Open a gym in the right order
Most gyms that fail were not short of effort. The catchment model was built, the layout was drawn, the budget ran to nineteen trades. The work was real. It was just done in the wrong order, and the question that killed the project, the one that cost a phone call, got asked last.
We watched a two million dollar facility die exactly this way. The full story is in our field guide, Before You Sign. This page is the same discipline applied to the whole journey, not just the site: eight stages, arranged so the cheapest question that can kill the next stage is always the one you answer first.
The rule underneath all of it: never spend a week on a question until you have spent an hour on the questions that could make it irrelevant.
Every stage below says three things. What the stage is. What it costs you to do it out of order. And which free tool on this site runs it.
Where are you up to?
Answer a few questions and get this roadmap as a personal opening plan, with your stage marked and the next checks first.
How we publish numbers. Every figure on these pages carries a source and an as-at date, labelled published, operator, vendor or modelled. Ranges, never point estimates. Where a number does not reliably exist, we say so rather than inventing one. See /methodology.
The eight stages
- 1
Concept and feasibility
What it is. Writing your gym down in numbers before you look at a single building: floor area, every powered system, target membership and price, opening date, and what stage two looks like. Then a first pass at whether the arithmetic can ever work.
Out of order, it costs you everything downstream. A vague brief cannot be tested against a building's power supply, a council's zoning or a budget. Operators who skip this end up assessing sites against a feeling, and a feeling always clears.
Run it with: Concept and feasibility and the cost to open calculator.
- 2
Location and lease
What it is. Six gates, in cost order: physical supply, planning and use, structure and access, catchment, competition, deal economics. You do not move to the next gate until the current one is clear, and you do not sign anything until the named professionals have verified what your screening only screened.
Out of order, it costs you months and, at worst, the business. Site selection done in the order things are interesting, catchment first, switchboard last, is the single most common way capable people lose a year. If a site dies at gate 1 you have lost a morning. At gate 6, a year.
Run it with: Location and lease and the Before You Sign field guide.
- 3
Approvals and compliance
What it is. The permission layer: council planning and change of use, building certification, work health and safety, insurance, music licensing, and the consumer law that governs how you sell memberships. Screening questions are cheap. Retrofitting compliance is not.
Out of order, it costs you your opening date. A development application that outruns your runway, or a condition of consent that kills a 24/7 model, is a blocked site even if approval would eventually come. Found out after the lease is signed, it is a blocked business.
Run it with: Approvals and compliance
- 4
Budget and finance
What it is. The full cost stack with sourced rates: fit-out, rent and security, insurance, soft costs, contingency, landed equipment, pre-opening marketing, and the line first-timers leave out, the cash that funds the ramp between opening day and break-even.
Out of order, it costs you month eight. A perfectly good gym, filling at a perfectly normal rate, runs out of money because the fit-out was funded beautifully and the ramp was not funded at all.
Run it with: Budget and finance, the cost to open calculator and the finance directory.
- 5
Design and fit-out
What it is. Turning the shell into your floor plan: zones, the column grid, sightlines, changerooms, and the trades that build it. The layout is where your concept either fits the building or quietly shrinks to fit the budget.
Out of order, it costs you rework at trade prices. A layout drawn before the walkthrough measurements exist gets redrawn. A mezzanine drawn before a structural engineer has looked at it can get deleted, along with the revenue it was meant to earn.
Run it with: Design and fit-out and the free 2D gym designer, with a shareable plan pack for your builder and landlord.
- 6
Equipment and freight
What it is. Shortlisting manufacturers, getting real RFQs back, and knowing what the equipment actually costs once freight, GST and port charges land on it. Until a real RFQ comes back, every equipment number in your budget is a placeholder.
Out of order, it costs you the difference between an FOB price and a landed price, discovered after the budget is locked. It can also cost you gate 1 twice over: supplier nameplate data is the input your electrician needs, and ordering before that exists is ordering blind.
Run it with: Equipment and freight, the manufacturer directory and the landed cost calculator.
- 7
Systems, staffing and pre-sale
What it is. Everything that has to exist before a member can pay you: billing and access systems, your first hires and their award obligations, and a pre-sale that is run as evidence, not as hype. Your pre-sale is the only real forecast you will ever have before opening day.
Out of order, it costs you the ramp. Opening with no pre-sale means opening at zero and paying full cost base while strangers find you. Hiring before the systems exist means paying wages to people who cannot yet sell or serve anyone.
Run it with: Systems and staffing and Pre-sale.
- 8
Launch and the first 90 days
What it is. Opening deliberately: induction and safety from day one, a weekly rhythm of joins, attrition and break-even progress, and the discipline of comparing actuals against the plan while there is still runway to act on the difference.
Out of order, it costs you the truth. Operators who do not measure the ramp against the plan find out they are behind when the bank balance says so, which is the most expensive possible way to learn it. Budget for six to twelve months before profitability, longer for a large site. Operator experience our experience across real openings, as at August 2026.
Run it with: Launch and the first 90 days
Where are you up to?
Start at your current stage, not at stage 1. The stages behind you only need checking, not redoing, and each stage page opens with exactly that check.
Save your progress. Tell us where you are up to and we will email you the roadmap with your stage marked, plus the checklist for the stage you are on. Nothing else, no course, no upsell — that is what The Gym Owner Brief is, and how often we send it.
This roadmap is a screening and planning method, not professional advice. Planning, structural, electrical, legal and financial questions are verified by the named professionals on each stage page, before you commit money.