So you want to open your own gym? - Part 1

 

It's probably one of the more popular. Goals and aspirations of personal trainers and coaches when they enter the industry, right? 

 

And especially a lot of the entry points of the industry are commercial facilities

such as the Gym Group, Pure Gym, JD, so forth and so forth.

I think that really prompts people to want to run their own facility 

because they are largely dictated to … what happens in the gym, the kit they have in the gym, the space, the attendance, the usage, you know, 

having their own environment to curate what they would love to do and be able to run their business with no restrictions. 

 

It's a really common thing and I think it's a great goal to have in general

 

if this is you?

 

Here are some considerations and things to think about when going to open your own gym. 

 

And this is coming off the back of owning own facilities, running commercial facilities and also supporting and

coaching and consulting personal trainers opening their own facilities. 

 

The first thing is going to come down to understanding location. Location is going to be really, important for kind of obvious reasons from, what your demographic is. 

 

Now, you've got a few different classifications of location. 

 

You've got city centre (old office blocks & shops)

You have town centre (again old office units, and shops)

You've got more residential, your kind of very popular works unit, industrial unit that you can convert into a facility. And they're great because, you know, they're pretty much open boxes, usually with a mezzanine, usually with a bit of parking outside.

 

All have different pros and cons. And would typical inlfuence the marekt your after, model you run, and schedule/hours you operate.

 

For example, city centre and town centre. You're probably going to be restricted on parking. 

So that's probably going to dictate a little bit of your demographic, 

i.e. local residents, especially town centres and city centres, and also probably more of a corporate target for your customers versus 

residential, where you're probably going to be focused around the local community. You would need to consider travel routes, main roads, for people coming to and from work. 

 

All those types of things will dictate a hell of a lot of your opening and closing times, and your peak times. Therefore, volume of sessions and can give you guidance on the business model and protections.

Now, typically there are four peak times over the course of a day. 

You've got first thing in the morning, 

You've got mid-morning,

You've got lunchtime and 

You've got the standard, very popular kind of five till eight, five till kind of nine, maybe a little bit earlier. 

 

Why are we telling you first? (and there will be more “parts” to this email series)

 

because WE DOUBLE DOWN AND FOCUS ON WHAT WE “LIKE” TO DO AND NOT CONSIDER THE THINGS WE NEED TO BE AWARE OF AND HAVE TO DO!