How to Keep Your Gym Relevant in a Changing Fitness Industry

The fitness industry doesn’t give you much time to become comfortable. Consumer preferences change, new training concepts appear, technology moves quickly and competitors seem to open around the corner every few months. Something that felt innovative 5 years ago can suddenly feel ordinary, which creates an interesting challenge for established fitness businesses.

How do you keep evolving without losing what made the business successful in the first place?

I recently sat down with Mets from Titan Fitness Coogee for an episode of ‘Profit Made Simple’, and that question became the thread running through much of our conversation.

Mets started running his first Titan gym with his brother when he was just 21, having developed a love of bodybuilding and gyms from a very young age. Almost 3 decades later, he’s still operating in an incredibly competitive part of Sydney and remains deeply involved in the industry.

Kevin and I have known each other for almost two decades, and during that time I’ve watched his approach to health, work and life change enormously. One of the biggest turning points came when he and his partner Maria moved from Sydney to Tokyo around 15 years ago.

They packed up their apartment, sold or gave away some possessions, put others into storage and shipped a collection of belongings to Japan. When they initially arrived in Tokyo, however, they had virtually nothing. They found a small apartment and for a short period were living with their suitcases, clothes, a blow-up mattress and a doona.

Obviously, they couldn’t live like that indefinitely, so they began buying what they actually needed. The difference was that every purchase became intentional.

Kevin and Maria eventually developed a simple filter for deciding what belonged in their lives:

Does it serve a purpose, or does it bring us great joy?

After a couple of months, they’d created a home containing everything they needed and very little they didn’t. Then the shipment they’d almost forgotten about arrived.

18 boxes.

Kevin described the arrival of those boxes as heavy. They’d spent several months feeling light, free and agile, then suddenly all this stuff arrived, and it felt as though it was weighing them down.

I think businesses experience exactly the same thing.

When people hear words like simplicity or minimalism, they can assume we’re talking about doing less because we’re lazy or taking the easy option.

That’s not what Kevin means by simplicity, and it’s certainly not what I’m advocating for a fitness business.

As Kevin put it during our conversation, simplicity is about not wasting energy on things that don’t need to be done.

That’s actually difficult.

We’re operating in an environment designed to constantly compete for our attention. There’s always another notification, email, social media post, podcast, YouTube video or business idea waiting for us. As business owners, we can spend the small gaps between our work consuming curated versions of everybody else’s success, then come back to our own business feeling as though we’re not doing enough.

Simplicity requires boundaries. It requires deciding what deserves your attention and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t. It means accepting that there are hundreds of potentially good things you could be doing but only a handful that genuinely matter right now.

That’s not laziness. It takes discipline.

One of the themes Kevin kept returning to was clarity. If you don’t know where you’re trying to go, almost any road can look appealing, which is exactly how fitness business owners end up constantly distracted by new strategies.

Stephen Covey famously used the analogy of climbing a ladder only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. I think that’s a useful way to think about business. You can be working incredibly hard and making impressive progress, but none of that matters particularly much if you’re moving towards something you don’t actually want.

Before simplifying the business, you therefore need to understand what you’re trying to create.

Do you want a single highly profitable location that gives you considerable lifestyle flexibility? Are you trying to build a multi-site operation? Do you still want to coach? How much money do you actually want the business to produce? How many hours do you want to work? What sort of team do you want around you?

Those questions matter because simplicity isn’t about blindly removing things. It’s about removing the things that aren’t helping you get where you’ve decided to go.

Once the destination becomes clearer, decisions become easier. An opportunity can be financially attractive and still be wrong for you because it moves the business away from the life or company you’re trying to build.

One of the things I see constantly among fitness business owners is an extraordinarily high level of stress and overwhelm. They’re running the business all day, then filling every available gap with more stimulation.

I’ve done this myself.

I’ll go for a run and automatically reach for a podcast. I’ll get into the car and immediately put something on. There’s almost an assumption that if we’re not learning, listening, responding or consuming something, we’re wasting time.

Recently, while preparing for the Sydney Marathon, I went for a run and decided to leave the earbuds alone. Rather than consuming another podcast, I gave myself some space to think. I find that some of my best ideas emerge in those periods because my brain finally has enough room to connect things that have been sitting there separately.

Kevin made the same point. Podcasts, books and education can obviously be valuable, but sometimes we need space inside our own heads. Creativity doesn’t always arrive because we’ve consumed another piece of information. Sometimes it appears because we’ve stopped consuming information long enough to process what we already know.

