Coach Wanting To Open A Cheer Gym

[AngelaDH2018]

Hi everyone! My name is Angela Hill and I need a little bit of help and guidance. I coached cheer for a school district here in Ohio for 2 and a 1/2 years and had to build a program from the ground up, along with going to USASF back in 2014 and volunteer coaching cheer for a church here in Ohio as well. I now would like to open a cheer gym of my own (my background is in dance).

I live in an area where it is mostly low to middle income and there is one all star gym near me, while the others are rec and school. Most of the other cheer gyms are 30-45 minutes away.

Any and all advice would be appreciated! This is something that I have wanted to do for the last three years, but finally have gotten brave enough to start taking the steps towards it!

 

[ScottyB]

Not trying to crush your dreams, just putting some reality in your line of sight...

Knowing this: "I live in an area where it is mostly low to middle income and there is one all star gym near me, while the others are rec and school. Most of the other cheer gyms are 30-45 minutes away. "

And knowing that cheer gyms are rarely profitable while also being expensive for athletes/families, you could be creating a recipe for financial disaster.

But!! You can use this knowledge to position yourself to have the most success possible.

-Survey families in the area that have kids, see if there is more interest at a different price or style currently offered
-Meet with people who left the other gym in town to see if there is an opportunity you can fill in for
-Connect with the city/town to see if you can utilize any public recreation spaces to keep costs down as you launch
-Do research on how many kids in town versus the number of teams you would want, etc to see if will be even possible to have enough for a team or teams
-Apprentice with a friendly gym owner who has experience and success, they are doing something right, learn from them because owning a gym is not just coaching

Best of luck!