Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008 - (Page 9)

THE EXPERTS Cliﬀ Latham has over 22 years experience as a ﬁtness and weight loss expert, university professor and strength and track and ﬁeld coach, where he was named eight-time Conference Coach of the Year. From 1992[ www.cliﬄatham.com ] 2000, Cliﬀ coached several world- and Olympic-level track and ﬁeld athletes, including a gold medalist in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Cliﬀ has trained over 2,650 clients, utilizing his advanced exercise physiology and sports nutrition degrees along with lessons learned from completion of the Ironman Triathlon, ﬁve sub-3 marathons, over 120 triathlons and experience with over 1,300 collegiate athletes. He is also President of Cutting Edge Seminars, a corporate consulting and training company that specializes in stress recovery and wellness applications promoting productivity, premier health, energy and life balance. Cliﬀ currently runs a Fitness Together franchise in College Station, Texas. Brian Calkins has been helping Cincinnatians safely and effectively lose weight and feel great since 1999. In June of 2004, Brian was honored as one of the nation’s top 50 personal trainers by the American Association of Personal [ www.briancalkins.com ] Trainers, and in August 2005, his personal training approach was featured in The Wall Street Journal. Having worked with hundreds of individuals, Brian has developed a warm, motivating and enthusiastic style and approach to ﬁtness that has helped many people weed through all the weight loss and ﬁtness hype and learn what really works. He is a ﬁtness presenter and author of various ﬁtness publications, including Burn Body-Fat the Right Way!, and coauthor of The Power of Champions. Brian works exclusively as the President of HealthStyle Fitness, Inc., a private training studio in Cincinnati, Ohio. Q What was happening with your studio when you decided to consider a franchise? Brian: My business was doing relatively well with ﬁve years of consistent growth at the time, so I considered converting my studio into a franchise. I was, however, very inexperienced with hiring and manag- ing trainers, and I was struggling to strike a balance between being a trainer myself, managing a staﬀ, marketing, sales and developing systems to run my business eﬀectively. And competition was becoming more intense with six training studios within a twomile radius of our location. Cliff: Our studio had always been strong ﬁnancially, as we were voted by a local magazine to be the number-one trainers in the area for several years in a row and had a great following. But I knew that our systems and marketing weren’t as strong as they could be, so I began searching out options that would help us streamline that area of our business. I stumbled across several franchise options, and as I did my homework, I met several other business owners within a particular franchise that had been in my same situation. Realizing their growth once they became a franchise, I began some soul-searching and made a decision. Look, owning a personal training business isn’t rocket science, but I didn’t want to spend the next ﬁve years making the same mistakes, when I could learn it in a ﬁfth of the time with a franchise. The speed to growth and success can be so much more rapid with proven systems and a template on which to expand and grow. Q What was the investigation process like? Cliff: I made a lot of phone calls, asked other franchise owners a lot of questions and then made a trip to Discovery Day, which helped answer one question: “Why would I pay six percent of my gross revenues each month to a franchise?” It’s an important question to have answered and one that was provided once I made the trip. Brian: I really enjoyed the investigation phase in considering a studio conversion. I spoke with a lot of owners who were current franchisees as well as studio owners who converted an existing training business to a franchise. I spent an entire day at the headquarters of the company I considered becoming a franchisee with and enjoyed meeting the staﬀ. I was very stimulated by what they had to oﬀer. In fact, ﬂying back to Cincinnati after my visit, I felt conﬁdent that I would convert HealthStyle Fitness into a franchise with the company. Q What were the deciding factors to go or not to go with a franchise? Brian: My decision not to convert my studio was a tough one. I was surely excited about the possibility of having a turn-key operation, well-designed systems and the support of a huge corporation. Ultimately, though, I felt a void in my entrepreneurial drive as I visualized and reﬂected upon my studio becoming a franchise. My long-term vision felt constrained with potential future options that I may not be able pursue due to contractual commitments to the franchisor. Cliff: I spoke with a franchise owner who had been in the same situation as I, and he very quickly had not only seen an increase in signiﬁcant revenues within a month but had been able to streamline his systems in such a way that he was able to work on improved customer service and continued growth. When an owner is bogged down in the day-to-day operations, you quickly get to a point where it becomes not only impossible to grow but impossible to maintain the same level of service that you once did. ➤ JUNE-JULY2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM 9 http://www.cli?atham.com http://www.briancalkins.com http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008 Contents Letter From the Editor, Writers To Franchise Or Not To Franchise? Current Controversies Insuring Success Case Study Exercise Spotlights Raising Rates Through Better Session Design Mark Your Calendar The Perfect Ad The Movement Triad Exercise Spotlights Product Profile New on the Market Spotlight: Brian Boyle

Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008

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