Covid 19 Help SAVE our GYMS
Donation protected
We are the Francis Family: Travis, Kristin, Zach (13), Tyler (9) and Landon (6). We live in Plainfield, Illinois, a suburb right outside of Chicago. In 2014, we started on this crazy adventure as gym owners, with the goal of helping as many people become more active and healthy as possible.
After much research, we fell in love with the Anytime Fitness model and signed on with the international franchise to open 3 gyms in 2 years. At that time our little guys were 8, 4 and 1...obviously, we're crazy. ;) They have grown up helping -and driving us nuts :)- in the 3 gyms.
Our Aurora gym was our 1st location to open in 2015.
Our Oswego and Lombard locations followed, opening in 2016. Since then, our lives have not stopped moving at mach speed. Our family has put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into these 3 gyms.
Growing our gyms has been frustratingly slow. As of May 20, 2020, we've yet to profit $1 from our gyms. Gym competition in the Chicago market is fierce. On top of that, more and more employers are offering their employees gym memberships as part of their employee packages. This is awesome for employees. But sucks for us, as we, the gym owners, are the ones who lose financially in this partnership. But with more and more gyms accepting health insurance, and more businesses offering benefits that include gym memberships, we have no choice but to accept it as well.
As 1st time business owners, there was a lot of trial & error, especially as the internet and our daily lives continued to evolve and change. We've made our fair share of mistakes - from hiring to marketing - but tried to learn from each and move on. It has been incredibly bitter-sweet. The high's and lows have been tremendous -from the overwhelming stress of, at one point, being down to only 2 employees, to reveling and celebrating in the success of our member who finally hit her goal of losing 200 pounds- changing her health and her life forever. A member telling you, "I saw my doctor yesterday and because of my exercise, she was able to take me off of 2 of my medications," is the BEST feeling in the world and make those lows worth it.
Over the years, our members & 12 employees have become part of our extended family. With the gyms closed for Covid-19, it has sucked not checking in with them and seeing their smiling faces each day. So many people depend on our gym. Not only for physical health, but for their mental health as well. Weather it's a way of reducing stress, getting away from the kids, or maintaining/improving medical conditions, we're heartbroken that our gyms can't be open to help our members and our communities.
As we mentioned, growing these gyms has been an uphill battle. Each of our gyms (we like to refer to them as our adult children) have their own issues. But now, into our 5th year, we finally seemed to figure it out, we were FINALLY about to start making a profit - our first profit - when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
We were forced to close down on March 18th by the state of Illinois. We have remained closed since then. Current state of Illinois guidelines for gyms reopening is June 1st. These guidelines will ONLY allow us to bring one member in at a time for Personal Training. As of now, according to the State of Illinois, we will not be able to open until July 1st, at the earliest. This will still include restricting usage to a limited number of members in the gym at one time, in order to follow all social distancing and health requirements.
Once the pandemic hit, we applied for all applicable government assistance programs. Numerous government programs have not come through for us as we had hoped. We have been turned down for all unemployment since we didn't show any income over the last year from the gyms. We have applied for the self employed version of the federal Covid 19 unemployment benefit of $600/week. So far we have been turned down for that also.
It was nearly 2 months before we saw any money from The Paycheck Protection Program. We now have 60 days to use 75% of this money on payroll or it's not refundable, along with many other requirements that SBA has put on getting the money forgiven. The issue for us and many businesses, is that there is the potential that we won't be fully open again until the 60 days is almost up, so we will have to pay back all of the money based on the current rules. Inc., Entrepreuner, NY Times, Wall Street Journal have all run numerous articles on how this is just a nightmare for small business's like ourselves.
When all of this began at the end of March, we did not know how long we would have to remain closed. We continued to bill our members and told them that we would credit their accounts once we knew how many days we would be closed. On April 8, once we realized, along with the country, that this was going to last much longer, we stopped all member monthly billing. We haven't had any membership income since then, but unfortunately, still have a lot of our same expenses that we were're able to freeze or reduce. Currently, we are bringing in less that $300/month from each location from our personal trainers' virtual training with members.
Our landlords at all 3 of our locations will NOT waive the monthly rent for April, May, and June (due to Covid-19). We continue to battle them on this-their reason is that every tenant is asking for reduced or free rent while they are closed. They claim their investors and lenders are not approving reduced or eliminated rent. What they are willing to do is take the three months we don't pay rent and add that on to our monthly rent payment starting with our July 1st lease payments. We can't afford this additional monthly payment.
We have set a goal of raising $72,000 by July 1st. The funds will be used to cover our rent increase ($6,000/month increase in rent for one year). As well as to pay our managers at all three gyms, once we open again on July 1st. Which, in turn, will help their families take care of their monthly needs.
