Chris Cooper's Blog, page 108

Make Money With Media in Minutes: Do This Today

In the gym business, media is all about consistency and momentum, not perfection.

Here’s a common problem:

A gym owner knows she should produce media but doesn’t know what to create. Or she feels overwhelmed by the thought of creating it and puts the project off week after week.

Here, we’ll solve that problem for two weeks and help you build some media momentum with your mailing list. Read on.

First, remember this: Media does not have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.  

To kickstart your output—or add to it if you aren’t struggling to produce content—just follow this two-week plan.

Week 1

Open your email program of choice and copy and paste the message below. Where you see brackets, fill in the correct info. Then send the message to your mailing list. Here it is:

Hi [Member’s Name]!

I just wanted to let you know about the things we have planned for the next two months.

Check it out:

[Insert bullet-point list of coming events between now and Jan. 15. Be sure to include hyperlinks to landing or sign-up pages in case people want more info or want to sign up.]

Does anything on that list really interest you? Hit “reply” and let me know!

And if you’re not currently training with us, we’re running a free consultation blitz right now. Click [here—link] to book a No Sweat Intro and talk about your fitness goals for 2021. I have slots available this week!

[Your Name]

Now about that list of upcoming events … . I hope you have some planned—nutrition kickstarts, bring-a-friend events, wine and WOD nights, movement clinics, specialty programs, etc. Two-Brain clients have access to all sorts of plug-and-play events that can be added to your calendar in short order (ask your mentor!).

But if you don’t have any events planned, just do this: Shine a spotlight on existing programs and generate some excitement. Do not under any circumstances avoid sending this email because “I have nothing planned.” Just highlight existing programs or regularly scheduled programming.

For example:

Have you signed up for our Dec. 1 workout? We’re going to kick off the last month of the year with a fun benchmark. Click [here—link] and sign up for this special class so you don’t miss out.We have partner workout planned for Dec. 15, with prizes for the top teams. Message your gym buddy and log into a time slot [here—link].Treat yourself to success in December: Book a skill session with a coach. If you’re struggling with any movements, now is the time to get some one-on-one coaching. Remember, the CrossFit Open is coming in the New Year. Click [here—link] to book a skill session.

This isn’t “cheating.” It’s communicating with your audience. And you probably aren’t doing it often enough.

Week 2

As the holidays approach, people are always looking for gift ideas. I bet you have some.

Here’s your cut-and-paste message:

Hi [Member’s Name]!

Are you struggling to think of gifts for anyone on your list this year?

Here are a few things that might be perfect for your friends and family—or maybe your loved ones might appreciate some gift ideas for you:

Check out our selection of apparel and gear [here—link to online store].Did you know you can purchase an on-ramp or gift certificate for a loved one? Hit reply and I’ll hook it up!You can purchase PT sessions for others—or they can buy them for you. Click [here—link to PT booking].You can book friends into our next [nutrition kickstart/seminar/specialty program] by clicking [here—link to next event].

And here are three special gifts for you!

1. I’ve got a great recipe for a quick, healthy meal you can use during the busy holiday season: [insert link to one of your recipes or to any healthy holiday meal that fits with your nutrition philosophy].

2. If anyone you know needs assistance with food or fitness, help them book a free consultation with me. If they like, you can even come along for support. Here’s the link: [No Sweat Intro page].

3. I want you to thrive in 2021, and I’m all in to help you accomplish your goals. So let’s talk about them: click [here—goal review link] to book a Goal Review Session with me. I’d love to touch base and get you on track for the New Year.

All the best!

[Your Name]

Get Moving!

Cutting, pasting and filling in the blanks will only take minutes. And I’d guess that these two emails will result in revenue or consultations and Goal Review Sessions, aka “chances to generate revenue.”

Do the math: If it takes you 20 minutes to create these two emails and you make a single $50 apparel sale as a result, your return is $150 an hour. But I bet you’ll sell more than one hoodie.

So get moving: Cut, paste, fill, send!

The post Make Money With Media in Minutes: Do This Today appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Done-With-You Services: The Secrets of Incredible Value

Mike (00:02):

It’s Two-Brain Radio. Gym owners. Chris Cooper has a question for you. Do you want to make mistakes figuring out every single little thing on your own, or do you want to completely offload all responsibility for your business to someone else? Think about it. If you think both options are bad, Chris has the solution. Pass on do it yourself, pass on done for you, and do it with someone. He’ll explain the concept right after this.

Chris (00:27):

Back to Two-Brain Radio in just a minute. 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 (00:52):

Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper. And today I want to tell you the difference between do it yourself, done for you and a third category that we as coaches all fall into, whether you’re coaching business or fitness or CrossFit or yoga or boot camp or Pilates or whatever your methodology it. This is a great reason for us to be optimistic, but it’s also a clarifying lesson in what we’re actually selling and what makes our service more valuable or valuable at all to people.

Chris (01:21):

My editor Anne is more than a spellchecker. She’s more than a thesaurus. She doesn’t just do line editing and put my commas in or take my extra commas out or fix the apostrophes on stuff. She doesn’t just do formatting and layout. She’s really a coach. And so I use an external editor, even though we have an amazing editor on staff at Two-Brain in Mike Warkentin, even though we have incredible writers on staff at Two-Brain, I use this external editor because she’s not immersed in Two-Brain land all day. She doesn’t just automatically fill in the gaps. She doesn’t really have context on what I’m talking about when I write a new book for gym owners. And so she asks questions from the eyes of an expert, but also from a beginner who isn’t really familiar with the world of gym ownership. And that’s why I use her.

Chris (02:08):

But more than that, the value of her service really comes from coaching. So instead of saying like Chris, you’re not capitalizing your T’s, Anne will say, Chris, I think what you’re trying to say here is this. And then she helps me say it better. And then the end result is that you who read my books, thank you, wind up getting a better book. That’s clearer and more coherent. And I was thinking about this a lot on my drive today because right now, Anne is helping me rewrite “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” to make it more clear, more actionable to give you more concrete goals. But we’re also in the process of writing a new book for people who are just about to start a gym. For coaches and trainers who want to open a bricks and mortar location. And one of the key lessons in this book is that there will always be a need for these physical locations.

Chris (02:57):

When all the gyms got kind of forced online, some gym owners said, holy crap, this is the future. Why do I have this $10,000 a month albatross around my ankles when I don’t need it? I could make the same amount of income from 10 clients online, or maybe I could even make more money without the staff and without the overhead and the loans and the landlord and the noise complaints and all that garbage. So some gym owners actually pivoted online and stayed there. And, you know, I think we kind of helped them. We went out to external experts and we found how to do great coaching online, but our intent was always to help gym owners train online with the goal of coming back to their bricks and mortar gym. And I think it’s really important. I think that there will always be a place for a bricks and mortar gym.

Chris (03:44):

I think that there’s never been a better time to start a bricks and mortar gym. And I want to tell you why there are, of course, a growing number of online coaches. The value of the online coach is rising. The attraction to an online coach i, rising among a certain clientele population. But there are more people coming to our type of coaching business in a bricks and mortar location than ever before. And there are more high ticket offers and programs and success with that stuff than ever before. So people are now selling like a 3 thousand dollar a month gym membership and people are now selling like $3,000 front end offers. And that’s great because what it does is it teaches the bricks and mortar gym owner exactly like what they’re really worth instead of just anchoring their price to the hundred dollars the gym down the street used to charge.

Chris (04:37):

Now they can see like, holy moly, I am this valuable to people. And the reason that you are that valuable that people will pay $3,000 for a high value service is because what you’re selling is not a do it yourself. What you’re selling is not a done for you. It’s this other thing in the middle. It’s done with you. Great coaching is done with you. And that’s the service that you’re providing at your gym and I’m providing it my gym. It’s the service that I am providing with a mentorship practice. It’s done with you. So let me break down the difference here for you. Done for you is when a service comes in and just takes over one part of your business. So let’s say that you hire an ad agency to come in. You hand over control of your Facebook ad accounts, and they run that for you.

Chris (05:28):

OK? Now there’s pros and cons to this. Pro you don’t have to learn Facebook advertising and you don’t have to spend all day figuring it out. That’s great. Con, you have no control over your advertising and it’s expensive. And if things go wrong, you’re not going to be able to fix it yourself. OK? You have to abdicate responsibility to them. Another done for you example is when you buy a franchise. The pro is that you don’t have to make decisions about branding and websites, and you probably don’t really have to figure out advertising on your own. You don’t have to think about programming. You don’t have to even buy yourself a job coaching. You just pay for the franchise. Those decisions are made for you, and you set it up according to their guidelines. And then you just kinda like, you know, maybe you work in the franchise for two years and then you can walk away and start the next one, right?

Chris (06:15):

Pros. You don’t have to make all the decisions that you want to make about owning a business. Cons. It’s crazy expensive. You know, most franchises in the fitness industry cost between a quarter million and 2 million a year just to start up and then you have to have another million or so in like liquid assets, just in case you don’t make money right away. You don’t just go bankrupt. On the other end of the spectrum from done for you is DIY, right? It’s do it yourself. It’s how we all started. Most of you and me. It’s bootstrapping, it’s, you know, you built yourself one plyo box and you found out how to make your own medicine ball. You know, if you’ve made your own medicine ball in the past from an old basketball that you cut a hole into, filled with sand, and then duct-taped up like send me a love letter and I’m going to send you a prize.

Chris (07:00):

Cause I did that. I remember what that was like. And that’s DIY. There are pros and cons to DIY to figuring it all out yourself. Pro you can work really hard, right? You could do it. You can become successful by figuring out by yourself. My first location, a personal training studio, was fairly successful. It was paying me $45,000 a year. I knew nothing about business. I just had like an audible.com subscription and I would try and figure it out. And that was OK until I opened a second location, which just about bankrupted me and I wound up getting the help of a mentor, but I’ll come back to that. The thing about the fitness industry is you can start with a DIY mindset. You can set up an A-frame in the park. You can do boot camp workouts down on the city’s waterfront under the big tent, whatever you want to do, right?

Chris (07:51):

You can kind of figure it out because you can work an 18 hour day, because you can scrap because you have a passion for this and a passion for your clients. That’s the pros, right? You can do it. The cons are, it’s actually a higher risk to DIY because you don’t have the benefit of everybody else’s experience. So it’s going to take you a lot longer to become successful. The other cons of DIY is that you’re kind of an island. You don’t have any kind of support out there. So while you’re not learning from other people’s mistakes and you’re making all of your own mistakes, you also don’t have the support when things go bad to say to you, that’s OK. We all have ups and downs and you’re going to be OK. Here’s how I fixed that problem. Here’s what I said to myself as I was going through that.

