Took part in the Action Duchenne Valentine’s fun run in Battersea Park on Saturday. There was a great turnout early on a cold February morning, an electronic timing chip for your shoe, and a nice yellow t-shirt to run in.
I was pleased to get round 4 laps of the park in just under 50 minutes, (49:52) according to the text I received from the (very clever!) chip, which also told me that I came in position 299!
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a severe and progressive muscle wasting disease. Young boys will face much of their life confined to a wheelchair and without treatment will die in their late teens early twenties. Find out more here. It’s time to stop wasting.
- Incentivise your staff on member retention
- Offer existing members a new benefit for free in order to make them feel at least as important as the new members
- Invite recent cancellations back for free session or two, & a coffee & chat
- Contact the customers about to cancel. You know who they are
- If someone asks to cancel, offer to reduce their payments for 3 months
- Show fitness improvements or offer refunds
- Entice recent redundancies into the gym during the day (for less?)
- Set an attrition target. You don’t have to reduce drop-out, your target could be to keep it the same for now
- Demonstrate value to all members, all the time
- Incentivise your management on staff retention
…or you could spend more money trying to get new members through the door with “no joining fee” offers, give them a free rucksack, and keep repeating the mantra – “the fitness industry is not affected by the recession”
Some of these ideas may seem controversial, in which case, terms & conditions would of course apply, but please feel free to comment on any of the points.
I hate treadmills. Not only are they boring but I also find it harder to run 5k on a treadmill than outside in the real world. Last week there wasn’t a lot of choice though, unless I was going to dig out the old football boots and slide round the park in the snow, and I really didn’t fancy that. So I added in a treadmill run to my regular gym workout and did a couple more 5k treadmill runs at a couple of the clubs where I was working. Not fun, although on Friday, I had a good view of the gym’s fish-tank, and the fish looked even more bored than me!
The snow’s almost gone in North London today, so I went for a beasting around Ali Pali again, and while it was far from easy, the treadmill runs have certainly helped my fitness levels, which is good ahead of the Valentine’s Love Run in Battersea Park this Saturday. It’s in aid of Action Duchenne, a muscular dystrophy charity. Come and join us!
Some of my local gyms are starting to embrace technology in the quest for new members. Phone calls, e-mails and even a few text messages have been coming over the networks trying to persuade me to join up for 2009. Most impressive is David Lloyd, who on top of a couple of nice personal phone calls and e-mails, have texted me about once a week since I filled in an online form back in December for a 12 day free pass. Unfortunately, the free pass was not forthcoming (the offer had already expired, and seems to change daily), so I’ll probably be texting STOP DLL soon.
LA Fitness (was Dragons) has called and e-mailed a couple of times, again in response to an online form, but when I did visit, I was shocked by how incredibly rude the staff were, confirming what I’d heard from friends and neighbours.
Also texting and calling is Movers & Shapers, a brand new powerplate/fitbug concept gym, who have been trying to persuade my wife to join since she had a trial session in December.
Although I’ve not visited since at least September, the Laboratory have finally done something with my e-mail address, and sent me an e-mail detailing their New Year offers.
At the end of the day, although they've not contacted me once lately, I’m happy going to Park Road Pools, and will be even happier when they start to e-mail or text the results of my workout post visit or at the end of each month. They have the technology, but don’t know how to use it… yet.
Facebook is banned in several organisations I know. However, facebook can be a great tool for improving your focus at work and being more productive.
A few (very few) of my friends aren’t on facebook, mainly because they say they don’t have time. There were 22 million people on facebook in the UK at the end of 2008, and 54% of them are over 35 years old. The way I use facebook means that I fear some of those friends may soon start to lose out. Here’s how to use facebook to be more productive…
The key is to manage your notification settings. Only set notifications for things that are really important to you. This is where you find it:
Most of the personal e-mails I get each day are created by me. No, I don’t e-mail myself, what I mean is that I e-mail different groups of friends about meeting up for a beer, dinner, game of golf, holiday, party, etc, and then they reply. When I initiate the message through facebook, they reply through facebook.
When I want to see who has replied, I open facebook. I no longer get e-mails every time someone pokes me, tags me, sends me a beer, or bites my zombie.
There is no doubt that facebook can eat up hours of time (as the internet in general can) and if that is a problem, then you probably need help defining what’s important in your life (or at work). LinkedIn is seen as being more of a business tool, and is therefore more accepted in work, but it can also fill up your inbox if you don’t manage the settings correctly.
Facebook is a great tool, particularly when is it used as a tool, rather than it using you like one.
Toby Beresford explains this in a different way
Lots of people set New Year resolutions, but it seems to me they are in decline. There are a couple of problems with resolutions – firstly, they are often resolutions rather than goals (I will give up/I will do less), and normally set out verbally over a glass or two of something fizzy during the celebrations.So make your resolutions into goals and write them down. Only 3 percent of adults have clear, written goals, and these people achieve 5-10 times as much as people of equal or better education and ability who have not written down what they want. Just because you’re reading this in February, or September, don’t let that be an excuse – write down a few positive things that you want to achieve by a certain date. Better still, share them with someone you know, or don’t know!Here are some of my goals for 2009, in three groups of three (3 being the magic number)
Fitness
- I will run in six 10k events such as charity runs, fun runs, etc
- I will take more effort (including asking for advice) in order to prevent those silly little injuries that could scupper my fitness goals
- I will get an independent healthcheck to ensure that I am really fit and healthy
Business
- GG Fit will improve member retention in gyms and health clubs through life coaching, especially with respect to motivation of staff and management
- GG Fit will increase the return on investment that clubs get from Exercise Management Systems by enhancing reporting and understanding of the exercise data
- GG Fit will be an ethical, environmentally friendly business
Other
- I will take more time over, and put more effort into things I enjoy – reading, learning the guitar, and most importantly, spending time with friends
- I will campaign to raise more money for charity – not necessarily to donate more, but to persuade others to part with their cash for the causes I support
- I will buy a new car (conditions apply)
I was pleased to see the article on the credit crunch in December’s Health Club Management magazine, but disappointed to read so much about sales and so little about retention. I think it is a dull reflection of the industry that so many operators are focusing on new sales offers during the financial crisis.
