Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Get rich quick, seven figure revenue tips, overnight millionaire: If you’re looking for that stuff, you’re actually listening to the wrong podcast. But I’m still going to tell you how to create wealth as a gym owner. Today, on “Run a Profitable Gym,” we’re going to talk about the un-sexy approach to building income. I’m not going to try to sell you on my secret wealth-building formula, and my guest doesn’t have any hot crypto tips—that I know of. But if you listen, you’re going to find out how gym owners can increase income and net worth and even become millionaires. That does happen regularly. Two-Brain has actually certified 43 millionaires and counting. First, stats. I always give you hard data on this show. Two-Brain’s most recent leaderboard tracked net owner benefit. It was over three months, so these aren’t one-hit-wonders. This is a three-month average.
Mike Warkentin (00:44):
It’s salary, dividends, whatever else your gym pays for—that could be your car or a phone or whatever. Our top 10 ran from $16,000 to $59,000. Now remember, that isn’t gross revenue. That’s what the gym owner actually earned per month. Those are great numbers. We’re going to dig into them today. How do gym owners do it? Well, my guest is going to tell you. His name is Nick Beal. He runs CrossFit Casco Bay. There are two locations, and one of them is in Portland, Maine, not Oregon. It’s on the other side. So, Nick, welcome to the show. How are you?
Nick Beal (01:12):
I’m doing great, man. How’re you doing?
Mike Warkentin (01:14):
I’m doing wonderful, and I’m really excited to chat with you about this. I’m just going to jump right in, so gym owners get some of the info that they need. Before the show, I read that your success generating income comes from like the un-sexy stuff and doing it consistently. What do you mean by that? What’s un-sexy stuff?
Nick Beal (01:30):
Yeah, I think that comment really comes from the things we learned in the gym when our members bring those Instagram posts in, and they’re like, “Hey, I want to do this workout.” And you’re just like, “That’s not going to help you.” Sometimes you just got to stick with the basics. What I mean by that, from a gym perspective, we really just know our numbers. We have our systems in place. We stick to them. When that shiny object comes up that we see on Instagram of like, “Oh, that’s a cool idea, let’s do it.” Just remembering that, you know, sticking to your day-to-day systems is what’s going to get that compounding effect of growth.
Mike Warkentin (02:02):
And it’s funny because that doesn’t fire you up. You’re like, “Oh, I’ve got to invest in crypto, and I’ve got to do this thing, and I’ve got to whatever—buy this building.” But I just talked to Chris Cooper, actually right before the show. We talked about building wealth as a gym owner. And that slow, steady approach actually works way better. And the flash in the pan stuff, it’s always too good to be true. Tell me about a couple of the shiny objects that might have tempted you. You mentioned seeing some stuff that maybe would’ve taken you off that slow and steady path. What are some of the shiny objects that pop up for you?
Nick Beal (02:29):
I mean, I think as a gym owner and anybody that owns their own business, there’s always ideas and thoughts that come in your head—things you can think you can do. I mean, it’s natural for us to have an idea and want to run with it, but we’ve got to stick with just a few of them. Some examples: I mean, it’s just like, you know, trying to run flashy promos all the time, discounts, like, “How am I going to get 50 new members next month? That’d be awesome.” It’s like, well, 50 members in a month, hey, maybe it happens—awesome if you do it—but over time, I found it’s like, “Hey, how do I just make sure that I’m netting two to three?” You know? And over time, as you’re doing it long enough, that adds up quite a bit.
Mike Warkentin (03:07):
Yeah. And my personal story on that is: We ran a six-week challenge. The first time we did it, we acquired, it was like, I think it was like 35 or 40 members. We had a really huge month in the gym. I think it was our all-time record that we’ve never surpassed. Most of those people left after the six weeks or even before the six weeks were done. They were long gone, never to be heard from again. They were onto the next thing. And that was a failure on our part to retain them, but it was also one of those things where we sold them a six-week challenge, and when they were done, they were done. But then I’ve talked to other gym owners like you, where they’re adding two or three members net per month. They’re retaining them for about two years, and they’re charging in the range of like $300 per member or something like that. That’s how you build these incredible businesses. Does that kind of describe what you’re doing?
