When you market to everyone, you reach no one. Name the two or three real people you built the gym for, and watch your language change.
Walk into most gyms’ marketing and you’ll find the same problem: it’s written for everyone. Get in shape. Feel better. Reach your goals. It’s so wide it lands on no one, because nobody recognizes themselves in a message built to fit the whole world. I’ve run Grinder Gym for thirty-four years, and the single most useful thing I ever did to my marketing wasn’t a new ad or a better headline. It was narrowing down. I stopped writing for “people who want to get in shape” and started writing for three specific people I could picture by name.
That’s the mechanic, and it has a name: member avatars. Not demographics, not a slide of stock photos. Real, specific portraits of the two or three people your gym is actually built to serve, close enough to true that you can hear how they talk and feel what turns them off. Get those right and everything downstream gets easier, because you’re no longer guessing who you’re talking to. You already know.
Why “everyone” is the most expensive audience you can choose
It feels safe to keep the door open to everyone. The wider the net, the more fish, goes the logic. But marketing doesn’t work like a net. It works like a voice in a crowded room. The person who says “I help people get healthier” gets tuned out alongside the noise. The person who says “I built this for the guy who used to be strong, lost it to fifteen years of work and kids, and is sick of starting over” gets a head turn, because somebody in that room just heard their own life read back to them.
When you try to speak to everyone, you sand off every specific edge, and the edges were the whole point. The everyday rebuilder doesn’t want the same thing the competitive lifter wants, and if your message tries to please both, it excites neither. Narrowing isn’t turning business away. It’s making sure the right person actually hears you over the gym down the street that’s still shouting “get in shape” into the void.
The three I actually built for
Here are mine. Yours will differ, that’s the point, but the shape shows you how specific to get.
- The strength athlete. The competitive or aspiring lifter, strongman, powerlifter, weightlifter. Already trains, maybe already competes. Wants serious equipment, real coaching from people who understand the sport, and a room where chalk and intensity are normal, not a problem. Turned off by clean commercial gyms and flashy machines. The phrase that lives in their head: “I want a place I can actually train.”
- The everyday rebuilder. Thirty-to-fifty-something. Busy professional, parent, former athlete. Had results once and lost them to life. Sick of fake fitness culture and workouts that go nowhere. Wants straight talk, structure, and to feel strong again, not to look fit for a photo. Turned off by hype, high-pressure sales, and crowded bootcamps. Their line: “I don’t want to look fit. I want to be strong again.”
- The blue-collar transformer. Works with their hands, trades, military, first responder, mechanic. Maybe never had a structured gym upbringing, but knows how to grind. Wants effort respected, fluff removed, and results that are real. Turned off by fads and elite exclusivity. Their line: “Just show me what works. I’ll do the rest.”
Notice what each portrait carries: not just who they are, but what they want, what repels them, and the actual words they’d use. That last part is gold. When you know the exact phrase a person already says to themselves, you don’t have to invent marketing language. You hand them their own words and they feel understood before they’ve read a second sentence.
One message, aimed at one person
Once the avatars are real, the work changes. You stop writing “marketing” and start writing letters to a specific person. The same offer described three ways, each one pointed at a different member, lands far harder than one offer described for the average of all three.
To the strength athlete, the trial isn’t a trial, it’s a chance to train in a room built for the work. To the rebuilder, it’s a structured way back without the hype and the judgment. To the transformer, it’s a place where effort gets respected and nobody wastes their time. Same fourteen days. Three completely different doors in, because each one is the door that particular person was looking for. And the writing gets easier, not harder, because you’re no longer trying to satisfy a committee in your head. You’re talking to one person you can picture.
The repelling matters as much as the pulling. A message sharp enough to make the strength athlete lean in will make the person looking for a clean machine-circuit gym keep scrolling, and that’s the system working. You’re not for them, they’re not for your room, and the avatar told you that before either of you wasted a conversation finding out.
The Monday action
This week, write your avatars down, two or three, no more. For each one, answer four things in plain language: who they are, what they actually want, what turns them off, and the exact phrase they’d use to describe their own situation. Don’t make them up out of thin air; pull them from the members you already have and already love training. Those people are sitting in your gym right now, and they’re the template.
Then write one short message aimed at each one, three to five sentences, using their own words, describing the same offer through their eyes. Read all three out loud. If they sound like the same message with the names swapped, go sharper; you haven’t found the real edges yet. When each one sounds like a different letter to a different person, you’ve stopped marketing to everyone. You’ve started marketing to someone, which is the only kind that ever actually works.
I live my truth and I make myself useful.