While new joining offers will encourage more people into the gym and move towards Fred Turok’s vision of 1 million more people exercising, I think these credit crunch deals are really trying to win over members from other clubs, and the more this happens, the more the industry will suffer. When times are tight, it’s much easier (and cost effective) to cut back on gym membership than utility bills, so we must demonstrate value for money and really good service.
The only chain in the December article mentioning a strategy for existing members or soon to be ex-members is énergie. Hooray for them for thinking about existing members during the crunch.
Focus on your existing customers becomes as important as new sales in times like these (if not more so). Your clients should always be your best sales channel, and you should do everything you can to retain them. All staff must be involved in your retention policy, empowered to make decisions, and measured on results. This could easily lead to better job satisfaction or even better pay for fitness instructors, another big concern of mine.
2009 is going to be an evolutionary year in the fitness industry. Many of us will be watching the development of the budget club closely, and I think that membership trends could look very different. I look forward to the HCM retention features in April and July 09, and I believe that the successful clubs in 2009 will be those who channel as much into retention as they do into sales.
Letter to Health Club Management magazine 22/12/2008
Boy, was it cold out there today! Max motivation needed, more than ever, I thought before I set off…
So first I mapped out a new route on googlemaps; a change is as good as a rest. No double loop around Highgate Woods today, but a new run along the disused railway track and up to Ali Pali park for some wonderful views of London. The distance looked like just over 5k, so next I needed a 30 minute playlist.
Here’s a very easy, and really motivating playlist for 30 mins. Muse – Black Holes & Revelations, but take out tracks 5, 6, 8 and 10. You’ll be left with an incredibly uplifting, shouty soundtrack which will keep you going uphill as long as you need, particularly at the end with Knights of Cydonia. Come on!
Howies NBL base layer on to keep me warm, chin up, and off I went. Felt great all the way round, grinning at passers by, particularly other runners, and soon had the sleeves rolled up. Started to struggle on the way back up towards Muswell Hill, but Bellamy’s guitar kept me going.
The combination of a new route and a 30 min playlist was a really good one… Best speed since August, and a new route to share next time I’m out with friends. Time for a hot bath now.
Many people in the fitness industry recognise that one of the major issues is the low remuneration and recognition of instructors. Yet only a few seem to be doing anything about it.
Sure, instructors need more money, but in a vocational profession, they also need more fulfilment, and to make a difference. And if they can prove that they are making a difference in people’s fitness and in their club’s member retention, more recognition and money will come along.
An Instructor’s Epiphany – Rob’s story
At the start of this year I resolved to take control of my own future and to really try to help more members at our club to be more active, more often.
After muddling through a couple of spreadsheets, I built a list of 100 members who I knew well, and noted their last visit date. I wanted to try to make sure 80% of them had always visited the club in the last three weeks. I would see how the numbers looked every 2 weeks, and get in touch with the people who were in my danger list. Every time I exceeded the 80%, I’d add a few more names to my spreadsheet, a mix of new joiners and other members that I knew. Before long I was keeping an eye on over 200 members.
The gym manager (who has worked here the longest) wasn’t too bothered about the numbers or the fact that I was making a real difference to members returning to the club. Being a naturally outgoing person, I find it easy to connect with the members; after all, they pay my (meagre) salary. If you always say “Hi” when you see people in the club, it’s easy to call them or e-mail when they’re not coming and ask what they’re doing, or when they’re coming next.
A couple of the other instructors saw what I was doing, and started copying me, which was great, because their members noticed and liked it too. And while my direct boss still wasn’t interested, the operations manager found out what I was doing, and now I’m being promoted to gym manager, and my old boss is looking for a new job.
Our club is more successful, members are fitter and more motivated, I have more responsibility, and I’m earning more. Which is nice all round, I think!
It may be that some instructors need a little coaching to get this model to work, and some gym managers will no doubt need a little help looking through the data, but these are relatively small hurdles in the grand scheme of things.
*More People, More Active, More Often – the FIA mantra
OK, up and running again… not been for a few weeks, as I’ve been away, and the last run was a bit of a beasting over the cliffs of Hastings.
Today was my first proper autumn run. Splashing through puddles and mud in the woods, half of the autumn leaves on the ground and half still on the trees. Cold, wet, and not very motivated when I set-off. This is the time that you sometimes need a little extra to keep you going. If you can keep going through the autumn, the winter seems easier somehow.
Feeling absolutely knackered, knees and achilles hurting after a couple of ks, and then just as I came up to the halfway “bottle” point (where the 2nd loop starts), my iPod on random plays Bloc Party’s “I Still Remember”. Nice. No question about giving up halfway, off I went for another loop, and the full 5k.
We all know that music boosts exercise capacity but this really confirmed that I need to sort out my autumn running playlist and powersongs to keep me going through the difficult season.
No personal best today, but back in the groove, and looking forward to the next autumn run through the puddles, leaves, wind and rain. Bring it on!
I was pleased to get round 4 laps of the park in just under 50 minutes, (49:52) according to the text I received from the (very clever!) chip, which also told me that I came in position 299!
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a severe and progressive muscle wasting disease. Young boys will face much of their life confined to a wheelchair and without treatment will die in their late teens early twenties. Find out more here. It’s time to stop wasting.
