whole bunch of people who hold you hostage by doing something you won’t take the time to understand or control

• Why is it that every successful owner I talk to can show me a written business plan as to how he will make money and every one that isn’t making money can’t show me any type of plan except for a bull…. plan they had their accountant do for the first business loan?

• How much time did you spend last month looking for good staff? If it is under an hour or two, you probably own what you deserve.

• If your staff is always showing up late because they were out late and partying big then fire them and stop hiring stupid young kids who stay out late partying and think that is an excuse to come in late. Again, you got what you deserved.

• Spending more than you make builds a great, lost decade of your life but it doesn’t build a life.

• Why do owners look so surprised when they lose half of everything to a spouse who did nothing more than stay home while you tore it up with one of your employees and then got caught in your own business?

This list could go on forever, because stupid has no limits. Progress is slow but by refusing to be dumb you can accelerate the game. If you are not making the money you expect, always, always return to the fact that what you’re doing isn’t working and the only way to change the results is to change the action.

We just came out of Atlanta and it might have been the best of the year with over 130 people. Our last gig of the year is in Phoenix and then it is off to 2010. Get your people trained and be ready for a great January-May.

The Power of Personal Motivation & Why Rachel Cosgrove is a Success

Published on 11/12/09 10:22AM by Thomas Plummer

Literally thousands of people have passed through our workshops over the years. If you do something like this long enough, you eventually encounter almost every type of personality, mindset and intelligence level imaginable all seeking information that they hope will change their lives and their businesses.

I strongly believe in the foundational truth that everyone, no matter what they do for a living, how much money they might have, or how successful they are, deserves some respect. The exceptions to that rule are the people who spend their life wasting their life by refusing to accept personal responsibility for their current condition.

Through the years I have noticed a certain small percentage of folks who are a little more driven than the rest, a little more personally motivated and perhaps a little more intense when it comes to defining how they want to live their life and the standards they are willing to live with in their quest for something more.

As I have aged, and gained a little more gray around the edges, a few of the people who find our workshops seek me out for coaching in their lives on a personal basis. In the earlier years, the coaching was always about business and money but as I have gotten older, and gained more of a father type figure look, the seekers are now looking for answers to life issues and personal coaching as to how to get the most out of what they have and how to live their dream.

This responsibility and opportunity to work with young, talented people has given me a viewpoint from which to comment on what it takes to rise to another level in your life and to achieve personal success no matter where you are at now or what you started with on the journey.

It would be easy here to throw out a few trite sayings about success. We could always use that successful people are great goal setters. We could also mention that people who achieve a certain level of personal growth were never quitters. And there are always endless other words, such as “motivated,” “determined” and “winner” that always appears in the success literature. But after watching for years I don’t believe these words are always the right ones to predict who will rise and who will simply maintain.
About 12 years ago, two young trainers set in the front row of a workshop, one furiously taking notes and the other rubbing his head with his hands and quietly swearing in Scottish under his breath. The information they were hearing was challenging their belief system but both understood that what they were doing wasn’t working as well as they hoped so they were open to new ideas.

These two students, Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove, have gone on to be two of the most recognized names in fitness in the world and have changed a lot of how the rest of us think about how to train people. They have also built a wildly successful training facility and are now mentoring others on how to succeed in such a competitive business.

If you’ve read any of my other stuff, or have been to a workshop or advanced school in the last several years, you have heard me mention Alwyn and his rise to international guru, but this blog is really about Rachel and her success, especially with her new book that just came out this week.

Me being me, I would love to take credit for their success but these two would have been out of control and crazy successful if they simply lived in a closet and only came out occasionally to publish something new or to make money for a while. Their success was not derived from outside sources but from within, which is the whole point of this blog.

It has been a pleasure to watch them grow over the years but it has been Rachel that has been the model of success worth noting and studying. Many spouses, especially those living with an already recognized guru type, never achieve their own level of success because the other spouse cuts off the light and you never really get a chance to live your own life.

Rachel has gone from great trainer, to financially successful business owner, to dedicated mentor for women and now to nationally known author. Her new book, The Female Body Breakthrough, was just released this week after a long journey and I think it is one of the best training books I have ever read or has been written.

As I mentioned above, when you get a chance to watch someone develop over a number of years, many of the traditional trite words that define success simply don’t apply. What has made Rachel successful and what can the rest of us learn from her personal journey.

When I think of Rachel, several things pop into my head. The first word is “discipline.” The act of writing a book, while running a business and living a full life, is mindboggling. Rachel emails me so early that I am barely awake on the East Coast and she is three hours earlier on the West Coast, which puts that email at about the, “What, she is up writing already?” hour.

Personal discipline is a lost act in most lives. We encounter clients who lie about what they eat because they know they are out of control. I have consulting clients who set out with a plan and good intentions but weeks go by with very little being accomplished because they can’t find the time, or the discipline in their life, to get things done.

Discipline means being able to set priorities, which might get us back to the old goal setting concept. Decide what you want, and then arranging your life so you can achieve it is rare and maybe one of the key talents Rachel has mastered in her life.

Another unique thing about how Rachel achieves is that I have never, ever heard her say, “I don’t know if I can really do that?” One of the things I admire about her, and that I see in other successful people I respect, such as Greg Rose from Titleist or Todd Durkin, is that she lives by the concept that anything is possible if that is what you want to do.

Write a book? I can do that. Build a successful business from the ground up and reinvent the business concept along the way? When do we start? Hang on to that business while my husband is locked in a hospital for two years fighting for his life? Sure, if that is what it takes to be successful then bring it on and more after that.

No limit people are often the most exciting people to hang out with at a bar? Sit around a table with Rachel, Alwyn and some of the other notables in our fitness world and you never hear anyone question the ability to get anything done. People are writing books, building new businesses and offering radical new thoughts on their DVDs about the evolution of fitness but no one questions if they can do it. They simply get up in the morning, follow the plan and then change the world.

Rachel has also taught me one more thing about success. I’ve noticed in her the personal belief that what she is doing is the right thing for her. If the thought above was no limits, maybe we can define this one as no doubts. She has found her personal mission and is prepared to live her life on that path. Each step leads to the next and her belief in mentoring women and defining fitness for women has created a rich and full life for her with so many years of success yet to come.

I think one of the richest moments in life is when you learn to celebrate someone else’s success. I am proud of having Rachel as a friend and I admire her journey more than most because of what she has gone through to achieve that success. I hope everyone buys her book and if you are in a training studio I highly suggest you buy many and give one to every female client that comes through the door. It is not only a way to train for you but a motivational tool for your clients.

You can order the book at www.orderthefemalebodybreakthroughtoday.com

Web Pages in the Fitness Industry

Published on 11/04/09 05:58PM by Thomas Plummer

Most web pages in the club industry are just short of so worthless why bother. I am asked often, however, if there are any good ones out there worth looking at and is there any thing you can learn from these sites.

The best site live site right now by my judgment is Goperformanceandfitness.com, a site developed by Jared Kuka for his Go Performance club in Nashville. I often use clips from Jared’s club in this year’s workshop because I feel he has created the next generation training facility that almost any trainer could own in almost any market.

