MONTREAL BARBELL
Transforming From A Gym To A Business
This is Really Exciting - Follow the Transformation Here
In the Beginning
Montreal Barbell opened three years ago because we wanted to grow Powerlifting in Montreal, in Quebec and in Canada. Right from the beginning we planned to hold powerlifting meets, so we bought the best equipment we could find, including Metal Militia monolifts and Metal Militia Benches, as well as Texas power barbells and deadlift bars and a full set of Ivanko Chrome Calibrated Weight plates for competitions. Everyone who came into the gym was persuaded to try to squat, bench and deadlift because I believe in Powerlifting and believe it is one of the best ways to perform full body exercises and to get stronger faster as well as gain muscle mass and lose weight.
We began holding three meets a year, The Battle of Montreal, a full power meet in January, then the Canadian Pro/Am Nationals, a full power national meet in May, and then the METAL MILITIA MONTREAL BENCH WARS, a bench only meet with top benchers setting All-Time World Historical Records in July. Word of mouth quickly spread on the internet that Montreal Barbell was holding the highest level, professionally run meets in Canada. Add to that the fun factor and our meets grew every year. Our first meets were held in 2008 at Bronx Gym where the owner Sean Vann was very kind to let us take over his gym for a day and create a crazy atmosphere. After two years at Bronx Gym, we moved and started holding the meets directly in our own gym, Montreal Barbell.
In 2010 we offered for the first time ever in Canada a large cash prize amount of $5000 and made the Canadian Nationals into a Canada's first big Pro/Am competition. Mat Court earned and walked away with the biggest chunk of the money by earning #1 spot and also getting the biggest squat, bench, and yes the deadlift as well. Mat set the highest squat ever in Canada with his 1153 lb squat and one of the highest ever in the world. Cheryl McKenzie set the highest squat ever in Canada for a female squatting 517 lbs and she did this at 48 years old. In July, we held our first Metal Militia Montreal Bench Wars and three lifters set World Historical All-Time ranking lifts. Bill Crawford benched 881 lbs for the best ever in his life and set an All-Time World ranking. Mike Guay beat Clint Harwood's All Time Canadian bench record by benching 810 lbs, the highest bench ever in Canada and Shany Gilbert benched 407 lbs for the biggest bench by any female in Canada and also set an All-Time World ranking at no.4 in the world.
The following year things got even better. In January we had lifters come from all over Canada to a local meet at our gym and Al Mehan squatted 1157 lbs to take over the biggest squat ever in Canada. Al is one of the best known Canadian lifters throughout the world having done over 13 world championship meets all across the world. This was Al's best meet ever.
Behind ever good man, there is an organized woman who gets stuff done. Cheryl was 50% owner and the silent partner who got everything done from the beginning when we first ran meets in 2008 until early 2011. Then, Shawna joined the gym and became the gym manager and 50% owner in 2010 and up to August 2011. Everyone noticed that the gym was cleaner and more organized. Plus, Shawna was an excellent coach and personal trainer for new members and she did over 90% of organizing the meets which made them run so well. The gym was very successful for what we wanted it to be. Meets were growing in success every year and every meet and more people were becoming aware of Montreal Barbell, not only in Canada but in the World as one of the best gyms in the world for powerlifting training.
After three years in business, in July and August, the gym reached a turning point. After strictly focussing on powerlifting and providing a nice facility to train in, we now had to make the gym profitable. But the gym was far from profitable. It was being subsidized out of our own pockets. Straight revenue only paid for 15% of the total costs of owning and running the gym, this is without any salaries as well.
We now had to transform the gym from a nice place to train that cost us money, to a business that made money and helped the gym grow.
I started talking to one of the gym members, David Taing whos full time job is helping companies improve their website presence for search engines. At the same time, Curd Hos offered his exerience of how he transformed his previous powerlifting business into a profitable and more enjoyable business. Incredible experience and advice.
