Major Management, LLC converted this gym
in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from a
Gold’s Gym to a Planet Fitness.
switching customers over to a new club has other challenges, too.
For Brick, the largest challenge with every conversion is
changing the culture of the club, which is a two-step process. First
needs to come a change in the culture of the staff, and second – and
most importantly – is changing the culture of the members.
“With staff there are always three things you can do: train,
tolerate or terminate. Since tolerating sub-par customer service and
lack of adherence to the philosophy of the Judgement Free Zone® is
not an option, that leaves you to train or terminate,” explains Brick.
“One of the hardest things to do, at least for us, is to fire good staff
simply because we don’t offer the service they provide anymore.”
This includes group exercise instructors, personal trainers and
child care attendants. Brick suggests having the seller inform those
individuals that they no longer have a job and that it helps to keep
a mentality of “the seller hired them and should be the one to let
them go.”
Even though letting go of people is never easy, controlling your
staff is much easier than controlling your members.
“While people joke about it all the time, one of the secrets of
Planet Fitness is that we have such a warm, comfortable, inviting
environment in our clubs because we discourage lunks. It is critical
to create this culture right away by removing equipment that would
attract intimidating, hard-core weight lifters and by enforcing the
no-grunting policy,” says Brick. “Even with these tactics, you will
lose some members. However, many will be the proverbial lunks
that really don’t belong in a Planet Fitness anyway. You can’t be all
things to all people.”
Regardless of the various challenges and advantages of buying
out a competitor, opening such a club is still a deal. Brick notes
that buying low and selling high is easier said than done but, at the
end of the day, is the true secret to deal-making.
“The best way to look at deals is with the ‘hell, yes’ test,” said
Brick. “If you can say ‘hell, yes’ about a deal, then do it. If you
can’t, don’t. It’s that simple.”
And converting competing locations is no exception. G
Christina Cannon is the PFIFA communications manager
and associate editor of Geared Up. You can contact Canno