We are humbly grateful for each and every donation - no matter how small! With this money, we will be able to continue our family's mission of helping as many people as possible be active and healthy. This money will help us to stay in business so that we can continue to play a positive and healthy role in our communities.
Tylers video to our members
After much research, we fell in love with the Anytime Fitness model and signed on with the international franchise to open 3 gyms in 2 years. At that time our little guys were 8, 4 and 1...obviously, we're crazy. ;) They have grown up helping -and driving us nuts :)- in the 3 gyms.
Our Aurora gym was our 1st location to open in 2015.
Our Oswego and Lombard locations followed, opening in 2016. Since then, our lives have not stopped moving at mach speed. Our family has put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into these 3 gyms.
Growing our gyms has been frustratingly slow. As of May 20, 2020, we've yet to profit $1 from our gyms. Gym competition in the Chicago market is fierce. On top of that, more and more employers are offering their employees gym memberships as part of their employee packages. This is awesome for employees. But sucks for us, as we, the gym owners, are the ones who lose financially in this partnership. But with more and more gyms accepting health insurance, and more businesses offering benefits that include gym memberships, we have no choice but to accept it as well.
As 1st time business owners, there was a lot of trial & error, especially as the internet and our daily lives continued to evolve and change. We've made our fair share of mistakes - from hiring to marketing - but tried to learn from each and move on. It has been incredibly bitter-sweet. The high's and lows have been tremendous -from the overwhelming stress of, at one point, being down to only 2 employees, to reveling and celebrating in the success of our member who finally hit her goal of losing 200 pounds- changing her health and her life forever. A member telling you, "I saw my doctor yesterday and because of my exercise, she was able to take me off of 2 of my medications," is the BEST feeling in the world and make those lows worth it.
Over the years, our members & 12 employees have become part of our extended family. With the gyms closed for Covid-19, it has sucked not checking in with them and seeing their smiling faces each day. So many people depend on our gym. Not only for physical health, but for their mental health as well. Weather it's a way of reducing stress, getting away from the kids, or maintaining/improving medical conditions, we're heartbroken that our gyms can't be open to help our members and our communities.
As we mentioned, growing these gyms has been an uphill battle. Each of our gyms (we like to refer to them as our adult children) have their own issues. But now, into our 5th year, we finally seemed to figure it out, we were FINALLY about to start making a profit - our first profit - when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
We were forced to close down on March 18th by the state of Illinois. We have remained closed since then. Current state of Illinois guidelines for gyms reopening is June 1st. These guidelines will ONLY allow us to bring one member in at a time for Personal Training. As of now, according to the State of Illinois, we will not be able to open until July 1st, at the earliest. This will still include restricting usage to a limited number of members in the gym at one time, in order to follow all social distancing and health requirements.
Once the pandemic hit, we applied for all applicable government assistance programs. Numerous government programs have not come through for us as we had hoped. We have been turned down for all unemployment since we didn't show any income over the last year from the gyms. We have applied for the self employed version of the federal Covid 19 unemployment benefit of $600/week. So far we have been turned down for that also.
It was nearly 2 months before we saw any money from The Paycheck Protection Program. We now have 60 days to use 75% of this money on payroll or it's not refundable, along with many other requirements that SBA has put on getting the money forgiven. The issue for us and many businesses, is that there is the potential that we won't be fully open again until the 60 days is almost up, so we will have to pay back all of the money based on the current rules. Inc., Entrepreuner, NY Times, Wall Street Journal have all run numerous articles on how this is just a nightmare for small business's like ourselves.
When all of this began at the end of March, we did not know how long we would have to remain closed. We continued to bill our members and told them that we would credit their accounts once we knew how many days we would be closed. On April 8, once we realized, along with the country, that this was going to last much longer, we stopped all member monthly billing. We haven't had any membership income since then, but unfortunately, still have a lot of our same expenses that we were're able to freeze or reduce. Currently, we are bringing in less that $300/month from each location from our personal trainers' virtual training with members.
Our landlords at all 3 of our locations will NOT waive the monthly rent for April, May, and June (due to Covid-19). We continue to battle them on this-their reason is that every tenant is asking for reduced or free rent while they are closed. They claim their investors and lenders are not approving reduced or eliminated rent. What they are willing to do is take the three months we don't pay rent and add that on to our monthly rent payment starting with our July 1st lease payments. We can't afford this additional monthly payment.
We have set a goal of raising $72,000 by July 1st. The funds will be used to cover our rent increase ($6,000/month increase in rent for one year). As well as to pay our managers at all three gyms, once we open again on July 1st. Which, in turn, will help their families take care of their monthly needs.
We are humbly grateful for each and every donation - no matter how small! With this money, we will be able to continue our family's mission of helping as many people as possible be active and healthy. This money will help us to stay in business so that we can continue to play a positive and healthy role in our communities.
Tylers video to our members
Organizer
Travis Francis
Organizer
Plainfield, IL