How to be a successful gym owner (Tips for managing a gym)

As a gym owner, your most challenging business problem remains low attendance, which is when people don’t choose to buy a membership with your gym and only come on a one-time basis. It is one of the most common issues that the majority of gym owners is facing today.

Why does it happen?

You don’t offer as many services as people need, want, and expect from a gym to convince them to get a membership.

A gym owner typically focuses on four key aspects of business:

• acquiring cutting-edge equipment
• identifying and analyzing prospective clients
• designing floor plans
• discovering the best possible location for their gym

It should be enough to build a successful gym, right?

It’s not enough because all gym owners focus on the same key aspects. What sets you apart from any other gyms in this case?

Nothing.

You need to focus your efforts on researching and implementing those extra services that offer customers more value than your competition.

For instance, you could introduce online booking for clients’ convenience. Or, enable your clients to pay online for your services with ease.

Amelia is a WordPress appointment booking plugin that can enable you to set up these quickly and easily on your WordPress website. Make it easy for your clients and stand out among the competition.

Let’s dive in now and see how you can improve your gym management.

21 Gym management tips

1. Make sure you understand what makes your gym stand out from the crowd.
2. Do not negotiate your values but negotiate all other things.
3. Consider creating a budget where you pay yourself what you are worth.
4. Don’t handover membership for services no matter how tempting it is.
5. Identify and follow critical numbers permanently and get yourself a reliable accountant.
6. Leave your office and get to know the people who choose to be your clientele.
7. Don’t have someone in your family handle your website development.
8. Thank those who have helped you and/or your business.
9. As a smart gym owner, stash some money for when your business calls for it.
10. Have an attorney handle the partnership agreement with a friend or investor.
11. Organize every day as if it is your first day but live through it as if it is your last.
12. Eliminate competition by providing crème de la crème services that no one can beat.
13. Recognize that your customers have a life outside the gym that affects their behavior inside the gym.
14. Pay your trainers what they are worth, so they don’t consider a job someplace else.
15. Don’t talk about people who have insulted you no matter how tempting.
16. Stay healthy, smiling, and laughing because that’s what a good gym owner does.
17. Leave your office at least one day per week to connect with other business owners.
18. Stay focused on building your business and don’t stay busy cleaning the floors.
19. Always learn from others but don’t enter the game of comparing yourself to them.
20. Keep in mind that a storm never comes alone; the sun always comes shining after it.
21. Understand that there is no easy way to success, no matter how tempting it may be.

How to Successfully Manage a Fitness Business

Include personal trainers

More people would go to the gym if they had the ability to choose the best training routine for their own goals and needs. Many people give up on exercise because they can’t handle that routine themselves, which is where personal trainers come to the rescue.

Include healthy food and smoothies

People are always told that it is great to have a healthy, high-protein snack after their workout. Why not cater to this need yourself? Why not offer healthy food as an after-workout snack for your customers? It’s good for customers, and it’s a profitable business for you as a gym owner.

Organize weight-watching groups

It is a fact that more people choose to attend a gym to lose weight than those who choose exercise as a way to stay healthy. Introduce the concept of weight watching groups where people can share their weight loss concerns and goals in a community-like group.

Provide various workout classes

People tend to try new things if you offer them. They get bored with the same routine and develop a passion for a new workout, such as Pilates, yoga, Zumba, etc. They enjoy a nurturing setting where they can pick up new techniques of exercising and keeping healthy.

Use gym management software

The role of gym management software is multifaceted: it can cut your workload significantly, save you time that you can dedicate to growing your business, increase efficiency, and generate more revenue. It also offers customers the technology they expect to see in a cutting-edge gym.

A management software relieves a gym owner of many responsibilities and headaches and allows your employees to dedicate more time to your customers and improve customer experience.

Here’s what we recommend:

Amelia

Amelia is a complete appointment booking plugin for WordPress that will help you manage your gym. The user interface is smooth and uncomplicated.

Amelia is an excellent option because it is easy to install and does not involve a steep learning curve. After installation, users enjoy free and complete booking functionality.

For website owners, Amelia provides an easy way to build appointment booking forms with all the relevant fields. It also allows website visitors to choose a service and handle their payments online.

Amelia facilitates and improves all aspects of customer interaction.

It sends SMS reminders to both the client and the relevant employee. It also includes functions for canceling and rescheduling appointments.

With the right forms, customers can make appointments through the interactive calendar. This can be set up to view by month, week, or day. Clients can also see list or timeline views.

Amelia’s booking wizard matches specific services, staff members, and time slots.