Chris (08:35):

So while DIY is super appealing to most entrepreneurs, because we want to start from scratch. We want that blank canvas. We want to invent everything ourselves. And it’s also attractive because it’s cheap. It’s actually more costly and riskier in the long run. So how do you bridge the gap between DIY, just kind of figure it out with no money and bootstrapping it and having a done for you service like a franchise? Well, that’s what’s in the middle and that’s called done with you. And that’s the service that we provide through mentorship. And it’s the service that you provide to your clients.

Chris (09:08):

Chris Cooper here, have you got a website designer, a marketer, a landing page software, a calendar, a CRM, and a form builder, communication platform and connecting software? You can get rid of all of it by switching to Gym Lead Machine. I use this platform along with 60% of the Two-Brain mentorship team. The average gym owner saves over 300 bucks a month with Gym Lead Machine and they’ll waive the thousand dollars set-up fee for Two-Brain Radio listeners. Switching is easy and you can go live in a week, visit gymleadmachine.com to watch a demo and book a sales call.

Chris (09:42):

Done with you means I’m going to share my experience and get you to where I am a lot faster. Done with you means I am going to support you and be there day or night as you run into trouble. Done with you means I’m going to tell you exactly what to do next, knowing that you have infinite number of choices that you could choose from. Done with you means I will remove all the obstacles of overwhelm. I will remove the burden of choice and make things really, really simple for you. Done with you means I know you could figure this out.

Chris (10:16):

There’s an abundance of knowledge out there, but I will be the one to filter things for you, tell you what’s going to work for you right now. Instead of here are all these brilliant ideas and options, here’s how this works in your business. Your clients fall on a spectrum between do it yourself and done for you. There are people in your city right now who just want to figure it out by themselves. They want to go on like a free website, get a free workout and do it on their own. And that’s all they’re ever going to do. These are the DIY people. When I started a gym, most of these people were doing P90X. And I actually thought that like P90X was my competition, but it’s not because I don’t sell a DIY service. I sell coaching. I sell a done with you service.

Chris (11:06):

So there are always these people, even if they’re at the start of their weight loss journey, who are just going to say, you know what? I’m just going to go for a jog. See if it works. And for some of them, it will actually work. But for a lot of people, they start with DIY and then they want more. They want some help. And that’s when they shift into done with you services. So this DIY crowd, who’s buying their Peloton bikes and trying it on their own. Who’s finding workouts online, CrossFit, yoga, Pilates, whatever, and starting that on their own, a lot of them will actually graduate up to coaching. And so you don’t look at a DIY service as your competition. You look at a DIY service as a breeding ground for your future clients. Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum, the done for you service in health and fitness.

Chris (11:56):

This is like, people who just sell you pre-made meals. It’s also people who will do surgery, right? Liposuction. Yeah. Don’t worry about anything. Just come and lay on the table and you’ll wake up smaller. These people too are not your competition. You do not have to write hateful blog posts about like the done for you services in fitness. You don’t have to say, I hate the people selling pills or weight loss, potions, or lipo or whatever. In fact, a lot of these people use weight loss pills. They use liposuction to get them started and to build the confidence that it’s going to take to come into a gym. I learned this lesson the hard way. We used to partner with somebody that sold like an extreme diet. And she was a medical doctor. I really love her. Her name’s Linda and her goal was to get people to move away from bariatric surgery.

Chris (12:52):

She didn’t want them to get bariatric surgery as a medical doctor. She could prescribe it. She could write a script for them, but she really wanted them to lose weight. And so she would send them to us for exercise. And she would give them like a nutrition plan and keep them away from bariatric surgery. But sometimes she said like, look, bariatric surgery is the only answer here. You know, they had so much metabolic damage that nobody could turn it around. And so she would send them for bariatric surgery. And one day I was talking about this, a catalyst in front of some clients. And I said, you know, I don’t think there’s ever a point where somebody needs bariatric surgery. Like I just, I can’t support that. And after class, this woman wh, was the head of a family of people who all came to catalyst, she’s an amazing woman.

Chris (13:37):

And she’s just great. She said, Chris, I’ve had the surgery, and I was shocked. And I said, are you kidding me? Like you’ve had the surgery? Like you’re super fit. You love CrossFit. You like want to compete in CrossFit masters. And she said, that’s what I had to do to give myself the confidence to start at your gym. And what I learned from that is like these other services, they are not my competition. It’s just a different category, it’s done for you service. Now what we do is we sit in the middle, right? We sell a done with you service. And that with you is really, really, really important because of the degree of withness, the amount that we stand by your side, the amount that we talk to you, the amount that we have an ongoing conversation, the amount that we hold you accountable, that really determines our value to the client.

Chris (14:26):

That degree of withness is what really determines how much we can set our prices to. So if you’re operating a boot camp and there are five other boot camps in town and looking at your website, your Facebook, your Instagram pictures, I can’t really discern the difference between your boot camp and somebody else’s boot camp. Well, now you’re selling a commodity and I’m just going to choose the one that costs the least. Cause they all look the same to me and the same with yoga. And it’s the same with Pilates. And it’s the same with jujitsu. And it’s the same with CrossFit. If your service is indiscernible from everybody else, you have to compete on price, right? But what makes it indiscernible is that degree that we do things with you. So what makes you indiscernible is you’re selling the exact same service as everybody else. You come in, you try a class and if you like it, then you come to class and that’s the same as everybody else.

Chris (15:18):

What makes the with have value is the degree to which I customize or personalize your experience in my program. It’s the degree to which I coach you one-on-one. And that doesn’t just mean like doing squat therapy for 90 seconds inside a class or inside a group. What that means is do I tailor the journey to you? So when you come in, do we do a consultation? Do I ask about your goals and take a measurement of where you’re starting from before I make a prescription? Or do I just sell everybody the exact same thing after I make that prescription? Do I check in on your progress? Do I track your progress at all? Do I measure the things that you care about? Like your weight and your body fat, or do I just measure these independent variables that you probably don’t carry care about? Like your time on Helen or Murph?

Chris (16:08):

Do I follow up with you when you’re not right in front of me? Do I send you a text when you’ve gone missing? Do I send you a text to say, Hey, send me a picture of your lunch today. Do I send you a video text, say, Hey, I was just thinking about you. And this message really resonated. It resonated with me when I was going through what you’re going through right now is the pivot to online really, really easy. Am I giving you accountability? Am I giving you one-on-one attention between classes? Am I customizing your approach? One of the longest time clients I’ve ever had, her name is Robin. Same as my wife. One of the prescriptions that I gave her early on was I need you to take three months off from the gym. She was overwhelmed. She was stressed and her cortisol levels were just through the roof.

Chris (16:59):

She was coming into the gym about five times a week. And she was also an accountant at this crazy big company that was like shutting its doors. They were going bankrupt. And she was trying to manage that. And just her life was a massive ball of stress. And so I said, look, I have a client centric business. I have to tailor my prescription to the needs of the client. What she needs right now is not more intensity in her workouts to take her mind off bookkeeping. What she needs is a frigging break. And so I said, you’re going to take three months off. Here’s your homework. It’s like a walking plan. You’re going to read five books. And we’re going to sit here in September and you’re gonna tell me the books that you read, and we’re going to take some measurements, you know, and you’re going to tell me how you’re feeling.

Chris (17:44):

And that was it. You know, we booked her follow-up appointment, but she wasn’t a client for three months, took three months off. And when she came back, she said, I’m ready. I feel good. And I am your client for life because you told me what I needed. Not just, you know, what you thought would like make you more money. And that was really important to me. That to me, is what it means to come alongside a client and sell a done with you service. It means having a client centric business, it means tailoring or changing your business even to suit what the client needs right now. How does this lead into the discussion on selling high ticket coaching? If you want to sell a service to a client that’s worth a couple thousand dollars a month, then you have to sell a high value service.

Chris (18:29):

The way you make more money is by increasing the value that you deliver to the client. How do you sell a higher value service than what you currently sell? You know your method already gets results. You add the things that will make them more successful. You add accountability, you add more frequent visits, you add more frequent one-on-one touch points. You tell them exactly what to do and you change your prescription more often. So if your client, you know, is at a different point in her menstrual cycle, maybe you alter her nutrition that month, or maybe you alter her workouts for that week, right? I should’ve said week. And that’s what some people do. And, you know, I use that specific example because Lindsey Van Shoyck, who has a high ticket program, and she talks to people inTwo-Brain about high ticket, high value programs.

Chris (19:16):

I know that that’s how she delivers for her clients. Your workout needs to change today because of this thing. And your nutrition needs to change today because you’re in a different phase of your menstrual cycle right now. That is what high value coaching is. That’s what done with you service to a high degree is, it’s the with that determines our value as coaches. How does that work at Two-Brain? Well, in case you’re interested, Two-Brain is a mentorship practice. We’re a done with you service. We could just sell you a course and say, here’s how to do it. Go do it DIY, but that’s not effective for most people. We could sell a done for you service, like, ah, we’re going to run your ads for you. Or I could try setting up like a sales call center for you, but that’s also not effective because that’s not a 30 year strategy.

Chris (20:05):

If you don’t know how to set up your own advertising, if you don’t know how to sell yourself, I’m not doing you any favors. And so what we do is we coach you through all those things. We coach you through building a playbook. We coach you through retention strategies. We coach you through sales and marketing and advertising strategies. We coach you through leadership because this is what makes us most effective. It’s mentorship. It’s not like a book. You know, if you think about the books that you’re reading on leadership right now, which one of those books is actually going to make you a millionaire or which one of those books is going to make your staff say, that’s it I’m signed up forever. I believe in you so much. None of them, right? It’s the sequence of books that you read, but also how you apply them, how you curate that knowledge and deliver it as you need it.

Chris (20:55):

Having a mentor is like reading every business book on the planet, remembering all of them verbatim and thinking of strategies on how you can use them right now. And that’s why we’re a done with you service, because that’s the mentors job to curate, to identify, to diagnose, and then to prescribe. I hope this helps you understand the business that you’re in and how people can sell a higher value service or how you can even increase the value of the service that you’re currently providing to your clients. You do it by providing done with you service.

Mike (21:28):

That was Chris Cooper on Two-Brain Radio. Don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes. And now here’s a special message from Coop.

Chris (21:35):

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 Done-With-You Services: The Secrets of Incredible Value appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Sickness-Wellness-Fitness: Where Coaching Fits

If you’re not familiar with the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum, it was created by Greg Glassman and it applies to most fitness methods.

Here’s a link to Glassman’s explanation of the continuum: “What Is Fitness?”

Our role as coaches is to move people along the fitness continuum from left to right.

