Third in a series designed to show creatives opportunities with clients that are good for people and the planet
I’m working out at the YMCA, and a guy in the weight room asks me to spar. I don’t remember a boxing ring in here. The thought passes.
“Hey, you can handle yourself. Wanna jump in the ring, go a few?”
Sucker for his acknowledgement of my fitness, I nod and pull on some gloves, remembering my Golden Gloves days. Then I stop—do the mental math—that was more than sixty years ago.
Ego, ego, ego echoes through my head as I climb my way through the ropes.
He’s smiling, approaching, gloves up. I note they’re branded Planet Fitness.
I dance to the side as he throws his first, thinking, “dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee…”
His second catches me hard and I’m falling…
Waking in a cold sweat. I lay there for a moment wondering what I was thinking, taking on a corporate giant with Wall Street backing. Crazy.
Planet Fitness has 21.5 million members now. Nearly 3,000 clubs. “Judgment Free Zone,” ten bucks a month. Up from nothing in just 30 years. A brand built entirely around one promise: nobody here will make you feel bad about showing up.
I remember that promise belonging to the Y.
For a hundred and fifty years, the Y was the place regular people went without being sized up by the beautiful people. Affordable. Welcoming. No status test at the door.
Planet Fitness figured out how to sell that exact feeling nationally. Huge marketing. $200 million ad budget.
Y’s promise, stolen? Not exactly.
Acknowledged, then bought by Wall Street.
Planet Fitness can match the Y on cheap.
It can match the Y on friendly.
What it can’t match, structurally, ever, is the Y’s actual mission… because Planet Fitness isn’t a mission, it’s a franchise model optimized for one thing: get you in, get you paying, and hope you don’t show up too often so the machines stay free. That’s not a criticism. That’s just what a for-profit chain is.
The Y is for something else. It’s just been out-shouted.
Planet Fitness will never support 1099 workers. Freelancers, contractors, gig workers; a share of the workforce that’s grown for a decade straight and isn’t slowing down.
Here’s what none of the national fitness chains, and none of the WeWorks of the world, can offer:
A freelance parent needs somewhere to work during the day. Planet Fitness has treadmills. It doesn’t have desks, doesn’t have Wi-Fi worth using for client calls, and it sure as hell doesn’t have childcare. The Y already runs licensed early learning programs. Put a coworking corner next to the childcare wing and a freelance parent gets something no gym chain, no coffee shop, and no coworking startup can offer, all in one building.
Watch your kid get cared for down the hall while you get an actual day’s work done.
A tradesperson working mobile jobs— a mechanic, a contractor, a delivery driver—needs a shower and a locker between gigs, not a smoothie bar. The Y has it. And it was built for exactly this kind of need, decades before “gig economy” was even said.
A solo freelancer with no employer needs life support nobody’s providing.
They don’t get a wellness stipend, gym discounts, or HR checking in. The Y could be that structured health touchpoint.
Time to say so directly, instead of assuming people already know.
And every one of these 1099ers, sitting in a coworking corner, is a potential client for each other: a freelance electrician and a freelance bookkeeper and a freelance designer, put in the same room by an institution built on community instead of a treadmill row optimized for nobody talking to anybody.
Planet Fitness’s whole design philosophy is built to keep people moving through machines efficiently. The Y’s whole philosophy is the opposite: build the room where people actually meet.
None of this requires the Y competing with Planet Fitness on price. You’ll lose that fight and you don’t need to have it. Remember, Planet Fitness sells a feeling. The Y is community, infrastructure, and real support for people the rest of the economy stopped supporting.
Don’t compete with Planet Fitness on their terms. Build the one thing they can never franchise.
Stay out of the ring.
~
The Work Beneath the Work is available now at tedleonhardt.com/the-work-beneath-the-work
