What stops gym owners from earning more?
The reality is you probably need to stop doing something to improve your income. I know that sounds strange, but most people don’t reach a higher net owner benefit (NOB) for three reasons:
- They have no focus.
- They have no plan.
- They are distracted.
Focusing on Profit
Like your deadlift, your NOB improves when you consciously pay attention to it and are very purposeful about increasing it.
Your deadlift might have improved a little bit just with general fitness when you started working out, but after your deadlift hits 300 or 400 lb., you have to be intentional about improving it.
And when you open a gym, you might be able to commit to paying yourself $900 a week because your family will starve if you don’t. But over time, if you want to increase your NOB further, you must be intentional about it. If you set that intent, you’ll build better systems, delegate to staff, make better investments, market better and forge a stronger gym.
So focusing on earning more is a forcing function. If you don’t think about earning more, it’s easy to become complacent.
Planning for Profit
Beyond a lack of focus, the absence of a plan will prevent you from earning more.
Some great plans do exist. One of them is called Profit First. My friend John Briggs wrote a book called “Profit First for Microgyms,” and it supplies a plan you can use to grow your income.
You can also just follow a pay-yourself-first strategy of pulling out your checkbook—like a real checkbook—and writing yourself a paycheck in advance for the next six months. Then you are never tempted to skip a payday and buy a new rowing machine.
You can add other tweaks to that plan, too. For example, you can automatically give yourself a 6 percent raise every quarter. Write these checks in advance, too, so you don’t have to make a decision about what to pay yourself every single week.
Avoiding Distraction
Entrepreneurial distraction is the third reason gym owners are unable to increase their NOB.
As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to start something new but hard to grow what you currently have. Most of us grow to the level of our knowledge and then struggle to go further—so why not start something new and novel?
“I don’t know how to improve my sales. I don’t know how to improve my marketing. I don’t know how to improve my retention. So I’m gonna go start something else where I can crush the stuff I know how to do.”
This is the reason most gym owners will never reach a net worth of a million dollars. They try to do too many things that don’t produce enough money. They get burned out and overwhelmed, and the original “golden goose” begins to struggle because it isn’t getting any attention.
Think about this: Imagine you hired somebody else to be CEO of your gym.
“Great! By the way, I’m also gonna be CEO of that yoga studio down the street,” the new CEO says.
“What the hell?” You might reply. “You’re supposed to be focused on growing my gym.”
But there’s nobody to hold your feet to the fire as the CEO of your gym, so you might grow it until it pays you $35,000. Instead of figuring out how to get that gym to pay you $100,000, you think, “I know how to get a gym to pay me $35,000, so I’ll open two more locations and earn $100k.”
But the reality is that a second gym is four times the work. And adding a third gym is six times the work. So all of them struggle and you don’t increase your net owner benefit.
The Solution
To increase your NOB, you need a goal, a detailed plan to hit that goal, and someone to help you stick to the plan.
That’s where a mentor comes in.
We get the average gym owner to $100,000 NOB in just over two years, regardless of starting point (some people move much faster). And we’re certifying new millionaire gym owners every quarter.
I’ve provided some simple tactics to help you earn more above. I hope they help.
If you want to take the next step and push hard to reach $100,000 NOB—and even millionaire status—book a call here to talk about mentorship.
