by John | Jun 23, 2015 | Instructor Training, Your Fitness Business
I'm a huge fan of Amazon Prime because it makes me feel super productive and efficient. When I realise I need something, rather then adding the item to a shopping list (I'll probably forget to bring to the store), I take 30 seconds to order it on Amazon. Then I hear my dog Maxx bark when the UPS guy delivers the package two days later.
Now they're offering business owners a similar service called Amazon Business. Similar that it offers free two day shipping… different because it's free to qualified business owners!
About Amazon Business
Amazon Business is a new marketplace on Amazon .com that gives businesses of all sizes access to hundreds of millions of products in a shopping experience built for businesses. New features include FREE Two-Day Shipping on orders of $49 or more, business-pricing on select items, multi-user accounts, and approval workflows. Businesses can now shop on Amazon and use purchase orders to improve recordkeeping. Amazon Business also makes it easy for businesses to compare multiple offers on products, and is integrated and certified for punchout with leading purchasing systems.
You can apply here for your Amazon Business account. To qualify you need a Fed ID number, which you should already have as a business owner.
There's options to establish a line of credit directly with Amazon. Your Amex card doesn't offer 55 day net billing… but Amazon does 🙂 Why can they offer this “free” money? You're aware that credit card companies charge fees, right? By bypassing Amex, MC or Visa, Amazon's costs are lower = they'll pass on the savings to you! If you prefer to pay over time the revolving rate looks competitive to any other business card and Amazon doesn't charge any annual fees.
So, what can you purchase? Just about anything, except they don't appear to have actual IC repair parts. Here's a few that came to mind.
by Karen Casler | Jun 8, 2015 | Giving Back To Your Community, KEEPING IT FUN, Your Fitness Business
Karen & Co. at The Magic Castle
The Indoor Cycling Studio Supplier Trifecta
As an Indoor Cycling studio owner or manager, you want your supplier relationships to be a WIN/WIN/WIN where your supplier wins…your customer wins…and you win.
Find the right retail supplier and you add value to the overall customer experience and to your bottom line.
On the flip side, choosing a supplier in haste can cost your studio time and money.
Poor decisions risk creating a false brand illusion, detract from your customer’s overall experience, are expensive lessons to learn.
A new Indoor Cycling studio owner or manager lacking in retail experience is left to rely on trial and error and the test of time to determine what retail products work or don’t work. Social media advice and google searches may help you determine what works in other studios … but there is no guarantee that what works for one will work for the next.
So, once you have narrowed down your chooses of suppliers, think about choosing a partner instead of a supplier. Stay focused on WHY you offer a specific retail product and consider the following…
1. CHOOSE A BRAND NOT A PRODUCT
The way you treat a product is different than how you treat a brand
A product is something. A brand stands for something
How you feel about a brand trickles down to your customer
Products come and go. A brand is here to stay
…very similar to how one feels about a job vs. a career
2. KNOW THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE BRAND
Passion drives success
You're passionate about your small business so choose partners with passion
…FUN Fact:smart business people surround themselves with like-minded people
3. CONSULT YOUR MISSION STATEMENT
Your mission statement is the foundation of every decision you make
…if you don't have a mission statement GET ONE
4. CAN YOU WRITE A TESTIMONIAL?
A brand that parallels and magnifies your own brand is easy to write about
A brand for which words are hard to find…may need to be reconsidered and
…go back to questions 1, 2, & 3
Think of your suppliers as partners and watch the WIN/WIN/WIN MAGIC unfold.
Here’s WHY…
A supplier who is also a partner amplifies brand awareness for both brands.
A supplier who is also a partner adds value to the overall customer experience.
A supplier who is also a partner makes you and your partner $$$.
A supplier who is also a partner … well … that’s KEEPING IT FUN for everyone!!!
YOUR CUSTOMER WINS. YOUR SUPPLIER WINS. YOU WIN.
EVERYONE WINS.
