Chris Cooper's Blog, page 104

Can Gym Owners Benefit From NFTs?

Mike (00:02):

All the cool people are talking about NFTs, non-fungible tokens. So what are NFTs and can gym owners benefit from them? Chris Cooper explains on this edition of Two-Brain Radio.

Chris (00:12):

We’ll get back to the show right after this. Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by Forever Fierce. Reach out to them to sell more apparel or retail items. Matt Albrizio and his team will save you time with templates. They’ll provide ideas and tell you what’s selling best. And they’ll supply marketing material and preorder sheets. If you want to get serious about apparel and retail, visit foreverfierce.com.

Chris (00:32):

Hey everybody, it’s Coop here and today I’m talking about NFTs, non-fungible tokens. For gyms. If you’ve been following NFTs, you might think that they’re just like people buying JPEGs like they’re buying baseball cards. They buy them, they trade them and they appreciate in value only if other people use them. But NFTs are not just about buying the rights to JPEGs or GIFs. The real opportunity is to make money through your own proven work. And if you’ve been producing content or programming or any kind of media at all, there’s a real opportunity here for you.

Chris (01:10):

The world of fitness training and coaching is changing really rapidly. And I think that the evolution of web 3.0 is gonna create a lot more opportunities for gym owners who are on top of it. So I wanted to share a little bit about NFTs. And before I do that, I’m gonna talk about web 3.0. Web 3.0 is what’s basically on the horizon for the internet in the next couple of years. Think about it like this: Web 1.0 was like one-directional info. Every website kind of looked like a brochure. You didn’t participate in anything you just consumed. Right? Lots of people back then said, I don’t even need the internet. Cause I’ve got these really good brochures or I’ve got the yellow pages or whatever. Web 2.0 was two directional. Everybody could upload content and everybody could have conversations, but the guys, and they’re all guys, who built the platforms, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram for content and for conversations, they make all the money, right?

Chris (02:12):

Like their product is actually us. They’re selling advertisers access to us. Web 3.0, everybody is their own platform. They own their own content. They can license their own content and they can even create their own money for transactions. Web 3.0 is basically built on the blockchain, which lends another layer of security and also anonymity. So right now, for example, if I wanted to license my ramp-up program, I would need lawyers and contracts and a ton of oversight. But if it was an NFT built on blockchain, we could say, everybody, go ahead and use it, copy it, build on it, add or subtract. And every time they sold their version, I would collect automatically, like a royalty payment. All the stuff that takes a ton of legalese and licensing and contracts and oversight right now, that’s not gonna be required anymore. The blockchain also creates a ton of anonymity, which breaks the current advertising algorithm.

Chris (03:14):

You can’t pay Zuckerberg for access to the audience anymore on web 3.0. So instead you truly own your audience and your content. For our kids, this means they could like build a castle in Minecraft and then add it to a race car game like Forza. And if somebody sees it in their game or on YouTube or Twitch on their streaming channel or in his metaverse room on Facebook or whatever, they can license that from him. And he’ll create like, he’ll get like a royalty forever and they’ll have it in their game or whatever. So content creators and audience builders are going to win. So I’ll use a couple of examples of how this could impact you in your gym business. All right. So I’ll start with just selling programming and keep in mind that none of us have any idea of just how far this could go.

Chris (04:05):

So the first ideas that I share with you, five years from now are gonna look kind of quaint, like what? That was his best idea? But the reality is nobody has a really good indication of like what these new opportunities are. And I was listening to Nivel last week and he said that right now, there are 8 billion people on earth who are trying to have a career or a job, but with web 3.0, there will be 8 billion different careers or jobs. Everybody will make money a slightly different way. And no two careers will be exact carbon copies of each other, like they were in the old industrial. So let’s get back to gym owners and NFTs. Let’s start with programming. So when box programming came on the scene, boxprogramming.com, there was no real infrastructure out there. Jason Brown was one of the first and he had to create the product, but also build the audience.

Chris (04:57):

He was an inventor. So we promoted boxprogramming.com Two-Brain because I thought it was an amazing way for people to save money who owned gyms. And he connected to our audience that way. But then more options came online, right? Chris Spealler had something and you saw a bunch of other people jump in too. The problem was that most of the others didn’t have an audience. Although, you know, Speal did. The guys with good programming who couldn’t access an audience didn’t make any money. So the people with the audience kind of became the gatekeepers, but then some platforms saw a different opportunity to connect a large number of programmers with the audience that they had. Right? So there was this list of, or a little bit of democrization happening like Sugarwod and Wodify created programming marketplaces and trainerize started doing this for personal trainers a little bit and exercise.com was working on it a bit.

Chris (05:54):

And what happens when you have a wide open marketplace like that? Well, two things, you get commoditization pricing, right? The price drops dramatically approaching zero, and you get differentiated value. So most of the programming that were on these platforms dropped in price from 200 bucks a month to about 20. And of course not, everybody went this route. Some of the gatekeepers, the people who controlled the audience, picked one type of programming, and they recommended that over everyone else. CrossFit picked HAM plan and renamed it, CrossFit Affiliate Programming. I picked Brooks Difiore’s programming because it had the best adherence and retention rates in the world. And I renamed that Two-Brain Programming. These aren’t bad moves. My job is to pick the best using data and say, use this. CrossFit HQ’s job is to increase values to its shareholders. And the best way to do that is to add value to its customers, the affiliates. But all of this is just to say that creators had to work with gatekeepers like me or CrossFit HQ to sell their creations. More on that in just a minute.

Chris (06:57):

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Chris (07:39):

What NFTs will do is allow you to license your programming to other gyms and trainers without the middle man. So if you can build a program and build an audience, then you don’t need somebody else to build a platform for you.

Chris (07:53):

You can just sell it to them. You can allow them to tweak the programming or the nutrition plan that you sell and you can still collect a royalty on it, even if they change it and resell it. If they’re using the base, you’ll still collect a royalty. You can be the licensor of your own content without lawyers and intellectual property contracts and platforms like SugarWod. If you connect to somebody with a large community, you can leverage their trust to sell your creation. And if you’re part of that community yourself, then you can build on that platform, which is a win for the community, for you, and for its leaders, because their platform just became more valuable. So trainerizw is doing this a little bit by allowing trainers to build specialty programs and then sell it to other trainers on the trainerize platform and Chalk-It Pro seems to be doing it really well.

Chris (08:42):

And they’ll be scaling that up in the next year, I guess. So basically let’s say that you’ve got this amazing pull-up progression program or an amazing on-ramp and it’s working really, really well. Well, you can put it on their platform and you can sell it to other gyms around the world and it’s all automated, but of course, because they are the gatekeepers to that audience, they’re going to keep a share of that. And also nobody’s gonna police usage. So somebody could copy your program, pay for it once and resell it. But web 3.0, built on the blockchain, will have automatic tracking built in. And so that won’t be possible. So this doesn’t mean that you’re gonna be selling programming for $300 per month again, I think those days are done, but what you might do is sell a bit of programming for $5 per month per gym, over and over and over again.

Chris (09:29):

So maybe you create the next like Murph or Fran, and you register the NFT and people license the ability to use that workout. Or maybe you set up the next charity WOD and you license that for $3 per user. And that’s how you fundraise, right? You can do that worldwide. Maybe you publish a clear exercise progression or your on-ramp program, or your supplement sales pitch, and people license that, and you earn a commission on it every time they use it. So here’s an example. Somebody in the Two-Brain group said, I just signed up a baseball team. Does anybody have sample workouts? And within six minutes, she had a full program from somebody else. So there are models of this in coaching and NFTs will unlock this world for a lot of people. This happens all the time in Two-Brain groups, someboday says, oh, I need this resource.

Chris (10:18):

You know, I need an on-ramp program. I need an Instagram ad. Somebody else has it. It happens right now because I’ve been trying to really encourage this with business by democratizing tactics in Two-Brain. So if somebody has a brand new staff playbook template, somebody has a canva template for, you know, their nutrition kickstart program. They’ll offer it to everybody else in the Two-Brain group. People will take them up on it. When I spot it, I’ll offer to pay them for it so that we can retain the rights and give it to Two-Brain clients forever and reward them a little bit. And this is just, it’s a way to democratize this process, but NFTs will speed this up. So that doesn’t mean that we take a vote on our curriculum. What it means is that if you have a proven creation, like an ad or some Instagram post or a nutrition guide or whatever, then I will buy it from you and I’ll give it to everyone at Two-Brain.

Chris (11:08):

And we do this five or six times every month. Someone in our group will share their kids program. And if it’s great and it’s helpful, then I’ll pay them for the rights. And I’ll put it in the Two-Brain modules forever. If someone was really great, they could make money from being in Two-Brain, simply by creating a ton of value for everybody else in Two-Brain. And if you want some examples, this is how Gym Lead Machine got started. This is how Two-Brain Coaching got started. This is how Two-Brain Programming got started. But of course, when you’re trying to do this, there are going to be some problems. So first is I’m the gatekeeper. So I have to like, notice your thing. And I’m pretty skeptical. Like I want actual proof instead of just picking your programming because I like you. So there is a burden of evidence.