Nick Beal (03:48):
Oh, yeah, for sure. And you’re always taking in effect—in this situation—of, you know, what is 30 new members going to do to your gym? You know, the people who are already there. Your foundational base of members. If you’re changing up the product now, and they have double the amount of people in their class, that kind of shifts up the product that they signed up for. So, a slow steady approach usually allows for a nice progression into the end of the change.
Mike Warkentin (04:15):
Tell me a little bit about your business. You said you’ve got two locations. Tell me a little bit about what you sell specifically. If you’ve got any stats, do you want to toss out about, like members or average revenue per member? Anything you’re comfortable sharing? Give us the rundown of what your operation does.
Nick Beal (04:27):
Yeah, our bread and butter is group class. We were a CrossFit gym through and through. And I really—we had always done a little bit of personal training, like we do nutrition. We really didn’t start diversifying our product offerings until we started working with Two-Brain, and now we’ve integrated into kind of almost building a secondary business within our business. It’s—how do we work our personal training and our semi-private into our day-to-day has really been the focus of our past year of growth. We came in with group classes taking care of us, like we were doing very well. And the addition of personal training and semi-private has kind of propelled us into that next bracket of income. So that’s kind of the structure of the offerings that we have and kind of how we phased them in.
Mike Warkentin (05:19):
And you said two locations. How long have you had both of those?
Nick Beal (05:22):
Yeah, I purchased my first gym in 2014. That’s the Portland location. And then I was lucky enough to purchase the second one in 2019 right before 2020, so that was a fun adventure.
Mike Warkentin (05:36):
I bet, I bet. And did I hear that you actually have one of your buildings—you’ve acquired one of your buildings?
Nick Beal (05:41):
Yeah. It was a fun two-year process that finally panned out last Tuesday, actually.
Mike Warkentin (05:49):
Oh, congrats.
Nick Beal (05:50):
So, yeah. Yeah. So now we have the fun project of repositioning the property because it has some residential units within it that we can tap into. So.
Mike Warkentin (06:01):
Okay. So, that’s super interesting. I bet all the fun was involving lawyers and zoning and all the other things, I’m sure. Right?
Nick Beal (06:06):
Yeah. And then involving municipalities, which is always fun when you get the government involved. There were some discrepancies on boundary lines of who owned what. So, when you start learning how to read old English deeds from the 1800s, it’s—you don’t think that owning a gym, you’re going to have to start kind of diving into that stuff, but you know.
Mike Warkentin (06:26):
Did you actually have to—is that what it got to, like 1800s deeds?
Nick Beal (06:29):
Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Herein and thenceforth and all these different, you know—
Mike Warkentin (06:35):
And 12 cattle delivered on the first of every month to the landowner?
Nick Beal (06:38):
Yeah. And I’m trying to find granite pegs within the parking lot. And it’s—oh, it was an adventure, but we got—
Mike Warkentin (06:46):
Wow. That’s a cool Maine story.
Nick Beal (06:47):
Yeah. We were persistent, and we figured it out.
Mike Warkentin (06:50):
I like that. That’s inter—that’s great. I’ve never been to Maine, but I love the East Coast of the U.S., and there’s some cool stories up in there. So, I love the granite pigs in the parking lot.
Nick Beal (06:59):
Yeah. Yeah. We acquired a property that was once part of four different properties. So, when it got broken up and split up, there’s paper roads and all these weird things we had to account for. But no, we were persistent, and we made sure we had a home for our gym for the next, you know, however long I want to keep it.
