Arguably, trust is an essential pillar to surviving in the highly competitive fitness industry. Plus, if you’re a leading organization that is highly trusted, you’re more than likely to have 2.5 x more organization and growth in your company than lower-performing competitors.
Trust does not just happen overnight, though, and there’s no one straight formula to accruing a lot of trust from your members.
While there are a million different methods to generate trust, there’s one proven and successful way to lay the foundations for trust in your health club: a mission statement.
In this article, we will look at what a mission statement is, why its important and how to create on for your fitness business.
Skip ahead to:
- What is a mission statement?
- Why do businesses need a mission statement?
- How to create a mission statement
What is a mission statement?
A mission statement is a blanket statement that reflects the purpose of what you want your gym to achieve. Normally mission statements tend to be small and spread over a couple of lines. Even though they’re just a couple of lines, these statements take time to write as they have to reflect your company’s vision and allow it to represent your values accurately.
They’re also important as they help your employees review your company’s purpose and act in line with your goals. Finally, mission statements provide you with a clear idea of the type of audience you wish to target and how you aim to serve them. While all good mission statements do this, they can be changed every few years so you can adapt to the fitness industry.
Why do businesses need a mission statement?
There’s a lot of benefits to gyms having a mission statement which are:
Increases employee engagement
Did you know that 67% of employees are more likely to be engaged at work when they strongly agree with their company’s mission statement? Mission statements allow your employees from the front of house staff, cleaners, personal trainers, class instructors, and more to have the same mindset and work together to achieve your gym’s goal.
Mission statements encourage your employees to be responsible for their duties, feel more engaged, and connect to the company culture to feel like they can play a personal part in achieving your goal. If many employees feel this way, workplace productivity increases, and the collective effort from employees allows them to feel more motivated in the workplace.
Fosters learning and innovation
Good mission statements can help your employees make critical decisions about how their actions will impact your company’s short and long-term goals. Over time, critical thinking can contribute to positive company culture and allow your gym to grow over time.
Supports smooth decision making
Mission statements help leaders within your team know what’s needed for change to happen within your organization. This also allows for consistent, clear, and regular communication from leaders to other team members during challenges allowing for greater organization.
Differentiates your company from the competition
A mission statement gives your company an extra edge to stand out from your competitors. Mission statements give you a chance to be creative and look authentic to consumers and allow them to consider your fitness services over others.
It also shows to your members that you have more of a purpose than just profit itself and the true reason why you exist. This can also help potential investors see exactly your focus and why you differ from your competition.
Keeps your whole organization focused
Sometimes in gyms, people can easily stray from their intended tasks due to changes in management, changes to services, and personal happenings in their own lives.
A good fitness mission statement can help your whole organization stay on track towards the end goal you wish to achieve from your mission statement. If they feel like there is some confusion around a task, a mission statement can help them realign their actions in accordance with your values.
How to create a mission statement
Creating a mission statement is not too difficult for any gym or club owners; all you need is to set about some time and patience to craft the perfect one for your gym. To help form the most creative, original, and strong statement, here are some top tips to follow:
1. Compose a market-defining story
All good gym mission statements need to accurately portray the ‘why,’ i.e., why members should buy into your services. This is crucial to help you identify your target customer and buyer persona. While this is not included fully in the mission statement, it’s useful to keep it in your head while writing your mission statement. It kind of provides you with a foundation of why your company exists.
The Customer Discover more
for Your Fitness
To help you do this, you might want to provide a list of what your gym offers and does not offer. Moreover, think about the following details about your gym members:
- Fitness goals
2. Describe what your gym does
Remember that your mission statement serves multiple people, you, your employees, your members, and potential investors. To target them effectively from a few sentences, you have to describe what your gym does accurately.
In this situation, you don’t want to be generic; try and add inspirational elements of what makes your gym special for your target market. Obviously, don’t go to extremes, i.e., you don’t have to eradicate obesity from your city completely or help reduce diabetes. But you can add in a statement specifically narrowed down to your target market.
