The thing i find it hardest to get across to new business owners and alot of old business owners is the fact that they might survive a recession but how much better could their business have been if they would have actually tried marketing.

Most people are just like the restaurant owner i once heard of; the first thing he let go of money wise when money got tight was the bug killer man, and it was the most important of all his business. If you don’t believe me, just go into a restaurant and see a roach. You will consider going back if you get bad service one time, but if you see a bug your gone for good!

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Here’s another amazing thing i have discovered because i have done this thing myself; I would tell anyone that called trying to get me to advertise with them that i didn’t have the money, but i would spend money on other less important things. PLEASE hear me! You need to spend the money on the right marketing PERIOD!!!

1. Start a website using WordPress:Its what you are reading now,its the easiest thing on the web to do and you can be up and going in minutes not days or months. here’s a great set of tutorials that will teach you how to get going with wordpress immediatley.Click Here!
2. Putting an e-mail opt-in form on your website: so you can notify your prospects of information and gym membership offerings.
3.  Start a referral program:that pays members money for refering others.
4. Offer a money back guarantee! :this should be first really. i have only had one person take me up on this, and they didn’t even want their money back, but i made sure to give it back to them anyway, and asked for a testimonial from her about her getting her money back so i can use it in my marketing.
5. Ask members what they want: It amazes me at the people in business that i say this to and they say it doesn’t matter what people say, they aren’t going to change that because they are stuck in thinking what they are doing is working better than giving the member what they want, and it might be working, but think about how much better it could be if you actually gave them what they want.

 To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

One Bonus tip is to make sure to get testimonials and use them in all your marketing efforts.

Shannon Cook is avaliable for consulting and marketing your fitness center by contacting fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

If the answer is yes, read on!

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

I can honestly tell you that i have increased my gym business by 25% in the last month alone, and its not because i have updated, done expensive marketing, or pressured sales people to sell more memberships.

No, just the opposite, I have cut my marketing in 1/2 and just done a test to see what i could do by a small but concentrated marketing plan.

I quit radio ads, which were effective, but right now, too expensive. I started concentrating on the members i have now and offering them and their friends incentives to get them to tell their friends and family about our 24 hour automated gym. Then i have worked on my email subscribers list by doing the same incentive offerings. Then lastly, i am putting up banners that i know will catch passerby’s attention and get them to stop by, call, or visit my website and hopefully get them to sign up on my email subscription form for future weight loss and gym articles and notices.

I really can’t believe how much it has helped my gym business in the last month or two.

I have had a lot of calls lately from the radio station that i advertise with, and also the newspaper wanting me to advertise my gym with them, but i am not afraid to tell them NO for now. I am going to resume my  radio and newspaper advertising before too long, but i really wanted to try this experiment first.

One Fact I will share with you is that in the last depression and the recessions since, the businesses that kept advertising and not cutting back, came to be the biggest and best basically because all their competition quit advertising. Think about it, I know if you are a business owner then you already have, I know i almost quit until i really got to thinking about it and realized that all my competition quit all their ads and i now am alone and don’t have to spend as much because they aren’t doing any at all.   

So please don’t quit advertising all together, if you can, you need to increase your ads and do the other stuff i have said in this article. But if your strapped for cash, please try these things that cost almost nothing.

**NOTE** IF YOU DON’T HAVE A WEBSITE AND AN E-MAIL SUBSCRIPTION SIGN UP FORM, GET ONE!!!  ITS THE CHEAPEST MARKETING YOU CAN DO.

You need to invest time and money in learning how to market your gym like i have, and here’s a product that shortcuts the learning curve. I spent many thousands of dollars to learn what i know about marketing, and now know that there is info available to the fitness business industry that concentrates only on the getting and retaining members. here is one excellent product to learn from that helps tremendously without learning everything about marketing like i did, especially if you don’t have much time and only want to learn the gym business marketing part. here’s the product: Click Here!

