What is Your Success?
Here at JumpStart Fitness, we say that any and every gym-owner can find success. But what does that mean? What is success as a gym-owner?
First, and most importantly, we need to understand that success can be whatever you want it to be. Don’t allow business trends, socially accepted lifestyle trends, or popular bloggers dictate a certain value to your idea of success. The bare minimum consideration you must accommodate in your definition of success is the value that you bring to your customers. As long as this exists, any idea of success is enough.
Secondly, you can be successful as a gym-owner. Planning, action, and reaction will get you there. Although there will possibly be unforeseen events that could derail the opportunity for success (like a pandemic or natural disaster), the only real threats to not finding success as a gym-owner are:
Lack of planning
Straying from your vision/mission
Lacking flexibility or an ability to adapt when you realize that the plan was incomplete, or that the plan did not fulfill the vision/mission.
Here’s an example:
My partners and I took over ownership of Real Change CrossFit in Nashville. The previous owners are veterans and successful (and very hard-working) corporate employees. During, and after their military service, they had tried many fitness modalities but really enjoyed CrossFit style workouts. So they affiliated around 2012. They began in their garage in a typical suburban neighborhood. Soon they had strangers showing up to that garage at 4 a.m. to lift, run, and fellowship.
Pretty quickly they had enough people showing up for workouts that they decided to open a facility. I became a member at their gym a couple years after they opened and remember them saying in private that gym ownership was not a means of income for them. They opened a gym so they could workout with their friends and other people they enjoyed being around. I, like many of their long-term members, really appreciated this vision, and we wanted to support them as much as we could.
I distinctly remember a moment when they ran a “new member special” that brought in quite a few new members. Previously, they had relied on, and succeeded in growing from, referrals and word of mouth. This change of growth strategy brought consequences. Sure the gym grew fast and new revenue came in, but the culture of the gym changed. New operations were put in place from workout programming, to new coaching hires, even to new partners in the ownership group.
They implemented new fitness modalities from Olympic Weightlifting, to HIIT, Bootcamp, Boxing, they even designed their own modality they called CardioFlex. Their membership numbers climbed to around 150 and their member satisfaction was high.
However, less than 2 years later, their membership number would decline to around 30 total, and they would announce their closure.
Did they succeed?
Well, they failed to execute a business plan that focused on quick membership growth. They somewhat failed to provide the same sense of community across different fitness brands/modalities. They failed to remain open.
However, when they initially opened, they purchased the condos in which they set up the facility, eventually - after closing - they acquired a lucrative long-term lease from a new tenant. Previous loyal members of theirs (myself and my partners) purchased their equipment - relieving them of any outstanding debt. Their vision continued, not just with the affiliate name, but also with the same sense of community that we had been so loyal to.
If you would ask them now about whether or not they succeeded, they would tell you that they had 7 years building a community of like-minded people that they enjoyed seeing every day - that they enjoyed helping every day.
That was their success. And it was the most important kind of success to them.
The only threat to the lasting memory of this success was failed planning, or a lack of detailed planning, straying from their initial vision/mission, and becoming frustrated when the new less detailed planning did not produce the outcome that matched their initial vision/mission.
I have seen many gyms that exist primarily to be a place where like-minded people can workout and fellowship. They don’t care if their numbers are small, in fact, they likely believe that keeping numbers small is part of the success! Low quantity, high quality!
I see gyms succeed that are very exclusive of the members they admit. They take their new members through expectations and screening that weeds out those that don’t buy into their vision.
I see gyms succeed that dress up as the coolest, hippest, trendiest, cleanest, most instagram-worthy location in town, but don’t care if you show up to workout as long as you pay your membership fee.
There is a popular statistic floating around that suggests that 80% of gyms will close within their first 5 years. This does not necessarily mean that the 80% were failures. This also does not mean that you are more likely to fail.
Do you plan to succeed? What does success look like to you? Are you willing to adapt to make sure that your vision for success is viable?
A focus on financial goals is certainly a part of a successful gym. If you cannot afford to pay your bills, your staff, reward yourself, or purchase a new piece of equipment, you may need to rethink the viability of your vision. But setting financial goals is only one part of creating your successful gym - not the whole.