By paring down my gyms, I’m better able to please customers, boost profits, and get my life back.
For most of my career in the fitness industry, I ran ‘big box’ gyms - giant facilities with amenities that ranged from child care to aerobics classes to walls for climbing - in my home state of Minnesota. These clubs tried to cram as many offerings into their spaces as possible, and at first I didn’t question that philosophy.
I started operating my first gym when I was 21. While I was playing pro racquetball in Florida, the owners of a troubled large fitness center in Willmar, Minn., asked me to come back and turn the business around. Over the next 5 years I worked like crazy: I opened and closed the club myself, ran the front desk, and even painted the walls. Eventually I made the club profitable and bought out the owners. Later I leveraged the building to open 5 more gyms, all of them successful - and huge. Read more.
Photo by Thomas Strand.
No comments yet.