Website Virgin - Need Help/Suggestions

We may earn a small commission from affiliate links and paid advertisements. Terms

Drudging up an old thread because well this beats doing work.

The website has been live for some time, we're still in a holding pattern and the business isn't actually up and running yet. We can't use the branded name yet, since we aren't signing our crossfit agreement until a building lease is signed.

With that said, there's some spelling errors, a bunch of content still needs to go up, and our logo isn't on the page yet. Keeping that in mind, how does the page look so far and how does it run for you?

Endorphin CF | What did you PR today? (We'll use our endorphincrossfit.com URL once we can legally use the name). Our twitter, facebook, etc will also get linked and go live once we can legally use the name.
 
There's not very many pictures or good pictures because she said the image size that has to be uploaded to fit and look good is much larger than all the facebook pictures she or I are tagged in.
 
website seems to run ok
its a little sparce
you said the lease isnt signed yet, but you have a physical address listed
would be good to have pictures of the facility, maybe even a floorplan
exterior shot once you have signage so people can recognize it when they come to see you

so what the end game here? you doing this fulltime now?
 
website seems to run ok
its a little sparce
you said the lease isnt signed yet, but you have a physical address listed
would be good to have pictures of the facility, maybe even a floorplan
exterior shot once you have signage so people can recognize it when they come to see you

so what the end game here? you doing this fulltime now?

Thanks for the opinion - I agree with everything.

The lease literally just showed up in my email for review and signing.

End game is to put an extra $40-$100k a year into our pocket. The gym will be open before and after our day jobs. 6am and 7am classes, then 5, 6, 7pm classes. If the gym is successful, there may come a time when my girlfriend leaves her job and runs the gym full time and has my babies.

I unfortunately or fortunately do 'too well' to ever leave my job. I'd like to take the money we make and reinvest the money back into commercial or residential real estate. I have no plans of reinvesting all the income back in the business - the only future investment will be replacing equipment because of wear and tear or buying additional equipment because of membership growth. Outside of that, its just promotional material like T shirts, supplements, and business cards. That really isn't more than $10,000-$15,000 in any given year and has been factored into our take home numbers of $40-$100k. If we have 60 members by the end of the year, we should take home $40,000+ after getting our initial investment back.
 
Last edited:
:thumbsup:
solid game plan man, i like the motivation

Thanks, I edited it and added some more details.

I always wanted my own business, as did she. She's a dreamer and with money I'm normally pretty risk averse. If she wasn't around, I never would have had the guts to take a chance. Hopefully the chance pays off and we live a more comfortable and more enjoyable life. If not, we lost a chunk of money but nothing that we can't recover from in the future.
 
have you priced insurance yet? seems like that would be risky business if some fat ass has a heart attack on your mat....

also, what if you break up?

going into business with a non-wife could not only ruin your relationship but be forced through nonsense afterwards. just a fair warning.
 
i think he works in the insurance industry
have you gotten yourself a portable defib yet? i think its pretty common to have one on site at gyms these days
 
have you priced insurance yet? seems like that would be risky business if some fat ass has a heart attack on your mat....

also, what if you break up?

going into business with a non-wife could not only ruin your relationship but be forced through nonsense afterwards. just a fair warning.

Insurance works out to be $800-$1,500 annually depending on the policy and where the market is for the year. I strictly sell commercial insurance and life insurance/disability insurance (mainly to my business owners) but we don't insure gyms. However, I'm comfortable with what the policy should and should not have - like Professional Liability coverage if we get sued for giving (allegedly) poor diet advice or coaching advice that results in an injury. The limits of insurance are also adequate and cover most all bases.

Haven't looked at a defib at all, but we should eventually get one. I actually should take a refresher course on CPR and the basics. The protocol has gone from chest pumping and breathing to strictly chest pumping in recent years.

As far as going into business with a girlfriend - I handle these sort of issues in my daily work because we help our businesses with business succession planning and estate planning (there's usually a need for life insurance and disability insurance to protect businesses, so that's where an insurance company fits in). We have an Operating Agreement in place that outlines us as 50/50 owners and gives a term of 120 days, if the other partner is not actively completing the activities listed in their job description, than the other party has the right to buy their shares. It's more complicated than that, but essentially if the other partner flakes and becomes a silent partner, they're gone within a year, if that's what either of us wants.

There's also provisions if I kick it, life insurance allows her to buy my shares and in return, my gets family paid their value in cash. The opposite is true as well.

There's a method for valuation built into the agreement and also provisions if either party doesn't feel that a fair valuation was completed. Then another third party business valuation can be completed at the contesting partner's cost. If the other party doesn't agree on that valuation, then we average the two and that's the value we use. If there's a point that we can't agree, it goes to binding arbitration.

