I like to think I’m doing something right. One of my club members, Susan Stevens, recently sold her home in a nearby city in order to purchase a new home located closer to our gym. I don’t know many clubs that can claim such devotion.
As owner and founder of The Training Club, I attribute the success and profitability of the gym to one simple philosophy: “Keep it simple, stupid.” I’ve been in this business for more than 35 years and I opened The Training Club fifteen years ago as, literally, a training club. While members come to workout on their own or attend group classes, the focus is on one-on-one training for every member in the core areas of fitness.
We take a simplistic approach to the business. Fitness is about two things: cardiovascular conditioning and resistance training. When it comes to fitness, there are three things we do really, really well. These three core programs successfully reduce body fat, build strength, and increase flexibility and desired muscle definition.
We always keep in mind that time is the most valuable commodity. To that end, the club’s programs work members hard and fast so they can get on with their busy lives. I recommend researching programs extensively before incorporating them into your club’s programming and focusing on programs that:
• Are hard, intense and FUN,
• Foster camaraderie,
• Aren’t gimmicky and avoid “whiz gadgets,”
• Allow you and your trainers to make a personal connection with club members.
We strive to keep fitness simple and to provide a supportive and inspirational atmosphere that encourages the development of a lifelong passion for healthy and active lifestyles. Clubs must realize that members are looking for concise programs. Even personal training is now down to 30-minute segments. People just don’t have the time to devote three hours a day at the gym anymore.
Our magic combination is team spinning, personal training and team gravity training. The gravity training equipment involves a free-motion glideboard and a pulley system that encourages functional exercise by using an individual’s body weight as resistance. It can adjust to eight different levels of resistance to accommodate people at every fitness level, and it can facilitate more than 250 strength training, stretching and Pilates exercises.
Since adding the gravity training program to the roster 14 months ago, we not only recouped our entire investment within seven weeks, but in a one year span, the program has run 1,000 classes with roughly 10,000 user sessions, creating the most successful and profitable training program I’ve ever seen. How many people can you reach in one year with one program and see results in every participant?
A big part of our success is due to our well-planned and pervasive marketing of the program to club members. This twostep promotional formula can be applied to the introduction of almost any pay-pervisit program:
1. Offer an Orientation
Offer a week-long program orientation to introduce and get club members familiar and interested. The seven-day orientation we conducted resulted in a 94 percent conversion rate, with members purchasing training packages in groups of 5 and 10 classes each. Prior to this, one of our biggest challenges was to attract those club members who hadn’t participated in strength training or personal training, and now, a whopping 46 percent of our gravity training attendees had never touched weights before. I also recommend making sure your club members can see signage everywhere – front desk, locker rooms, weight room walls, cardio rooms, etc.
2. Build Buzz
Before advertising to your club members, market and build buzz among your staff. When introducing the team gravity training program to our staff, we created anticipation and secrecy around its arrival. The campaign utilized clever slogans, including, “Tried all 120 positions,” and “Resist. You know you want to,” and we posted obscure flyers that alluded to “Something exciting is coming soon.”
It’s not rocket science. Show people the impact and change it can have on them so it becomes a positive addiction. When people start feeling better about themselves, you’ll get them to come in consistently. If your goal is to increase long-term profitability, then invest in your most valuable asset, your member.
Timothy Schliebe is the owner and founder of The Training Club. He can be contacted at 858.793.0665, or by email at contactus@thetrainingclub.com.
