Category: Blog

Where Fitness and League Sports Meet

Where Fitness and League Sports Meet

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There’s a new professional sports league in town. For this league becoming fit isn’t just the preparation for the game—it is the game. The National Pro Fitness League (NPFL) is a new organization that pits co-ed teams of athletes against each other in a range of functional fitness events. Headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, the NPFL has franchises in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, Washington, D.C., Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Its season will kick off at the end of August and last for six weeks, with the franchises competing in a total of 12 matches and a culminating championship match taking place in early October.

Wow. This is exciting news for fitness facilities and sports facilities alike. What a great development to get behind and support. Even if your facility doesn’t focus on functional fitness or offer related classes, the creation of the NPFL can be a boon to you. Since it will bring both fitness and league sports events to the forefront of the nation’s attention— at least for a little while (especially because, as NPFL Director of Team Development Cassie Haynes pointed out in a recent article, this league, unlike the NFL, MLB, and other older leagues, can be built around technology. The opportunity for fan engagement will be huge).

How can you benefit from the upcoming NPFL events? First, let your members know about them—chances are, they haven’t yet heard about the NPFL. Be the first to fill them in. Get enthusiastic about the league and convey your enthusiasm with posters, announcements, and by having your trainers talk it up. If there are competitors from your region, build up a show of support for them; make the events a bonding experience and a way to motivate your facility’s patrons in their own fitness and league practice sessions.

If you have the space and technology, you might consider setting up a few in-facility viewing events for members (and potential members!). Chances are, you’ve been looking for ways to build community anyway—and if you’re not, you should be! This is another excellent way to do so.

One great thing about the league is that it has the potentially to appeal to a wide variety of audience. It’s co-ed, so both men and women can get behind it. And it’s not filled with just hot young things; for each match, at least two competitors (one male, one female) from each team must be a “Master Athlete”—meaning age 40 or older. What other sport can boast of such inclusion? In spreading the word about the league—in your facility or on social media—you’ll want to stress this aspect of it. There’s something here for everyone.

Finally, can you think of any tie-in events you can stage at your own facility? If you have the capacity for functional fitness training, maybe you can plan for training activities that match a particular competition occurring on a certain day. Or after an event is over, you may have a trainer analyze an athlete’s performance together with clients, and help incorporate lessons to be learned into clients’ own practices. As always, the benefits you reap from such an exciting development (the creation of the NPFL) are up to you: You’re limited only by your imagination. It’s worth spending the time thinking about where you can go with this.

Workout Statistics

Get Fit with Exercise Snacking

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Have you heard the latest? Snacking is good for you. Not food snacking—exercise snacking. Researchers in New Zealand recently conducted a study that showed that multiple, brief portions of exercise in a single day—“exercise snacks,” the researchers dubbed them—may control blood sugar better than a single, continuous workout. The study was conducted on men and women with insulin resistance, a common precursor of Type 2 diabetes. Though, the news is relevant to anyone who wants to stay healthy by keeping blood sugar under control. In the study, participants who exercised for 12 minutes before breakfast, 12 before lunch, and 12 before dinner had far lower blood-sugar levels after dinner than those who exercised only once in a day, for 30 minutes before dinner. They also kept their blood-sugar levels lower for longer—over 24 hours as opposed to less than a day.

What does this mean for health clubs, gyms, fitness centers, and exercise boutiques? Well, you need to be prepared to serve members and clients who are looking to get to your facility three times a day. Also, if you want to help your members and clients reach their health-related goals (and you do, because their success is your success), you should probably think about how to encourage those who aren’t necessarily looking to get there three times a day to do so — and, let’s face it, many of them most likely struggle to get there once a day. Scientists have long argued that shorter, more frequent bursts of exercise are more beneficial than long, continuous spells. As the body of research supporting this hypothesis grows, more and more people will be demanding — and needing — to fit this new way of working out into their daily routines. This is especially true because, as researchers of the New Zealand study discovered, the blood-sugar benefits (and it remains to be seen which other benefits) are strongest when the exercise snacks consist of high intensity interval training. For most people, such training is much easier to do at a facility, with trainers and functional fitness equipment, than at home.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

1) Create a new three-times-a-day program. First, be sure to spread the word about the findings of the New Zealand study (and other studies that show the benefits of exercise snacking). Then, establish a structured program to help people get started. Designate a core group of trainers to work with the three-times-a-day-ers: They’ll have to work hard to motivate their clients to come before breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At the same time, they’ll need to plan out careful twelve-minute exercise sessions, preferably high-intensity interval routines.

2) Everything’s easier with incentives. What discounts, rewards, or deals can you offer your members for trying out a new three-times-a-day program? Can you provide a day pass that will allow them fast-track entry each time, or a free smoothie from the juice bar after they complete their third workout? Can you give a free month to members who manage to make it to your facility three times a day, three days a week, for one month? Or maybe you can offer a month at half price for anyone who comes in three times a day with a friend at least twice in one month. The possible variations are limited only by your imagination.

3) If your facility has the capacity to serve food, consider providing three-times-a-day-ers with vouchers for at least one meal on their exercise days. This might make it easier for them to contemplate the logistics of coming to and leaving your facility three times in one day. They might, for example, come before breakfast, head to work, come before lunch and then stay and have lunch, and come again before dinner.

4) If it’s feasible, consider offering three-times-a-day classes in a couple of satellite locations in addition to your facility (maybe there’s an empty warehouse somewhere on the other side of town?). That way, members who live or work further away from your facility have a choice in where to go, and choices make for convenience.

As the trend increases and the demand for facilities to accommodate for more frequent, briefer sessions grows, health clubs and other fitness venues will learn what works and what doesn’t. Now is the time to get started — put yourself at the forefront of the exercise snack trend, and you’ll find yourself the leader of a pack before long.

The Right Hire For Your Gym

The Right Hire For Your Gym

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If you’re a fan of reality television, or even if you’re not, you have probably heard about the recent episode of Inside Job that featured New York’s David Barton Gym. Inside Job’s premise is that a company seeking to fill a position agrees to let the show’s producers select three candidates. Those candidates live together for a week and undertake challenges that supposedly reveal their worthiness for the job. A fourth person also lives in the house, someone already employed by the company who presents himself or herself as another candidate for the position. That person is the insider, reporting back to the CEO about the candidates and choosing one of them to recommend.
Well, that’s one way to hire an employee. For those of us who don’t have the opportunity to get to know job candidates quite so intimately before we hire them, we need other approaches. Since so many staff positions at a fitness center or sports facility involve direct interaction with members and clients, it’s crucial to hire carefully. Moreover, hiring is an expensive process; you want to get a good return on your investment.
What can you do to ensure you’re hiring well? To begin with, craft an excellent, clear, and precise job description. The more specific your description, and the more explicitly you define what you’re looking for, the better your chances of finding appropriate candidates. If you need a marketing person with social media experience, don’t just put, “Five years marketing experience”. It’s better to write, “Experienced marketing professional with social media expertise.” Also, be sure to stick in a few words that convey the sort of work ethic you’re looking for. If you want to scare off potential loafers, then change that wording to “Dedicated, experienced marketing professional with social media experience, a can-do attitude, and the willingness to stick it out when things get tough.”
Once you’ve collected your applications and narrowed the pool down to a handful of candidates, line up your interviews. Let me stress on the word “handful”: At this point, you don’t want to bring in too many people. Start with your top three or four choices; if you can’t find what you’re looking for among them, you can always call in others.
No doubt you’ve conducted interviews before, so you know the drill. Still, there’s one thing that’s easy to forget: Interviews are not effective if you’re focusing only on the science behind them — the questions you should and shouldn’t ask, how you read a résumé, what answers a candidate gives to your questions. More effective is to focus on the art of interviewing. This means paying attention to how a candidate answers your questions more than what they say. Did you get an answer — but not to the question you asked? Were there inconsistencies in the candidate’s replies? What was the candidate’s body language saying, what were the unconscious reactions and gestures? These will help you better understand who the person is (rather than just what he or she has done).
Once you make an offer, be prepared to negotiate. Any candidate worth hiring is probably going to come to you with a counter-offer. Remain open to the offer. Often, it reflects what the potential employee truly thinks he or she is worth. You might not be able to meet the counter-offer, but you might gain some clues about what alternative offers the candidate might be willing to accept. If you really want the person, you’ll have to find a way to make him or her happy.
Which brings me to my final point: Keep your employees happy. The gym and sports industries by nature face high turnover (how about a reality TV show that addresses that fact?). When you’ve invested the time, money, and energy to hire the right candidate, you want to do everything you can to make sure he or she stays. Create an open, warm workplace that makes relationship-building a priority. Recognize and reward good work. Consider perks such as tuition reimbursement, free lunches, and employee-of-the-month programs. The investment in human capital is worth it.

