Using your gym to change the world

[GymJobs]

This article isn’t intended to be about running a business, teach you how to coach better, or how to get a PR. Instead, its intention is to show how you can use your gym to make a huge impact on the world.

Each year, my gym hosts what we call a “Joy Prom.” This event is different from the proms when we were in school because it is a beautiful night we put together for the special needs community. With a little bit of effort and time, you can have a huge impact on some amazing people.

We will host our Joy Prom for the seventh year this February. The first year we hosted it, we had 12 kids show up and for us, that was a huge success. The second year, we had 82 kids. In the third year, we had 160 special needs members of our community in our gym enjoying a party and it continues to grow.

It’s an amazing feeling to help people, and so I’m going to explain how you can do it. You’re going to need sponsors for your event. To get sponsors, granted they love helping you, but you have to remember that they are also making a business investment and need a return on that investment. Whenever you post on social media about the upcoming Joy Prom, you have to market the sponsors at the same time or you will not have any sponsors the next year.

You have to pick a date. I suggest allowing six months to plan and picking a time when there are few school activities going on. That’s how we choose February. We don’t pick this date for the convenience of the guests at the Joy Prom, but with fewer activities going on at school, you’re much more likely to get more help for the night of your event.

When you have your date and time set, call all of the newspapers and news stations. They love hearing that a Powerlifting, CrossFit, Olympic Weightlifting gym—whatever you are— is taking the initiative to help the world be a better place. It’s great marketing for your gym and promotes the event so that next year you’ll have more people. If you are a new gym owner, it can help you to become well known in your community very quickly.

Now that you have your date, figure out what to do with all the equipment in your gym. You can’t have barbells, chains, and kettlebells just laying around during the Joy Prom. What we do is ask a local business that owns a tractor-trailer truck to let us use it for a few days in exchange for being a sponsor of the event. The business always lets us borrow it, and we park on the property, load it up, and lock the doors. To add an extra layer of protection, the driver backs the truck up to the building so the doors can’t be opened.

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