I walked through our facility last week at 3:30 and it was dead.

A week ago, we had 30 lacrosse athletes training hard, where did they all go?

Oh yea, Lax season just started, they’re at practice!

This drop off used to hurt us as a business but not anymore

It wasn’t until we got clear with who we wanted to be

I talk to gym owners every week that struggle with this.

They get frustrated of the large swings in revenue based on the sports seasons and it messes with their cash flow greatly.

I have yet to see an athlete performance ONLY facility not have these swings.

These swings drive up stress levels like crazy, especially if you are not particularly good with your financials (most fit pros do not do well here)

These swings make it very hard to have a predictable reliable receivable base, which makes it hard for you to consistently build wealth.

When you do not have a consistent base of income that covers all your basic needs and business expenses you will always live in this constant state of anxiety.

The most important thing we need in our business is focus

If we focus on athletes 50% and then adults 50% we will always be in the middle

The middle is no mans land.

My advice to most guys that struggle with this is to pick one

Pick one and own it

It doesn’t mean you have to stop one of them all together but have a clear identity.

It may mean you have to accept less of one and even make some hard decisions

When we made this call we stopped taking on teams for 4-8 week programs.

We were bringing in a decent chunk of money from them but they seriously got in the way of us growing our adult program.

Teams are a one of the biggest distractions out there. There are usually unpredictable, take over your entire gym, bring clients that may or may not be good candidates to continue and usually bring high maintenance parents.

They are sexy because they bring in a big chunk of money for a short time.

When we gave up teams we gave up revenue in the short term but that allowed us to put an adult class there that generated money year-round instead of one month

I had a guy tell me on a consulting call how frustrated he was that he couldn’t get his adult program going. He told me he kept canceling his nighttime adult class when he randomly got a team, absurd! its stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

We also limited our sports performance to 330-630, this eliminated several spots in that programmed but freed up core times in our primary market

You can’t have your facility smell like a locker room and hang jerseys all over the place and be an authority on helping busy people get healthy, its possible and there are always outliers but for the most part set your business up for who you want to help…the most.

I don’t care what you decide but I do believe there is a right answer to this for those that want to really make it in this business.

So stay focused on your primary market and structure your business around that, your website, Facebook page, facility layout, class time selection all needs to based around who you want to help

Still have the secondary market but never compromise your primary

If there is any gym I can help the most it is the hybrid model of Sports Performance/Adult Fitness

Respond to this post if you need some help here and want to chat