Gym community

Helping Your Members Connect

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Every weekday morning, my sister-in-law heads to a functional fitness center and undergoes a grueling routine involving kettlebells, ropes, medicine balls, and heavy chains. The center is located in a small warehouse with a homegrown feel. There’s one instructor and a small number of regulars for each time slot; it’s the kind of place where the instructor greets everyone by name and asks about their kids and pets. My sister-in-law took me to a class recently. When I arrived, she introduced me to each person there, and they welcomed me so warmly that I felt I’d known them all for years.

The workout that followed made me want to lie in bed for three days and moan feebly, but I had a great time while I was doing it. It was great partly because functional fitness is just plain fun and the instructor was wonderful—but I know the main reason it was great, was that I felt instantly comfortable around all of those people. I felt accepted; I felt both gently teased (when I collapsed after the ten-thousandth burpee) and brilliantly supported (when I discovered a natural flair for kettlebell action); I felt a genuine interest in all of my classmates, and it was clear that feeling was mutual. I left with a whole new set of friends.

My sister-in-law lives far away, so I can’t join the class, but I know that if I could, I would (despite its tortuous aspects). There’s one simple reason why I would: to be a part of that community. Anthropologists and social scientists have long known that human beings function best when they function within a community. We have our ideas about independence and autonomy, but when it comes to basic questions of survival, or just to getting through each day—or, say, to getting through a workout—we need to have others around us, and we need to feel some connection to those others.

For owners of gyms, fitness centers, training facilities, and health clubs, these facts are crucial to running a sound business. If you build a supportive, intimate community, you’re much more likely to both retain members and find new ones. So where do you begin?

1) Introduce members to one another. This one is simple, but it works, perhaps even better than anything else. I don’t mean just play icebreaker games at the start of a class; I mean make personal introductions based on your knowledge of your clients. If a new member who is a schoolteacher joins, bring her over to the schoolteacher who’s been working out at your facility for years and get them talking. Of course, you can’t facilitate connections on this level without first knowing—or ensuring that your staff knows—members personally and thoroughly. Getting to know them personally and thoroughly takes a great investment of time and energy, but it’s one of the most worthwhile investments you can make. Members will feel valued, and their positive feelings will translate into referrals, loyalty, and longevity.

2) Form clubs to address specialty interests. Find out what your members are interested in doing outside of your facility (you can use surveys, registration forms, or just personal chats for this), and see what happens if you form a club around that activity. Outdoor biking, bellydancing, macrobiotic cooking — whatever it is, you can get things started, and you don’t have to do much else. Put up a sign-up sheet, and let the members themselves take care of the rest. They’ll form personal connections and you’ll benefit.

3) Get social. I’m talking about two kinds of social here: real and virtual. On the real side of things, host cocktail hours (or juice bar hours), get-togethers, and meet-and-mingle events. Match members up for training sessions. Hold talks and seminars. On the virtual side, welcome new members to Facebook, offer incentives to members who post to your Facebook page or comment on posts you put up, create a Facebook group that members can join in order to stay connected. Explore other forms of social media too. Again, your members will form a valuable community; you’ll reap the rewards.

Five Steps to Safeguard Your Sports Facility Against Liability

5 Steps to Safeguard Your Sports Facility Against Liability

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Ever had an athlete twist an ankle on your field, or worse: break a leg, dislocate a shoulder, or sustain a head injury? Ever had someone run into a brick wall? I’m serious here — at one football field, a brick wall was placed just beyond the end zone, and a player ran full speed into it. Be glad you weren’t the owner of that field when the question of liability arose — because, when you run a sports facility with a field, the question of liability always arises. You have to be vigilant about it, and take constant measures to both protect players from injury and yourself from litigation. What can you do?

  1. Start with common sense. There are no published industrywide standards for all aspects of sports fields, but there are generally accepted expectations. Is your playing field level? Is it free of debris, holes, depressions, and other potential safety hazards, such as loose seams and worn patches? Is there a risk of rocks rising to the surface, and is the field playable when wet? Your field maintenance efforts should focus first on safety, while your common sense should guide you in terms of what is safe and what isn’t.
  2. Next, take a look at your field as if you’ve never seen it before. If there are liability issues, you’ve probably become so accustomed to seeing them that you don’t really notice them anymore. Take the brick wall, for instance: Any field manager who has stopped to think about it would have realized the danger. However, it’s easy to not think about things when you’ve got a routine and a checklist of tasks to accomplish. Step onto your field and look around. Are there poorly placed walls? Are there ridges or lips on the field?

    If it’s an expanded field, such as a soccer field, is there sufficient space for athletes to slide without hitting fences? Is there room to comply with American Disability Act requirements? See everything as if it is for the first time and make assessments. If you’re too busy to consider all of the potential problems, or are just too familiar with your field to be able to see it with a fresh eye, don’t hesitate to have an outside firm audit safety issues. If you don’t have the budget for an outside inspection, consider asking a fellow sports field manager to inspect your facility in exchange for you to inspect theirs.
  3. Do your paperwork. Make sure you have contracts, insurance documents, and anything else you might need in place, in order to manage any financial and legal liability. If anything unfortunate ever does occur, you’ll need to have the paperwork ready on hand.
  4. Don’t delay. When you identify a potential problem, fix it right away. No, scratch that: First document it by noting the problem, how and when it was discovered, and what the strategy for resolution is. Then go ahead and fix it.
  5. Finally, after an issue has been discovered, documented, and dealt with, schedule regular re-inspection times (document your re-inspections!). Then take the time to analyze: Why did the problem occur in the first place? Could it lead to other problems? Are there ways to avoid such problems in the future? Remember, the best way to reduce risk is through prevention. This way, any time and resources you invest into large-scale improvements now will pay off for you down the road.
Addition of View Details Option on E-mail Campaign History Page and More!

Addition of View Details Option on E-mail Campaign History Page and More!

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In a world full of numbers it is easy to get lost in them. From what’s in your bank account to the number of clients that pass through your facility each day. Our last release featured the introduction of the Email Campaign History page, which, not only gives you the ability to see previously sent emails, but also allows you to report on their success or failures using numbers. With that in mind EZFacility’s Development Team has taken that concept one step further with the release of a “View Details” section of the Email Campaign History Page and more!

