With the holiday season fast approaching, it’s time to start thinking about your holiday marketing plan so that you can take advantage of all of the festive cheer in the air.

Preparing and planning your seasonal marketing campaign ahead of time will help you to determine the goals of your campaign, your target audience and to identify an appropriate call-to-action. Your holiday marketing needs to grab the attention of customers. If done right, you can really capitalize on what can prove to be the most profitable time of the year for your business.

From a budget standpoint, this is the time of year when I tend to spend the most amount of money on marketing. Thankfully, my investment never goes to waste because my ideal customers and demographic are in the ‘shopping spirit.’ They’re out of their houses, attending festivities, visiting family members and above all, they’re shopping…a lot!

In this festive episode of the Beyond The Mat podcast, I share my best holiday marketing tips to help you create an effective holiday campaign and get more people through the doors of your gym.

Listen in to find out:

• How to find your ideal demographic and create campaigns that boost brand recognition
• Tips for taking advantage of floor clings and smart light marketing
• How to use cart advertising in grocery stores
• Why you should use incentives and special offers to help attract more customers
• How to create revenue for your gym when it’s closed

Please remember to subscribe to our podcast, leave a rating and/or review and tell all of your friends about it!

For more information and to explore other episodes click here.

Is there anything worse than having to chase a payment?

You’ve worked really hard to get your business going, you provide an excellent service, yet some people just aren’t willing to pay on time for the services you provide.

It’s easy to feel guilty about having to chase invoices, especially around January when bank accounts are recovering from a festive binge. But listen, unless you are a bank, if someone is not paying their invoice, it’s coming out of your pocket.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure your customers pay on time. If you don’t collect their payment, then you’re going to struggle to pay your own bills. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have to rob Peter to pay Paul.

In my case, I’ve even had to refuse to train children as their parents haven’t paid on time. It’s a horrible situation to be in, but it’s a vital part of running a business.

In this episode of the Beyond The Mat podcast, I reveal the best ways to make sure that your customers pay on time.

Listen in to find out:

• How to create a plan to collect from your customers
• How to deal with late payments
• What to do if you’re paying for things that you simply don’t have the money for
• How long you should give your customers to pay their invoice
• Why you shouldn’t feel guilty about chasing payments

Listen to this full Beyond the Mat podcast episode here. 

Your staff are the face of your brand, so how do you make sure you hire the right people?

Some people believe that an interview or two is the right way to judge whether a person is the right fit for their company. For me, interviews are just a fraction of the process and they teach you next to nothing.

When I hire staff for my gym, I want to make sure I get as thorough a report as possible before making the big decision. That’s why I do things slightly differently. Once I’ve found someone I’m confident will be an asset to my team, I’ll create an environment in which they can thrive, which in turn makes them want to stay.

After all, good staff bring customers in, while bad staff scare them away. By having a foolproof hiring process and knowing how to treat your staff right, you’ll be well on your way to success.

In this episode of the Beyond The Mat podcast, I reveal how you can hire, train and retain the most important people in your business.

Listen in to find out: 

• How to hire people who are right for your business
• When it’s time to reward staff and when it’s time to let them go
• The importance of education in the workplace
• How to create a high retention rate
• The value a diverse workforce brings

For more information and to explore other episodes click here. 

How do your customers feel when they enter your gym? Do they feel safe? Looked-after? At home? It’s not rocket-science to literally have people feel like they’re at home.

During the holidays, we would make our parent lobby extra inviting and warm. We got significantly less complaints during this time. Was it all down to holiday cheer? Maybe, I wondered. But maybe… just maybe it was how good it felt for parents to hang out in our lobby, regardless of the decorations.

After detailed crafting of how our space, staff, everything they make contact with, presents itself to parents, we have a home away from home. An old customer who I hadn’t seen in years was walking by, literally smelt our parent lobby, and walked in to say hi. He said it felt like home. 

In this episode of the Beyond the Mat podcast, I dive into how we crafted the ideal experience for everyone who enters our gym, from the candles to the flooring, from the greetings to the behind-the-scenes logistics. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Key Takeaways:

• How parents feel when they enter your gym plays a crucial role in whether on not they will become customers.
• The smallest detail matters. Can the floors be easily mopped? How does it smell? Are the staff genuinely interested in their lives?
• Honour the kids in what they achieve in a place that new parents can see.
• Treat your staff well with a place they can go to get away from the bustle, vent if necessary, recharge, and get back out there.
• Staffing for the right experience can be a trial-and-error process. When you find a superstar, cling on to them if you can.

Did you enjoy this episode? If so make sure you tell your gym owner friends about it and subscribe to the podcast to keep up with new episodes!

For more information and to explore other episodes click here.

Did you know that credit cards can help grow your business? 