Clients don’t know the continuum. So their goals come first: If they say they want to lose weight, the probably don’t care about other health metrics—yet. Good coaches know to focus on the client’s goals but to also keep the long-term progression in mind even if they don’t talk about it. Great coaches talk about weight loss to their clients at first and slowly introduce the “big picture” over time. That’s how Glassman did it.

Here’s where we fit on the fitness continuum: Our scope of practice is limited on the left side but wide open on the right.

For example, we can’t cure cancer or COVID-19 with exercise. Those are diseases, and we are not pathologists.

If someone is already pathologically sick, the person needs a health-care professional. Glassman referred to doctors as “lifeguards” and trainers as “swim coaches”:

So let’s talk about musculoskeletal, respiratory and metabolic “illness”:

We can’t cure a broken bone. We can’t knit a torn muscle or heal a contusion.We can’t cure Type 1 diabetes.

We can provide comfort and care. We can sometimes even help people with other things in their lives or help them train around acute injuries. But we can’t cure the stuff at the extreme left side of the spectrum. That’s for doctors and time.

Now take a small step to the right: soft-tissue injury, concussion or chronic metabolic problems created by disease.

We can’t heal a sprain. We can’t reverse a chronic overuse injury or repair an acute injury like a labral tear. We can’t rehabilitate because, by definition, rehabilitation begins with illness. A therapist’s job is to guide a client from illness to wellness.

But few therapists can take a client further than “normal” function, or “wellness.” That’s where we take over.

Your Role on a Client’s Health-Care Team

Now, can we take a client from “sickness” to “wellness”? Yeah—sometimes.

Unfortunately, some of the systems that exist for this purpose are failures. Comorbidities (which compound illness and make people more susceptible) are becoming more common despite government spending. Most members of the public get too little exercise—they just don’t do the stuff that will make them well. And our national “food guides” aren’t solving the problems.

So sometimes coaches reach past “wellness” and pull people up from being not-quite-ill. We do it because we have to, and sometimes for the reasons I detailed in the previous post in this series (ego, overconfidence and fear).

But as a general rule, our job is to take people from “wellness” to “fitness.”

If someone is more sick than well—if they show the markers of illness, including disease and injury—you are best to treat them in partnership with a health-care pro. You don’t have to share responsibility, but you should definitely tell the health-care provider what you’re doing.

Clients who fall on the left of the sickness-wellness-fitness spectrum require care provided by themselves, their coach and their lifeguard.

In the next post, I’ll tell you how you can use this knowledge to grow your business.

The post Sickness-Wellness-Fitness: Where Coaching Fits appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Hire a GM: A Step-by-Step Guide for Gym Owners

When your operations are excellent and you’re ready to scale, hiring a general manager (GM) can buy you time.

A GM’s job is to maintain your standard of operations while you focus on marketing or to maintain your gym while you build the second location (or something else). Remember: Every person in your business must generate revenue or save you time. The GM role is the most expensive, so you must have a plan for your saved time before you hire.

The key is to understand that the job is to keep things the same. Consistency is the GM’s goal.

The GM’s primary tool is your staff playbook. The person must maintain the standards set in that guide. The GM will also use other tools, like staff meetings and contracts, to maintain the gym.

Most importantly, the GM will solve problems—not just report problems to you.

When Should You Hire a GM?

Your GM should be the last hire before Tinker Phase—the third stage of entrepreneurship. (Take our quiz here to discover what stage you’re in.)

To hire a GM:

You should already be earning $100,000 per year (or close to it).You should be ready to focus on marketing and sales and have a plan to do so—or you should be ready to start a different project.When Should You Wait?

Don’t hire a GM:

If you’re not being paid well yourself.If you need someone to grow the gym (that’s your role).If you just want to give a coach “more work.” If you’re just trying to avoid doing something you hate (like sales or management).If you don’t have someone who can manage other people. Paying a GM

A GM must do more than punch the clock: This person must bear the burden of responsibility. The GM must have some flexibility in the time spent working but must also display absolute reliability when it’s required.

A salary is not a birthday present or a reward for time served. It’s an agreement, by both parties, that some flexibility is required.

For example, when the gym floods, the GM is going to be the one calling the plumber at 2 a.m. Obviously, the person is going to need a late start the following day, but the GM shouldn’t have to call you to resolve the problem.

A GM role doesn’t need to be full time. My GM at Catalyst works in that role for 20 hours per week and coaches for another 20 hours. His pay rates are different for each role because each role brings different value to the gym.

While a GM should make less than an owner, a good GM should be able to earn between $35,000 and $45,000 per year in a microgym. You can use our Microgym Model P&L Spreadsheet to calculate what you can afford.

Finally, a GM should not earn a commission on gym growth unless the person can directly control that growth. If the GM isn’t handling sales and marketing, this person really can’t influence growth. However, you could tie a commission to retention or some other measurable metric that is controllable.

Training a GM

I’ve had four GMs in the last 12 years. I put them through the Two-Brain RampUp program and then meet with them monthly for an hour. That’s it.

I get my GM a mentor because it removes proximity bias. The GM gets an objective perspective and clarity—and why wouldn’t I want to provide the best help running my gym?

If you’re going to train your GM yourself, start with the most important things: member billing, member management and member retention.

Step 1

Give the GM your gym playbook to review. If you don’t have a playbook, you aren’t ready to hire a GM.

Step 2

Train the GM on your gym-management system. Take as long as you need to make sure the GM is comfortable. Every minute spent troubleshooting and calling help lines is money poured down the drain.

Step 3

Train the GM on your member-management software, including your customer relationship management tools, Facebook groups, coaching software, website, email software and texting app. You can’t ever risk shutting off the flow of new clients (or risk current clients slipping out unnoticed).

Step 4

Get the GM a gift card for the store where you buy lightbulbs, mops and cleaning supplies (like Home Depot or whatever). That way the GM can solve problems without coming to you.

Step 5

Perform the five audits with the GM. This is a great time to find holes in your processes and upgrade instead of just training a GM, fixing stuff yourself and retraining the GM later. The five audits: client journey, operations, facility, marketing, sales. Listen to gym owner Jason Cohen walk through them here: Two-Brain Radio.

And here’s Part 1 of Jay’s audit on YouTube (the other four audits are on our channel, too!):

Step 6

Book Career Roadmap meetings with your staff. Have the GM sit in and help plan their growth.

Step 7

Set up monthly mentorship calls with the GM. This person must have a mentor (just as you did). You can be that mentor or you can get someone outside your gym to fill the role (as I do).

Don’t forget: The GM hasn’t learned all the hard lessons you have, the GM hasn’t read the books, and the GM doesn’t have your education or experience. You must treat your manager like a new entrepreneur and assume you’re working with a blank slate. This process is great practice for mentoring others!

The post How to Hire a GM: A Step-by-Step Guide for Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Starting a Personal Training Business From Scratch: How to Do It

Whether you are a fitness expert, an exercise buff or an exercise entrepreneur, starting a personal training business is possible with the proper approach and planning.

When you finish this article, you should have a sound understanding of what it takes to:

Establish a personal training business.Avoid the pitfalls you might encounter.Make your personal training business sustainable.
Why Do You Need a Business Plan?

Owning a successful personal training business can be an enriching experience. By helping your clients reach their fitness goals or overcome their physical weaknesses, you can develop strong bonds that could last a lifetime.

However, the business part of the venture will make or break your personal training career. It’s a sobering fact that 90 percent of all startup businesses fail, and personal training businesses are no exception. No matter how much your clients love you, your business practices will determine the fate of your enterprise.

Having formal business training is excellent, but you can learn as you go if you have a good business plan. For this reason, we will continue as if we were putting together your personal training business plan.

Planning Your Personal Training Business

Before you start planning, you should determine what your vision is for your personal training business. Do you see it as a resource for the community or an industry disruptor? And who is your ideal client? College-age athletes, busy professionals, seniors or some other group? The answer will have a significant effect on how you set up your business.

Also, it is essential to decide what outcome you want for your business. For instance, you might want to develop it into an expandable model that leads to employees, franchises or satellites. On the other hand, you might want to keep it a one-person operation. Creating a clear definition of your vision and mission for your business will help shape the planning and operation.

Because you will be the founder of this personal training business, its success relies on you. These are some questions you can ask yourself before moving forward:

Am I comfortable in a leadership role?Am I a teacher and mentor?Do I consider myself a problem solver?Am I a good salesperson? Am I hard to discourage?

If you can affirmatively answer these questions, you are ready to plot out the process of starting your personal training business.

Choosing Your Personal Training Business Model

The first task in starting your business is deciding what business model is best for delivering your service. This decision will dictate your initial and ongoing costs, operational planning, marketing, and revenue potential. With this in mind, here are some major personal training business models that may suit your background, training and ambitions.

Operating in a Private Gym That Charges You a Per Session Rate

Operating in a private gym is a low-cost way to start your personal training business. In this set-up, you train clients using the gym’s equipment and facilities just as the staff personal trainers do. Some gyms allow you to solicit their members and others don’t. Either way, you are responsible for your clients’ safety and liable for any damages attributed to you or them. Most private gyms require you to carry liability insurance.

Typically, your only daily cash outlay would be a per session fee. These fees are usually reasonable unless you’re working in a popular gym. Many small gym owners like this arrangement because they can offer personal training services without incurring salary, liability and tax expenses. Plus, they usually require that you become a paying member—or that your clients become members if you bring them in from outside the gym.

Pros and Cons

Private gym arrangements have the following pros:

Low entry cost and no maintenance cost—equipment is provided and cared for by the gym.No lease, managerial or operational expenses.Convenient.Flexible: You can switch gyms at any time with no transition costs.

Here are the cons of private gym arrangements.

It’s challenging to build a brand or create a unique gym experience.Sometimes you will face stiff competition. On occasion, other trainers might try to steal your clients.You are bound to the gym’s operating days and hours.During peak hours, you might have to wait for specific pieces of equipment to become available.It’s challenging to develop a client list that you can sell to someone else.

This business model works best when you are a regular gym member and have a friendly rapport with the staff and owner.

If you go to a client’s home, that’s a premium service. Make sure your rate reflects it!
Training Clients in Their Homes or On-Site Facilities

Training clients in their homes or condo gyms would be the cheapest way to conduct a personal training business—except for the travel expenses. There are no per-session fees or maintenance costs. But you must account for gas prices, parking fees, car maintenance and down time due to travel.

You can offset the travel cost by charging in-home clients more or securing other clients who live in the same neighborhood or building. For this reason, some personal trainers work as on-site trainers for large condo complexes or resorts. A contract or monthly fee might be part of these types of arrangements. But ongoing fees are rarely involved.

If you decide to train clients directly in their homes, you will initially pay a few hundred dollars for the exercise equipment. Inexpensive resistance bands work well for this purpose. In some cases, some of your clients may have well-equipped home gyms. 

