Weight Loss Programs
| The obesity epidemic. The type 2 diabetes crisis. Fat, inactive kids.? |  |
| We’ve heard the stories and stats ad nauseum. What we need now is solutions. Pairing a serious weight loss program with fitness is a strategy that’s working for both members and clubs. | |
| According to club owners everywhere, prospects touring their clubs are getting larger every day. Combine this anecdotal information with the hard fact that the plus-size market has been virtually ignored by the conventional fitness club industry, and an enormous business opportunity emerges. |
Currently, many overweight people turn to traditional weight loss programs like Weight Watchers and Herbal Life. These organizations focus solely on diet modification with little if any encouragement to exercise. But some fitness club owners are realizing that, with the right personnel and programs, fitness clubs are the ideal setting for weight-loss clients. Clubs can offer on-going expert advice in the areas of both exercise and diet, a supportive community and at the end of the program, slimmer, stronger and healthier clients.
Moving into the weight loss business can be a major boost to a club’s bottom line. And flourishing clubs know that multiple, revenue-generating profit centres are the key to financial success.
A lucrative profit centre
“If you have 4,000 fitness centre members, you have 4,000 opportunities to sell other profit centres,” says Romeo Rawlins, owner of Body Fitness (www.centrebodyfitness.com), in Pointe Claire, Quebec. Membership really just covers your operating expenses, so you really need to focus on other income streams to make a profit, says Rawlins. His wellness centre offers all the classic profit centres – tanning, a juice bar, spa services, rehab services and babysitting, to name a few. But his four-year-old weight loss program is by far his biggest revenue generator.
He chose a team of independent professionals, including registered dietitians, homeopathic doctors, naturopaths, and medical doctors to create a high-quality program that would provide instant credibility for clients. “It’s a huge profit centre since most costs are covered by insurance,” explains Rawlins.
Give them what they want
When Jason Christoff opened his Cornwall, Ontario, club Physical Limits in 1994, he quickly realized that an enormous number of members were joining with weight loss as their primary goal.
With experience developing many successful club profit centres (“We live by the rule ‘the more profit centres the better’”) Christoff and his business partners decided to offer exactly what these clients were looking for: an in-house, results-guaranteed weight-loss program. “If a client wants to lose 25 pounds, most other clubs offer only memberships,” says Christoff. “We decided to directly satisfy the demand.”
Christoff, who holds several advanced certifications in nutrition and exercise science, developed the program himself (www.revolutionweightlossclinic.com). It’s helped members lose as much as 100 pounds, and he’s sold the program to seven other fitness clubs in Ontario, Quebec and the U.S.
His model has clients choose from four weight loss options: 10 pounds, 30 pounds, 50 pounds and 50+ pounds of weight loss. They receive a customized diet, nutrition re-education, cookbooks, cooking demonstrations, their own group toning classes, phone and e-mail support and post-weight loss nutrition counseling. The 30-pounds and 50-pounds programs range from $130 to $190 per month for a 12-month period and include a club membership. Two to three employees per club work on the program, and their pay is tied to their performance.
Pricing the product
If the price sounds too steep for your town or demographics, bear in mind that Cornwall, the location of one of Christoff’s clubs, has the lowest income per household in the entire country.
He suggests heeding of the teachings of Bob Proctor and Anthony Robbins: “The key to a successful profit centre is to focus on something original and to limit or eliminate the competition in that area of the market. A great imagination is all that is needed.”
According to Christoff, “Many people think that the plus-size fitness market is a barren landscape, but in reality it’s a field of riches.”
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