Chris Cooper's Blog, page 107

The Economics of “Yellowstone”: John Dutton Needs a Mentor

I disagreed with John Dutton for the first three seasons of “Yellowstone.”

Not in a way that would force the ornery Montana rancher to send Rip Wheeler to take me on a one-way trip to the train station.

I just felt like Dutton could have used a business mentor at some point in his career.

I’ll tell you why below—but here’s a spoiler warning if you aren’t past Episode 2 of Season 4 at this point.

John Dutton is hard AF. As a sixth-generation rancher, he’s been bred to carve a living out on the land with a cattle knife. His family’s glorious valley property has been under attack by others for centuries, and John might now be facing the toughest opponents.

Despite the size and value of the ranch, viewers are constantly told it isn’t that profitable. In fact, the clock is ticking and the Duttons are essentially fighting a losing battle against property taxes and the rising price of labor, fuel and feed. Add in the fluctuating price of beef and you’ve got a tricky entrepreneurial situation.

I won’t get into the hostile corporations looking to build airports on John’s land or the Indigenous people who were the original inhabitants. We’ll just look at ranch economics.

Statistics Canada released some interesting farm data in 2019. According to the Canadian government, which is close enough to Montana, “Beef cattle farms maintain the lowest average operating profit margins.”

More numbers: Cattle-ranch operating revenues went up 5.7 percent, but expenses were up 6.3 percent, reducing average profit margin to 5.7 percent from 6.2 percent in 2018.

Those numbers aren’t as bad as the digits in the restaurant industry—about 3-5 percent profit margin, according to this article—but they’re pretty bad. They’re horrid when you consider that beef prices per kilogram can swing 28 percent in a year, as they did from October 2020 to September 2021 (at least they swung in the right direction for Dutton—this time).

All this points to a very challenging situation—something any entrepreneur can understand. Sure, gym owners aren’t subject to the extreme price fluctuations of commodities, but they’re still faced with rising costs, staffing concerns, competition, lease negotiations and so on. And their “cattle” sometimes wander off to other pastures, demand discounts or start their own ranches.

Dutton’s trump card is that his land is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but he refuses to play that ace after promising his dying father he wouldn’t sell an inch of property. “Yellowstone” needs this plot point or the weekly show would be void of all the glorious conflicts that drive it.

The stubborn commitment to heritage and tradition puts the Duttons in an impossible position, and John’s daughter realizes it. She’s the business shark of the family, and she’s a great white. Maybe a megalodon.

Kelly Reilly, as Beth, chews the scenery like it’s rare beef tenderloin and wonderfully redefines “strong female” for a genre that’s usually ruled exclusively by male hardasses. The second John dies, Beth will sell the land for $500 million or more, but she’ll fight with him as long as he’s able to hold a lever-action Winchester 1894 in one hand and a glass of Bulleit bourbon in the other.

As Season 4 gets going, the Dutton family has leased land to a developer while John lies unconscious in a hospital after getting shot several times. The lease isn’t a great deal, but at least it’s income.

When John awakens, angry of course, he sees the writing on the wall and finally makes a move: He gets into show horses to make a national name for the ranch and generate new income. He invests heavily in fine horses, and within a few episodes he’s seeing a return of sorts.

And that brings us back to business mentorship: John could have used a little guidance along the way.

Will and Wisdom

Imagine John had put his legendary stubbornness aside and talked to another old-school rancher who had found creative ways to pivot and evolve before time caught up with him. Instead of filling a Wyoming canyon with corpses, John might be passing a more stable business to children who wouldn’t have to patrol the pastures with assault rifles.   

That, of course, would ruin a great show.

But guidance won’t ruin your gym.

As fitness entrepreneurs, we’re as hard headed and tough as John Dutton. We’re willing to work hard and get our hands dirty.

But here’s a truth: we’re in a far easier industry than John is, and help is available.

For example: The best gyms run at a 33 percent profit margin, and it isn’t that hard for other gyms to reach that number, too. Your rates aren’t set for you by the market, either. You can charge whatever you want as long as you create value for clients.

Another example: John loses a staff member to injury because he needs more money and decides to try and stay on a furious horse for eight seconds. We can teach you how to help your staff members make more money for themselves and your business, solving two problems at once.

It takes only a mentor’s help to build a solid, profitable fitness business that can last for generations. If you’re struggling with your own “ranch,” get that help here.

Then enjoy “Yellowstone” knowing your business is secure as John fights for his.

The post The Economics of “Yellowstone”: John Dutton Needs a Mentor appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

What’s Better Than a Value-Killing Free Trial Session?

Mike (00:02):

Free trials at your gym? Get rid of them. They’re old school and they erode value. Chris Cooper is here to tell you what’s better than a free trial. Listen, and learn how to create value and get your clients to take action.

Chris (00:15):

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Chris (00:38):

Hey, everybody, it’s Chris Cooper here, and I have been talking and writing about value a lot recently. So today I want to talk to you about the value of free. Many gym and studio owners still use a free trial as part of their marketing strategy. And this is still true in a lot of CrossFit gyms. We also work with boxing gyms and yoga studios, personal trainers, martial arts. And this is really common across all disciplines.

Chris (01:08):

So 15 years ago, like the free trial was actually pretty effective. But today I’m going to give you something even better than free. First. You need to understand the relationship between price and value because they’re not the same thing. So let’s say that you’re owed buying paper for your printer and you go to the paper store and all the paper looks the same to you. One brand of paper is on sale. So you pick that brand and that brand has the best value because it’s the cheapest, right? If two things look exactly the same, the only way that you can decide which has more value is the price. Now, if you were a paper expert, you would be able to tell the difference between two different reams of paper, or if you were like an artist or a graphic designer. In other words, if you were an expert on paper, then you would be able to discern the difference.

Chris (01:54):

But I can’t. So to me, the value is the lowest price option. Now let’s say that you’re buying soap and you go to the store and you see like 50 different kinds of soap, but one kind of soap reminds you of your grandma’s house in the early spring. That kind of soap is a bit more expensive, but the memory of grandma, every time you wash your hands with that soap, it’s worth it. The value that you’re paying for here is the memory. Most people would pay a bit more for that value because this soap is different. So even though the ingredients are almost identical, they’re almost exactly the same as every other soap that’s on that shelf, what makes this soap more valuable is the context. I have the context that this soap smells like my grandma’s rose garden and not everybody has that same context.

Chris (02:42):

Someone else might find the pumpkin spice soap smell a lot more valuable because they have a different context than I do. But what creates the value that makes me want to pay for, you know, the rose garden soap or the pumpkin spice soap is the context that I have. When I don’t have context, I don’t understand value. I don’t have context over the paper. So I’m going to take the cheapest option. So offering a free trial at your gym will give you a way to sign up the people who were about to sign up anyway. And you might have some of these in town, especially when you first opened. And 15 years ago, that was enough because these people were already sold when they walked in the door, they were looking for something new and you had something new. They had read about yoga, and you’re the first yoga studio.

Chris (03:29):

They have always wanted to try jujitsu. And you are the first jujitsu school. They have read about CrossFit somewhere. And like, they’re so excited to have a CrossFit gym in their town, but that’s gone now. Now you need something better than free. You need to actually create value and value comes from putting your service into the client’s context. We’ve been doing a free consultation at Catalyst since well, since before there was a Catalyst. I think I did my first free consultation in 2000, but this is different from a free trial. So back then I had this binder with clear plastic sleeves inside and in each sleeve, I’d place a sample training plan or a picture of an athlete who had trained with me. And I remember that on one page, I had this sample yearlong macrocycle for a sprinter. And I used to talk about linear periodization during the consultation.

Chris (04:21):

And it took like an hour and the client saw a lot of graphs. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but my close rate was very close to a hundred percent. Not because of the graphs, but because I would say here’s how this is going to help you. And they didn’t understand the graphs. They didn’t have context on what a macrocycle was, but what they did understand was that I said, you are going to have a plan like this, that I will tailor for you.

