Hi there, newer to this sub. My dad owned a gym in the past, and while yes I asked him this, I was curious on the general sentiment of marketing.
For smaller boutique gyms, do you do everything in house?
Do franchises rely on corporate to handle the ads they get?
Do you outsource all of it to an agency or have a buddy who is in marketing?
I am exploring a franchise gym on sale 30 mins from where I live. At peak 3 years back, it had around 3400 members and currently is at 2900 - same they had in start of 2022. 2023 Top line was $1.14M and last 12 months is at $941K. Seller agent advised that it would need a refresh and a new lease would be signed. SDE for last 12 months was about $220K. Wondering what multiple I should consider the business at.
We started a podcast where gym owners get real about what actually happens running a gym.
Not just the crazy stories, but what worked, what blew up in our faces, and the stuff we'd do differently.
The first episode leaned into wildest stories, but there are still lessons buried in them.
One guy had a member show up in a suit and a BMW, walk to his trunk, and pull out a samurai sword... Broad daylight, at a gym.
One coach talked about how he almost pushed away a guy who said he wanted to open his own gym someday, then hired him instead.
That guy worked for him for four years and now owns one of his old locations.
The lesson being don't write off ambitious people just because their long-term vision isn't staying with you forever.
And a story that reminds us why repetitive emergency response prep is so important.
Dropping the link so you can hear the full thing 🎧 https://linktr.ee/gymlaunchunfiltered
Does anyone have their own wild gym story?
Looking into WellnessLiving before I hop on to yet another demo. Comparing software options for my studio opening later this year. How is the support experience? Any regrets? Any friction in daily operations?
We use When I work to schedule coach’s classes. It was an easy to use, visually pleasing app. Now Rippling has bought it and I hate it. What app or program are you using to schedule coaches. They must be able to put in thiEr own availability in and I must be able to run payroll amounts. Looking into homebase?? Any suggestions??
I'm helping a small gym move its new member registration online and I'm looking for a gym membership form template we can customize instead of building everything from scratch. We need to collect the usual stuff like basic member info, contact details, emergency contact, date of birth, membership preferences, etc. It also needs to work well on mobile since I imagine a lot of people will fill it out on their phones.
My first thought was Google Forms since it's free and everyone already knows how to use it but I'm wondering if there are better options for something that's part of the actual sign-up process. I've also looked at Jotform, which seems to have a lot of templates and features, but honestly, it might be more than we need. I also came across Youform's gym membership form template, and it looks like it could save us some time.
For anyone who runs a gym or fitness studio, or deals with memberships, what are you using for your gym membership forms? Mainly looking for something that's easy to customize, looks professional, and isn't a pain for new members to fill out.
I'm trying to gauge the overall interest in pure Bodybuilding style gyms....is it just something I'm interested in and seeing a ton of content b/c it is what I like or is it truly pulsing in the market?
Men's & Women's bodybuilding popularity feels like it is rising. Olympia, IBBF, NPC style contests are popping up and I see a ton of brands pushing guys that are competitive vs just your typical "Hot IG Influencer" types.
There are a few "commercial" style gyms bodybuilding gymes like Carbon Performance, Absolute Recomp in Texas....but there seem to be a ton of smaller 8-10k sqft boutique gyms with Atlantis, Panatta, Gymelco, Prime, etc and a posing room and other amenities popping up. I travel a decent bit for work and can usually find a "good gym" like these in most metro areas. Some examples....
Muscle Factory in Tempe, AZ
1858 Athletic Club in northern Atlanta Suburbs
RVA Iron in Richmond, VA
I know no one can see the future, but seems like a big trend right now in the gym space. I'm in a top 6 Metro and it's completely missing this type of gym. We've got the shitty Planet Fitness, and the commercial LA Fitness/Crunch, then the country club types like Life Time and endless "class" style gyms for PureBarre, Pilates, OrangeTheory, etc.
How do I decide if I create my own in house PT cert for my trainers or require an NCCA accredited certs instead.
My current opinion is requiring a NCAA accredited one with continuing education being handled in house instead with the option for them to pay for their own certs if they so desire?
Does it matter if they’re 1099 or W-2?
I’m getting things ready for a new gym and currently comparing a few software options. Glofox is one of the platforms I’ve been looking at for memberships, class bookings, payments, and member management.
For those who’ve started a gym recently, has anyone here used Glofox? How has it been in day-to-day use?
I’m mainly looking for something reliable and easy to manage without paying for a lot of features I won’t need as a new gym.
