Locating and Setting Up Your Business
There are several ways to keep your costs and risk factors down in the first few years of growing your business. Keeping your obligations simple while allowing yourself the greatest freedom to charge what you please, keep 100 percent of the profits, create your own policies, and develop your own style will ensure that as your reputation grows you are rewarded accordingly. There are benefits to being a gym contractor or employee, most of which fall under the category of being unencumbered when your shift is over: How much of your income is it worth to have someone else handle the responsibilities of insurance, booking, billing, paying the rent, and maintaining equipment and marketing?
Too often trainers pair up with health clubs in hopes of growing a client base but become disillusioned with their cut of the profits and lack of freedom to try new things that don’t fall under the clubs’ policies. Pairing up with a health club can be a great learning experience in the beginning of your career, but make sure you have clear plans on when you’ll fly off on your own and how you’ll break free from that partnership.
Working independently part time in a different facility to build your client base while you work part time for someone else can help solve the problem some trainers face when they want to dissolve their club ties and keep their client following. Contractual obligations can prevent you from keeping the clients you met under the employ of a club, which is fair since they’re paying for all of the extras that allow you to practice your craft.
If you are new to the industry a wise approach might be to start small, working with clients at their locations. Build a solid reputation and following first, then look at renting a commercial studio or low-cost alternative venue.
Become familiar with the various gyms and health clubs in your area. If you find a client who is already a member of a club, they may want you to work with them there. Or you may have clients who want to work with you in a gym setting and will look to you for advice as to which gym to join.
Whether you’re starting from scratch as a solo enterprise or trying to build your client base part time, consider the following creative venue ideas.
Recreation and Community Centers
Tyrone Minor of Chizel, Inc., finds unique situations like recreation centers, client homes, and parks to keep his costs down. Some cities offer low annual fees for recreation centers as a perk for their residents, such as the St. Paul, Minnesota Parks and Recreation Centers. For an annual $30 fee residents and nonresidents employed in St. Paul enjoy 11 workout gyms throughout the city filled with much of the same equipment featured at expensive health clubs. There is also a swimming pool available for a small fee, should you decide to incorporate water aerobics, therapy, or lap swimming as part of your routine. Other cities have similar programs.
You can custom outfit client homes to suit your teachings with a little crafty shopping, and your new outfitting service can become an additional source of income. Some clients will already have existing home gyms fully loaded, but others may not have even considered the idea of a home gym and welcome the suggestion. You may find some clients happy and relieved to know you’ll not only create a home gym for them but also keep their costs down by shopping for used equipment and training them in their homes, saving them time and commute costs.
When Lynne Wells first started as a personal trainer in New York City, she worked with clients in a gym and paid a fee to the gym for that privilege. Today, she works with clients primarily at their homes. If you’re going to work from home, your space requirements are minimal and your startup costs can be as low as a few hundred dollars (depending on what office and exercise equipment you already own). You’ll need a small area to do your administrative work and a place to store any equipment you might use. A clear space in your living room is all you need if you do training at home, or you may set up a dedicated workout room if you have the space.
Personal Training Studios and Private Gyms
Renting small personal training studios and privately owned gyms is another way to keep costs down, which Minor takes advantage of, using several around the city, each chosen so clients don’t have to travel far to see him. Each has its own inventory of equipment. “Just Google search ‘personal training studio’ and the name of your city,” Minor says. The cost will vary depending on location and equipment.
Creating Custom Home Gyms for Profit
Tyrone Minor helps clients set up their own home gyms by first taking a detailed account of their goals and budgets. He then scours www.craigslist.org for used equipment in great condition, and if when he inspects it he finds it safe and functioning well, he purchases it, cleans it up, makes repairs or upgrades to make it perfect, and then puts it into a home gym package for the customer priced at a markup he can profit from. This is a great deal for the customer because their custom shopper is also their trainer and understands their goals. Minor can help affect home workouts by setting up these gyms, therefore increasing the chances his clients will stay on track with their fitness goals.
Another location option is a mobile studio. Outfit a van or mobile home with exercise equipment so you can take a gym to your clients’ homes or offices. Decide what type of equipment you’d like to have, then consult with a recreational vehicle dealer or a van conversion or customizing shop to find out how much it will cost you to get the setup you want. Google “mobile gyms” to bask in the creativity of other entrepreneurs for inspiration. See www.gymagic.com and www.mobilegymusa.com for examples.