View Details- Email Campaign History

In the Email Campaign History section of your EZFacility account you will notice our newest feature – View Details. Our goal for adding the View Details section was to associate a name and purpose with email campaign results. This allows you to better understand and analyze the reach and depth of your campaign efforts.

Clicking into View Details will automatically display campaign result totals for a variety of industry standard email event types. These results can be broken down to include the email address of the recipient and an event time stamp that allows you to view statistics as they happen. You can also filter through campaign information using criteria such as email address and event type.

Email Results Recorded:

  • Delivered: Message has been successfully delivered to the receiving server.
  • Open: Recipient has opened the HTML message.
  • Click: Recipient clicked on a link within the message.
  • Bounce: Receiving server could not or would not accept message.
  • Dropped: Recipients IP address has been added to the blacklist.
  • Spam Report: Recipient marked message as spam.

Display Available Openings Remaining on an Online Registration Form

In an effort to make Online Registrations as efficient as possible, our latest release includes the ability to display the remaining openings available on an Online Registration Form. When your clients first view this page they will be met with the available openings remaining totals for creating new subgroups and individual registrations. For those clients who will be looking to register for a sub group, the sub-group openings will be displayed when viewing the list of subgroups.

Note: The number of available openings remaining is based on the “Max. Individuals” and “Max. Subgroups” set in the group details.

Update to Our SPAM and Security Settings

With our latest release we have made an update to our SPAM and security settings. Now, when sending an email blast, the ‘From’ field will be changed from your facility or personal email address to services@mail.ezfacility.com, while still displaying the name of your facility at the top. Be assured however, that when a client replies to a sent email, it will be received by the user that sent the email blast and not EZFacility. This change is for security reasons, and is being implemented across the industry for SPAM prevention. Email providers such as Yahoo and AOL already require this change and are beginning to block emails that are sent ‘on behalf of’ another email address.

And More!

In addition to these changes, there were many additional updates included in this release. For more details, please visit out Release Notes page.

Establishing a YouTube Presence

Establishing a YouTube Presence

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YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world. The first is Google. When you consider the facts that (1) Google owns YouTube, (2) Google’s search engine algorithm weighs heavily the presence of videos on a website (in plain English: if you’ve got videos, your site will appear higher up in Google’s search results), and (3) videos are much more likely to go viral than text-only online content, the conclusion you should draw is obvious: Your facility can benefit from having a presence on YouTube.

But where to begin? Or, if you already have a selection of videos on YouTube, how to optimize? Don’t worry. There are some simple steps you can take to establish yourself in the YouTube universe.

First, if you haven’t already, create a YouTube channel for your facility. This takes seconds to do and allows you to build up a mass of users who subscribe to your account; it also lets you send emails to subscribers. Be sure to upload the videos you create to your channel.

Then consider the production value that’s right for you. Your videos do not have to be perfectly polished works of art; in fact, anything too polished could be off-putting. You want to keep them authentic, comfortable, and welcoming. You also want them to be cost-efficient. This means investing just enough resources to get your point across; you might be able to make a perfectly fine video with just a smartphone attached to a tripod accessory (just make sure you’re paying close attention to sound quality; if you invest in any sort of high-tech equipment, let it be a great microphone).

That said, keep in mind that viewers won’t stick around for long if a video is too low in quality. And you want them to stick around, because the whole point is to give them a direction to take. By the end of your video, you should tell viewers to contact you, stop by, or check out your social media channels. Including a call to action — and making the video compelling enough so that viewers stay long enough to get the call to action — is crucial.

As far as other content goes, the sky — and your imagination — is the limit. Videos featuring quick, helpful routines created by your trainers are an obvious choice, and are sure to be a big hit. But don’t overlook other possibilities: videos of new members, perhaps explaining why they chose to join your facility; videos of staff discussing their favorite parts of their jobs; videos of events you’ve hosted or sponsored, especially if they’re events that show your dedication to your surrounding community. Also, videos of CEOs, managers, or owners offering personal, sincere stories about how they’ve overcome hardship or what motivates them or why they do what they do can be extremely compelling. Don’t forget that humor always attracts attention. As do children!

Other things to keep in mind: You want to be sure to help Google — and viewers — connect your YouTube video with your other online content. That means, in the description of your video, include a link to your website. The flip side of that is connecting your clientele (and potential clientele) with your videos: Be sure to tweet the videos, share them on Facebook and Google+, promote them on Instagram — make them an integrated part of your social media strategy.

As part of that strategy, you should also take time to invest in the YouTube community. Become an integral part of that community by commenting on other videos within your fields of interest. Add links on your website to videos you find interesting. If other YouTube users perceive your facility as a supportive, community-minded entity, they’ll support you, and then the real magic of YouTube will kick in, with word about your facility spreading at lightning speed.

Of course, as with all of your marketing efforts, you’ll want to maintain brand recognition. Include your logo, use fonts and colors associated with your brand, establish a consistent voice and personality, and ensure that the tone conveyed in the video matches the tone you have established elsewhere. The pay-off — a higher profile on Google and a reputation as a video provider — will be huge!

Free Classes

Free Classes

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If you’re a sports facility with tennis courts, you’ll want to pay attention to this. And if you’re any other kind of sports facility, you’ll also want to pay attention. Actually, everyone listen up — this is an idea that health clubs and fitness centers can capitalize on too.
In May, as part of a promotional effort started jointly by the Tennis Industry Association, the Professional Tennis Registry, and the United States Professional Tennis Association’s Tennis Across America program, sports facilities and certified teaching pros around the country will take part in Try Tennis — a program to offer free tennis lessons. Any facility with tennis courts can sign up here to participate; tennis-playing aspirants can find participating facilities on the same website. The possible result for you? Free advertising and perhaps new long-term members.
The sponsoring associations based their decision to launch Try Tennis on industry research showing that 65 percent of players who begin tennis in an introductory program continue with the sport. Offering free classes or lessons is a way of getting potential players hooked.
You can see why I wanted you all to listen up — this is a widely adaptable idea. If you’re a facility with a focus on baseball, basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, hockey — any sport — you can work on getting a Try [Your Sport] promotion going industry wide. If you’re a gym, you can think about a Try a Trainer month, or a Try Zumba (or other workout class) month. Pushing a promotion on a huge scale, like the tennis initiative, might feel beyond your scope; if that’s the case, try it with a few other facilities in your network or your region, or just launch a similar program in your facility alone. However you’re able to manage it, a full month of free lessons is likely to draw potential new members, a good number of whom will stay on after the promotion ends.
The idea can be applied in all types of facilities and can be carried out in a number of ways. You could do as the tennis folks are doing and make it a month-long promotion. If you’re a facility with fewer resources, make it a week’s event, or even just a single day’s. Of course, however you end up designing it, you’ll want to spread the word widely. If you’re doing it in conjunction with other facilities, consider setting up a website like the Try Tennis one. If you’re going solo, give it a big headline on your own website’s landing page, and shout about it on your social media channels. Ask your current members to let others know; ask them to bring their friends.
Equally important: Keep track of the numbers. Make sure you count the people who take part (and get their names and contact info for follow-up). Then count the number of people who sign up for long-term instruction or general membership. You’ll want to know whether the effort pays off for you. In your niche, is it also the case that 65 percent who begin playing continue on? Maybe not, but either way, you want to have the data available. Then, if it works, do it every year!

