Gym owners often forget about recurring charges or don't know what they're paying for. Set a weekly or twice-monthly review of your last 7-15 days of bank transactions and ask if each expense drives member retention or acquisition. The Profit First framework helps you catch expense creep before it drains your business.
Hey everyone, today a quick reminder just came up with a client conversation and on the list of things that you all have given us feedback on. Cutting expenses. It's a frustration for some gym owners, and we— I've been having a few Profit First calls with other clients over the last couple weeks. And I had a realization. I realized that every time I go through this process, one of 2 comments is being made by the client. And, and I'll get into the process in a second, but as we're going through their expenses, they say one of 2 things. One, oh, I thought I had canceled that. And 2, I have no idea what that's for. So This pattern in other clients makes me feel like it's possible that if you're listening to this, you may have the same comment you make if you go through your expenses. And both of those comments tell us that those are expenses that aren't needed for your business. If you don't know what it's doing for you, chances are, even if it is doing something, it's not doing enough of it to justify the expense. And then of course the other one is, I thought I had canceled that. Um, I mean, that, yeah, that obviously you had recognized that you didn't need that expense, but for some reason it keeps going on. Um, I remember, um, talking to one gym owner and he was mentioning how he had paid, uh, like the Bulldog lease payments for many years after he had actually paid off the contract. Look, some of these guys out there, these vendors, they're not as honest as you are. And so you got to be aware of that, which is why paying attention to your expenses is really important. So how do you build that into your routine? I have found when there's things that frustrate me, building a routine around it makes it at least more tolerable. So what we recommend is that you are sitting down either every Friday or twice a month, usually on like the 10th and the 25th, so that you have 15 days apart. Maybe the 5th and the 20th. Again, every Friday or 15 days apart. And when you're following the Profit First system, you're going to allocate money from your income account Into your other buckets. At the same time, we recommend you look at the last 7 days or 15 days of transactions that have hit your bank account. So this way, now I'm not saying, hey, let's go back and review the last 12 months of expenses. That wouldn't hurt, but most people, most of our gym owner clients Are kind of like, man, that's a big ask. I'd rather do Murph 800 days in a row or something like that. So I'm not asking for something daunting like that, because let's just start now from as a clean slate and going forward establishing this routine and these habits. It's really easy. It'll be very easy for you to quickly look at the last 7 to 15 days of transactions. And as you're going through those expenses, I want you to ask yourself, is this a productive expense? Is this an investment? Am I really getting a return off of spending this money? Is it really improving my retention? Is it really bringing in new members? Whatever it may be, go through questions. Now, in my book, Profit First for Microgyms, I have an entire chapter on how to analyze expenses. And if you go to either Profit First for Microgyms or insightstax.com, We do have resources, free resources. I took those questions and we turned it into a resource so you can access that. And of course, if you don't, can't find it, just put a Slack— Slack— put a comment below here on Facebook and someone will reach out to try to get that for you. So that being said, again, it's really simple to implement and you're going to be able to do it and you're actually going to get You're going to feel empowered as you're looking at the past 7 to 15 days of expenses, because you're going to be able to also stay on top of expenses as they come up. This is one of the ways in which we protect ourselves from increasing our expenses at the same pace our income is increasing, because without boundaries like this, it's very easy to just start throwing money at other things because the The cash is there for us to spend, but we would really only want to spend it if it's truly an investment. Okay, last thing I want to say, it's an ask. It serves me and I appreciate it if you can do this. We are trying to get our book reviews up on Amazon. So if you've read the book, honestly, I mean, I'd love a 5-star, but if you don't feel like a 5-star is deserved, I'd still love an honest review of the book on Amazon.com, Profit First for Microgyms. I would really appreciate it. Anyways, so that's it for today. Remember, profit is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.
