What is up guys? My name is Coach Joe and I am the owner of the Lines-In which is a 5,000 square foot shrinking and addition facility. This is actually my third location and I want to talk about some of the mistakes that I made when opening up a gym. So let's grab some coffee and get right in on it. Let's go. What is up guys? Coach Joe at the Lines-In. First, let's take a sip of this amazing coffee. A lot of you guys want to content on how I run the gym business or maybe you are someone who wants to start a gym, have a garage gym, they're looking at scale, whatever. But I figured a really good place to start would be the biggest mistakes that I've made opening up this gym. This is my third location. So I have a ton of wisdom on what has worked, what hasn't worked, and hopefully you set you guys up by avoiding the things that I ran into and give you guys a lot less of a bumpier road to get this business rocking and rolling. But before we get on into it, make sure that you subscribe to the channel, give this video a like and hit the notification bell so you can stay up to date with all the videos that are coming out. A little bit of background on the gym, the current location I'm in is 5,000 square feet. I'm in a commercial space and we do all things strengths, what related. So powerlifting, strong man, general strength conditioning, I have about 60 members in the gym currently. So speaking of location, that's actually the first of biggest mistake that I had made. So mistake number one was rushing the location that I was going to have the gym in. I got to turn on my cool little light. Just sets the mood a lot better. Do you guys feel that? I feel it. Feels good. Back on track. And if you guys know me and I'm sure a lot of you were like me is that I get super passionate and excited about something and I want to get it done right away. Now that's not necessarily the best way to go about things because not taking enough time is actually what kind of hurt me in the long run and postpone me being able to open up. And when it came to location, I overlooked a lot of little things that ended up setting me back a long way. So if you guys have watched my other videos about what had happened with my previous gyms, you guys understand if you haven't, I'll put a link up right here. But basically I ran into a lot of structural problems with the building. So the floors were instituted for dropping heavy weight. You know, I couldn't get my music as loud as I wanted to. The parking was a major issue and so on and so forth. There's a lot more things, but check out that video up above. But something that you guys really want to pay attention to, especially with location in regards is the lease. Okay. So how loud can you play your music? What is the parking situation going to be like, how many bathrooms do you have? Is it too big? Too small. Do you want retail? Do you want commercial? Retails going to be more expensive, more visibility, commercial. It's going to be bigger, not as much visibility, but it's going to be probably cheaper per square foot. So these are all things that you really have to look into. And don't just settle with what's in the lease. Like you can make adjustments, make as much adjustments as you need to, and make sure that you're happy with the lease, and then it hits everything that you need to. Because even though it may be something small, it can end up being something that's going to bite you in the butt and kind of screw up the whole grand plan of what you got going on. You really want to make sure you can drop heavy weights in the floor and that they're not going to crumble in the buildings, not going to fall down. Just say experience. Okay guys, so mistake number two that I made when I opened up the lines then was I was way too general and I didn't have a niche. So I would say for you guys, one of the biggest suggestions that I would give to you is to make sure you have a niche that you're catering to. When I first open up the gym, I wanted to be the guy who could do everything because I figured I could get as many people under the gym as possible. I wanted to be the boot camp guy, the strength guy, the weight loss guy, the zoom guy, the pilates guy, the Olympic lifting guy, the straw man guy, the underwater diving guy. I wanted to be everything. But like I said earlier, you want to have a niche. You want to get really good at that one thing and become the expert in the area for that one thing. And that's just going to draw people to you. So it wasn't until I really just kind of knuckle down and said, I'm just doing strength and conditioning with a huge emphasis on straw man and powerlifting that more and more people started to recognize the gym for that and come to the gym because they were looking for that specifically. Another quick thing that I realized too is often people would ask me all the time, well, what is your gym about? And I used to kind of ramble on and on. But what you really want to do is have a one sentence to describe to somebody exactly what your gym is about. So we are in a least strength and conditioning facility with an emphasis on straw man training. Boom. Simple, concise to the point they understand what you're about. It's not confusing and you're not confusing the audience that you're talking to. They know what they're getting. Niche, niche, niche, niche. Another side note too is if you're doing something that you know isn't true to yourself, the people are going to sense that. So if you want to be a straw man gym, but you're dabbling in a limbic weightlifting and cross it all the time, people are going to sense that. You want to be into what you're about and what you're teaching. And it's going to help you stay in this for the long haul. So don't just do whatever is trendy or whatever the hot thing is at the time. Stick to your guns and do what you like to do and what you are passionate about. All right. So now that we have the gym set up, all the beautiful pristine equipment is in the music is bumping. We have the big garage door. People are going to be flying into this place. Wrong. So mistake number three was thinking that just because I had everything all figured out and I was set up a established business that it was going to just draw people in magically through the doors when that was far from the truth. So my biggest thing that I would tell you guys if you're opening up a space is make sure that you have some sort of marketing strategy in place, whether that would be through social media, through ads, just getting involved with business development in the community and just meeting new people or something like that. You need to have that stuff in place because people are not just going to come flooding in the doors. You're new to the area. They don't know that you're here. So you have to try to make as much noise as possible literally and figuratively to get people to realize where your at and where your location is. Have those things in place well ahead of time and understand that there's going to be a lot of slow time and it's going to be almost like a snowball effect where you're going to have to keep rolling that snowball and get momentum and grow bigger and bigger and bigger. The biggest thing that has helped my business has been word of mouth and having a social media presence for sure 100%. So if you don't have a social media presence, really start building that and try to go above and beyond taking care of your clients and members so that they go and tell other people what you're about and get them in. So I know a lot of you guys are currently members at gyms or maybe you have a garage gym or maybe have some ideas, but I'd like you to comment below with what do you love the most about your gym? Okay, the equipment is at the atmosphere, the environment, the community, the people. Is there something really small that they do that you just absolutely love? Let me know down below in the comment section. That'd be super cool. But that's pretty much it guys. Those are my three biggest mistakes that I made when starting the gym. I've made a ton more than I can really go into with other videos, but I would say if you're starting from scratch, those are kind of the big things that stood out to me that I messed up with and hopefully you guys can learn from my mistakes by making sure that you're taking the time to pick the location, make sure that you have your niche and then also understanding that people are not going to come flooding in the doors. So have some sort of strategy or marketing in place and also the funds to keep your business growing during that kind of starting point and building that snowball. If you like the video, make sure you give it a like, subscribe to the channel. Once again, hit that notification bell so you can save today with all the videos that I put out, trying to put out some more business content for those of you entrepreneurs who want to start your own business, have your own business, and kind of just help increase your influence, impact, and income with the gym biz. So there you guys have it. Make sure that you stay a lean, lean, strike machine. I'll talk to you next time. Pooos!