Mike Warkentin (07:20):
That’s pretty cool. And that building—you know, one of Chris Cooper’s strategies is to buy and hold real estate—that building, if you decide, let’s say, “I want to sell the gym.” You sell the gym: That business still pays you rent if you want; you could rent it out to something else. You could pass this on to the kids, and they’ll get rent. Buying a building is an interesting way to create and grow net worth, and a lot of gym owners have done that. It doesn’t work in every part of the country. Las Vegas real estate is probably a crazy price that you maybe don’t want to get into that necessarily, but it is one strategy. Talk to me a little bit about your net worth—or sorry, not net worth, but net owner benefit. How has that changed over time? Like, when I started as a gym owner, my net owner benefit was zero. And for a long time, it stayed zero because it was a bad hobby. And then eventually when I started working with Two-Brain, it started to go up. Talk to me about how your numbers changed.
Nick Beal (08:06):
Yeah. I think it kind of goes right back to the beginning of our conversation of how it’s been slow and steady. I remember when I first bought the gym, and I was working another job, and I wasn’t taking any money out of the business.
Mike Warkentin (08:18):
What did you do?
Nick Beal (08:19):
I worked at an advertising agency. So, I was an account manager working as a middleman between the company and our company. So just dealt with everybody’s problems. Got me ready to own a gym. But so, I was in the advertising world and then slowly transitioned into owning or doing the gym full-time. And it was just year after year; I’ve just focused on trying to continuously grow the gym in a way that, with the growth, my net owner benefit is growing as well. And I was fortunate enough to have some systems set up in the beginning that it kind of was—I wasn’t just making more money and pushing it out the door. It’s like my pie grew, and the percentages were in the right spot.
Mike Warkentin (09:05):
Okay. And listeners, one of the things that often happens when gym owners get more revenue is they don’t pay themselves. In an odd way, we decide to buy Salt bikes and SkiErgs and sandbags and maybe a new sign for the building and then some other stuff, renovations. That’s all good. But you deserve to get compensated from your business for all the work you put in. And so, one of the things—“Profit First” is a really interesting strategy. John Briggs wrote “Profit First for Microgyms.” A lot of that is paying yourself first because if you don’t eat, your client and your staff aren’t going to eat either. And so, protecting some of that income for yourself is a really important thing. When you were growing this number, were there any big milestones that—you said it was slow and steady—but was there anything that like you could look back on and say, “Ah, that was a thing that really had some downstream effects?” Or was it just that slow, steady snowball building over time?
Nick Beal (09:58):
Yeah. Honestly, I don’t—I can’t point to like, “Hey, that was the one thing that did it.” Yeah, it would—I think it would be a lie if I was like, “Hey, this is the secret to it.” It was really just doing everything right and continuously making improvements along the way. We’re always, like I said, like when we talked about, “Hey, we’re always doing the un-sexy things, and we’re just consistently doing it.” It’s like, well, we’re always assessing those systems. We’re always looking at—each week, we start off our week by looking at, “Hey, these are the numbers from last week.” And then extrapolating kind of like, “Hey, well, why were our leads down this much? Why was our conversion only here?” And like seeing where we can make some improvements and tinkering with it along the way. So, we have our systems in place, but they’re not done. They’re never done. So, we’re always looking and say, “How do we make the things that we have in place a little better?” And by continuously making the product up a little better over time, we found that it translated into that growth.
Mike Warkentin (10:52):
So, I’ll point it out for you. You just summarized it, but the major thing that you did to increase your net owner benefit over time—the big milestone—was deciding to be consistent about your business. And that’s just doing it over and over again because a lot of people aren’t. We get crazy about something, go over there, do this thing, push through it, and then go to the next thing. And then try Facebook ads for a little while, then try ChatGPT, and just get crazy—and going from thing to thing to thing and never dedicating yourself to that consistency. And that’s what really—when I talk to gym owners who really do well, it’s always that firm foundation and then a commitment to always shoring it up, building a little bit higher, shoring up the foundation a little bit higher, a little bit higher.