Chris (04:46):

Chris Cooper here to talk about Beyond the Whiteboard, 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 (05:24):

Now back then also. So 21 years ago, we had a lot of big commercial gyms in town with real salespeople and they were trained in sales. And one of my roommates actually got a job at one of these gyms and they were giving him all kinds of sales tips and training and stuff. And he was taught how to cold call people, which he hated. His targeted close rate at this gym was like 20% or 25%. And he was closing at 20% and he was struggling to get up to 25% so that he wouldn’t get fired. And meanwhile, across town, I was closing very close to a hundred percent all the time. And I was selling packages that were like 700 to $1,200. And this was 2002. So yes, I had the advantage of a good reputation. I was publishing a lot of content even back then and getting most of my clients through referrals.

Chris (06:14):

And that’s still a massive advantage today, but he was selling a $30 a month gym membership, and I was selling expensive personal training that costs 25 to 30 times as much. And I was closing with clients five times as often as he was. Why? Well, I couldn’t have told you at the time, but I was creating value when I met the client and he wasn’t. He would let people come in and do a free personal training session or attend a free spin class or give them a free three day trial to use the gym. And 20% would sign up at 30 bucks a month. I would meet with people and talk about their goals. And then I would show them a plan and say, I’m going to create a plan like this just for you. And they would sign up for 700 to $1,200. He was giving free, but I was giving value and value is better than free.

Chris (07:05):

At Two-Brain, we teach the prescriptive model. The no sweat intro, which is like our free consultation, where we provide value. It’s one step in the prescriptive model. The average Two-Brain gym earns $90 per month more for every single client they have than non Two-Brain gyms. And they keep the average client seven months longer. That means that every client at a Two-Brain gym is worth about $630 more than a client at a non Two-Brain gym. So how do we do that? We teach gyms how to create value for their clients, and what is valuable to their clients? An actual plan that fits their life, a journey that’s written just for them. In other words, context. Now, one of the most common questions I get at Two-Brain is why do you give away so much stuff for free? And as I say, this, we’re handing out free marketing courses in our public Facebook group, Gym Owners United.

Chris (08:00):

So if you join that group, which again is a hundred percent free, you can get a ton of stuff for free, like a Facebook marketing course. We had about 32,000 people on our daily email list, thousands on our YouTube channel. And there are about 7,000 of you listening to this podcast right now. My books with step-by-steps instructions cost about 20 bucks each. And that’s like the most expensive thing that we produce. So with all this stuff, then why do we have thousands of gym owners who sign up for mentorship every year? Why would anyone choose to pay for mentorship when they can have all this stuff, all this knowledge for free? Because value is better than free. The average ROI on our growth phase right now is double the cost. So if you invest a dollar into growth phase at Two-Brain, you’ll get two bucks back.

Chris (08:49):

We track this stuff and we optimize for this stuff. I want you to get an amazing ROI. Now, obviously that doesn’t account for all the support that you get from your mentor and your new ideas, and having an objective third party look over your metrics with you and like all the mistakes that the mentor stop you from making, that’s not reflected in that ROI number, right? This is just a dollars in dollars out ROI measure, two bucks back for every dollar that you put in. And of course the value of mentorship compounds over time. So if we track that out over a year, instead of just like immediate, the ROI would be even larger. Now these clients getting a great ROI inside our program are getting some of the same info that we publish for free. Yeah. We share deeper data. We go way deeper on step-by-step instructions.

Chris (09:35):

We have office hours and they have one-on-one calls with their mentor every single month to keep them on tracks. And yeah, we give them templates and blog posts and social media pictures that they can just swipe and use. Like in some cases we do a lot of the work for them, but they create the value by taking action. Knowledge doesn’t create value. Action does. We certified four new millionaires last month, these people aren’t using different strategies than what’s in my books. They’re just applying them to their context and executing on them over and over and over because that’s what a mentor does. A mentor creates value that way. And that’s why we’re a mentorship practice. Sometimes I get on calls with people who want to sign up for Two-Brain mentorship. They can recite parts of my book back to me like stuff that I’ve forgotten that I wrote, but they’re not getting any results from the books.

Chris (10:29):

Meanwhile, there are people in my programs who haven’t even read my books, who haven’t been through our entire roadmap. They don’t even show up in our private Facebook groups very often. Instead they were guided to a strategy by their mentor in Two-Brain. They executed consistently on like that one or two things. And bam, they’re getting amazing results. The difference between the people who are millionaires and the people who are just kind of starting out is not a different level of knowledge, is a different level of execution and a different level of consistency to iterating over and over until it works, right? The people going from being broke to like literal millionaires in 30 months, they might have a deeper understanding of what we teach, but we’re not giving them radically different knowledge because value comes from action. And it’s a mentors job to create action.

Chris (11:21):

So think about it here. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or other business podcasts and reading books, reading blog posts and not measurably improving your business, the knowledge is not your problem. Action is. Mentors create action by understanding your context. And that’s how value is created through mentorship. Now, I’ve also got to mention this because this is important for you and your gym business too, is that people who pay for mentorship are way more likely to take action. That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t afford mentorship. When I got my first mentor, I wrote a check for 500 bucks that probably should have bounced. But because I knew that I couldn’t afford it, I knew that I couldn’t afford not to take the mentor’s advice. And so I hustled, I did stuff that I did not want to do it stuff that made me uncomfortable, like asking for people to pay for their sessions in advance, but it worked.

Chris (12:11):

And then that’s how I paid for the program. And then I just kept going. And in my past with Two-Brain, we’ve given two scholarships to help gyms who quote unquote really needed it. Right? One was a request from CrossFit HQ. One of their quote unquote flagship gyms was actually really close to bankruptcy and one was a personal sponsorship. So I paid out of my own pocket for another gym to go through the Two-Brain mentorship program. And guess what? In both of those cases, their results sucked because they weren’t invested. Literally it was free to them. So back to you. You’re a coach, it’s your job to create action. There’s more than enough knowledge on the internet, right? Nobody can out-think the internet. Your clients have watched videos. They’ve attended free classes. They’ve read all the diet books and they’re still not fit.

Chris (13:01):

Knowledge is not their problem. Derek Sivers said, if more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs. Free trials are just information. You need to bring value. You need to charge whatever it takes to get the clients the results they want to have. You to charge whatever it takes for you to do your best work, because you need to be valuable, not free.

Mike (13:26):

Two-Brain Radio airs twice a week, and features all the info you need to run a profitable gym. Subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Now here’s Coop with an invitation.

Chris (13:36):

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 What’s Better Than a Value-Killing Free Trial Session? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Sell With Bonuses (Plus: A Bonus for You!)

The main reason gym owners give discounts?

“Marketing.”

There are a dozen reasons why discounting your price is bad marketing. I’ve covered them in the previous posts in this series.

There’s no denying that a limited-time offer can push a teetering lead into signing up when they’re in your office. The problem is that if you offer them a percentage off the membership price, you’ll give them a discount worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars when a free water bottle might be enough.

For example, if you charge $150 per month, you offer 20 percent off to firefighters, and your average client stays for 1.5 years, that’s a gift worth $540 to every firefighter in your gym.

Could you afford to pay $540 to recruit every new client?

Could you afford to donate $540 to a local firefighter right now? How about every firefighter who walks into your gym?

Most of us don’t do the math. We try to solve a short-term problem (how to get them to sign up) but create a long-term problem in the process (not enough cash, unequal pricing).

So how can we push potential clients across that line? With bonuses.

Bonuses That Don’t Break the Bank

A little added value beats a lower price.

Think about these options:

1. “If you register for our on-ramp before Christmas, I’ll give you our Holiday Meal Planner guide for free. It’s usually $79, but I think it would really help you.”