Chris (11:49):

You have to prove that this thing actually worked. And third, unfortunately, if I think that your thing is bullshit, then I won’t buy it and you’ll get mad and leave and try to rip hole on your way out. That’s also happened. But NFTs get people around this problem of gatekeepers. And at first, I hate to say this, but when you’re publishing an NFT for other people to license, you’re not gonna have to meet that burden of proof. People will buy your VA service or your kids programming template or your marketing plan simply because it’s available. And they like you. Now over time, the market will wise up and demand proof just like I do, but that’s just the nature of a free market economy. I said that in the future, there will be 8 billion careers. Your kid’s career path won’t look like yours or like mine.

Chris (12:33):

One of the ways that they can make money is to create media or content that people find valuable. The other way is to be really good at creating an audience or connecting with people who have an audience or a community and people who are great at both will probably win really big. NFTs are really the mechanism to do that. The reason that self-published artists and musicians and writers are really excited about web 3.0 is that we remove the gatekeepers and the middlemen. And if they can build an audience for their work, they’re probably set for life and they don’t need lawyers or IP people or contracts. And they don’t have to be like policing the legalese for the rest of their life. I think that this is potentially a massive opportunity for gym owners to build content that they own forever, instead of putting it on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform.

Chris (13:23):

And he owns it. To license that to other people, but most importantly, to work collaboratively with others. Wow. What does that mean for collaboration? It means that you don’t have to be insular anymore. You don’t have to have this mindset of me against them. It means that you can work with the local yoga instructor, the local swim coach, the local running coach. And you can put parts of your programs together like Legos and everybody gets paid and you don’t really have to worry about who’s collecting the money and who gets what percentage. NFTs will take care of all of that for you. The simplest way to think about NFT is as like a Lego brick that you own. And you’re putting in somebody else’s castle. And when somebody buys that castle or rents a night in your castle, every brick in that castle is going to earn a little bit of the total share. That’s what web 3.0 is bringing, but it’s really the opportunity that exists on the blockchain beyond anonymity, beyond security that I think is gonna play a real role in the fitness industry in the next five years,

Mike (14:31):

Two-Brain Radio comes out twice a week and features all the info you need to run a success full fitness business. Subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Now here’s Coop one more time.

Chris (14:39):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook, this is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in. And I’m there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook.

 

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State of the Industry: Owner Hours and Profitability

According to the survey we conducted for our 2021 “State of the Industry” report, the average owner invests 37.8 hours per week working on or in the business.

A quarter of business owners spend less than 20 hours per week on or in their businesses. A quarter of business owners reported spending more than 50 hours per week on or in their businesses. The gyms on that end of the spectrum tend to be much less profitable.

Some owners reported working more than 100 hours a week—but it’s possible to spend that time accomplishing nothing, just as it’s possible to make a great deal of money while working very few hours.

On the lower side of the scale, outliers are to be expected as well. We teach entrepreneurs to build businesses that can run without them, so some successful owners don’t spend much time on the business after it’s running well. Owners in our Tinker program might only spend 10 hours on a business per week yet reap a rich reward as they work on new projects or spend time with their families.

Here’s the data:

Here’s another graph:

Analysis: Gym owners who work 40 or fewer hours per week are more likely to have profitable gyms. But correlation does not imply causation: It’s more likely profitable owners have been able to set their operations to run without them. For example, I don’t spend any hours on my gym, yet I own it and receive the benefits of its success.

What’s more interesting is that we see a steep decline in the number of profitable owners as hours of work increase—especially after 50.

That proves what I’ve been saying for years: It’s not enough to “hustle” or “grind.” You have to do the things that will actually make a difference in your business.

Over the last year, I’ve dedicated myself to helping gym owners find clarity. Now, in 2022, Two-Brain mentors can confidently tell gym owners exactly what to do to improve their businesses. That’s incredibly important to me. I don’t want you to beat your head against the wall and hope to break through. I want you to take swift, targeted action that moves the needle, and then I want you to spend the rest of your time with your family.

If you’re working more than 50 hours and your gym isn’t profitable, you might need some guidance. This is my invitation to book a call with a member of my team to find out how a mentor can help you reach profitability and get home in time for dinner.

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State of the Industry: Revenue Opportunities

Our 2021 “State of the Industry” report gave me a lot of clarity—and a lot of hope.

Today and tomorrow, I want to highlight a few data points and provide analysis that will help you improve your business in 2022.

Gyms: Where the Money Comes From

Check out this table showing how various kinds of gyms generate their revenue.

Analysis: Most gyms in our data set are supported primarily by group training revenue. The most common supplementary service is personal training. In two segments, nutrition coaching has a small but significant effect; in all segments, online coaching, supplements sales and kids coaching contribute small amounts.

Reliance on group coaching can create issues: See the COVID Crisis, with bans on group training in some areas and limitations on class size in others. Further, group training is a gym’s “discount option.” Two-Brain gyms that have worked hard to sell premium services—personal training, hybrid online/in-person packages, and hybrid nutrition/fitness packages—report very different breakdowns.

Here’s a sample revenue breakdown from an actual Two-Brain gym:

Group training: 42 percentPersonal training: 29 percentNutrition coaching: 2 percentOnline coaching: 4 percentKids classes: 14 percentSport-specific coaching: 7 percentRetail/supplements: 2 percent

When you look at the breakdown above, don’t consider it a “checklist.” You don’t have to do “all the things.” In fact, you’re probably better off doing just a few things very well until you have the resources and stability to expand.

That said, this “balanced breakdown” shows one way to reduce your reliance on group training. I hope it inspires you to review your own breakdown to see where you might be able to generate more income.

For example: One Two-Brain gym owner’s revenue relied heavily on group training in 2020. After COVID, she focused on PT, and it now generates 76 percent of revenue. She makes almost $300 an hour from her business.

If you analyze your numbers and find that group training provides 75 percent of your revenue, you definitely have an opportunity to add a revenue stream that doesn’t require new equipment or skills—just different marketing.

It’s likely personal training provides that opportunity. This isn’t to say you must forget about group training altogether. It’s just a reminder: PT can be a very important revenue stream that can make your business “antifragile,” generate more profit and help clients accomplish goals sooner.

Click here to get the complete “State of the Industry” report for free.

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The State of the Fitness Industry Report

Mike (00:02):

It’s a Two-Brain Radio special edition. Chris Cooper is here to present our annual state of the industry report. This is data and insight you won’t find anywhere else. Get the free report at twobrainbusiness.com/soi2. That link is in the show notes. Now, here’s Coop.

Chris (00:18):

Hey guys, Chris Cooper here. And this is the state of our fitness industry at the end of 2021. When I’m trying to improve any part of my business, I ask myself three questions. First, who has solved this before me so that I can just buy the answer instead of paying 10 times more and taking years to figure it out myself. Then I ask myself who has solved this better than anyone else so that I can set my sights on like the best in the world. And then I ask myself, what’s the average solution so that I can recognize average when I blow past it. Two-Brain Business is my mentorship practice. It’s the largest in the world for gym owners, because we have the answers to these three questions. We provide mentorship every day to gym owners and it’s delivered through mentors who have already solved the problems that our clients are facing.

Chris (01:04):

We publish leaderboards every month so that you can target the best in the world. And we publish this guide every year so that you can see the average. This year, we’re providing data from 14,162 gym owners worldwide. We drew on data from some of the largest gym management platforms in the industry, like Arbox, Wodify, Zen Planner. And we dove really deep into the numbers with our friends at Gym Lead Machine and also Incite Tax. And we dug right down to the roots with a thousand gyms who use the Two-Brain dashboard every month. If you wanna reach the moon, you have to take a leap and to make the highest leap, you have to start with a foundation. That foundation is data, and this is your data. The end of N equals one: data eliminates risk and silences those without proof. Good data equals proof.

Chris (01:56):

Good interpretation of that data equals clarity and acting on clarity gets results. This report goes really, really deep, but it’s also broad because the experience of one person isn’t enough. We have data from 14,162 gyms worldwide in this report. And we hired an independent and objective analyst to help bring clarity to all these numbers for you. When I started mentoring gym owners in 2012, I only had my own experience as a gym owner to draw from. And that data set was like N equals one, right? My gym, seven years at that time, that experience was enough to help other people, but now our recommendations are exponentially more valuable because they’re based on data from thousands of gyms instead of just mine. My ideas in 2012 were pretty good because they came from experts with data in other fields. But at the end of 2021 and moving into 2022, Two-Brain’s tactics and strategies are better than good.