Mike Warkentin (11:28):
And then they get these gigantic pyramids of businesses that are incredible, and they’re always rising. But I never see these rocket ships where it’s like, “All of a sudden, I’ve got 500 members, and I’m wealthy.” It’s never that. It’s always something that’s very consistent. So, gym owners, if you’re out there, it’s 1% improvement every day. Do something to grow your business every day. Chris Cooper’s written about this many times. Just do something. Take action. A mentor can certainly help you do that. Nick, tell me a little bit about—if you’re comfortable sharing anything—what is your net owner benefit strategy? Do you just pay yourself a straight salary or some other stuff that the gym kicks in? Or how do you go about that?
Nick Beal (12:02):
Yeah, so I do kind of a monthly draw. I have a number that I like to make sure that I take out of the business, but really what I try to do is I maintain my account to a place where it holds a certain amount of cash just to always make sure the business has what it is. But from there, I just extract any profits out month to month, knowing that if I ever need to put money back in, it’s all from the same place anyway. So, it kind of—my thought is I keep a certain amount that I like to have in the account to handle business operations. And then, the rest I utilize to invest into other areas. I do run, as much as my account allows me to, through the business.
Nick Beal (12:42):
As I led into knowing I was going to be purchasing the building, I did change that strategy up some, obviously, because we wanted to show as much income as possible coming, or profit coming from the business, so that way I had as much buying power as possible. But now going out of like, “Hey, I won’t have any large purchases through the gym.” I’ll probably change that up a little bit to take care of the tax burden. But it’s really just a monthly draw. Keep it very simple.
Mike Warkentin (13:09):
Listeners, there are creative and legal ways to pay yourself. Talk to an accountant if you don’t know how to do it, and you don’t know what to do to tick all the boxes for the government and also minimize your tax burden. Do talk to someone about that so that you can find out how you can cover your bases and earn—keep—as much as you can. So, there’s lots of ways that gym owners do it. Some people pay themselves straight salaries. Other people have all sorts of webs of corporations and transfers and things like that. It all works, but if you don’t know how to do it, talk to someone who can help you with that. So Nick, the next thing I want to ask you is: How does a mentor help you with consistency and building that net owner benefit? Because again, when I was without a mentor, I would just do some stuff, do some stuff, and kind of randomly running around. I didn’t have someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey, get back to this thing. You should maybe fix your on-ramp first before you start looking at Facebook ads.” That kind of stuff. How has a mentor helped you build this number over time?
Nick Beal (14:01):
Yeah, I think it’s just the accountability piece. Just like what we do for our athletes: They’re checking in. They aren’t—you’ll find moving along through this, there’s no revolutionary ideas. Beyond, you know, the first “aha!” moments that you have within your journey. But once you kind of figure that out, it’s just keeping the blinders on of like, “Hey, we’re focusing on this until our next meeting. We’re not focusing on these five things. Let’s focus it down to these actual things, so you can make an impact.” So, I think that’s where I find benefit out of utilizing a mentor is just the, “Oh, I’ve got to check in with my mentor. I don’t want to be the guy that didn’t do his homework.” I can’t say that I haven’t every now and again had that happen. But knowing that I have to have that meeting and that accountability, I find that very beneficial.
Mike Warkentin (14:49):
Who are you working with right now? Who’s your mentor?
Nick Beal (14:51):
Ryan McFadyen.
Mike Warkentin (14:53):
Ah.
Nick Beal (14:53):
Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (14:54):
He is a good one.
Nick Beal (14:55):
Yeah. He does a good job. He’s been—it’s been helpful. I mean, beyond the accountability, it’s also just—you know, being a gym owner can be lonely at times in regards to, like, our problems feel unique. However, there’s a lot of us out there, so just to be able to bounce around ideas and pain points, even things that were a great success that you want to share with them—sounds like you have a little bit of a therapist there.