2. “I think that nutrition coaching is your ideal starting point, but I’d like to help you build an exercise routine while we’re dialing in your nutrition habits. So if you’re up for it, I’ll give you a 30-day walking plan if you’re ready to start today. How does that sound?”

3. “Tell you what: I was going to say, ‘Let’s start after the holidays,’ but that story you told me really hits home. Why don’t we bring your husband in for a 2:1 personal-training session next week? It’s usually $105, but this time it’s on me. I think that will help keep you on track. How’s that sound?”

Remember, the bonus you give must be valuable to the client. That doesn’t mean it’s expensive to produce or takes a lot of effort on your part.

Real-World Example

My favorite “bonus” ever: I was sitting in a No Sweat Intro session with an undercover cop. We were talking about his job and the long hours he spent sitting in trucks, waiting for something to happen.

I made him a prescription and promised homework that he could do to keep from seizing up on stakeouts. But then I asked, “How do you keep from getting bored all the time?”

He said, “It’s a challenge. I listen to audiobooks.”

I pulled up my audiobook catalogue and showed him some of my favourites. He’d read some of them, but we spotted three others that I thought he’d love.

I said, “OK, I’m going to send you these three audiobooks. On me.”

He was taken aback. “Um … what?”

“I’m going to ask you what you think about them at our PT sessions. OK?” I said.

“You’re giving me homework?” he laughed.

I said, “I’m serious!”

“OK, sign me up,” he said. “This was great. Before I came in, I was worried this was going to be some kind of sales pitch or something!”

He signed up for our $400-per-month premium service—and then signed up his wife and son, too.

A Bonus for You!

Bonuses can help you sign up a client who’s not sure. But there’s no need to injure your business long term by giving a lifetime discount.

What is an asset that has value to the client but can be given away by the gym for free? Think about a free guide, a template, a planner, even a course.

Don’t think about a free month of classes—that’s too valuable.

Now, a bonus for you: I have a sweet new guide called “How to Delight Your Clients.” Join the Gym Owners United Group on Facebook, click on the picture of the guide’s cover in the discussion, comment with “Delight,” and I’ll give it to you!

The post How to Sell With Bonuses (Plus: A Bonus for You!) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Say “No” to Discounts

By now, you already know this: Discounts kill businesses.

I made the case in “The Discount Death Spiral.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to say “no” when someone asks for a discount—especially if a nearby gym is offering discounts.

To help you act, I’ll supply the easiest ways to say “no” when someone asks for a discount.

1. “We don’t have discounts.”

This is my go-to. Because I don’t have discounts for anyone, it’s simplest for me to say that discounts don’t exist. This has solved our “discount” problem for over six years.

2. “We don’t play those games.”

Use this one when another gym is giving discounts.

Because the nature of discounts is subjective (it requires a human “decision” instead of an automated process), it’s always easy to cast a shadow of doubt on the intent on the discounter.

I saw this in action when I was selling high-end fitness equipment. We were always in a losing price battle against Sears and other department stores that ran frequent “sales” on treadmills. So when someone asked us to match a price or when we’d have a 40 percent off sale, we’d say, “We don’t play those games.”

It worked: You could see a visible shift in the purchaser as he or she became suspicious of the chains offering the discount. It helped that one of the department stores was sued for advertising a regular price on tires that it never actually charged—they were always on sale. I occasionally brought that up.

3. “We treat all our service professionals equally well because we know our service is critical for your safety.”

Use this one when firefighters, soldiers or nurses ask about discounts.

Members of some service groups receive discounts from other businesses, so they’re sometimes inclined to ask for them.

But the service you provide to military staff, police officers and other safety workers isn’t five bucks off: It’s keeping their butts alive. Remind them (gently), and also use the peer anchor: “No one else gets a discount, and you don’t want to be different from the crowd, do you?”

Bonus: If you’re a veteran, you’ve sacrificed enough (thank you for your service). It’s time for you to get paid fairly.

4. “This rate is as inexpensive as possible for this level of service.”

Use this when someone asks why you’re more expensive than other local gyms.

First, don’t ever say “cheap” unless you’re talking about the competition.

Second, you’re sticking a wedge into the conversation: “for this level of service.” That phrase should prompt an opportunity for more explanation. But don’t expand unless asked.

Additional Advice

A couple of other things:

Don’t over-explain. All these responses consist of one sentence. The more words you use, the more handholds you give the person asking for a discount.

Keep it black and white. If you give a discount for one person in your gym, you’re ripping off everyone else.

Your primary duty is to your current clients. Scrambling to recruit new clients with discounts your current clients can’t get is a breach of trust.

Don’t run through all the scenarios in your head before a conversation starts. You’ll be trying to “remember lines” instead of giving honest answers, which come naturally. Especially if you use response No. 1 above, communication is easy and transparent.

If they say, “I’ll go join the cheaper gym,” that’s good. You don’t want everyone. Don’t pour your knowledge and care into fickle clients who are only after the cheapest rate.

Finally, don’t presume anyone wants a discount. This is the No. 1 error business owners make: We project our own budgets onto other people.

Lower Prices Require More Clients

Years ago when my gym opened, I was desperate for cash flow. So I started offering discounts for teachers, military, spouses and so on. It was a pretty long list, and it got longer all the time.

In the discount mindset, I’d actually try to find a reason to discount people. Without a client even asking, my mind would race to find a way to make an exception for him or her. Soon I had a gym full of members, a 15-hour day and a shrinking bank account.

Every time you give a 20 percent discount, you increase the number of clients you need to reach your perfect day.

You weaken your business and impoverish your family.

You know why no one ever asks me for a discount?

We don’t give any.

In the next post in this series, I’ll tell you how to give an optional bonus to incentivize signups (but only if you want to).

The post How to Say “No” to Discounts appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Pay Your Coaches More (Without Losing Money)

Mike (00:02):

I am a generous person. So I shall pay my coaches more. However will I do it? I shall review seniority lists and then use my abacus to calculate an appropriate increase. And then I shall retire to the drawing room to read the new book by the young author, Ernest Hemingway. Today on Two-Brain Radio, Chris Cooper is here with modern ways to pay your coaches more. Get out of the past and join the clever entrepreneurs who are paying staff members more by growing their businesses.

Chris (00:28):

We know that getting clients results isn’t enough to make a great business or a great career, but it is the foundation. If you’re not getting your clients results, none of the other stuff matters. Your marketing plan, your operations plan, your retention plan, your systems, how much you care about the clients. You need to get them results. What does it take to get a client results? Long-term behavior change, short-term habit change. It means learning skills like motivational interviewing, peer-to-peer programming. It means focusing on things like adherence and retention instead of novelty. And I built twobraincoaching.com with my partner, Josh Martin, to teach coaches how to do this. More than ever before it is critical to get results for your clients. You need to charge a premium fee. You need to provide high value to warrant that fee. And what is most valuable to the client? What do they care about the most? The results on the goal that they choose. Twobraincoaching.com has programs set up to help your clients achieve those goals. We will train you and your coaches to deliver personal training, group training, online training, nutrition coaching, and coming soon, mindset coaching, in a way that’s simple for you to adopt, it’s legal everywhere. And it’s super effective. These courses were built by experts with years of experience getting clients results. Twobraincoaching.com is a labor of love for me, and I know you’re going to love it too.

Chris (01:55):

I know you. You are generous. You put other people ahead of yourself. Your clients, your family, and even the people who are paid to put you first, your coaches. Now it’s not wrong to put other people first. Your team is critically important to your gym’s success, but it is wrong to undermine the gym’s stability or sacrifice your family’s income by paying your coaches too much or following the wrong strategy. Coaches and your other staff can have a great career in your gym, especially when the relationship is good for everyone.