Some common examples of fitness companies that do this are:
- CrossFit: “The mission of the CrossFit Foundation is to improve health and fitness through education, research, philanthropy, and advocacy?”
- Golds gym: “To enhance the quality of life in the communities we serve through our fitness philosophy, facilities, programs, and products and to instill in the lives of people everywhere the value of health and fitness.”
- Nike “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.”
To help understand what your gym does, you might wish to think about the following:
- Your niche
- How much you charge
- How your services are delivered
3. Add the reason why your gym does what it does
In addition to showcasing your services, it’s important you underline the core values of why you offer such services and exist. Doing this is essential for any mission statement as it helps show the human side to your company. This section does not have to belong at all; at the most, it’s a line or two. At first, it can be difficult to narrow this down into a few word for your fitness facility, but to help you ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the main principles your gym holds?
- Why do you exist?
- What makes you unique?
4. Include how your gym serves its employees
Often, some of the best gyms have a fantastic fitness culture commonly shared between employees and members. Great gyms are also there to support employees; if not, they have high turnovers, and they don’t last. Company culture and motivation are equally as important as retaining members.
You might not want to state exactly how your gym is good for your employees in your mission statement. Still, instead, you might want to include important qualities like fairness, creativity, fairness, empowerment, diversity, goals, and more. Try and include universal words that can be easily relatable to members too.
5. Keep it concise
Some of the best mission statements that exist are to the point, simple, and concise. If possible, try not to fill it with too many fitness buzzwords or jargon, as it could throw people off. While writing it, it might make you feel that you’re articulating yourself well, but for others with different English comprehension levels, it can make it difficult for them to remember. To have a good mission statement, you must make it easy to understand for everyone and one that can allow your employees to retain it easily in their minds.
Regarding the size of your mission statement, there’s no set rule of how long it should be. On average, though, most mission statements, regardless of the industry, generally fit the length of 2-4 sentences and do not have more than 100 words.
On that matter, remember to choose relevant words that fit both your customers and employees that can be useful. You might also want to try and avoid duplicating certain words so you can make your mission statement more compelling.
6. Start composing it
Now you have an idea of what to include in your mission statement for your fitness center; you might want to try writing it! Remember, it’s totally up to you how you want it to portray your short term or long term goals, aspirations, how you want to target your audience and employees.
Do note that you might not get it right the first time; it could take a few tries. Ideally, try and keep your mission statement relevant, timeless, and something that can be measured to see if you’re in line with your vision.
7. Refine your mission statement
The best mission statements hold multiple functions, set out your objectives, and last for a good few years. Therefore once you have your first draft, you should spend a good amount of time reviewing and refining it. When editing your mission statement, you should also cut out specific terms or jargons the average person won’t understand.
At the same time, try and remove any common terms like “the best in the business,” “world-class,” “unparalleled levels of customer service,” and more. In addition to not being understood, the last thing you’ll want is to look the same as everyone else with these common phrases. Remember, it’s important that you establish your authenticity in the fitness industry.
It’s also important that you get used to refining your mission statement now, as over time, you will need to do it again and again, as the fitness industry is always changing.
8. Test it out
Once you think you have your final mission statement, it’s important that you test it out before fully finalizing it. Typical ways of testing it out can include adding it to your website and social media pages to see if it reads well.
Similarly, you could add it to your posters and banners to see if it fits in with your design. Another way you might want to test it out is by saying it out loud and sharing it with your employees to see if it’s easy to read and makes sense.
Overall, mission statements are essential for your survival as a gym owner as it makes you look unique in the highly competitive fitness industry. It also helps your members see why you exist and keeps your employees’ work ethics aligned with your values.
Mission statements can be displayed anywhere; some good places are your website, social media bios, and wall mounts in your gym. Moreover, as the fitness industry is constantly changing, it’s always good to review your mission statement every few years.