Mike Warkentin (15:25):
That was just it, and that therapist also is going to give you some very interesting insight into “Do this thing right now.” And that’s the benefit, listeners. If you’re out there and you know that there’s something in your gym—you probably have a list of stuff; “I really know that I should do all this stuff,” but you don’t know where to start on that list—a mentor can look at the list and say, “This thing right here is going to give you the greatest return in your time and investment and move your business forward the furthest. You should do it right now, and I’m going to tell you to do it. And then I’m going to call you in a week to see if you did it. And I’m going to call you a week after that. And on our next call, if you didn’t do it, I’m going to really remind you to do it.”
Mike Warkentin (15:56):
And again, it sounds like hounding, but that’s what’s needed for a lot of people to move forward. There are other people who don’t need that hounding, and they just mow stuff down. I’ve talked to some gym owners who, they’re just like focused on a list. The mentor sets out the list, and these people just plow through the stuff and just checking boxes like maniacs. And it does incredible stuff for the business. Others require a little bit of prodding, and that’s cool too because it all gets done. So that’s—there’s different paths. We have different mentors. Some will be more abrupt with you, and some will be much more, I don’t know, empathetic. And I won’t use the word coddling, but they’ll certainly lead you along, give you what you need. But that’s the idea behind the whole process: finding out what needs to be done, then helping you find the way to do it. So, Nick, give me this. Gym owners who aren’t earning a lot from their gym yet: What’s a top piece of advice that you would give them? Just step one in getting more net owner benefit from their business?
Nick Beal (16:44):
I would say it’s get those systems in place. It has a compound effect. If you get the systems in place, and it just kind of—the wheels are turning without you having to do every little task yourself. And even if you’re at the point where you are doing all the systems yourself, it just allows you to have a process, so that way there’s a funnel to how everything is done. If you’re constantly reinventing the wheel each time that a new task comes in, and you’re doing something that’s the same over and over, but you’re doing it a different way each time, you only have so much time in the day. So, I found that having the systems and then kind of refining them along the way has helped for that exponential growth.
Mike Warkentin (17:19):
It makes a lot of sense because as sort of a hobby gym owner, as I was back in the 2013-14 range, I would just do it myself, or I would just say, “Eh, it takes too long to write this down. I’m just going to do it, whatever.” And it took me like five years of doing that to realize that if I just write down the process—and it’ll take 10 minutes—and hand it to someone, it gets done, and I can do something else, which is like sales, marketing, growing the business, improving the client experience, all those different things. What is a system that you would build first?
Nick Beal (17:47):
The system I think I would build first is: How are you developing your leads? You know, the lifeblood of your gym. Obviously, you need to have a great product. However, even if you have a great product, if no one’s showing up, it’s not going to be a very sustainable business model. So, find a way to get them in the door. And, not only that, how are you going to hold onto them as members? What’s that member lifecycle look like?
Mike Warkentin (18:16):
Intake and retention. Stuff that almost was never talked about a decade ago. It was just like, “Be a good coach, and they’ll show up.” It doesn’t work like that. You actually have to market, get people in the door, and then you have to work at retaining them, which is, you know, retention is actually sales over and over and over again. I’ll ask you a quick advice question off-topic. Where do you get your leads from? What’s your biggest source?
Nick Beal (18:34):
I mean, the majority of ours just literally come in through, “Hey, how’d you find us?” and they’re like, “Google.”
Mike Warkentin (18:39):
Okay, that’s cool. So, you got some SEO.
Nick Beal (18:41):
I know. Yeah. When I took over our gym, we were fifth in the SEO in our area, so we’d be like way down. We were below a gym that had been closed for two years. So, I was like, “Wow, this is, this is not good.” Because I mean, I know how I find a business. I Google it—if I know nothing about the industry. And it’s like, “Hey, are you number one or two? Which one has the better website?” You know, read a little bit about them, ask some questions. Because most people are coming in uneducated about what we do, so I plowed a lot of resources into making our SEO better. And so, really, we’re trying to make sure that we’re just the first thing that people see. And then that way, if we capture them and do our job right, even if we—they’ll show up and find out that we are still the best service available.