Use Your Club Size To Your Advantage

Use Your Club Size To Your Advantage

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Over on the IHRSA blog, there’s an interesting post about how small gyms in rural towns tackle the unique challenges they face. It’s true that for any health club or sports facility with a small pool of members and clients to draw from, there are difficulties that clubs in more populous places don’t experience. You might compete with larger clubs nearby, vying hard for attention against brand-name franchises. Or you might struggle to fill up your classes or operate programs or leagues that are tricky to manage without a certain bulk enrollment.

The best strategy? Use your club size to your advantage. Sisters Athletic Club, in Sisters, Oregon, makes a point of creating a homelike atmosphere in its facility. First of all, the gym provides no membership cards. Instead, even though the club boasts 1,600 members, employees are required to know every member and greet them by name when they enter. Here’s where small-town advantages come into play: The town has only 2,000 residents. Chances are, the member entering is your neighbor anyway. Also, the club strives to create an anti-gym feel. Outside, the 19,000-square-foot facility looks like a lodge. Inside, a rock formation fills the lobby, classical music infuses the air, and an art gallery spreads out near the front desk. You can’t see the cardio court from the entrance, and you don’t smell anything that even vaguely suggests you’re in a gym. The hominess is complemented by fastidiousness; everything is spotless.

Playing up the sense that the facility is an extension of their members’ homes is crucial for Sisters Athletic, in part because the club’s biggest competitor is nature. There’s so much skiing, biking, and hiking nearby that the facility has to give members the sense that they’re getting something they can’t possibly get outdoors. It’s precisely its small, comfortable feel that allows it to do so.

The situation for B-Fit 24/7 Fitness in Adrian, Michigan, is different: The local population consists of 24,000 and there are big-name competitors not too far away. So, B-Fit has a bigger pool to draw from than Sisters Athletic Club, but there are more options for the folks who make up that pool. B-Fit has to really stand apart from the crowd in order to create a loyal clientele and attract new members.

Their solution? The club has made itself the only one in the area that’s open 24 hours, and it pitches itself as the “ungym” — unlike the traditional gym model, B-Fit does not require members to sign a contract, and it refunds members who don’t reach their goals. Also, the club works hard to forge relationship with the 80 percent of the population that isn’t naturally exercise-oriented.

For sports facilities in similar positions — either with only a tiny pool to draw from or with big-fish competitors nearby and a relatively small pool of potential clients — smart marketing, along with lots of event hosting, might be the key. Looking to fill up your baseball league? Try putting up flyers in towns one to two hours away; parents will go surprisingly far to keep their kids interested in an activity, and adult players who are committed enough to join a league probably won’t mind the travel. As far as events go, don’t limit yourself to birthday parties. Put the idea in the minds of potential customers that you are there for all occasions, from celebrations for specific events and holidays to celebrations for no reason at all.

The overriding lesson is this: What you think are weaknesses might be turned to advantages. Exaggerate the very qualities that seem limiting — your small size, the restricted pool you’re in — and figure out what about those things might appeal to those around you.

New Email Campaign History Page and More!

New Email Campaign History Page & More!

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Our Development Team is constantly working to improve your user experience with EZFacility. Between major updates, we release small but important Features and Fixes that address issues and add useful new options/tools to better help you manage your business with EZFacility.

Sending a carefully choreographed email campaign regarding special events, news items or promotions can lead to increased revenue and a larger client base. However, have you ever sent an email campaign and been left wanting to know more? For example, what email campaigns have I sent, how many clients did each campaign go to or how many of those clients had invalid email addresses? EZFacility’s Development Team has released a brand new feature, Email Campaign History, that focuses on those very questions!

Email Campaign History

In the Administration section of your EZFacility account you will notice a newly organized Email Campaign section that houses our newest feature – Campaign History. Clicking into Campaign History will provide access to the riches that are your previously sent email campaigns! Clicking into Campaign History you will see the last 20 sent email campaigns displayed automatically. However, not only can you just view campaigns, you can also search through previous ones using criteria such as address, subject, and date.

The Campaign History list will show the:

  • number of clients attempted
  • number of duplicate email addresses
  • number of clients with no email address
  • number of invalid email addresses
  • number of clients the e-mail was sent to

Add Multiple Email Addresses to a Client’s Profile

Understanding the need to have multiple email addresses saved for a single client, we have updated the client page to do just that. To begin saving multiple email addresses, navigate to a client’s personal page and locate the email address section. Entering an email address into the field and clicking the add button will include the address on the client profile. You will want to continue this process for as many emails as applicable. After emails have been added editing them is as simple as selecting the edit pencil to the right of each email address.

**Remember to click the update button on the client profile to save your changes**

Outdoor Workouts

Outdoor Workouts

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I don’t know about you, but now that the long winter finally (finally!) seems to be drawing to a close, all I want is to be outdoors. I want that so badly that I almost, for a very brief second — full disclosure — considered letting my gym membership expire. I’ll just start a new one in September, I thought. It was only a fleeting idea; happily, I know that I get too much from my gym to ever really let go of my membership so easily. But a lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people do exactly what I thought of doing: let their membership slide in the warm months and rejoin (or, worse, join somewhere else) when the cold sets in again.
One way for a gym, or any type of fitness or sports center, to combat this phenomenon is to take things outdoors. In recent years, it’s become more of a trend for health clubs to institute outdoor programs. Large cities hold yoga-in-the-sun classes. Gyms offer boot camp in the park. So-called “street workouts” are becoming more popular, with exercisers using poles, park structures, even swing-sets to build up core muscles and practice other forms of strength training.
If you haven’t yet cashed in on the trend, it’s time to do so. Your audience is hungry for it (google “outdoor workouts” and you’ll see what I mean). The question is, how do you make it work? How do you move operations outside?
Start with an existing class — it’s probably your most portable commodity. Go for a low-key class first, one that doesn’t rely on music or heavy equipment. (Once you get things up and running and you understand how to coordinate outdoor sessions smoothly, it’ll be simple enough to fiddle with sound systems and free weights; til then, keep things easy for yourself.) Think of props that naturally work well outside: balls, jump ropes. Get your instructors to incorporate these items and, if necessary, to modify their routines to suit the outdoors. Of course, promote heavily. Your social media channels should be screaming, “New outdoor class!” The walls of your facility should be littered with posters and flyers. Make sure the logistics are clearly communicated: Will the class meet in the gym lobby and then follow the instructor out? Will there be a meeting point in the park? Spell it out.
Once you’ve seen how it works — and what the potential pitfalls are — think of creating classes specifically for nature. Call upon the expertise of your trainers and instructors; find out their favorite outdoor workouts and ask them to develop these into teachable sessions. Scout out potential locations carefully and make use of what’s out there: trees, old jungle gym sets, park benches. Anything fixed to the ground is fair game.
After you’ve built up an outdoor clientele, think about investing in equipment. Life Fitness recently developed a “jungle gym” series for outside; other companies are following suit. If you’re in a location that doesn’t easily allow for outdoor access, consider doing what my gym in New York City does: use the rooftop. You might have to partner with a school, community center, or other organization that already has outdoor space. (If you’re using parks, keep in mind that many municipalities require permits for the use of public spaces, and often there are restrictions about how existing structures, including trees, can be used. Do your homework.)
Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on your way. The only thing left to figure out will be how you can sneak into one of your own facility’s outdoor sessions — because once you have the option, there’s no way you’re going to want to stay inside.