Starting a Personal Training Business in Your Home

Without travel-related expenses, in-home training is arguably the least expensive way to deliver your service. Some trainers use their garages, backyards, condo gyms or ad hoc gyms to train their clients. This business model gives you more control of equipment choices, your business environment and operating hours.

You will need to acquire and maintain your own equipment, and you’ll have to give up part of your home to the business. If that’s the case, your business should pay you for the use of your home. That might not be possible when you start out, but keep it in mind for the future. An accountant can help you figure out what exact options are available to you.

You must also have insurance, and it’s worth checking into local zoning to make sure your neighbors don’t call in the bylaw officers because your clients are taking up all the parking spaces.

If you don’t have a problem separating work from private time, training clients at your home might appeal to you. It is low cost and low risk. However, it has unique challenges to growth.

Maybe your ideal client is online!
Starting an Online Personal Training Business

The advances in internet-based technology have introduced an exciting new personal training business model. Live video chat programs allow you to deliver your training online from anywhere in the world to almost anyone in the world with compatible technology.

Although this venue is still in the early stages, there are many ways you can use online platforms to enhance your business with:

Non-personalized video fitness programs. You can record a series of exercise instruction sessions and market subscriptions to them.Hybrid online and in-person training. This is an excellent benefit for clients who don’t like missing personal training appointments because of vacations, deployments or quarantines.Online group personal training. Live online chat services like Zoom, Skype and Google Meets allow you to train clients in separate locations simultaneously.Customized programming.

Get the Two-Brain ebook “How to Add Online Training in 24 Hours”

Entry costs for this online personal training business model are low. The initial cost generally ranges from $300 to $500 for a webcam with a tripod, a microphone, lights and a reflector, exercise equipment and props. If you are short on cash, you can use the built-in equipment on your laptop or desk computer until you can upgrade.

More info on media equipment: “Best Gear for Online Classes”

When it comes to software, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet and other cloud-based chat platforms will do if you’re leading sessions. With some variations, free versions of communications software usually offer hosting of unlimited one-on-one or group sessions (sometimes with time limits).

For example, Zoom is very popular in the fitness world, and the free version will serve you well for one-on-one sessions. If you have groups, you’ll hit a 40-minute time limit with the free version. If you want to go longer with groups, add about 1 GB of recording and enable social media streaming, the upgrade to the pro subscription is only about $14 per month. Otherwise, your only monthly cost would be the internet connection.

Other platforms exist and have features specifically for fitness trainers. The cost for coaching software varies widely—click here to see our 2020 review of the top platforms.

Remember: Online coaches don’t always lead workouts live. Many provide programming and accountability instead. For more info, listen to this podcast: “Online Coaching: Pro Tips for Excellence and Efficiency.”

Things You Will Need to Start a Personal Training Business

Allocate most of the initial cost for starting a personal training enterprise to business essentials. Here is a rundown of the main requirements.

Personal Training Certification

Along with providing knowledge and coaching skills, a credential in personal training gives you a professional advantage in dealing with clients and the public. Plus, this accomplishment qualifies you for insurance.

The initial cost of a personal training certificate ranges between $500 and $2,000. Some credential institutions require maintenance and renewal costs along with continuing education requirements. Some of the best personal training certifiers are listed in the table below.

CertifierPrerequisites and Renewal RequirementsPrice (USD)American Council on Exercise (ACE)Age 18, high-school grad., CPR and AED cert., government-issued photo ID; 20 hours of continuing education, $129 renewal fee every 2 years$509 – $899 (financing avail.)Athletics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA)CPR and AED cert., valid photo ID; 15 hours of continuing education, $99 every 2 years, $399 to recertify for life$499, or $124 per month for 4 monthsAmerican College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)Age 18, CPR and AED cert., valid photo ID, high-school grad.; 45 continuing education credits, $45 renewal fee every 3 years$349CrossFit Level 1Attendance, full course participation; valid for 5 years$1,000International Sports Science Association (ISSA)Age 18 or high-school grad., CPR and AED cert., government-issued photo ID; renewal free every 2 years with 20 hours of ISSA continuing education$69 per month and up for 12 monthsNational Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)High-school grad, CPR and AED cert., government-issued photo ID; 20 contact hours of continuing education, $99 renewal fee every 2 years or recertify for life for $329$674 -$2,024

More info: “The Best Certifications for Personal Trainers”

Business Bank Account, Business License and Insurance

Commingling your business funds with your private funds is a recipe for a tax-time nightmare. At the very least, it can lead to money mismanagement, and confusion as to whether you’re making a profit or taking a heavy loss can lead to disaster. For these reasons, a business bank account is a valuable tool.

Before you open your business bank account, register for a business name. This move helps you distinguish your personal life from your business activities even more. For example, when you open your business bank account under your business name, it will appear on all the payments, bills and statements. As a result, your business record keeping will be much easier.

For added protection, you should register your personal training business as a limited liability company (LLC). This simple and relatively inexpensive step separates your business liability and finances from your personal affairs: A client or any other party cannot go after your personal assets in a lawsuit against your business.

Another essential form of protection is personal training insurance. It helps cover the cost of client injuries or other mishaps. For $200 to $300 per year, you can get up to $2 million in general liability insurance. Many credential issuers are connected to insurers; for example, NASM partners with Next Insurance Inc. to offer trainers professional and general liability insurance for as little as $11 a month.

Never forget this: Helping clients accomplish goals is very valuable.
How Much Should You Charge?

On average, personal trainers charge between $35 to $100 per hour—a very wide range.

To find your starting point, figure out what you need to charge to earn the income you need. Then ensure your services provide the value that justifies your rate. If you can add more value for your clients, you may be able to enter the market at a higher price point. Examples of adding value include perks like exercise/nutrition packages or off-hour sessions.

If your expenses demand you set a higher price than the standard rate, you can focus your marketing on couples, pairs or threesomes.

For more info on personal trainer wages, read “How Much Does a Personal Trainer Make?”

How Do You Get Personal Training Clients?

As you start your personal training business, the most important and challenging business task is getting clients. But new technology has made this an exciting time to start a personal training business. There are many ways to channel your efforts and money to reach potential clients.

Identifying your target market is a crucial task in marketing your personal training business. Essentially, your target market is a segment of people who are most likely to become your clients. You can group them by age, gender, occupation and many other categories. Generally, it is easier to truly define your target market after operating your business for a while. In the meantime, you can consider who you like working with and do some online research to find out which market segments are attracted to your personal training business model.

Once you have reasonably identified a target market, you can attract clients with old and new marketing techniques.

Old-School Marketing and Advertising Techniques for Trainers

Although there are many new options available to promote your business, here are some long-standing techniques that still work.

Telling everyone you know that you’re starting a personal training business.Circulating business cards, brochures, free consultation coupons.Joining networking groups, giving free seminars, organizing free walk groups and exercise sessions.Wearing T-shirts and hats with your business name on it.Starting by recruiting potential clients from your inner circle of family and friends.

Read: “Personal Trainer Business Cards: Everything Coaches Need to Know”

New-School Marketing and Advertising Techniques for Coaches

Your first online marketing move should be to build a website for your personal training business. For a very low setup cost and monthly expense, website builders such as Wix, Squarespace and Monster provide easy-to-use tools and templates to make very professional-looking websites. They also offer domain names, business email addresses and traffic analytics.

After you build the website, you can try these options to fill up your client schedule.

Fill your website with helpful content that appeals to your target market.Create exercise instructional videos on YouTube and Instagram.Develop a social-media presence by posting exercise-related content and joining fitness groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest (be sure to make impressive profiles).Create a profile on Yelp and get clients to write positive reviews on your business.Create a Google Business account and get clients to write good reviews.Use digital marketing.

Consumer service websites like Yelp and Thumbtack provide free listings for service providers. With their per-click advertising, you only pay for the potential customers who visit your website or call you. Plus, their filtering tools allow you to focus on your target market. Facebook is another platform that offers many tools to a marketer. Remember this: If you choose to spend money on ads, track your metrics so you know if you’re getting a return on your investment.

For our “Affinity Marketing Guide” and “Free Digital Marketing Course,” click here.

Your marketing plan will be influenced by your ideal client.
Making Your Personal Training Business Profitable

When you consider all factors, your net profit potential depends on how well you balance your total monthly revenue and your ongoing expenses. This fact highlights the importance of maintaining good accounting practices.

Fortunately, you can invest in inexpensive accounting or bookkeeping software to help you keep track and record your transactions and balances. Also, payment apps like PayPal, Venmo and Zelle do an excellent job collecting, processing and recording your transactions.

The Road to Success in Personal Training

With a thoughtful plan, starting a personal training business isn’t that hard.

Due diligence before you take the plunge can help you profit in a lucrative market by avoiding the pitfalls that sink most startups. Being prepared and staying informed of developments in this industry can give you an advantage.

Two-Brain Business can help you along the way. For a detailed done-for-you business plan for personal trainers, click here.

About the Author—John Burson successful ran a personal training business for over 20 years, and he has written volumes of published articles on business entrepreneurship, finance and the fitness industry.

The post Starting a Personal Training Business From Scratch: How to Do It appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

DIY, DFY and the Perfect Balance for Entrepreneurs

You can’t do everything yourself. In the previous post in this series, I shared the true cost of DIY.

It’s tempting to just hire someone else to do stuff for you—like an ad agency. But that’s expensive. And let’s face it: An agency is not really incentivized to optimize your marketing, just to spend your money on ads.

When we don’t know how to do something, it’s tempting to say, “You handle this and I’ll pay you for it.” But that creates a blind spot in your business, and when the DFY option stops working, you have to start from scratch.

Your time as an entrepreneur falls on a spectrum of value.

On one end of the spectrum, you’re doing everything yourself (DIY).

On the other end, you’re outsourcing everything (DFY).

In the middle is done with you: DWY. That’s the perfect balance. I’ll tell you how it works, and then I’ll share a few examples.

DWY Details

First, you learn how the process is done. You do the process once or twice yourself, following a template. Then you alter the template a little and record the process as your own.

Then you teach the process to someone else and monitor progress. If the person is doing well, you check in less. If the person is not doing well, you can mentor or replace.

Then you move to the next process.

Because we start with simple processes, we call this “climbing the value ladder.” The first rung, for many gym owners, is cleaning the gym. So that’s my first example.

DWY: Cleaning, Retention, Sales

You start by cleaning the gym yourself. As you do it, you try to optimize your time (you can even run a clock). You write down your optimized process and teach someone else to do it. You pay the person for cleaning.

Every month, you evaluate the work according to your checklist. If the person does a good job, you evaluate quarterly instead of monthly. If the person does a poor job, you can mentor or replace.