Chris (02:55):

They’re proven. We teach our clients the lessons we’ve learned from the largest data set in the fitness business. So why should this matter to you? Well, because in the fitness industry, there are always voices saying this worked for me. It’ll definitely work for everybody else. And these are the N equals one experts and maybe their ideas will work for you, but their advice carries risk. Like what if they’re overreporting their results? Or what if they’re under reporting the downside or the costs? What if their ideas only work that one time? Or what if their ideas only worked in their gym or what if their idea only worked with their clients or will their ideas stop working over time? Or of course, what if they’re getting paid to tell you that it worked and even worse are the N equals zero biz coaches out there who will sell you an idea that they haven’t even tested themselves.

Chris (03:46):

This is a rapidly growing segment of the business world, but data eliminates risk and silences all those people without proof. Data also makes great things possible. Two-Brain created six first time millionaires in 2021, real millionaires, not the shell game success stories who say I made a hundred thousand dollars in my gym last month, and now it’s gonna last forever. Instead we help real gym owners grow their net worth to over a million dollars. And we did that because of data. So where did this data come from? Well, in August, we sent out a 62 question survey to our 30,000 person email list, to all of our clients and to our Gym Owners United Facebook group, which has about 4,500 more members. We also collect data from a thousand gyms in the Two-Brain business mentorship program every single month through our own dashboard.

Chris (04:38):

We collect data from Arbox, PushPress, Wodify, Zen Planner, and they contributed anonymous data from about 13,000 gyms worldwide. Their data sets weren’t uniform. So in some cases we only pulled data from one or two or three. Arbox contributed key insight into international markets and provided a comprehensive package for data and analysis. Wodify gave us a huge data package with stats on memberships, users, demographics, and financial data for thousands of gyms, PushPress contributed important data that included a year over year analysis of average revenue, total members, new clients, and cancellations per gym, and Zen Planner gave us data on month over month check-ins, new members, cancellations and a lot more. We also turned to our partners at Incite Tax, one of the largest bookkeeping and accounting firms for small gyms for data on monthly rent, payroll and profitability, and Gym Lead Machine supplied website, marketing prospect conversion data.

Chris (05:37):

Then we had an independent industry analyst screen, research and package the data to give us the clearest picture. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So first who’s in this data set. Well, the majority, about 65% is from CrossFit gyms or gyms that would call themselves CrossFit gyms. There’s a small sample from martial arts studios, multifunction facilities, boutique studios, and some strength and conditioning gyms. Also, most of our gyms about 75% in the survey are in the US, but there are other gyms worldwide. Canada is well represented, the UK, Australia and New Zealand and also parts of Asia. So let’s get into gym growth here. First we asked gym owners, how long have you been in business? And what we found was that 25% had been in business for fewer than four years. 75% had been in business for fewer than nine years.

Chris (06:35):

So most of the gym owners are still, you know, maybe they’re emerging from that founder stage and they’re becoming more mature as entrepreneurs, but you still don’t have like a lot of even 20 year old gym owners to draw information from. OK. And median years in business across all segments was about six. So while this sample size does come from mature gym owners, you know, it’s not people who’ve only owned a gym for about a year. They’ve been around, they’ve seen some stuff, they’ve done some stuff. You’re also not getting long term feedback from people who’ve been in the industry as a gym owner for 30 years because those people just aren’t around. Let’s start by talking about how many clients the average micro gym has. This is one of the biggest questions that we get asked is like, how many clients do I need?

Chris (07:21):

And every year we publish a report. Last year, we published a model called the 150 model, and we showed you how to make a hundred thousand dollars in net owner benefit per year for owning a micro gym with 150 clients. In the state of the industry this year, we found that the average gym has 137 members. This is the average of over 13,000 gyms worldwide. Of those 137 members, about 51% are men 49% are women. So pretty close right down the middle, but a lot of people would’ve guessed a larger percentage of women. So I think it’s really important to get that. That gender breakdown doesn’t differ much depending on where you are in the world. So in the states, it’s 51 to 49%. And it’s about the same in Canada. The place where you get a bigger, significant differences in the UK, where it’s 53% men and only 47% women in gyms, European Union falls along those lines too.

Chris (08:15):

Now let’s talk about average member age, and this is really important to understand when you’re building your client avatars and thinking about your marketing. A lot of gym owners are fairly young. I was young when I opened a gym, but the person that’s owning the gym is not necessarily the target audience for the gym. OK. So, it’s important that you know, that the average member age at gyms is 35. So when you’re doing your marketing, whether you’re 45 or you’re 25, think about what a 35-year-old would wanna see and think about what’s going on in a 35-year-old’s life. Like they’re probably settled down. Like they probably have a home. They probably are in the middle of a career of some point they might have family, they might have some kids. All right. I’ve also got here in this state of the industry guide, which by the way, you can download for free and do like a really big, deep dive into these numbers.

Chris (09:06):

If you click on the link in the show notes. You can see that there was a general uptick in members in 2020 and 2021 at certain points. And you’ll see gradually that those upticks happen as gyms were getting reopened worldwide after COVID. All right. So I’ve got some growth numbers you can see, like, depending on where you are in the world, how much the average gym grew in 2021 and how much in 2020. And you can see all that on page four team of this report. Let’s turn now to people who are thinking about becoming clients, but they’re not clients yet. OK. We would call these leads. So what we find is that the average gym is booking about 33% of all the leads that come onto their website for a free intro. Now, these aren’t like Facebook leads. They’re people that actually make it to your site, but that’s a good number to have. 33% of the people who come to the website are actually booking an intro.

Chris (10:01):

The average gym is attracting 37 new leads per month with 25% of gyms getting more than 50 people per month. So new leads, these are new people coming to your website. And the average gym of course, is then therefore booking about 12 intros per month. With 15% of gyms booking over 20 new intros per month. The average gym website gets 442 visitors and 75 returning visitors each month. Traffic is down about 18% from 2020, maybe because people were hosting virtual workouts and instructions on their website. And they’re not doing that anymore. The average new visitor spends one minute and eight seconds on your website, which means you’ve gotta take advantage of their attention. You’ve gotta get them to an actionable page on your website. You gotta have a very clear link for what you want them to do. They have to be able to understand all of your service in a minute, eight seconds or less.

Chris (10:55):

And 50% of traffic is coming from mobile phones now. So you have to have a site that’s like mobile and tablet friendly. If you aren’t sure, call up your site on your phone right now and take a look. If it doesn’t display properly, you’re losing clients and that’s costing you money. What we found with paid advertising and lead generation is that 80% of gyms had run ads. But now about half of those are continuing to run ads, which means that about half of gyms who have run Facebook ads in the past or Instagram ads, don’t do it anymore. And this is really intriguing because the gyms who know what to do and are running ads generally see a pretty good ROI and they generally don’t stop. So this leads me to believe that the gyms who have run ads in the past and then stopped either random for a very short period of time.

Chris (11:45):

Like I do, you know, a couple times during the year for about a couple weeks to a month, or they just weren’t really sure what they were doing. And they were tired of throwing good money after bad. The average respondent who gets a new lead from Facebook though spends about $25 to acquire that lead, to get them, you know, onto the website, at least. And then, you know, if 30, 33% of those can book an appointment, you can extrapolate out like it costs about $75 to get somebody sitting in a chair in front of you. So that just means you have to make your front end offer worth eating that $75. If you’re gonna turn to advertising. And of course, we’re going to be talking about other marketing strategies too. Ads are kind of like the last strategy that we teach at Two-Brain.

Chris (12:27):

So if you’re not running ads right now, there’s no need to panic. As long as you’re still getting new clients in the door. In fact, when we ask people, why aren’t you running ads? A lot of people said, I don’t know how, or I got a poor ROI when I tried it, but an equal number or more even said, there’s no need, I’m getting enough people. I prefer other methods. I do like affinity marketing, or I do referrals, or I do organic posting, or I do email marketing or whatever. We also asked people who was using a marketing agency. And just like last year we found that the ROI on hiring a marketing agency is not great. So what we generally recommend from looking at this data is you should know how to run ads. You should have ads like ready to go so that you can turn them on.

Chris (13:11):

If you turn them on, don’t turn them off, just dial your, spend back to about a buck a day. And, don’t give up on them foreveriIf they don’t work the first time, it’s just, you know, you need to set something up and you don’t need a marketing agency. If you are gonna run ads, just learn how to do it yourself. If you hate doing it, like I do, teach somebody on your staff to do it for you. OK. A lot of people actually use marketing software like CRMs, funnel builders, stuff like that. And they don’t wanna learn how to use all that stuff, but probably somebody on your staff does. Let’s turn to client value. Now, another big question that so many people ask us is like, how much should I be charging? And this is a massive issue in our industry because a lot of the original gyms they just guessed and then the next person to open in their city, they look at like the price of the original gym and they subtract $5 and that’s their price, right?

