Bill McBride is a health club industry veteran with 30 years of experience leading and managing all aspects of commercial health clubs, medical fitness centers, community centers and corporate fitness centers.  He owns BMC3 – a health club consulting company and most recently he and partners launched Active Sports Clubs. He is considered a thought leader and heavily involved in moving the health & fitness industry forward.  

During this episode, we ask Bill 3 questions:

1. What does the Threat of Substitution mean for a fitness business?
2. What are the characteristics you look for in managers of your clubs?
3. What are 3 critical components to a strategic plan?

Also in this week’s show, we welcome one of our new sponsors – Tribe Team Training who are global leaders in providing Team Training solutions to health and fitness clubs around the world!

Justin Tamsett is the Managing Director of Active Management. He has managed and owned fitness clubs since 1990, and now travels the globe speaking on topics from business skills to work-life balance.  During this episode he shares updates from the Industry Leader roundtables, valuable insights from a Harvard Business Review study and he explores the consumer trend called, Tinderisation!

During this episode, JT talks about: 

• The importance of accurately tracking leads in order to understand the effectiveness of your marketing dollars
• Why your business vision and mission must become a part of your team DNA
• And what exactly Tinder has to do with your gym members!

This episode also features our podcast marketing expert, Sharon, who shares tips on identifying your podcast and the importance of truly understanding your target market.  

We hear an update from Pam O’Donnell of The IHRSA Institute, plus get a taste of one of our new show sponsors, Visual Fitness Planner, a must for PTs and gym owners to check out!

In this show we hear from Amanda Vogel, the owner of Active Voice, a writing, editing and consulting service for the fitness industry. She’s a Hootsuite-certified social media consultant for fitness brands and public figures and a Fitness Technology Spokesperson for IDEA.

During this interview Amanda shares her tips on why its essential to truly understand your customer, the importance of strategy and planning for Social Media success, and having the right person working for your business or brand.  

In this interview we ask her 3 questions:

• What are the 3 biggest errors fitness businesses make around Social Media? 
• Who should run the Social Media department? 
• What are your top 3 tips to becoming more efficient at managing your social media strategy? 

In this show, we interview The Retention Guru, Dr Paul Bedford.  With over 20 years experience working in the fitness industry, Paul is one of the global fitness industry’s leading authorities on retention, attrition and member experience management. 

In 2015 Paul will be publishing a 1 million member study of the North American fitness market, the worlds largest fitness market study. He has just finished a 340,000 member research over a four year period on the UK Fitness Industry and a study of the New Zealand fitness market. Paul is the author of the book ‘Why people join, leave and stay with health and fitness clubs’. 

In his interview we ask him 3 questions:

• After all your research, what is the MOST surprising revelation?
• Have you seen any correlation between GX & retention; PT & retention?
• If you were a club owner, what 3 strategies would you explore to build retention based on what you know?