Additional FUN Fact:
The article … WIN/WIN/WIN, was inspired by a testimonial I wrote for Violet Love Headbands. While writing the testimonial, it dawned on me that the reason Violet Love Headbands are so successful at our studio is because of the partnership that I share with the founder/owner, Rebecca Michaels. It's not the product that's amazing, it's the people behind the product. KC
Rebecca and Karen share a business philosophy of #keepingitfun
Email info@totalstockroom.com to inquire about wholesale pricing on Violet Love Headbands and product. Violet Love by Rebecca Michaels
by Joan Kent | Apr 20, 2015 | Best Practices, Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness, Promote and Build Your Class, Your Fitness Business
Do you have an elevator pitch? Mine has changed several times — all necessary. But this post is actually about the emotions that sugar generates.
I began with a standard 30-second elevator pitch. Remember that version? It was the original length years ago, but now almost nobody will listen that long.
I shortened mine to 15 seconds.
Yet people went glassy-eyed when I said “psychoactive nutrition,” even though I immediately defined it as “how foods affect brain chemistry.”[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Still, brain chemistry interested them, so I changed the pitch again. I started with ‘food and brain chemistry’ and left out ‘psychoactive nutrition.’
Then I heard great recommendations from speakers and marketing pros on the perfect pitch:
– Don’t explain your process, just the results.
– Keep it short.
– Avoid big words.
– Start with a question.
All sounded like good ideas. I re-crafted my pitch with a starting question and shortened it again — this time to 10 seconds.
“You know how people have diabetes, high blood pressure, or other medical problems they can’t fix because they’re stuck on sugar? Well, I help people conquer sugar addiction so they can transform their health and feel great.”
I could never finish it. Everyone would interrupt by the time I said “high blood pressure…”
“My father has both, and high cholesterol. What should he do?”
“My mother’s diabetic. Are you a doctor?”
One woman told me, “The second part interested me, but the first part didn’t.”
(Ironically enough, when I asked what she did, her answer took 45 complicated, boring seconds. I didn’t have the heart to challenge her critique of my 10-second pitch when hers was a remedy for insomnia. But I digress.)
I changed my pitch again and dropped the opening question.
“I help people conquer sugar addiction, so they can transform their health, feel better, lose their mood swings, and gain control of their eating.”
It’s 6 seconds long. And I can’t make it through the 6 seconds without being interrupted, right after ‘sugar addiction’:
“Oh, that’s so important!”
“That’s a big deal right now. Everyone’s addicted to sugar.”
“My daughter is addicted to sugar; it’s all she eats.”
“Sugar is more addictive than heroin. Don’t you agree?”
“Do you really believe it’s possible to be addicted to sugar?”
So — and I already knew this — it’s an emotional topic. If I can’t even get through a 6-second sentence, something is charging people up enough that they must speak then and there.
In past presentations, people have glowered at me when I’ve talked about the health problems linked with the granulated white stuff.
A man walked out during one talk because I answered his question that, yes, fruit is sugar.
While I was still working on my doctorate, fat was the go-to dietary demon. In a lecture I gave to fitness pros, I was discussing sugar as a factor in health issues. “I have the same degree you do,” an angry woman shouted [we had master’s degrees in exercise physiology], “and you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
With all of these food-related emotions, this past weekend was such a relief. A real estate agent asked what I do.
He gave me the full 6 seconds to finish my sentence and questioned, “Is there a market for that?”[/wlm_private]
by John | Apr 19, 2015 | Best Practices, Instructor Training, Your Fitness Business
Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em, there's no denying that SoulCycle is enormously successful and a driving force that's responsible for much of the excitement our industry. I visited SoulCycle last fall and participated in a few classes. The purpose was to accurately report on this juggernaut of Indoor Cycling.
The bottom line IMO, SoulCycle get's it. They understand their target market precisely – everything they do is directed at female non-cyclists who ride at SoulCycle multiple times a week.
More importantly, these non-cyclist ride year-round!
SoulCycle also understands that their Instructors are what make them so successful. Now that I was able to find and then download, the new SoulCycle iPhone App, it's abundantly clear that promoting each Instructor is the main focus of the App. Not only are they featuring Instructors, they've also added links to the favorite music each Instructor plays in class. Check out the bio page for “Stacey” who I just choose at random >
Each of those album thumbnails link to a sample in iTunes. Why not Spotify? Good question. My guess: everyone with an iPhone can play those tracks. Not everyone (yet) has Spotify. I also wouldn't be surprised if SoulCycle has an advertising agreement with Apple = they might be generating some ad $$$ every time a customer views an Instructor bio.
by Joan Kent | Apr 13, 2015 | Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness, Your Fitness Business
Participant resistance was such a big part of running a weight-loss program, I didn’t even realize it was a thing to write about (if that makes any sense). It just went with the territory.
