The gym gives you aura, but the gym industry can also make you money.

See, all of us go to the gym because we want to look fucking good, whether it's men or women, as men we want those big shoulders, small waist, some upper chest, some abs, basically that stupid Toji silhouette, You want to put on a tight black T-shirt, listen to some hardstyle, trance music (fun fact when i was a bouncer that was exactly my era), you wanna look aesthetic, you wanna go to a rave shirtless, shredded, looking like Greek god.

Women too want insane glutes, tiny waist, nice legs, whatever their version of the same thing is. Everyone is basically going there trying to become hotter.

But the strange part, the one I want you guys to really reflect on, is that: when we’re at the gym, it seems like we’re all just looking at ourselves in the mirror, it never really occurs to our mind to look at the actual room, we’re basically “Narcissus”, so the room itself just disappears in the background. It just looks.. ordinary, just a bunch of expensive metal that people pick up and put back down. But what if for a second we stopped looking at it like someone who goes there to train, and looked at it like the person who had to create that gym from nothing? Because before, it was basically just an empty room, then somebody had to turn that empty room into the thing we’re standing inside. Excellent, now we’re looking at it the business way. Now every dumbbell is not just a dumbbell, it’s something somebody had to buy. Every rack, every bench, every machine, every plate had a price attached to it.

Which means the next question becomes pretty obvious:

How much does all this shit actually cost?

Because the person opening the gym is not buying one dumbbell. They need the dumbbells, racks, benches, machines, cardio, flooring, everything, basically an entire room at once. And when you add all of that together, the number gets stupid very quickly. In the gym projects I looked at throughout my research, the median buildout was around $195,000, and a big part of that money goes into filling the room. So before the gym makes its first membership payment, the owner is already staring at one of the biggest cheques of the whole project.

And this is where the owner usually has the same reaction any normal person would have:

“There is no fucking way I’m paying that much if I don’t have to.”

Because remember, they are opening a gym, not trying to win an award for having the newest dumbbells in America. They just need good commercial equipment that works, looks good, and lets people train. And this is where another whole industry appears.

There are companies whose entire business is selling used gym equipment

They buy commercial equipment from gyms that closed, replaced machines, upgraded, whatever, clean it up, refurbish it, and sell it again for much less than buying everything brand new. So now our empty gym owner has a very obvious choice:

Pay full price for everything new.

Or:

Find someone who already has the same type of commercial equipment sitting in a warehouse for much less.

             EQUIP THE GYM

                  ●
                 / \
                /   \
               /     \
              ▼       ▼

        BRAND NEW     REFURBISHED
         $195K           $45K

           😐              😎
         FUCK NO.       EXACTLY.

And now look at the other side. That refurbished equipment dealer has racks, treadmills, benches, machines and dumbbells sitting inside a warehouse. That equipment is money stuck in metal. Until somebody buys it, the dealer does not get their money back.

So the gym owner is thinking: “I need equipment without getting murdered on price.”

And the dealer is thinking: “I need somebody who is buying equipment right now.”

Excellent again, now we have two people who already want exactly what the other one has.