Would appreciate hearing about your experiences with Glofox or other platforms you’d recommend.
What are you all using to keep music on 24/7? Thanks!
I'm working on leaving Gym Master and switching key fob systems. Basically all I need is 24/7 access for up to 300 people who can be individually tracked as being in the building. I do not need to take payments (I really like Square for that), so Gym Master is very overkill for us. But, Gym Master is cheap, so I'm also debating staying with them for the key fob access only aspect, and running the gym dues payments through Square Subscriptions. Thoughts?
I’m doing some research into how fitness coaches actually run their coaching business day-to-day, and I’d really appreciate some brutally honest answers from people who are currently coaching clients.
I’m particularly interested in how you handle things like:
● Workout programming
● Nutrition/meal plans
● Weekly check-ins
● Progress photos & measurements
● Client communication
● Tracking adherence/progress
● Payment collection
● Following up with clients
● Keeping track of which clients need attention
I’m curious about the actual workflow, not what you think the ideal software should look like.
A few things I’d love to know:
I’m exploring a product in this space, but I haven’t built it yet. I specifically don’t want to build another generic coaching app based on assumptions.
I’m trying to understand where the real problems are first.
So if you’re a coach, trainer, or online fitness coach, I’d genuinely appreciate your experience — including if you think existing solutions are already good enough.
Thanks!
Our boutique fitness studio has up to eight instructors now, and keeping track of schedules, memberships, payroll, and client messages across different systems is starting to get messy.
What's the best fitness studio management software you've used? I'd really rather have most of this in one place than keep adding another tool every time we need a new feature.
I've been noticing that a lot of gym websites end up looking pretty templated, which makes sense since most gyms are trying to appeal to a broad audience and a clean, safe design does that job fine. But it got me thinking about a specific niche that probably needs something different: coach-run barbell clubs and serious strength facilities, the kind of place where the whole point is that it's not for everyone.
So I built a concept site for that niche specifically, just to see what it'd look like if the design actually matched the culture instead of playing it safe. Made up a fictional facility called LOCKOUT, positioned as this ultra exclusive, coach-run barbell club in Pittsburgh. Capped at 100 members total, no drop-ins, no fighting for a rack. Three membership tiers going up to $1,250 a month for the top one, which gets you your own assigned Eleiko bar, a coach ratio of about one to four, velocity-based programming, video movement audits, even a recovery suite with sauna and cold plunge. The whole idea was to speak directly to lifters who are done with commercial gyms, waiting on equipment, dealing with staff who've never coached a real squat session in their life.
For the design I went heavy and industrial instead of clean and corporate, figuring that if a prospective member lands on a page like this, it should actually feel different from the second they scroll, not just say "we're different" in the copy. Thick borders, yellow and black contrast, sharp typography, some scroll animations where common gym complaints literally get struck through as you scroll past them.
Since a lot of you actually run gyms and deal with pricing and member acquisition for real, I'd genuinely like your take on a few things. Does the aggressive "we're not like other gyms" tone land with serious lifters or does it come off as trying too hard? At that price point members are basically paying for a luxury experience, so does raw industrial design build trust for that kind of buyer, or do people paying over a grand a month expect something closer to an Equinox spa feel instead? And if you landed on a page like this as a prospective member, is there something obvious missing that you'd expect to see before you'd even consider reaching out?
Every gym seems to have that one task that eats up way more time than it should. Have you found a tool or workflow that helped cut it down, or is it still something you deal with every week?
Always interested in learning how other owners handle it.
Hi all,
Just curious if financial consulting is the sort of thing that gym owners would benefit from, or if generally the finances are highly under control in this sort of business. Does your electronic system handle that? Do you feel like you would benefit from more clarity on where money comes from and goes to? Just a feeler - not intended to insult or assume!
Cheers
Founder of TrainerPal here, obvious bias, but this came from a real problem, not a hackathon idea.
Every small coach or gym I talked to was running client programming out of Google Sheets, check-ins over WhatsApp, and payments chased manually or through bank transfer. It works until you have more than a handful of clients, then it's just admin eating your evenings.
TrainerPal assigns a full training programme and meal plan in two clicks, clients get streaks and one-tap tracking so they actually log stuff instead of ghosting you for three weeks, and billing runs on Stripe automatically instead of you chasing bank transfers.
Free tier is 3 clients forever, no card needed, paid tiers scale from £29/mo for 25 clients up to £99/mo for 100+ and multi-coach gyms.
Genuinely curious what this sub is still duct-taping together with spreadsheets and group chats, might be missing something obvious.