Chris (02:31):

And today, I’m going to tell you how to give your staff a raise. The first principle here that we need to understand is that you earn more money by creating more value for more people. Your staff can do the same. And today I’m going to walk you through the exact path to do this and why salaries and bonuses aren’t the best ways to create opportunities for your staff, because the best way to create opportunities for your staff is to allow them to grow the pie, not to divide it up a different way, or to allow them to take the biggest slice. OK? So before we get into this, I don’t want you to assume that every great coach is a full-time coach. A great coach can work part time, and I’ve got a link in the show notes to a blog post I wrote called gym management: the case for part-time coaches. But whatever they choose, full-time part-time, here are the steps to building the careers that they want.

Chris (03:28):

Step one: At your quarterly career roadmap meeting, of course you’re doing those, right? You can ask your coach, what do you want now? Ask the coach to tell you about his or her perfect day. Ask how your gym can support that perfect day. Ask where he or she would like to be in six months. And we teach people how to do career roadmap meetings in our mentorship program. But basically a career roadmap meeting is a 30 minute sit down with a coach where you do an evaluation to measure where they’re starting from. You give them some goals to accomplish in their career. And then you work backward on the math to help them achieve those goals. You assign different roles and tasks based on, you know, what they want to achieve, how much they want to work and what their target income is. And then you mentor them to achieve those goals.

Chris (04:12):

That’s step one. Step two is you determine exactly how much the coach needs to earn those, the money that will pay for those goals. So you can use tools like the happiness index. If you want to approximate. Or you can use that coach’s personal budget if you really want to get specific. And then you should calculate a goal number and that’s step two. Step three is to use our career roadmap tool or to build your own spreadsheet, to work backward from that number. And then you assign a dollar value to the different roles in your gym. This much for group classes, this much for personal training, this much for cleaning, this much for admin work. And then you create opportunities to do those things for your coaches. So you can create opportunities to do personal training or nutrition coaching, or other specialty programs. And I lay these all out in our free guide intrapreneurialism one-oh-one, which you can download if you go to the show notes for today and just click the download button.

Chris (05:08):

Step four is to determine the starting position. So what will the coach need to learn before they can really capitalize on the plan that you’ve just built for them? Will they need to take a super new certification before they start their kid’s program, for example, or will they need to take the Two-Brain Coaching first degree program before they can work one-on-one with clients? Are they brand new, et cetera. Step five is help them launch whatever their growth program is. You got to mentor them through it. And you’ve got to perform regular reviews to make sure that they’re on track. You have to have an evaluation process. And then step six is, you know, when they get there, give them the opportunity to open their own business under your brand.

Chris (05:50):

So after you’ve taught a coach how to be an entrepreneur, you can help him or her step outside your protective umbrella and open their own gym with you as a partner and mentor. And there’s a link to a blog article called go with them. So here’s the path to a solid career. Step one through five. And then step six is if they want to open up their own gym. Step one, sit down with them and say, what do you want now. Step two, determine how much they need to earn to make that dream a reality. Step three, create opportunities using a career roadmap tool, step four, determine their starting position. Step five, measure their progress regularly and mentor them on it. And then step six, for some coaches, give them a chance to open a business under your brand. But the key to all of this is asking your coaches, what do you want now?

Chris (06:39):

Some coaches might want more money. Some might want more opportunities, somewhat consistency and some are willing to take risk in exchange for equity, but nobody wants the same thing forever. So the best way to help your coaches build careers is to mentor them to success. The wrong way is to pay them bonuses based on metrics they can’t control or to pay them based on like ideas out of the 1940s, like seniority. According to data in our state of the industry guide, most gym owners aren’t profitable enough to give their staff members raises. The average coach income in our state of the industry last year was $21 per class coached. That’s not enough, but the businesses can’t afford to pay them more. So the best way for coaches to earn more is to help grow the business. Instead of giving them a largest share of the pie and going hungry yourself, just grow the pie.

Chris (07:33):

So here’s how to pay more. So start with what can you afford to pay per class? So you add up all of your revenue from all of your groups or your classes, and you multiply that by 44%. This is the rule of four ninths. And that’s your total class budget for staff. Think of that as like your salary cap. OK? That’s how much you can afford to pay all the coaches to coach your classes. Now divide that budget across all of the classes that you offer.

Chris (08:01):

It’s Chris Cooper here. Your gym’s programming won’t attract new clients, but it can help you keep your clients longer. Good programming includes benchmarks, novelty, skills, progressions, leaderboards, you know all that stuff. But great programming contains something more: a link between each client’s fitness goals and the workout of the day. Your coaches need to tell your clients more than what they’re doing every day. They need to explain why they’re doing it. Gym’s whose coaches could explain the why connection had a 25% better retention rate during lockdowns. Imagine how that translates into better retention when things are back to normal. Now, I want to solve this problem for gym owners. Programming is the service you deliver to your clients. So I partnered with Brooks DiFiore, who had one of the highest adherence rates in the world for his group classes at his gym to build twobrainprogramming.com. We built this for Two-Brain gyms and we give them free access in our mentorship program. But I’m now making this available to the public. Programming proven to improve retention and cashflow in your gym. Visit Two-Brain programming.com to get it.

Chris (09:09):

So let’s say that you’re taking in a thousand dollars a week, you have a budget of $444 and 44 cents to pay coaches to run those classes. Now you’ve got to divide that budget evenly across all classes, because each coach is teaching the same programming and following the same plan, they should all be paid the same amount for classes.

Chris (09:29):

They’re delivering an identical service at 6:00 PM and at 6:00 AM. If the resulting per class rate is too low, then you have three choices. Number one, raise the price of your group training classes, which will expand the 44% budget without changing the ratio and allow you to pay people more per class. Number two, put more people into the classes or number three, deliver fewer classes. So which one of those three options should you choose? Well, you can go back to our first rule. You make more money by creating more value. So if you deliver far more value than you charge for group training, raise your rates. The average group training rate, according to our state of the industry data is about $154 per month. You should be much higher than that. The September 2021 leaderboard for average revenue per member per gym showed that some gyms are actually making just over $400 per member per month.

Chris (10:23):

You can certainly go up from where you are now. Second, if adding more people to a class will increase its value, then focus on marketing. If you’re running a quote unquote class for two people, you need to add more people to that class. What’s the ideal number per class? Seven people, minimum, 13 people maximum. At seven people, retention and adherence go up because you’ve got enough friends in your class to hold you accountable. But at 13, that number starts to go down again because you’ve got so many people that nobody misses the one who doesn’t show up. OK. Third, if you find yourself delivering one-on-one coaching at group class rates, just kill that class. So if you’re giving somebody personal training at 6:00 AM, then you know you need to remove that class. And there’s a strategy for doing that too. But raising your rates, increasing your value, that increases your salary cap.

Chris (11:15):

Adding more clients increases your salary cap. Delivering fewer classes, spreads out your available spend better. It’s not the long-term solution, but if keeping coaches is your priority, it might be the best solution. Right now. You might have to take a small step back, run one fewer class per day before you can take the big leap forward because you’re just not ready to run eight classes yet. Now the key here is to understand your numbers and understand your salary cap. When people say, how do I pay my coaches more? I say, make more money in the gym. The ratios don’t change. And when people attack or criticize the four ninths model, it’s simply because they just don’t understand the math. You don’t need to give people a larger share of the pie. You don’t need to starve yourself and your family. What you need to do is to make the pie bigger and your coaches can help you do that through a process that we call intrapreneurialism, they can grow the pie for everybody.

Chris (12:09):

They can earn themselves a raise and that’s how you give them more and create more value in their lives. Now, what about paying different coaches different amounts? So if you’ve got a group class and it’s running the same programming and you’re following the same class structure, and you’ve got two different coaches coaching it, those coaches should be paid the same amount because even if one coach is more experienced or you know, technically better, or they’ve got 50 certs, that will not change the value that the client receives from that class. However, if you’ve got a coach who is very proficient, you know, level three USAW certified, then they should be running a weightlifting class for which you charge more because you’re adding more value to the clients and they should be making a percentage of that number. And that’s how they make more money.

