In this interview Sam Wood of Gecko Kids Fitness discusses the difficulties of the children’s fitness market, why many existing club programs fail, and how Gecko’s model addresses those gaps. He explains that most clubs treat kids’ programs as a loss‑leader, offering infrequent, adult‑oriented choreography that doesn’t match children’s psychology. Gecko provides a turnkey solution: weekly video workouts, printed guides, trainer support, marketing assets, and a structured fitness‑testing and reward system (white‑to‑black‑belt progression, hero board). The model requires no capital outlay or risk for partner clubs, allowing them to focus on their core business. Wood also shares the five biggest mistakes his company made – pandering to unsuitable club inquiries, losing focus on the core business plan (e.g., chasing mobile‑franchise demand before the product existed), over‑complicating marketing (radio, broad advertising) and not staying simple, and wasting time on pitches that don’t align with the niche. He highlights key market data (25% of Australian children are obese, 15,000 monthly website visits) and stresses the importance of brand credibility, child‑psychology‑based program design, school partnerships, and digital‑first marketing. The interview ends with contact details (GoGoGecko on Twitter, Gecko Kids Fitness Facebook page).
Chapters
Underestimating how hard the kids market is, is the biggest mistake people make.
It's huge.
When we first— 18 months ago, it was all— it was fine when we had our own little baby where we had full control. It's still our flagship centre. It's what we're most proud of. But 18 months ago, when we started looking at entering the existing club market, We spoke with a plethora of clubs that had their own kids fitness program. And then once we looked at that further, we realised they didn't make any money. They were run terribly. They were effectively a free babysitting service, which was a loss leader for their club. And they provided nothing but headaches for that facility because it was never going to be a priority and there was no passion behind it. It was purely an attempt at an additional revenue stream because they'd heard that it's a Fast-growing kids' success, right?
Yeah, kids are growing.
And they didn't do it correctly. Out of the 27 clubs that were already opened, I think 16 of them had their own existing kids' fitness programs that lost money. And we've gone in there and they've gone, ah, this is how you do it. And now they don't have to worry about it. We do it for them. We provide their trainers. We provide their marketing. We provide video programs to their club every week. So their trainers do a new program every single week. Because unlike Les Mills, which has a brilliant grasp on the adult market and their programs are outstanding, they provide choreography quarterly. Yeah. Which for an adult is brilliant because they have long enough to master it and then it gives them something new to sink their teeth into. Kids don't think like that. They want to be fit yesterday. They want to know that what they're doing is going to help them with their footy on the weekend. They don't want to be in shape for 6 weeks for a girlfriend's wedding. So their psychology is so different. So we provide a completely new program every week for our club. Every week? Yep. We send a video and a printout to all of our trainers.
Okay, so that working alone is enough work to say, a lot of work to actually—
Oh, it's huge work. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Let's just clear things up. Let's just put some points here. One, Just take it from myself as well, that kids, get kids to actually start a program, it's— I wouldn't even try it anymore. It's really tough. So your program is genius, I think, and to get those sort of results fast, I think every personal trainer should be out there using this sort of stuff.
Look, we want as many kids to get fit as possible, and as much as I would love them to have a lot of fun—
Well, 25% of the population in Australia is obese kids.
Yeah, I know.
So, you know, we all know the stats out there, they're getting bigger. What can we actually do about it and actually implement it really fast? That's the first thing.
I think that's the thing of it. We can do it quickly. We can do it with no capital outlay from the club and no risk. We absorb all the risk. And I think the biggest thing is it allows them to focus on the core of their business. As soon as they start, I want to become a personal training gym, but that's not really what we're about, or I want to do kids' fitness, it's, you know—
I think you have to, any business has to stick with their niche.
Yeah, absolutely.
If you don't stick with your niche in business, out goes the door. You're doing this, you're doing that, you're selling supplements, you're selling clothes, you're doing aerobics, you're doing weights. It's like, stick with a niche and be really good in your niche and then get experts to do other things.
Kids love our brand, kids love our programs, clubs love our brand and programs. The greatest, the greatest thing that we can do as well is give it instant credibility. If you call it— if you've got Joe's Gym and all of a sudden it's Joe's Gym Kids Fitness, Parents see that. It's transparent that, well, Joe doesn't really know anything about kids, but he's having a crack.
He's having a crack.
Whereas if you bring an expert in that area in where the programs have been designed by child psychologists and movement specialists for children, the brand is something that they can identify with straight away. Because they don't think they go to Joe's gym. Kids do Gecko, or Go Gecko as they call it.
