Female gymmer works 17 hours a day

From a slim office worker, Bui Thi Huyen (born in 1990) transformed into a female gymmer and then a gym trainer known by many people with the nicknames "Huyen Dior", "Queen of the gym". Gym changed her life.

After 4 years of working as a trainer, in February 2022, Bui Thi Huyen decided to start a business by opening a gym with 1-1 training method. To date, she owns a chain of Live Fit gyms with 4 facilities in Hanoi .

Live Fit is developing its own app platform and plans to test it in 2025. This will be a huge step forward in improving customer experience. Thereby, the customer journey from knowing, accessing, purchasing and using the service here is updated to help customers have the best experience.

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Ms. Bui Thi Huyen - founder of Live Fit.

Sharing with VietNamNet, Bui Thi Huyen said that her only starting-up luggage was passion and youthful enthusiasm. But she quickly realized that passion alone was not enough.

“To build 4 gyms like today, I used to work 15-17 hours a day during the first 2 years as a trainer, there were days when I taught 12-15 sessions. My house is in Vong Thi (Tay Ho), the gym is in Tran Quoc Toan (Hoan Kiem), there were days when customers started working out at 6am, I had to leave the house at 5am. I got home at 10pm but still hadn’t gone to sleep after working online with customers past midnight,” Bui Thi Huyen said.

Huyền said she was given the responsibility of running a gym when she had nothing but passion. Poor sales, opposition from staff, pressure from shareholders, there were times when Huyền just wanted to explode, hugging her pillow in the middle of the night and crying without knowing who to share with.

"Doubts about my ability to manage operations, doubts from superiors and subordinates drove me crazy. But I never once thought of giving up. I had stumbled too much and failed too many times, so I didn't allow myself to give up too soon," she shared.

Long term vision is important

Huyen’s most significant failure was having to close a facility due to a loose lease agreement. This incident cost her about 600 million VND, but also served as a lesson for future contract negotiations.

After 6 months of operating Live Fit, she realized that being a good trainer and running a gym are two completely different things. The skills she learned as a trainer hardly helped her solve the difficulties of being an owner.

As soon as she realized her own weak capacity, the owner of Live Fit attended appropriate courses and continuously trained her staff to improve service quality.

“For me, going to school is not to apply everything to achieve better results. I want to change my mindset, have the right perspective on what I have done, am doing, and will do in the future,” she said.

According to the 9X owner, there are too many difficulties in startups, such as finding new customers and managing human resources. How to attract customers and at the same time build a dedicated staff is a difficult problem in the early days of starting a business.

Up to now, her greatest success is that she has built a team of staff with a common vision and working effectively, along with a stable customer base.

According to Huyen, the most important thing when starting a business is to have a long-term vision, but also be flexible in the face of change.

“Live Fit is a small business with limited resources. If we do not invest wisely and spread ourselves thin, it will greatly affect our cash flow and not bring real results. We had financial problems at times, but fortunately we have never owed salaries, delayed salaries or made unreasonable deductions from employees’ salaries.

In difficult times, Live Fit always maximizes profits by increasing employee productivity while reducing unnecessary operating costs," Huyen confided.

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A Live Fit facility.

With her experience in opening a gym, the owner of Live Fit gives advice to those who are planning to start a business. That is, learn carefully about the business model you want to run, do not open a gym just because you want to be your own boss or are bored with your current job.

To start a business with a Private Gym model (1-on-1 guidance), you need to prepare about 1-2 billion VND. That is the initial investment capital, working capital, risk reserve fund. If you decide to expand, you should have some additional funds such as: expansion investment fund, legal fund, personal reserve fund...

If you have a goal and a methodical plan, you can borrow up to 60-70% of the initial capital.

With a large amount of capital, you can invest in a large room system. Capital here includes financial resources, human resources, technology, relationships, etc. On the contrary, if you do not have enough "capital" factors, you should accumulate more and learn carefully before starting.

Finally, Ms. Bui Thi Huyen concluded that no amount of experience is enough, one must continuously learn to achieve results.

4 mistakes that make human resource management difficult

Firstly , when I first opened the gym, in order to reduce my workload and to multiply faster, I had to find good “leaders” and empower them. I even sought out people who had no experience. This was my first mistake.

Second , the "locomotive" must be someone born in the organization because he will work better and stay longer. But he himself forgets that he does not have good enough management skills to train the next generation.

Third , when appointing skilled personnel from within, you will unintentionally lose a good employee but may gain a bad manager. Forcing personnel to "mature" to get promoted is not a good way if that person does not have leadership qualities.

Fourth , it is too easy to promote staff, the promotion path is unclear. Important positions are easily obtained, making staff not take their positions seriously. Doubts from superiors, colleagues, subordinates and themselves create pressure after pressure, they always feel that no matter how hard they try, it is not enough.

(Bui Thi Huyen)