The 4 x Pillars Of A Scalable Fitness Business

I opened my first gym in 2016 (8 years ago). I had no idea how to grow a gym or what my goal for the business would be.
Little did I know that I would have opened another two gyms within the next two years. And would continue to scale from there.

The above is the TLDR version of my fitness business owner story. 
It was more challenging than it reads. Trust me, there were many mistakes and hard lessons learned along the way…

But the journey isn't what I want to share in this blog. 

I want this to be practical, not motivational, so you can take away and apply what you learn to map out how to grow your gym.
I want to share the four pillars I used to grow and scale my gyms, the same method I teach others as a mentor to my fellow gym owners.

Pillar 1: Lead Generation

If you want to grow and scale, you need to be able to consistently and predictably attract new leads to your gym.

We used a combination of:

• Paid Marketing (Facebook, IG & Google Ads)

• Organic Content

• Referrals

To help hit our weekly lead goals.

The number of leads we would aim to attract would be reverse-engineered by the number of new clients we wanted to sign up for each week (see pillar 2).

Pillar 2: Conversions

Once you can attract leads, you need to be able to convert them into paying customers.

A high conversion rate requires:

• Sales skills

• Lead Nurture

• An offer that people will buy

• A service that people want to buy

If you are attracting 10 x leads per week and converting only 20% into paying customers = two new clients are sold into your gym each week.

However, improving your offer, lead nurturing process, and sales ability could help convert 40-70%+ of those leads, doubling the number of new clients joining your gym.

This simple maths shows how powerful refining your conversion rate can be to help grow your gym.

Pillar 3: Retention

Now, you can acquire leads and convert them into customers for your gym. 

However, the most crucial part is delivering the results you have promised your clients and keeping them there longer—turning clients into 'Raving Fans'.

For our gyms, this included:

• An onboarding program

• A dialled-in customer journey

• Client ascension models

• Community and Culture-building 

Although this wasn't pillar #1, it is the most important.

Attracting and converting leads will be easier when people rave about our gym and are getting good results for others to see.

Conversely, it becomes expensive to run a gym when we constantly churn clients by overpromising in our marketing and sales process and underdelivering on client fulfilment.

Pillar 4: Systems and Team

Lastly, when growing our gyms, we systemised all of the above so our team could replicate success over and over again. This meant there were no bottlenecks in the gyms, and any Coach could deliver and get the same outcomes across each pillar. 

This allowed us to scale to multiple locations while maintaining consistency across the brand - without  me doing all the work. In fact, the bigger our business became, the less busy I became.

• Standard Operating Procedures

• Ongoing Mentoring

• Accountability

• Leadership

• Software and Automation, where applicable 

These 4-pillars work together, feeding each other like a conveyor belt, and my job was to oversee and ensure the machine was functioning properly.

Pillar 1 (Leads) would feed Pillar 2 (Conversions), which would flow into Pillar 3 (Retention). These would be glued together by Pillar 4 (Systems), working as a revolving cycle.

Whenever one pillar stopped working (for example, not enough leads, low conversions, or poor retention), I would work through the systems, solve the problem, and get it running again.

Here are a few problem-solving examples if you are stuck trying to grow your gym:

Let's say you are trying to reach a member or revenue goal but have plateaued and can't seem to crack it.

Example:

1. Are you generating enough leads?
   Yes, continue to question 2. No, fix Pillar 1

2. Are you converting your leads?
   Yes, continue to question 3. No, fix Pillar 2

3. Are you retaining your clients?
   Yes, then you need more leads, go back to question 1 and increase volume. No, problem solve your retention issue

Once you fix something, revisit your systems, update them, retrain the team and get the conveyor belt moving again.

This is still the process my team and I use today at each location to grow our gyms, and I use the same process to help any mentoring client grow or scale their gym.

Once mapped out, it becomes very simple to understand and operate this gym scaling machine.

If you want help implementing this 4 x Pillar Gym Scaling System into your fitness business, you can reach out via the button below for a free scaling session with me: