Ten years ago I got my first hankering to expand the gym. Back then, I just wasn’t satisfied with what we had.

But 2016 was not the right time to reinvest in the gym. I was looking toward retiring from my job in a few years, so instead of expanding, we spruced the gym up. New flooring and paint. It would have to do. New programming started with adding HIIT classes, new yoga classes in a dedicated upstairs zen space with an awesome instructor. This brought in new clients and membership grew. Late in 2019 I started joking about needing a bigger gym and our members enthusiastically agreed.

Enter Covid March 2020: we were shut down for 6 months. Honestly, my wife and I didn’t know if/when we would open back up. We started offering outdoor exercise classes in the summer at our local town pavillion for free to give our clients a safe space to continue to exercise together. We did re-open in September 2020 with a new scheduled format of a max of 4 members in the gym for safety.

Then, in 2022, a few years into retiring from my job, I got the urge again to expand the gym. Actually, the desire never left, but now I had the resources and time to do it. I realized our current space would not allow for the growth of more membership.

The gym had evolved to what it was in 2022 through trial and error. You can read our (abbreviated) story here, but over the years several factors landed us to where the gym was.

The result of our evolution was a gym that we were very comfortable with and liked very much. At roughly 1100 square feet, it essentially had everything needed for our members. It was right-sized for our customers and efficient.

So why did I think it should be bigger?

Even though the gym served our members well, I knew in my heart it wasn’t the right size for our community. I wanted to create the gym that the community needed. In the past, we felt that demand would right-size our gym – that we would grow into business. I believe that philosophy was flawed now as I have seen several local businesses build out and then grow.

Other than the high school gym, we are the only local training gym within 20 minutes of the village.

Our gym is part of our purpose and our service to the community. It’s been a labor of love and for the past 38 years. The only income the gym generates is the rent it pays (which was less than a studio apartment would yield).

The gym is not sustainable in its current form. If the business had to rent the space it has now on our property at market rates, it would quickly be broke. This needs to change and here’s why:

Barb and I are in our 60’s now and though we are going strong with our gym, we don’t know what the future holds. What I do know is that if the gym is to survive us, it will need to be sustainable. It will need to be something that others would be willing to run.

The Building

I knew I needed to add at least another 500 square feet. We’d need that for classes and for more open space in the center of the gym. With our post Covid scheduled model of attending, certain times end up being more crowded than others.

The main problem with Phase 1 was that we could not simply add space to the existing gym. The roof was a hodgepodge of old early 1900’s structural timbers, including posts, beams, rafters and a lean-to added in 1990.

Imagine trying to add on to this:

Here’s how we did it:

(More details of Phase 1 at Building a Community Gym.)

• Phase 1 of the gym was to construct something that could support a new addition that connects seamlessly.
• Phase 2 would be the addition of workout space.
• Phase 3 would be a new entry way.

We are currently at the end of Phase 2.

And Here’s the ‘Better’ Part:

According to Codie Sanchez, gym businesses have an 80% fail rate in their first 5 years.

But gyms don’t fail because they are a bad business to enter into. Gyms fail because they are poorly run.

There are plenty of gyms like ours that do well. Chris Cooper, founder of Two-Brain Business and the authority on successful gyms, says that being a successful gym owner requires that you not only deliver what’s best for your clients, but also what is best for your business. This is what he refers to as being “Two-Brained”.

Most people that open gyms are people that love fitness: athletes, ex-athletes, “gym-rats” (Ron), Personal Trainers, and Physical Therapists. Only the ones that develop their Second ‘Business’ Brain will they be successful.

On a side note, I contacted Two-Brain Business a few months back to join their mentorshiop program. We wanted to do this expansion right. But I backed out because I realized: 1) There were so many weak spots I already knew of in our business that needed fixing 2) I have a daughter that’s been through gym mentorship already and 3) Chris Cooper is literally an open book. I can find everything he will teach me in his books.

The Business Brain

The first step in starting, redirecting or growing a business should be to revisit your “Mission Statement”, or more accurately, your VPM (Vision, Mission, Purpose) statements. You can find our Vision, Mission and Purpose Statements here.

We already meet many of the objectives laid out in our new VPM, but there are few we will be focusing on moving forward:

• Excellence in facility
• Excellence in training.
• Empowerment of all of our clients to have the tools and knowledge to meet their goals. (More on this later).
• Sustainability of the business.

The primary metrics we will use to determine our success will be:

• Client success in meeting their goals
• Membership

Looking forward to 2026.