Social Media Interaction

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Social Media is interactive, making it part marketing and part customer service. The marketing part of it comes from using social media tools to let the world know about you and your products, services, and events. It’s a great way to broadcast and share information similar to traditional advertising outlets. The interactive part is what makes it part customer service.

Any time you are interacting with your customers, and more specifically, any time your customers are interacting with you, you are providing customer service. Don’t make the mistake of not continuing the interaction. Don’t ignore the feedback and questions you get via social media as your customers will interpret that as you ignoring them and their input.

Know Your Worth

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The topic of offering discounts to attract new customers consistently comes up, especially this time of year as we enter the holiday season. Whether you are a Gym, Studio, or Event Producer, it’s tempting to offer discounts to get new business to walk through the door, but what type of business does this attract? Does offering discounts lead to new long-term customers, or do discounts lead to single serving or drive-by customers? If you answered with long-term customers, please keep doing whatever you are doing. If you answered with drive-by customers or don’t know what the answer is, there are a few things to consider when offering discounts.

Are you equipped to handle a surge in business? Having a significant amount of additional business mean employees need to work more hours or more employees need to be hired. Are you able to accommodate either of these options? If the increase is temporary will you be able to scale back down after the surge?

Will you be able to convert these new customers to paying the full rate? If not, will these new customers be profitable for you or will they speed up the demise of your business? At the risk of stating the obvious, gaining additional customers that you are losing money on is not a healthy path for your business.

Will you offend any of you loyal long term customers by offering discounts to new customers or will you be able to handle offering the discount to everyone? Since gaining a customer is much more difficult and expensive than keeping a customer, you don’t want to do anything that will annoy your existing customers. Will offering a discount to new customers do that? Can you afford to allow existing customers to take advantage of a discounted offer?

Will offering a discount change the perception of your brand? Are you the premium price brand, like Apple, or the low cost leader, like Wal-Mart? Both have been very successful with their model and are among the most valuable companies in the world, but have very different identities. If you are the premium brand, will offering a discount reinforce or change the perception of your brand in a way you are comfortable with?

Technology Matters in the Gym

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A common theme I see in lots of gyms in lots of places is to use worn-out, old technical equipment to run their gym and practices. Computers running Windows XP, older software versions, a busted radio out in the gym… all these different elements that are tired, worn out, not efficient and not user friendly. But owners everywhere cling to the fact that ‘it works’. Why does my gym need a WiFi hotspot or nice radios to run practice? They think these are the details that just don’t matter to having a successful business or cheerleading program.

I am here to tell you technology is one of the BIGGEST factors to having a successful cheerleading program. Cheerleading was made for technology and logistics. Think about it. Unlike other sports we have to have every single person in attendance to get things done. Can you imagine organizing this and trying to find out why someone is running late to practice before cell phones? Or you need to call an emergency meeting at a competition with your team. Before a nice group text message this was practically impossible. So our first necessity that every gym should have is:

Each Coach Needs a Smartphone

Perhaps the gym does not pay for it, but every coach should be required to have a smartphone. There are too many apps allowing everyone to organize and do their job more effectively and efficently. As well with MP3′s off a digital player becoming the defacto way to play music at a competition it makes sense to have every single coach with the ability to carry around all the teams music easily.

Your Front Office Needs Macs

I do IT for a living. I understand computers, PC and Mac. And I am here to tell you if you do not have an in-house IT staff member (which you probably don’t) just save yourself headaches and time and get your office some Macs. The sheer amount of time you will save yourself from not dealing with any of the PC headaches is worth it!

WiFi for Your Gym

Let’s face it… getting choreography is tedious and not the most exciting to watch. I am a coach and watching people make can be a bit of a strain to get through, even when the final product is fantastic! But this could be a long 6 hour process to get there. Parents sitting around for the ‘boring’ parts of cheerleading, which there are some, need a way to connect and do work while giving up their Saturday. It is a lot more bearable to a parent to say, I have to take my daughter to cheerleading all morning, but at least I can get some work done while I am there.

A Good Sound System

Music in cheerleading now is expensive. You can pay up to $1500 for a mix of some of the highest quality mixing that is possible. To take that level of creativity and play it on a busted $50 radio your team can barely hear makes no sense. Invest the 400-1000 in a high quality stereo with good bass. You will be amazed at how much better a routine will be performed if the radio is clear and easy to hear.

Follow these pieces of advice and you can help your program not only run more efficiently, but be more effective!

Living in the Past

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As a business owner you cannot live in the past. What is done is done and you cannot change it. You need to look forward to make sure you don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and you are setting yourself up for the best future possible. Phrases like “We already spent so much money (or time or energy) on …” are a sign someone is stuck in the past. Those phrases are also irrelevant because that money, time, and energy are gone, never to return.

What you need to look at is what is best going forward. If Plan A is what you are currently going with and you realize Plan B is better, you need to switch to Plan B. Don’t let your attachment to the path you’ve been on stop you from changing to a better path if one arises.

Elements of a Good Gym Website

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Every gym needs a web presence to help grow their business, but how big does their website really need to be to be truly effective? Gym owners all over know they need to invest in something that looks attractive, exciting, and professional, but on a limited budget with limited resources this can be difficult. To help everyone out lets examine what a gym really needs to help out their business.

What Makes a Good Gym Website?