The club is 5000 square feet and embraces many of the principles I think are important in a club, including training men and women the same as athletes, fully functional equipment and performance training, and trainers who are more coach than clip board cowgirl.

The thing that makes his web site so powerful is that it almost entirely video driven, which is a huge step beyond endless copy and still photos. In the world of instant gratification where most people live engrossed in Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, video is the tool of choice and of getting and keeping attention.

The video that is attached to this blog is a strong sample of how good a site can be. The production quality is fantastic, the testimonial aspect is extremely strong (see the last blog on marketing) and most of all who see is and what she is doing is completely believable. Watch her do this and you think immediately that hey, I want to do this too and most importantly, watching her do it proves that a slug like myself, sitting at home eating bags of nasty chips, can get off the couch and get my fat ass moving as well.

(click here for video)

One of the common pushbacks I get in the workshops when we discuss group personal training and semi-private training is that this type of workout is fine for someone already in shape but no average person would do this. That is when I show the Sally H. clip and prove that if she can do it, and is happy doing it, then any of your members can do it as well.

Another strong aspect of the site is that the first thing you see is a video that appears in the center of the screen. Immediately you get sucked into the site and the large buttons and mostly video content keep you there. Remember, the longer you stay on the site the more likely you are to take some type of action.
This is also why guys such as Anthony Diluglio do so well with their web sites. He currently has well over a 100 videos on his site and once you get there you need a six-pack of beer and a yellow pad because you will be there for at least an hour and want to take notes. Of course, the longer you stay the more likely you are to buy, which is the whole point of keeping you trapped with great video.

You can also use this type of video in your club at point of sale. For example, you could have a 32” flat screen near your sales area and introduce your prospect to a few of you members by video before you tour. These videos induce the need to move and once you watch a few you will probably tour the club with an entirely different perspective.

Costs vary on these shoots and Jared shot several at once keeping the cost down. If you’re going to shoot these for your club, make sure your folks start with Jared’s site because this is the quality you should be striving for in your work.

Another aspect worth exploring is how Jared does the montage clips of a lot of things going on in his club. These short bursts can get you fired up about working out, introduce you to an entire style of training you might not have ever even seen and the music gets you inspired to watch the clips several times.
These clips should also be part of your Youtube presence and at some point you want to get your own camera and start posting short 30-second clips daily from workouts or other high-energy activities in your club.

One other point about these clips is that if someone goes to your site and sees this type of clip and workout and then visits another club’s typical website, you will win the battle to get someone to visit you first. Keeping this in mind, you should have a large capture on your site, meaning a button that says, “Try us risk free.” The capture is simply a way to get someone to fill out some information in exchange for a guest pass to the club that the potential member can print out himself and bring with him.

Don’t worry, I am back

I received a number of emails concerned that I haven’t blogged in a few weeks. October is typically our worst month when it comes to travel and being out of town and this year was no different with me being home for only about four days. The blogs will resume weekly as always starting with this one. If you have any ideas or questions, post them at the end of this blog and I will start to address the ones that might work for the large group.

Why Most of Your Marketing Fails!!

Published on 10/14/09 04:02PM by Thomas Plummer

Most of your marketing is a waste of money because many of you forget what marketing is actually supposed to do.

Marketing, done correctly, is supposed to drive someone to take action. This action might be to buy your product directly or to respond through a call or visit to the business where a waiting sales person who has the skill will get you to part with your money.

This urge to respond can only happen if there is an emotional response to the advertising. We buy because we become emotionally connected to the story or ad content and we don’t buy if there is no tapping of our emotional keys.

We buy Volvos because we want our kids to be safe. We buy Pillsbury products because they remind us of life we might have never even had. We buy expensive alcohol products because we want to be beautiful and successful like the people drinking them on television. Every good ad has reached our soul yet in our industry we are still years and years behind.

Most club marketing fails because it is void of an emotional content. If you look at a typical ad in our industry, you find almost the direct opposite of emotion. Most ads are boring, lame and a pathetic waste of money because the owner left the design of the ad up to the sales person that sold him the ad. The goal was to get something out quickly, throw in a few stock photos and add a price discount of some type and let it go.

This is why you find ads with headlines such as, “Fitness for everybody!” or “Where fit happens!” These generic masterpieces are then followed by a standard stock photo of an impossibly fit person leading to bullet points listing everything the club offers. For example, here are the bullet points from a club I just visited that are listed in their brochure and in their local ad in the paper. The headline read, “You will see and feel the difference.”

• Marble counter tops in the locker rooms
• Super clean
• State-of-the-art equipment
• Granite steam rooms
• Over fifty treadmills
• Lots of free weights
• Tile entryways
• High ceilings
• Trainers on staff at all times

You can’t make stuff like this up and I would have never listed marble as a point even if I owned the business. What purpose does a list like this serve? Doesn’t every fitness center have fitness equipment? Is marble going to make me run to the club for the deal of the day? What a waste of money and energy to produce such worthless advertising that does nothing but devalue your brand.

The question is who is the target of this ad and what is the expected response? Marketing theory is as old as marketing itself but we forget the basic tenets. Rule one is always remember that features don’t sell; benefits do. This ad lists all the features of the club, or the things that you will see if you visit the business.

Rule two is what is in it for me the consumer. I don’t care what kind of equipment you have as long as you can get my fat ass in shape. It’s not the tools (or features) it is what you do with them that is important to the consumer. But every owner breaks this rule because if I paid for marble and high ceilings I am going to tell someone about how much I spent even if it doesn’t bring anyone in to my business. This guy paid big bucks for the marble and someone is going to hear about it.

The emotion here is loaded on the wrong side. The owner is emotional about what he owns because of pride and cost but the potential member just sees it as another fitness facility with another long list of fitness stuff that is really no different from any other of the large number of clubs in the same town that by the way, just list all of their stuff too.

There is no response without an emotional driver and without answering what is in if for me as the consumer. Fitness marketing fails because it is always unemotional centering on lists of stuff rather than trying to touch the consumer’s soul.

But what about running price in our ads? Doesn’t a deal or discount answer the question of what is in it for the consumer?

Price is based upon a wrong assumption. When you run price you are assuming that everyone in the community has already made up their mind to join a fitness facility (prior interest) but they are hanging at home anxiously waiting for the local club to drop their pants, and price, low enough to move them off the proverbial couch.

The fallacy is that only about 16% of the people in this country belong, or have ever been in, a fitness facility. The ones that have experience and are fitness practitioners know where the clubs are in their towns and have already tried most of them. Price ads do burn up the folks with previous experience when first introduced into a market but after a while these ads become more and more ineffective because price ads do nothing to create new business merely drawing from a base that already had experience.
The logical thing to do here of course if you own a fitness business would be to chase the other 84% that have never set foot in a club. Why fight for crumbs when you can eat cakes. The ad copy above, for example, only chases people with some type of preexisting fitness experience. They are the ones who do have basic expectations about a club and who might be looking for specific equipment or services. But the bad news is that fitness people are already in the club so why are we constantly advertising to people who already get what we do?