Then you reinvest your own time into something else—let’s say you need to improve your retention. (Don’t worry: Your mentor will help you decide your next priority.)

You start by measuring your retention. Then you get a retention plan and follow that specifically (Two-Brain clients use a plan called “The First 90,” which is a very specific client journey template).

After guiding a couple of clients through their first 90 days, you tweak the template a bit: You raise the price of your on-ramp or you add some group sessions. You measure your retention again and find it’s improved. That improvement is worth an extra $300 per client to you, so you hire and train someone else to manage the client journey—we call this person a client success manager (CSM).

You evaluate monthly, then quarterly. And you reinvest your own saved time into the next thing. Let’s say that thing is sales—increasing your signup rate.

You start by downloading our No Sweat Intro template and watching our training on NSIs. You practice with your mentor, and you use the template for a couple of clients.

Then you tweak one thing and measure the effect. When your close rate rises, that improvement is worth an extra $500 per month, for example. So you begin training someone else to do sales.

You measure close rates monthly, and then quarterly, until the salesperson is as good as you are. And then you invest your saved time in the next thing—for which we have a template waiting.

This is “done with you,” and it’s the fastest way to progress in business without skipping any steps.

Skipping Steps and Stalling Growth

What do I mean by “skipping steps”? Outsourcing before you have a proven process.

For example, you could hire a coach to clean your gym. You could say, “I’ll pay you $20 to clean the gym every night!”

But his idea of “clean” is not your idea of “clean.”

Maybe he’s better than you and the work takes three hours every night. He’s not going to accept $20 for long. Or maybe he’s worse than you, and the gym isn’t clean—but he thinks it is. You’ve moved on to improving your retention, and the cleaner is doing a bad job, so you fire him and step back into cleaning—and your retention doesn’t improve.

Or let’s say you outsource your lead-nurture process to a virtual assistant.

You think, “They’re going to do way better at this than I am!” And you shell out the $1,000 per month.

The VA starts texting your leads for you and encouraging them to get in the gym. The first month, you actually get fewer leads—but there’s a learning curve, right?

The second month, your appointment-booking rate gets back to normal—but goes no higher.

The third month, you get more appointments booked, but you notice most people are unprepared to sign up or they don’t really know what your service is all about. So you talk to the VA, who “tweaks the script.”

By the fourth month, you’re worried about the expense of the VA. It’s costing you money instead of making money for you. It’s become an expense instead of an investment. So you fire the VA and take the reins back.

You turn off your advertising until you sort out your lead-nurture process. You have to start from scratch, and it takes you two months to build your client journey, set up your texting and start getting good leads again.

That’s a six-month black hole for growth. You really can’t afford to put your business on pause every time you have to fix a step you skipped.

Choose Speed

DWY is the fastest road to growth because you get significant forward momentum without having to backtrack to fix problems. Mentorship is a done-with-you process because I want you to keep going forward without going in circles.

Sometimes you can hire an outside agency to fix your problems. But these are always temporary solutions. You need to know how to change the tires on your car even if you have AAA.

To talk with our team about mentorship and DWY, click here.

The post DIY, DFY and the Perfect Balance for Entrepreneurs appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

DIY: The True Cost for the Fitness Entrepreneur

I wasted $100,000 on staff pay before anyone told me to say, “Here’s how to do it.”

I hired three full-time coaches, one right after another. I thought, “These are knowledgeable experts. They are good at exercise technique. They are the best people to coach others.”

I also thought, “They are like me. They will show up 15 minutes early and stay to clean up after class. They will be happy to wear a staff shirt. They won’t swear at people in their class. They will check people in and accept their payments.”

When they failed to do one of those things, I got mad. I expected better. The anger built up until I started micromanaging them—and then eventually fired them.

When I found my first mentor, he said, “Write a staff playbook. Tell people what to do.”

So I did. And bingo—every staff person got better because no one had to guess anymore.

Selling Yourself Short?

When I opened my gym, I had to learn how to sell. I didn’t expect that—as a personal trainer, I got a lot of referrals and didn’t have to convince anyone. More than 90 percent of the people I met signed up. But when I opened a gym, my “close rate” dropped to less than 40 percent.

I understood what I was selling: CrossFit. But people would walk into the gym, see a giant pirate flag, smell the stinky mats, see chalk dust floating in the air, read a bunch of language they didn’t understand and say, “This is not for me.”

I remember one of my first walk-in prospects. Her name was Tiffany. She came in through a side door because my main entrance wasn’t clearly marked. She had to dodge a couple of guys who were lifting during “open gym time.” She spotted me at the desk and walked over. I didn’t notice her because the music was too loud. I snapped to attention and tried to “sell” her on CrossFit. We walked into a quieter corner. She saw chains hanging from a power cage, pointed at them and said, “What the f*** are those?”

I thought she wanted me to explain accommodating resistance to her. I got really excited and talked for 30 minutes straight. She tried her best to leave without being rude. But she left, told all of her friends CrossFit was for crazy people, and that was it. The funny part: I was sure I’d just convinced her to sign up!

For the first two years of gym ownership, I didn’t know how to sell. Usually, I just told people that what they were doing was dumb and that they should let me tell them what to do. I was polite but long winded and bad at signing them up. I actually bragged to one new client that I was the “world’s worst salesman.” Over those two years, I signed up fewer than 40 people out of the 100 who walked through the door.

Then a mentor said, “You need to sit down and ask them about their goals. Try asking them these three questions. Keep the conversation under 15 minutes.”

Bam—I started signing up twice as many people. Of course, I’d already blown it with over 60 people, and that cost me around $5,000 per month for a couple of years.

You Don’t Have to Do Everything

I probably don’t have to tell you about my adventures in learning about Facebook ads. Fortunately, by that time I’d learned to ask “who has already solved this problem?” and buy their playbook.

As an entrepreneur, it’s very tempting to want to do everything yourself. But your primary leverage isn’t money; it’s time. So while there’s value to knowing how everything works in your business, most entrepreneurs never grow because they spend all their time on the wrong stuff. They do the low-value work that someone else could do for $10 an hour and never do the work that actually makes them more money.

Yes, you’re smart enough to do everything. Yes, you’re smart enough to “figure it out.” I hope you’re wise enough to choose not to do everything. It took me five years to realize that I’d actually save time by hiring a mentor instead of trying trial and error.

But the big epiphany came when I realized that I was actually wasting a ton of money by trying to DIY everything. Mistakes are expensive.

In the next post in this series, I”m going to tell you the difference between DIY and DFY and why neither is ideal. Then I’m going to tell you how to hit the perfect balance of knowledge, delegation and action: done with you (DWY).

The post DIY: The True Cost for the Fitness Entrepreneur appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Keep Clients for Years Instead of Months

Mike (00:02):

Here’s what we know. If you don’t keep clients for at least 14 months, you’re going to spend all your time marketing to replace the departed. What if you kept the average client for almost four years? Answer, you’d be in a very good spot. Today on Two-Brain Radio, I talked to a retention leader who’s going to tell you how he does it.

Chris (00:18):

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.

Mike (00:55):

This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m Mike Warkentin. wherever you’re watching or listening, don’t forget to subscribe, ring the notifications bell and hammer a like on this. We really appreciate it. Now. Length of engagement. It’s a key stat. Not churn length of engagement or LEG for short. Basic churn rate calculations assume all clients are equally likely to leave at any time in fitness. That is absolutely not the case. Length of engagement calculations show clients are more likely to leave at very specific times. The gyms that know when these periods occur can take the steps they need to improve their retention. For example, in 2020, we discovered if you can get a client past the eight-month mark, you’ll probably keep them for 14 months. That’s a huge amount of revenue. If you can keep them past that 14-month mark, you can probably keep them for 24 months. Again, that is huge. Nick Seabock of CrossFit Off the Grid keeps clients even longer than that. 41 months. He was one of Two-Brain’s length of engagement leaders for September. And he’s here to tell you how he does it. Nick, welcome. How are you doing today?

Nick (01:51):

Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

Mike (01:53):

I am pumped. Sales are sexy. Retention is more important. It’s one of those things where, right. Everybody wants to sell stuff and market, but retention is way more important because it costs less to retain a client than it does to acquire one. So we’re going to pump you for information today and hopefully you can help some gym owners keep clients longer. So here’s the deal. I want to ask you about your history first, because you have a really interesting twist in your story. You’re actually the third owner of the business, but you still have retention from the garage days. So I need to understand before we get into everything, give me the short history of Off the Grid. So we have the background.

Nick (02:24):

Yeah, absolutely. So really Off the Grid is a really unique place. It started in, I want to say 2007, with Mark Saber and, very early days, started in the garage. Probably did Fran one too many times, really, you know, just kind of seeing what stuck, but there was something to it. He opened a building, and that’s the building I’m in today. I first walked in there in 2015. So Mark started Off the Grid. My mentor and coach Kenny. He also worked out in the garage. He didn’t coach there, but that’s where he did a lot of a lot of his fitnessing. I found my CrossFit journey started in Kenny’s garage. Kenny Barber. He was the second owner after Mark. I started working out in Kenny’s garage.

Nick (03:23):

He opened his own gym. Didn’t work out, ended up moving to Off the Grid in 2015, he was the head coach and manager there. And I was kind of in a transition getting out of a career, I was a chef before all this. And, it wasn’t very healthy or conducive to my lifestyle, or what I saw for myself. So I kind of put it out there. Kenny brought me on board in 2015 to start coaching. That was also my first experience at Off the Grid. There’s a memory I have of standing there and watching people work out and it was just, there was something to it and it stuck with me and I said, I want to be here. And, quickly started with open gym on Sundays and then started picking up more classes, fast forward to 2018.

Nick (04:12):

They called me and offered to sell the gym. They said, Hey, either we’re going to close or you’re taking it over. And I said, well, this is my home. So let’s do it. Worked hard to, you know, get to that point and set up for taking ownership in 2019. Kenny was still coaching. He was helping with programming, Mark, he’s the magical unicorn every once in a while. He’ll pop up out of nowhere and work out and disappear and we won’t see him for a year, but he’s still got it. So it’s still, you know, it’s still pretty tight knit group, even after all these years.

Mike (04:49):

So it’s interesting. I’ve been around long enough. I’ve talked to a lot of old school gym owners, people who sold their businesses. And, you know, I think of several in particular told me that they sold these labors of love to someone and then they bled clients and they actually had to watch their gyms just bleed out under new ownership. So how concerned were you about that when you bought the gym, like, were you worried in that transition that your clients or existing clients were going to be like, no more Nick?

