Former OPEX Fitness CEO Jim Crowell Answers

Understanding your own financial statements is critical to your success in business, the fitness industry is no exception. Though the topic of financials can be incredibly dense and confusing the best to place to start is by tracking your own financials.

Why?

Tracking your financials gives you insight into what your revenue is and what your expenses are. This allows you, as a business owner, to make better decisions based on this data. Without this information it’s impossible to make smart business decisions. We would go as far to say that you shouldn’t be making decisions without financial tracking.

The solution to this dilemma is to start tracking your basic financial statements on a monthly basis. You may be surprised at how much money you spend on Facebook ads, but lack information on how effective they are.

Once you’ve established a system by which you are able to track your financials, then you can tie them to other metrics, like social media advertisements. It’s the combination of tracking your financials and tying them to other metrics like Key Performance Indicators that guarantees sound business decisions. It also helps you understand the overall health of your business.

In our work with hundreds of gyms around the world, we’ve discovered that an inability to produce and track metrics and financial statements is a critical error many gym owners make.