Four big mistakes I've made managing gyms (and what I've learned)

·15 min·1 clip

Jack Thomas reveals four critical mistakes he made running gyms over 10 years, starting with failing to back his staff.

In episode 234 of the Fitness Business Asia Podcast, host Jack Thomas presents a solo episode structured around four key managerial errors from his experience owning a gym for six years and working in fitness management for over a decade. He opens with a hook about these mistakes and a teaser for an upcoming business announcement at the Fit Summit in Bangkok. The first mistake involves an early management incident where a client was rude to the front desk team; Thomas apologized to the client to retain them, which backfired as the client left anyway and the staff felt unsupported, requiring months to rebuild trust. The second mistake was offering steep 20% discounts at the launch of his first studio, BASE location one, which devalued the service, eliminated profit margins, and created resistance when trying to raise prices later. He notes they repeated this error at a smaller scale with a 15% discount for the second location. The third mistake was not conducting proper pre-sales campaigns before opening, a belief he held until learning from Tony of F45 Yangon, who successfully sold memberships in a market with low brand awareness. The fourth mistake was promoting a talented salesperson to a regional sales manager role she didn't desire; she struggled with training others and eventually left the company, teaching Thomas to consider incentives beyond promotion. He concludes with a recap and reiterates the upcoming announcement about a new business project aimed at disrupting the fitness industry.

As heard by us

Jack Thomas explains why an opening gym discount can be hard to unwind.

Jack Thomas opened his first studio with a discount that brought in clients but left him short of the membership price in his projections. Some paid 20% below market rate. When he cut the discount to 15%, many resisted. The same thing happened at 10%.

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Why you'd press play

If you're pricing a new gym, hear how a 20% below-market opening offer became hard to unwind.

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