Chris (14:05):

Not knowing that the original gym didn’t do any market research or anything like that. So here’s all the data that you need for group training. The average gym in our data set is charging 159 per month. And that’s actually up from last year, which I love to see. Just so that, you know, the average gym in Two-Brain, ARM is just over 185 a month. So about $30 more per member per month. The average person in our data set selling personal training was selling personal training for $71 per hour or compared to last year, which the average was 72. What I think is happening is more people are selling personal training and we’ll come back to that. But they’re undervaluing their price. Nutrition coaching. This was great news this year. The average person in our data set was charging 129 per month for nutrition coaching compared to 110 per month last year.

Chris (15:00):

So, the average value of an hour of nutrition coaching has gone up 20%, sorry, slightly more than 20% by about 20 bucks. That’s awesome. Online coaching. This year we found that the average person selling online coaching is charging 163 per month, which is right even with last year. But that’s interesting because that price is higher than group training in person or nutrition coaching in person or personal training in person. And what’s probably pulling that up are these packages that include a lot of accountability. So, when we looked at revenue mix, like how are gyms making their money? We found that depending on what type of gym it was, most gyms are making most of their money from group training, but different gyms had a different kind of revenue mix and you can see all of them. And we looked at kids’ classes, supplements, online coaching, nutrition coaching, personal training group training, and we broke them all down by segment.

Chris (15:57):

So if you’re a personal training studio, if you’re a martial arts facility, if you’re a yoga studio, if you’re a CrossFit gym, you can see all of them on page 21 of this report. And again, you can download this report by clicking the link in the show notes. It’s free. All right, next interesting stuff is client retention. We wanna know how long does the average client stay. And we track this very religiously in Two-Brain. The average Two-Brain gym keeps the average client for an average of 19.2 months. And if you’re thinking like, OK, well the average person is paying $200 per month. That means that the average client is worth about $4,000 at a Two-Brain gym, right? 3,800. What we found though is that length of engagement actually improved through 2021. And so, people were just less likely to cancel.

Chris (16:47):

Of course, I’m sure there was a COVID effect there, but we’ve been working really hard to help gym owners keep clients longer. And so what that means is like, if you’re keeping people an extra month, every single client in your gym is worth an extra $200 to you, but it also means you have to market less because your churn rate goes down. You spend less time on marketing. You spend less time on no sweat intros. You spend less energy worrying about who’s leaving your gym and most importantly, you can change their lives. You know, if every client stayed with you one more month, how much of a difference could you make in their lives? So let’s talk about what the average gym is like selling or delivering to their clients, right? Their operations. The average gym has about 13 average membership plans. Now that’s way too many.

Chris (17:33):

You need a maximum of nine, like three options, times three price tiers, maximum. 13 different average membership plans means that people are probably getting paralyzed and not buying from you. We see the average class attendance to be six, which means that a lot of gyms are running a lot of classes that barely break even, or might even be costing them money. And we’ve got some great media series that will help you with that. 28% of gyms offer between 25 and 40 classes per week. That’s the largest segment. And the average number of classes, all segments was 33 classes per week. The busiest class times were 8:00 AM. 9:00 AM, 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM was the biggest class time across all segments. 8:00 PM was also big. Surprising to me was that there weren’t a lot of early morning class times like six and 7 because that has always been super popular at our gym, but this could have a seasonal effect too.

Chris (18:34):

So for example, in the winter here, fewer people will come to a 6:00 AM class because it’s hard to start a cold car. In the summertime though, that’s our busiest class. And so if you average that across the year, it could very well be that those are the most popular classes we hear from people lot. Like I’m running this 10:00 AM class. How do I fill it? And that’s tough because 10:00 AM is just not a convenient time for people who work a nine to five or people who work a night shift even. So, the two busiest class times overall were 7:00 PM and 6:00 PM. Super, super easy. All right. Almost everybody offered group training like 97 percent, which is great. I mean, there are a couple of personal training studios in our sample who didn’t offer group training yet, but I’m sure they probably will.

Chris (19:19):

The median group training cost again was $159 per month, which is better than last year, but it’s still not really high enough. We need to be getting that up. Let’s talk about personal training. This year, 92% of the gyms in our data set offer some kind of personal training, but it only accounts for about 20% of their revenue. So there’s a big opportunity there for gyms to boost up their personal training and or nutrition coaching and or packages that include all of the above. The average was $71 per hour. Last year, it was 72, so it hasn’t changed much, but it has gone down in this larger data set. The other thing to notice is that strength training gyms that advertise themselves as like a specialty gym for weightlifting or powerlifting, they charge more for one-on-one session than anybody else. On the other hand, the multifunction gyms who they try to do a little bit of everything like boot camp, CrossFit, Pilates, yoga, they charge the least for one on one training.

Chris (20:18):

And it’s probably because without that perception of specialization, they can’t charge for premium service. Let’s talk about nutrition coaching. So this was really, really encouraging to me. 74% this year of people in our data set offered a nutrition coaching service. Last year, it was 69%. And I think the year before it was less than 40. So this is really becoming important, which is very heartening to see because this is how you help your clients best, right? However, nobody’s charging enough. So this year, the average rate for a month of nutrition coaching was $129. Last year the average rate was about 110. And this year, even though more people are offering it, it’s still a very small percentage of their revenue, 6.4%. So there’s an opportunity to do more. If you think about like what’s at the base of your practice, you know, what are you doing?

Chris (21:16):

That’s most important to help your clients? It’s probably nutrition coaching, and that will help your clients more than anything else that you do, but still it’s only responsible for about six and a half percent of your revenue. So that’s some good perspective to think about. The other interesting thing to find there too, is that martial arts gyms who are selling nutrition, coaching actually charged the most for it. So they were charging about 150 bucks a month. The lowest performer were gyms like yoga, who were wildly under charging at 122 a month. Online coaching has come down a little bit since last year. Understandable. A lot of us, we just wanted to get back to our bricks and mortar gym, didn’t we, and as soon as we did that, we said, we’re done with this online stuff. I totally understand that.

Chris (22:01):

Supplements, about 52% of gyms in our survey are selling supplements. Now that’s actually up, or it’s about even from last year, it hasn’t changed very much. But what we see is that supplements account for only 4% of their revenue. So what that tells me is twofold. Number one, if you’re going to sell supplements, like go all in and commit to it, you know, that number should be 10%. If you can’t get that number to 10% of your revenue, just don’t sell supplements, OK. Or like set up a referral strategy with the local supplement shop. If you’re selling 4% of your revenue to come from supplements, it means you’re just kind of half-assing it. And you maybe you’ve got a few on the shelf and you’re not thinking about it. For us, I mean, if we do a couple of supplement pre-sales a year gets people on the train and then when they order more supplements through our portal on Driven, we get paid for that.

Chris (22:55):

And so that drives our revenue up. Kids classes about 42% of gyms are offering kids classes this year, 57% are not anymore. Now this is really interesting because the number of gyms offering a kids class has really gone down in the last year. And I think as more gyms try to focus in on who their key avatars are, they might find that they’re not really dealing with kids. They just saw an opportunity and went for it. So that’s understandable unless you’re absolutely in love with coaching kids, you shouldn’t be coaching kids. All right. 90% of gyms out there rent, very few own. The average gym size is 4,500 square feet. And the average rent that they pay is $3,700 per month. And of course this takes in, you know, cities around the world, which has very wild swings in rental per square foot rental size.

Chris (23:50):

That kinda thing too. Let’s talk about the CrossFit Games Open participation rates. And we see this as a really great measuring stick for participation in CrossFit and like the belief in the program as a whole. One good signal that you’re not just using the method, but you are ingrained in the whole philosophy and community of CrossFit is your participation in the CrossFit Open. And what we found is that 84.7% of gyms in our state of the industry dataset did the CrossFit Open in 2021. And this is super interesting because only 70 something percent of the gyms in the data set are CrossFit gyms, which means that about 10%, across thousands of gyms, identify with the CrossFit method, but are not CrossFit affiliates. The other interesting thing is that 90% of gyms planned on participating next. So even if they’re not an affiliate now, even if they haven’t been an affiliate for a while, they still plan to do the Open next year.

Chris (24:51):

And I found that really interesting. Conversely, 78% of survey respondents are confident in the future of the CrossFit brand down from last year, which was 82%. And so while people are eager to participate in the method and things like the Open, they’re not too sure about where the brand is going long term. OK. Let’s talk about staff. On average gyms the industry have one full-time employee, other than like the owner, 75% have one or two staff members and most gyms have about four. So one full-timer four part-timers. Staff compensation for a group class is $22, which was consistent from last year. It didn’t change. Didn’t go up, but it didn’t go down either. I think that might actually rise in 2022, as we move back into full-time bricks and mortar. The highest paying gyms out there were generally boutique studios or martial arts.

