Anyone who opened a gym 10+ years ago, built a huge following, and continues to kill it today might tell you that he could do it again from scratch in current market conditions. He’d either be lying to you, or just blissfully unaware of the reality that what got him here likely wouldn’t be as effective as it once was.

I don’t believe that we (Cressey Sports Performance) would fail if we tried to start again, but I am certain that our goals and objectives would need to shift. I think we’d kill it locally if starting from scratch today, but I am also aware of how difficult it would be to create a national presence and brand awareness the same way we did in the past.

What changed?

In short, everything changed.

Here’s a little peek at how the landscape has shifted since we opened the doors on CSP on July 13th of 2007:

Twitter became “a thing.” In fact, the platform emerged less than a year before we opened, and didn’t hit a point of critical mass until well into our early stages of business.
Facebook introduced the newsfeed, rolled out “business pages,” created their own advertising platform, and bought a tiny little operation called Instagram.
Speaking of which, Instagram actually started as a platform called Bourbon at a time when we were just about to sign our third lease at CSP.
Roughly 100 gyms (a guess, but likely a safe one) opened up shop within an hour of our facility.
Baseball players almost universally discovered strength and conditioning to be a competitive advantage, and have since watched it morph into a standardized component of their off-season that is expected of anyone who hopes to compete at a higher level (this was anything but the case when we began).
Gurus, influencers, and masterminds flooded the internet offering short-cuts to building the perfect fitness business operation. Some of these service providers are worth their weight in gold, while most others are pitching gym solutions without having ever owned or operated a gym. Go figure.

Like I said, everything has changed, and that is why I believe we’d struggle if trying to recreate “the magic.”.

CSP’s inception pre-dates many of these icons…

We had a wonderful little thing called first-mover advantage when we decided to chase the baseball niche, and there really can only be one (or a small handful) of first-movers in any given space. I also know better than to think our experience is enough to jump into a hyper-competitive market today and simply roll out the same approach that got us here.

Why am I telling you this?

I’m sharing because many of the gym owners I engage with want to employ social media audience size as a metric that somehow indicates their self-worth. The idea that achieving a national following or micro-influencer status is the key to success is a joke when the business in question isn’t set up in a way that allows for monetization of a large following.

For example, the personal training gym you own doesn’t need tens of thousands of Instagram followers in order to fill a one-on-one studio with a capacity for 40-60 sessions per week...it needs 30+ engaged audience members who are buying in to what you are selling.

There are two important realities to keep in mind as you compare your online presence to the big operation with the huge following:

A small local service business doesn’t extract much additional value (outside of a little bit of social proof) from adding followers from outside of their market.
The gyms with the largest followings have often been in the game for as long as a decade and enjoy the natural momentum of growth that comes with having a big list. Plus, they’re probably chasing the big follower counts so that they can drive attendance at live events, fill masterminds, and sell the occasional digital product.

How many of you are losing sleep because you can’t get your mentorship, seminar series, or digital product up and running? That’s right -- almost none. This is likely because you know better than to concern yourself with any of these things until you’ve got a viable and sustainable training product, which isn’t built on impressing people scrolling the Instagram feed three time zones away.

You might need to hear this — we could not recreate the current size or reach of our audience at CSP at the same pace if starting today thanks to the recent massive influx of operations looking to do that very thing. As one of my recent consulting clients recently vented to me: “It’s incredibly difficult to find my voice on social media when everyone else seems to be shouting at the top of their lungs at the same time.”

If you want to stress about something, let it be retention, employee satisfaction, or any handful of other factors that impact your ability to put bodies in the gym today. The problem of not having the ability to swipe up on your Instagram stories isn’t what’s holding you back...you can trust me on this.

_____

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, make sure to say hello on Instagram or Twitter, and subscribe to my newsletter here.