Winter in Summer

Winter in Summer

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Since we seem to be in the middle of an endless winter, let’s contemplate the experience of winter in summer — or, more precisely, how rinks and hockey centers can manage most efficiently in the off-season.
I have a friend who loves to go ice-skating in the summer; rinks are empty, she tells me. But I don’t get it: Why are they empty? Why doesn’t everyone head straight for a field of ice when it’s 95 degrees outside? It’s largely and very simply a matter of public perception, I think: We associate skating and hockey-playing with cold weather, so we don’t think of doing it when summer rolls around. If you operate a rink or hockey center that’s open year-round, however, there are a few things you can do to shift public perception.
It’s all about managing the message. If you offer a summer camp program, get the word out to families before the major push for summer-camp registration starts. These days, parents start signing their kids up for summer activities the day after New Year’s. Luckily for you, that’s the ideal time for a rink to spread the word. At the beginning of December, when you’re in the thick of league games, regular training, clinics, and rink rentals — and before other types of summer programs have easy access to the audience you’re serving — start an advertising campaign for your summer camp program. Put up posters that play on the winter-in-summer contrast, and get creative with them. Images of kids in bathing suits running around in mounds of snow will grab your audience’s attention. Your goal is to let families know that the hockey and skating they’re enjoying so much right now are available to them all year long (and are even more enjoyable when the temperature is soaring!).
Also, if your rink is the kind that converts to non-ice sports in the warmer weather — roller-skating, soccer, field hockey — be sure your customer base knows this. Again, because the tendency will be to associate your facility with winter sports only, customers might think of other venues before they think of yours. From the first moment a hockey player or ice-skater walks through your door, be sure it’s obvious that your activity offerings go far beyond the ice-based. Prominently display pictures of people enjoying other sports in your facility; directly advertise your other offerings. Train your staff members to mention those other offerings at the moment when registration for a winter sport happens.
Finally, make good use of social media. Facebook, Twitter, and especially Instagram and Pinterest are all image-centric: Reveal your full breadth of offerings through vivid images that you post frequently. Avoid the natural inclination to show off only your ice-skaters and hockey-players when the holiday season in upon us, and businesses everywhere are plugging images of happy, winter scenes. That’s the perfect time, in fact, for you to capitalize on the interesting contrast you can offer that other places can’t: winter in summer!

Making Sound Decisions

Making Sound Decisions

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IHRSA’s 2014 33rd Annual International Convention and Trade Show offered up so much food for thought that you’re probably feeling stuffed right about now. But it’s worth really digesting what author Dan Heath had to say in a general session discussion during the event. His talk, “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work” took a close look at the foundation upon which all business are built: decisions. Good decisions can make you; bad ones can break you. How can you be sure you’re making sound decisions?
Heath identified four elements — or, as he calls them, “villains” — of bad decisions: (1) narrow framing, (2) confirmation bias, (3) short-term emotion, and (4) over-confidence. He also offered a strategy for countering each of these villains; he calls it the WRAP strategy.
If you’re framing out an issue too narrowly, you have blinders on; you can’t see the full picture, so you can’t make a sound decision. To counter this villain, use the “W” in “WRAP”: Widen your options. Try to see more than just the two possibilities of making the decision or not making it. If you’re working with a confirmation bias, you’re not gathering enough information before making your decision — you’re seeking reassurance about your preconceived notions rather than the truth about the issue. To counter this one, use the “R”: Reality-test your options. Find a real-world way of testing your options before you make a decision. If you’re relying on short-term emotion, you’re not taking time to think things through. The remedy? “A”: Attain distance before you decide. If you feel emotional about a decision you have to make, give yourself time, or take a step back. You can act more rationally with distance. Finally, there’s the problem of over-confidence. If you’re too confident, you think you know more about what will happen in the future than you really can know. You counter this “villain” with the “P” in “WRAP”: Prepare to be wrong. To make such preparations, you set up what Heath calls a “decision trip-wire,” something that makes you, at some future point, go back, assess the decision you made, and alter or undo it if necessary.
As a gym, health club, fitness center, or sports facility, your business relies on dozens or scores (or more!) of small decisions each day. Do you schedule a cycle class in the morning or the evening, or both? Do you hire a trainer who specializes in HIIT workouts or more of a generalist? Do you purchase Vibration Training machines? White towels or beige ones? And are you going to fire that employee who is slacking off every time you look at him? There are these and so many more, and it can be hard to know what’s right. Having a rubric that helps you know when you might be making a bad decision — and what you can do to turn it into a good one — can be immensely empowering. Heath says his scheme isn’t right for all kinds of decisions, and it might not be right for all businesses or all managers, but thinking about it can help you come up with your own plan. Then you’ll be able to make decisions with confidence (but only just the right amount of it!).

Brand Identity

Brand Identity

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We all know how confusing a mixed message can be. Somebody tells you one thing and then does another, and you’re left wondering what exactly happened. Did you misunderstand something? Have you misinterpreted? Most of all, can you still trust the person in question?
While it can be bewildering when it happens between individuals, it can be downright damaging when it happens between an individual and a business, especially when the business thrives on retaining members. So, it might be time to review the messages you’re sending your clientele and make sure you’re not putting conflicting signals out there. To that end, a few pieces of advice:
1) Consider your free offers carefully. Some gyms have been known to offer pizza days, bagel days, even doughnut or candy days. While such food giveaways might make members happy, they can undermine your primary messaging. You want your members to believe that you care about their health — sure, a slice of pizza or a bagel once a month never hurt anyone, but let the strip mall down the street supply those. If you do it, how believable are you going to sound when you tell your members they need to exercise and eat properly to lose weight? And if you don’t sound believable and they don’t lose the weight, are they going to renew their membership when the time comes?
Of course, you could give away candy or bagels—even bagels slathered in cream cheese or butter—if you hand out with them, say, a chart that shows how many push-ups a person would need to do to burn off those calories, or how many miles they’d need to run on the treadmill. Again, it’s about consistent messaging.
2) Check how inclusive you’re being. Unless your facility is an elite training center or something similar, chances are you don’t want to turn away any potential clients. Are your flyers, advertisements, social media postings, and other promotional materials inclusive, with people of all colors, genders, sizes, cultures, and ethnic backgrounds represented? Will an overweight person or a Spanish-speaker or a transgender individual feel alienated? Try to consider your messaging from as many different points of view as possible, asking yourself whether you might be unintentionally shutting anyone out.
3) Pay attention to your grammar. I know this one makes me sound like your ninth-grade English teacher, but it’s important. In this day and age, when so much of a company’s identity depends on the words it strings together on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, in emails, and on websites, proper grammar—along with careful spelling and punctuation—is crucial. This is especially the case if your messaging is about achieving excellence, pushing yourself, going over and above, and the like. If you want to keep your credibility, you have to show your own willingness to achieve excellence, to push yourself. Even if your clientele cares more about a good workout than a well-crafted sentence, on some level evidence of carelessness will have an effect.
In the end, it’s about having a solid brand identity and continually working to strengthen that identity. Tweaking small details and taking the time to reflect on the messages you’re conveying can make a big difference.

Features and Fixes

Features & Fixes – Automatic Credit Card Notification Emails

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Our Development Team is constantly working to improve your user experience with EZFacility. Between major updates, we release small but important Features and Fixes that address issues and add useful new options/tools to better help you manage your business with EZFacility. These changes are documented in our Release Notes, found in our Community Center under the “Product Info & User Guides” section.

Have you ever tried to process a customer’s monthly membership or package renewal only to be declined due to an expired credit card? An expired card can lead to lost revenue and wasted staff hours as necessary follow-ups must ensue to acquire updated billing information. EZFacility’s Development Team has released a brand new feature that focuses on eliminating this all-too-frequent scenario – Automatic Credit Card Notification Emails.

