To Co-Founder or Not?

And why the correct answer is yes

In gym ownership communities, there’s an ongoing debate that needs to be put to bed today.

Usually the people who’ve either been been burned in the past or never had a co-founder immediately chime in with a resounding NO.

I’ll be the first to emphatically say YES.

You Have 99 Jobs and Sleep Ain’t One

This is because opening a business is so hard, you 100% need at least one other person to help you maximize your chances for success.

In a typical day you will need to:

• Market

• Sell

• Post on social media

• Write a newsletter or customer engagements

• Fix members with bad billing

• Help some customers with issues

• Reply to leads

• Coach class

• Train your coaches

• Fix a toilet

• Handle your apparel sale

• Plan a holiday party

• Keep your attendance club going

• Write a blog post

• Plan your workouts / lesson plan

• 99 other things too boring to list here…

• and still have time to tuck the kids in and spend time with your spouse…

You can’t get everything done in a day. You’ll always be falling behind.

If you just add one co-founder, you will double the amount of things your business can get done.

In fact, co-founders not only work on sweat-equity, but they will actually donate working capital into the company to help keep it afloat.

Co-Foundering Requires Some Human Intelligence

Now. Not all humans have the ability to work in harmony with co-founders today. But with some practice and thought you can.

The reason many people have been burned in the past working with co-founders is because one (or all) of the founders lacked the human soft-skills in picking and working with a co-founder.

I’ll dive into this topic a little deeper in later posts, but for now leave it at this.

If you’re looking to open a gym (or any business) you will maximize your odds of success if you have at least one co-founder along the ride with you. If you try to go it alone, the burden is deeper and the risk is higher.