Shannon Cook is available to build your website for your gym, health club, or fitness center, and copywriting your ads and web site material by contacting fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

For some reason when most people start a business they figure everything into the cost except marketing. Just because you put a business in a building, doesn’t mean they will rush to your door and beg you to let them in. and I know a lot of businesses that think like that, and here’s an example:

My father owns a high traffic, corner building that a BBQ joint wanted to move into. The owner did everything to get the restaurant ready, but told me he wasn’t going to do any marketing because he didn’t need to, he said his father owned a BBQ place for 40 years and didn’t do any marketing, and he did great business.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Well he got opened up and did ok for a few weeks and then winter hit and he saw a drastic drop in business, so I told him to at least put some attention getting signs up and the high traffic road would draw in some business at least. Instead he decided to do nothing and it wasn’t long before he went under because he wouldn’t get off his lazy butt and try anything at all.

NOW HERE’S THE PROOF I HAD THAT I WAS RIGHT ABOUT MARKETING:::

After he left the building, a Mexican restaurant owner moved in, and I went to him and said to him that I wanted to help him get established and offered to help him market his business to prove my marketing would work, he said he wanted to just get opened up first and then he would see before he paid any money out on marketing.

After he was opened up for a month he asked me for some help, and since I was new to marketing I told him 3 things to do that would only cost him maybe $150 and my advice was free.

1.      Park all the cars of his employees in the parking lot everyday, so it would look crowded and people would think it must be good if its always packed. (even if they come in and see that there’s no one else in there they will stay and eat because they are already there)

2.      Put banners up on three sections of the road saying the specials like “kids eat free with two adults” or “1/2 price margaritas on certain nights”.

3.      Put a bowl by the cash register for people to drop their business cards or a piece of paper in with their e-mail addresses on them for a free dinner giveaway through email. (this allows them to email those people to send them offers and just keep the restaurant name in front of them at least once every 2 weeks)

Needless to say this worked great. He now has to have his workers park out back again and people are waiting in line for lunch and dinner to get a seat.

He proved by doing these things that marketing works. Even after the BBQ guy seeing all the cars there day and night, he still says it just wasn’t a good place for a BBQ place. Some people will never listen, especially when there cheap people to start with.

Marketing is absolutely essential to any business. Marketing is in everything you do, from greeting your customers to saying bye and when they get the food they eat, because if it’s good, then they’ll come back, and that’s what marketing is all about, getting them to come in, and back.

 If someone goes into your business bathroom and there are no toilet paper and no soap or hand towels, they will know that other parts of your business could be just as bad, and that stays in their mind, thereby costing you customers. Market with every aspect of your business, not just outside.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon Cook is available for hire to market your business by emailing fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

In my case i don’t.

I have a DVR (digital video recorder) that has a battery backup on it. You can get battery backups from 5 minutes for cheap ,or a few days that are expensive. But always have a battery backup no matter what. The bigger you can afford the better.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

You don’t want the power going out for a few days because of a hurricane and people being able to come in and rob your gym or someone get hurt and you not have any proof they didn’t. 

I have battery backups on everything from my door access system to my computers, a backup not only helps when there’s a power outage, but also protects in the case of power brown outs, which are not the same as a blackout, a brown out simply allows the power to go off for a second and the surge of power coming back on messes a lot of electronics up.

I monitor my own camera system and door access because i don’t have to pay that fee and if something does go missing or someone takes something, all i have to do is look back to see. my DVR records up to 40 days before it starts recording over the first day again.

So, to recap:

• Have a battery backup on your system
• Have a big enough dvr to record a long time so you wont have anyworries about looking up something that happened 3 weeks back.

P.S. when selecting a company to install your system, make sure they understand what you need and want your system to do. Write out everything you want it to do and when you both agree on a particular system, Make them sign it. They will say they don’t remember you saying that or they misunderstood you, and that mistake cost me over $4000.

No one is too smart to learn from others experiences.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon Cook is avaliable for hire to market fitness centers or to turn your club into a 24 hour automated club by contacting fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

I don’t have a company monitor mine, I basically monitor it myself. If i have a problem and need to go back and look at something, i simply go back on my digital recorder and look at it. i can even check it from a mobile location from my laptop.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

The next question i get asked is “what about safety for people coming in late at night or when no ones in the gym to help if they get hurt”.