Automatic Credit Card Notification Emails

In the Billing Preferences page, you can now choose if and when customers are notified that their credit card on file is about to expire. First, enable these notifications, so that the system knows to start sending these reminders on your behalf. Then choose whether the system should send notifications 60 days before expiration, 30 days before expiration, or on both days. Lastly, select whether these notifications are to go to everyone with cards on file, or just those who use their credit cards for Autopay.

Please note, credit cards saved on file are set to “Use for Auto Pay” by default and can only be changed if your account is setup to use direct debit.

And More!

In addition to these changes, there were many additional updates included in this release. For more details, please visit our Release Notes page.

FDA’s New Nutrition Labels

FDA’s New Nutrition Labels

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For twenty years, Americans have known that if they want information about a food product’s nutritional content, they can check the label. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a change to the labels we’ve grown used to. The government organization wants to replace out-of-date serving sizes; highlight certain parts of the label, such as calories and serving sizes; and include information about nutrients some consumers aren’t getting enough of, like Vitamin D and potassium. “To remain relevant,” explained FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., “the FDA’s newly proposed nutrition facts label incorporates the latest in nutrition science as more has been learned about the connection between what we eat and the development of serious chronic diseases impacting millions of Americans.”
First, bravo FDA. It isn’t always the case that policies and laws are revised to accommodate findings from new research. Given what we know about nutrition and chronic disease that we didn’t know twenty years ago, the proposed new label has the potential to help improve the health of a great number of people.
Second, now’s your chance, health clubs and sports centers. You are better positioned than most other institutions to educate the public about the proposed new labels, and to use the FDA’s new nutrition labels as a way to boost your visibility and desirability. By being among the first to spread the news about the labels, and by linking the news to your own programs and offerings, you’ll remain relevant to your clientele in a way that can work only to your benefit.
As a fitness center, gym, health club, or sports facility, you probably already spend some time and other resources on keeping your members and clients informed about nutrition. (If you don’t, what are you waiting for? If people don’t get such information from you, they’ll get it from elsewhere. If you provide it, you have an immediate way of establishing how essential your facility is to health maintenance — along with how generously you provide value-added services.) There are many ways you can teach your clientele about the proposed new labels. Search FDA’s website for an example, and blow it up to poster size for prominent display somewhere in the gym. Invite people to speak with resident nutritional experts or trainers about the changes. Host a lecture by a nutrition advisor who can explain the changes and their significance. Invite the general public to the lecture as well as members — what better opportunity for attracting new members? Have instructors take a few minutes at the beginning or end of class sessions to explain and describe the new labels.
The goals here are to make yourself the source of the information, get a dialogue going within your four walls, emphasize your facility’s commitment to clients’ health, and prove yourself a dedicated member of a larger community. In the past, fitness centers and sports facilities were not expected to do much more than provide a place for a good workout or league game. The FDA is keeping up with changing times; make sure that you are too.

The Benefit Is Clear

The Benefit Is Clear

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With one of the fitness industry’s central players — IHRSA — priming for its annual convention and trade show in a couple weeks, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the general benefits of attending such events. For companies selling machinery, equipment, gear, software, and other products, the benefit is clear: Easy access to many potential customers at one time.

What about for health club or sports facility owners and managers? What’s in it for you? Is it worth the investment of time and participation fees?

In a word, yes. Attending a convention and/or trade show is beneficial to facility owners first and foremost because of the opportunity to connect with others in the industry. Sure, they may be competitors, but the old saying holds true: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Your competitors, other clubs in your industry, are the ones from whom you have something to learn. Happily, participants who choose to attend events like conventions generally do so with an open attitude: They’re there to share. Through casual conversation, over meals and beverages, by chance meetings and introductions, ideas are transferred and transformed. Want to know how the gym down the street handles retention issues? Want to understand why that other baseball center is so successful at attracting new customers? Here’s your chance to find out.

Also, those guys out on the floor trying to sell you stuff? They’re not just looking to fill their pockets. Most of them attend with ideals of relationship-building in mind. They really want the opportunity to meet you, get to know you, understand your needs and desires as a customer. From their point of view, the better they know you the better they can serve you — and the better they can serve you, the better off you are. And it’s a lot easier for a salesperson to cut a deal for someone with whom he or she has a personal connection than for a stranger.

Finally, there’s the whole pay-it-forward idea. As a business owner or manager, and specifically as the business owner or manager of a fitness or sports facility, you’re part of a community. Even if it’s easy to forget for most of the year, conventions and trade shows can serve to remind you that the difficult work you do is the same as the difficult work others do. And just as you can gain ideas and tips from other facility folk you meet at such events, other facility folk can gain ideas and tips from you. You might even seek to take part in a panel or give a talk — because business, as you no doubt know, is as much about giving as it is about receiving. There is no better opportunity for giving than to share what you know, what your best practices are, and how you meet day-to-day demands than at a large gathering where so many industry-mates are all at once. You might not see immediate returns, but eventually your paying it forward will pay off. In tangible and intangible ways, you’ll feel the benefits of having been part of it all.

Scheduling

3 Quick Ways To Streamline Scheduling

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These days, scheduling just one day in a single family’s life practically requires a PhD in metaphysical engineering. Your spouse is out of town, you have an important work meeting, you’re out of groceries, and the plumber is coming to fix your broken sink; meanwhile, one kid has to get to soccer practice, taekwondo, and a dentist appointment and the other has a dance class and a tutoring session. Figuring out how it’s all going to get done seems impossible.
No wonder running a sports facility can give you a headache. If coordinating four people’s activities in one day is complicated, what about coordinating fields, equipment, practice space, classes, and special events for hundreds of people over several months? How are you going to get it all done?
Of course, you already have systems in place for tackling this task, but can you improve those systems? Here are a few tips for streamlining:

1. Test Your Knowledge

If you use league scheduling software, make sure you know its capabilities. Sure, you know how to publish a schedule to your website (you do, right?), but can you schedule multiple divisions at once? Are you sure you’ve got the settings right so you avoid double booking? Are you accommodating team preferences? If your software doesn’t allow you to do all these things, it’s time to find a new one. If it does and you’re not sure how to do them, it’s time for a refresher course. Do some research online, or, better yet, call your software’s support line. If you don’t use scheduling software, oh boy. Unless you’re a tiny, boutique facility, offering just one sport and with only a small clientele, you probably really need some.

2. Setup Quick Group Meetings

Have weekly or daily check-in sessions with employees to make sure everyone knows what’s on tap, forestall any potential glitches, and fix any problems. Scheduling works best when all the people involved know about the schedule and have a chance to weigh in on it. You’ll be doing yourself and your facility a big favor if you create time for brief, frequent sessions to ensure all systems are go. Also! No matter how carefully you plan and check your plan (and double-check your plan), conflicts happen. Know your steps for handling conflicts; train your employees in handling them too. Remember the end goal: Keep the customers happy.

3. Make Time for Analyzing Mistakes.

Again, conflicts arise. If something has gone wrong with your scheduling despite your mastery of software, your open lines of communication, and your vigilant efforts to stay on top of things, you need to know what went wrong. It can be useful to have a flowchart of questions to help you avoid problems in the future (for example: Did I enter this team’s practice location change into the software correctly? If no, then learn how to enter changes; if yes, then did I check to make sure the change was communicated through the proper channels? If no, then…. You get the idea).
We tend to think scheduling should come easily to us, and sometimes it does. But your facility is a complex system. To maintain complex systems, small adjustments often are necessary—and they can make a big difference. Figure out what small changes you can make to simplify scheduling!