Generally, a mobile studio will cost less than half of a small commercial storefront type of studio. Your biggest expense is the vehicle itself, which can range from $20,000 to $40,000 or more, depending on how elaborate you want to get and whether you buy new (in which the sky is the limit!) or used. More and more businesses are going to their clients these days, but make sure your particular market will support this service and give you a sufficient return on your investment. A good approach would be to start by visiting your clients in their homes and offices; then, depending on their degree of interest, determine if they would use a mobile studio and be willing to pay proportionate fees.
Parks, beaches, and wooded settings can provide inspirational atmosphere to your themed classes and work especially well for groups. Most often it is free to teach a class in a public setting, but the problem is that you can’t reserve it. There are plenty of reservation options with boards of local park systems, though, and they come with perks that may help details of your event, such as having a kitchen readily available after your dance class for refreshment and snack preparation.
Community centers sometimes offer use of their attached sports fields and use of accompanying facilities for a fee. Consider how a beautiful, natural backdrop would affect your next class or one-to-one workout.
Of course, you can open your own facility, targeted to clients who want personal service but don’t want to join a traditional health club, gym, or spa. If you’re going to invest in a commercial facility, be sure the market can support the business you envision. You need to calculate your investment; depending on the type of studio and location, you’ll need anywhere from $50,000 to $350,000 to furnish and equip your operation. Then figure out how much you can pay in cash and how much you’re going to have to borrow. You’ll need to do the market research to determine if you can generate sufficient business to service your debt and still operate your company. Whatever facility type you choose, you’ll need to start connecting to health-focused markets. Work through the exercise in Figure 4–1 on page 52 to jump-start that process.
warning
The volume of music during group exercise classes should measure no more than 90 decibels (dB), and the instructor’s voice should be about 10 dB louder—no more than 100 dB total—based on standards established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. A class C sound level meter can be purchased for under $200 and will provide a way to monitor sound to avoid damaging the hearing of you, your clients, and your instructors.
The design of your facility is up to you. You might have one large open room with the various types of equipment grouped together. Or you might have several rooms dedicated to specific functions, like a weight room and a cardiovascular equipment room.
The Franchise Option
If you’re considering opening a studio, there are franchise opportunities. Fitness Together has more than 340 locations throughout the United States and five countries. The concept involves one-on-one personal training in a private workout setting. For more information, visit http://fitnesstogether.com.
Trainer Abby Guinard in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, decided to open a franchise with Get in Shape for Women. Guinard was an active cross-fitter. “I was personally very successful and considered myself an elite athlete,” she says. She looked into doing a training business on her own for years while she ran a very successful marketing business. Then her sister joined Get in Shape for Women and loved it. Guinard was intrigued enough to attend a franchise meeting with her skeptical fiancé, who had tried to talk her out of it until then. He loved it, and now theirs is one of the top franchises. “The premise of the franchise was already different,” she says. “Small groups, a unique model with a nutritional focus. The bottom reality I came to realize is that while I considered myself an elite athlete, it is everyday people that I can help.”
Planet Fitness (http://planetfitness.com) is another franchise gym that has over 1,000 clubs in the United States and is currently expanding into Canada. Their stats include a typical 13 to 18 employees (most are open 24/7/364) per location with a 25 percent average return on investment in the second year. And most of their franchisees do not come from fitness industry backgrounds.
FIGURE 4–1: National Physical Activity Plan
Sad Brains Crave Fat
Research findings on the link between feeding oneself and emotions were reported in a 2011 American Society for Clinical Investigation article, “Fatty Acid-Induced Gut-Brain Signaling Attenuates Neural and Behavioral Effects of Sad Emotion in Humans.” Findings proved the relationship between fat cravings and depression, or sadness, come from your brain. When the test brains were sad, they produced responses telling them they needed fat. Those neurological messages stop when the brain is happy. This exploration of the human body’s messaging system of hunger, satiety, food intake, visceral sensory signaling, and emotions will provide insight into a wide range of disorders, including obesity, eating disorders, and depression. Read more of the findings on the Journal of Clinical Investigation site at: www.jci.org and search 46380.