It’s kind of like advertising giant burgers to fat people. They have already bought and are proudly displaying your product over the top of their pants. These people have tried all of the burgers, selected the one they deem best, and eat there a number of times a week, hence the problem but you don’t have to advertise to this group to get them to buy. The real money here is in chasing the casual diner or perhaps one who doesn’t have experience with your product.

The opposite is to focus on developing new interest in the 84% who have not yet made a leap into fitness and not cater to people who already have fitness experience. In other words, all your marketing should be centered on developing interest and future business. If you get this, then the types of ads you would run would be totally different than a typical naked model/bullet point hell ad.

Developing interest is a completely different mindset than trying to attract fitness experience people. Instead of price as your main attraction, you would first have to create a new awareness and need in someone who has no experience or any reference point about what you offer.

Keeping this in mind, most of what we do won’t work. Hard body fitness models become the enemy and entry barriers to that deconditioned female, rather than a role model. Price discounts and specials are meaningless since those in the 84% have no reference point to compare against since they don’t have club fitness experience. Bullet points are also ineffective because they list items and services that are assumed to be part of any fitness facility. I have said it before too many times, but you never see an ad for a hotel that states: Stay in our Sheraton, we have beds. Beds, and fitness equipment, are nothing more than presumptive things any good hotel or club would offer.

Again, if we want to tap the 84% we need to tap the emotion. The only way to do this is through the use of testimonial ads.

Emotion is the last, great, unexplored region in fitness business marketing. We sometimes allude to emotion, such as an ad that gives reasons to workout. Feeling better about yourself, or looking better in your clothes, are the by product of fitness, however, and not the direct reason someone goes to a club.
It’s what drove the person to join in the first place that is the source of the emotion. Feeling better about who you are is a noble ambition, but it is not what makes people get off their butts and change behavior. Sitting in the dark crying about your weight because of fear and loneliness is the driving emotion and that is the one that needs to be tapped if we want to develop future business. This person joins a gym because of the avoidance of pain and not just to look better in a mirror.

Emotion is often dark and intrusive, which is why we haven’t yet used it as a tool in our industry marketing. But the rules are changing, especially when we are faced with 63% of the people in this county either obese or just plain fat. When you’re in a fight with a tougher opponent, why fight fair? If you’re losing hit him with a car jack, run over him with your truck, or in the worse case, force him to watch a Sarah Palin speech. You’re losing the battle so fight dirty to win.

I wrote in my latest book, Naked Woman at My Door, that many people would rather die than change. Smokers know it is killing them yet they can’t stop. Obese people in their 30’s who already have medical issues know the weight is going to kill them but it is harder to admit your dying and change than it is to order a double cheese burger with a diet Coke™.

Testimonials are the only tool we have at our disposal that can begin to reach this level of emotionalism needed to get someone to try fitness. Testimonials done correctly are your tool to place the prospective member into your business and associated with the struggles and success of the member you highlighted. “If he can lose 20 pounds so can.” “If she can come back after three kids and look that good then I can do it because she is just like me.” “Wow, I know that guy and if he can do it then I can too.” All of these are responses that should be elicited by a strong testimonial.

Good testimonials are about normal people making change. They give people hope and a role model for success. Testimonials also prove that you have normal people in your club and that you are not filled with just fitness freaks that were born and will die in outrageous shape.

The Susan K. Bailey Company, based in Canada and which is the largest full service ad agency in the industry, developed the attached testimonial. The “Find Your Reason” idea was something we trademarked through the NFBA several years ago with the hope of someday doing a supportive web site and national campaign. The idea behind this campaign was to force the person to admit that you may not want to exercise for yourself but there might be others, such as your children, who may be the driver that finally gets you moving.

Study this ad carefully. I believe it represents the first generation of ads that targets the 84%. It was carefully aimed at people who have never been in a club before and who haven’t yet realized fitness is going to be in their life. Start your thinking now for next year’s ads and realize that lists of fitness crap is really just that and isn’t the tool you need to attract people to your business. Tap the emotion and you will find more members and for most of you testimonials are the only ads you should ever run.

The More We Learn the Less We Know

Published on 09/29/09 12:59PM by Thomas Plummer

Sooner or later, the pendulum has to swing back in our favor. Everything that is bad for us in this country eventually becomes viewed as nasty, a backlash forms, and we revolt against what is hurting us and move ahead.

Cigarettes peaked several decades ago and now you are morally a bad person if you smoke. The judgment zone went from socially cool and featured in the movies, then came the first levels of being unacceptable, to yucky, to socially unacceptable, to you must have a rotten soul if you smoke. The pendulum swung from glamorous all the way back to deviant in just a matter of years.

Fitness, and especially weight management, has to swing our way because we just can’t get that much fatter. We are slow learners in this country but when we do get pissed we have the brain trust and the resources to declare war on any issue that really pisses us off. Right now, we are just at the point where the pendulum has swung all the way out and is hanging at that weightless point before plunging back toward what we all know and believe: fitness matters and a healthier lifestyle is relevant in this county.

We are also in the stage where we do know what has to happen and we are learning how to get people fit. What we can never agree upon, however, is how to eat. One man’s healthy feast is another’s source of fat gain and until we get a little more unified in our beliefs, we might be doing more harm to the clients than good. Here are a few examples of the more we learn the less we know:

• Why is every recommended diet result in one third losing weight, one third staying the same and one third gaining weight?

• Why do fitness centers, the alleged source of the fountain of youth, suck so badly at even delivering the most basic of weight management information and support?

• Dieting is nothing more than the absence of the crap food you were eating on a temporary basis. You lose a few pounds then eat the crap again and get fat again. Until we teach people how to eat healthy nothing will really change.

• Why are most nutritionists so out of touch with people that move everyday? Why can’t they understand the difference between an active adult and one who has never moved?

• How come drug ads on television are now trying to make taking drugs a badge of honor? The drug makers make having a perceived illness as something that makes you unique and something you can flaunt to your friends.

• If you don’t fix the children, you will never change the adults. Most adults over 30 that are really out of shape won’t change and we shouldn’t even bother trying to change them. The ones who seek change will find us but most will be locked in for life because the habit of being fat is too much to change if you haven’t seen the importance of fitness by that time in your life. Change the kids and how they think about fitness and you will change the future.

• Any woman under 30 with low cut jeans, a short top and a roll of fat hanging over the side should do prison time. Any guy over 30 with a wife beater shirt and hat on backwards should be sent to Iraq as an Al Qaeda practice dummy. These two points have nothing to do with the blog but I feel better venting.

• Why hasn’t mainstream medicine explored metabolic typing as the only form of diet? It just has to be common sense that a person is an individual and that there is no one diet that fits their age, metabolic makeup and current health condition. Read William Wolcott if you don’t know what I am referring to here. Individualizing food and diet has to be the only thing we haven’t tried yet.