Chris (13:01):

Whenever you’re adding value to the clients, you can give the coaches a raise and the more valuable the service that you offer, the more the coaches get paid for delivering that service. If you’ve got two coaches doing personal training, should they have different rates depending on their experience? Only if one client is paying more than the other. And that’s why we use a ratio to figure out how much the coach should be paid instead of prescribing an actual dollar value or saying here’s a hierarchy of raises that you get with experience. The truth is that experience alone does not necessarily increase client value. And it certainly will not make one client pay more than another client. However, quality, value. And if your knowledge adds value to the client, then the client should be paying more. I’ll give you an example of where a lot of gyms get this wrong.

Chris (13:53):

Let’s say that you own a CrossFit gym. And you’ve got some people who are competitors. And those people are like, oh, we’re going to follow super-duper secret squirrel programming. We only want open gym access. And because these people are like the best at CrossFit in your gym, you’re tempted to let them come in, coach themselves, pay somebody else for programming and only charge them for open gym. So they wind up taking up the most of your time and space, but paying the least for it. The reality is that the people who wants to compete need more coaching than anybody else. Not less. They need more of your time and attention and individual focus than anybody else, not less. And so they should be paying more than anybody else. Not less. They should not be paying for the minimal amount of service. They should be paying for the maximum amount of coaching if they really want to progress in their sport. And if they’re not willing to pay you for that, then they should be going to, you know, whoever they are willing to pay for it. And that’s where maybe one coach earns more than another. When the client is paying more for their expertise. But when a client is paying two coaches the same amount, those coaches should be paid the same amount, because that is the value that they’re delivering to their clients.

Mike (15:09):

Two-Brain Radio airs twice a week and features all the info you need to run a profitable gym. Subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Now here’s Coop with an invitation.

Chris (15:19):

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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The Discount Death Spiral: A String of Huge Mistakes

Most fitness coaches are undercharging people.

Worse, the majority are stacking discounts on top of their too-low prices.

Discounting your rates causes a lot of problems.

Simple math says that giving a 20 percent discount to five clients means you’ll have to attract a sixth to cover the difference. That means splitting your attention more ways, onboarding more clients, losing more clients and working far harder for the same money. Most gym owners now understand the danger of discounts, but if you don’t, read this:

“Why We Don’t Have Sales (Or Discounts, or Paid-In-Full Deals, or Problems)”

What’s the most lethal discount to give? The paid-in-full (PIF) discount, where a client pays for 10 months in advance and gets two months for free.

As a mentor to many CrossFit gym owners, I’ve had a ringside seat for a few PIF bouts. Here’s one story.

Harry’s Tale

Harry opened his gym in 2016. He followed the typical template: working out in his garage, following CrossFit.com programming, inviting his neighbors to join in and then backing into a business. With interest from early adopters, he grew to 50 members and needed to rent some space. For the first time in his business, he needed money.

Instead of taking a loan, he self-financed by offering his members a deal: pay for a year in advance and get two months for free!

Mistake 1

Harry assumed his clients understood they were taking a risk. He thought they’d realize they’d lose their money if his venture didn’t work out. But most of his clients—who started as friends and neighbors—didn’t understand that. This is why many states have laws against PIF memberships now.

Mistake 2

Harry “financed his loan” at a much higher rate than any bank would charge. His rate was even more than most credit cards charged. Every “free month” is an 8.5 percent discount off his annual rate. Two free months meant Harry would have to cover the same bills but receive 17 percent less revenue.

But Harry didn’t notice a problem at first. In fact, everything seemed great: In January 2017, after taking a lot of PIF payments, Harry had more money than he needed. So he upgraded his equipment. He bought a new car and new clothes for his coaches. And things seemed great … until December.

In December, Harry was out of money. New-member growth really didn’t happen at the rate Harry expected, and all the PIF money from January was long gone. His business still seemed viable, and he was optimistic about January, but he had to pay the rent. So he went back to what he knew best: He offered another PIF discount of “buy a year, get two months free.”

His new members took him up on the deal. His old members said, “Wait. We still have two months left on our memberships.”

Harry generated a bit of cash flow to get him through the end of 2017. He got a few new clients in January. And at the end of February, his long-term clients asked, “If we pay for another year, can we get another 2 months off?”

Harry, who had been starving for cash for a few months, sighed with relief.

“Hell yeah!” he said as he started collecting the money.

Mistake 3

Discounts compound.

Harry’s “pay for a year, get two months free” deal brought him a lot of cash in March 2018. He bought his coaches some nice jackets and added a coffee bar.

But you already know what happened next: By December, Harry was worse off than ever. He was desperate for cash again. He realized he wasn’t going to “just figure it out” between cash-flow spikes, and he was trapped in a downward spiral. He knew he’d have to coach his current members for a full four months for free before he saw another cent out of them. And his new clients weren’t making up the difference—far from it.

Every month, Harry had to offer the same discount to newcomers just to pay the rent. He was trapped.

Mistake 4

Discounts boost the wrong metric.

Harry believed the answer lay in growing his headcount: with 20 percent more clients, he could fill in the cracks his discounts were creating.

But when your target is “more members,” you actually have an incentive to discount your membership more—and the downward spiral perpetuates.

Focus on This

Your enterprise is a high-value business.

Your primary metric isn’t headcount but client value: What’s your service actually worth to your clients?

Discounts erode client value in the name of “getting more people.”

In the next post in this series, I’ll tell you how to say “no” to discounts when people ask for them. After that, I’ll tell you how to incentivize future clients with a short-term bonus instead of tying yourself to a multi-year discount that will cost you thousands of dollars.
 

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How “Beat Saber” and VR Headsets Might Save the World

Darth Vader’s cardio sucks, but he’s pretty good at the deadlift.

But maybe “Beat Saber” can change that.

As a gym owner or trainer, feel free to make your own joke about virtual reality—VR—fitness games and apps.

After you do, read on to find out why VR fitness might be a good thing for your business.

You and I enjoy working out. We’re weird—at least when compared to the general population.

Most people don’t like burning muscles, pounding hearts and a slight tinge of exercise-induced nausea. They like other stuff: Binging on “Yellowstone,” pwning noobs on “Call of Duty” and “Halo,” and swiping right on Tinder. They like watching “Squid Game,” not actually playing it.

They don’t know who you are and they don’t care. They’re not going to click your ads, they’re not going to watch the CrossFit Games, they don’t want to flip tires, and they literally could not care less about energy systems and squat technique.

To lean on “Star Wars” one more time, if your gym is Earth, these people are out past the Dagobah system in a galaxy far, far away.

Despite those facts, you hold the secret to improved health.

And you just might be able to reach these people with a little help—and some media.

Fitness in The Matrix

VR fitness is now a thing—whether users are actually trying to work out or get tricked into it as they slash glowing arrows with a light saber.

I’ll bring you up to speed in case your gaming experience ended in 1997 when Baron Samedi executed you with a silenced PP7 in “GoldenEye 007” on N64.

Video games have evolved to include VR headsets that place users in immersive environments. It’s a lot like the Holodeck on “Star Trek”—or “The Matrix” if you took the red pill. Gamers also use handheld controllers, gloves, waistbands and even foot-tracking sensors to interact with the digital world.

These systems allow users to play games like “Beat Saber” and “The Climb,” in which they become active by accident, or users can actually pursue fitness with specific games. Check out FitXR on the Oculus Quest platform:

As a trainer or gym owner, it’s going to be really tempting to throw shade on VR fitness. I did.

“This is just battle ropes without the ropes.”“There’s no progressive overload for strength training!”“What if you accidentally hit your lamp with an uppercut?”

