S.L.E.D. = Stronger, Leaner, Every Day    The focus of most health clubs is getting new members to replace the ones that are dropping out. This is called sales. The other side of this is retention…getting the members to quit dropping out. The industry talks about retention, but they’re not really doing it. They consider knowing everybody’s first names and sending out birthday cards to be a retention program. Members need help, every time they come in the gym, whether they know it or not, that’s what leads to retention. They need to know that somebody is paying attention to them, their needs, and their goals. The SLED System helps them with every workout they do, it takes barely a minute to fill out the average workout sheet for each member and it provides a small “touch” to every member that they weren’t getting before. When members start increasing their weights when lifting, and pushing themselves during cardio workouts, their results will increase. Imagine having a couple hundred members in your gym all of a sudden getting better results?? What do you think will happen? Their friends will start asking them what they are doing; they will join your gym. The members will stay at your gym and not drop out, your retention numbers will go up. You will spend less money on sales and advertising. I’d like to see a slight paradigm shift in the fitness industry: A member joins a club. They get taken through their first workout. When they finish, they hand in their workout chart. A trainer fills in their next workout for them. The member comes back into the club for the next workout. Their chart is filled out for them, they know what to do. They get results and tell their friends how much their club is helping them. The friend thinks about how much help they are getting at their current club. They quit that club and join yours. Your club can spend less on marketing and advertising, and sales. New members are walking in because their friends are looking great. The members continue to get more results. Less and less members are quitting your club. The club’s membership numbers continue to rise. Less sales staff is needed, and on and on and on. Personal trainers are a great retention tool and income generator. But how many people in the average club can afford personal training…5%? Maybe? What about everyone else? Who’s helping them? Who’s telling them when to increase their intensity or do some new exercises? It’s this 95% or more of a clubs membership base that is at the highest risk of quitting your gym. Will this program affect your personal training income? Not likely. In the past couple years of doing this program, there are about 50-60 other clubs that have started it. The feedback I’ve received so far has been that their PT income has either remained the same or actually improved due to the increased communication with members. I’ve read just about every article on retention and attrition I can find, those articles all say that it costs anywhere from two to seven times MORE money to get a member than it does to keep a member. So where do you think you should be spending your time and money? Should you spend it on getting new members or spend it on keeping the ones you have? If your retention numbers are 66%, then 34 out of 100 of your members quit your club…why? How much did it cost you to get those members in the first place? How much will it cost to replace them? Do you think a few more would have stayed if you had been helping them? Would it cost you much to find out? What have you got to lose? I love this saying: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” That saying applies to you, the fitness industry, and your members. As a club owner, with the SLED program, you will be able to keep in touch with all your members, checking over their workouts to see how they are progressing. Including the members you rarely see if you own a 24 hour key club. This provides a level of accountability to each member; this allows you to “touch” each member. They know that someone is paying attention to them, that someone is helping. That someone cares about them, their goals, their health, and their success. THAT is a retention program! Accountability is one of the reasons that personal training is successful. PT clients have someone watching over them. The SLED System gives just a little bit of that accountability that 95% of your members weren’t getting before. People need help knowing when to increase the weights, when to increase the repetitions and when to increase their cardio workouts. They need help with which machines to do, which ones can be added into a program, where they should be added in, and which exercise should go with it to promote balance within the body. Members need to know that the people that signed them up for a membership care about them. If people get this help, they will stay at your gym. If people get this help, they will get results…then they tell their friends. This program is extremely easy to implement in any club. Simply have one or two of the gym’s trainers start to fill out the member’s workout charts for them. Filling out these charts takes very little time and makes a lot of members very happy. The rest of the links on this site will show you the workout charts I use (and you can copy), how I fill them out, how the whole program got started, everything. And it won’t cost you a dime. There is no place on this site that will ask you for money or collect any information about you. If you ever have any questions, you can email me through the “contact” link. You can come to one of my clubs in south eastern Minnesota anytime you’d like and I will show you the whole thing. I can also come to you…just help me with the expenses! My intentions for giving this program to everybody are entirely altruistic. I ONLY want to improve our industry and help our members. I would love to see this program spread throughout the country, all of our membership numbers doubling, our retention skyrocketing, and our members getting results. We are the only industry out there that can really make a difference in the obesity epidemic and change people’s lives forever. If you got into this industry like I did (24 years ago!) because you liked helping people, then you should see the logic in this program for your gym. I only ask one thing if you decide to implement this program in your gym, that you use the “SLED System” name and give me credit for coming up with it, that’s it. It’ll look good on my resume! I want no money, just credit where credit is due. Thanks!