Confessions of a Gym Owner
"If you see me talking to myself, I'm having a staff meeting"
It’s ‘only’ been a year since I handed over the keys to the Capricorn Fitness gym. A lot has changed in that time but it feels like it happened a decade ago. On one hand it was my crucible and proving ground where I truly cut my teeth as a coach and I desperately miss having it at my disposal, to do with as I please. On the other hand I certainly DON’T miss being tied to a physical location that I couldn’t escape from. There’s a good chance that in time, once the girls are a little more independent from us, that I might venture back into the gym business…but with a MUCH better plan.
Preparing for opening was a mix of pure joy and excitement along with frustration and uncertainty. I had to submit applications for a change of use and obtain a building warrant for changes to the building. It took months of unexpected delay but in that time I must have made hundreds of floor plans and I driven my equipment suppliers absolutely mad with my requests for quotes and advice. But that was the fun part; figuring out how I could best provide strength and conditioning training with the space that I had. Hitting ‘send’ on my equipment purchase lists was something I’ll never forget. The not so fun part was watching the work take place to convert the bleak, empty space into a gym from installing lights and heating to levelling floor (as best we could) and creating the treatment rooms and toilets. I’m no handyman and had to put my trust into the hands of others. I’ll never forget the time when I started painting the place to try and save money. After 3 days I relented and paid a lot of money to have someone else do it far better and faster than I could. Then of course came the ‘outfitting’ and installation of all the heavy equipment which is when things really started to become ‘real’ in my head.
Initially I had set out in the firm belief that all I needed to do was open a gym and build a reputation as a great coach. People would see the results of barbell strength training and flock to my door. I had clients ready to go but no marketing plan or business systems in place. My plan, if you call it that, was to use the gym as my own laboratory to train as many people as possible and develop my coaching skills to be able to spot the most subtle of movement problems and then become the ‘go-to’ dude for strength and conditioning. I might even still be there now if I known a few more things.
My gym was never big enough to be a viable ‘commercial’ option where 1-1 in-person services could be offered alongside an ‘open’ membership where folks could do their own thing. I tried to tread the line between private coaching facility and a commercial open gym and couldn’t generate enough traction for several reasons:
You can’t please 2 masters. When I was coaching someone who had paid for my time and attention I would also have to attend to anything that popped up in the background. I would inevitably get distracted from what I should have been doing. On the plus side I did get LOTS of practice observing multiple people training at once but that was just masking the fact that I should have been solely focussed on the individual.
A busy open session in a small space makes 1-1 coaching more challenging and certainly unpleasant for someone new to the environment or who might be self-conscious or nervous. Even though my members were a friendly and considerate bunch, the clanging of metal turned off more than just a handful of prospective clients who just needed a little more time to adjust.
Due to the need to limit the number of people in the gym at any one time (I had a limit imposed by the local council in order to satisfy the conditions of the building warrant), my prices were necessarily and considerably higher than my large gym-chain competitors. Although I maintain that I kept a much cleaner and better equipped facility than most that allowed for effective strength and conditioning work, that wasn’t enough to bring people salivating to the door.
‘Actual’, real, effective strength training doesn’t sell; it ain’t sexy. Very few people I spoke to had the vaguest notion of what I meant by strength training. Most thought they’d be lifting some dumbbells and doing sets of 20 reps. In case you don’t realise it; that’s NOT strength training. You might be moving a ‘weight’ around but there’s so much more to it. Suffice to say that I spent so much time explaining what we did, it came off as too complex, intense and BORING rather than simple, hard, effective and WORTH THE EFFORT. I didn’t know how to sell it in a world of well-known, cheaper, sexier but lesser alternatives.
I neglected the gym 'community'. By that I don't mean that I was intentionally mean, miserly or dismissive. I mean that I didn't foster or nurture what would have been a powerful collective of minds, ideas, encouragement and support anywhere near as much as I should have.
