During the course of your gym ownership adventure, you’re probably going to set some big goals. When you first open your doors, they could simply be related to gym growth. Eventually, you’ll aim to hire a team and actually take a vacation. But being a fitness business owner means constantly being pulled in a million different directions. So how often have you set a goal, only to end up putting it off or never getting started at all?

Before I opened my gym, I worked a corporate job and I hated it. Being a cubicle warrior led to me feeling like a potato and gaining a bunch of weight. If you can’t relate to this personally, I assure you that some of your members can.

Deep down, I knew this wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. And even though I kept setting goals to do something about it, the same thought always crept into my head: ‘What difference does it make if I don’t get started today?’

I felt like no matter what I did on any given day—no amount of squats, deadlifts or burpees—I wasn’t going to get fit today. And whether I ate a salad—or didn’t eat at all—I wasn’t going to magically drop some pounds and regain my energy.

Have you felt that way with your gym growth? For example, ‘I could create a marketing strategy, but it’s not going to bring in a flock of new leads today, and I need leads TODAY.’ And you’re right. But this is where “the magic pill” comes in.

For Gym Growth and Fitness Results, Move the Dirt.

Phase I: The First Spoonful

First, the bad news. Measurable change in gym growth isn’t going to happen in one day. The same applied to my weight-loss goal. But the great news is that one incredible thing would happen that first day: I would start moving the dirt.

Someone once told me that each of our fitness journeys are like moving a pile of dirt. Some days, we have a shovel. Some days we have a spoon. But every day that we show up, we’re moving the dirt. The same goes for our business goals.

So imagine one of your gym growth goals as a big-ass pile of dirt sitting in front of you. On that first day, when you show up with your spoon (because that’s all the energy you have if you’re like I was… overweight and exhausted), you move a spoonful of dirt.

Afterward, you look at that giant pile and you can’t even see where that spoonful of dirt came from. In fact, you look around on the ground for where you dumped the spoonful and you can barely find it.

Phase II: Don’t Yeet the Spoon

This is where the magic happens. Because at this point, you have two choices: First, you could launch that stupid spoon, say screw it and be done with this pile of dirt. Second, you could show up again tomorrow and move another spoonful of dirt.

Fitness goals and business goals are both accomplished by “moving the dirt” one day at a time.

If you choose the second option, after about a week you’d start to see a tiny new pile of dirt start to form. And after a month, you’ve probably gotten a bigger spoon and you’re able to see more progress. Six months later, imagine how much dirt you’ve moved. And a year from now, that first pile of dirt isn’t the mountain it used to be.

In more gym growth, non-dirt terms, think about that first week when you’ve started to set your plan in motion. Maybe you’ve accomplished a few small tasks like optimizing your Google Business Page and downloading the Gym Growth Game Plan (yes, that was a shameless plug but seriously, go download it).

After a month, you’ve improved your sales process so you can convert more leads. Six months in, your SEO strategy is working and more leads are rolling in. A year down the road, you’re focused on retention to help people stick around, and the gym owners down the road are all wondering what you’ve been doing to see this kind of growth.

Don’t tell them you’ve been moving dirt. They’ll have questions.

But… I Want it Now.

We live in an instant-gratification world. We get annoyed if the video on our phone takes more than a couple seconds to load. If the light turns green and the car in front of us doesn’t go immediately, we say words that are not blog-appropriate. (My driving emotions are a work in progress.)

​If we’re really honest, we all have a little Veruca Salt in us. Some of us have a lot. And just in case you didn’t watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 6,824 times as a child like me, Veruca Salt gave us this entitled banger: “I don’t care how. I want it now.”

Unfortunately, instant gratification is impossible when it comes fitness, nutrition, and gym growth. And as mentioned above, nothing we do in one day will instantly gratify us. But a wise person recently told me, “Delayed gratification is also called dedication.”

In other words, you either want something badly enough to be dedicated to achieving it, or you don’t.

Here’s the thing: Dedication changes your mindset from ‘what difference does it make today,’ to ‘this is going to be a process and I’m committed to it.’ It sets you up mentally and emotionally to accept that it won’t be quick or easy.

But wait, there’s more. When we don’t expect it to be easy, we don’t quit when it gets hard. Because we knew that eventually, it would get hard.

If Gym Growth Was Easy, Everyone Would Do It

Here’s an example from my gym. Recently, one of my 6pm regulars switched jobs, which disrupted her normal routine. Working late meant that 5:30am was now the only viable class option for someone who proclaimed adamantly that she is “not a morning person.”

So naturally, she hit snooze and missed class on the first morning of her new schedule. Day two was a repeat of day one. Samesies for day three. So by the fourth day, she didn’t even bother to sign up, claiming she’d try again on Monday.

We all have that one member with unrealistic expectations about how easy it is to get out of bed for the early morning class.

What happened that week was the combination of her fixed mindset and unrealistic expectations. When members commit to attending early-morning classes, they somehow expect to pop out of bed when the 4:45am alarm goes off and prance happily off to class. First of all, no one prances anymore. Second, everyone’s bed feels amazing at 4:45am and it’s incredibly easy to hit snooze instead of work out.

Whether it’s showing up to class, moving the dirt, or accomplishing your gym growth goals, the key is recognizing that an especially-tough moment will happen. The alarm is that moment for an early-morning class. For us as gym owners, it could be a moment we had blocked for marketing strategy but something else suddenly requires our attention. In order to move the dirt, we have to stay committed.

The Gym Growth “Magic Pill” is Consistency.

Experienced gym owners have all dealt with that person (or many people) looking for the “magic pill.” They’ve “tried everything” and they’re just hoping that your gym will be the unicorn place where they get fantastic results without actually putting in any work.

As you and I know, there truly is no magic formula or pill where someone gets results without working hard… consistently. And that’s why consistency is the second part of the equation for fitness results and gym growth.

Ultimately, consistency happens in two simple steps:

  1. Start.
  2. Stop stopping.

Don’t make it complicated. Sometimes we all just need to turn off our brains so we can’t get in the way of our own dedication. We need to stop talking ourselves out of things and start making our actions align with our goals.

Remember, you are strong in so many ways. You are capable of so much more than you think. And capable people move some effing dirt. So grab a spoon and let’s go.