What are the list of college and/or high school courses you should take if you want to own a cheer gym? I'm currently in 10th grade and hoping to go to college. After college I'm planning on coaching and later owning a gym.
Unfortunately, there's not a degree you can get in tenacity, that's a trait you have to learn on your own. Think about all the all star gyms that open and fail within a very small amount of time. This is not a cheer gym issue, most small businesses in the United States fail within the first five years. Cheer gyms just happen to fall into that category. All of the business classes listed above will help you understand the two primary causes of these failures: 1) poor planning and 2) too much growth, too fast, with too much debt.
Because of the equipment that everyone believes is necessary to own a successful gym, most cheer gyms begin with a boatload of debt. You can avoid this by growing slowly. Purchase Dave Ramsey's book "Entreleadership" as a starting point, and then start brainstorming NOW about how you can follow his slow-growth mentality debt free.
Some things that I have seen friends of mine do that have worked well and produced two very successful, single-site locations:
1) Begin your all star program by renting gym time from a local gymnastics facility and practicing there. This will require some WRITTEN agreements about the amount of time you will be able to utilize their facility and what days/nights/hours of the week the place will be yours. Don't forget to factor the cost of this rental time into your fees for your all star program.
2) Lease your first gym, don't go out and take out a commercial loan to purchase a huge facility. The chances that you could qualify for one without someone else taking on the risk with you would be very slim anyway, but banks will do dumb things. If the bank is requiring you to have a cosigner, that means they don't expect you to be able to pay the money back. That's a sign that something in your application is a red flag for them. Consider that a warning that you may be biting off more than you can chew. By leasing, you limit your exposure to risk. If your first go at it fails, the amount of money your out is limited by the length/buyout option of your lease. The monthly rent you pay will look substantial, but it's going to be much easier to swallow if things go south and you realize you're out a limited amount versus potential hundreds of thousands of dollars if you can't sell the property you've bought or built.
SIDE NOTE: One of my best cheer friends of all time started his gym literally in a barn. There was enough concrete floor space for him to lay out a full cheer floor. The ceiling space did not allow for baskets to be thrown (I actually grazed the ceiling with my flyer popping a stretch double down once). The owner allowed him to use it for free, and five years after starting, he had saved enough money to rent an old warehouse. When he sold out 15 years later, he had built up to owning a building with two full-size spring floors and an airtrak. He did all of this without ever taking on debt. He never stressed over years when his participation was low because he had very little risk.
3) Never borrow money for equipment. Check out the prices for used equipment on websites such as this one and any others that sell used tumbling equipment. You will never get enough out of it used to pay back a loan for it, and it's almost always possible to come up with a drill to train skills without it. In the formative years, maybe you need to focus on the level 1 or level 2 segment of the market where a single wedge will give you the ability to sufficiently train your athletes' skills. Then as the team grows and you can afford more equipment, you can build those kids up to levels 3, 4, 5.
4) On the same lines, never pay full price for equipment when there is a world of it on sale on Ebay and places like this website. Watch for deals with free shipping as well.
5) Learn the fine art of marketing your teams successes in the best possible light. It's cool to put "475 national championships" on your website for the general public, but people within the business know that these companies make national championship banners left and right. When your team finishes in 4th place, but only 0.2 behind "Kick Butt All Stars" who's name everyone knows, put that little snippet on your website, just a photo of the final placings with the scores and your team name circled...people within the industry will read the placing above and the placing below and will realize that you were competitive with that big-name gym.
6) Be prepared to hustle your tail off, and coach all of the teams yourself for the first few years. The biggest ongoing expense for any business in any industry is almost always payroll. Hiring a head coach, assistant coach, stunt coach, tumbling coach, all star coordinator, etc, for a small program is ridiculous. If owning the program is your full time job, you should be able to coach three or four teams with one assistant. You might consider hiring out choreography and passing that fee on to your athletes, but having a full-time choreographer on staff is nuts.
7) The people you do hire, take care of them. Loyalty breeds loyalty.
8) Lastly, be sure that you're operating within the economic circumstances of your clientele. Every all star cheerleader wants to wear a sparkly uniform that some poor kid in a foreign company has spent 6 weeks bedazzling for 25 cents a month. Not every all star parent wants, or can afford, to pay $500 for said uniform. Every all star cheerleader wants to compete at Worlds or the Summit or what have you. Not every all star parent wants, or can afford, to pay for said trip. Anonymous surveys can be your friend. Pricing out items you purchase before you purchase them can be your friend. Consider having at least one half-season team for the purposes of allowing people an option to get in on the ground floor and purchase items like team bags, warm ups, etc in a season in which they are spending a limited amount on competition entry fees.