I think business owners need deliberate white space for exactly that reason. If every hour of your week is occupied by delivery, meetings, notifications and content, it becomes incredibly difficult to think strategically about where the business is going.

You don’t necessarily need a three-day silent retreat. Start with a walk without your phone or a run without headphones. Give yourself 30 minutes where nobody is asking anything from you and you’re not asking your brain to consume anything new.

You might be surprised by what turns up.

Kevin’s two questions about possessions translate surprisingly well into business.

Does this serve a purpose? Does it bring value?

You can run almost everything in the business through a version of that filter.

Look at your services. Are there programs you’ve been running for years that no longer make commercial or strategic sense? Look at your fitness business systems. Are there processes that existed for a good reason three years ago but have become unnecessary as the business evolved? Look at your marketing. Are you still producing something every week simply because that’s what you’ve always done?

We’ve made these decisions inside Fitness Profit ourselves. At the end of last year, we eliminated one of our programs even though it was generating revenue. From the outside that might seem strange, but removing it made almost everything else easier. Delivery became easier, sales became easier, onboarding became easier and there was less stress on the team.

The revenue wasn’t free. It carried a complexity cost.

Sometimes the strongest decision you can make is to stop.

Every mature business accumulates baggage.

Some of it is physical. You might have equipment occupying valuable floor space even though members rarely use it. Some of it is operational, such as a report nobody reads or a meeting that has existed for so long nobody remembers why it started.

Then there’s strategic baggage. Services, offers and marketing activities continue because removing them feels riskier than simply allowing them to remain.

The problem is that every one of those things has a cost. It may not appear as a line item on your P&L, but it consumes attention, time and mental energy.

I’d encourage fitness business owners to periodically conduct what Kevin described as a stocktake. Walk through the business and question what you’ve stopped noticing.

Why do we still have this?

Why do we still do this?

Who actually uses it?

What happens if we stop?

If we were starting the business today, would we introduce this?

That final question can be particularly revealing. If the answer is no, the only thing keeping something alive may be history.

This was probably my favourite question from the conversation because it gives us a way to reconcile simplicity with ambition.

Is the prize worth the price?

Last week Kevin and I spoke about adding new revenue layers to a fitness business. That inevitably creates some additional complexity, so are we contradicting ourselves by now advocating simplicity?

Not at all.

Sometimes complexity is worth adding.

Opening a second location will create complexity. Hiring your first employee creates complexity. Having children certainly creates complexity. The fact that something makes life more complicated doesn’t automatically make it a bad decision.

The question is whether the outcome justifies what you’re giving up to achieve it.

Opportunity cost is real. Every time you say yes to something, you’re taking time, energy, money or attention from somewhere else. A new revenue stream might increase gym revenue by another $100,000, but if it consumes an enormous amount of management time, distracts the team from the core service and creates additional stress, you need to decide whether that particular $100,000 is actually worth having.

That’s a very different question from asking whether the idea can make money.

Absolutely, but the key word is intention.

In our previous episode, we talked about building additional gym revenue streams around a fitness business’s core product. That might involve specialised programs, higher-touch services, products or experiences. I still think that can be an excellent growth strategy, particularly when it increases client lifetime value or makes better use of existing capacity.

The mistake would be interpreting that advice as permission to add everything.

Every new revenue layer should have to earn its complexity. What problem does it solve? How much potential profit does it create? What resources will it require? What will the team need to stop doing or spend less time doing to make it work? Does it make the overall business stronger?

If you can’t answer those questions, you’re probably not ready to add it.

This is why simplicity and growth aren’t opposing ideas. Simplicity creates a stronger foundation from which you can make deliberate additions rather than accumulating random ones.

During our conversation Kevin referenced an idea associated with Marcus Aurelius: do less, better.

I think there’s an enormous amount of wisdom in those three words for business owners.

Look at high performers in almost any field and one of the things they tend to have is extraordinary clarity around what matters. They don’t necessarily possess more hours than everybody else or some secret source of energy. They’ve become very good at directing their finite time and attention towards the things that produce the greatest return.

I see the same pattern among successful fitness business owners. They’re not necessarily tracking dozens of fitness business KPIs or running 15 marketing strategies at once. They know which numbers and activities actually matter, and they focus on executing them well. They aren’t constantly reinventing their product. They know what their members value and deliver it consistently. They don’t need to be involved in every task because they’ve become clear about where the owner actually creates the most value.