So here is what we decided to do: The plan was to improve the popularity of our website, MontrealBarbell.com and then use the website to sell products other than just gym membership. We looked at developing several revenue streams by selling supplements, powerlifting gear, powerlifting equipment, seminars and certifications. In the future, we will add to that training DVD's.
The Transformation
The first stage was to improve the website popularity. In the beginning of August, MontrealBarbell.com was ranked as 1.8 million out of 14 million websites worldwide. Our goal was to break 800 thousand. We reached that goal much quicker than expected. By the second week in September, we hit 797k and we were very happy. Today, we have surpassed that goal and we stand at 585,000 in world popularity. What this means is that when people search for gyms or items that we provide we have a better chance of coming up on the first page of search inquiries. This then means that more people visit our website. Today, we have an average of 1300 visitors per month and about 45 per day, half of which are brand new visitors, we have been visited by 28 countries around the world, having 7 visits from Russia, and Great Britian, France Gemany. Visitors from Japan spent over 10 minutes reading our website. in fact the average time spent on our website is over 3 minutes for each visit. These are great statistics and they are going to get even better. A surprising outcome is that we are told now that we have the potential to earn over $7.00 a day from advertising on our website.
I am working with a marketing specialist who is helping us take the next steps to really increase our poplularity in search results. There are so many ways and things to do that it is very exciting once you understand how the internet works and how much it affects your business. So, this is why this was our first step. One thing that I have learned in life is to seek out experts in the field to help. When I started powerlifting, I took training session with world record holders, then I found Bill Crawford and Sebastien Burns and accelerated my improvement by years. The same thing in business, experts are like coaches who will accelerate our plans for profitability.
We have hardly just begun and things are going ahead of schedule already. The PR Squat Suits and the PR Bench Shirts by M3 our in-house brand of powerlifting gear are selling well. We are working on a logo and a different colour for the gear to make it look sexier and more impressive because it is the best gear on the market. RossFit is starting, the gym is reoganized and looks great and we have people who have asked to register already. The MMM Personal Trainer Certification also is taking off with several people commiting to taking the course and passing the certification. We have sold our extra Metal Militia Powerlifting equipment - don't worry when the next meet comes, we will buy or make more. We have a deal to sell Protein supplements with a Quebec company who is providing us when a new brand of protein on a conseignment basis. We also have a great arrangement with Fitness Warehouse and Creatine Depot, to buy powerlifting gear such as lifting belts and bench belts and wrist and knee wraps at low prices allowing us to make money on these items as well. The problem in the past was supplements and gear had such a low markup that we made very little money by selling them. With Creatine Depot, we can order our own labelling and specify exactly the type of protein or amino acid that we want in bulk orders. This will allow us to sell these products at a lower price with higher quality ingredients than brand name products.
We are working with Yellow Media to improve our popularity in all their companies in on-line inquiries. We also have arranged to have a profession video made for a one minute advertizing piece for the gym and our products.
"We are going to fill this place up by January!".
I know that some people were getting worried about the future of Montreal Barbell. Now, with the changes, I know that we are all very excited about the possibilities which really are even beyond our dreams. Transforming Montreal Barbell from a gym to a business makes the possibilities unlimited and very exciting.
This is How You Can Help
Publicize Montreal Barbell as much as you can. Google ranks our website based on how many other important and even not so important websites link back to us. Right now we only have 7 websites linking back to us. So, if you subscribe to a forum then put our link in your signature. See if the forums have a listing for powerlifting gyms or hardcore gyms and add us to that listing. There are so many places to list us and its too much for me right now to read all the forums and keep up with it. So, if you can get us in with a link, that will help our Search Engine ranking. We haven't even tapped into Ebay or Craigslist yet or any of the other Canadian and Quebec internet marketplaces. With an army we will be stonger and bigger. Also, email me with any ideas that you may have that will help us get more popular and more profitable.