Nick (05:16):

I would be, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have that thought. I think that’s something, if I’m being honest, a lot of us struggle with daily of that fear of everybody could just walk out the door tomorrow, then what? Right. I think that’s something intrinsically we all deal with. Sometimes we don’t want to admit it, but it’s there. We gotta be honest. It happens. Unfortunately that did happen in 2017. There was a divide. We lost probably upwards of 40 to 50 members. A new gym opened up down a mile down the street. That’s a long story for another day.

Nick (05:53):

Yes, so it did happen. And, it wasn’t under my watch, but I was there. I was, you know, coaching every day and I was still very, very much a part of the community and trying to keep Off the Grid alive. I knew in my gut that was a special place. It gave me, it helped me on my journey and I know it did a lot of good for me. And I wanted to see that for a lot of people and do my best to keep that afloat. So when I took over in 2019, my commitment was not only to not have that happen again, but to lead and be a leader and communicate and not leave, you know, no questions, no guessing, no, you know, people over here doing whatever programming and this happening in that it’s one cohesive unit. So that in my brain, that was OK. That’s step one. As long as I’m clear and open and honest and communicating, I think we’ll be good.

Mike (06:53):

So now here’s the big question. So you went through that experience where you saw 40 to 50 people bleed off in a, you know, the gym wars as we call them. But so what did you do to ensure a smooth transition to prevent that kind of thing from happening as you came in? Like, what was your plan and did it work? Obviously it did, you’ve got 41 month length of engagement, but tell me the details of this thing.

Nick (07:13):

So transitioning from the management and head coach role into now, a owner, it took time, it took work. It took relearning who I was and my relationship now to not only the gym, but the members and my family and, what, you know, taking off the hats. And I was very much the person that was doing it all, cleaning, you know, I like things a certain way. I’m slightly OCD, members make fun of me cause I walk in and they turn the dumbbells.

Mike (07:47):

I hear you, dude, I’m the exact same way.

Nick (07:50):

I couldn’t if I wanted to survive mentally, but also from a business side, I knew deep down, I couldn’t do that, and continue to do so. But step one was sending out the letter to the members and saying, Hey, you know, nothing’s really changing, but I plan on doing X, Y, and Z. And that first piece was just communicating and saying, Hey, I’m transparent. I’m going to keep you guys up to date on everything and where we’re going, where we’re headed and lay out plans and all that. At the time, I didn’t know exactly how to do so. I kind of had ideas just based on what was working before. but I also made the commitment to, Hey, I want to do this right. And that’s where I started looking around for different, you know, mentorship really?

Mike (08:41):

Yeah. And people knew you, I guess, like you’d been there for a while. So it wasn’t like you were a brand new person just getting bombed in from the outside. You were a part of the community. Right. But when you started to take over, were there any, like obviously you were there and it wasn’t going to be sharp changes direction, but were there some turns that you were going to make that maybe you thought, oh, people are going to say, I’m not sure how this is going to go over.

Nick (09:00):

Yes. And that was the start of the hard conversations. And it’s funny because a lot of these little things I did based off of my personal journey of Nick and the growth I went through, you know, through my mid twenties, into my thirties and transitioning from, you know, married, divorced now, married, kids and that whole growth and everything kind of mirrored each other, my growth in the gym from open gym to management to now owner was also reflected back from me as a human. So I knew in my gut, OK, there’s some things I don’t like. There’s some hard conversations gonna have to have, just like those dumbbells, I want this gym to look and feel a certain way. in 2019, the second piece, the first piece was being in 2015, experiencing Off the Grid and saying, Hey, this is it.

Nick (09:51):

The second piece was the Open, the transition from 2018 to 2019. A lot of people talk about it, but there was something different. And I remember standing on the floor for the first workout and it just wasn’t the same. Open. wasn’t the same. I remember standing there and just not wanting to feel that and I said, Hey, Nick, what do you need to do to recapture the magic of the Open? And that’s where I found Two- Brain. That’s where I found the intramural guide. What sent me along the path of Two-Brain. And here I am today, which is crazy to me.

Mike (10:26):

Yeah. And listeners, if you are looking for a way to re-energize your Open, or generate some revenue, you know, and/or generate revenue, I encourage you to get that guide, the intramural open guide, Two-Brain puts that out, and it is fantastic. It will recharge your entire community and you’ll make some money off of it while everyone has a good time. So Nick, I’m glad you found that one as a way into Two-Brain.

Nick (10:47):

I can’t speak highly enough of that. That’s what hooked me in. That’s what drew me in. And that’s what started the process and answering all the questions. So back to the original question I had, you know, those conversations I had to have, there were some members, you know, there were still some weed clients, and they didn’t really fit what I was looking to do as far as the cohesiveness. Right. I knew I wanted people to be committed and I had to lead from the top and be upfront, be transparent. So I sat down and I said, Hey, this is my expectations. Some of them wanted to be coaches. I met, you know, right when I took over, Hey guys, even if they’d been coaching her for five, 10 years, I gave everybody a contract.

Nick (11:32):

I gave everybody expectations. And 99% of them met that with no problem. And then there’s the 1%. And that’s where I started. That’s where things started telling them, just being honest, Hey, it’s nothing personal, but I’m not Nick the coach anymore. Or the manager, I’m the owner. And this is my, this is me. This is my life. And I don’t know if you’re a good fit for where we’re going. Nothing personal and, you know, let them work through it and go through the emotions and all the things. But those are the hard things to do. And that’s my advice is you gotta, you gotta do it. You gotta do it.

Mike (12:10):

What I’m getting from right off the top here is first, you know, you came in, you communicated, which is so important and you communicated internally, and, you know, obviously with your staff, I mean, sorry to your members and your staff, but then the second thing I’m getting from you is commitment, right? And you had a commitment to a vision and to like following through on that vision and doing the hard stuff that comes with it, because those conversations with the 1% are never fun. Right? You gotta have some, you know, you’re going to have some tears, some anger, it’s not fun. but you did it. So you’ve got those two things related to that commitment is like, you decided to find a mentor to help you through it. And that’s something that, you know, in the early days I didn’t do that.

Mike (12:43):

I just banged my head against a wall. I’m like, I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. I made endless mistakes, you know? And then finally, you know, I ended up working with Chris and Two-Brain and things started quickly turned around and I didn’t have to make all the mistakes the same way. Let’s move into from the history. Now let’s move into like, what are the key elements of your current retention plan? So what we’ve got is we’ve got some of the background of what you’d laid the groundwork to set the basis for like retention of almost four years at 41 months. Tell me about the stuff that’s keeping that going. What are you doing right now? Day-to-day?

Nick (13:13):

So I think the easiest is social media. That is, it’s free. You might need to pay for some software to keep you organized. And up-to-date X, Y, and Z, but it’s a free marketing platform that anybody can use. Within that. There’s still a purpose. So for us, our social media, our goal, our mission is just to tell our members’ story day to day, celebrate bright spots, put them on a podium. All the things Two-Brain talks about. As humans, it’s basic human wants, needs and desires. We want to be loved. We want to be seen, we want to be heard. That’s easy. And that gives you, just take a picture of somebody and put it on your it’s. They love it. But, and it’s not from a marketing standpoint per se of like, look at us how cool we are. It’s this person went from maybe not ever being able to do a pull-up. And now they’re doing five to 10 kipping pull-ups or they got their first rope climb. Any number of things, easy to do, put it on a little whiteboard, take a picture in front of your logo, put it out there, tell their story.

Mike (14:23):

How long does it take to do that?

Nick (14:26):

Minutes. Right after the workout. Come over here. Let me get a picture real quick, I’m gonna you up on Facebook.

Mike (14:31):

And it’s too pronged, right? Because like that is whether you like it or not. It is a marketing tool because people will see that and be like, oh, smiling, happy person who kind of looks like me does like, maybe I could be that person, but it’s even more, it’s a retention tool because everyone, like you said, everyone loves to see themselves celebrated. And if you do that and put your members on a podium as Chris Cooper has written about many times, you’re going to have increased retention. Listeners and viewers, if you have two minutes after this podcast, go out, find a member, put that member up on Facebook, Instagram, whatever, celebrate him or her, make it happen. Do that today. Keep going, Nick.

Nick (15:05):

You could build upon that. It doesn’t even have to be things that happen within the gym. It could be outside of the gym. They went and hiked five miles for the first time or those things. The gym’s a tool. What we’re really trying to do is make people harder to kill, make us last a little bit longer and do some cool stuff along the way. So if you find stuff on their Facebook, ask them, Hey, can I use that? I’m so proud of you. That’s awesome. It would be great to post about.

Mike (15:29):

You see content. They almost always say yes, and you don’t have to even take the picture.

Nick (15:33):

They publish it for you.

Mike (15:35):

And it takes like 20 seconds.

Nick (15:37):

Absolutely. Copy and paste. And then kind of, I think also too, within the community itself, if you do have an active group on Facebook per se, you know, celebrate the bright spots on Friday, I know we do it in the growth group. Do it in your private groups. People love that. Shout them out. We do it in class, but not everybody’s there in class. So if you do it on your Facebook and you know, if you do emails a lot, put it in there.

Mike (16:06):

Listers. I’m going to give you a tip on that one. You can’t just do it one time and expect it to take off. You have to do bright spots every single Friday or whatever day you choose and do it relentlessly. And you’re gonna have to lead from the front. So it’s not enough to say, Hey, post your bright spots. You need to get your coaches and you yourself need to post some bright spots. And then people will eventually start to do it. If you just make a half-ass commitment to it, you’re not going to get results and people won’t buy in and it’ll die. Do it every time, post a lot. And then like, and comment and celebrate people when they do. That’s the only way to grow that thing. All right, what else you got?

Nick (16:39):

So we do, I do a monthly recap. Just a quick, I have a Google doc. I just copy and paste each month update based off of new members, PRs. If we had a test week, keep them up to date on, we’re headed, when test week is going to be, and then also events. If we have any events coming up on the calendar, again, just like you said, it’s not just posting once and forget about it. That’s anything, anything you write, any blogs. You could wrote a blog five years ago, guess what? You probably have a hundred new people that never read it. Republish it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Constant communication. That’s key. It’s key.

Mike (17:18):

When I was running a gym and there were times when I was stressed about whatever aspects of the business, I realized that I hadn’t talked to my members in a while. That’s a huge mistake. Right? And I’ve heard it from other people, not just you, but just the idea of like, just texting members randomly, whether it’s like, Hey, I haven’t seen you or, Hey, I saw you working really hard in that workout. And I was just wanting to mention that, that communication, those touch points are so important. It goes beyond like, ah, you know, push your knees out in the squat. It’s like, Hey, I saw you. You know, I see you. And I recognize you, that interaction with members has a huge, huge effect that you can’t measure. But it’s obviously there, right? So I love your communication plan.