Chris (25:51):

And they were averaging 23. Personal training was right in there too, the lowest paying gyms were multifunction gyms like yoga, Pilates who paid their coaches around 20 bucks per class. But that was pulled down because some paid them zero. So if you compare this to gyms that are profitable, you’ll see kinda why there’s low payment in a lot of these gyms, like the gyms just aren’t that profitable. And so this is really all they can afford. It doesn’t mean that the gym owners don’t wanna pay their staff more. They probably do, but it’s all they can afford. Right? If you look at the average, highest salaries per survey segment, what you’ll see is like the highest salaries are usually actually made at like the yoga gyms. They’re just not paying people per class. So the average salary in like a yoga or multifunction gym was 36,000. A boutique studio,

Chris (26:44):

so like personal training was about 31,000. The average salary at a CrossFit gym was about 25,000. Martial arts was about the same. Strength and conditioning was higher at 32. Now if we look at profitability and we compare that against expenses paid to staff, what we find is that 34% of gyms are profitable. 30% are unprofitable. And the other 30% are kind of like right at the break even. And the mean average that these gyms paid to their staff was 33%. Now at Two-Brain, we teach you how to pay 44%. But just so that, you know, in the broader industry, like if you take all the globo gyms, the average amount of revenue that’s paid to staff is about 15%. So while we are paying a bigger percentage of revenue to staff in our part of the gym industry, the pie is a lot smaller.

Chris (27:34):

And so that actual dollar amount is not much better than what they would make at a globo gym, unless they’re working at a Two-Brain gym. All right. So I’ve got some stuff here about, business partners and stuff, but I really wanna get to how much are gym owners paying themself? I mean, you opened this gym for a lot of reasons, right? You opened it to serve your community. You opened it to provide meaningful careers to fitness coaches. You did it like for reasons of saving your clients’ health. I get that, but you also opened this business to create financial freedom and time freedom for you, the owner. And so I wanna compare a couple of things, how much you make and how much time you spend. When I was a young gym owner, younger gym owner, 2005, I asked myself like, who is actually retiring from this? Is anybody keeping a gym for their entire career?

Chris (28:26):

And then like, how are they retiring successfully? And I couldn’t find very many models for it. You know, even the people who were 60 years old at that time were still actively coaching and working every day. And that was a little bit discouraging, but we’re really making a lot of progress here. So first off, let’s talk about net owner beneft. Net owner benefit is the sum of the money that you receive from your business. So it’s like your profit, it’s your salary. And it’s like the little bonuses that your business pays for. Like maybe your business pays your cell phone bill. OK. Half of the people in our data set took home less than $4,000 per month. That’s not enough. However, the top 25% of the gym owners took home more than $6,000 per month, which, you know, depending on where you are in the world actually exceeds the happiness index, right?

Chris (29:13):

It’s like, that’s enough. So you’re seeing this big separation between gym owners who are earning enough and more than enough and gym owners who are just making enough to barely survive or maybe like their partner or their spouse has a job somewhere else. And we’re gonna dig into why that separation is there and why that separation is actually spreading out. OK. So first off, about the bottom 25% of gyms are making less than $1,900 per month. The middle 50% are making just under $4,000 per month. The top 75, sorry, the top 25% are making just under $6,000 per month. And, the very top are making about just over 6,000 per month. Now, what we found in Two-Brain is that focusing on a target, earning a net owner benefit of a hundred thousand dollars per year gets gym owners there a lot faster. Failing to have that target generally means that you starve yourself or like you martyr yourself to the business.

Chris (30:17):

So if you look at like, what are causing these separations, what gets people to earn that net owner benefit faster? I’ve actually got some data on this. The first is gonna be goal setting. The second is working with a mentor. If you look at like the people who are earning less than $2,000 per month, only about 45% of those people have a business coach or a mentor, or somebody formally saying do this next. But if you look at the people who are at 4, 6,000 and above, over 70% of those people have a business coach. And if you keep in mind that like everybody who has a business coach is growing, I think what you’re gonna see next year is like these top groups earning over $8,000 per month. The bottom groups though, without a mentor, are probably gonna be the same.

Chris (31:07):

That sounds like a sad prediction. And I hate to be pessimistic, but we just haven’t seen that change. The average gym owner is working about 37.8 hours per week, which is absolutely fantastic. However, this is hours tracked working, and what we find is that, like, if you get there at 6:00 AM, you stay till six at night and you see five or six clients or coach five or six classes in there that you only count those five or six hours, but really you’re there for 12 hours. And so I am surprised that this number is low, but it could just be attributed to the way it’s counted. OK. We also found that there are people at both ends of the spectrum. Some like me who work zero hours in their gym, one hour a month meeting with the GM. And there are also people, more people working between 70 and a hundred hours a week.

Chris (31:59):

This was certainly me for years and years. If we look at like the percentage of people who are profitable, this is where we break down. So does working more make you more profitable? Well, not if you own a real business. So what we find is that the people who work the least zero to 20 hours have a very high profitability. 77% of those are profitable, and it’s not because they work few hours, they work few hours because they’re profitable. If you look at people who work 51 hours or more a week, only 59% of those are profitable. And again, it’s not because they’re not working hard enough. It’s because they’re working, working, working in their business instead of working on their business. So owner hours, you know, what makes you work less? Is it just like, I need to put in the work, I need to spend five years building this gym, and then I’ll automatically work less.

Chris (32:50):

The data says that’s not true, that you can just keep working a 70 hour week forever and not get any better. You can doing the same thing over and over and over again. And just putting your head down and grinding, and that’s not gonna actually improve your gym. And this was the epiphany that I had back in like 2009 that made me seek a business coach and actually fix my gym. Cause I could see that I just couldn’t work any more. I couldn’t work any harder. And my gym wasn’t improving. All right, let’s talk about revenue insights. So if we go from summer 2020 to summer 2021, the average gym saw a revenue increase of about 43%, I don’t think that’s gonna surprise anybody. Because you’re going from a period of like full COVID lockdowns in many cases, to a period of being wide open and back to business. There were some really interesting insights though.

Chris (33:40):

Like for most gyms, when they opened up, they saw a surge of clients. Again, you can download this guide yourself just by clicking the link in the show notes, it’s free. OK. Let’s talk about profit. Let’s talk about profitability and square footage. Is a bigger gym more likely to be profitable? Well, it depends. So what we found is that gyms that are under 2,500 square feet, about 70% of those are profitable. Gyms that are 2,500 to 4,000 square feet, 73% of those are profitable. Gyms that are 4,500 to 6,500 square feet, 77% of those are profitable, and gyms that are over 6,500 square feet, that number drops a little bit to 76%. not a massive swing, which means that size does not really determine profitability very much. Up to a point, you know, it can be hard to be profitable in a smaller square footage, but you know, more than two thirds of gyms are anyway.

Chris (34:33):

However, where you start to see the numbers drop off is when the gym gets bigger than 6,500 square feet. That was a big sigh of relief to me because Catalyst is like 6,400 square feet. So I don’t need to get any bigger. Profitability by sector. What we found going through 2020 and 2021 is that most gyms did manage to stay profitable. Now this is really profound because if you look outside the micro gym community and you look at like the big globo gyms that make up most of the industry, most of them went to zero profitability. They went to zero revenue, which meant they were losing money, several filed for chapter 11 protection. OK. But by and large, the small operator gyms, the micro gyms, they survived and they actually finished 2021 profitable. The sole exception is martial arts gyms and martial arts gyms tended to take a beating.

Chris (35:22):

It could be that they lost clients as they tried to pivot online. And then back again. It could be that masking restrictions or vaccination mandates in their local area stopped them from doing their usual stuff. But strength and conditioning gyms bounced back really, really fast. Boutique studios like one on one, they bounced back really fast, less so CrossFit, yoga did. OK. But CrossFit gyms are on the way back. According to this data set. Let’s talk about business debt. You know, I started with 16,000 in debt. Some people try to start with zero in debt, , but we found that 62% of people in our data set had debt, between zero and $20,000, could have been purchase, buyout, whatever. And 10% had debt over hundred thousand dollars, which is a little bit scarier. Let’s talk about profit. So if we look at like how profitable a gym was before COVID shutdown and how profitable they were after, that will give us a great insight into the gym’s retention, like their adherence rates, how close they are with their members and also their systems, how well they did during COVID. Their ability to retain clients online was actually a great predictor of how quickly they would bounce back when they could reopen.

Chris (36:36):

So what we found was that within a month, 71% of Two-Brain clients returned to full profitability, but only 53% of other gyms did. We also found that revenue got right back to where it was after COVID in 74% of Two-Brain gyms, but only 55% of other gyms. And with that means is that during COVID, the gyms may have cut some expenses that they didn’t really need anyway. So revenue got back really, really quick. Profit came back almost as quickly, but you know, caught up in the next month or so. Now you can download this guide for free. You can have all of it. The reason that I put this guide together is even back in 2009, when I was trying to figure out like, why can’t I make this gym work? Or how am I ever gonna retire?

