I've come to a conclusion and though may it sound strange and be rather odd considering, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps I don't want any more new members at my boxing club. Initially our focus was on getting our business up and running and racking up our numbers with our members as quickly as we could.
My focus has shifted.
The original soft opening attracted a lot of members that perhaps bought a membership only because of the great discount and not because they were really committed, I'm definitely learning this. Well, soft opening memberships are quickly finishing up and those who jumped in and paid for the three month discounted rate will have to decide in August whether to continue or not. I know some of them won't and that's ok because I much rather help those that want help instead of filling my ears with excuses. You either want to change or you don't. It makes a hell of a difference training someone who wants to train and then someone who is just there to do the motions. Of course not everyday do our members come super pumped for training but I know their heart is into it and they want to be here -- here as in a part of our crew of members. I don't want to ever feel like I'm trying to convince members to care about health, our club or about each other. This is more than just a boxing club, it's a community and if they don't want to be a part of it, well, they know where the door is. People have a means of "self-straining" themselves out and that's the irony of it all.
My focus has definitely shifted, it's shifted to wanting to get that stack of membership consent forms filled in to kind of not wanting any new members. I mean, I like my group of members and though they're a large group already, I don't care for it to get bigger and, perhaps this is bad of me to say, but I'm kind of waiting for a couple of them to either smarten up or leave. Those who I want to leave are only a few but they don't bring any real positive energy to the club nor do they really respect it.
I don't really care for our group to get bigger but instead get tighter. I like it how many have swapped phone numbers, friended each other on Facebook and are seen hanging out together outside of the boxing club because of having met at our club. We've got a solid foundation for a strong community here and I'm rather nervous about us getting too big and this foundation shifting. Having said this, my interest is no longer focused on going out of my way for new members because I'm not desperate for them nor particularly interested in the balance of our club being tossed about. Surely I will accept new members but there's reasons why we have done absolutely no advertising since the initial Grand Opening flyer. Everyone here is pretty comfortable with each other and we've got a good flow going on. Everyday isn't the same but in a way it kind of is. Many of my members know I do boxercise at 6pm so they either come in early or come in after my class so we can train together. I now have about 6 standing commitments with various members everyday and they come according to my schedule that they've picked up upon, I like that.
I've had a lot of foreigners message my phone, email me, text me and randomly drop by to question me. I used to really show off the club by giving them a tour of our club and ranting and raving about it and our members but now I'm kind of like this is our club, like it or leave it. And it's not that I don't care, it's just the foreign crowd still remains our hardest customer despite our club originally being all about them. I didn't expect so many foreigners to join our club but I definitely didn't expect so many to show bursts of interest and then so quickly turn the other cheek and become uninterested. The foreigner population in Cheonan is quite high but so is the turn over considering most stay 1-2 years so investing in the foreign crowd is quite the unstable investment. We knew this going in but we wanted so bad to tap into this foreign population for various reasons. Snickers wanted to direct our club towards the foreign crowd because he's seen first hand how much of a difference me starting Flipside Fitness has done to my life -- it's helped me make Cheonan more of a home to me and less of a temporary home. Moreover, he's quite curious about foreign cultures so he thought our club would be a great means of sharing cultures with those from his culture -- the Korean culture. As for me, I wanted our club to focus on foreigners because if you don't drink, shoot pool or date than there's really not any means of socializing. Not all of us foreigners work at foreign-packed hagwons so that's another difficulty. Of course times are changing but not as quick as you think or as much as you'd expect. Bars are the hot spots for foreigners to socialize but I wanted to create an alternate place and viola, Hulk's Boxing.
I am no longer focused on getting in new members, Snickers is but I am not. I'm really interested in keeping my current members happy because if they're happy than they'll stick around and if they'll stick around I things will stay cool and comfortable. Having said this, I'm thinking about convincing Snickers to put a cap on a lower membership number than originally discussed.
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