The lowdown on what we spent to open our gym? | One Good Question

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Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Friday's
episode of fifty percent Facts. One good

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Question where we take questions from y'all. We answer them in five to ten

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minutes best we can. Today we're
opening up the p and LS. It

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says, would you be able to
Oh shit, I just clicked it wrong.

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No, would you ever be able
to talk about overhead and planning for

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when you open? Three SB and
I think we can talk a little bit

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about money opening gyms or businesses.
There's a million factors when you look into

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opening a business. Obviously, location
plays a very big role. If you're

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talking about startup costs, we can
go over that, which is different than

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your overhead. Overhead is typically what
you consider to keep the business running and

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moving, something like rent lights,
employees, et cetera, et cetera.

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Startup costs is typically the big old
chunk of some money and work to get

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it going and moving and how you
like to go. So for a gym,

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that's equipment, lease, startups,
plates, front desk, security,

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cameras, music, et cetera,
et cetera. You know, when you're

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we're in the dead middle of the
capital of California, California, is I

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think the most expensive state now from
some of the data I've been looking at,

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which, yeah, President, on
who you are and what metrics obviously,

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but I think top to bottom,
I think it's beating New York.

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But either way, we're one of
the top three most expensive states in America,

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which means we're probably top five or
ten most expensive states in the world,

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and so obviously that raises rent.
We're in a warehouse style building where

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you're going to look anywhere in California
at least. Again, it depends on

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where you live, but a dollar
to two dollars per square foot is what

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you're looking to pay monthly. You
know, if you're in Arkansas and some

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ten thousand person town, you could
probably cut that by ninety percent for all

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I know. Or even Vegas is
a little cheaper. Different parts of Sacramento

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if you go to the suburbs,
a little cheaper conditioned versus unconditioned. Yeah,

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there's a million things. Does it
have a kitchen, does it have

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bathrooms, does it have showers?
All those will play a role. Square

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footage of the building, you know, we're sitting, you know, roughly

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around six thousand square foot with our
back podcast office space and fulfillment space,

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all that matters. Yeah, how
many bathrooms you have. We have a

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small parking lot, which we're very
lucky to have in a downtown space,

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which isn't very common. That will
depend on your costing and then what style

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gym you're having. You know,
if you're talking about cardio equipment and more

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machines, they tend to cost more. Although all equipment's very expensive. You

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know, if you look at the
average machine, chest back, whatever,

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it's probably sitting at four to five
thousand dollars. If you look at the

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average powerlifting combo rackets, probably sitting
at two to three thousand dollars. So

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it is a hair cheaper I guess
to run a very strict powerlifting gym.

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Squad racks are even cheaper. Barbells, a good barbells three hundred to five

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hundred to one thousand dollars. Plates
are very fucking expensive. I don't even

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know what they're going for now,
but a regular plate was about a dollar

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per pound. It's probably more.
A competition plate is double or triple that.

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If you're looking at a set all
the miscellaneous, you know, you're

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looking at computers to check in,
you're looking at sound system if you care,

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you know, in a hardcore gym
and building a certain culture, we

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try to pay attention to a lot
of things we think will help build up

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that culture, and that's something we
care about. We probably spent a grand

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there, computers and shit, a
grand plus security, a grand plus locks,

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all that type of shit, toilet
paper, soap, whatever might be.

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It all definitely adds to not only
startup costs, butcher overhead. And

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again, so much depends on what
you're trying to do, you know,

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very estimate to get the lights going
and rocking. Here, we're looking at

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low six figures. Yeah, I
think that the total all in startup costs

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for three SB was in the neighborhood
of one hundred twenty thousand dollars. Yeah,

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and again we're six thousand square foot
facility. We had a background of

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fitness, We had decent confidence going
into this thing, and competency of a

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facility that was in rough shape.
Yeah. Let alone our labor hours we

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cut. We cut our startup costs
probably in half doing it ourselves, probably

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even less. And the only things
that we paid for were electrical upgrades.

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Yeah, those were first start so
minimal. There was a yeah, We're

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very minimal, just places that we
needed plugs that we didn't have plugs.

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I don't think we actually I don't
think we actually farmed on anything else.

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I don't remember any no, there
being nothing. We had some help.

