Branding is important—but only if you’re doing it at the right time, for the right reasons.
Too many gym owners try to build a full-blown brand before they’ve nailed their product. Others treat branding like a surface-level marketing tool, rather than what it actually is: the foundation for how your business is perceived, experienced, and remembered.
Here’s how to think about branding at each stage of your business growth—what matters, what doesn’t, and what to focus on next.
Stage 1: Branding When You Are the Business
Revenue: < £10k/month
Focus: Coaching quality, product delivery, client experience
At this stage, you are the brand. People come for your energy, your presence, your coaching. They stay because they trust you. Branding in any formal sense—fonts, colours, “tone of voice” guides—is not what moves the needle.
What matters now is consistency of experience. Your job is to create sessions that people love, communicate like a professional, and show up in a way that builds trust.
✅ Do:
- Deliver a consistently great service
- Pay attention to how clients feel when they interact with you
- Get a simple, clean logo and colour scheme for the sake of professionalism
- Notice which parts of your style people respond to—that’s the seed of your future brand
🚫 Don’t:
- Waste time debating mission statements before you have steady revenue
- Overthink the visuals—clients don’t care what font you use if the sessions aren’t great
- Build a brand around a niche you don’t personally connect with
Your brand at this stage is reputation. Protect it by delivering results and being a decent human.
Stage 2: Branding That Drives Growth
Revenue: £10k–£30k/month
Focus: Sales, marketing, systems
Now that you’ve got a working product, a bit of market traction, and some systems in place, it’s time to codify your brand—so it can be communicated clearly and consistently, especially in your marketing.
This is where the Three Ms come in:
- Market – Who are you speaking to? What do they care about?
- Message – What do you stand for? What problems do you solve?
- Media – How are you reaching people? Where are you visible?
Most owners skip straight to Media (Facebook ads, content, branding assets) without nailing the first two. It doesn’t work.
✅ Do:
- Define your client avatar(s) clearly
- Develop a brand story rooted in your own values and your clients’ pain points
- Build out basic messaging frameworks for your team to use across content, emails, and conversations
- Begin embedding your brand into your environment (language, tone, session delivery, team behaviour)
🚫 Don’t:
- Pay for rebrands before you’ve proven your messaging resonates
- Use branding to “look bigger” than you are—just be clear, consistent, and client-focused
- Build a brand persona that doesn’t match how the gym actually feels
Your brand at this stage is clarity. Focus on saying the right things to the right people in the right way.
Stage 3: Branding That Builds Culture
Revenue: £30k–£50k/month
Focus: Team, financials, staff development
As your team grows, your brand needs to do more than attract clients—it needs to unify your staff, shape your culture, and drive consistent behaviours across the business.
This is where you invest in brand internally, not just externally.
✅ Do:
- Define and document your core values
- Build a brand book or playbook to guide internal behaviours
- Use your mission and values to shape hiring, onboarding, and performance reviews
- Create systems for delivering your brand consistently across all touchpoints
🚫 Don’t:
- Assume your team just “gets it”—they won’t unless it’s clearly communicated and reinforced
- Let branding become abstract—tie it back to real actions, systems, and expectations
- Build an aspirational brand that no one in your team can actually embody
Your brand at this stage is culture. It should drive behaviour, not just marketing.
Stage 4: Branding for Scale and Legacy
Revenue: £80k+/month
Focus: Leadership, future planning, investment
At this point, your brand becomes a strategic asset. It should do three things:
- Inspire staff and clients
- Differentiate your business from competitors
- Support long-term growth, whether that’s franchising, licensing, or expansion
This is where you refine positioning, visual identity, and brand architecture (especially if you’re growing across multiple sites or revenue streams).
✅ Do:
- Evaluate how your brand is perceived at scale—through surveys, feedback, retention data
- Revisit and refine your mission, vision, and identity as the business evolves
- Involve your leadership team in shaping how the brand shows up in the day-to-day
- Think beyond your local area—how does your brand perform in new markets?
🚫 Don’t:
- Assume what worked at £30k/month still works at £100k+/month
- Let your brand stagnate while the business changes
- Forget that consistency across multiple sites or channels requires robust systems
Your brand at this stage is equity. It builds trust, opens doors, and gives your business a voice that outlasts you.
Final Word
Your brand is a reflection of what you do, how you do it, and why it matters.
Done right, it helps you attract better clients, build a stronger team, and scale without losing your soul.
Done wrong—or done at the wrong time—it becomes a distraction.
Know what stage you’re at.
Know what your brand needs to do.
Then build what matters.