Foster Partner Workouts

Foster Partner Workouts

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A recent blog post and a recent study, although differing significantly in content, come to essentially the same conclusion: We have more of a chance of staying healthy when we partner with someone than when we try to go it alone.

The blog post, written by a sports writer and athlete for the popular Greatist website, notes that studies show working out with a buddy can increase accountability, keep spirits high during exercise, and spur better results. The post lists 35 great ideas for partner workouts. The study, a collaboration between the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and policymakers in the Canadian province of Manitoba, suggests that younger children learn about health from older children more effectively than from coaches and teachers. Researchers looked at a program called Healthy Buddies, in which older kids mentor younger ones about healthy foods, physical activity, and positive body image; elementary school children who took part in the program reduced their waist sizes and showed improvements in self-esteem.

Why should all this be important to you? Of course, as a fitness club or sports center owner or manager, you’re interested in retaining current members and attracting new ones. One way to do those things is to make workouts or practices fun. If science is proving it’s more fun for people to workout with a partner, it would behoove you to think of ways to foster partner workouts. If you don’t yet have classes designed to accommodate buddy exercise, it’s time to develop and offer some. And maybe it’s time also to experiment with new ideas: How about designating a weekly time slot for partner workouts in the cardio room? Anyone can come, and no one will be forced to work with someone else, but singletons who want a partner can ask others looking for the same if they want to pair up during that time, and duos can be encouraged to come. Trainers can be on-hand with ideas for buddy exercises.

Really, with the studies in hand that prove the effectiveness of partner workouts, there’s no limit to ideas you can try launching based on that information. And let your clientele know that you’re reading up on these studies and developing new ideas based on what’s best for them — that’s another good way to keep the members you already have and gain new ones.

As for the study about older kids mentoring younger ones for better health, this is information that will be useful to sports centers that cater to youth. Whether you specialize in baseball, soccer, track and field, or offer general athletic programming, why not start thinking about how older kids at your facility might be able to help teach younger ones? Can you offer one night of mixed-age practices, pairing elementary-schoolers with high-schoolers and letting the learning take off? This same strategy might work for fitness clubs too — not necessarily using age as a guide to matching mentors and mentees, but creating a program that would allow members who have successfully met their weight loss and exercise goals to mentor members who are still struggling. Doing so could only strengthen your community, and strengthening your community can only be good for business.

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

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There’s a particular kind of frustration that all business owners have experienced: You spend time and money searching for the perfect employee. You make a promising hire, invest valuable resources in training, and finally breathe a sigh of relief — and then your employee moves on. So how do you fill positions and keep them filled?

At fitness centers and sports facilities, certain positions are especially hard to keep staffed. Over on the IHRSA blog, three fitness/sports center owners recently answered questions about the positions they’ve repeatedly had difficulty filling. For Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, Texas, the trickiest position is the front desk. “By nature, [it’s] entry-level and offers competitive, but minimal, hourly pay and ‘front line’ responsibilities,” says Brent Darden, the center’s owner/general manager. At Riverside Health Club in Mount Vernon, Washington, owner Karen Westra has found the facilities manager position most challenging to fill. Joe Cabibbo, owner and general manager of Odyssey Athletic Center in Waldwick, New Jersey, struggles with personal trainers leaving because they lack skills to market their services.

Whatever position you struggle to keep properly staffed at your own facility, there are some general steps you can take to improve the situation. First, take the time to analyze all of the tasks that the position in question is responsible for. You might find that you’re consistently hiring people with the wrong experience, or that the tasks can be split between two positions, making it easier to keep the troublesome one filled. That’s what Westra discovered when she sat down and listed out everything a facilities manager would have to do in order to keep up with preventative maintenance demands at her club. The solution? Hire a facilities assistant, and consult regularly with the facilities manager about which tasks can be delegated.

Next, rather than investing resources in a particular individual, invest in systems and training. This approach works for Darden with the font desk job. “We have found the best solution is to invest heavily in the systems and training of front desk staff in order to maintain consistent service, despite frequent turnover,” he says. In other words, even if you have to make a new hire for the front desk position, or any position, every six or nine months, having seamless systems in place and a rigorous training program will ensure that members’ day-to-day experience doesn’t change much.

Finally, for personal trainer positions or similar ones that require self-promotion, make sure your hires are equipped to engage in self-promotion. As Cabibbo puts it, “Regardless of the extent of their certification, personal trainers seem to have difficulty applying their knowledge in a marketing/sales aspect.” Where certification programs fail, you might have to be prepared to teach. Keep your coaches, personal trainers, and perhaps other employees up-to-speed on the best ways to attract and keep clients. You’re the one who will benefit in the end, because you won’t have to worry about replacing the employees who aren’t keeping themselves busy enough.

Information Is Power

Information Is Power

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All right, a show of hands please: How many of you have done your reports? Yes, that’s right: reports. When you hear the R-word do you break out into hives? Do memories of tenth-grade English class flood your mind and render you a sobbing mess? Do you start sweating, thinking about those all-nighters you pulled back when you would sit down around 8 p.m. to get started on a twenty-pager due the next day? Well, relax. That’s not the kind of report I’m talking about — although, like that sort, this kind also can mean the difference between success and failure.

I’m talking about reports you can use to measure and improve every aspect of your health center, fitness club, gym, or sports facility. Financial reports, booking reports, availability, payroll, membership, point of sale, inventory, marketing, participation, attendance, and system usage reports — all of these can give you vital information about how your business is doing on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. But only if you actually run them. And only if you know what to do with them after you’ve run them.

For this industry, having data available at your fingertips is vital. All day long, you serve members who want the best workout experience possible; coming to your facility might well be the highlight of their day. If you don’t know how packed your classes are, what marketing efforts have been effective in the past, what the daily attendance patterns at your facility are, and the like, then you don’t know how to provide your members with the tip-top service they’re seeking.

It’s not enough, however, just to run reports and have them available. You have to make sure your employees are trained in reading and analyzing the reports you run. Can your membership guru study the membership report and understand when and why new enrollments dip? Can your payroll director take a look at a report and determine whether there are payroll expenses you’re incurring unnecessarily? If you’re regularly producing reports (and if you are, good for you!), sit down with the employees responsible for studying them, and make sure they’re on the same page as you when it comes to understanding them.

Finally, know how to take action based on your and your employees’ analyses. If a booking report tells you your 12 p.m. Monday spin class is constantly over-enrolled, consider running a second spin class at the same time. If your inventory report shows that the women’s locker room runs out of towels every day at 5 p.m., you know you’ve got to get more towels in there, or make changes to your laundry schedule. Whatever the issue, when you’ve taken the time to gather and examine data that tells you how your club is doing, take action. Let the reports guide you in your decisions about which actions to take. Information is power, but until you make changes based on the information, it’s only potential power.

Got an App?

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It’s time we talked about apps. The fact is, if your facility doesn’t have one, you might soon find your business going the way of the 8-track cassette player and the fax machine. Websites alone don’t cut it anymore; customers expect your business to be accessible to them at any time of day, from wherever they are. That means if they’re at their kids’ soccer practice and they want to check your class schedule, or they’re walking down the street and they want to know your exact address, you better have an app for that. You need a quick, easy, smartphone-accessible solution to all of your customers’ needs.