Sometimes it’s easy to get so carried away with our budgets that we don’t consider how we’re going to turn a profit. Surprisingly, many gym owners are unaware that credit cards can offer some great rewards and actually help to create higher profits for your gym.

While most gyms have a gym debit card, they usually don’t offer the same rewards that you can get from cards like American Express’ Platinum Card. Credit cards like this can offer rewards that you can put towards expenses like travel costs, food, gift certificates and so on. 

When used properly, credit cards can help your gym boost profits and increase your bottom line. However, knowing how to use credit cards to increase profitability can be tricky if you don’t know where to begin.

In this episode of the Beyond the Mat podcast, I reveal how you can take credit cards and use them to increase your profitability.

Listen in to find out:

• The best type of credit cards to help make your gym more profitable
• What rewards and interest rates you can expect from different credit cards
• How to get your business name on the credit card
• Why you should create a chart to track your expenses
• How to use your business credit card to increase profits

For more information and to explore other episodes click here. 

Do you have trunk or treat events in your community?

You know, when you go to a parking lot and there’s lots of cars with their trunks open and decked with Halloween decorations while the owners give away free candy? You’ve probably been to a few over the years, but did you know that as a gym owner, you can host a trunk or treat event in your own parking lot? 

A Trunk or Treat is a great way to connect with people in your local community. You’ll see lots of new faces and potentially meet a few future clients too. It’s a great way to increase brand awareness and, when done right, you can roll in some extra profits for yourself too.

With Halloween just around the corner, now is the time to start planning your Trunk or Treat event. Even if you’ve missed the window for this fall, the tips and advice I share in this episode of the Beyond the Mat podcast will help you host the best Trunk or Treat next year and the year after that.

If you want your Trunk or Treat to be as profitable as possible, you need to get some vendors to attend! Tune in to discover how to make your next Trunk or Treat a complete success so that the entire community comes out and everyone’s excited to see what your gym does next!

Listen in to find out: 

• What Trunk or Treat is and how to get people interested in yours
• How to pick a date for your Trunk or Treat and the benefits of having a flyer created for your event
• Why you should add your Trunk or Treat to your local community calendar
• How to put on a great Trunk or Treat no matter how much space you have
• How to attract more vendors to your event and what to put into a press release to help drive more people to it
• Tips for increasing profits on the day through competitions and contests

Listen to this full Beyond the Mat podcast episode here. 

Are you thinking about opening your own gym? Before you hang the metaphorical ‘open’ sign on your doors, you need to decide whether you’re doing this as a business or a hobby. It’s great if you’re really passionate about it but if you want to turn your passion into a profitable business, you need to take some very important steps first.

I opened my first gym back in 2003 and since then, I’ve learned a lot about leadership, training, coaching and how to build a thriving business. It’s not enough to just be passionate about something, if you’re serious about growing a profitable gym, you need to master all of the things “off the mat” too.

Join me in this episode of the Beyond the Mat podcast, where I share everything you need to know before starting your own gym. Don’t worry if you’ve already opened your doors, a lot of these tips act as a great refresher to enlighten and inspire you to take your gym business to the next level.

Listen in to find out:

• The basic costs involved with running a gym
• The importance of creating a great team with an attorney and accountant
• How to find the perfect gym building
• How much time I spend running my gym every week
• Why you can never have too much insurance
• Why it’s important to make mistakes and learn from them

If you enjoyed this episode and want to know more about how to run your gym as a business, please remember to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review/rating and let me know what you think of it!

For more information and to explore other episodes, click here.

Welcome to Beyond the Mat, my podcast for All-Star Cheer and gym owners, and your ONE-STOP shop with everything you need to grow a successful business.!

I’m Tanya Roesel, your host and successful entrepreneur, I’ve grown my own cheerleading business, MidWest Cheer Elite, from scratch into one of the most profitable gyms in the country. Now I’m here to show you the ropes to growing your own.

I started Beyond The Mat only three months ago when I saw a huge gap in the market. Gym owners are great at what they do but often need help with the business side of things.

This is where Beyond the Mat comes in.

I’m taking gym owners and All-Star Cheer coaches beyond those 2.5 minutes of competition time and teaching them how to focus on growing their business and increasing their popularity

I want to make sure that you are confident in all areas of your work so every single week I am going to discuss something completely different; starting your own gym, what to look for in leases, hiring, staff credentials, how to pay your team and so much more!  

I can’t wait to get started!

One of the most important aspects of my business is marketing, I am obsessed with getting people in the door and providing a versatile product that anyone can enjoy. I’m going to teach you how to do this too! Plus watch out for some great guests who’ll be sharing their knowledge too!

Make sure to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app to never miss an episode!

I have also created a Facebook group called Beyond the Mat which is for gym owners only. It’s the perfect place to interact and discuss our businesses so please join our community and get involved.

For more information head over to BeyondtheMat.com