Club Insider

About Will Phillips

Will PhillipsWill Phillips

Will Phillips has over twenty-six years of practical experience as a management consultant in thirty-four industries and nine countries. For the last nineteen years, he has chaired executive roundtables for owners of leading health clubs. Over ninety industry leaders participate in eight Club Roundtables. His input and out-of-the-box thinking about the club business has added immeasurably to the growth, profit and strategic positioning of these clubs.

Phone: N/A
Email: Will@RexRoundtables.com


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A New Year's Commitment
January 2013 - Business growth is the critical indicator of business health. Growth without profit is nice in the short run and dangerous in the long run. Too much growth can be cancerous and dangerous if there is no profit. The danger of no growth is complacency that leads to a lack of reinvestment in the future, including financial reinvestment and innovation reinvestment whereby a business reinvents itself. Read Article...

A Retention Breakthrough!
April 2011 - I believe it is possible to double the average monthly stay of your members if you try to solve the retention problem in a different way. Read Article...

A White Paper
Challenging Views of the Health Club Industry - Part I

October 2005 - Read Article...

A White Paper
Challenging Views of the Health Club Industry - Part II

November 2005 - Read Article...

A White Paper
Challenging Views of the Health Club Industry - Part III

December 2005 - Read Article...

Accelerating Out of a Slow Growth Economy
A Revisit and Expansion of Step 3 in the Series: Fifteen Steps to Paradise

August 2010 - This may be the most important article you read in the next ten years. It goes to the heart of the success of your business. Read it and take action, now! It describes how the rules of the game have changed. Read Article...

Cost Saving: A Neglected Source of Profits
June 2007 - Read Article...

Customer Service Is...
September 2007 - Read Article...

Customer Service: It's Not What You Think!
July 2007 - Read Article...

Doubling The Success Of New Members
January 2015 - January is always the strongest sales month for your health club. The January joiners also have the highest dropout rate. This article will give you some new insights that have the possibility of dramatically increasing the retention of new members. Read Article...

Driving Growth and Profit
July 2008 - Sales have been spotty the first half of 2008, as reported by over 100 clubs who participate in REX Roundtables. Some clubs are up in net membership, many are flat and lots are down. Interestingly, many of the flat and down clubs are showing increases in profits. Read Article...

Effective Training
September 1995 - Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 5 - Key Performance Indicators

January 2010 - "I have personally increased my net profit by 30% in my first year of using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Not only that, the understanding of where my business could improve and where I was going wrong was very quickly identified." Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 6 - Monthly Management Meetings That Pay For Themselves

February 2010 - If you have a monthly or quarterly meeting to review your club's performance, change the name to Review and Action Planning (RAP) meeting. The emphasis in these meetings will be action. In fact, one ground rule is that 70% of the meeting is devoted to action planning. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 7 - Market Well To Sell Easier

March 2010 - mong everything you have learned about managing and marketing, 98% is based on research in about 177 of the largest public companies in the world: Disney, Ritz Carlton, SAS, Hewlett Packard and so forth. These are the companies that hire the consultants who write the books. These are the companies that pay the business school professors to do the research. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 8 - The Right Team

April 2010 - What is a Manager? Your management team is the group that helps you manage. It could be one or a dozen others. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 9 - Culture: The Hidden Advantage

May 2010 - "Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world." Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 10 - Managing People Productively

June 2010 - "The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own." Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 11 - Leading is Not Managing

July 2010 - Read this to learn how to escape from management land and stay in the world of leadership, where you will do less, work faster, reduce frustration and have more impact on your business success. This article will cover four different perspectives to help you enter leadership land: Can leadership be learned? Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 1 - Moving Beyond the Recession

September 2009 - The recession will be with us for a while, and no one knows how long. Many think consumers will be different, even after the recession ends. I, and others, have written many articles about getting ready for the recession and living through it. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 12 - Enabling Staff

September 2010 - One of the greatest inefficiencies in health clubs is the failure to fully engage or enable the passion, creativity and brains of the staff to contribute to the business. The result is that most clubs are overstaffed to make up for the shortfall. A second, more subtle, inefficiency occurs when staff are not fully enabled; the owner makes up for it by working harder and staying operationally focused. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 2 - Elements in a Strong Sales Machine

October 2009 - Clubs with Strong Sales Machines (SSM) located in strong markets are posting 5-7% real gains in sales this year. SSMs take time, money and effort to build. Fortunately the directions for building a SSM in the club industry are clear, specific and thorough. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 13 - Execution

October 2010 - A plan without execution will not succeed. A solution without implementation will not solve the problem. Successful organizations not only have a great mission and plan, but they also have the systems and discipline to get things done. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 3 - Strategy: The Mother of Business Success

November 2009 - During good times, your club will succeed whether it is well managed or not. Even poor farmers farm well in good years. In the tough times, though, you need a powerful competitive strategy. Read Article...

Fifteen Steps to Paradise
Step 14 - Debriefing: Can You Learn?

November 2010 - Too often, club owners and managers make good first decisions on such areas as pricing, programs, personnel and then avoid making the secondary decisions that produce winning results. Conducting good debriefings about what worked and what did not, then applying the insights quickly is one of the sure signs of a learning organization. A club which learns quickly and applies those teachings has one of the strongest qualities for success. Read Article...

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