Feel free to take a second and clear your own pipes of vitriol.

Then check out this dude. He’s got a Rogue safety squat bar in the background and a whack of fitness credentials. He’s creating videos to help people get fit in the virtual world:

To Mock or Make Connections?

Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper has written about how he used to criticize P90X and other programs because they weren’t as effective as training with him. When he realized that these programs were actually a “gateway” to his services, he stopped criticizing.

Instead of telling people that P90X wouldn’t help them build muscle, Chris congratulated them on working on their fitness. He built relationships that eventually created clients when people got sick of doing the same DVD every day and hitting the inevitable plateaus that come when you always do the same routine.

So take Coop’s approach with VR fitness. Instead of making fun of it, ask yourself how you can help people who want to get fit in a virtual world. Connect with them. Apply your expertise and share your knowledge. Then tell them how you can make them even fitter.

And check this out:

FitXR is being marketing to people who don’t ever want to go to a gym. That’s great!

Gaming companies are doing the heavy lifting for you. These companies have entered the cheat code that gives you access to a secret level full of gold coins. They succeeded where the traditional fitness industry failed: They got a huge group of inactive people to get off the couch and shank zombies just in front of it.

You can coach those people, right? Your online coaching and accountability service can easily work “30 minutes of ‘Beat Saber’” into a prescription that would help a person get fit at home.

Write about that—or, better yet, make a video because you already know these people like videos.

The point: You have a chance to make a connection any time anyone is interested in any aspect of movement. Even in a virtual world.

So start thinking outside the Xbox: Use your media to make the connection between movement and your services.

The post How “Beat Saber” and VR Headsets Might Save the World appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Chris Cooper’s Best Books of 2021 for Gym Owners

Mike (00:02):

It’s book week on Two-Brain Radio. In this episode, bookworm and best-selling author Chris Cooper checks in with his book recommendations for gym owners in 2021. You might be surprised which books made his list and which books you can skip.

Chris (00:15):

Chris Cooper here to talk about Incite Tax. The people at Incite Tax know you’re working long hours to improve health for the world, but it can still be hard to turn a profit. You just can’t focus on your mission without money in your account. So Incite founder John Briggs wrote “Profit First for Microgyms” and created a system that increases your cashflow so you can be home for dinner with a thriving fitness business. Bookkeeping, profit first, cash flow consulting, taxes, whatever your financial needs, Incite can help. Join their free five-day challenge at profitfirstformicrogyms/five days to get a snapshot of the financial health of your gym. That’s profitfirstformicrogyms/five days.

Chris (00:54):

What are the top five lessons that you’ve learned from books that have actually helped your business? I’m Chris Cooper and my current Audible library hit 150 books and I’m on my third account.

Chris (01:07):

Now my bookshelves at home and work are overflowing and I try to give books away after I’ve read them. I listen to at least an hour of podcasts every day. I read blogs, I take courses and I doubt I’m alone out there. So what in those thousands of hours of acquiring knowledge has actually made a measurable difference in my business? As I was preparing this list for 2021, I struggled with that question. I don’t just want to give you a list of popular books or well-written books or books that come from authors I like. I want to give you a list of books that actually created more money or time for me. So here we go. My best books of the last 12 months for gym owners, with the specific lesson and the value included in each one. In no particular order, starting with “$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No” by Alex Hormozi.

Chris (01:58):

If you’re thinking about selling a high ticket item, or you just need to understand why some gyms can charge 10 times what you’re charging, then this is a great book and it’s a really easy read. The second and third sections of this book are particularly helpful because they force you to see your business through the eyes of your client and rearrange your services accordingly. Your value is determined by your client, not by your price and building a client centric business requires you to step into the client’s shoes. Here’s the best exercise in the book. Think about the problems that your clients will encounter when they’re trying to lose weight, for example. Then brainstorm all the ways you could solve these problems, including even like moving into their house and making every meal for them. Then identify the strategy from your list that will get the client the desired result, but take up the least amount of your time.

Chris (02:49):

And this client centric approach is a real dose of reality for professionals who just want to coach group classes all day, like me. It’s probably what your clients actually need to their problems that is going to drive your business and just running classes all day is not going to solve all their problems. The second book is “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown. Now we all over-deliver, but are we really best to give our clients everything? Or would we be better off giving them only the exact thing that they need when they need it? So this book serves as a great audit to the book that I just went through the, hundred million dollar offers, because instead of just thinking about like, what else can I pile on to what I’m giving the client? You need to think like, what is actually going to have an effect here and more and more coaches get paid for producing results, not for offering their service.

Chris (03:42):

So I’m actually super guilty of this. Our Two-Brain Roadmap has over 400 courses on it because I want to give gym owners everything they could possibly need, curated by proof and arranged in order of impact, but nobody needs all 400 things. And if you give gym owners a list of 400 things that they could do, they’re going to try and do them all. So that’s why we have mentors to guide gym owners to the thing that they actually need to do out of all 400 possibilities. And after reading Greeg McKeown’s book, my fears were confirmed. I need to give people only the most important things to do, not a list of everything that they could do. So in your gym, this means removing options instead of adding them. It means telling clients exactly what they need with full transparency, instead of just suggesting what you think they can afford or giving them like an unlimited option.

Chris (04:33):

And they can just make up their own mind. It means constantly auditing your time and using measuring sticks like effective hourly rate to keep you focused. Value doesn’t always mean more in our current age of overwhelm, value usually means just enough. My third book is “Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for all the Performances in Your Life” by Michael Port. How will a book on public speaking make you a better coach? I mean, you can already yell really, really loud, right? I mean, I used to practice singing in my truck on the way to work to get my vocal cords warmed up so that I could yell super loud thinking that would get a better result for my clients. But it will help you just to think about your one hour class or your 30-minute session as a performance.

Chris (05:23):

And that performance has an introduction period, a slow build of excitement that leads to like a climax and then a finale that leaves everybody happy. Planning your sessions this way means your clients will be more excited about your service. And Michael Port does a great job of breaking that down step-by-step in the book. It will also help you keep your clients coming back. And for me it meant no more boring conversations in client sessions. You know what I’m talking about, right? You have five personal training clients in a row and you start the same conversation with each one over and over, and then you get bored and then you get tired and Port’s book changed all that for me. When you lead a class or a session, you step on stage. Most of the time you’re with a client, you are on stage and they rarely ever see backstage and they shouldn’t. They won’t remember how much you know, but how engaging, how interested and how entertaining you were. Bored clients quit.

Chris (06:18):

And it doesn’t mean you need to wear tap shoes, but it does mean you should think about how you present yourself. The next book is “Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day” by Jay Shetty. Now, if I were arranging and presenting these books in order of importance or relevance to me, I would probably put Shetty’s book at the top. I’m in the tinker phase of entrepreneurship. And that means I have to spend, I get to spend a lot of time in my own head and think like a monk was the first book I’ve ever actually finished and then replayed right away. I even went through it three times before I moved on to the next book. It’s that good. Shetty takes all the mysticism out of meditation, mindfulness, and inner peace. He gives you great stories from his time as a monk, but then he provides specific exercises to calm yourself, to refocus and to de-stress.

Chris (07:09):

This book is like an operating system for the modern brain. You don’t need to learn to meditate, although Shetty talks you through it, but you can use his quick exercises every single day. In my office, I keep a few boxes full of books just to give them away. And I keep a dozen copies of how to win friends and influence people. Rich dad, poor dad. My super me that I give to kids and I give them a way to any entrepreneur who just walks into the cafe. Shetty’s book is the fourth that I’ve purchased in bulk for that exact purpose. The next book is “The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I read this one because Jocko headlined our summit in 2021. And the book was a huge surprise. I really liked this book more than extreme ownership, which I really liked because while extreme ownership can be summed up on the back of a napkin, this book, the dichotomy of leadership was a real revelation.