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We had some homies help, you
know. Kyle's uncle helped us build the

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front esque, Kyle's cousin Mason Shadow
Mason helped us with some shit. Marcus

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and Riley helped us with a bunch
of labor itself. Yeah, but we

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painted the whole facility, we redid
the floors in the whole facility, We

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built this whole back room, insulated
it. So, yeah, the one

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twenties like pure cost of goods because
we did like a good four months,

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ten hour days minimum, six days
a week of the construction itself. So

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yeah, it's probably four hundred k
if we ever got hands to do that

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for us. Yeah, we had
people doing stuff for us. And we

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also didn't get any with it called
tenant improvements or yeah, you know.

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Yeah, yeah, we got no
cash up front, We got no help.

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I mean, the only thing that
we did get was we have to

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pay triple net for the first four
months, but we do not pay rent

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for the first, which is common, but it's all tacked on at the

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end. Yeah, so it's not
like, yeah, it's semi common to

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get a couple of free months when
you when you sign a longer lease.

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We signed a five year lease.
But yeah, you know, a lot

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of those moneies and scales can be
mixed around. I opened my very first

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gym, which was nine hundred square
foot roughly, for ten thousand dollars.

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Yeah, and I had two squad
racks. I had a full dumbbell set

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up to fifty. I had three
bar bells, bumper plates, regular plates,

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mismatched plates, medicine balls, a
sled, a couple adjustable benches,

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you know, kind of everything I
needed. It was more personal training style

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obviously, but that just shows the
difference in scale. And then opposite of

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that, you know, I've had
people or there's that one that went viral

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on the internet that's supposedly opened for
two million dollars, you know, or

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like a typical Lifetime Fitness or even
a regular Planet Fitness that you know,

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a Planet Fitness. Obviously, they
have relationships with the companies in some of

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those larger scale gyms, point paint
manufacturers. Yeah, they lease their equipment

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or they buy in mega bolt because
they're opening twenty gyms at a time.

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But let's erase all that and encapsulate
one of them. It's probably yeah,

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four hundred to five hundred k,
maybe more, and their overhead is probably

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slightly higher because they all choose like
strip mall situations. All that matters.

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You know, if you're off the
off the beaten path a little bit into

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a warehouse style, it'll save you. But hopefully that helps a little bit.

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And then yeah, the million things
that come along with that. You

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know, we sell protein bars and
clothing and everything that comes across all the

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foam rollers. Like, there's a
million little pieces that we don't have exact

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pricing on because we added as time
went on. I would say that we

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probably have put twenty five to thirty
thousand more in so roughly about ten thousand

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a year ish, Yeah, maybe
more to additional equipment, maybe more right,

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because we've got a bunch of combo
racks, new plates, new leg

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pieces. Yeah, maybe added fifty
yeah maybe so yeah, somewhere between yeah,

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thirty and fifty, thirty and fifty
yeah, but yeah, the constant

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upgrades. Overhead only gets more expensive
as inflation and the world goes on like

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that's just a norm. So yeah, it's ever progressing thing. But that's

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kind of any business. You know, any business is gonna have something similar.

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If you're opening coffee shop, you're
gonna need coffee filters and machines and

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roasters and whatever, the plates and
the cups, and every company has its

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own layout of what that might look
like. And then it's just the square

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footage of what things look like for
you. Everything you can think of and

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things that you can't. Yeah,
that's a year in it. Yeah,

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that's true. Then even still,
like our leg press is too tall for

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some of our employees and other folks, so I had to buy two phone

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pads to fill in their back yesterday
for fifty bucks. You know, shit

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like that pops off all the time. But that's kind of the big growth

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in it. And you upgrade stuff
over time. You get better equipment,

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do you you know, like our
first camera system was like, I don't

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know, three four hundred bucks and
like that costco special. Yeah, for

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the current one was over a grand. Yeah. Yeah, it just happens.

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You upgrade it and you put the
priority where I mean, that's the

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beauty of building your own business,
you put the priority where you want.

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Maybe you're in a really nice area
and you don't need a security camera,

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but then you're gonna pay more for
the rent. Where we're in a fine

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area, but we're twenty four hours, so we wanted a nice security you

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know. And that's that's the fun
part of being a business owner, I

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guess, is you tailor it to
not only what you like, but what

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you particularly need. The access system, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's

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all that. That and the what
we pay for the member management software.