Chris (17:57):

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Nick (18:32):

I think that is something, that might get forgotten. For me, it’s important. You know, it’s very important for the coaches. I let them know too. Hey, it’s two touch points. Say their name a couple of times. And the touch points don’t have to be, Hey, you know, these are tempo squats so make sure X, Y, and Z. How’s your mom doing? I know your mom was in the hospital for two weeks. How she’s doing. Those things. That’s what people remember. Oh my God, how’d you remember that? We’re referring back to, I had a member who was sick. They joined was doing great. And the last workout they did ended up being when they came back a repeat. So they were out for two weeks. They came back, it was a retest and it was the same workout. When I said, Hey, last time we did X, Y, and Z.

Nick (19:23):

Let’s try to do this. And they’re like, how do you remember when I did? I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little crazy, but like, so you can hear love, know and trust. You know, you have to put a little bit of effort there. If that’s not your go-to, I can’t say it enough. It’s important to meet people where they’re at. And that might not just be their PRs during the workouts. It might be what’s more important. And that could be family. That could be, you know, their pets. That could be their trips, whatever that is.

Mike (20:00):

Yeah. You need to get to know your members. And that’s one of the things that Two-Brain Coaching has talked about. It goes beyond like, you know, functional movements performed at high intensity. It goes beyond, you know, squat mechanics, tempo squats, and all this other stuff. It’s actually being a good human being and interacting on a level. And we forget about that sometimes. Cause we’re, you know, we, as coaches, we can be obsessed with rate of force and all this other stuff that nobody cares about, right. What makes us probably better coaches honestly, is being able to interact and like, you know, hang out with each other and people want to be around you. And if you have any relationship and you don’t remember like how many, how often you’re gonna forget your best friend’s like favorite music or, you know, or address or the name of his or her dog or whatever.

Mike (20:38):

It’s not going to happen. And you kind of develop that friendly relationship with your clients. If you do that, they’re going to want to stay a lot around longer because they’re not quitting a gym and they’re not walking away from a coach who’s, you know, just tells them to put your weight back on your heels. That’s quitting a relationship. That’s way harder to do. So you’re clearly doing that. You’re creating relationships with your clients and the OCD that you talked about, which I have also definitely helps with that. Cause you remember stuff. So I want to ask you this. It sounds like, cause we all agree that retention is important. We all agree the communication’s important. We all agree the relationships are important, but often we just forget because we’re busy entrepreneurs, gym owners, how do you systematize this stuff so that you like actually have, you know, OK, I need to text these members or someone needs to, or how do you get this stuff done in an operational standpoint?

Nick (21:26):

Once we laid the groundwork and started reinforcing the foundation, I worked with my mentor, Jeff Jucha, shout out to Jeff, amazing human and wonderful person. He’s amazing. We set the foundation, we built the four pillars we got through COVID. Once we got to this, you know, 2021, back in the gym in 2020, once it kind of seemed like, OK, the COVID thing, it’s not necessarily going away, but we’re almost back to normal in a way, whatever, wherever you are in the world. But for us, you know, I’m in New Jersey. So things have kind of really calmed down a bit. Once we got to that point, you know, laying the foundation, making sure my coaches were good to go, then it was those tougher tasks. Like things you don’t want to just hire somebody for just because you have a need, but finding the right fit for those things.

Nick (22:29):

And I knew within the gym, I had members that fit those roles. So, I found one of our members, Tracy, she takes care of every week. I send her just an update. We use software to, like some CSM stuff, just making sure every week. All right. So-and-so, hasn’t been in gym for one or two weeks. She’ll send them a quick text and an email, Hey, how’s everything going? Typically it’s, you know, busy at work or vacation or like little things. But we do that every week, that I think it’s important. Even if you, like I said, even if it’s nothing big, it doesn’t take that long, granted, if you have a lot of members, that’s where I think, you know, having somebody help you with that is huge because it’s easy to get caught up in all the other stuff that we’re managing. But don’t forget this, that piece. Cause it is mportant. Metrics are great, metrics are important, do your metrics, but also members check in with them. That should be a metric you guys should be thinking about all the time for sure.

Mike (23:32):

Yeah, I’ve heard this. You’re not the first person that’s told me this. John Herringer from Method Three Fitness. I interviewed him last month. He is one, he had $86,000, monthly revenue. He was one of our leaders for that. He told me that he does that. It’s labor-intensive but he has his staff. They do that. They run a report every time they find the people that are absent and they make sure, and like the guy has almost a hundred thousand dollars of revenue a month. That is one of the things that he’s prioritizing. So you’re not the first person to say it. The other thing I like about what you’re doing is that you’re not, you have this thing, you know, it’s automatic, it’s automated to a degree where it’s on a schedule. People do it. We all, you know, the machine works, but it’s not just like the random email that goes, like, it’s just triggered. It’s like, Hey, you did not come to class on insert date here. You know, it’s got that personal touch to it, which, you know, you can certainly use other systems, they’re better than nothing, but the personal touch of like, Hey, and then they interact. You’re like, oh, my dog was sic, oh, how is Fido? You know like, cause you know that like it creates these conversation opportunities. So I love the fact that you have this client success manager, the CSM who’s really invested in this process.

Nick (24:34):

People know when it’s an automated email. People know when it’s coming from you.

Mike (24:39):

Thank you, Nick, for being on Two-Brain Radio.

Nick (24:45):

You could go into your software and make those 3, 6, 12 month check-ins and as personal as you want, but people know that it’s not really coming from you. It’s a set thing. They still go out. We use those, but I have 0%. I’ll tell you the 0% of all my members, nobody responds to those. None. But when I send out my emails or text, you know, without a doubt, they get back.

Mike (25:16):

So you need the systems to like cover the, you know, cause you miss people, right? So the automations are great, but don’t miss that personal touch and it’s more powerful and like it’s worth it. It absolutely is worth it because every response you get is an opportunity to solve a problem. If someone is going to leave, or if someone’s just on vacation, it’s just, you know, hi, how’s it going? These are touch points. So what you’re creating is touch points. Even if it’s a bit of labor, totally worth it, what else you got? Cause these are great. Like, the thing that I’m looking for here is like, we’re all busy and we forget this stuff. So what else have you systematized for retention?

Nick (25:45):

When we do our open, we do our emails, our check-ins, during COVID I, there was the transition point, right? We were online a lot more. So it was, it became, how do I communicate regularly, but not in front of people. And granted, you know, we had zoom, but took advantage of YouTube a lot. So maybe if you know you and your community doesn’t have a strong Facebook group, I think YouTube would be a good resource there. Make a video. It could be once a week, right? Just explaining where you’re going that week with your programming. That’s the simplest and easiest way to put yourself out in front and communicate and say, Hey guys, this week we’re working on X, Y, and Z. Push the YouTube link in an email, weekly recap, boom, there you go. Start the communication process. It doesn’t have to be a daily text to all your members, but something like that is great. Put yourself out in front. And I think in the back of your mind, just have that feeling of never wanting them standing there questioning why are we doing this? Where are we going? What are we doing? There’s always a why give them the why every day.

Mike (26:59):

That’s so easy. Cause you know, it, you just have to throw on the camera. And I’ve talked to gym owners who really struggle with like blogging and content creation. This is like your bread and butter. Talk about why your clients are doing this workout. Why did you program this thing? Why is this thing on your whiteboard? Just throw the camera on. If you prefer, type, whatever you like, that’s easy content. I’m going to ask you this. Do you have, anything? Do you like memorialize y know, like the six month, 12 month annual, do you have any programs in place for stuff like that with members? Long-term people?

Nick (27:28):

There’s two pieces to this. We do a committed club every year. This was something we started last year. So every one, fifty, two hundred and two fifty. So within a calendar year, if you attend 150 classes, you get a shirt.

Mike (27:45):

Three times a week, average.

Nick (27:49):

200, it was same shirt, but gold. And then two 50 is this year is going to be a hoodie. Last year. It was a ncier shirt simple. Right. And if you have software that keeps track of attendance. And there’s a communication piece. We use that every couple, every quarter, I would post put a committed club update. Hey guys, we’re first quarter through the year, put your leaderboard just like Two-Brain, right? Here’s our ARM and LEG leaderboards. Right? Here’s our leaderboard. Don’t forget, you know, you still got whatever, six months to work on this and they see the shirt and they’re like, I want that shirt.

Mike (28:30):

It’s crazy with stuff like that. The earn it. You can’t buy it, stuff. That stuff, it’s crazy what people will do for that. Like have you seen some like, you know, banter and leaderboarding there trying to track down leaders like our people like signing in twice in the last day of the year. Right?

Nick (28:44):

Exactly. Get those sign-ins. So we do that every year. And that restarts with the calendar year. I also think this was an important piece and something I realized last year, we spent a lot of time nurturing and growing our new members and guiding them along the way. But as time goes on, members that have been with you for a while, sometimes not that they’re forgotten, but their PRS are way less. they, you know, they’re committed, they’re there, they’re huge pieces of the gym. And again, not that you as an owner forget about them, but they might feel as if, Hey, you know, you have all these new people that you’re talking to all the time and bright spots. What about us? So like in my situation, having members from the garage days, I was at a point of, OK, how do I celebrate them?

Nick (29:35):

Yes, we’re doing the committed club. Yes. You know, X, Y, and Z. But how do I honor the folks that have been for almost 12 to 13 years. And I will give a shout out to Tommy, over at CrossFit Hooga in Mount Laurel. He is also a Two-Brain member as well. I noticed on his Facebook, they were, they did a thousand club. So all their members that hit a thousand classes, they printed out sign and put it up in the gym. And I said, I like that. I like that a lot kind of falls in place with our committed club, but it’s also an opportunity for us to, you know, put our older members up on there. People walk in, they go what’s that mean? What does that? And oh, that’s our folks that have been, you know, have a thousand classes.

Nick (30:22):

Now the caveat to that, I only have tracking from 2015 up to this point and I had members from 2008. So some of them are at 1500, 2000, who knows. so that’ll be, my next work is OK, let’s replace some of the signs, put them with their true attendance. But that, you know, and we took pictures. We said, Hey, so-and-so has been to x thousand classes. Think about that for a second. That takes minimum five years consistently, at least. And, put it on our social media. It’s a talk point for newer people that come in and they go, what’s all that mean? These are extra committed folks, they’ve done it over a thousand classes.

Mike (31:06):

Well, there’s two things here I’m going to hit. There’s like those milestone posts, they slay on social media. People love them. Like, no matter what the milestone is, whether it’s you celebrating a client or even blowing your own horn and saying, I’ve been open for 10 years, milestone posts are a huge deal for interaction. So guys, I would encourage you to use those both as a gym owner yourself and celebrate your clients. The other thing is like, think about five years of training and a thousand classes, think about what a lifestyle change that is. First of all, you’re creating a streak. So that client doesn’t want to break that streak, obviously. Right. Go for a thousand classes you want to keep going. But also, you know, the changes that happen over a thousand classes of functional fitness is, they’re incredible.

