Both of those sound like a good thing

Here are two gym policies.

We make you check in and reserve your class ahead of time, so we've got your equipment set up and we know you're coming.

We don't make you check in, because we don't want you thinking about logistics before you've even walked in the door.

Those are opposite policies. They both sound great. I could sell either one to you in about nine seconds and you'd nod along.

I brought this up on my Tuesday call because an owner was agonizing over whether to charge more or charge less, and it was the wrong argument. He'd been treating value like it was a number he had to find. It isn't. It's a story people are either being told or not being told, and mostly we are not telling it.

Whatever you do at your gym is awesome, because it's the thing you chose to do. Say it out loud that way. Then go check internally whether it's actually true, and if it isn't, go fix it this week.

I told him what I'll tell you, and it wasn't gentle: I don't think you do a good job of making your members know your gym is awesome. Most of us don't. We assume that because we know why we do things, everybody else does too.

Your gym needs to be the club people want into, not the one with the empty line out front.

Two jobs come out of that, and neither is complicated.

More people in your town need to know you exist at all. That's marketing, and for a lot of us it just hasn't happened in a couple of years. Not badly. Not at all.

And then every single person who walks through the door needs to leave thinking the place is THE SHIT. Every time. Not on the days you're in a good mood.

The owner's own version of this at the end of the call was better than anything I said:

You've taken me from a perception of, do I charge more or less, how do I get clients. No. It's a perception in the community that this is high level. Build that, get the recognition out there, stop worrying about the numbers, because they'll come when the reputation grows.

He also dropped the line I've been thinking about ever since, about being willing to post and promote and look like a try-hard in his own town:

I'll look dumb as long as it takes to get rich.

I've spent years being too proud for that and it cost me more than it saved.

Nick

Nick Habich owns Shark Bite Fitness in Cape Coral, Florida, and coaches gym owners in Pathfinder Collective. These notes go out to his email list on Tuesdays and Thursdays.