Sitting quietly... thinking, wondering and reflecting
i am in this really interesting space lately for growth, reflection and evaluation of my life, my goals and my purpose. Every time I take to writing this blog- I seem to be in a similar mind space. This time is a little different though…
A couple weeks ago I made the decision to close my gym, which I had owned, managed and grown over the course of 7 years and 2 months. The fitness industry was kind to me and my family for a lot of years- not just from owning the gym, but also from my time spent as a personal trainer- working at a regular gym.
For a lot of years I loved the fitness space, meeting people where they were at and helping them transform their lives and their health to the degree that they wanted. In my over 12 years in the industry, I helped clients lose tens of thousands of pounds, gain confidence and even in a way mentored many trainers in my community to start their own gyms and do the same.
Owning a gym is one of the most fulfilling things I have done to date in my life, but I am only in my early 30’s so I also still have a lot left of life to live.
People have asked me why I closed the gym…
How do I answer? Honestly… careful not to give too much information or be too negative.
It’s weird, because 3 weeks before I made the hard decision to close the gym- we received an award for “Best Gym in Wyoming” this award was given based off our social and online presence of reviews. We had over 220 reviews between various platforms ranging from Facebook, Google, Yelp and every where inbetween.
The issue with having that many reviews- it didn’t equate to sales.
A business lives and dies by transactions, and money that customers pay for a product or service.
Turns out a service based gym has a ridiculous amount of overhead between rent, utilities, software, client incentives, payroll and everything in between. The business last year- being our best year in business ran 30% margins- not bad.
This year though- in 2019- we saw a rapid decline in transactions, clients in the door and people who were willing to spring the expense of caring for their health. I don’t know why- because looking around we seemed to be kicking ass, but no one was coming in, and the people who were coming in were not enough to counter the loss of clients every month. This is called churn.
So we ramped up our service and retention efforts, got better in every way. Business continued to slip.
January was down 20% from the year before.
February - June were down 30% from the year before- goodbye profit.
July- August were down 35% from the year before, this is where we started losing money and cutting extraneous expenses, from wages, to softwares we rarely used. We continued marketing- but our ad costs skyrocketed while people coming in the door dipped.
September- November we hung on for dear life, said our prayers, cut more costs and still didn’t have more clients coming in…. we were down 50% from the year before, and I was out of money that I had stowed away just to get us this far.
Talking to people in the industry in my area proved to me that it wasn’t just us… every business and gym business around was down this year.
After much thought, prayer, consul and consideration I decided I was done. I could have cut my staff and plowed through- but truth be told I don’t have the passion or the energy to work 18 hours days just to survive.
There came a point of no return… looking at my business, how deep in debt we had gotten and finally realizing there was no way out of the hole than to simply get out of the hole negotiate my debts and pivot.
Pivot…
The word that had become my mantra in 2019.
So here I find myself, still buttoning up my business and pondering what is next for me… It’s a strange place to find myself.
I can’t look at closing my business as a failure, because I know I gave it everything I have. I fought until fighting more didn’t make any sense, so now I pivot… where to? Who knows, but I will keep you posted