I use a device called the GUARDIAN ALERT 911 SYSTEM that has a big button on it, and when pressed it dials 911 automatically. The best part about it is its not monitored for a monthly fee. It cost around $150 and that’s it, no fee’s

I have a sign up telling how to use it and also show new members how to use it. it gets used all the time, but no one has had to call on it yet.

It can be found at this link   www.AnActiveLife.com 

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Thanks for reading , and please post any questions or comments you may have or contact shannon at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net   shannon cook

Well, you can guess what my answer is can’t you?

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Here’s why i don’t like some of the companies

• They come in and lower your rates to 19.95 or less per month
• They intimidate your staff and members into doing things they will regret like, pressuring existing signing up for too long of a contract and causing them to not resign again, and making your employees feel like they have to pressure new members to sign up for longer than they want to thereby causing most of them to default on their contracts by closing their checking accounts or canceling their credit cards.
• They also take all the income from all the first members that sign up until their initial investment is covered.
• They then take 1/2 of the rest of the contracts they sing up or you  sign up anytime you run one of their campaigns.
• Then lastly, they leave you with the cheap members that they attracted by their campaigns. This is the worst of all the above. I tried to be the low price leader for the first two years i was in business, and had tragic results. I got all the cheap people that were so cheap they would “look over their glasses to keep from wearing them out”. I had them fuss about everything from wanting a special piece of equipment to the color of the walls to wanting childcare when we told them we didn’t have it in the first place.

 To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

When you go to the websites of these big companies, and please do, you will see all the testimonials from “BIG GYM OWNERS” saying they made them $250,000 in 3 months. Well what they don’t tell you is that’s the total contract amount from signing up members for 2 years and that’s including the amount they paid the company, then they get their take. In the end they might end up with $100,000 and that’s before taxes and then its spread out over 2 years in most cases.

I have increased my membership by 200% in 8 months and while raising my prices by 30% and lowering my labor by 300%.

I love marketing because I took the time to invent my own specialized marketing campaign for gyms of all types and it worked. From fitness centers, gymnastics clubs, karate studios, etc…   any kind of gym type membership club can use my system. 

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

If you would like please post comments to ask Shannon Cook any questions, contact me by e-mailing fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

When I wrote my first radio ad for my gym, I did like everyone else, I used the cheesy, cliches and did nothing but repeat my gym name and phone number. Then when I learned my way of marketing I realized I had to get my entire pitch across in 15 seconds or 30 seconds. I choose 15 seconds because it was cheaper and people will listen to 15 seconds pitches without being bored. I wrote down all the benefits and features of using my business and then wrote them into a paragraph that flowed when read. Here’s my 15 second pitch that gets me great responses every time I use it. I check the stats on my website daily and most days I get 10-15 Hits, but when I run my ad I get 50-100 hits. Here’s my ad:

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

 ” Temple Gym, A 24 hour fully automated facility in Northport, Al, is the only gym in town that’s got a 30 day money back guarantee and 24/7 automated so you can come in anytime and not be worried about people watching you workout. Call our automated message at 333-1999 or visit templegym.tv”

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon is avaliable for copywriting ads by contacting fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

When i swapped over to a 24 hour club I went through a computer crash and had to reinstall (Aphelion) my gym software again. come to find out, it wouldn’t come out of demo mode. I tried the website for them and called them, only to find out they shutdown or sold out to someone else.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

I researched gym software to find out it cost upwards of $10,000. So i decided to ask the guy fixing my computer what software he thought would work? To my surprise he said “Quick books Customer Manager”.

I rsearched the program and decided to try it. I got it off ebay for $25

It has taken some time to learn what to put in the program as far as, How to customize the fields for all the member info i needed to accurately keep track of the members. But after a few months of small changes i had it.

I can now enter everything about a member that i need from, contract dates, PIN #’s, birthdays, how they pay, address, and contact info. I even have the program set up to Alert me, upon starting the program, to expiration’s of contracts for mail outs and any other alerts i want to type in. The only drawback is that i have to sync it to the front desk computer manually, the makers somehow forgot to put that automated part in the software.

All in all, we love it.

I will say that i also do alerts on Google Calendar and set that as my home page in my browser and we really love that feature of google.