Chris (37:25):

How am I gonna put my kids through college? Even back then, there were these fitness industry gurus who were like selling their system. And I would look at these people, they were always dudes back then. And I’d say that guy doesn’t even own a gym. How’s he know what I’m going through? Or they would put out an idea and I would say, OK, like where have you tested this? You know, what’s been your experience. What’s your data? Is this working better than something else? You know, compared to what is basically the question that I’d ask and nobody had any data. And so I started sharing my wins and especially my losses on a blog just to share like my N equals one data. But over time we’ve said the industry needs a data set. Like you need an objective set of norms to say, am I doing better than that?

Chris (38:13):

Not because I want you to be average, but because I want you to know what average is. So you recognize it as you blaze on by. So Two-Brain Business is a team of successful leaders mentoring gym owners to success. And we use experience instead of opinion, we use data and proof, not random ideas. We move entrepreneurs through distinct phases of entrepreneurship, founder phase, farmer phase, where you’re growing your team, tinker phase, where you’re growing your wealth. And then thief phase when you’re giving it all back to your community. And we’re committed to generating measurable results for fitness professionals so that you can help your clients, because I want you to stick around for 30 years and help correct the flow of health, which is on a downward trend worldwide. Our values guide our actions. We believe in honesty, we believe in transparency, and that’s why we create this guide. That’s why we spend a ton of money, time and resources putting this together. And it’s also why we give it to you for free. You can make your own decisions. I want to empower you to do that. I wanna empower you to say this works, that doesn’t, but I also want to empower you to ask the question compared to what. Or I want you to say, prove it. And if somebody can’t prove it, then it’s their opinion. But if somebody can prove it, then that’s your bedrock and you can leap from there.

Mike (39:31):

To get a free copy of our state of the industry report, click the link in the show notes, or visit twobrainbusiness.com/soi2.

 

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State of the Industry: The End of n = 1

Good data equals proof. Good interpretation of that data equals clarity. Acting on clarity gets results.

Our 2021 State of the Industry report goes deep. But it’s also broad because the experience of one person isn’t enough. We have data from 14,162 gyms in this report, and we hired an independent and objective analyst to help bring clarity from the numbers.

When I started mentoring gym owners in 2012, I had only my own experience on which to draw. My data set was n = 1.

As a gym owner of seven years at the time, that experience was enough to help others.

Now our recommendations are exponentially more valuable because they’re based on data from 6,000+ gyms instead of just mine.

My ideas in 2012 were pretty good because they came from experts with data in other fields. But in at the end of 2021 and moving into 2022, Two-Brain’s tactics and strategies are better than good: They’re proven. We teach our clients the lessons we’ve learned from the largest data set in the fitness business.

Why should this matter to you?

Because in the fitness industry, voices will always say, “This worked for me, and it will definitely work for everyone!” Those are the “n = 1 experts.” And maybe their ideas will work for you. But their advice carries risk:

What if they’re over-reporting results?What if they’re under-reporting downside?What if their idea only worked once?What if their idea only worked in their gym?What if their idea only worked with their clients?What if their idea will stop working over time?What if they’re incentivized to sell you on the idea?

Worse are the n = 0 “biz coaches” who will sell you an idea they haven’t tested themselves. This is a rapidly growing segment of the business world. 

Data eliminates risk and silences those without proof. 

Data also makes great things possible: Two-Brain created six first-time millionaires in 2021. Real millionaires. Not the shell-game success stories who say “I made $100,000 at my gym last month and expect it to continue forever!” Instead, we helped real gym owners grow their net worths to over $1 million.

Where Does This Data Come From?

Our 2021 report contains data from the following sources:

In August, a 62-question survey was distributed to our 30,000-person email list, Two-Brain Business clients and the Gym Owners United Facebook group (approximately 4,300 members at the time).Over 1,000 Two-Brain Business clients enter key metrics in our upgraded Dashboard every month.Arbox, PushPress, Wodify and Zen Planner contributed anonymous data from 13,416 gyms across the globe. Their data sets were not uniform, so in some cases, only data from one, two or three providers is used.Arbox contributed key insight into international markets and provided a comprehensive package of data and analysis.Wodify submitted a huge data package with stats on memberships, users, demographics and financial data for thousands of gyms.PushPress contributed important data that included a year-over-year analysis of average revenue, total members, new clients and cancellations per gym.Zen Planner provided data on month-over-month check-ins, new members, cancellations and much more.Incite Tax, one of the largest bookkeeping and accounting firms for small gyms, supplied data on monthly rent, payroll and profitability.Gym Lead Machine supplied website, marketing and prospect conversion data.An independent professional industry intelligence and market analyst reviewed, screened and packaged the data to give you the clearest picture.

Our 2021 report contains information from 14,162 gyms. It is the largest and most comprehensive data set ever collected in our industry. It’s the info gym owners need right now.

To get the free report, click here.

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The Why and How of Offering Yoga Privates

Shannon Brasovan, Two-Brain Yoga Business Mentor

If you’re a yoga teacher or studio owner, you’ve likely encountered three major problems with your students:

1. The students attending your classes have a wide range of knowledge and abilities, making it difficult to teach them all effectively.

2. Your students have goals that go beyond the scope of a general yoga class.

3. You aren’t making enough money (or creating enough impact) for all the time you invest in group classes.

Group yoga classes are your discount offering. While that might seem backward in the yoga community, it’s the reality. Group classes offer scalability, not personalization or high levels of accountability.

Think about the client who always requires your “yoga whisper.” You know the person: You have to crawl across the room while leading a group vinyasa flow to assist this student with chaturanga almost every time. What if you could have 30 minutes one on one with that client? How different might their practice be—and their experience—if they weren’t gently called out in every class?

Plus, some students simply learn better one on one or in small groups.

In terms of yoga teaching, private yoga used to be the norm. Krishnamacharya, the father of modern yoga, studied privately with his teachers and taught students privately (including B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois). He believed that the techniques should evolve to meet the needs of the individual at the given moment and did not insist on one particular technique.

Over time, it has become the norm for yoga to be taught predominantly in group classes—but that doesn’t mean this is most effective. Group classes do not allow teachers to evolve the techniques to the each student’s needs. Instead, they must prescribe the same movements and techniques to everyone, regardless of goals, abilities and so forth.

Offering private yoga instruction is so important. So how do you start?

Step 1

Begin by setting aside five to 10 hours a week that you can devote to private yoga. Be realistic about initial time commitments. Start small and grow from there.

Step 2

Next, clearly define what problems you are equipped to solve one on one. Are you the best teacher for desk workers seeking better posture or early-rising Type A folks who need someone to hold them accountable to their practice three times a week? Clearly define whom you can serve and what problems you can solve so you don’t get caught teaching things you are not comfortable with or qualified for. Example: If someone wants to practice yoga with you to help with scoliosis, don’t take the client if you don’t know anything about scoliosis and yoga.

Step 3

Set a rate based on value, not what you think people can afford. What is an hour of your undivided time worth? What are you able to offer a student one on one that they can’t get in a group setting? A general starting rate is $65 an hour for newer teachers. 

Step 4

Finally, call, text or email five clients you know could benefit from one-on-one teaching. Start with the problem they are trying to solve and share how private instruction can help them solve it. Don’t forget to come in with a “help first” mentality. How are you going to help them achieve their goals or overcome their obstacles? It’s not about you just selling them an hour of private instruction but about helping them move to the next level of their practice!

Click here for more about mentorship for yoga business owners.

The post The Why and How of Offering Yoga Privates appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Media Mission: How to Offer Perspective and Connect With New Clients

A recent study has linked excess weight and body fat to increased risk of severe COVID-19 and COVID-related death.

Another recent study reported that Canadians grew increasingly sedentary during the pandemic.

Over the last year, social-media platforms have been cracking down on or banning ads promoting weight loss.

And you, as a gym owner, know that your business has had its ability to help people become or stay fit reduced by pandemic-related measures since 2020.

It’s no wonder the pandemic seems endless.

But at least you have another opportunity to help people get through it.

I won’t make this column political and get into the finer points of pandemic management, economics, “body shaming,” social media and gym ownership. Instead, I’ll just highlight an opportunity for you:

People are hearing more and more about how excess weight and body fat are tied to poor health and risk of death. But they aren’t being given an exact, step-by-step plan to drop those pounds.

That’s where you come in.

Data and Real Solutions

First, your references:

1. Dec. 8 New York Times article: “The Coronavirus Attacks Fat Tissue, Scientists Find.” Key quote: “The coronavirus appears to be able to evade the body fat’s immune defenses, which are limited and incapable of fighting it effectively. And in people who are obese, there can be a lot of body fat.”

