If you remember back to the beginning of February, I announced to the members of my gym about the monthly gym membership for Iron Sport increasing from $45 to $65 per month. Most people that read this site thought that it was a no-brainer, who would stupid enough to have a problem with that to have a good strength training gym to train at with great hours and a good coach on hand? Well I know better since I have been in this business for twenty years now, never underestimate people's cheapness sometimes. I knew there would be about two solid months where a certain percentage of people would cancel their memberships and move on to cheaper pastures. I crunched the numbers ahead of time and figured the price increase would out-weigh the leakage and so far I have been right.
Now it's time to slowly build that base of members up again into that range where my price increase starts to actually build up my reserves of cash up where I can start really making improvements to the gym that I want to do. So far April is looking fairly decent already but it's still early yet. But I can honestly say for the first time in three months I can start to breath again and not be super stressed about this place. Just a little piece of advice, if you have a friend or relative that owns a business and they vent to you about how stressed they are regarding their business please don't say, "just stop worrying, things will work out". Fuck that fairy tale bullshit, things don't just work out, you have to MAKE that shit work out! There is nothing worse than when you are justifiably worrying and somebody tells you to just stop worrying. Have you every tried that? No? That's because it's fucking stupid and doesn't work. Try 100 proof booze, that DOES work and I can vouch for that.
Just to show my members that I ain't just fucking around, I just ordered this tasty incline bench in Iron Sport red and black- https://www.elitefts.com/shop/strength-equipment/benches/olympic-incline-bench-w-weight-racks.html
Also you could add something to sell in house to make up the extra cash. Some people are on budgets and have kids. Narrow margins for error. Especially in this economy. Now a gym might open like the one down the street from me did and is 24 hours with a 10 membership and no contracts. Decent equipment.Sells a a lot of memberships. Id join if i didnt prefer no human contact and working out in my underwear.