An Interview with Snap Fitness Franchise Owner Greg Mooneyham
A Wellness Club Franchise Owner Shares His Insights
If you’re considering investing in a fitness franchise opportunity with Snap Fitness, one of the best ways to get an inside look and learn more about the business is by talking to current franchise owners. Reading interviews of current franchisees can help you gain valuable insights into the Snap Fitness franchise owner experience, how it has influenced their fitness industry business journey, and whether franchising is a good fit for you.
From Passive Residual Income to Primary Income Source with Snap Fitness: Greg Mooneyham, Multi-Unit Franchise Owner, Atlanta, GA
We spoke recently with Greg Mooneyham, a multi-unit Snap Fitness franchisee in Atlanta, GA, to learn more about experience acclimating to the franchise process. Greg started franchising with us in 2006 and currently owns three Snap Fitness locations. While he had no experience in the gym industry prior to joining Snap Fitness, Greg used his expertise as a business consultant to expand his operations, a venture that initially generated passive residual income and evolved into a primary income source.
1. Can you tell us about your experience in the fitness industry and how it led you to become a gym franchise owner?
I had no experience in the gym industry before becoming a franchise owner, but I've been working out in gyms regularly since I joined the military 40 years ago. Of course, fitness is big in the armed services, so I was regularly working out, and even when I got out of the military, I continued to work out. That was the sum of my gym experience before launching my first Snap Fitness franchise.
2. What attracted you to the idea of franchising with a gym rather than starting an independent fitness business?
I moved to Atlanta in an up-and-coming part of town, and there were no gyms in the area – at least none that you could easily access. The closest one was an LA Fitness, which was four miles away, but could take you 20 to 30 minutes to get there, frankly.
I was doing some business consulting and decided to take a little bit of my own advice. I wondered what would be a good way to start gaining some passive residual income. While it’s not the model anymore, it was at the time. I wanted to start something close by so I wouldn't be struggling to get to a gym all the time.
I realized that I had some business experience but not any real fitness/gym experience. So that's what led me to the whole franchise piece of it: I needed the support; I needed the help. I needed someone to show me how this is done to avoid a lot of mistakes that I didn't want to make as a new business owner.
3. What motivated you to choose a gym franchise with Snap Fitness over other options available in the market?
One of the reasons I went with Snap Fitness versus other options was that they had a couple of competitors with virtually the same business model. I applied to a couple of brands that are essentially the same, but the competitors seemed to have no interest in me because I wasn't looking to open ten. My initial idea was I wanted just one for passive residual income.
I've been a franchisee for a long time: I signed my first franchise agreement in 2006. There weren't many brands at the time that were the same model. There were maybe three total, and I was looking at all three. Two of them were hard to get a hold of. They said, Look, if you don't want to do three to five, we're not interested in talking to you. And it kind of put me off a little bit.
In the franchise space, some franchisors want multi-unit owners. I was ignored by the other brands, but Snap Fitness was very different. They were like, yeah, come on, we're ready. Snap Fitness seemed very interested in me and engaged with me.
4. What are the key advantages of being part of a franchise system from your perspective, and how has it helped your gym's growth and success?
The biggest advantage is you get brand recognition, of course. There's also a lot of support that should be there.
We got smart about the business down to the nitty-gritty details, and with our fitness business, the tail started wagging the dog. It was no longer passive residual income; it became primary income. And the more I managed it and the more I worked at it, the better it was. I realized very early on that this could be a great business.
If you want passive residual income, that could work, but it would only do so much. But if you really want to work the business, what you could do with it is significant. So I kind of let the other part of what I was doing fade away and jumped into the fitness side of it 100%.
When we went to the regional meeting back in the spring, the big thought I came away with was how much work the brand had done. Everything from marketing to training to just literally anything across the board with what needs to be done in business – and they were doing it all.
And that's when I first started thinking maybe it's time for us to get back into growth mode and start looking at opening more again. I currently own three with a business partner but certainly in the right situation, opening up new locations is very attractive to us right now.
5. Have you faced any challenges related to operating within a franchise system, and how did you overcome them?
Businesses ebb and flow, and things got bad for a while, and then they got much better. And I think the current folks running the brand are fantastic. Over the last two or three years, they've helped steer the ship to get us headed in the right direction.
What you'll hear from many franchise systems is that if you don't want to follow the system and the rules, you'll struggle in franchising. There are boundaries that you have to stay within, and as long as you're okay with that, you're going to love it.
If you want to go out and do your own thing completely, you should open your own gym. Don't get into the franchise business. I mean, you're paying franchise fees for a reason. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of the help and support they're offering if you're paying for it?
I'm surrounded by a great group of people who know what they're doing – they're smart, they're motivated, and they understand this business. We spin off people all the time that I hope will one day have their own gym because of what they’ve learned working for us.
6. What should prospective franchise owners know about the Snap Fitness opportunity?
They should know absolutely everything about the opportunity. That sounds obvious, but it's a little shocking to see how many people don't do the amount of prep work they should do before they make a decision.
There are two types of people. Some people make quick decisions; you've got this group that's like, give me two facts and I'm ready to roll. And then you have people on the far opposite end – you can give them a bazillion facts, and they still can't make up their minds.
You should be able to do the research. You should be able to get all your questions answered to the point where you have to make a decision – am I going to do this or not do this?
If you're the type of person who needs a 100% guarantee that it's going to work, you're never going to do it because there's no 100% guarantee – faith in yourself is what it is. You can get 80% or 85% there by having all your questions answered by talking to the franchise team, understanding the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), and talking to franchisees.
7. What advice would you give prospective gym franchise candidates?
The one part that I find that people seem to miss is feeling like they've done everything but they haven’t worked out the financial aspect. And if you don't know how to do that, you need to seek help because you need to know if it's going to work.
If you love fitness and you love working out, go work out. If you love training people, go train people and get a job as a trainer. If you want to run a business, that's a reason to open a gym. You have to be passionate about running your business. And if you're going to be training people all day, who's running your business? Sometimes that works. But you need a business partner. You need someone who's going to do that piece of the job.
So just because you love fitness, don't let that be your only reason for opening a gym. You should realize you have to do sales, marketing, operations, keep your books – everything's got to get done.
It's not semi-absentee ownership. Let's say you don't have a job and you have one gym – you should be in there every day. If you do have another job and you can't be in your gym every day, you better have someone in there who can run the gym every day, all day. It doesn't work to leave it sitting empty, at least not the way it should be run. The gym has to be actively managed.
I would say the biggest thing is don't be afraid of it.
I encourage people to flesh it out, dig in, and figure out what it's all about. Even if you evaluate just one opportunity and decide you don't want to do it, when you go to the next one, you're that much smarter, and you can better evaluate that one. And if you decide you don't want to do that one, you go to the third one, and you're even that much smarter, and you also figure out what it is you really want, what's going to work for you versus guessing at it.
You might evaluate ten different franchises before you decide on the one that makes sense for you, but don't be afraid .
Don't be afraid to look now – it's not that scary.
Check out Greg’s Snap Fitness Locations:
Inman Park
Explore gym franchise opportunity to learn more about opening a fitness franchise with Snap Fitness and why you should consider becoming a Snap Fitness franchisee.