Mike Warkentin (19:28):
That’s just a little thing, guys. It’s like, “Okay, it’s not sexy to work on my website SEO,” but it has huge, huge downstream effects. If you can be Google Page 1 for your area with local SEO, right? Like, you’re not going to win fitness—Nike or whoever else will have that one locked down. But like, if someone searches for “Best Gym in Portland, Maine,” Casco Bay is probably going to come up or at least be on that page, I’m guessing. And you’ve done the work to do that. So again, that’s the un-sexy stuff, but it pays off big time. Tell me—similar question—you’ve got a gym owner who’s starting to get to that hundred-thousand-dollar net owner benefit range, starting to feel like the gym is stable and profitable: What tip would you give that gym owner to get to the next level? You talked about leveling up and getting that to the next tier. What could that person do?
Nick Beal (20:13):
I mean, I think once you get to the hundred thousand dollars, it hits the point of like, “Okay, now how do I take care of my other people?” And that’s kind of the phase that we also kicked into in the beginning of this mentorship process as well—you know, once you’ve taken care of yourself, how do you start taking care of your employees? And then that really is what propels you into that next phase is you start having some employees that are making a career out of this rather than just a job. And then their growth—if you have your system set up right—as they grow, it’s growing your business, and the pie’s growing for everybody. So that really, I think would be the next phase.
Mike Warkentin (20:50):
Yeah. And it’s really, it’s more important than people think with staff development because once you make a good income—you know, if you drive your income up way, way, way higher, and your staff is only making 25 grand, the staff aren’t, they won’t stay. And then you’re right back to you in that hamster wheel of like intaking new people, training them, and then they quit or get fired. And then you’ve got to keep going through that. You can’t actually build a business. Whereas I’ve talked to gym owners at your level: They have three or four great staff members. They’ll tell me their staff members are making 75, 80, you know, $90,000 a year with benefits, which is great. Those staff members are then incentivized to stay at the gym, stay at the business, build it, run it, and the owner can then start doing other stuff saying, “Oh, you know what? I want to invest in real estate. I want to open an Airbnb. I want to pursue crypto,” whatever it might be. But the owner then has that time and flexibility to do it. But it comes from building a great staff. I’ll ask you, as an associated question, what kind of staff do you have? Do you have a whole bunch of full-time people, part-time people, what have you got there?
Nick Beal (21:46):
Yeah, I have three full-time staff members. And then we utilize part-time coaches as well. But, um, the majority of our businesses run through our full-time staff in regards to operational day-to-day activities, and then they have a certain amount of class load that they handle as well. But I’ve found that as we’ve transitioned out into more full-time employees, the product has become better. And then, you know, just like we said before of like, “Hey, taking care of those people,” that reflects on the product and helps it grow.
Mike Warkentin (22:20):
Yeah. Do you have—is it three full-timers per location? Or three in total that are shared?
Nick Beal (22:24):
Yeah, three in total. So, we have two at our Portland location and one at our secondary location in Augusta.
Mike Warkentin (22:31):
How long have they been around? Do you happen to know off the top of your head how long these guys have been around?
Nick Beal (22:34):
How long have they been coaches?
Mike Warkentin (22:37):
Yeah, are they long-term?
Nick Beal (22:38):
So, I’ve had—my longest tenured coach has been with me for nine years.
Mike Warkentin (22:44):
Oh, good work.
Nick Beal (22:45):
Yeah. My second one has been there for—I want to say—six years. And then the other came with the purchase of the Augusta gym. She actually—I sat down with her and said I would only buy the gym if she stuck around.
Mike Warkentin (23:02):
Oh, she’s that good
Nick Beal (23:02):
So yeah, she’s been with me since 2019, so was that—four years now?
