Small proves to be the right fit for personal training company

Complete Fitness provides pilates exercise classes as well as personal training and physical therapies through a team of physical therapists and trainers in Dublin.

Established in 2006 by Dylan Crowe and Marc Smith as The Posture Centre, the business expanded in 2011 to encompass a TRX and personal training studio in Dublin 2. It has recently rebranded as Complete Fitness.

What sets your business apart from the competition? The fact that our classes are small with a maximum of 10 is our unique selling point. Small classes allow the instructors to give their full attention to everybody in the class in order to get results. We are innovative in terms of our service offering, with a mixture of fitness and physical therapies.

What was the best piece of business advice you've ever received? What I have learnt from my father's outlook on life was to find something you are good at and work hard to try to be the best at that thing. The actual process of working hard to achieve your goal is what will bring happiness. It works for him and it works for me.

What's the biggest mistake you've made in business? I remember when we opened the centre back in 2006, we became busy really quickly – too busy in fact. We didn't manage the influx of so many new clients very well. We started overfilling the classes.

Straight away the quality of the classes suffered and our retention level dropped, which was a big eye-opener for us. We learned that keeping class numbers small kept the retention of clients high.

It also develops a friendlier atmosphere and makes our clients feel that they are part of our process. We will never make that mistake again.

And your major success to date? I think our biggest success to date has been our office corporate classes. We knocked on a lot of doors in the city centre explaining the benefits of pilates and its relationship with employees' posture and pain.

Our corporate clients include Depfa Bank, Paddy Power, Davy stockbrokers. We also work with L’Oréal, Accenture and Bank of Ireland. These corporate classes were not in our original business plan but have really become quite popular for us.

Who do you most admire in business and why? I admire my business partner Marc. He has an incredible ability to always look at the bigger picture and soldiers on even when the chips are down. I tend to start counting the pennies and press the pause button when things get tough. I guess we complement each other well.

Based on your experience in the downturn, are the banks in Ireland open for business to SMEs? Luckily we have never needed start-up capital from the bank. Our initial set-up didn't cost too much. We were lucky because we could always put a percentage of what we made back into the business. When planning to expand, we will need to seek funding so it remains to be seen. What one piece of advice would you give to the Government to stimulate the economy? Generally any small business in Dublin has either stagnated or regressed because of high rates. It is an issue which should be tackled.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced? Our biggest challenge was the recession and the mass exodus of large and small companies from the Fitzwilliam Square and Baggot Street area in the period between 2008 and 2011, including Bank of Ireland and Fineos, which saw 800 staff move to the East Point Business Park.

Many solicitors in the area took offices in Sandyford. In the last six months, there seems to be an influx of businesses locating in our surrounding area.

Lots of new coffee shops have opened too which I think is quite significant. There are exciting times ahead.

How do you see the short-term future for your business? We are continually trying to fine-tune our brand. We are an ever-evolving company in terms of coming up with something new with which to educate and interest our clients. We are constantly developing and learning as professionals to give the most up-to-date classes based on science.

We are currently nailing down exactly what our brand is and knowing what our business model is so that we can place it in different cities. We are currently looking at premises in Cork and Galway, with Belfast also on the map. We are hoping to expand within the next 12 months.

What is your business worth and would you consider selling it? We are all self-employed within the business, which acts like a kind of co-op, so it's hard to put a figure on it. We have five busy pilates instructors, two physical therapists and a number of other therapists who are all earning a living, as well as Marc and I at the helm.

www.completefitness.ie

In conversation with Ruth O’Connor