2. “ParticipACTION: 2021 Report Card on Physical Activity for Adults.” Key quote: “Compared to their typical behaviour prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 61% of adults indicate spending somewhat or much more time in front of screens.”

3. Harvard Health Publishing article: “Did We Really Gain Weight During the Pandemic?” Key quote: “39% of patients gained weight during the pandemic, with weight gain defined as above the normal fluctuation of 2.5 pounds. Approximately 27% gained less than 12.5 pounds and about 10% gained more than 12.5 pounds, with 2% gaining over 27.5 pounds.”

Let’s be real: People have been told that excess weight is associated with negative health effects for years. A lot of them don’t seem to care. That will not change even as more research lays out the exact relationship between COVID and obesity.

But some people are going to want to lose weight and body fat after reading that New York Times article. Without your voice, they’re going to be led astray by all the stupid powders, wraps, cleanses and extreme diets that fill the internet.

Don’t let a prospective client in your area waste time and money on some “thermal-nuke fat-destroying weight-loss band” that retails for $19.99.

Instead, tell local people how they can actually drop pounds and fat, and give them realistic expectations instead of empty promises. Then invite them to come in and talk to you about coaching.

Do This Today

As new research rolls out, your job is to put it in perspective for people and link it to corrective measures. Avoid the urge to say “I told you so.” Say that privately to other gym owners only, curse your ignorant politicians in your head and then move on.

To get the message out, write a blog you will also send to your email list. Here’s a simple structure:

The New York Times reported on a new study on excess weight and COVID (link to the article).We specialize in sustainable weight loss, not gimmicks. We can help you.Here’s a sample plan (provide an example of a very basic fitness and nutrition coaching plan for weight loss).This is what it can do (insert brief client success story with real results). Feel free to present two stories. Here’s how to find out more about a personalized plan that will work for your goals and lifestyle (link to No Sweat Intro booking page).

I wouldn’t expect a huge flood of new clients the second you hit “publish.” People already know that excess weight is an issue. But every time an article or study like this comes out, a few local people are going to start googling. You have a chance to share your expertise with these people. And if you can connect with any of them—even one—you’ll change a life and keep money away from peddlers of snake oil.

So it’s well worth 20 minutes to tap out that blog. And it’s worth another 20 minutes to offer perspective any time similar articles show up in the news.

Remember: The news will only tell people the plane is heading into the mountain. You need to tell people exactly how to pull out of the nosedive.

The post Media Mission: How to Offer Perspective and Connect With New Clients appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Stop Using Yoga Teacher Training Courses to Pay Your Bills

By Shannon Brasovan, Two-Brain Yoga Business Mentor

Why did you open a yoga studio?

For me, I wanted to share the healing practice of yoga with people daily. I wanted folks to have the same joy, stress-management tools and bodily ease that I had found.

I can tell you why I didn’t open a yoga studio: to lead teacher trainings full time.

If you’ve ever put a teacher training together, you know it’s a lot of work. And while teacher trainings can be deeply rewarding—financially and spiritually—they are not why 99 percent of owners open a yoga studio.

It pains me to no end when I hear time and again that studios offer training one to three times a year, not because the community is calling for it but because it’s the only way the owner can pay the bills.

Better Ways to Generate Revenue

Let’s cover first why we should offer teacher trainings. It’s obvious: to train future teachers.

We should not offer teacher trainings:

To make ends meet.To help folks deepen their practices (there are a dozen other ways to do this in a more sustainable way).To retain clients.To give our teachers a career roadmap.To teach skillsets or knowledge not offered at the group class level.

Somehow, the top reasons why we shouldn’t offer trainings end up being the exact reasons studios offer these sessions—sometimes upwards of four times a year!

Good News: There’s a better way!

If you opened a yoga studio to share the powerful benefits of a yoga practice, then start there! Gear your memberships and other offerings toward practice. Here are some ideas:

1. Do you offer private yoga? This is an incredible way to help students deepen their practices, pay the bills and retain clients. 

2. How often do you offer a la carte workshops? This is another wonderful way to help people deepen their practices, give your teachers further career opportunities and generate solid revenue.

3. Are your memberships structured so clients can consistently grow their practices and deepen their knowledge and awareness? If so, do you price them appropriately? Or are you price-matching the studio down the street?

4. Do you offer lifestyle programs like Ayurveda challenges or meditation programs that achieve the same level of knowledge transfer as a teacher training without requiring attendees to learn how to teach? 

5. Do you foster a sense of community among your practitioners “off the yoga mat?” One of the biggest pros of a teaching training is the community that’s built, but that can happen just as easily through book clubs, workshops and events!

When the Time is Right…

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that teacher trainings are the only way you can run a successful yoga studio. There are other ways that are more beneficial to your entire student base and your bottom line. Those options are your base.

Then, when the time is right and your community is calling for a teacher training, you can offer an impactful sold-out session that benefits everyone!

Click here for more about mentorship for yoga business owners.

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Top 5 Tactics to Generate Year-End Revenue

Mike (00:02):

Need to generate revenue fast? Chris Cooper has five quick wins on this edition of Two-Brain Radio.

Chris (00:07):

Chris Cooper here with a word about O2. Your gym members will love O2’s hydrating, non-carbonated beverages after a tough workout. Even better, O2 is a community-based brand that wants to give back to gyms. If you sell O2 at your gym, you get a free sponsored event every year. Gym owners who wholesale O2 also get their first order for a dollar. Visit wholesale.drinko2.com to apply for an account today.

Chris (00:34):

Hey everybody, it’s Chris Cooper. And today I’m gonna give you five revenue-generating ideas to close out to 2021. Now this was originally published as a free guide in our free Facebook group, Gym Owners United, I’ll post a link to that in our show notes. But if you go in that group, we are regularly publishing content, just like this, giving out free guides because our mission is to help gym owners succeed.

Chris (00:58):

And so every week or two weeks, you’re gonna get free guides just like this. They’re immediately actionable and they’ll help you make more money. So here we go. Our top five revenue-generating ideas to close out the year. One of my most trusted staff members, Mike Warkentin, our editor, sent me this text last week and he said, what would be your top five list of ways to generate an end of year cash infusion for a gym? And I said, well, let me think about it for a little bit. So an hour later, I came back to him and I gave him these five ideas. And today I’m gonna walk through the details of each one. So the five ideas, if I needed to generate some income from my business between now and the new year, these are the five things that I would do: first, a retail presale.

Chris (01:43):

Second, I would make a blog post about the top gifts for CrossFiters with links to purchase on my site, third, I would offer like a save your spot for a January something, you know, maybe there’s a group OnRamp or whatever. Fourth, I would have a bring a friend holiday party and fifth, I would do some kind of January kickstart specialty program. Now Two-Brain clients have access to plug and play resources that reduce workload dramatically. So for example, we have tried and tested done for you kickstart programs that they can bolt into their plan at warp speed. And we can tell them exactly how to run a social event that will result in new clients. So if you’re already in Two-Brain, just ask your mentor for these details. And if you’re not a client, I still want to help. So just listen to the rest of this podcast.

Chris (02:30):

And if you need additional assistance, you can book a free call with my team any time to talk about mentorship. So here we go, the five ways that I would generate revenue between now and the end of the year. First up, the retail presale. Many of your members will buy your T-shirts whenever you sell them, you already know this, but you might not have a retail calendar in place to ensure you’re regularly putting out new gear. So now’s the time to create some apparel and market it for the gift giving season, but let’s be real. Retail sales aren’t going to generate as much cash as personal training or nutrition coaching, but most members won’t think twice about dropping 20 to $40 on a shirt or a hoodie. And every single dollar counts. If you can make money while getting happy people to wear your logo, that’s a huge win. Apparel sales don’t take much time either.

Chris (03:18):

Unless you start overthinking things and trying to be a fashion designer, don’t do that. The best part with a pre-order plan, you only need to purchase what you’ve already sold. It will be tempting to order extra apparel, but remember, we’re looking for a cash infusion. We don’t wanna tie up your money in inventory. So do this, contact your apparel provider and get the ball rolling right now with a design, then announce a pre-order and promote it on your social media, in classes, in your newsletter, et cetera. Here’s the easy button: Forever Fierce will get you going within like a day. They’ll design exactly what you need. And they’ll make sure that you’ve got the styles that will sell, and they’ll even teach you how to set up and run your presale. We do this at catalyst twice a year. It’s amazing. I don’t tie up money in inventory.

Chris (04:05):

Forever Fierce handles everything. Second way to generate revenue before the end of the year is to write a blog post called top gifts for CrossFiters or top gifts for yoga or whatever model, whatever method you teach at your gym, have a blog post saying top gifts for those people. A lot of people are looking for gift ideas right now. And especially as supply chain issues threaten to create shortages in some stores, people are having trouble figuring out what to buy their loved ones. You know, it’s hard in a normal year to figure out what to buy your spouse. But if you know that they love yoga, CrossFit, bootcamp, whatever you sell, then you can really help out people by showing them exactly like what to buy your clients. So do this: create a list of top gifts and feature your products and services. Get that list on your blog and send it to your mailing list.