• Most trainers are too extreme in the eating suggestions. What person is going to eat dried chicken, white rice and broccoli out of Tupperware for the rest of their life and be happy about it? Because we don’t know how to eat we suggest extremes for everyone, which helps no one.

• Keeping the last two blogs in mind, how come I have only met one doctor in 30 years that starts with lifestyle as a treatment rather than just suggesting side effect inducing drugs for life? Exercise and healthy food can cure more disease than the drugs that do nothing but mask the symptoms neglecting the origin of the disease itself.

• Whole, fresh and natural are words never used by anyone who orders food for an airport.

• Most of us believe that getting in shape is about 85% of what goes in your mouth and about 15% of how you move. How come the vast majority of fitness facilities only sell the 15%?

• It is scary to see heavy women in their 30’s with mobility problems. Where will it end and who will pay for her lifetime medical conditions?

• The better the running shoe, the more likely you are to get hurt. If you love running and run for the shear joy of getting away from everything read, Born to Run, by Chris McDougall. It debunks running shoes as the solution to injuries and makes you want to get out the door and move. This guy might single-handed bring back the running craze and get people moving again.

• Why can’t we just admit we are wrong and simplify fitness again? Dan John is still right. Fitness is as simple as picking up something off the floor and putting it over your head. We make training too complicated for most people. Simple is good and simple gets results. If you own a club or are a trainer, read his book, Never Let Go. We have some of the few copies you can still get through the NFBA. It is a must read if you are in this business. Also look at guys like Anthony Dilugio and his Art of Strength site. There is no simpler approach to fitness than one person and a couple of kettle bells in the back yard. We should be the ones teaching simple in the clubs and by the way, anyone spending an hour walking aimlessly on a tread in your club to lose weight isn’t going to get there. We can’t change them all but most members would really like to understand that hours on a tread don’t lead to weight loss. If you can’t explain HIIT then see Alwyn Cosgrove’s site.

• We have 40,000 fitness centers in this country and yet we are still getting fatter as a nation. Maybe it’s us? Maybe we just aren’t helping as much as we think. Maybe we need to rethink fitness and how we teach it in the clubs.

• Get results with your members and you will never have to advertise again. Do you think that the guy who invents stuff that will really grow hair will ever have to advertise it?

• Supplements are great. Supplements kill you. I am going with great because I know what’s in that McDonald’s crap. Your higher income members are looking for guidance in supplements and you should be offering that information.

• If you are wearing it, you ate it. Shut up, workout and stop blaming someone else. It’s your fault you’re fat and nothing changes until the fat in your head understands the fat on your butt. Wouldn’t you like to say this to a bunch of whinny members?

• The pendulum will change when the politicians get involved but they are mostly so out of shape that we may have to wait a while for anything to happen there.

• I don’t understand why movie stars are in shape but their fans aren’t? The teenagers think just starving gets you there but tell that to Angelina Jolie or Beyonce: fit freaks who get it done. I wish they would share the work they do to get the bodies they have-it might change how others think about fitness and dieting.

• How can fitness be done sitting down? Everything we have done since the beginning of time has been chase stuff, catch stuff and eat stuff but we take a deconditioned (nice word for too fat to move) person and immediately sit them on a recumbent, then move them to a row of machines where they sit or lay down while exercising and then we have them sit at the juice bar. What in hell are we thinking here? The last thing a struggling overweight person needs to do is sit more. Don’t be the club that has mastered the art of ass sitting. Embrace movement and all the training that goes with it.

• Why are guys like Mike Boyle, Gray Cook and Todd Durkin so right and yet so few hear and learn? There are gurus out there talking about how to do it right but mainstream owners are very late to that dance. If your business is flat, one reason might be that you are selling pagers in the age of IPhones.

This list could go on for quite awhile because the more I learn the less I know and I want answers. This is a glorious business that changes lives but we could do so much more if we can simply move ahead in our thinking and stop doing fitness by old habit. The pendulum is coming our way but I am afraid it will just smack us on the ass.

The Medical Community Doesn't Get What We Do

Published on 09/24/09 04:37PM by Thomas Plummer

The last blog on personal responsibility triggered a small debate concerning how we as an industry can induce a tighter bond between the fitness world and the medical community. We all dream of this partnership and the money it can provide, but there are huge barriers that are preventing this with both sides unable to solve the issues that could bring us together.

Paul Grymkowski, one of the legends in this business who was instrumental in building the Gold’s gym brand into an international presence, asked in his response to my last blog how we can get both sides to understand and build a continuum of care that would benefit both the fitness world and the national health of this country.

First of all, the new generation of fitness professional is seeking a wellness solution for their members, which is something the chains have been unable or unwilling to go after in the clubs. This total fitness and wellness solution often contains total body functional training, nutrition guidance and weight management, supplement support, and other keys to a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Our weakness is that few clubs have all these components as part of their normal offering but that is changing, especially in the smaller clubs (3000-12,000 square feet) built upon the premise of providing a complete solution to living a healthier lifestyle.

On the other hand are the clubs that work against almost everything that is right for the client. These membership mills do nothing more than take membership money, turn numbers and rent equipment. Sadly, we are more known for these clubs in the industry instead of the ones trying to move us into this century.

In most clubs, if you actually get in shape walking on a treadmill by yourself a few nights a week after work it is more likely an act of God feeling sorry for your fat ass and lack of social life rather than a solid fitness program. The large majority of people left to their own devices do not understand fitness and simply push a few machines and spend an hour at a very slow pace walking on a tread and watching Oprah. You might feel a little better compared to sitting at home staring at a mind numbing television show but nothing is happening to that forty-pound bag of donuts hanging off your ass and there is definitely nothing happening that would excite a major health insurer enough to pay for you to be there.

But again, we know how to provide fitness today and many clubs are providing a complete solution although it is seldom sold that way to the members. We still do nothing more in most fitness facilities than push low intensity, self-directed activity to lose weight and manage health and don’t offer any type of real health and wellness support. Most clubs shy away from this level of sophistication because they simply don’t have the skilled personnel to provide this help and others fail the consumer because they are too cheap and can’t charge for the service.

What all this means is that while we are weak at offering total support for a healthy lifestyle at many clubs there are a rising number of smaller facilities that would qualify for an insurance boost because they can track attendance, offer weight management, and talk about lifestyle changes that negate fitness in the real world and these clubs would be an ideal blend with the insurance world.

On the other side of the debate, medical people don’t get fitness. I was recently diagnosed with a mild case of atrial fibrillation and then sent into the equivalent of medical purgatory, where I have been tested, probed, received three cardioversions, and put on medicine that was supposed to improve my health but did nothing more than make me want to lay under my desk and sleep. After almost a year of chasing rhythm my doctors have decided that maybe all that wasn’t really necessary and maybe just an aspirin a day is all I really need.

I did, however, learn things along the journey. First of all, some of the fattest people, most out of shape people I have seen work in the largest cardio specialty clinic on Cape Cod. Out of the large number of staff wandering the halls supporting at least 10 doctors only three would qualify as in shape and the rest would fall into the Wal-Mart Saturday morning Little Debbie crowd. There is also a small percentage of the doctors that are in horrible shape, which you might consider ironic considering their specialty. Obviously most live in the world of “do as I say not as I do”.

