To be a successful gym owner today, we’re led to imagine we’d like complex marketing plans, internet advertising, and fancy software solutions with automated lead nurturing.
We have to undergo sales training, and we most definitely have to hire a business mentor. Oh, and group classes aren’t enough. We need a minimum of 4 revenue streams, including personal training, individual design, and nutrition coaching.
Or will we?
Preston Soechting hasn’t done any of the above, and today, he’s the owner of two successful gyms in Nashville, TN: CrossFit Nashville, which he opened 13 years ago, and CrossFit Nashville West.
In nearly a decade and a half of being an affiliate owner, Soechting says the key to his success has been to maintain it easy.
CrossFit Nashville’s Story
After serving with the U.S. military in Iraq, where he discovered CrossFit, Soechting returned home and opened the primary affiliate in Nashville in his garage in June 2011. By the top of the summer, he moved right into a industrial space.
Soechting explained that it was a straightforward time. Gyms weren’t using sophisticated software to nurture leads, nor were they hiring the most recent and biggest marketing firm that promised 50 leads a month or paying for fastidiously crafted online ads. Instead, old-school word of mouth and referrals were the backbone of attracting and keeping clients.
Further, no person cared who the fittest person within the room was. It was nearly showing up, working hard, feeling good, and having fun, he told the Morning Chalk Up.
Thirteen years later, that is all still the case for Soechting because, because the saying goes, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
Soechting has never hired a marketing company, he doesn’t pay for social media ads, and he doesn’t even use a management software system to speak along with his clients.
- “It all feels so used automotive salesman-y,” Soechting said. “I reply to every email personally. It’s so vital to try this. And that’s my job.”
What about offering other revenue streams like nutrition coaching and individual design? Soechting shook his head.
- “We just do CrossFit,” he shrugged.
“Just doing CrossFit” for 13 years has led to 2 successful gyms — one which is 5,100 square feet and the opposite 10,000 square feet — and an owner who continues to be as committed as ever to what he’s doing.
It’s a rarity in an industry where small gyms come and go or change owners, often multiple times in a decade. Soechting has witnessed this firsthand.
At in regards to the five-year mark, “that’s when it turns into work,” he said. This is when he said he sees many gym owners begin to lose their passion because “it isn’t fun anymore,” and it often ends within the gym’s closure.
Though he has to work long hours, the explanation he still enjoys what he’s doing is because he has been dedicated to finding the appropriate people.
- “I don’t care how good you might be at fitness. I just want good people. I even have had individuals who are available who’re really gifted athletes, but they weren’t cool people, and never the form of people I would like my children to be around,” Soechting, a father of three young children aged 3, 5, and eight, said.
The key here is to eliminate the massive egos.
- “In a competitive environment that sometimes the CrossFit gym becomes, it may turn into whoever is one of the best at CrossFit goes to be a very powerful person within the room.”
- “And nobody should feel like they’re a very powerful person within the room, like ever. That’s very toxic to the culture,” he said, adding that he has made it his mission to stamp this out.
The same is true of sourcing coaches who’re good people. He has never put out an ad to rent a coach, as he desires to get to know the people he hires first.
- “I’m not going to rent anybody unless you’ve gotten been here for at least six months,” he said. “And that’s why we’ve got an awesome group of coaches who all began here (as athletes) and built up. That’s why I trust them completely.”
This approach has paid off. Soechting has a team of 20 coaches, most of whom have been on his staff for him for a minimum of seven years. As for his clients, Soechting still has members who began with him in his garage in 2011.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
While Soechting is perhaps humble about what he’s doing in Nashville, his long-time coach, Sarah Topp, said Soechting is a big reason for the gym’s longevity and success.
His passion is at the center of the community, she said.
- “He continues to be so consistent with it and committed to it, and he himself continues to be enthusiastic about it…He’s doing the workouts himself, as well, and continues to be enthusiastic about doing them and attempting to improve his own fitness and improve at CrossFit. And when you’ve gotten an owner like that, it gets everyone enthusiastic about it and makes people need to work hard, as well,” Topp said.
She added: “Preston is the important thing to why CrossFit Nashville has been so successful for thus long.”
The Big Picture
To anyone trying to open a gym now, Soechting’s primary tip is to maintain it easy.
- “Everybody desires to go big, and I’d say just stay small. Just provide super effective coaching and be as minimal and streamlined as you most likely can just construct a solid base of community,” he said.
For Soechting, this implies just providing “one of the best service I can to essentially the most people I can effectively provide it for,” he said.
- “I’m only a gym guy. I don’t see myself as a flowery entrepreneur…We’re just doing CrossFit. That’s why I signed up for this. I’m dedicated to CrossFit and I’m just doing that.”
