#18 Inside Madison’s: Building a Premium Small-Group Gym (w/ Jerome Bolze)

In this episode, I sit down with Jerome Bolze, owner of Madison’s in Haywards Heath – a 400-member, premium small-group gym charging around £900 for its front-end trial.

We get into why Madison’s obsesses over tiny details most gyms ignore, how Jerome “becomes the customer” by training in his own sessions every week, and why he always fixes the product before worrying about marketing. We talk premium pricing, 60-day+ front-end offers, challenging your own limiting beliefs about what people will pay, and how he protects his time so he only works on high-leverage tasks.

If you run (or want to run) a high-touch, small-group gym and you’re curious how far you can push your standards, prices and positioning, this conversation will give you a ton to think about.

Here are 10 concrete things you'll learn if you listen:

1. How Madison’s creates a genuinely “premium” experience – The tiny, unsexy details (greetings, lighting, music, equipment layout, member flow) that make their sessions feel different from other gyms.
2. Why you should regularly train in your own gym – How Jerome uses 3–5 weekly sessions as a member to spot friction, standards slipping, and opportunities to improve the product.
3. How to build a culture of shared standards across your team – The way his club manager, head coach and junior coaches all feel responsible for details, instead of it all sitting on the owner’s shoulders.
4. What a premium small-group model really looks like – Why they run 1–4 instead of 1–6+, and how they justify (and deliver on) pricing around £900 for a front-end offer and £300–£450/month ongoing.
5. How to think about your front-end offers (and why they went long) – The pros and cons of 21-day vs 30-day vs 60-day vs 12-week trials, and why Madison’s has settled on 60+ days to attract more committed, long-term members.
6. How to challenge your own money stories and raise prices – Jerome’s shift from “no one will pay £249” to successfully selling £1,400+ trials – and the question he uses: “What would need to be true for someone to happily pay that?”
7. Why product comes before marketing (for real, not just on Instagram quotes) – How Jerome thinks about improving the training experience, coaching, and environment before chasing new tactics or ad campaigns.
8. How a gym owner can protect their time and focus on high-leverage work - Jerome’s approach to time management, boundaries, deep work, and saying no – and how he decides what he personally should and shouldn’t be doing.
9. How to use competitions without cheapening your brand - The thinking behind their big annual giveaway, why it still feels premium, and how it’s turned winners and runner-ups into paying members.
10. What to read if you want to build a serious business and a life outside of it – The books Jerome keeps coming back to, and how they’ve shaped his views on scaling, systems, and actually living a good life alongside running a gym.