How your gym is exactly like wet laundry?

January 24, 2013
Categories: Club Management • Customer Service

This is part of our ongoing series about what is the recipe for success in the health and wellness industry. Before we go any further, let’s recap (that’s writers code for I’m running out of friggin’ ideas). In episode 1, I laid out the 5 pillars (and gave you the recipe for McD’s special sauce). In episode 2 we took a deep dive into people. How to find them and keep them. In this episode, I want to spend a little time talking about…

Portable toilets, keyboards, movie theaters, cell phones, gyms, murder scenes, and Baku, Azerbaijan have one thing in common. They, along with 43 other places and items are considered the grimiest places on earth. Let me go ahead and put this list into perspective. Your gym (ok maybe not yours) and Baku, Azerbaijan a city of two million people have that in common. And guess what? Your members know it.

I’ve read numerous reports that suggest a major reason members quit a gym is because of cleanliness. And I can tell you from personal experience that I have in fact changed gyms to one that is not as convenient because of it. And I am far from a neatnik/clean freak. In fact, you are talking to the guy who will often times buy accessories (socks and underwear) rather than do laundry. So you know my threshold isn’t that high.

So what should you be doing to keep it clean? I call it the 6 Ps:

1. Product – Have wipes. Here is a link.
2. Positions – Have wipes everywhere. Now that you have the product, place it throughout the gym. If you are in doubt about where, follow Hossein’s Rule of 30. If it’s more than 30 feet away, your members won’t use it.
3. Persistence – Creating a culture of clean takes time. Just because you mention it in an employee meeting, doesn’t mean they will immediately pick it up. You need to reinforce and lead by example!
4. Post – As in signs. Not these signs. Or these. But something more like this. Or this. Again follow Hossein’s Rule of 30 if in doubt on where to put them up.
5. Partnership – Goes along with post. To create a great community at your gym, your members need to feel like they have ownership. They need to be a partner that helps maintain.
6. Patterns – Every night when I get home I throw my clothes on the chair next to my bed. And it keeps piling up until either the chair breaks from all the weight or my wife threatens legal action if I don’t clean up. If I had just done it every night (as part of my going to bed pattern), instead of once a week, I would save myself a lot of hassle and a lot of legal fees.

Follow these simple rules, and maybe you won’t find your gym on the same list as my underwear. Yeah I went there!