Trafft

Trafft is a newer option. This is a next-generation solution for booking and scheduling.

Trafft sends notifications by email or SMS for assignments, cancellations, and rescheduling. This feature reduces the number of no-shows and prevents any booking confusion.

Inside the app, users can manage details such as business location, employees, services, and vacations. They can also adjust their regular business times according to the season.

Trafft is suitable for businesses in the event industry or that offer multiple services. This may include fitness studios, gyms, salons, and photographers.

Some outstanding features are:

• Appointment booking
• Detailed business analytics
• Excellent user interface
• Multiple locations management
• Online payment
• Outstanding security

Fatal Mistakes That Gym Owners Must Steer Clear of

Failing to understand the challenges of opening a gym

Opening a gym and being a gym owner is not a hobby or a leisure activity. It is a challenging job that consumes a lot of time, energy, and finances. The reward may be great, but the efforts required are also great. Don’t go into this business unaware of what it will demand of you.

You have to be willing to put in a lot of long hours and understand that the reward will come after you’ve reinvested enough to build and nurture a successful fitness business.

Failing to know and understand your purpose

Ask yourself a simple question: what inspires you to be a gym owner? You will be surprised to learn that many gym owners have no idea why they chose to enter this business other than the prospect of financial reward. They lack vision and have no mission or set of values to stick to.

Now, ask yourself another question: how do you expect your clients to join your gym and refer you to others, if you don’t know your cause, belief, or purpose yourself? How can others follow you if you offer them no direction to follow? How can they believe in an undefined cause?

Failing to act like a professional

A gym owner is a professional and must think and act as such if he/she wants to be taken seriously and be successful. Gym owners that act like amateurs are not on their way to success. Think like a pro and act like a pro and these are just some of the things a pro would never do:

• Fail to get results for their clients
• Show bad habits in the workplace
• Be late for meetings/ workshops
• Fail to show up every day and give their best
• Abandon promises to clients and trainers
• Make excuses
• Take time off when the business can’t afford it

Indulging in lack of focus

If you neglect to run your business based on a well-defined plan, you are planning your failure as a gym owner. You need to keep your focus if you want to build a successful fitness business. You can’t afford to lose the direction or not know your purpose and what it takes to achieve it.

Lack of focus leads to failure, and many gym owners are shocked that they need to do more than open the doors to their business every day. You need a mission and a plan to accomplish that mission. Once you are clear on that, focus on executing your plan every day.

Being surrounded by distractions

A gym owner needs discipline just like his/her gym’s clients need the discipline to achieve their health or weight loss goals. It is easy to get distracted by things and people, and it is difficult to say no to things and/or people. It takes the strength of a true gym owner to be able to say no.

Discipline translates into staying away from people who feed on your time as well as time-consuming and addictive social media activities. Stick to your plan for that day and indulge yourself in distractions AFTER you have checked everything on your to-do list. No excuses.

Managing their time poorly

Prioritizing and delegating tasks is what a gym owner must be very good at, and few business owners succeed in that respect. They blame it on not having enough time to do it all, but they forget that they don’t need to do it all; they need to prioritize and delegate tasks.

Effective time management is an art and requires a gym owner to master the art and science of delegating tasks. It’s better to learn from the very beginning to delegate the tasks that others can handle very well for you. This will allow you to concentrate on what you do best.

Embarking on this challenge alone

A smart gym owner does not get into a fitness business without a coach. It may be tempting for them to go at it alone and on their own, but how likely is it that you will succeed? Not likely.

It is just as unlikely as it is for someone without any prior training or knowledge of fitness to get the same results training on their own at home as they would get if they joined a gym with a personal trainer. Don’t embark on this road alone! Have a coach with you!

Ending thoughts on these gym management tips

No matter how you choose to look at this article – as a set of guidelines, a checklist, a set of tips, or a to-do list – what matters is that you understand the key aspects that you need to consider and cater to in order to get your fitness business up and running and, ultimately, thriving.

If you enjoyed reading this article on managing a gym, you should check out this one on gym owner mistakes.

We also wrote about a few related subjects like how to be a successful beachbody coach, how to create a gym website that stands out, gym names, starting a fitness business, opening a gym , gym management software, gym marketing , personal trainer website and gym WordPress theme.

Author Ljubica Buha

Back to Previous

Share the article

Read Next

Back to Previous Read Next

View Comments (0)

Explore features Explore Demo

Read Inspiring Customer Stories

Check out how our user set Amelia for his business

Read the full story