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Yeah yeah, all the digital fees. We have yet to buy a new

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computer or or tablet other than yeah, I think Kyle just had to rework

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that. When he just told me
hisselves out there, it's like, all

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I started to die, is like, but don't worry, I hacked it.

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I was like, all right,
man, make that thing work,

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make a breathe. We can,
we can, we can figure that out.

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I did not know that. Oh
well, yeah, that's and that's

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actually like I had a lot of
personal stuff that I brought in here,

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like the whole like a big part
of this set is stuff that either I

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had or or we had. As
part of the previous podcast, yeah,

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situation, Yeah, you put it
all together, yep. But yeah,

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that hope gives you an idea you
can you can. We do a lot

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of that math. And we did
a lot of the equipment math before opening.

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You know, we ran different companies
and called them and ran the pricing

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of five of these and six of
these, so you can plan pretty good.

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We were able to get a little
bit of sponsorship on equipment, not

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a time. Yeah. Yeah,
we've got some gifts, we've got some

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partnerships, we've got some fun stuff. But yeah, this just kind of

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goes. You build connections, you
do what you do. But biggest thing

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is if you're new to it,
as I would definitely start small as much

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easier and fun to scale up than
it is to scale back. Yeah,

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I think we if we had had
had the option of starting smaller, we

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probably would have started closer to three
thousand square feet or so. Yeah.

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Yeah, there's never a harm in
that. Our situation was just slightly different

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because of our nostalgia and past in
this building in particular. But the other

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thing too in business, and I
talk a lot of my entrepreneur friends and

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business owner friends about this is there's
always, like always two lanes and brains

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working, and in a corporate situation, it's two different jobs. But when

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you're a small business, it's typically
you. It's kind of the creative and

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personal side of things, and then
there's the x's and o's zeros in one

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side of things. And when you're
a small small business, you can be

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the ultimate goal just to make pure
cash and just be a cash cow.

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But typically there's passion involved and love
for what you do involve, and so

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that scale tends to change. And
even as you progress, you know,

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our scales probably turned more to ones
and o's than when we started. We

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started pure passion and did things exactly
how we wanted to do them. And

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then you know, you go back
and forth and maybe it's in season or

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maybe if it's in quarters, one
quarter, you got to focus more on

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the x's and o's than the creative
and the fun and that kind of goes

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back and forth and again. In
a corporate setting, it's kind of a

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CEO versus a CFO versus the CCO. They kind of have their own lanes

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and they bounce off each other.
But when you're a small team or small

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business, you kind of have to
wear multiple hats and weaker that part.

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We passed the ball back and forth
on certain things like yeah, for sure,

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kind of more admin stuff, more
CFOI kind of stuff for sure,

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co CFO kind of stuff, and
you do more of the creative stuff.

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But we you know, but like
in the gym itself, like like the

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branding in the gym and stuff,
a lot of stuff that does all of

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us. It's takes on things that
you've done and and and that we've gotten

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for designers and stuff. Yeah,
and a lot of it too is just

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uh like a big goal of ours
was to make it slightly autonomous and it's

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getting there. Yeah. We got
our team and they crush it. Yeah.

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The other thing too, it I
just for one last consideration is are

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you going to be the person who
is doing you know, the mid lion's

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share of the work, or are
you in a partner or whatever or are

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you going to have a team because
that does change the money conversation. You

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can make a lot more money by
doing a lot more Yeah, for sure

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for sure. And we from the
outset had I mean at the beginning it

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was us. It was kind of
just us, but and and Kyle.

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But along the way we have been
working toward the goal of having a team,

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and we have a team now,
and so it means that we're not

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doing everything. Yeah, and that's
life. You know. You work a

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little more, make maybe more money, but slightly less freedom or back and

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forth or other projects. But Jim
and I have lives. We try to

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live. Yeah, appreciate y'all.
New episodes Wednesday Friday. Fifty percent Facts

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dot Com Good Company, Discord dot
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Street barbe if you're in Sacramento,
California, and I'm Sam, Like where

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you off fin me? I am
at the Jim McDonnell the social media.

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This show is fifty percent facts,
four percent of the word and fifties just

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numbers. Fifty percent of Facts is
a Spreaker Prime podcast in association with that

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Art Media on the Obscure Celebrity Network. And we'll talk to you next week. Six