Chris (08:06):

Great leadership is really about clarity in the moment, but balance in the long term. It’s easy for me as a business mentor to answer every question with it depends, but this book is an amazing illustration of the dichotomies many leaders face, how opposing answers can be right at different times and how to maintain a balanced perspective for a long time. Great leaders have playbooks, but they know which plays to call out of those playbooks and when to call them. What the dichotomy of leadership really did for me was show me in a really demonstrative way that as you get more and more successful, there are fewer and fewer black and white answers. Usually what you’re trying to do is maintain balance instead of just trying to make things like, you know, follow this script or maintain this perfect black and white template.

Chris (08:58):

Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper. Your members are buying supplements somewhere, so they should buy them from the person who cares about them the most: You. And you should work with my friends at Driven Nutrition. Jason Rule and the Driven team put customers first, every time they’ve got a ton of products with high margins and they’ll even train you so your retail program adds revenue to your business. Kirk Hendrickson from Iron Jungle CrossFit says Driven Nutrition has some of the best support I have seen from any company we’ve partnered with. To make more money with supplements and retail sales, visit drivennutrition.net.

Chris (09:31):

And when you’re in the earlier phases, founder phase, I mean, you can follow a script. Farmer phase. You can follow a template and you can tweak it a little bit, but you can follow the data and just do what the best gyms do. When you’re in the tinker phase. You don’t have that much data. You don’t have those scripts.

Chris (09:48):

And so for a lot of times, what you have to do is understand, like there’s a certain balance that has to be achieved between for example, like discipline and creativity. And the dichotomy of leadership is a great book to illustrate that. The next book on my list is “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” by Jordan Peterson. I was a fan of Peterson’s last book, but this one actually made me a fan of Jordan Peterson. In this book, Peterson actually argues in support of a perspective that’s opposite the position in his first book. And that takes a really flexible mind to do so. For example, Peterson says, and I’m paraphrasing here. It’s OK if you don’t want to go to church, it’s OK if you’re not a Christian. But what system of values are you replacing Christianity with? Now any answer according to Peterson is fine, but if you don’t have a system of values that you can follow and you can explain to others or teach your kids, then you don’t really have a system of values.

Chris (10:44):

And that means that you’re acting on whims all the time. And you’re unpredictable to the people around you who are counting on you to be predictable. Now, Peterson isn’t arguing for Christianity or for religion or against Christianity or against religion. He’s advocating for systems. Many people attend church because they like the routines, the processes, the atmosphere, or something else. They’re comforted by the predictability of church. They know the people, they know the hymns. They know what time it starts. They know when to kneel and when to sit and when to stand. And these are all systems and we can learn from them. Clearer systems are better. Repetition is better. Consistency is better. Familiarity, predictability. These are better. And of course these systems can be taken to the extreme and, you know, Peterson shares those examples too. But putting rules in place in your gym doesn’t make you OCD.

Chris (11:38):

They make you trustworthy and predictable. And that’s the great message to take away from this. The next book is a Dan Sullivan book and I’ll warn you like every Dan Sullivan book is an entry point into the Dan Sullivan rabbit hole. So this wasn’t the only Dan Sullivan book that I read this year by a long shot. I probably read about 12, but “Who Not How” is a fantastic, simple premise that any gym owner can follow for choosing the right people, empowering those people properly, mentoring them to the result that you want, and then moving on and elevating yourself as an entrepreneur. So, Sullivan is really big on systems. So this isn’t just another, just get the right people on the bus book. Instead Sullivan suggests finding doers and then mentoring them to success. So for example, Sullivan gets pitched on a dozen new ideas every week.

Chris (12:33):

And most of them sound like Dan, you should do this, but occasionally somebody will say, Hey, Dan, I can do this thing for you if you give me permission. And that’s an extremely different premise. So in those cases, Dan gives the person permission or time or money or whatever they need. And they build something that he didn’t have time to build on his own. And this book is actually a great example of that. The top lesson in the book is that you can’t just hire people and expect them to move your business forward. Instead, you have to wait for the right people who can tell you exactly what they’ll do, and then remove barriers for them. I’ll give an example. A gym owner in Two-Brain had this new client come on board, and this new person was a great connector. And she had this background, this new client had this background in marketing and sales.

Chris (13:21):

And so the gym owner says, oh, I feel like I got a great opportunity here. You know, I should put this person in charge of my marketing or my sales, or, you know, I should pay them to introduce me to other clients or how should I incentivize them? And the right answer is you don’t. Or you ask that person, how will you market my business? Or how will you sell my business? Or how will you get me more clients? And if they don’t know the answer to that, then all that’s really happening is you, the gym owner are going to be hiring this person and frustrated when they can’t produce results. And you’re going to wind up trying to teach them everything that, you know, instead of just doing it yourself. And the worst thing that happens is that this person takes a seat that could be taken by somebody who would do the marketing and sales for you.

Chris (14:06):

So it’s a great book because it explains not just like how to find the right people, but also how to find the people who will do the work on their own and then how to mentor them to optimize the results that you get. And this is, Who Not How is a clearer version of Sullivan’s simplifier, multiplier collaboration, but I also recommend his books “Always Be the Buyer” and “Who Do You Want to Be a Hero to?” The next book that I recommend in 2021 is “Get Different” by Mike Michalowicz. So Michalowicz does a lot with Two-Brain. He celebrated his book launch in our tinker group a few weeks ago. He came on and presented, and we had a super fun brainstorming session with him. In this book, instead of Mike’s usual tactical approach to business, though, he went broad. He taught some foundational lessons for entrepreneurs and in this book get different Michalowicz shares a few lessons that are both important and timeless.

Chris (15:01):

So for example, his dad framework for marketing is really simple, but a lot of gym owners actually fail at marketing because they don’t provide an affirmative answer to one of these three questions. So the dad principle is this, does it differentiate? Does it attract? And does it direct? So all of your marketing, all of your advertising should differentiate. You attract the right people and then direct those people on exactly what to do. For example, can clients who are thinking about joining the gym, tell the difference between your gym and the one down the street without setting foot inside. Are they attracted by the pictures and media they see, or are you pushing people away? And do you tell them exactly what steps to take next? Or are you just putting up cool pictures on Instagram. These duh I should’ve thought of that revelations. At least that’s how I feel when I read these books, these are what makes Michalowicz’s books worth reading. Genius makes the complex simple and Michalowicz does a great job of simplifying marketing in this book, just like he simplified, profit first in profit first, just like he simplified seed client interviews.

Chris (16:10):

And what’s really important in the pumpkin plan. Now there’s a couple of books you can skip in 2022. And I said that this year I read well over a hundred books. My average is over a hundred. Sometimes I get up to 150 books in a year. There are a couple of books that I think you should skip because I was really excited for these books. I told people I was excited about them and then people went out and bought them. But I think, you know, as gym owners, you really have to police your time really well. And so this list was curated to highlight the best books that you should read, but there are also a couple that were disappointments this year that I think you can skip. So first is B E 2.0, which is short for beyond entrepreneurship.

Chris (16:52):

2.0, turning your business into an enduring great company by Jim Collins, man, I feel like I’m stabbing myself here, but I’m a huge Jim Collins fan, right? I once got this voicemail from Jim Collins praising me for the work that we were doing in Two-Brain Business. And I saved it on my phone like for three years, he’s kind of a hero to data-driven entrepreneurs like me, but what makes Collins’s books such epics is that he uses real data to tell a story. And this book beyond entrepreneurship 2.0 was written to update what he originally wrote, but it’s not like a dramatic upgrade. If you’ve read the original beyond entrepreneurship, you can kind of skip this one. And if you are looking for a place to start with Colin’s books, start with good to great, instead of or great by choice. Even instead of this one. Another one you can skip is “Leading From Anywhere: The Essential Guide to Managing Remote Teams” by David Burkus.

