Driving small business growth

Taking a huge leap of faith, one shared by his financial backers, David Westaway packed his family into the car and moved north to purchase the Riverside Health Studio in Ballina seven years ago.

‘We didn’t have a place to move to…my wife was eight months pregnant and we still hadn’t finalised the business purchase. I was thinking to myself, Geez, what am I doing? But I figured if I had not made the decision and was still in Sydney I would have hit a crisis point by now.’

The Riverside Health Studio was not up for sale when David first fixed his sights on it, but having grown up holidaying in the area and with his personal-training experience, David knew this was where he wanted to be. He started by contacting a local commercial real-estate salesman to put the feelers out. Luckily, the owner was willing to sell.

‘I gave him an offer, he came up with what he wanted, and I paid pretty much around that mark,’ says David.

Cash not king

The gym’s owner ran a cash business and had no financials or figures to analyse, making both David’s purchase decision and gaining further financial backing much harder.

‘I had to come up and sit here for a week and watch how many people went in, how many people came out and work it out from there,’ he says. This enabled David to figure out a budget, but getting finance was still a problem.

‘I couldn’t get finance. I had two wealthy older clients in Sydney who basically just said, “Look, here’s the money, just pay us back as you go”.’

Rebranding

After a year, David rebranded and redesigned the logo. He also added images of his target market (40- to 65-year-olds) to his website.

David attributes his business success to a number of factors including keeping up to date with technology and continually improving the service and equipment on offer.

David attributes his business success to factors including keeping up to date with technology and continually improving the service and equipment on offer.

One suspects that other success factors include David’s strong marketing nous and good interpersonal skills, particularly in terms of relationships with his members. One of his previous members, Aub Eardley from the Business Enterprise Centre, offered honest support along the way.

‘I think it’s important for businesses to have the BEC there,’ David says.

Another Riverside member offered David advice on search engine optimisation while yet another member alerted him to the fact that competition is soon to beset him.

Competition spurs marketing

The arrival in 2013 of Anytime Fitness forced Riverside Health Studio to become Riverside 24/7 Fitness. Once the conversion to a 24-hour facility – at a cost of $20,000 – paid for itself, David still had a host of marketing campaigns planned to counter the effects of the new bods in town.

One marketing strategy includes allowing members of Riverside to bring a friend for free – any day of the week.

‘There’s a fair few conditions with it… but for me it’s a constant stream of potential members and it’s something Anytime Fitness don’t offer. So rather than compete on price I’ll just give more.’

Something else that Riverside offers for free is a bootcamp on Monday mornings at 6am. Cleverly, the location is kept quiet until Sunday night, forcing people to engage with the Riverside Facebook page in order to find out the location each week.

David has found Facebook to be one of the most financially effective forms of advertising.

Yet another big marketing campaign that David planned was a 100% guaranteed-weight-loss program.

Extra services

Riverside also boasts the services of a masseur, a personal trainer and an exercise physiologist on-site.

What he has learnt about business since starting? David replies, ‘You are never in a comfortable position, never. You know, you think one day you’re going to be ahead,’ he laughs, ‘you’re never.

‘You have to drive your business yourself and you can’t expect your staff to have the same level of commitment and drive as you do.

It’s not their business, after all, and the drive has to come from you because ironically, in the competitive world of fitness, it’s all about bums on seats.

Karin von Behrens, Northern Rivers BEC, Lismore, NSW