Your customers aren’t the only ones who benefit. If you can provide them with palm-of-the-hand services, you’ll reap rewards yourself. A mobile app that gives you the ability to immediately update members with “Push Notifications” allows you to communicate quickly and effectively with your entire community about club changes, news, class availability, and the like. An app also can present you with an easy way to distribute information about specials, promotions, and coupons, drawing members in by keeping them on the look-out for deals from you. There’s another big bonus too: An app can be a selling point for new members (and it’s a must-have if the gym across the street has one).

But no matter how much easier an app makes things for you, what it comes down to is greater customer satisfaction. If you’ve got an app that complements your sports or fitness business — again, engaging members and clients when it’s convenient for them — then you’ll have customer satisfaction, which means improved retention. In addition to keeping clients informed, hooking them on promotions, and providing an easy way to book classes, you can offer an app that allows you to post motivational photos and videos, showcase members’ stories, offer fitness tips, and highlight new workouts. Your customers get what they need, and you get what you need. That’s what apps are all about.

Data Security

Protect Your Customers’ Data

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The recent and ongoing Target credit card debacle shouts out a loud and clear warning to anyone who operates a business that involves credit card transactions: Protect your customers’ data! When 40 million or so Target shoppers had their credit and debit card data stolen because of problems with the store’s security procedures, the company was sued in multiple lawsuits, its shares fell precipitously, and it was left struggling to placate customers with apologies and discounts. The legal and financial threads will take months — or longer — to untangle, and the store will have to fight to win back its reputation.

For health clubs, sports facilities, and fitness centers, protecting data is especially crucial, because business depends so heavily on relationships with customers. The key to successful protection is the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, which provides an actionable framework for developing a strong security process — including prevention, detection, and appropriate reaction to breaches.

Here’s what you need to do to become compliant with PCI Data Security Standards:

  • Use a firewall to build and maintain a secure network. Also, consider changing all system default passwords to create unique employee user IDs.
  • Encrypt all credit card numbers. This one is a no-brainer.
  • Install industry-standard antivirus and malware security programs. These will perform scans and provide feedback, confirming that your systems are protected and letting you know when a concern arises.
  • Restrict employee access — on the network and physically — to cardholder data. You want to make sure only specific employees have permission to access it.
  • PCI compliance audits are your friends. Participate in them regularly in order to monitor and test systems that process and store cardholder data.
  • You have an information security policy, right? If not, what are you waiting for. Establish — and maintain — one immediately.

When data is compromised, so much is lost. The last thing you need is to have customers lose faith in your club or facility, to feel insecure about your ability to protect them. If a security breach occurs, they will wonder if their faith is misplaced. A store like Target probably can survive such a blow — it’s big enough, and offers enough conveniences, that customers will begin to trust it again eventually. But with a fitness center or sports facility, the stakes are higher because of the personal and emotional investments your customers make when they trust you to help them shape healthier selves, to provide a refuge from the more stressful parts of their lives. If your systems are breached they’re going to feel the pain more keenly than customers in other industries.

So take the necessary steps — and then let your clientele know you’ve done so. If you communicate with them about the security measures you’ve taken, they’ll be reassured, and a reassured customer is likely a retained one.

Making a Difference and Boosting Business

Making a Difference and Boosting Business

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Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released troubling data: Only about a quarter of kids ages 12 to 15 are getting the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity recommended by federal guidelines: 60 minutes each day. This follows a report the organization issued last year, revealing that childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past thirty years. We all know where childhood obesity, or simply too little activity in childhood, can lead: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, poor self-esteem, stroke, cancer, osteoarthritis — nothing good.

The trend is worrying, but also worrying is the fact this data is tracked and reported year after year, and large-scale improvements seem nonexistent. In this year’s report, researchers write, “…tracking the prevalence of physical activity among U.S. youth may help inform public health interventions.” We need these interventions now.

Where they’re lacking, health facilities, and in particular sports facilities that train youth, can make a difference. The key is to connect news of the data to the everyday happenings at your facility. First, you have to help spread the word: Send newsletters, post on social media, hang up flyers in your facility, put up a billboard-sized sign in your window — however you do it, get the word out there that there is a problem. Use the numbers the CDC provides (they’re sadly impressive—for example: In 2010, more than one-third of American children and adolescents were overweight or obese).

Then explicitly describe how your facility directly helps combat the dire figures. List the classes you offer that keep kids moving for 60 minutes; highlight any special deals parents can take advantage of. Invite new students in for free trial classes. Post videos showing kids having fun at your facility. If you’re a health club or fitness center that does not cater to kids, get the word out there anyway — and then explain why it’s crucial for parents, teachers, and other adult role models to stay in shape if they want future generations to stay in shape.

Also, consider what new offerings you might develop in order to speak to the worrying reports, and make clear that your new offerings are a response to those reports — you can even mention the CDC’s data in your catalog of courses or on your website. As for those offerings: Have you studied your scheduling software to see where you might fit in an extra class or two? Have you hosted nutrition-information sessions for parents and kids? Can you send personal trainers into schools or camps, both as ambassadors charged with spreading the word about health and fitness — and, of course, your facility?

If you help share the information that’s out there, show your members and clients (and potential members and clients) that you care, offer ways to make meaningful changes, and provide a free class or lecture to get folks started, you’ll be well on your way both to making a difference and boosting business.

Motivation

Keep Your Clients Motivated

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Around this time of year, there’s a lot of motivation in the air. Even people who avoid making resolutions find themselves catching the New Year’s bug, and they and the resolution-makers alike launch fresh exercise schedules, re-dedicate themselves to weight-loss plans, research new fitness programs to try, and put their workout-related holiday gifts to use. All well and good, but by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around, a lot of that motivation fades away like a bouquet of old roses.

This means you have a tough job, because if you want to keep clients coming back to your facility and spreading the word about it, you have to help make sure the New Year’s bug sticks — that is, you have to keep your clients motivated. How do you do this? Three main strategies will give you a good start.

First, charm them into it. Your front-desk staff, trainers or coaches, and head administrators should have the charisma to make members and clients feel drawn to your facility. Any business is only as alluring as the people who make it run. Make sure your people are alluring: Do they smile and greet customers in a friendly way (preferably by name)? Do they go out of their way to establish a personal rapport with clients? Can they do what the best teachers do: make others desire their approval? If you have employees who make your members feel welcome, recognized, appreciated, and inspired, you’ll see high motivation levels all year round, and high motivation levels equal retention.

Also, hold your members and clients accountable. This is a strategy that works especially well with youth; if you run a sports facility that trains kids you’ll want to employ this one. We all perform better when we know someone is watching and when we feel someone is counting on us. Let your members know that you’re paying attention: If someone trains really hard, beats a personal record, or wins a competitive match, send an email — you, the owner or manager — to say you heard about the accomplishment and you feel proud to have that client on board (and make sure coaches, trainers, and other employees truly are paying attention so they can let you know about it). Make it clear that you consider their success your success. Motivation will come naturally as a sense of responsibility for the larger organization sets in.

Finally, make it fun. Some college professors are good at this one. They’ll bring donuts to class, hold a session outdoors, show a film, or have an entire seminar over for dinner one night. You don’t want to bring donuts to your spin class or baseball training, of course, but you can liven things up in other ways. Hire dynamic instructors and coaches who aren’t afraid to make jokes, smile, show clients that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Maybe there’s a music video or film clip your aerobics instructor could show; maybe he or she could surprise the whole gym by taking the class outside of the studio one day and having them run a lap around the facility. A coach could bring a pitcher full of smoothies to practice. The possibilities are endless, so encourage your staff to be creative.

The more fun they put into workouts and practices, the more likely your members and clients are to want to stick with you.