So if you don’t have several computers that have to auto sync, and you want a very cheap alternative to gym software, Quick books Customer Manager is great. Also it syncs with the  Quickbooks main program if you use that for accounting which i do.

I hope this helps.

Please leave a comment if this helps

Attention: here’s a product that specifically helps you how to market fitness centers, gyms, and health clubs cheaply

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon Cook can be reached at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net for questions about hiring for marketing your gym or turning your gym into a 24 hour fully automated gym.

Automate a proshop in a gym to make money while you sleep.

When i chose to turn my gym into a 24 hour fully automated facility, I knew I hadto automate everything i possibly could to futurize the gym industry.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

One problem i had was being able to sell all my energy, protein, and NO2 drinks without being there or having to worry about someone taking drinks out of the old glass front freezer because no one was at the counter at the time, or they said they forgot to pay us when they seen us. This was costing us a minimum of $100 a month in drinks.

I researched glass front drink machines that accept up to $5 bills and found a company in Atlanta, Georgia that offered a guarantee and it was only 3 hours from my house. So i went to there warehouse and they were an excellent family owned company that totally redid every part of the machines they got in.

I bought refurbished because they are like new and are about a 1/4 of the cost.

Anyway, i took a can and bottle of each drink i was gonna sell, and made sure they would work.A word of warning, Red Bull small cans wont work in these machines and you can’t buy shims either, coke is the only one that has special machines and makes shims but wont sell them.

I found the right machine at a cost of $1,800 and it was the best investment i could have made.

The company’s name is A & M equipment in Atlanta, GA. I found them on ebay, i believe they ship for a fee.

I highly recommend them for all your vending machine needs because i saw them redoing the machines with my own eyes and they are good.

I also checked into automated machines they carry for snacks and protein bars, and even tanning lotion paks.

My gym isn’t that big so i decided not to carry all that right now.

I have had my machine for over a year without problems yet. 

My revenue went up by $600 per month just in drink sales alone. You can see my drink machine at you tube or my website at www.templegym.tv

Look for ways to automate everything you can, if your like me and want freedom and less headaches.

Attention: here’s a product that specifically helps you how to market fitness centers, gyms, and health clubs cheaply

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon Cook can be reached by either leaving a comment on this blog or by e-mailing  fitnessmarketing@comcast.net. Shannon specializes in marketing fitness centers and turning your fitness center into a 24 hour gym.

“Writing your own sales letters for your gym or health club or fitness center”

I know that all the gyms in my town have these brochures of mainly pictures of equipment or a bodybuilder that have dumb sayings and the prices on them. That is what i used to do also, until i tried another approach of using the sales letters i wrote for my mailing list of potential prospects.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Then i placed a “Take One” box by the front door and started getting phone calls saying they wanted to come and sign up without me even telling them any contract stuff at all because they already knew everything to do and how many months they wanted to sign up.

I have no pictures at all on my brochures and they are 4 pages long. Not all people read the whole thing, but many do because they are signing a contract and many have been screwed by other gyms into signing up for 2 years when they thought they signed up for a year or less.

All the other gym owners i have talked to have said ” who would read all this”, my response is the same everytime, “no one except someone wanting to join a gym”. If i am open about all the pros and cons of my contracts i don’t get very mean phone calls from members that thought they signed up for something different. The first thing the mad member says is “i thought i would be taken out after the contract was up, and i used to have to say, no, if you read the back of the contract in really small writing you’ll see it. This is how the gym business has gotten the used cars salesman look. I now put all the it out front for them to see and they come in now and love it.  I haven’t had not one mad phone call since and i have three times as many members as before.

Just think of if you were walking into a gym for the first time and write all the questions down you would have to ask and then answer them. That’s your sales letter and brochure.

The last thing i do is put my personal cell phone # on all my materials and let them know they can call me anytime, and they all say that they feel they have a personal relationship with someone that does that.

I can be reached at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net for questions about marketing your fitness center, health club, or gym. thanks, shannon cook

My sales letters that we mail out to prospects for my gym are the exact same brochures we give out in the gym when visitor show up.

Attention: here’s a product that specifically helps you how to market fitness centers, gyms, and health clubs cheaply

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

Shannon Cook is avaliable for consulting by contacting fitnesmarketing@comcast.net