A Friend is Opening a New Gym!
A buddy of mine who I work out with from time to time has always said he wanted to open his own gym. I’ve known this guy for years and he’s been saying this for a long while now, probably the last six or 7 years or so…He always brings it up from time to time, how he wants to be as big as Gold’s Gym or something like that and I always blew him off because he never talked about starting small. It’s great to have lofty ambitions like that, but even Gold’s Gym started out as one little rinky dink gym on the edge of town somewhere in America. This is something that I didn’t think he understood the concept of…or so I thought.
So, the other day he calls me up and I’m assuming he just wanted to talk about things in general, stuff I usually don’t have time for. I was cooking dinner for myself and I’m running around the kitchen holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, only uttering incoherent one-word answers…yeah, no, maybe, uh huh…I clearly didn’t have time for this small talk and I figured if I did this enough, he’d get the hint. Nothing gets in the way of me and the food I think I so richly deserve. But then, he dropped the bomb:
“So, I think I have enough saved up to open my own gym…”
“Huh? You’re actually gonna do it? For real? I thought that was just something you talked about?!”
Obviously he didn’t like hearing that little jab of mine, but decided to keep talking to me about it anyway. Apparently, unbeknown to me, he had been saving up A LOT of capital over the years and he’s been mapping it out all this time! From what he told me, he definitely did his research. From what he was saying, the gym is going to encompass the usual fair you would expect from a gym: free weights and machines, treadmills, elliptical trainers, etc., but also yoga and pilates classes, karate seminars and boxing classes after the first year, which is something none of the small gyms around here offer.
“So,” I asked, “what are you going to do to attract people to come to your little gym when there’s that huge gym (name unmentioned) across town”? I’m a business major and this is an important question and something I’d personally like to know…how well did he really do his homework?? He rambled off a couple things to me that he was going to implement during the first 6 months of the establishment’s life, which I was quite impressed with and he then asked me if I knew of any other ways since I’m Mr. Business Degree and all. I told him I didn’t really know much about how to market a new workout gym, but I handed him an early edition brand marketing book by James Connor, that someone had given me for a Christmas present.
So, it looks like I may be attending a new gym sometime in the next coming year if everything gets off the ground for him, I wish him the best of luck, and a major apology for not taking him seriously!