Gym Biz: Starting and Running Your Own Gym for Profit [Paperback]

Lou Ravelle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2000

Takes you through every aspect of starting and running a successful gym.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lou Ravelle

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Robert Kennedy (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552100197
• ISBN-13: 978-1552100196
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,343,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Glorified Magazine, very dissapointing, November 23, 2001

By 

TomK (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gym Biz: Starting and Running Your Own Gym for Profit (Paperback)

This "book" is basically a 80-page magazine, with lots of irrelevant pitcures to take up space. There is a lot of general talk about starting a gym, but no statistics of any kind, no surveys, no hard-facts backed up by studies, no examples of business plans, obtaining financing, examples of successful gym cash flow statements, etc. More or less, this is of the quality of a high-school term paper. I was very dissapointed, and I've returned it back to Amazon.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of time, March 19, 2002

By 

"duncangoodall" (New Haven, Ct United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gym Biz: Starting and Running Your Own Gym for Profit (Paperback)

The book has alot of pretty pictures, but that is about it. The book outlines only a superficial understanding of how to start and operate a gym. I was sorely disappointed and dropped it off to my local goodwill soon after reading it... Dont bother with this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written, March 7, 2007

By 

L. Boswell (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gym Biz: Starting and Running Your Own Gym for Profit (Paperback)

First, this book is tough to sit down and read. Lou may be a very good gym owner, but he's not a very good writer, so the publisher should have had someone more heavily edit and fix up the text before this ever went to print.

Also, who designed this book? It made me laugh out loud that every single image throughout the entire book was of huge, rippling-muscle body builders, and yet the text constantly reiterates that you don't want to advertise your gym with body-builders. So then why include them throughout your book? I understand this book was put out by MuscleMag, but the people who buy the book aren't necessarily going to be MuscleMag fans, and the images completely contradict what the book says. I mean, if they're the smallest percentage of people who attend your gym, why are they the only ones you show in the book? And I noticed at least twice that on the same page where it says, "Don't use an image of a huge muscle-man in the logo of your business because it will intimidate people" a man was shown wearing a shirt with a gym logo on it that had...a huge muscle-man image in it. ?????

I've never owned a gym. It's an idea that I'm considering for a bit in the future, and I bought this book to kind of give me an idea of what owning a gym entails. What are the pros and cons? What are the real challenges, and what are the real rewards?

Here is the advice I gathered from this book:
* Having a telephone in your gym is good, because then people can call you.
* Make sure your gym has gym equipment.
* Have an office in your gym (how could you NOT have an office? Where would you keep all your paperwork? Staple it to the walls???)
* Try not to have ripped, broken equipment.

If any of these tips helped you, you should seriously NOT consider ever opening a business.

Also, the entire book is obviously geared toward the big muscle men that it tries to tell me not to gear my gym toward. Women are mentioned as cursory afterthoughts--creatures who sometimes come to the gym wearing leotards and big hair. And all they do there is step aerobics, with their "shapely" step aerobics instructor. Or maybe they take "martial arts" with their "Oriental" martial arts instructor (yes, he actually says "oriental" to refer to a person).

Anyway, other than mildly offending me, this book really had no effect. It told me nothing that anyone who has ever worked out a gym wouldn't already know. I didn't really gather any pros or cons about owning a gym, or feel like the book taught me any insider secrets. So...skip it.