Chris (17:47):

I was super excited to get this one because I have a huge remote team. There are well over 50 people who work for Two-Brain and we’re all across the globe. Leadership in person is hard. Keeping people excited and engaged over zoom is like unknown territory. Nobody has the answer to this. So I was super excited to read some proven best practices. Unfortunately, this book is full of ideas that are totally or mostly unproven and some really obvious strategies, right? Like don’t have your slack and your text and your email open while you’re on a zoom call, give people your full attention. So to sum up, I want to talk about the difference between having knowledge and knowing the answer. I love books and courses and seminars, but there’s a big difference between acquiring as much knowledge as you can. And knowing the answer for you right now, we all like to feel smart.

Chris (18:40):

We all like to show off our reading lists, but success really comes down to the application of knowledge. You know, do you know which tactics to use right now? Do you execute on that tactic? And then do you measure the outcome? That’s a mentor’s job to help you do. And the reason that I curate these lists is to help you save time, avoid overwhelm, and actually act on this stuff. So the question that I asked at the start of this podcast was which books have actually made a measurable change in your business this year. Of course, to be able to tell me the answer you have to measure the change that they’ve made. You have to take action and you have to be clear first. So I’d love to hear from you, chris@twobrainbusiness.com, what books have actually had a measurable impact on your gym this year?

Mike (19:24):

Send Chris a message now with your top books. He’s at Chris twobrainbusiness.com. Two-Brain Business airs twice a week and features all the info you need to run a profitable gym. Subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Now Coop’s back with an invitation.

Chris (19:37):

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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How to Prevent Clients From Leaving Over the Holidays

Chris (00:00):

Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper. And today I’m going to tell you how to retain clients through the holidays. Thank you to my buddy Di for asking this question. The holidays, especially in the US are a big drop-off point for a lot of gym clients. And what happens is they go into Thanksgiving, you know, so in Canada, that’s early October, but in the states it’s late November and all the way to Christmas, they’ve got kind of like this black hole of hedonism, right? They’re just eating whatever they want. And they see that in advance and they think, ah, I’m not going to be able to work out during that time. I’m going to gain weight anyway, why don’t I just put things on hold? And then of course, as coaches, we know what’s going to happen, right? They get out of the habit. It’s really tough for them to get back in the habit.

Chris (00:46):

Maybe they never do. Maybe they never come back. But it’s that premonition or that foresight that we as coaches have that’s actually our greatest weapon. So here’s what you’re going to do. With each client in your gym individually, starting with your personal training clients or your one-on-one nutrition clients, you are going to say the toughest time of the year for fitness and nutrition is coming up. And maybe you say everybody takes a small step backward during this period, or maybe you don’t, that’s up to you. But the next part is the most important. You say, I have a plan for us to get through this challenge. And here it is. Our job as coaches is not just to teach movement, it’s to use our experience to know what the next challenge will be for the client, and then to solve that problem for them in advance. Not to remove the problem, but to be ready to coach them through it, to give them the resilience or the tools that will help them get through it.

Chris (01:48):

And then almost more importantly, to tell them we have a plan and here it is. So if you have a client and before they even bring it up about quitting or putting their membership on pause for the next couple of months, you should grab them one-on-one and say, Hey, Jordan, we’re entering the holiday season. As you know, this is a time when everybody’s fitness or nutrition takes a small step back. I’ve got a plan for us. What we’re going to do is try and take three small steps forward, knowing that you’re not going to have a perfect diet over Christmas. And I don’t want you to feel bad about that. Here’s the plan. We are going to get together as we currently do three times a week for your one-on-one sessions, but I’m also going to add this habits tracker sheet for you. And you can find this on the Two-Brain Coaching side, or if you’re a Two-Brain Business client, you can download this in online coaching one or two. Give them a healthy habits tracker.

Chris (02:48):

It’s just a sheet that you print off and you say, OK, our plan is to track this. I’m going to be checking in with you every few days, just to see how it’s going. And we’re going to build up a little bit of momentum to help us avoid totally falling off during the holidays. OK. Now what you say is not as important as the fact that you’re pulling them aside and saying, I have a plan. Now this is best delivered one-on-one. OK. Acutely person to person, coach to client. But for your group clients, you might not be able to get through the whole list. So what you want to do is start creating a lot of content around tips to survive the holiday season or a quick video. Hey guys, coach Chris here. This is the time of year when it gets a little bit more challenging to stick to your habits.

Chris (03:31):

Here is my three-step plan for staying on track and meeting your goals through the holidays. Or here are my top five tips for avoiding binge-eating at holiday parties. Or here are three things that I do before I go to a party where I know everybody’s going to be like over-drinking and overeating, OK. Stuff like that. Like you need to know what your client’s next big hurdle is going to be, and then prepare the help, the guidance and the tools that we’ll see them pass that in advance and then tell them exactly here’s what we’re going to do. So we go back to CALM, the CALM model, clarity, assurance, leadership, movement,.clarity. I know exactly what’s about to happen to you. Assurance. We have a plan for that. Leadership. This is the plan. Movement. Let’s take step one right now. I hope this saves you a client or two. If doing this with every client stops one client from canceling, then the activity’s worth $200. Well worth your time. Keep them around over Christmas and help them from sliding back five steps.

 

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Get Therapy out of Your Gym (Seriously)

“Ohhhh, that feels so great. Mmm … .”

I was sitting in my office and heard a female moaning.

I knew one of my coaches had a personal-training client, but otherwise the gym should have been empty.

The sounds coming from the gym floor were pretty sensual. I froze for a second to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.

She groaned again. “Ohhh … .”

I blasted out of my office, expecting the worst but hardly believing it.

Across the gym (yeah, she was loud), a trainer was rubbing the neck and shoulders of his female client.

He wasn’t a registered massage therapist. She was wearing a tank top. But there was a lot of contact, and the sound alone was way across the line.

I hope you haven’t been through the “massaging a client” scenario. But I bet you’ve seen other instances—or participated in them—where your service crossed the line between coaching and therapy.

Here’s why we do it, why we should stop and what we should do instead.

Creating Problems Instead of Solving Them

Scenario: You’re a fitness or movement coach. A client has a physical limitation that prevents him from doing your fitness method or prescribed movement.

You’re a problem solver, so you do a little triaging. Maybe the client has shortened hip flexors because of too much sitting, right? You just read an article about sitting being the new smoking, so “let’s mobilize the hip flexors!”

The real problem isn’t tight hip flexors. The real problem is that you’re not a therapist.

Personal trainers and fitness coaches don’t have a professional college (at least not in North America). We don’t have a clearly defined scope of practice. That’s good—except that without a clear scope, we go way beyond what we’re qualified to do. That leads to mistrust from other health-care pros, and rightly so.

And hey—sometimes we do know more than a client’s doctor or their dietitian, right? And sometimes we don’t want to send the client to a chiropractor because the chiro will tell the person to stop coming to our gym. It’s just client preservation to do the therapy ourselves!

In fact, this is the primary fear: not that our clients will get bad advice but that they’ll stop coming to the gym.

The solution? Work with the other health-care pros in town.

Look, I know this problem inside and out. In my case, the problem is twofold:

I have a big ego and think I can just solve every problem.I was really scared I’d lose every client I referred somewhere else.

In fact, the opposite happened.

I lost the trust of health pros because I tried to do their job (and was unqualified and without tools).When a client had to leave, it was because of a real injury, so the client never came back. And the health-care pros saw clients leaving my care with legit injuries instead of just short-term setbacks. That didn’t create trust, either.

In the next post in this series, I’m going to tell you where we fit on the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum. This will help everyone understand our scope of practice.

In Part 3, I’m going to tell you how to get over the real fear: that you’ll lose clients if you refer them outside your gym.

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