How would one get started in Motocross?

How does one get started running their own gym?

• How much capital is needed to start a gym? How does one go about finding an area for such a business and what else does one need to think about to be sucessful?

• Answer:

  This is not a cut-and-dry question. The most important thing in my opinion is always start with "why." Why are you starting a gym? Why are you starting any business really? It should be meaningful to you. Then, what's your actual vision for the gym? What do you picture 2 or 3 or 5 years from now? There is significant variance in kinds of gyms. For instance, a Crossfit gym could be in 400 square feet, have 2 cheap racks, 4 barbells, some bands, some dumbbells, and a small variance of equipment and you might be able to get the whole thing started out of your garage even for 20k or less. A commercial gym though, needs more space, more machines and significantly more capital investment. A fifty thousand to one hundred thousand square foot gym, in a downtown location could be up to 10-15 million or more. Next, where are you opening? Are you buying or renting space? Buying requires more cost upfront, but more value long-term (in Vancouver or New York, say $600 a square foot or more to buy, $100 a square foot or more to lease or rent in a downtown space) and being in a downtown area is significantly more expensive than being in the burbs. I like being downtown or just outside of downtown because that's where I choose to live. I can also charge more relative to the burbs because my costs are so much higher, and because I'm close to work for more people, it's more convenient for a lot of people. I have colleagues that are equally happy working out their garage 90 minutes outside the downtown core, or owning a larger space with parking 60 minutes from downtown. Being in an industrial space is cheaper and a lot of small gyms and crossfit gyms go this route. Changerooms and shower facilities are expensive, and so a lot of crossfit and small gyms skip them or skimp on them anyway. Being in a smaller community like middle of no where Ohio or New Mexico, your expenses will be way cheaper from everything to rent, equipment lease or purchase even, parking, advertising/marketing, etc...etc... Then, price of equipment varies significantly. Do you want the top of the line Woodway high speed treadmills or will the cheapest commerical model Cybex do? Do you even want treadmills? Do you even want ellipticals? Do you want bikes? Do you want rowers (which are probably the cheapest of commercial equipment to purchase and maintain) Do you plan on hosting spin classes? Do you plan on hosting classes at all like yoga, or pilates, or zumba? You'll need a space for that that's open and some free-weights/bands. Would you rather specialize in something like classes, pre and post-natal care, weight training, athletic training, crossfit, circuit training, etc...etc... Are you going buy Kaiser Cable systems (at a 2 or 3x premium to regular cable machines)? or are you going to go with a cheap no-name brand stack? Do you want a lat pulldown machine or a cable row machine or a reverse hyper or a GHD, or some hammer strength stuff. How many benches? How many racks? How many dumbbells? Will you buy a whole set? Will you buy a modular set? Will you buy bands and medicine balls? Will you buy high quality or low quality? You have to figure out how to utilize the space, which means you'll have to go on MLS or hire a commercial real-estate agent and go and check out spaces and see if they fit within your vision. Then figure out how you'll utilize the space that you settle on, or like the most. Evaluate the amount of foot traffic walking by, the convenience factor, what businesses are close by, who your target market will be, etc...etc... You can run a gym in nearly any kind of space but I would find something with high ceilings, minimal windows, concrete walls (as opposed to drywall) and open space. Then I would read a book like 'Designing Strength Training Facilities' by Michael Boyle and figure out how I'm going to fit the equipment I want, into the space I have. You'll need to think about staffing. Will you have a front desk? Will you hire a book-keeper? Will you need personal trainers or other coaches? People to teach classes? Will you have online scheduling or do it manually? Will you do it all yourself? Will you offer nutrition? Will you sell food items like protein shakes or supplements? If you're making shakes or other food you need to worry about food serving laws in your state and food inspection agencies. After that all that, you'll need to get insurance too, which is not cheap in this industry but it will be based off your location, equipment, size and amount of customers. So once you decide what you actually want to build and lay it all out, then you can figure out how much it's going to cost. The only thing you need to think about in terms of being successful it to decide what success means to you. Do you want to make a living or do you want to make a big social impact? Do you want a space you can work out in and have a little fun, or do you want to run a tight ship where you squeeze every last dollar out of your clientele? Once you figure that out, just make sure you make more money than you spend. That's as simple as business gets. If you want more specific advice, hire a coach!