Cutting Edge Insights for Leading Clubs April 2010 Volume 2 Issue 4 Change can be difficult for any business, but our feature article on dealing with resistance to change will help you make better decisions for your club. Two other articles provide specific recommendations for your approach to green business and reaching out to seniors. Dealing With Resistance to Change However change is motivated, the common response to resistance is to speak louder, speak stronger, and talk about consequences. Invariably, as the person in authority escalates the effort to change, resisters dig deeper. How can you break this cycle?     Read more... Green Business: Best Cost-Effective Practices When Xerox wanted to improve their customer service in delivering machine parts worldwide, they studied the business with the most consistently high customer service ratings in the world: LL Bean in Freeport, Maine. This article provides ideas for best practices without having to travel all the way to Maine.     Read more... Marketing to Seniors at Risk for Fall-Related Injuries In 2005, more than 15,000 persons aged 65 and older died from an unintentional fall, and 1.8 million seniors were treated in US hospital emergency rooms for non-fatal falls. Help your senior members prevent these injuries and increase your profits as well.     Read more... March 2010 Volume 2 Issue 3 Common sense, so often touted as the best way to make business decisions, is in fact often counterindicated for successful promotions. These articles provide some alternatives for more cost-effective planning. Correlation Does Not Equal Causation; Cracking the Retention Barrier Did you know that health clubs lose about half of their members annually, with the average membership lasting only between 18 and 24 months? All is not lost as current data offers new ways to crack the retention barrier.     Read more... Failures in Intuitive Problem Solving You're a good problem solver aren't you? In fact, most people think they are yet at times our natural, intuitive approach to a problem is dead wrong. Read on for an example that costs lives, not just money.     Read more... Smart Experiments Improve Your Business Every day, managers fiddle with pricing and promotions based on their own common sense or perhaps recommendations from colleagues. This belief that all businesses are similar, not to mention that all managers and employees are similar, could not be further from the truth.     Read more... February 2010 Volume 2 Issue 2 These articles focus on turning tough situations into winning ones. Facing Down the Mini-Monster Health Clubs; Part 1 of 2 Curves, Anytime, Snap, and Planet (the Mini Monsters!) are chipping away at the sales and membership of traditional clubs. In this article, Will Phillips provides strategies for Tribal Connectivity and Social Bonding to keep those monsters at bay.     Read more... Romance: A Powerful Marketing Factor Even During the Recession While the recession may be holding back some buyers, there is one business that's growing in leaps and bounds: the online dating arena. How can you use the pull of romance to bring in new clients?     Read more... Pricing Goes to Zero A speaker at an International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) event said that at some point in the future, health clubs would charge nothing to join! He believes that the true value is found not in joining fees, but in the membership itself as a highly selective audience, one that advertisers will pay to reach. Sound a little scary?     Read more... January 2010 Volume 2 Issue 1 For this new year we invite you to take a few minutes to read these articles focused on planning for your club's future. No More Performance Reviews! Edwards Deming, often known as the father of the quality movement, stated categorically that we should never, never do performance reviews! Performance reviews blame individual employees, and even more importantly, business performance is rarely linked specifically to differences in individual performance.     Read more... Your Future... In Five Easy Steps In these challenging times, wouldn't it be great if you had an easy-to-use tool to help make decisions? Wired magazine recently developed a Scenario Planning Tool. It was designed for large corporations, and can just as effectively be applied to your health club, your personal life, or even your children's lives.     Read more... EmptyNesters Despite losses to their 401Ks, the Empty Nesters segment has disposable income to take advantage of your club services. In fact, their age alone is enough to get them motivated about their health. Have you been delivering to the Empty Nesters?     Read more... A Great Price on a New Logo or other Graphic Design Project Have you always wanted a custom made logo, newsletter, or promotion, but don't want to hire a full-time graphic designer? If yes, then these tips will help you get there in a cost-effective way.     Read more... November 2009 Volume 1 Issue 2 This issue features articles which will help you build affinity groups —or tribes—with your employees as well as with your customers. How Healthy is Your Business? Most top clubs are seeing a decline or flatness in net membership growth. One untapped member source in most clubs is corporate memberships. Many businesses are well aware that reductions in staff put more stress and work on those remaining. So how do they maintain morale?     Read more... Social Bonding and Tribal Affinity: A Solution to the Retention Challenge During the 1990s, many clubs differentiated themselves by lowering prices. This approach often backfires as the next new competitor goes even lower. In contrast, smart owners differentiate through social bonding and tribal affinity, which so far has often been only a by-product of club programming.     Read more... September 2009 Volume 1 Issue 1 These articles challenge the status quo in health clubs. Each one is an OpporThreat. An "OpporThreat" is an event which is either an Opportunity or a Threat, depending on how your business prepares for and responds to it. OpporThreats shift the responsibility for the event to you, making you an active participant rather than a victim. If you look at external events as OpporThreats, you can prioritize them by their likelihood of occurring and the power of their impact, and therefore make better decisions for your business. Flu Opporthreat For Your Club While H1N1 may not be the global threat of some previous strains, it's an OpporThreat for you as a health club owner, particularly for your younger members. You should plan to be prepared so that this threat does not disproportionately affect your business.     Read more...    Download PDF Contemporary Findings Show that Exercise Does Not Make You Thin! Some health club owners have realized that exercise has zero impact on weight loss, but many still address weight loss in their sales presentations. Even if one percent of the clubs in the United States continue to sell exercise as a weight loss solution, health clubs will be seen as "tricksters," that we don't tell the truth and that we'll do anything for sales.     Read more...    Download PDF Tanning is as Dangerous as Smoking! You probably recall that for close to fifty years now, the tobacco hid the deadly impact of smoking on cancer and death rates, and are suffering now for it. If you support tanning beds in your club, how are you are reducing your member's life spans with tanning as much as you're enhancing them with tanning?     Read more...    Download PDF