Blunders and brilliance: microgym owners talk about 1st year in business

We all make mistakes, especially when opening a business for the first time. Learning by doing frequently means learning the hard way. Fortunately, we all have moments of brilliance too! I asked six fitness business owners to reflect back to when they first opened and share a first year blunder as well as something they considered a really smart move. If you own a fitness business or other service business feel free to share your own in the comments.

The Questions:

1) Name one thing you did the first year in business that you would consider a “blunder” or that you wish you could “do over”?

2) What’s the smartest thing you did when you first opened your business?

The Responses:

Greg Carver – Strength Box @strengthbox

1) Biggest mistake: Relying too much on press releases, articles, social media and online videos. These are great tools for building credibility, but not a substitute for face-to-face traditional networking. You have to get out there, meet and connect with local people, and generate referrals.

2) Smartest thing: Being able to define exactly why my business is different. At StrengthBox, everything from the brand itself to the way in which we coach is built around that definition. That makes it easier for clients to justify why they should do business with us.

Michael Rutherford – Bootcamp Fitness @coachrut

My biggest blunder was being ALL business ALL the time. I was on it 24/7 365. My personal life suffered.

My Smart move was establishing a merchant account and collecting Credit Cards. This kept me in the coaching mode and out of collector mode.

Candice Howe – Reebok CrossFit LifeSpark @candicehowe

1) The biggest 'blunder' I made was expecting that I could do everything and work 15 hours a day. If I had a do-over I would have invested in help earlier, delegated sooner and made time for my rest and recovery.

2) The smartest thing I did (early on) was to define my partner’s roles and mine in the business. Then, (later on) I found someone who loved admin and systems to help us streamline our admin backend.

Joel Hatch – Bomber Athlete @bomberathlete

1) Blunder: Bad website and no client management system.

2) Smartest thing: Opened my own business and I’m not a slave to someone else!

Kate Galliett -Prokine Performance @kgalliett

1) Two parts: Business side and service side. From the business - wasting money on flyers (too many, no direction on how to get them out to people who'd be interested in signing up.) The best clients have come from referrals, which takes longer, but is so much more valuable.

From the service side-trying to go with trends for classes (i.e. offering "TRX Group Classes" because it was 'hot' at the time we opened.) We didn't have foresight yet to realize that our own vision trumped any 'trendy class'. We dumped those classes quick in favor of our own brand of strength & conditioning and our classes have grown steadily since then!

2) Hiring an advisor with experience running a micro gym made a HUGE difference in our rate of growth. We only had experience as 1-on-1 trainers, not with group classes. We knew we were good trainers, but couldn't figure out how to translate that into large group classes. Having an expert guide us and hold us firm to a task list made all the difference in how we grew our group classes, which is a big part of exponentially growing our business!

Also, we're in a heavily saturated market (6 micro gyms within hundreds of yards of each other...it's bizarre for sure) and we never tried to be like any of them. We chose to stick with what we do best and not try to be the kettlebell guy, or be the CrossFit guys, or be the owners who talk crap about everyone else. We just educated people about what we do and why it works and we let them feel the difference in our workouts.

Again, it's taken a little longer than if we had directly price-warred with these other gyms, but now in year two we are getting clients from these other gyms who were getting hurt, not getting amazing results, or who have seen people they know transform at our gym.

Jason Seib – Clackamas Physical Conditioning - @jasonseib

1) We focused way too much on results for each individual client and we forgot to make things fun and that some people don't want 100%.

2) We began tracking everything we could think of. We still find new things to track, but we have a good picture of our biz over 5 years.

What about you? Please share your first year blunders and smart moves in the comments.