Tongue In Cheek: with insincerity, irony, or whimsical exaggeration.

In every far-flung corner of the internet, you can find articles proclaiming the “5 Best Business Practices for Your Gym” and podcast episodes detailing the “3 Marketing Strategies to get you 20 Leads in 7 Days.”

Those are fine and dandy, but I find that flipping the lens and viewing it through the negative can often paint an even better picture. Everything I am about to write is going to be a tongue in cheek way of pointing out where gym owners, myself at one time included, can sometimes fall prey to their own stories. I was extremely guilty of this during my 8-year stint as a gym owner. I told myself that I was special and that I just needed to work harder. I would bury my head in the sand and never come up for air to actually see what I should be working on. Many of the tips below come from personal experience doing it the exact wrong way. 

Here’s your challenge as you read: when you read through these anti-tips, you will likely naturally stumble upon the opposite (i.e. correct) tactic. Many of these are whimsical exaggerations of a poor practice that will clearly point out how something should be handled. But maybe there is a small voice inside of you that says, “I know I should do it that way, but I don’t want to change how I do things. I’m comfortable and it seems to be working just fine.” Are you going to listen to that voice? Or will you explore your options, maybe save your gym, and create a business that fulfills you.

Tip #1

Sign a bad lease. Get a space that’s way too big but you know you will grow into. Starting small is for coaches or owners who don’t believe in themselves. Don’t negotiate any of the terms, and definitely don’t use a realtor or an attorney to review the lease. 

Tip #2

Along with the lease, location doesn’t matter, dude. Don’t worry about how close you are to your target demographic. If your parking sucks, your clients will get over it. How bad do they want it, am I right? Building aesthetics don’t matter either. People just need to know that you are the best coach in the city and your grungy warehouse with a cobweb infestation is definitely going to attract moms in their 40's who want to lose weight. 

Tip #3

Train everyone. I mean everyone. High school athletes, dads looking to get back in shape, hardcore lifters with years of experience, CrossFitters, you name it. They’re all dollars walking in the door and having some kind of “niche” is overrated. Why would you only train one group of people to an extremely high level when you can coach everyone and make like 30% of them happy? Besides, people aren’t naturally intimidated by gyms and how other people may view working out at all, so all of those different groups are bound to get along like gangbusters. 

Tip #4

Rely exclusively on your coaching prowess to grow your business. Hey, if you build it, they will come. Don’t market yourself in any way. Make sure you don’t join any kind of local networking groups to meet other local business owners. Those are just glorified free lunches. Businesses just grow without any knowledge of finances, marketing, or sales, so you should be all set on the latest business books or marketing courses. We all know that the average American adult will bow down when they see multiple 3 or 4 letter accreditations behind your name in your email signature, so go get that 7th certification on training Olympic bagpipe players so you can brag to Sally next time she shows up for Goblet Squat day.

Tip #5

Keep your head down and don’t rely on other gym owners or small business owners who have displayed success in their field. Their situation will have absolutely no parallels to yours, so what could they offer you? Definitely don’t look into gym owner specific groups like Business for Unicorns where you can get guidance, mentorship, and an immense amount of content you can use in your business.

Tip #6

Make sure you don’t build a path for a coach to have a career within your gym. Part-time is completely fine, $15-$30/class is an extremely livable wage when you have a house note, car note, insurance (oh, definitely don’t provide any insurance coverage), and student debt. Besides, we all know that part-time coaches are extremely bought in to building the membership and honing their craft because they’re so replaceable so they have to be good coaches.

Tip #7

Do your own taxes and bookkeeping. You took algebra and have used TurboTax before, so you’re good. 

Tip #8

The only metric that matters is the number of members in your gym. If expenses go up, so be it. You gotta spend money to make money. You just need to pump people into that place and make sure you have more members than you did this time last year. Don’t worry about things like revenue per session, or revenue per square foot, retention rate, number of leads, number of calls to those leads, or something super boring like retention. Those are just for spreadsheet jockeys.

Tip #9

Ignore all other fitness brands or fitness concepts. You are building something unique and unprecedented! Come on, give yourself some credit. They got to where they are through blind luck, fancy logos, and paid Instagram ads. There isn’t an iota of knowledge you could take away from their member experience, business structure, or overall concept.

Tip #10

Your number one goal should be to have as many classes or offerings at your gym as possible. Look, if nobody has shown up for the 8:52 AM group training session for 3 weeks straight, today may just be that day. Definitely don’t get rid of it to give yourself time to work ON the business because you might get a nasty email from one person who was considering coming to the class when their 3-year-old starts high school. 

Tip #11

This is the big one you’ve been waiting for. Make sure you are absolutely grinding harder than everyone else and completely neglecting self-care. Look, your time for working out was before you opened a gym. Those days are gone. You can always slam another coffee or energy drink to shake off your funk to go meet the new prospect coming in the door in 5 minutes. Nutrition is overrated as well. As long as you know how to coach your clients on how THEY should eat, you’re good. Oh and definitely offer more classes on holidays than your competitors. Your members will truly be thankful that they got to workout on Christmas Eve at 6 PM instead of being with their families.