The second more frightening thing is their willingness to just prescribe drugs to everyone they meet as patients and most of these drugs are things that they casually prescribe for the rest of your life. This shouldn’t surprise me, however, since the calendars in the offices were all furnished by drug companies, the check out person was drinking coffee out of a large cup with the name of a drug on the side and many of the other charts and illustrations on most of the walls were proudly provided by drug companies who splashed their names prominently on each piece.

Lifetime drugs mean lifetime patients and while the doctors may not be thinking that way visiting their offices is sort of like going to a PGA event where the average player has about 7-8 different logos on his shirt. If you are displaying that many logos the perception is that someone must be paying you.
We discussed drugs often but we spent very little time on health and wellness. I was by far one of the youngest patients through their clinic, which is quite amazing at 56, but sadly every solution was a drug to take the rest of your life with a minimal discussion of what those drugs might do to you and the quality of your life.

My experience highlights why we will find it so difficult to build a bond between what we do and what the belief system of a doctor in our country is taught to do. Doctors don’t understand fitness, few proscribe anything beyond walking a little and cutting back on whatever is considered bad food in the press, and lifestyle is vaguely discussed because if the doctor learns too much it might get in the way of presecribing the drugs.

In our world, we want to prevent illness. In their world, they only treat symptoms and most doctors don’t seem to have the time to find out why things are going bad and how to change things further up the line that might be causing those symptoms.

Every insurance company in the country should be paying for a fitness membership, but how do you verify compliance? Every insurance company should be offering weight management help but no one can agree on what we should be eating or which diet we should be on although why we don’t at least go after soft drinks, junk food and high fructose corn syrup is beyond my limited wisdom.

We should also build a new version of BMI and reward people who maintain a lower, healthier weight instead of telling a professional athlete that according to the current system he has an index of 30 and is obese though he is as healthy as he will ever be in his life.

We should be the first thing a doctor prescribes to any patient if we can live up to that responsibility by providing a solid product and support that really works. At this point, too few of us in the industry can provide the verification that fitness as practiced in this specific facility can make a difference in someone’s life.

The good news is while not now then soon. The old dogs are dying and the new owners are rising and may they howl at the moon for the next ten years. Modern fitness works, is verifiable and there are owners who provide total support for a lifestyle change. Our time is coming but we have a little dead weight to get off our shoulders first.

The Rules of Personal Responsibilty Do Apply to You

Published on 09/10/09 11:28AM by Thomas Plummer

One of the most culturally defining shifts I have witnessed during the last 10 years or so in this industry is the trend by the professionals in our industry toward blaming others for lack of success in their business or for their personal failure.

As I have said many times, the industry as a whole is in the middle of its biggest shift ever away from many of the old practices that sustained us in the 80’s and 90’s. Many of these fundamentally flawed, and in many cases outright sleazy practices, such as high pressure sales or draw boxes, simply reached their expiration limit and don’t work anymore.

Other trends, such as the shift away from circuit equipment toward results driven functional training, are more positive and reflect an industry moving in the right direction. You may not agree with these examples or the others I have used in recent blogs, but hardly anyone will disagree that things aren’t what they use to be.

Change also leads to extreme success for some and hopeless failure for others. Change happens whether you want it to or not and right now we are in the middle of the fastest period of change since the late 70’s and early 80’s when the entire industry was beaten back to its roots by the emergence of the first franchise clubs such as Gold’s, group exercise was rising, cardio driven by electronic function appeared and the peak and slow fade of Nautilus.

But as we say, with changes come those folks who don’t adapt and this lack of adaptation to what is really happening in your world brings failure. Owners who don’t reach their expected success often don’t admit that maybe their dream business was nothing more than an abrupt nightmare that drained their money and left them crying on the curb. Something caused them to fail and that force had to be something else beyond their control.

This lack of personal responsibility is not only disgusting, but it is often that thing that prevents anyone from fixing the business. If you are the source of failure, but spend all your time blaming the market, the economy, the competitor, your spouse, your dumb ass staff (that you hired and trained), and anyone or anything else you can find, then you will never really address the issues that often can be fixed and the business saved.

An owner that blames his staff for his lack of success in the club is often the one that hires the cheapest people he can find, refuses to learn how to train and motivate, and then fires often because, “they don’t get it”. The issue is not the staff but who hired them and trained them. If the owner adapts and changes rising to meet his weakness, he will prosper. If he doesn’t he will fail, but nothing changes until he realizes they are his staff and it’s his fault they are worthless employees.

Personal responsibility assumes the owner will look within first. Most don’t because it is so much easier to blame someone else for your misery and stupidity than admitting you might not be doing a great job with your people.

But it isn’t just the owners who suffer from this personal flaw. Many companies in our industry refuse to look inward as well and many individuals depicted on the news also avoid starting within as the root of their personal evil. Eat too many big burgers and then sue the company for selling them to you might be the ultimate example of the mixture of lousy personal values and a lack of personal responsibility in your life.

Based upon the assumption that refusing to be responsible for your own life is cultural and beyond just our industry, here are some things worth mentioning:

• If you are wearing it around your fat ass or gut, you ate it. It’s not water weight. It’s not bloat. It’s not pretty. It is impossible for anything to get to your ass that didn’t go through the lips first.

• If you are not projecting a curve toward being profitable by the end of your first six months in business, your business plan doesn’t work and probably won’t. Change the plan and stop blaming the competition.

• The Y’s are a fact of life Get over it. If a Y is hurting you look at what you own. Is it a niche? Is it up-to-date? Have you even painted the pig in the last several years? You do not have a right to make money just because you opened a club. You do have the ability to run a competitive business, but most of the clubs that fail against Y’s are way beyond their competitive years and often deserve the beating.

• If major equipment companies continue to develop endless lines of fixed equipment they will fail. It is not the economy, it’s the fact that going around in circles with a giant card doesn’t work anymore and the members know it.

• Trade shows in our industry are not relevant. The speakers are seldom relevant, the format is worn out and fewer owners are going because of the expense. It’s not the economy; it’s the fact that your product is no longer relevant to the consumer. Change it or close it but deal with it.

• If you are being drained of members it’s not the club down the street that is killing you, it’s the fact that you can’t even spell customer service. Members just want you to be nice and appreciate their business but most clubs won’t even greet their members or thank them when they leave. Look at your staff and if they are dumber than a Jerry Springer audience fire them all, learn customer service and get new ones. Members leave for two reasons: you don’t appreciate their business and show this appreciation every day and they don’t get results because your training is 20 years out of date. The new guy gets them but you drove them out and it is your fault.

• I don’t care how many kids you have, how many years you have worked or how burned you are, if you own a single facility and go home at five on Monday afternoon, you deserve to have your ass kicked.

• If your spouse is making you miserable get a new spouse. Many owners I talk to spend hours blaming their spouse for their failure. If you are that miserable either get professional help and fix it or move on. If you let someone else ruin your life it is your fault and not theirs. Stop bitching about it and get on with your life.