Mike Warkentin (23:08):
Okay. So that’s, yeah. So, you’ve got huge continuity with your most important people, which listeners, think about that. Like if your business—let’s say you, listener, stepped out of your gym and handed it off to a staff member, what would happen? What if that staff member was a nine-year staff member who was making a career, who wanted to be a part of that business and grow it and keep it strong? What would happen versus if you step back and that person was maybe just kind of not that interested in it because they’re not making any money and don’t really care? Things are difficult. So, staff retention is a huge one. Nick, what’s next for you? You’ve got your building. Are you in a situation here where you’re just going to kind of stabilize, get your stuff together and kind of move forward? Or do you have any more plans on the horizon?
Nick Beal (23:48):
Gym related or just in life?
Mike Warkentin (23:50):
Whatever, everything. Because once you get to that level, I mean, things start to change. Where I talk to gym owners, they’re like, “Oh, you know what? I’m buying an Airbnb in Fiji,” or something like that. So, what’s kind of—what’s the next step for you as an entrepreneur? We’ll call it.
Nick Beal (24:02):
So, I have actually been, along the way, been dabbling in real estate for a while now. And so, the gym purchase kind of came along with that. So, we actually manage quite a few properties, and now the next immediate phase is, I’ll actually be GCing the work within the building that we purchased. So, I will be doing a build-out of four residential units that sit above a CrossFit gym. So, updating those, getting the building repositioned so that it’s cash flowing. And then after that, I think I was going to sit back and kind of see which direction I want to take it in. Do I want to purchase another gym? Do I want to go all in on real estate? I really am in that kind of a—every now and again, you hit those points in your journeys when you get a little comfortable—and I think now it’s like, “All right, I need to put a little bit more stress on my plate to propel me forward.” So.
Mike Warkentin (24:56):
Doing general contracting for residential units will definitely put that stress on your plate for a bit.
Nick Beal (25:01):
I think it’s fun. You know, it’s use your hands, get a little dirty, and make something out of—it’s pretty rough right now, so it’s going to be a fun little project.
Mike Warkentin (25:14):
Good for you. I’ve got to ask this question: How do you deal with noise with residential units above a CrossFit gym? That’s a—I’ve got to know.
Nick Beal (25:21):
Yeah, so fortunately how it’s set up right now, it’s kind of built in a way that there’s a buffer between the two anyway. So, I’m going to be very tactful in regards to how I put insulation in above gym space, how I put flooring down on the residential space and maybe putting some restrictions on the music during certain hours, but luckily, I guess if I’m controlling the business that’s below the residential, I can have a little bit more say over that, but we’ll make it work out.
Mike Warkentin (25:55):
Yeah. It’s interesting because Chris Cooper and I worked on an article way back in the day about a gym, I believe it was Manhattan, where they had—the gym was on the main floor, and there were condos above, and they weren’t owned by the same person. Things got a little weird. So, I was super curious about that. So yeah, you can definitely kind of make that work. But again, that’s kind of the forward-thinking stuff that gym owners can do now based on the mistakes the rest of us made in the past.
Nick Beal (26:18):
Yeah, right. It’ll be challenging, and obviously, when you’re renting them out, you’re going to disclose that, you know, “Hey, you’re living above a gym,” and it is what it is.
Mike Warkentin (26:28):
Yep. That’s cool. Well, Nick, thank you so much for sharing all this. The lesson to take from this, listeners, is steady progress: Do something every day to grow your business, keep doing it, make sure it’s going the way you want it to, and then slowly move forward and pursue other stuff. Nick, thanks so much for being here and sharing that with us.
Nick Beal (26:44):
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. It was a lot of fun.
Mike Warkentin (26:46):
That was Nick Beal. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” This is where the world’s best gym owners tell you exactly what they’re doing, so that you can have the same success. Subscribe on the way out. Do yourself a favor. We’re going to share more tips and help you move your business forward every single week. And here’s a final message from Chris Cooper.
Chris Cooper (27:02):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder, Chris Cooper, with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.