Your clients will appreciate clean, spacious locker rooms with showers, toilets, sinks, and dressing areas, as well as a place for them to safely store their personal belongings. If your business is going to be a small studio where clients work primarily under individual supervision, which means it will rarely be crowded, your locker rooms do not have to be able to accommodate more than a couple of people at a time.
stat fact
According to IDEA Health and Fitness Association (www.ideafit.com), an organization for health and fitness professionals, the recommended square footage per person for a group exercise class is 36 square feet; for a step class, it’s 40 square feet per person.
The facility needs to have a sufficient number of electrical outlets if you are going to be using such machines as electric treadmills. Position equipment to provide a safe, comfortable environment for your clients. For cardiovascular equipment (treadmills, bicycles, elliptical machines, etc.), allow at least two to three feet of space between each machine. Clients need sufficient space to use the machines without interfering with another client. Have at least three feet of space behind each treadmill.
Think Personal Safety
Keep your personal safety in mind at all times. If you work with clients in their homes and offices, be cautious when you travel. Let someone else know your schedule, and consider checking in with that person on a regular basis. If you fail to check in, have a plan for what action they should take.
If you have a studio, be sure your reception desk is staffed at all times so people coming in and out are tracked. If you do not have sufficient personnel to do this, consider keeping the doors locked.
How Much Activity Is Enough?
A list of our nation’s general health statistics generated by the combined U.S. health agencies and provided by www.fitness.gov include:
Adults 18 and older need 30 minutes of physical activity on five or more days a week to be healthy; children and teens need 60 minutes of activity a day for their health.
Significant health benefits can be obtained by including a moderate amount of physical activity (e.g., 30 minutes of brisk walking or raking leaves, 15 minutes of running, 45 minutes of playing volleyball). Additional health benefits can be gained through greater amounts of physical activity.
There are significant health benefits in taking 30 to 60 minutes of activity and breaking it down into smaller segments of 10 or 15 minutes throughout the day.
Moderate daily physical activity can reduce substantially the risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers, such as colon cancer. Daily physical activity helps to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, helps prevent or retard osteoporosis, and helps reduce obesity, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and symptoms of arthritis.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death among men and women in the United States. Physically inactive people are twice as likely to develop coronary heart disease as regularly active people.
Only 37 percent of adults report they are not physically active. Three in ten adults get the recommended amount of physical activity.
The free-weight area may be the most dangerous place in your facility. If your clients are not using the proper techniques, they could easily hurt themselves or someone else. Be sure they know how to safely handle weight plates, load a barbell, and handle dumbbells. Also, be sure you have adequate floor space for the clientele you’ll be serving, and allow plenty of room between benches. The free-weight area should be supervised at all times, even though you may have clients who want to weight train on their own.
warning
If you choose to sublet space in a gym or health club, or to contract with another facility to provide trainers, be prepared for the fact that anything can happen to that other business, and the result could range from exciting to devastating.
Medical Mysteries
Virtually every time you turn on your TV or pick up a newspaper, you’ll see something about a new medical study that proves or disproves something. You can find studies that say caffeine is good for you and studies that say caffeine is bad for you. You can find studies that claim certain products or activities cause cancer and others that say those same products or activities are totally harmless. If you’re confused, your clients are likely even more so.
Most people put a tremendous amount of faith in studies reported by the media. They are also often unable to recognize when someone with a legitimate medical degree is trying to sell them a dubious product, using a medical study as a sales technique. How can you sort out what’s real and what’s not? Here are some tips for evaluating medical studies:
Find out if the study used animals or humans as subjects. When studies use lab animals such as mice or rats, the results are not always relevant to human physiology.
How many participants did the study include? The more participants there were, the greater the chance that the results are valid. A good study will have at least 100 subjects.
Where was the study published? A peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal is a credible source.
What was the geographic scope of the study and how many researchers were involved? When tests are conducted only in one place by a small group of researchers, the chances for bias are higher than when multiple locations and more researchers are involved.
Was there a control or placebo group? Without such a group, you won’t know the true results.
Are the findings ready for immediate application? News reports of breakthroughs in weight control are common, but frequently the techniques are not available because more testing still needs to be done. Additional tests may disprove the theory.
Attractive, friendly signage can help convey the standard of healthy, respectful behavior you expect from gym users. Making the message humorous with graphics can help.
Before designing your own facility, visit a substantial number of gyms, health clubs, and small studios to get ideas. Think carefully about the services you’re going to provide and what type of environment will be most appropriate.