“Resist” has many synonyms: oppose, battle, combat, duel, fight back, put up a fight, defy, struggle against, stonewall. Why would someone join a weight-loss program — and pay lots of money — only to do these?
Participants resist in many ways. Below are only a few examples of actual participant behavior during the 13 years I ran a program combining athletic performance training and a robust nutrition plan geared to weight loss and ending sugar addiction.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Jeffrey
Jeffrey was our first participant. He got used to having my full attention and turned petulant when other participants joined. From that point on, he continually criticized the program and stopped following instructions. When I said peanut butter was okay to eat, he ate a 1-pound jar in a day.
John
John was in the program for almost a year before he lost any weight. Once his weight started dropping, he told me that, at first, he wanted to prove it wouldn’t work, so he made sure it didn’t.
Kathy
Kathy complained about hearing sugar addiction info in both a live class and a webinar, instead of realizing she heard it twice because it was key. After a private consult, she waved to me from the window of Pete’s (the coffee place) while eating. Based on Pete’s menu, draw your own conclusions about the food.
Kimberly
Kimberly was a vegetarian, miserable, touchy, and quick to anger. She masked it with a phony-soft voice but complained to management about everything (especially me). Even her doctor had told her she needed protein. I knew on Day 1 she’d never finish the first quarter. She didn’t.
Tom
Tom was an alcoholic who reacted to the rule about avoiding alcohol with a strange grin. He dropped out and rejoined over a year later. He reacted to the alcohol rule with the same grin, dropped out again and never came back.
Shelly
Shelly was in sales and said she had to drink with clients. She had many reasons she couldn’t get around drinking. She never lost weight until she did the AIDS ride from San Francisco to L.A. (without alcohol).
Kristin
Kristin’s attendance at trainings was poor. Because it was a progressive, periodized training program, not a drop-in class, she didn’t progress. She also wanted detailed menus instead of guidelines. When we didn’t supply menus right away, that became her excuse to eat pizza, drink wine, and never keep a food log.
When we developed menus, she complained they weren’t specific enough. She wanted to know precisely what SHE should eat every hour of every day. She gave me The South Beach Diet and said our nutrition program was just like it. It wasn’t, but I never understood why she didn’t just follow that diet instead of eating nachos and drinking margaritas. Or what any of this had to do with never logging her food intake as instructed.
So why do people pay lots of money and then resist? Here are a few reasons.
Alcoholism
Addiction defies rules of reason and logic. It’s a complex topic, very briefly covered in a previous post (Sweet Tooth or Sugar Addiction: What’s the Difference?). Alcohol can sabotage weight loss, as covered in another post.
Sugar Addiction
See above. People will go to extreme lengths to avoid giving up their favorite foods. Lots of blame gets thrown.
Not Taking Responsibility
They’re overweight because of a spouse’s work schedule. Or they go to restaurants frequently. Or they never learned what to eat as kids. Or… fill in the blank.
Plausible Diversion
Registering and paying for an expensive, intensive program showed their sincere desire to lose weight. If they didn’t lose, it was the fault of the program, not because they never did the work to make it happen.
[/wlm_private]
These stories aren’t pretty — and they’re crummy memories — but they’re 100% true. If you have a similar experience with your students, maybe something here can help you start them moving in the right direction.
by John | Apr 9, 2015 | Big Box Instructor, KEEPING IT FUN, Latest News, Music, Your Fitness Business
Err, where's the SoulCycle iPhone App?
I'll bet somebody at Apple/iTunes is getting an ear-full this morning…
SoulCycle sent out an email this morning, announcing their new iPhone App. The email included this link to their App in the iTunes store… which of course opens in iTunes so you can download the software.
Except most people (like me) don't use iTunes to install an App. We download and install Apps directly from our phones.
Which is great as long as the App Store can find SoulCycle's App when a user (in this case me) searches for SoulCycle… which returns two available Apps, neither is the SoulCycle App 🙁
So I guess I'll have to go old-school and transfer it from my computer, before I can review it!
413 Update – I'm now seeing you can search and find this now in the App Store using your iPhone.
