The Health Club Doctor

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The Health Club Doctor Established in 2005 by industry expert Jarrod Saracco
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HCD is an international, health and fitness business consulting firm that specializes in creating remarkable facilities, experiences and profits for its clients.

Pull up your draft from last month and the month before. If the number barely moved, new members are only replacing the ...
10/21/2026

Pull up your draft from last month and the month before. If the number barely moved, new members are only replacing the ones who left.

In August, one of our high-profile clients saw their draft go up 67.68% over July. Signed members were up 46.34%, and initial sign-up collections were up 60.25%.

The ads brought in 232 leads at $1.84 each, and 37.9% of them booked a visit. The ecommerce ads returned 348% on what was spent.

If your leads come in but your draft stays flat, the gap is usually somewhere between the ad and the front desk.

10/20/2026

Your best trainer has had an off couple of weeks, and you're not the only one who's noticed. The rest of your team has too.

They're watching what happens to a good person who has a bad month at your club, because one day it'll be them.

Greg Maurer built the training and education systems behind a franchise that grew from 60 to 200 locations. Here's the question he asks before he brings up performance at all.

10/19/2026

Building a gym is hard. Building one that only has to exist for one week, in Vegas, during Olympia? That’s a whole different animal.

Everybody who walked into the Dragon’s Lair pop-up saw a finished gym. What they didn’t see was everything it took to get there. Every meeting, every vendor, every sponsor, every volunteer, every container or truckload of equipment. Then you run it all week, and when it’s over you pack every last piece back into the trucks and move on to the next project.

This video is 3:40 AM on load-in day, and trust me, we were already a long way in.

Nicole says she only caught me sleeping twice that whole week, both times in the back of a cab. I’d argue, but she has video.

Huge thanks to the crew who made it happen, and to our partners GNC, Thor Performance Products, Newtech, American Barbell and MEGAMASS FITNESS.

10/19/2026

If your website is packed with keywords to help it rank, that approach doesn’t work as well as it used to. Rosa Evans, who specializes in websites and digital marketing for HCD, explains why. In her words, “AI is now the way that people get their responses.” Those tools go through your site looking for answers to the questions people ask, and a page stuffed with keywords doesn’t give them much to work with.

So write your site around those questions. Do you have classes for beginners? What happens on a first visit? How does a trial work? When a bot can find a clear answer on your page, it has something to give the person asking.

She makes one point before any of that: you don’t need to know everything about AI search to get started. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing process, so start where you can. It’s worth getting right before January, when people start looking for a new gym.

What’s one question your front desk answers every day that your website doesn’t?

You're good at selling memberships. You've done it for years, and you know what to say on the phone, what to show on a t...
10/16/2026

You're good at selling memberships. You've done it for years, and you know what to say on the phone, what to show on a tour, and when to follow up.

Your staff has watched you do it, and you've probably walked them through it. But what you know came from years of practice, and a few walk-throughs don't pass that on. So they each do their own version, and the follow-up usually still waits for you.

For most of the year you get away with it, since you're the one doing most of the selling. Then January hits. You're halfway through a tour when the phone rings and a walk-in is waiting at the desk. The part-timer takes a name and says someone will call back. They assume that someone is you.

At the end of the month, sign-ups are lower than they should be, and it's easy to blame the offer or the number of leads. The leads came in. They just landed with a team that had seen your process but never had it written down to follow.

In October, get what's in your head onto paper: the first call, the tour, the follow-up, and who owns each one. Then run your team through it in November, while the phone is still quiet enough to practice on.

Take the Free Checkup and find out whether your sales process works when you're not the one running it.

10/14/2026

Ever tried to build a gym in a day? For Olympia week in Las Vegas, our CEO Jarrod Saracco and the HCD team helped set up the Dragon's Lair pop-up gym. Racks built, plates loaded, then the doors opened and people got to work. Big team effort. Huge event. Crazy atmosphere. Thank you to our partners GNC Live Well, Thor Performance Products, Newtech, American Barbell and Megamass Fitness. More footage to come.

When do you usually start hiring for January? If it's when the holiday rush hits, you're already too late.Here's how it ...
10/14/2026

When do you usually start hiring for January? If it's when the holiday rush hits, you're already too late.

Here's how it plays out.

December: you post the job. The strongest candidates are already working somewhere that planned ahead, so you interview who's left.

Late December: you hire the best of them and hand over a shirt and a login.

January: they learn the job while the busiest month of the year happens around them. The inquiries they fumble came from the ads you ran all through December. The new members they don't know how to welcome are the ones you'll be chasing in March.

February: some of your holiday hires have already moved on, and you're hiring again.

Hiring in October means two quieter months of wages before the busy one. It also gives them eight weeks to train, shadow and make their mistakes while the stakes are low.

Hire for January now, or do the training in January, live, in front of every new member you spent the fall trying to attract.

If your January team isn't in place yet, let's work out what it needs.

10/12/2026

You’ve got at least one member who has figured out which staff member says yes. The way to stop it is to write your policies down, so everyone at the desk gives the same answer.

Jarrod Saracco, who has run operations for a global gym franchise, describes the moment every front desk will recognize. A member walks up and says another staff member already promised them two free months, 85 personal training sessions, and a spot in the lobby for their daughter.

HCD’s Nicole Vahey says the problem starts inside the team. One manager tells a staff member one thing, another manager says something different, and staff are left asking why someone else gets to do it one way while they have to do it another. Members notice that inconsistency too.

Once the policies, procedures and processes are written down, the staff member at the desk has a clear answer: “That’s actually not our policy.” The document protects your staff and gives every member the same experience, no matter who’s working.

It also makes onboarding easier. Every new hire learns the same answers from day one.

What’s one policy your front desk would answer differently depending on who’s working?

10/09/2026

Do you feel like your gym is struggling a little bit? Maybe it's a little run down lately?

Nothing is broken, exactly. The classes still run and the doors still open. It just takes more effort than it used to, and you can't point to why.

You'd never let a new member start a program without an assessment. You'd check where they're starting from, what's holding them back, and what to work on first. Chances are you've never done the same for your own business.

The Free Checkup is that assessment for your club. It scores the areas that decide how well a club runs, like sales, retention, programming and your team, and shows you where to start.

Better to find out in October than in the middle of January.

Take the Free Checkup and get your club's prescription before January.

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Newark, DE
19711

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+14849194223

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