Chris (04:57):

Tell members that they can purchase gifts for others, or send a list to their fan family and friends who are looking to buy for them. Then post on your social media, tell people to share it around. Hint. Hint. I’ve personally had a lot of success with this plan. I once had five people pay for PT packages in full as gifts. And that’s in addition to the other products and services we sold that year. You could sell gift cards. You could sell packages of like five personal training sessions. You could sell specialty group sessions, nutrition, kickoffs, whatever. Here’s an additional win. You know that old inventory that’s sitting in a box in your office? Put it up on display near your entrance. You have cash tied up in that inventory. So get rid of the stuff at the best time of year to make retail sales.

Chris (05:43):

One of our clients did this and recouped hundreds of dollars as clients bought from the rack of odds and ends. Now, we don’t recommend that you ever offer discounts, but when it comes to moving old goods and freeing up cash, you might consider dropping the price on a t-shirt from three years ago, selling an old shirt at cost is better for your bank account than using it to wipe down the rowing machines.

Chris (06:04):

Back to Two-Brain Radio in just a minute. Beyond the Whiteboard is the world’s premier workout tracking platform. Beyond the Whiteboard empowers gym owners with tools designed to retain and motivate members. We all know clients need to accomplish their goals if they’re going to stick around long term, and Beyond the Whiteboard will help your members chart their progress. They can earn badges view, leaderboards, track their macros, assess their fitness levels, and a lot more. Your job is to get great results for your members. Beyond the Whiteboard’s job is to make sure your members see those results and celebrate them. For a free 30-day trial, visit BTwb.com today.

Chris (06:41):

Third strategy: Run a save your spot for January promotion. Selling in advance is a great way to generate revenue, especially at the end of the year when revenue typically dips. You can recommend people save a spot for anything you offer like personal training sessions, nutrition coaching, specialty clinics, nutrition kickoffs, whatever. The key is to motivate people to commit. Now it’s all about generating a sense of urgency. So often all you have to do is put a cap on a program, you know, maximum 12 people and then tell people to grab a spot before they’re gone. When spots start going, let people know how many are left. FOMO is really powerful. Do this: pick a popular service and promote it on social media, on your website and in your newsletter. Make sure your call to action has a reason for people to act now, instead of waiting until January. Here are three examples.

Chris (07:33):

My schedule is filling up, book your January 22 personal training sessions now to make sure sure you get the time slots you want. Number two, wanna add nutrition coaching in 2022? Book this week, and I’ll have your program ready for you to hit the ground running on January 1st. Number three, we only have 10 spots available in our January weightlifting clinic, lock yours down before they’re gone. The fourth way I generate revenue before the end of the year is a bring a friend holiday party. You aren’t going to charge people to attend this party. You’re going to use it to get very warm leads into your pipeline. Your clients know you like you and trust you. So give them a gift, a chance to spend some time in your gym with a close acquaintance who might need some help getting fit. For the party, you can definitely include a simple workout or maybe give a nutrition presentation.

Chris (08:22):

You can also spend a little on snacks or beverages, but you don’t have to break the bank. Make sure you build in time for socialization so you can meet people and start conversations. So do this. If you’re inTwo-Brain, check out step nine in our affinity marketing guide, and you can even download the public version of this guide, the scaled down version of this guide. If you click on the link and I’ll put it in the show notes, then you just put together a simple evening so that you can meet the friends and family of your members, ask your clients to bring the people that they care about. Make sure you’ve got everybody’s email address and add it to your contact list. Just have people sign a waiver when they enter the gym, that’s all. And then you should also book free consultations with everybody who attends.

Chris (09:06):

You might get some signups right at the events, but more than likely if you book free consultations with other people, you’ll give yourself a great opportunity to make a sale to a high affinity client. The fifth way that I would make revenue before the end of the year is to run a January kickstart group. January is usually a great time in the fitness world. After the holiday season, people are very likely to do something new in an attempt to become fitter and healthier, so offer some way for them to do it, help them. And a great option is a nutrition kickstart. Two-Brain clients have a complete done for you program available, you know, just ask your mentor or it’s on the roadmap, but you should read “nutrition challenges are dead. Kickstarts are the answer” on our blog and I’ll post the link below.

Chris (09:52):

Then create a program that will run for about four weeks, start promoting it now and use the ideas that I outlined, to promote it earlier in the podcast, right? Push people to save a spot for January. Book now, pay for your sessions so that you know that you’re committed. You know that you’re in, you know, you’ve got a spot. And if you need a full marketing plan, there’s a blog post that I’ll link to called how to sell out any specialty program. The big bonus by presenting this as a kickstart, instead of a challenge with a see you later end date, ongoing coaching will be seen as the next step. So be sure to talk about what happens after the kickstart ends while you’re delivering the program. Now, of course, some people who start a kickstart won’t continue, but nobody will be surprised when you bring up ongoing coaching.

Chris (10:37):

In fact, you aren’t delivering full value on the kickstart if you don’t tell people how to keep moving toward their goals after the kickstart ends. After experiencing your high level of service for a month and seeing progress, some participants will be very eager to find out how to keep going. When the kickstart begins, make sure you schedule a goal review with each kickstart participant. So you can sit down at the end and discuss options for ongoing coaching. A kickstart can provide great front end revenue, but also ongoing revenue if you run it properly and I’ve got another resource for you that will help you think of creative ways to provide ongoing services. It’s called how to run specialty courses every day of the year. And the link is in the show notes. Once again, if you’re interested in working with a Two-Brain mentor to add these things to an annual plan so you’re not just scrambling at the last minute, you can click a link to book with our team and talk about joining the Two-Brain family. Hope it helps. Happy holidays.

Mike (11:34):

Two-Brain Radio airs twice a week and features all the info you need to run a successful fitness business. Subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Now here’s Coop one more time.

Chris (11:45):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook, this is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in. And I’m there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook.

 

The post Top 5 Tactics to Generate Year-End Revenue appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Why We Don’t Use Surveys (or Town-Hall Meetings)

Your business is built around your clients.

But it’s not a democracy.

Your job, as coach, is to understand what your clients need and give it to them. They don’t really know what they need, which is why they elected to pay you. They vote with their wallets. You don’t need to keep asking them what they want next.

Client surveys, “town hall” meetings and even advisory boards are a horrible way to run a small business.

Encouraging Complainers to Vent

In the darkest days of my gym, Catalyst, I was tempted to turn the gym into a co-operative. Not because I thought my clients had better ideas than I did but simply because I wanted someone else to share the responsibility for the gym’s success (or, more likely, to share the blame when the gym failed).

But you can’t make decisions by committee and hope to get anywhere. If you chase customer feedback, ideas and complaints, you’ll be directionless.

Here’s an example:

A few years ago, gym owners liked to use surveys. They would send out a survey to everybody in the gym, and all members essentially got “an equal vote” when responding.

And who would respond? Complainers and helpers: people with axes to grind and people who really wanted to help.

As I explained in the first post in this series, the “helpers” exaggerate their feedback so they can feel important. And the complainers exaggerate their feedback just to make things suit their own needs to a greater degree.

Even though most of the people in the gym have no complaints, the squeakiest wheels tend to get the grease. And the gym owner can be led astray. In surveys, complainers say things like this:

“I want you to change this.”“I don’t like this coach.”“We need more open-gym hours.”“We need 20 more classes a week.”“If you dropped your rates a little, you’d get a lot more clients!”

So the gym owner makes changes in response to the complainers. Two months later, she’ll call Two-Brain and say, “Well, I’m running these extra classes. Nobody’s showing up. I’m spending more time. I’m not making more money. This was a mistake.”

Meanwhile, most of their clients had no problem with the previous schedule—or the coaching or the rates.

Even more often, gym owners will recognize the survey feedback as bad advice. And they won’t make the changes. But the clients who gave their feedback expect some kind of action, and when none is taken, they think, “Why ask for my feedback and then not take it? Obviously this coach doesn’t take me seriously!” Then they amplify their demands by threatening to quit or just complaining to other clients.

Don’t Use Surveys!

Surveys are a no-win strategy.

Your best clients won’t give you anything actionable in a survey.

Your worst clients will complain and expect action.

Worst, surveys make it easy to confuse the squeaky wheels with the people who are really driving the train.

Instead of surveys, identify your best clients (see the first post in this series). Take them for coffee. Listen carefully. They won’t give you good advice on how to run your business (that’s a mentor’s job), but they’ll tell you how to serve them more—and how to find others like them, too.

The post Why We Don’t Use Surveys (or Town-Hall Meetings) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.