Cliff notes;
I work in the insurance industry so I'm as covered as I can be by the policy. Using a specialty company to write the lines of insurance that I would recommend to a client in this industry.

No defib but we should get one and CPR courses.

There's an Operating Agreement that protects us and contains the Buy/Sell agreement for the business.

And that's not a "thanks but no thanks for the advice". I appreciate the insight because I'm 100% POSITIVE that there are things that I'm missing that are going to come up along the way. I'm trying to prepare for every outcome that I can think of, so any new angles are good.
 
Last edited:
We can't go public with these logos on our website yet, but we'll use one of these logos.

The pictures are actually Bonnie and I. The originals are on the Meet the Trainers page - she has mostly crappy old pictures up, but she's in spandex in the one on that page, so it's worth the look.

She updated Endorphin CF | What did you PR today? quite a bit last night. Now it's a matter of putting the logo up and replacing all the CF references with CrossFit and adding more pictures.
 

Attachments

  • EndorphinLogo_HQ.jpg
    EndorphinLogo_HQ.jpg
    133.1 KB · Views: 171
  • FacebookCoverIdea.jpg
    FacebookCoverIdea.jpg
    75.1 KB · Views: 186
Last edited:
I really like your business operating agreement.
Sounds real solid and well thought out. I wish my clients had the same forethought.
 
I really like your business operating agreement.
Sounds real solid and well thought out. I wish my clients had the same forethought.

Thanks. We work quite a bit with accountants in addition to attorneys. The good accountants and attorneys generally have life insurance/disability insurance agents that they work with and P&C agents that they work with - to help protect their client's businesses.

Here's a basic copy of the operating agreement. I added provisions for disability, changed how certain things would function - i.e., giving us both 50/50 rights rather than having a single person/chairman that had more authority, and massaged other things but it was the basic template that I used.

Free and easy.

http://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/pdf/operating-agreement.pdf

I also formed the company as a LLC and am going to take advantage of filing as a S Corp so that I can 1) either be a silent partner that only draws a dividends and circumvents the 15.3% self employment tax or 2) we'll both take nominal salaries since this is a "part time" job and then bonus the rest as dividends for the same purpose.

Most of my accounting friends went into Audit and work at the Big 4 - so they had no idea on the S Corp filing, what was needed, and the benefits. I'm assuming that you're probably a really good person to talk to about that, because I think you do personal tax and small business tax? Does that stuff sound right? I haven't filed form 2553 yet for the S Corp election. Standard election is partnership, if I don't file for the S Corp status.
 
yes, that all sounds about right
just make sure you are drawing some sort of payroll if you are an active member
"fair and reasonable" is the IRS guideline for S corp officers salary, the rest will come onto your tax return via the K-1 exempt from SE tax.
they have been focusing on officers of S corps recently, its a new area of review.
make sure you file the 2553 certified/receipt for proof of filing... and when you get your letter of approval for S status, keep a copy of that in your corporate books, or somewhere else you won't lose it.
not 100% on NJ but there is also a form for S corp election for NY
here it is
http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/revenue/sub-s.pdf

and here's something you might get a kick out of
1234575_519060684845878_1017964408_n.jpg
 
Last edited:
interesting facebook linked article on crossfit
something to be aware of when considering business liability

https://medium.com/health-fitness-1/97bcce70356d

Thanks for all the help.

That article has made its rounds. Generally its just overblown and most people have never seen a case of rhabdo before - however, that is one of the main reason why I specifically purchased the professional liability insurance policy that covers exclusions that are standard in a general liability policy. It'll protect us if a lawsuit like this were to ever come up.
 
website looks good, its came a long way since the beginning
i still think you need more pics of the trainers on there
something for people to look at and say "yea... i want to look like THAT, if ian can make himself look like that, then he can make me look like that too"

could also use some construction completed pictures of the facility showing some of the equipment

and whats with the green floor in the trainer pics? astroturf? is that a crossfit thing?
if your floor isn't going to be green i would update those trainer pics showing you lifting in your own facility
 
website looks good, its came a long way since the beginning
i still think you need more pics of the trainers on there
something for people to look at and say "yea... i want to look like THAT, if ian can make himself look like that, then he can make me look like that too"

could also use some construction completed pictures of the facility showing some of the equipment

and whats with the green floor in the trainer pics? astroturf? is that a crossfit thing?
if your floor isn't going to be green i would update those trainer pics showing you lifting in your own facility

Recked - thanks again for the suggestions.

The green is fake turf and it is actually at the gym that we worked out at for the past two years. The plan is once we're in our facility, we'll update all the pictures to shots that are within our facility.

There's no completed stuff up yet because they're still painting and our equipment hasn't arrived. We pushed our lease date back from 10/1 to 10/14 because things just aren't ready.

We're trying to promote and build awareness for the next two weeks before we open our doors.
 
Back
Top