Tell us about your market and your member community .
M E L I S S A : We love our members and want the best for them . We bought the gym because it was something we always wanted to do . After being a member for a few years , we knew we wanted to make changes that would improve the facility and our members ’ experience . Members had expressed their desires for improvements , and we went straight to work on things that would make an immediate and positive impact .
We have worked hard to improve our Medallia scores . Much of the negative feedback received has been connected to things prior to our ownership of the gym . But we have worked through adversity and have put things in place for the gym to run smoothly . We have been solving problems and correcting things from the start . We want our members to enjoy every visit !
The feedback from members and non-members alike regarding how we handled shut down and the lengths we went to keep people moving and engaged during quarantine has been amazing . We worked hard to livestream classes multiple times daily , hold Zoom meet-ups , even have Kids Club workers livestream story time . We did several interviews and updates with local media and began outside workouts back in April when outside gatherings under 10 people were permitted .
I also spent several hours speaking with local and state leaders and writing emails to the governor regarding the gym . I spoke at Re-Open events and was one of several gyms who worked to form the Maine Fitness Center Alliance which lobbied the state to move gyms from the last phase to the second phase of re-opening . It was a physically and emotionally exhausting time but I believe that hard work is what saved us from losing a lot of members during shutdown .
Many of the members have personally known Melissa for years , since she was a member and a Group Fitness Instructor . Along with that , she and Michael are well-known in the community , and people have been massively supportive of all 3 of their businesses and it means a lot them .