Then there were the overheads. Oh my, the overheads. I had never had cause to consider just how challenging it is to run your own small business due to the fact that very suddenly you will be viewed by the rest of the world as a cash cow to be relentlessly and ruthlessly milked. I’ve heard it said that when you become self-employed you’ll put in double the hours for half the pay. It’s scarily accurate. Limiting myself to mostly in-person 1-1 sessions and the cap on numbers in the building meant I had to charge a lot more to cover costs…but in an effort to attract people I kept them as low as I could… which meant I ended up cost neutral and hardly paying myself at all.
As a one-man band I was tethered to the building. I loved it but it became a prison and because I was fully employed in running it, I couldn’t free up time to step back and figure out how I might develop it as a business. I attempted to bring on staff so that I could take that much needed step back but even then I couldn’t seem to break away.
If I had been able to see through the smog, I would have seen that there was only one real option that would satisfy my trifecta of requirements:
Deliver high quality strength and conditioning to lots of people and thereby become a better coach.
Make enough money to cover costs and actually pay myself.
Create the ability to have time away from the gym without negatively affecting the business.
That option was to minimise 1-1 sessions, cease the open sessions and introduce group training.
Now I don’t mean circuit training classes which I’d already done successfully over the years. When people think ‘classes’ they also tend to think ‘cheap’. I had run circuit classes in local halls and for the local council for peanuts before. They were great for getting people moving, sweating and exercising but I’m talking structured training designed specifically to get people considerably stronger in the most time efficient manner possible with direct supervision and coaching which you generally don’t get with one instructor in front of 20+ people doing half-push ups and standing on a bosu ball.
Small group coaching is an 'everybody wins' concept. The coach is much more efficient with their time and can generate more income per session and actually make a viable living whilst the members still get the high-level coaching and expertise they want and need whilst paying considerably less per session. The combinations of those pretty major factors plus more concentrated community spirit and encouragement can then lead to much greater and prolonged progress.
I had successfully run strength and conditioning classes for groups of 8 people in the past. It was hard work and very demanding but it bloody well worked. The problem is that I was charging ‘class’ prices for it and basically giving away incredible value with not a whole lot in return. It wasn't sustainable at the rates I had been charging.
I should have been fostering a community based on bringing together these small groups of people who were effectively getting personal training without the time wasted on gossip between sets. These would be high energy, extremely effective, well-organised training modules with great equipment, environment and the coaching to match.
However, I hamstrung myself from the outset because I thought that in oder to be ‘professional’, I should keep a barrier between my private life and my business life. My problem was that my interpretation of that prevented me from seeing the value and power in community which would have added layer upon layer of additional accountability and a greater sense of belonging for the membership.
I could have created a set schedule of sessions that catered to their needs and my availability whilst setting aside time where the gym would be closed and I could have time to satisfy my growing family commitments and address my own health issues. I would in fact be creating a sustainable business with room to grow. The combination of better time management and community spirit would have dramatically changed how I approached things.
The problem was that I came to this realisation far too late. I was exhausted by 3 years of non-stop work, no sleep, self-induced pressure, family responsibilities and deteriorating health. And then lockdown started.
I’ll probably talk about that in depth some more some other time but suffice to say that 2 years of closing and re-opening and the weight of economic uncertainty and it’s long term effects compelled me to take a break. We didn’t qualify for the self-employment support or furlough schemes and if it wasn’t for my new online work, I wouldn’t have been able to pay myself at all. I was emotionally drained and the prospects of potentially alienating my existing client base, changing how the gym worked, hiking prices way up, planning and executing a big marketing effort to remain a viable business sucked all of my remaining enthusiasm dry. Something had to give and handing over the keys was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone else could have been far more successful. I had a very short-sighted and blinkered vision and someone more flexible could have rolled with the punches and been more proactive. But it’s not all doom and gloom. No, in fact I look back very fondly at the fact that I was able to coach HUNDREDS of people during my 5 year tenure. I learned a whole bunch of stuff and the gym did actually serve as my own private laboratory where I could experiment and test myself. Without that environment, I don’t think I would have been able to amass the experience I needed to join the ranks of Barbell Logic and I wouldn’t have been able to rub shoulders and make friends of the people I admire. So it DID serve its purpose. But it also served to prove that I’m not much of a businessman! I can live with that; we all play to our strengths and it’s good to know our weaknesses.
Might I give it another go in the future? I guess it depends…