Go Gecko, what is that?
Yeah, they do fitness testing every term. They get a white headband when they join their Gecko program. They progress for 11 terms to become a black belt in fitness. There's a hero board on the wall that rewards them for any outside activity that they do, any outstanding achievements they get in some kind of physical or sporting capacity. So there's so much more to it.
There's heaps.
Our website gets 15,000 hits a month from parents looking for kids' fitness activities for their children.
That's good numbers.
So that's something that we're growing all the time, but there's a need for it. But parents, it's their most prized possession.
And they're not gonna be mucking around with exactly, you know, Joe's Gym and Kids Fitness.
And you know how savvy adults are now when they're looking for a personal trainer.
Oh, these are the worst.
It needs to be word of mouth. Yeah. Alright, so times that by 10 when they're leaving their children.
I am so with you in that because I've been through the whole situation myself. But I want to wrap it up, but I want to figure out from you, not your 5 good things, I want to know the 5 worst mistakes you've made in business.
Okay.
That everybody can learn from.
Like, what are your mistakes then?
5 out of 100 that you've lost money on, that you screwed up, that you've lost clients on. What are they?
We call it in our offices being a pander. And that's pandering to inquiries when they don't meet your criteria. So we have pretty strict criteria of clubs, and a lot of clubs meet those criteria, but we have You know, it's a PT studio with equipment sort of spread around the outside. It's not an area conducive to kids, but they're desperate to get Gecko in their club.
And you're trying to help them?
Yeah, we're trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Okay, wasting time. So number 1 would be being a panda.
Panda, yeah.
Number 2? Number 2 would be just losing focus of your business plan. Because we're a new industry and because we get You know, we got all these— we had over 300 Mobile Gecko inquiries, people wanting to buy a Mobile Gecko franchise. We didn't even have one.
Okay.
So in 2007, these emails started coming in. They'd found us through search engine whatever, gone to our website, Sam, I want to buy a mobile franchise. Nowhere on our website back then was that we even had a mobile franchise.
Oh my gosh, people want it, don't they?
But again, you start to go, Well, we've got it. This is what the people want. This is what we've got to do.
This is what we moved to.
But you don't even have that product yet. Yes, you run it internally yourself, but it's not a packaged strain. That's gold.
So you're just going, people are asking, yeah, do we, do you sell, do you sell stock supplements in here? Yeah, of course we do. And you order them in tomorrow and then that becomes your focus and you make no money on it. So that's golden. It's going away from what you want to do, what you're supposed to do, what your business plan was. And has that affected and taken your business back a few months by doing that?
Yeah, I think we lost time and we lost money.
Okay.
Because the time and the resources that we spent Checking out what was going on over there, we lost valuable, just valuable time moving forward. Sure. You know, and it's such a fast-changing industry that you can't afford to lose this time. You've got to really—
that's a really good tip. Okay, let's just do one more. We're just about to run out of time. Last big mistake and—
Getting too complicated with our marketing.
What do you mean by that? What have you done?
Because we're a brand that I don't know, is quite, not sexy because it's children, but it's bright and it's colorful and it's, you know, it's sort of got that Boost Juice, you know.
Yeah, I'll zoom up on the logo later.
Feel for it. We started to get a lot of, you know, you should advertise on the radio, you should do this. And the reality was it's not local. So we now do web because they will find us if they're in our area.
Hey Google.
And we build amazing relationships with schools Because that gives us a
direct
line to our prime market.
I think that's gold. Panda, number 1. Number 2 was focus, not losing focus. Number 3 was business plan.
Number 2, business plan. Number 3, keep marketing simple.
Keep marketing simple. And when someone calls on the phone and says, do you want to do radio advertising? Say no, we're focused on this.
And that was the thing. Even if we didn't say no, we let them come into our office and have a pitch to us for an hour.
And waste time.
And at the end of the hour, they left. And I think that's— I don't think that's our business. I'm sure that's generic across all businesses.
You want to keep sort of what's out there, but at the end of the day, if you know that works and it's successfully— you've tried the other stuff before, just stay focused and keep something. All right, thanks a lot. Now, where can they find— where can everybody sort of see, connect with you and find you?
Gecko Kids Fitness.
Gecko Kids Fitness. Do you hang out on Facebook at all?
GoGoGecko on Twitter.
GoGoGecko on Twitter, yeah.
And yeah, Gecko Kids Fitness Facebook page.
On Facebook, okay. It's brilliant to see, and yeah, we'll see you around.