The first thing is understanding your audience. When people start designing their website they can come up with this incredible list of things it should have. “We need a news section for all the latest updates. We need a picture section so all our athletes can upload pictures their moms take a competition. We need a videos section so that every parent can see their baby perform.” While all of these ideas seem great at first, in reality you need barely any of it. People will visit a gym website for only a few things: general gym/class/team information, paying their bill, finding the links to their social media websites. Past these three things everything else you add to a website will stop getting updated and end up being a drag on resources (and money in the beginning to design it). A parent is coming to your website ‘once’ to get information on what services you offer. A child will come to your website to look for your twitter or Facebook page (although this is questionable as most kids will just search in Facebook). Lastly your most frequent visitors will come to pay their bill (possibly the best reason to have a website is online bill pay). Scaling down the website to just these three things allows you to come up with someone simple, effective, and not to heavy on the financial resources.

Keep it Simple and Professional

Creating a gym website does not have to be incredibly difficult. As we said before its mostly a medium to put out general static information A cost effective plan is to use the software, WordPress, to help develop your website. There are millions of websites using WordPress to promote their business. WordPress is a free blogging software that has been adapted, with various plugins, to meet any business need. There are also free skins and many developers willing to help you (for a lower fee than developing a website from scratch) get your site looking how you want. As well many hosting companies will host a WordPress site for as little as 5 bucks a month.

Use Social Media

Because Facebook and Twitter are so easy to use, even from a mobile device, these platforms should be heavily utilized to promote the social aspect of your gym. Took a great picture at a competition? Tweet about it. Want to announce an open gym? Post on your Facebook page. The reach of both these services is far greater than you can hope to accomplish on your business website and they are both free.

Having a realistic plan on what your website for your gym should be and what it should accomplish significantly reduces the time and cost of this project and as well increases the effectiveness of what you are trying to accomplish. If you are looking for any guidance, feel free to contact us and see what we can come up with for you.

How to Improve Your Business Writing

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Intuit Small Business Blog published How to Improve Your Business Writing by Lee Polevoi. The advice given breaks down to the following points:

  1. Take a “Less is More” Approach
  2. Get to the Point
  3. Use Subject-Verb-Object Construction
  4. Avoid Formality and Business Jargon
  5. Know What You Want the Reader to Do
  6. Edit Ruthlessly

It’s Not About You. (The Best Leaders Focus On Others.)

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Forbes published It’s Not About You. (The Best Leaders Focus On Others.) by Victor Lipman.

“One of the most fundamental lessons of leadership is that if you’re a leader, it’s not about you. It’s about the people following you. The best leaders devote almost all of their energy to inspiring and enabling others. Taking care of them is a big part of this.”

Are You Involved in Every Decision at Your Company?

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You’re the Boss published Are You Involved in Every Decision at Your Company? by Josh Patrick. The article talks about the importance of creating an organization that can run without you so you can focus on what you need to.

One of the best ways I know to create value in a business is for the owner to become operationally irrelevant. That doesn’t mean leaving the business. It means changing your relationship to your business. Instead of being involved in every decision, you build a team and find a way to trust your senior employees to take care of their individual areas of responsibility.

You Don’t Have To Be Loud to Lead

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Forbes published You Don’t Have To Be Loud to Lead by Erika Andersen.

So, as an introvert, how can you let people know that you have leadership capabilities and not get overshadowed by your louder, more gregarious colleagues?

Make Your Point, Build Individual Relationships, and Lean Into Your Strengths are the 3 pieces of advice given in the article.

7 Deadly Sins of Business Growth

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Fortune published 7 Deadly Sins of Business Growth by Jeff DeGraff, talking about the mistakes business make that prevent growth.

The sole purpose of a business is to grow. This can take on many dimensions — profits, revenues, market share, brand or community influence, just to name a few. The road to growth is very simple. Innovation is required to drive growth. You make something better or new (products, services, solutions, etc.) and you sell to someone better or new (markets, segments, channels, etc.). Basically, that’s it; the rest is just fine print.

The Top 5 Reasons Your Decisions Fail You

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Forbes published The Top 5 Reasons Your Decisions Fail You.

The decisions that fail us, that take us away from who we are and where we want to go, and cause serious unhappiness and regret, have the following five traits in common. These decisions:

  1. Don’t support your intrinsic values
  2. Are communicated poorly or without proper reflection
  3. Come from a place of weakness and disempowerment
  4. Haven’t been properly vetted – they don’t factor in well enough the potential impact and outcomes
  5. Are focused on the wrong problem

One on One

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Ben Horowitz published One on One., discussing the benefits and method to meeting with your employees individually.

If you are an employee, how do you get feedback from your manager on an exciting, but only 20% formed idea that you’re not sure is relevant without sounding like a fool? How do you point out that a colleague that you do not know how to work with is blocking your progress without throwing her under the bus? How do you get help when you love your job, but your personal life is melting down? Through a status report? On email? Yammer? Asana? Really? For these and other important areas of discussions, one-on-ones can be essential.

5 Powerful Things Happen When A Leader Is Transparent

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Forbes published 5 Powerful Things Happen When A Leader Is Transparent.

  1. Problems Are Solved Faster
  2. Teams Are Built Easier
  3. Relationships Grow Authentically
  4. People Begin to Promote Trust in Their Leader
  5. Higher-Levels of Performance Emerge

Each of the preceding points is interdependent and builds upon one another. This naturally takes us to point #5: higher-levels of performance. The formula is simple:

Efficient problem solving + the ability to build teams easier + the development of authentic relationships + trust = higher levels of performance.