Mike (31:49):

And you can obviously use that as a marketing point too. Like, I’m sure you’ve probably got for some of these guys, if I had a 10 year client, the transition between then and now is going to be quite extreme, probably got if you’ve taken pictures, which you should be, you’re going to have some amazing before and afters. You’re going to have some amazing stories to tell about clients who, you know, quit smoking, had three kids, kept working out like all, you know, divorce, the whole thing, everything. You can just tell these client stories and celebrate them. And I remember, you know, you make a great point with our older members, not older, but, long-term members. We sometimes think of them almost as furniture, right? It’s like, they’re, they’ve been there for so long. They’re just like the sign-in desk at the front door.

Mike (32:25):

They’re just like the pull-up rack bolted over there. and we forget sometimes, but they’re our most valuable clients. Retaining them. You know, they’d given you 10,000, $20,000. Some of them. Retaining them is the biggest, most important thing you can do. So it would be a mistake to be the bank that gives away the free toaster for everyone opens a new account. When the old school people don’t get anything. Right. So I love that. That’s a great point of celebrating your existing clients to, you know, to a huge degree. And it goes back to your point earlier of telling stories, putting them on podiums, anything else in the retention plan that we haven’t covered. These are all great things.

Nick (32:59):

Just to build upon the thousand. If you know, if you’re a newer gym and you don’t have that, you know, you could reduce that down to whatever metric you want to track. But when you get to that point to, it doesn’t have to be a sign. It could be a conversation, sit down with them, ask them. Everybody has a story, right? Ask them what brought them in, ask them, how has your life changed for the better, everybody has something to learn from somebody else. And you have members that probably reflect somebody else out there who might not know what their path is or where they’re going. And they hear something from your member, Greg, and how they went. They lost a hundred pounds and they’re doing Spartan races. And they go, that’s me. I want to do that. But what do I have to do? And then they find your gym and they come in and say, oh, I saw your post about Greg. And that really struck a chord. Like what? Tell their story, you know.

Mike (33:59):

I love it. I love it. Let’s let’s close by this. So you’re one of our leaders. There are people out there. First of all, I’m going to give you the first thing you gotta do. If you do not know your length of engagement, you need to track it. One problem. A lot of gym software doesn’t do a good job of this. It’s worth your time to create any system, even a DIY spreadsheet to make this happen and find out how long people are staying. OK? So like, if you do this, you will find out there are some like, why is everyone leaving at six months? Why is everyone leaving after three months? You know, talk to your people who’ve been here forever, but start tracking length of engagement. Now, Nick, you are the expert on this. So you’ve got a gym owner out there who finds out they’re, you know, they’re losing clients quickly, or they just want to improve this number. The owner doesn’t have a clue. What’s the first step. What would you tell that owner to do today to start improving length of engagement?

Nick (34:51):

I think the first thing is to take a step back out of the whirlwind of gym ownership and the day to day mundane tasks and getting caught up with, take a step back. Be honest with yourself, ask yourself if you’re communicating. Which is probably no. And that that could be with yourself. It might sound weird, but are you talking to yourself? Sometimes I find I’m in my best state when I’m in my car, I’m having a conversation with myself. I’m in a good state. Communicate. If you’re not communicating, start and you could start by telling your story. We all got into this for a reason. If you don’t feel your story’s interesting, that doesn’t mean somebody else does, or doesn’t. Tell your story. explain who you are, what your vision, get your vision out there and get your mission out there and explain why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Nick (35:43):

If that’s established and you’re all well and good, let’s dig a little deeper. And these are things I think will strike a chord with some people. Pay attention to the things that you might be avoiding. There’s some emails, there’s some Two-Brain Radio episodes that I see it. And I go, oh, I wish I was doing that. Or, oh, I’m not doing that well enough. And you have the thought and you could easily skip over that. You could skip over Coop’s emails and I’m not going to read that one because there’s some feelings I’m feeling, or I’m not going to listen to that episode because it’s gonna, it’s gonna make me go down this rabbit hole. Pay attention, paying attention is the first step. Maybe you take action. Maybe you don’t. The best next step would be to take action. Read the email, listen to the episode without bias, take from it.

Nick (36:32):

What you can. There’s always little gems in there and that’s going to elicit, hopefully some ideas, some response, the best case scenario. You have a mentor that you can bounce those ideas off of. And they are the guiding light. And they say, you need to focus on this. Don’t worry about X, Y, and Z. Let’s avoid paralysis by analysis. It’s easy to swipe, swipe, swipe, see what everybody else is doing or compare. Don’t compare. You’re you, you’re sticking to your vision. Your mission. Think about the hard conversations that you might have to have. Take action, never stop learning, be open and honest. Communicate. Take action.

Mike (37:10):

I will tell you guys listeners take action right after the show ends. If nothing else, pick up your phone and message three members and just say, Hey, how’s it going? Or I saw you working hard, wanted, to give you a high five. Just do that. If nothing else from this show, do that, do it right now, Nick, congratulations on making the leaderboard. I can’t wait to see how far you push that number up over the next years from 41 to, you know, as high as you can get it. And I really appreciate your sharing your story. Thank you so much.

Nick (37:39):

Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Mike (37:39):

That was Nick Seabock, he was a Two-Brain length of engagement leader for July. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. I’ve got a top gym owner on the show every month to share secrets of success. Subscribe for more episodes. And now here’s Two- Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final word.

Chris (37:57):

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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Entrepreneurs and the DIY Mindset

You and I are entrepreneurs. We like to solve problems.

We like to figure it out for ourselves. We like to start from scratch, build and tear down, make mistakes, get our hands dirty.

But we also like to eat. We like to spend less than 12 hours per day at our gyms. We like to have time to work on our own fitness. So we have to balance the temptation to “figure it out ourselves” with the need to be efficient.

In this series, I’m going to talk about the things in your business that you should figure out on your own (do it yourself, or DIY), the things you should hire someone else to do (done for you, or DFY) and the things that are best suited to a new third option: done with you.

What You Should DIY

When you start a gym, you should coach the classes. Get lots of reps. Refine your process. Develop an excellent delivery (reach a nine out of 10 here). Document every step you take, minute by minute, so you can replace yourself with a coach who will deliver to the same level.

Repeat this process with every role in the business: cleaner, bookkeeper, billing agent, salesperson, personal trainer, etc.

Do it yourself first. Leave deep tracks for the next person to follow. Then—as soon as possible—buy yourself time to work on your business instead of in your business.

I wrote the process here: “How to Automate Your Gym.”

Two-Brain Clients follow a strategy called “the value ladder” to keep ratcheting up the value of their time.

Build Your Own Equipment?

Now let’s talk about equipment.

I built my first pull-up station. I built my first plyo boxes and jammed my first wall ball full of pea gravel and expanding foam.

You can do some of this stuff, too, but beware—the “early adopters” of CrossFit are long gone. New clients expect to see professionally built rigs in matching colors. But you can still DIY some stuff.

Automate Comms?

More important than your equipment is your communication.

Whether through email, text or phone, it’s very hard to replace yourself when communicating with your clients.

Email automations are a good safety net. (If you’re not sending regular blog posts out, then yeah, use a client relationship manager to do it for you. That’s the bare minimum. Blog posts written by you are the standard of excellence in client communication.)

Texts from your gym should be sent by a local human. Never use a bot in chat or text.

And never, ever hire a low-paid virtual assistant who doesn’t fluently speak your first language to impersonate you in communications with your clients.

Being yourself is something you can’t fake.

DIY Saves Money—Or Does It?

You should do every role yourself first to learn it. DIY, in entrepreneurship, is a great strategy—but it’s short term. Every time you start something new, you should begin with a plan to eventually move it off your plate.

Why DIY? Well, your time is cheap, right? It’s your primary point of leverage when you’re starting out. Or at least it appears that way.

In the next post, I’ll tell you about the downside of DIY (it’s much more expensive than you think).

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Things Gym Owners Should Never Do

The roof-mounted vacuum was sucking wasps out of the side of the building.

I was alone on the roof of the gym shortly after dawn on a Saturday, and I was wearing winter clothing in August. Not an inch of skin was showing as the angry wasps attacked. Beside me, a bright yellow vacuum was howling away as it slowly filled up with insects exiting a hidden nest.

Every morning in the week previous, we’d opened the gym to find dozens and maybe hundreds of wasps inside. I’d finally tracked them back to a nest behind the flashing above the back door. Instead of calling an exterminator and shelling out about 100 bucks for the appropriate treatment, I had gotten up at dawn to create a jury-rigged solution that might have made the Apollo 13 astronauts proud.

It would have made a mentor sad.

I solved the wasp problem by wasting my time.

Instead of improving my business or resting so I could improve the gym, I wasted about four hours on a weekend morning doing a job a pro could have done in five minutes for $100.

But I didn’t want to spend the $100. I was desperate to make the business profitable, so I thought spending my time was better than spending the company’s money.

That was a huge mistake.

Another big one: This wasn’t even my problem. A call to the landlord would have passed the issue on to the person actually responsible for maintenance of the building shell.

A mentor could have pointed all that out to me.

But I also wasn’t ready to pay a mentor at that point, so I put on goggles and a parka and lugged a vacuum onto the roof when I should have been relaxing at home.

Too Many Hats

I have dozens of stories like this. I served as our gym’s locksmith, snow clearer, lawn mower, plumber, painter, cleaner, bookkeeper, webmaster, programmer, social media manager—the list goes on. When I think about everything I used to do, I actually get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

When I think about other gym owners following this path, the feeling intensifies.

We’re tough, so we think we can work long hours forever. I’ve been there, and I learned the pace is unsustainable.

You might read that and think, “I can sustain it.”

I thought the same thing—and I maintained a foolish schedule so long that I started to resent the business. I was also wasting many of my best hours, and my business, family life and fitness suffered.

When I was burned out, frustrated and ready to leave the fitness business, I finally took advantage of a mentor’s outside perspective. I stopped doing all the jobs, and I changed the business. It was a turning point.

Remember: You can turn your business around in months—but only if you spend your time doing the right things.

If you’ve got a low-value task on your list this week, do yourself a favor and offload it. Then use that hour in a better way: Book a call with a mentor. In that hour, you’ll find out what you should be doing with your time if you really want to grow your business.

Or you can get up before dawn on the weekend to spin your tires doing pointless tasks that make you feel like you’re “grinding” and “putting in the work.” If you do that, I’ll offer one more piece of advice: Don’t open the vacuum cleaner to see how many wasps are inside.

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