• You are not entitled to make money because you had what you thought was a good idea. Good ideas are cheap and everyone thinks they have one but the ability to turn a good idea into money is very rare. Good ideas are the first brick in your success but it is only one brick and it is a very big house.

• Putting everything you have into your club to get started gives you the right to play but doesn’t guarantee you will win. You have the right to get your ass kicked like everyone else but you also have the right to work harder and master what it takes to make money in this business.

• If you are blessed by being successful, the rules of the universe then don’t guarantee that you will be successful forever. Many big companies in our industry have failed, and are failing, because they don’t realize that what made you successful seldom keeps you that way. The client changes but many companies don’t. What ever happened to Stairmaster, Nautilus, Body Master, Flex, Ezone and so many more? Where is Universal now? How about Icarian? Where is Living Well and International Fitness? What happened to Spa Lady? Where are all of the circuit knockoffs that were ripping the last few years? All merged, sold, closed or are lesser versions of past success. The foundational truth of the universe is that everything changes and you change or die because the client no longer wants what you have to sell. There is not a single idea in this industry that hasn’t been disputed and resurrected. Look at strength training. We are now back to the basics because the members want success and won’t settle for anything else. You change willingly by accepting the rule of change or you change unwillingly because the laws of the universe dictate that your business plan is no longer relevant in the real business world.

• Stop bitching; no one cares. If you are unhappy, keep it to yourself. Endless complaining, especially to your staff, leads nowhere except to a miserable staff. No one cares your broke. No one cares your fat, unless you have a skinny spouse. No one cares your business doesn’t work unless it is someone like me who gets paid to clean it up. Stop being a victim, get off your ass and go to work. It really is that simple.

• To quote Larry Winget, you’re broke because you want to be. You don’t need that big ass truck while you are barely making your rent. Your kids don’t need all that new kid crap when you are just getting started. You don’t need to eat out every night and you don’t need to get away this weekend. Look in the mirror if you are broke and blame that guy if you want to blame someone, because it is the guy looking back at you who is spending you into financial oblivion.

• Most stupid kids have stupid parents.

• You can’t save yourself into profitability. Cutting your expenses down to nothing and hiring children as staff gets you nowhere. Your goal is to generate revenue everyday you are in the business and if you aren’t generating enough revenue then learn how.

• Smoking might be the all time dumbest thing you can do. If you smoke and are in the fitness business then get out of the fitness business because you giving the rest of us a bad name and you are definitely not a role model for a healthy lifestyle.

• With all the books, workshops, online training and consulting help in the industry there is no reason to be an unsuccessful owner unless you are uncoachable, hardheaded or don’t understand that your lack of knowledge is why your business doesn’t work. The funny thing is that you don’t know how to fix it but you won’t let anyone else fix it either.

• If you own your own business and aren’t working about 70 hours a week then you are probably getting what you put into it.

• There is enough time to do it all. Turn off your television and play with the kids or better yet take your significant other and a good bottle of wine to your room and embarrass your kids. Turn off the television, back away from the computer, put down the crackberry and you will find a lot more hours in your day. Stop bitching about not enough time and start valuing the time you do have.

So many people make their lives harder than they need to be. Once you realize that you are the one responsible for your own life, miracles can happen. You can learn new tricks, make money, have a life and be productive but you first have to escape “poor, poor, me” trap and be able to acknowledge that you don’t always have the answer and that it isn’t someone else’s responsibility to make sure you are happy in the world.

The Numbers NEVER Lie

Published on 09/01/09 10:07AM by Thomas Plummer

Most owners make very emotional decisions, and often ones that are right for their businesses, based upon a situational management style. Situational management means you base your decision on what is in front of you at the moment, and if that something is causing you a little pain at the time, the reaction, and the decision, is often emotional rather than what is best for the business.

Effective management is always number based. If you track the right numbers, and understand what the numbers mean in relationship to your business, then you will make better decisions that will improve your business because the numbers never lie and will always point you to the decision you need to make to help the business grow.

For example, a typical owner who is not numbers driven has a poor and extremely stressful sales month. He is sitting in his office when his local newspaper sales rep drops by to check in to see if he needs to run an ad. Our owner, who is frustrated that sales are slow, listens closely as the newspaper person paints a great picture of a new section coming out in the paper next week on brides and summer weddings.
The newspaper person tells him he has to be in this section because it will be the best read special issue of the summer and if he isn’t he will miss out big time on a chance to get great exposure. Our hardworking owner, but dumb as a kettle bell, slaps together a special for a bride’s boot camp, the paper designs the ad in about an hour with no thought to the club’s brand or marketing look, and a few people drift in when the ad appears, but not nearly enough to justify the ad.

The owner had a frustrating day, makes a quick decision to solve that frustration, wastes some money in the process and still hasn’t helped the business. This is situational management at it’s worst because the decision was made through emotion and the day’s frustration and not based upon any real numbers that reflect the true financial situation of the club.

Most owners claim they track all leads, for example, and most owners lie in this case. Few owners really know the amount of qualified leads through the club over a typical 30-day period because they simply don’t have a system in place that forces the staff to report correctly, therefore, the owner always thinks he knows but seldom has a tight number. In the case of our kettle bell head, he made the decision based upon frustration and not real numbers because first of all, he doesn’t know how to gather real numbers, and secondly, he doesn’t know what to do with them if he did have them.

In his case, if he would have looked at his numbers closely he might have found something like this, which is often the case in a typical club. If he had control of his leads he would have found out he really had 80 leads through the door and not the 60 the staff reported because there is really no incentive, or punishment, for not reporting true numbers everyday.

He would have also found out that he only converts 35% of his total leads each month and not the 60% and higher his staff reports because they drop the amount of leads to look better. They aren’t trying to cheat, but they do find many reasons a person wasn’t really qualified and dropped from the potential lead list and that eventually raises their closing percentage much higher than it should be.

If kettle head was really in the game, he would track his numbers every day for his team, and for each sales person, and find out he doesn’t have a marketing problem, he has a sales training issue since the numbers would have shown him that he is really closing less than 40% and no amount of marketing money can overcome a bad sales effort.

Training his staff would be far more effective than blowing senseless money on an ad. If he really wanted to do the ad, he should have his ad company do a real ad for the paper that reflects a thought out special reflecting the club’s brand, meaning the ad perpetuates the club’s image in the market. A bride’s boot camp might have been a good idea, but it has to fit the overall marketing plan for the business and the ad has to build a recognition factor in the marketplace.

