Hiring a fitness business consultant: what to look for

Most consulting advice aimed at gym owners comes from people who have never signed a lease, made payroll or stood at a front desk watching members walk out. That is the first thing to check.

Start with scar tissue, not credentials

A consultant who has only ever advised has a blind spot the size of your P&L. Ask what they have owned, what they have run and what went wrong. The wrong answers are polished. The right ones are specific.

Dai co-owns CrossFit BC with his wife Christie. He spent years as a COO before that. When he talks about member churn or pricing, it is because he has made those calls with his own money.

What good consulting actually includes

Real consulting is not a slide deck. It is someone looking at your numbers, your floor plan and your front desk, then telling you the thing you did not want to hear. Expect:

An honest audit of operations, member experience and retention. Decisions you have been postponing, named out loud. A short list of actions, in order, with owners and dates.

The retention problem is usually not marketing

Most gyms that struggle do not have a lead problem. They have a leaky bucket. The IHRSA research library has published on retention for years, and the pattern is consistent: the first 90 days decide whether a member stays. Fixing onboarding beats buying ads, every time.

Watch this before you hire anyone

Dai''s TEDx talk is not about business. It is about why people change and why they do not. If you are trusting someone with your business, watch how they think about people first.

The reality check

No consultant fixes a gym in a month. Anyone who promises that is selling. What a good one does is shorten the list of things you are guessing about. Selective optimism: the problems are real, and they are fixable, in that order.

If you want to talk through your business, start with the consulting page. Dai reads every enquiry himself.

Dai and Christie run this playbook at their own gym, CrossFit BC, so the advice here is practised, not theoretical.