Focus is a competitive advantage precisely because distraction has become so easy.

The challenge is accepting that doing less means saying no to things that may actually be quite good. You’re not only eliminating bad ideas. You’re often saying no to good opportunities so you have enough capacity to execute the best opportunities properly.

If this resonates, I wouldn’t respond by creating another complicated improvement project. Instead, give yourself an hour away from the day-to-day operation of the business and run a simple audit.

Look at your services, marketing, systems, meetings, software, equipment and your own responsibilities. If your goal is to build a fitness business that runs without you, pay particular attention to the tasks and decisions that still depend entirely on you. For each one, ask whether it still serves a clear purpose and whether the value it creates justifies the time, money and complexity required to maintain it.

Then broaden the audit beyond the business. Kevin’s philosophy isn’t simply about having fewer possessions. Over time, he applied the same thinking to habits, relationships, health and the way he spends his attention. His guiding question became how he wanted to feel tomorrow and whether today’s choices were helping him get there.

I think there’s something useful in that for business owners because your personal life and business aren’t completely separate systems. If you’re physically exhausted, mentally distracted and carrying unnecessary stress everywhere else, you’re probably not going to become a better leader simply by implementing another business framework.

You might finish the audit with three lists: keep, eliminate and reconsider. Don’t feel compelled to immediately remove everything in the second category, but start questioning why it’s still there.

The goal isn’t to build the smallest possible business or live with one wooden spoon.

It’s to stop carrying things simply because you’ve become accustomed to their weight.

Start by identifying the services, systems, marketing activities and owner responsibilities that consume time without creating enough value. Ask whether each still serves a clear purpose and what would happen if you stopped doing it. Simplification should remove unnecessary work while protecting the activities that produce results for members and the business.

Not necessarily. A fitness business can offer several services and still operate simply if each has a clear purpose, strong systems and sufficient value to justify its complexity. The problem occurs when services accumulate without periodically reviewing whether they’re still worth delivering.

Look for activities with low utilisation, poor profitability, unnecessary duplication or high management demands. Ask whether you would introduce the same activity if you were designing the business from scratch today. If the answer is no, investigate whether it still deserves to remain.

Reducing unnecessary complexity is one part of the solution. Gym owners can also create deliberate thinking time, delegate responsibilities that don’t require their unique skills, reduce unnecessary notifications and meetings, and establish clearer priorities for where their time should be spent.

Yes. Simplification can improve focus and allow resources to be directed towards the parts of the business that generate the most value. Growth may still involve adding staff, services or locations, but those additions should be deliberate and worth the additional complexity they create.

Ask what client problem the service solves, whether it aligns with your core business, what profit it could generate and how much operational complexity it will create. You should also consider opportunity cost by identifying what time, money or attention will need to move away from something else.

There’s no universal schedule, but a structured review at least once or twice a year can help prevent unnecessary complexity from accumulating. Major changes in your team, technology, market or business model are also good reasons to review whether existing systems and services still make sense.

It means identifying the relatively small number of activities that create the greatest results and executing them consistently rather than spreading resources across too many priorities. It doesn’t mean working less or avoiding ambition. It means becoming more deliberate about where effort is invested.

Fitness business owners spend a lot of time thinking about what they should add next. The next marketing strategy, product, revenue stream, staff member or location can be exciting because adding something feels like progress. Removing something rarely creates the same excitement, even when it’s exactly what the business needs.

My conversation with Kevin reminded me that simplicity isn’t really about owning fewer things. It’s about becoming more intentional about what deserves space in your life and business.

Ask yourself what you actually need, what you genuinely want and what is creating enough value to justify the price you’re paying for it. Look at the services, habits, systems and responsibilities you’ve accumulated and be willing to question whether they still belong.

Some things will absolutely be worth keeping. Others will be worth adding despite the additional complexity they create. The objective isn’t to avoid complexity at all costs, because meaningful businesses and meaningful lives will inevitably contain some of it.

The objective is to make sure the complexity you’ve chosen is worth carrying.

Kevin finished our conversation with three questions that I think provide a useful filter: What do you really need? What serves a purpose for you? What brings you great joy?

Apply those questions to your business as well as your life and I suspect you’ll make better decisions. More importantly, good fitness business coaching should help you make decisions based on the business and life you actually want rather than simply following what everybody around you says you should be building.

Sometimes growth requires doing more.

Sometimes the next level comes from finally letting something go.