                                 The most important number you aren’t tracking

The most important number you aren’t tracking right now is your average EFT payment. Typically, a club might have a monthly rate of $39 for one person. If you break couples (two people at same address) into separate agreements, you will find that if the club sold seven memberships on a Monday, the average EFT is always going to be lower than the single rate of $39. For example (ignore the membership fees here):

Monday sales
$39 x 12
$34 x 12 (second person)
$29 x 12 (student)
$39 x 12
$29 x 12 (senior)
$39 x 12
$29 x 12 (corporate)
The average EFT payment is $34 ($238/7 = 34)

In our business, the average EFT has always been lower than the stated monthly single rate, which makes it hard to run a business over time since most owners base their success on the higher number. If you factor in all of your discounts, you’ll probably find that your number is actually lower than this example.
This lower number is what makes you so vulnerable in the market place to the lower priced competitors, because whether you want to or not, you are competing head-to-head on price. If the guy down the street is at $19 a month, and your true average is only about $29-32 in this example, you are in the same price game he is except you are losing. Your price is high enough to differentiate or high enough to protect your business.

Your discounts reflect the only way most owners know to generate more volume in their clubs. You simply drop your price for every exception to the rule. Couples get discounts. Kids get discount. Seniors get discounts. Corporate people get discounts. Your business plan is to figure out a way to give everybody a discount.

What you should be working on is how can you raise your EFT average not lower it. You can generate a higher monthly EFT average, especially if you switch your training away from session driven to monthly EFT, something we have been teaching this year in the workshops and that has proven to be a very successful plan in the clubs.

Other clubs have also added weight management programs based upon 12 weeks that is also EFT driven. Yet others have added programs such as a Parisi sports performance school that allows the club to drive more memberships by adding the children for just $15 per month per child and then upgrading the kids from that point into higher priced sports performance training or one-on-one.
Once your number goes higher than the one person price, your vulnerability in the market drops because you are now making a much higher return per sale, or in other words, you are now making more money per club client. Here is what your sales for the day should look like:

Monday sales
$39 x 12
$89 x 12 (group personal training)
$150 x 3 (weight management)
$54 x 12 (one parent with one $15 add-on for the Parisi program)
$39 x 12
$39 x 12
$39 x 12
The average EFT for this club is $449/7 = $64

Couple this with a low entry price, such as value pricing members using the 18 month tool at $29, and you have the best of all possible worlds: you can show a low entry into the club at $29, which allows a higher monthly membership conversion but you also get a higher EFT average from all members you do sign up increasing your return-per-member.

Track this number every day and also get a monthly total. Your goal is to create programs in the club that allows you to seek a higher return-per-member and still get the highest number of new members possible each month.

This is just one of the numbers you should be tracking each month or each day. The secret here is to track the right numbers and then learn how to react to what you learn from these numbers. The numbers don’t lie and keep you from making kettle bell head emotional decisions based upon situational management.
If you want more about numbers, try and get into the last few seats for the Chicago three-day advanced workshop in October. Most of the first day will focus on numbers and how to use them to make better decisions in your business.

Special note: The NFBA has Dan John’s new book, Never Let Go, in stock. This book is only for people who are fascinated with the essence of what we do in this business, and the theory about how we should train clients on the floor, which should be providing our clients with the information and leadership to get in the best shape of your life. This book might be the anti-gym book but what he discusses is what most of the real training clubs are returning to for their clients. It is not a business book but if you love training and working out it will get you to think about what we do in the club and how we train our clients in a different way.

Thom - What if you are wrong?

Published on 08/26/09 08:53AM by Thomas Plummer

This year has been totally flat out with more teaching and more workshops than we have done in years. During a brief respite, I was sitting with the famous singing insurance guy, Ken Reinig, talking about life and business. One of our constant sources of amazement is that we have been on the road for over 20 years as friends and that I have been out doing some sort of seminar somewhere for almost 30 years.

Thirty years on the road translates into thousands and thousands of students passing through your life. For example we just finished a workshop last week in Chicago with about 100 students in attendance representing about 170 clubs. If you figure a slightly smaller average and take it times the amount of work we do through the NFBA and that I have done in the past, you can guess that about 60,000 people have passed through our business not counting outside events or speaking engagement.

One of my most sacred personal beliefs derived from years on the road is something I found written better than I could have ever done it in a Hugh Macleod cartoon:

Stay ahead of the culture by creating the culture

I have worked to do this by watching the industry carefully; stripping out what doesn’t work and replacing these dated ideas with practices that better represent what any small business should be doing to make money. Small business is defined here as any single business that has less than 100 employees and does less than three million a year in revenue. Get bigger than that and the rules do change slightly.

We have been on such a mission for all these years to change the industry from sleazy business practices designed to punish those who trust us to ones that allow a young owner to make a lot of money ethically and professionally while still helping the clients who trust us with their money.

The speed of change in this industry has been painfully slow but in recent years things are picking up as the practitioners of the old methods begin to fade. Still, there is huge pressure for a new owner to question his processes, especially if faced with a competitor that is doing many things most of us think is wrong and ineffective. The following is a letter I just received questioning the system and even my sanity. Although I thankfully don’t receive letters like this one too often anymore, I respect Pete and think his inquiry is worth an in-depth answer, perhaps with more information than he really asked for when he sat to write me this email.

Thom,

I hope this email finds you well. I recently joined the NFBA and I have been enjoying the benefits of my membership.

I have been reading all of your stuff and I have put many of your ideas into practice. I have certainly benefitted from your expertise but I have to ask you a blunt question.

Thom, what if you’re wrong?

I strongly agree with your methodology regarding marketing and membership sales. That is probably because it resonates with my own values and philosophy. However, it is challenging to maintain the proper course when I see competitors doing ALL OF THE THINGS THAT YOU SAY NOT TO DO and packing the house with members.
These things include:

• “Insulting” marketing images
• Price ads
• Misleading advertising-baiting with a low price(only good for limited hours) and then switching to a higher priced membership
• Warehousing rows and rows of fixed joint equipment
• Drop Closing
• Pressure sales

It is sincerely like someone attended a Thom Plummer seminar and then did everything that you say not to do! The frustrating thing is that IT IS WORKING!!!

So the logical questions is why should I stick with the Thom Plummer way if the BS works?
Maybe people are not as sophisticated as you give them credit for?

Thom, I’m sticking with your way but I thought that this was a fair and interesting question that many of your clients and seminar participants likely also have.

Sincerely,

Pete Longo – Owner
Anytime Fitness of Asheville

P.S. I’ve copied my business partners on this. You come up quite a bit in our conversations and this is a question that we struggle with in both of our respective markets.

First of all, I can never answer this question in a way that will give a young owner an answer he will feel secure with in his business, but I will try here to at least lay a foundation for future growth by asking a few questions myself.

Why do you think everyone else makes money?

Since this business began in the modern era, usually assumed to be about 1945, someone has done something and everyone else copies that person assuming that the other guy must be making money.

In the 60’s, we all copied long-term memberships because the chains did it that way.

In the late 60’s and early 70’s, we all bought Nautilus and practiced High Intensity Training. Everyone had to have the stuff and everyone finally realized that if doesn’t work over time. Imagine today telling our members that we have equipment where one size fits everyone. We have grown and stability, total body strength, and agility are more important as fitness research progresses.

We keep trying it, or some form of circuit training, in the industry. It doesn’t work but people still buy it because they trust us to provide the answers they need to reach their goals. We sell it because it is cheap to offer in a business and questionable owners always think there is always another stupid person who will replace this one once they realize that going in a circle only works for six weeks and then fails the consumer. We copied it, and had to have it although, and while it was a break through at the time it eventually failed.

