How-to Open a Fitness Studio A-Z
Are you a personal trainer or a fitness professional with a dream of one day opening your own gym or studio?
Well I remember being there, but fast forward many years and I bought, built, and sold five studios of my own.
I’ve had partnerships, solo ventures, I’ve used financing, I’ve self financed.
And I have helped dozens of other trainers on four different continents open their first, next, 5th or 10th locations.
So I’ve been building this kind of A-Z series on the steps to take and how to layout your plan successfully, really helping people acknowledge some of the key areas that are generally skipped or misunderstood in this process.
Heck I remember when I first got this crazy notion.
I remember the look of the real estate agent showing me the 15,000 square foot building and he plans I had for the grand temple of iron!
Little did I know my savings of $27,000 was not going to finance the million dollar project!
I remember being deflated when next we looked at the beat up 2000 square foot dance studio, and because it was the only option we could afford felt we had to proceed.
Little did I know at the time the bullet I dodged.
We went on to build a business that would do more than $1,000,000 in personal training revenue in it’s first 18 months of operation (this from a trainer who previously struggled to generate $50-70k annually on my own.)
I sold that business three years ago, but it’s still operating today, nearly 14 years after it began with the humble beginnings of that beat up dance studio filled with hopes and dreams.
If that sounds at all like you, I hope these videos help you do it faster than I did, and skip so many mistakes that cost me tens of thousands of dollars!
Part 1: Visualizing Your Dream and Finding and Validating A Good Location
Part 2: Projecting Your Operating Costs, Setting Pricing, and How-to Plan to Be Profitable On Day 1
Part 3: Renovation Costs, Total Opening Costs, Financing, and Negotiating Your Lease
If you found any of this helpful I hope you’ll subscribe! (Just click here to subscribe www.youtube.com/mrfitnessmarketing)
The Personal Trainer Technician
I want you to look at your schedule today and for the next few weeks and I want you to schedule a few hours each week to work on the most critical project for your business, your business plan. I would say the majority of personal trainers I’ve met as well as other entrepreneurs don’t have a functional business plan. I think the reason for this is that we are all (as Michael Gerber says in his book the E-Myth) technicians at heart. We are very good at doing the work but in the transition to entrepreneur we struggle to duplicate ourselves or grasp the idea of repeat systems as opposed to just doing it ourselves because we will do it right.
Many people feel that if they are not looking for funding of some sort that they don’t really need to spend time drafting a length and in depth proposal. If this applies to you it’s time to shift your mindset. Though after three years of operating One-to-1 Fitness I’ve rarely referred to our business plan I can assure you that plan has been a strong contributor to our success.
Writing a business plan will identify many problems before you face them, before they cost you thousands of dollars. The budgeting and financial projections provide clear and concise goals and allow you to answer the question, “is this business viable and worthwhile?” You will begin to generate ideas about systems and marketing based on sales projections as you can’t help but think, “how will I handle that many people?” or “if we grow this fast I can’t possibly handle it all who will I need to hire? How am I going to hire them?”
Even if your business is already up and running you need to write your business plan, the value of being able to look at present and future is a critical component of your system for long term success as a Profitable Personal Trainer, fitness marketer, and entrepreneur.
Some of the resources I’ve found valuable for writing my business plan were:
- Business Plan Pro a small piece of software that helps you get out of the gate by simply completing the blanks and forming the base structure of your business plan.
- A simple spreadsheet to being estimating revenues and expenses. If you’d like my current budgeting spreadsheet I am happy to share it with you simply contact me with ‘Budget Spreadsheet’ in the subject line.
- A book called Building a Dream (actually a textbook from a college class) by Walter S. Good
- And another book called Business for Beginners by Frances McGuckin