Chris Tamer opened CrossFit Brighton in Brighton, Michigan in 2008.
A former professional hockey player, Chris began doing CrossFit to recover from old injuries, build his core strength, and generally improve his fitness. He started out training sports teams, then began training individual members. The first year CrossFit Brighton had 80 to 100 members, and now, almost 13 years later, CrossFit Brighton has more than 250 members.
Chris said he always keeps his eyes open for any way to streamline the processes at the gym.
“If we can do something once that's going to save us multiple steps then we're going to do that just to free up time for other other tasks and other things we have to do,” Chris said.
Before UpLaunch, Chris was frustrated by having to use multiple, disconnected platforms to communicate with his leads and members.
“When UpLaunch came on board, communication and a whole bunch of other things kind of came together in one platform. And it's absolutely a good return on the investment. We've grown 25 percent with the efforts we've done over the last year. That's huge.”
Chris said UpLaunch helped CrossFit Brighton gain members by automating lead follow-up. They’d started doing Facebook advertising around the time they signed on with UpLaunch, and Chris said UpLaunch was instrumental in converting those leads into members.
“When UpLaunch sends communication to prospects, clients, or former members, there’s definitely an impact,” Chris said. “We've gotten back a few former members. It's always fun when you get an email (from a former member) like ‘Hey, I'll grab a cup of coffee with you.’”
Chris used the UpLaunch Agency to redesign his website, which improved the look of the site and also connected it to the UpLaunch platform, so anytime someone enters their information into the website the contact not only goes to UpLaunch, they also go to Zen Planner, a billing and business management software.
CrossFit Brighton has been using Zen Planner for about eight years, and in addition to making the member billing and gym finances easy, the software quickly gives him a daily snapshot of how the gym is performing so he always has a finger on the pulse of his business, even when he’s not in the gym.
“If I'm only coaching a handful of classes and I'm not there every day I can see what's going on. I look at the finances once a month. I look at the attendance regularly to see how things are going. I like the fact that it has tasks that you can set up for any payment information or anyone anyone that needs their account tended to,” Chris said.
Chris uses another piece of software in the UpLaunch/Zen Planner family: SugarWOD. He began using this workout software when his gym shut down because of COVID-19 restrictions. He used SugarWOD to give the members programming they could do at home along with the Zoom classes. He liked using SugarWOD so much, he decided to stick with it even after the gym reopened.
“Now our coaches can check people in from their phone versus someone coming in and using a kiosk,” he said. Members enter their scores in SugarWOD instead of writing them on the whiteboard.
“I think it's a good habit to get in mentally because they get a reward of doing this and they feel like they've accomplished something by entering a score,” Chris said.
“It’s a lot of fun because you see the times on the board (in the SugarWOD app) and you see what other people have done in the the fun competition,” he said.
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