In the 80’s everyone jumped on group and priced their memberships with a group upgrade. Sounded good but didn’t work. And let’s not forget the first generation of semi-naked model ads that appeared in these years. Looked good and we all did it but how well did it really work?

In the 90’s we all copied the guy who sold memberships on a bi-weekly plan so he could rip the consumer for an extra payment a year. Sounded good but where was the ethics in this one?

This year we are all copying the enhancement fee because someone claims, usually in a bar, that he made a ton of money and got no complaints from his members. He lied but we copied it anyway.

Why do we copy?

We copy because we are always looking for the easy way. This business is hard. It is service intensive. It is capital intensive. It has staff turnover that rivals banks, which has the highest turnover in the service sector.

But the guy down the street, and he swore to me in the bar that it worked, tried this cool price sheet and it worked. In fact, he is opening more clubs now based on that damned sheet.

I even copied this in my own career. For years I believed that there had to be a magic combination of words that would lead to a higher sales percentage. Once I threw that crap away and spent time getting to know the client and what she wanted my sales did go up. I stopped copying sales people in our industry and started following Xerox sales practices. Huh, a lesson there?

Important fact

The bastards are lying. They lie in the magazines. They lie to their board of directors. They lie in the bar. They lie to their spouses. They lie because statistically they can’t be telling the truth. Everyone claims to have found the magic but if it is too easy, and too perfect, and you don’t have to do any work, then start with the assumption that the bastards are lying. Here is how real life looks in all small business, including the fitness industry. Remember here that his is true for the chains as well.

At any one time, they are fighting these numbers in their pile of clubs along with the independent guy:
20% make money and show a profit of about 15-20% pre-tax net
50% make a little; lose a little, and run average businesses that can go on for a long time
30% are too stupid to own their own businesses and never will make money burning up their money, their parent’s money and the bank’s money along the way. These people are in it for the wrong reasons and simply can’t figure it out

The guy down the street has the same issues you have. If you think running a single business is hard, imagine running 300. Your morning person didn’t show? Now take that times 300 hundred units. Your club is worn out but you don’t want to spend $500,000 to make it competitive. Take that times 300 clubs and see where you are, especially using the numbers above that reflect the true state of small businesses everywhere in the country. 

Another factor to keep in mind is that the chains are mostly in the going public business. They are not, and never will be, in the same business you are. Their goal is to show little debt, high revenues and sales and hope they can go public before they have to reinvest in their clubs. To do this you have to constantly open new clubs that are fresh and generate cash to feed the dogs that have reached the two-year plateau where they are flat.

You can as an independent, keep growing almost forever, but the chains don’t seem to work that way. I believe they get flat because they use such aggressive price driven marketing when they open that they burn down the market and do little to create new customers in their marketplaces.

The rules are the same for all of us

There are things call foundational truths that are the same for all of us. These are the basic rules of running any small business and have to be followed to make money. If you aren’t making the money you want, check your practices against this list.

• You have to develop a product that differentiates you from your competitors. For example, one of the worst things you can do in a market as an independent is to become nothing more than a shrunken version of a big chain club. Keep in mind that, “The same but smaller” is not a good business plan and also kind of sucks if your girlfriend is using this line on you comparing you to her last boyfriend

• You have to develop a marketing system that creates enough leads to feed your business. Most owners won’t budget to get leads, won’t do the guerilla stuff to drive in new business and just wait for people to come through. Marketing is so hard that most owners just refuse to play beyond sending a few cheap mailers once in a while. They never master the art of lead generation and just blame the guy down the street for draining leads

• You have to train your staff to convert these leads, at least 60% in our businesses, or your marketing is wasted. The national average for sales conversions is 38% meaning that the typical owner doesn’t have enough money for marketing to cover a lousy sales effort

• You have to create a system that allows you to collect the most money from the most members, meaning using a third-party financial service specialist

• You have to master service/retention because competitive markets force us to keep the ones we have. There is a limit to new business in a competitive market.

The tactics listed in the letter are the ones we have used for 40 years in the business. Why do we assume they still work when there have been so many failures using those tools? If this nonsense still works, why don’t we have more than four public companies in this industry? If this out of date garbage worked why do so many chains post such big losses annually? Why are the investment people trapped in club chains when VC guys have to flip in three years or they never get their money back? Why are there so many local failures, using these same mentioned tools, if running a club was as easy as using a picture of a big chested model in a skimpy outfit and running a two-for-one price special?

Most importantly, if drop closing, pressure sales, bait-and-switch tactics and sleazy marketing worked so well why is it that after over 60 years in the modern fitness era do we only have 16% of the total population in this country as members of gyms? The number is low because we have created an industry that insults the consumer and then can’t get him in shape once he is in the door.

In other words, that guy down the street looks good but if he were really tearing up the market every investment guy in the country would be funding clubs and the members would find us without marketing. Think about it, if someone really had a cure for baldness do you think you would have to advertise it on TV? If we had the cure for a bad case of fat ass, you wouldn’t have to market and beat people so badly when they do come through the door.

Fitness was, and will still be, a local affair based upon servicing clients that live three miles or so from your business. How do you stand out and how you are different are still the foundational truths of our business and these rules apply to the guy down the street too. Don’t assume he is making money and that what he is doing makes your life easier.

We have proven our system works for over 20 years and we have literally thousands of clients making money using our ideas. But what makes one client successful and the next, using the same stuff, less successful.

The key is execution. Good owners simply get more done and more effective in their businesses. They set a plan, follow it, and ignore the competition to a certain extent, especially if it interferes with their plan.
Good owners are driven business people first and fitness people second because they are in it to make money while providing a needed and ethical product. Most owners who are not as efficient as they hope can’t sell memberships, don’t practice modern training systems, won’t spend money on marketing and won’t study best practices in the industry, meaning the ones that do work with the numbers to back up the bull.

We begged an owner who was failing last year to get out and at least do door hangers near the club. She refused saying that there was more important things, like paperwork, to do in the business. She rode it down because she felt that since she opened her business she had a right to make money. Good owners simply make business happen compared to bad owners who wait for business to come to them. If you don’t know the difference then you are not in the 20% who is making real money in your business.
What all this means is that you can only master and run your business. You are responsible for your own success and failure but the grass is always greener in the next yard and it is so tempting to seek the fast way to success.

There was a famous columnist in San Francisco named Herb Caen. When I lived there a local radio station ran a billboard of one of the most beautiful women in the world. Herb received over 4500 letters from readers wanting him to research her. Who was she? Where did she live? Why was she not more famous? He ran about 30 of the letters in his column selecting the best lines from a lot of letters. His answer was simple: Your fantasy is someone else’s pain in the ass.

In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because Pete, it’s your business and you should try all those things to see if they work for you. There are no absolutes and there are many ways to make money in the world beyond what I teach. Experiment and see if these things will draw the way you think they will for your business but always return to the foundational truths because they are the only things that will determine your success in this business.