Chris Cooper's Blog, page 109

7 Signs You’re a Mature Entrepreneur (and 5 Signs You Aren’t)

Mike (00:01):

Where are you at as an entrepreneur? Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper checks in with seven signs that you’re mature and five signs that you still have some developing to do.

Chris (00:09):

Chris Cooper here with a word about Arbox. This business management platform is designed to take you from a fitness expert to a successful gym owner. Arbox offers a full suite of tools, including a dashboard and report with the top metrics that we prioritize at Two-Brain Business. With a glance, you can see length of engagement, average monthly revenue, new versus lost members and more. Arbox will also help you drive engagement with a members app that allows clients to interact with their friends. So here’s the special deal for Two-Brain Radio listeners. Save up to 50% for the first year using Arbox. Visit arboxapp.com/tbb to register to a free 10 day trial and schedule a demo with one of Arbox’s experts.

Chris (00:55):

Hey everybody, it’s Chris Cooper here and today I’m talking about entrepreneurial maturity. And this is top of mind for me right now, because two weeks ago we certified four brand new millionaires, like real millionaires at Two-Brain, right? Not, oh, I did $80,000 one month and I’m going that’s going to continue forever. My gym is projected to make a million dollars. Therefore I’m a millionaire. No, these are people with real net worth. Real gym owners with net worth of a million dollars or more. And we certified four of them in one day. On that same day, we got a bad review from somebody. It’s one of only two negative reviews we got in the entire last year, but somebody reported that they hadn’t had a great experience in our ramp-up program. Now the old Chris would have fixated on that one bad review, even with the new millionaires and the hundreds of positive reviews that we get every year.

Chris (01:51):

Even with all of the thank you for everything messages I get in my inbox and chat every single week, that one negative thing would have stuck in my brain. And I know this happens in your gym too. And in the past, that would have been all I could think about, but this time I thought, Hey, if these four people can use our systems and take their gym from struggling to being literally worth a million dollars or more personally, then the system works just fine. And that’s when I realized, holy crap, I’m not ruminating on this problem. Something’s working here. I’m maturing as an entrepreneur, and I’ve been working on this a lot with my coach from Level Up Coaching as well as the usual quarter million or so that I spend every single year on mentorship. And when I went back into our group at Two-Brain and I looked at our tinker group and I looked at our growth group and the discussions that are being had around there, even though some of these gyms just went right back into lockdown.

Chris (02:47):

Again, I’m realizing like, wow, we are producing some really mature entrepreneurs. And so if you’re listening to this and you’re already in Two-Brain, I hope that you’re nodding along and smiling and recognizing this maturation in yourself. And if you’re not in Two-Brain, I hope that you recognize some points here that you’re doing right. And you recognize your own path to maturity as an entrepreneur. I’m also going to give you some signs that maybe you’re not as mature as you could be yet. And keep in mind that entrepreneurial maturity is a spectrum. It’s a process. There are some things that I’m going to list today that I don’t do yet, but hopefully I’ll do better as I become a more mature entrepreneur. And hopefully there’s some things too, that you can say, you know what? This won’t bother me as much, or I can start looking at this differently.

Chris (03:37):

So here’s some signs that you are becoming mature as an entrepreneur. Number one, you take a long-term perspective and this is one of those things that you can only get with time. It’s not something that you can read about, but here’s a great proverb to illustrate. And this is from my book, “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.” Once upon a time, there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day, his horse runs away. And when they heard the news, his neighbors came to visit. Such bad luck. They said, sympathetically, you must be so sad. We’ll see, the farmer replied the next morning. The horse returned bringing with it two other wild horses, how wonderful the neighbors said, not only did your horse return, but you received two more. What great fortune you have. We’ll see, said the farmer. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, got thrown off and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy for his misfortune. Now your son can’t help you with your farming. They said, what terrible luck you have. We’ll see said the old farmer, the following week, military officials came to the village to conscript young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed them by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out such great news. You must be so happy. The man smiled to himself and said, once again, we’ll see. The lesson here is to stop reacting to things you can’t control. I know that’s easier said than done. And again, this is a lesson that really comes with time, but is a sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur when you start to think this too shall pass, or you start to think about like, Hey, I went through worse stuff than this, or Hey, I had a smaller example of this happen to me before.

Chris (05:30):

And that really prepared me for when this greater crisis is happening. Now, for example, I was able to draw on a bad experience that I had when my gym was shut down for COVID in 2020. When I built my gym out after I bought our building in 2016 or 2017, we failed to get permission to occupy the space from the city and it drove me bananas. It was purely a bureaucratic problem, not like a construction problem. And we couldn’t open for the first week that we were in this building. And so we had to run all of our classes outdoors at a neighborhood park, and I had great pictures. We had great memories. We had taken all these pictures of the crew together, outdoors, and we kind of came through this whole process as a group and everybody reminisces about it now.

Chris (06:17):

And so when my gym was shut down, I sort of had an indication that like, I could do this, even if we’re only going to be shut down for three weeks or as it turned out 12 months out of 14. These small little setbacks that you have can actually prepare you for bigger challenges in the future. So the second sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur is related to the first, and this is perspective, and this is something that Two-Brain mentor Oskar Johed from Sweden said to me this morning, and that is, you never know what worse luck your bad luck will save you from. So you might have a little setback today, but that little setback is actually saving you from something else. So, you know, a couple of weeks ago, my gym got locked out or the double vaccination mandate came through in Ontario.

Chris (07:06):

And so the rule was that like your clients had to be double vaccinated to attend. It was black and white. There was no margin for error. And I thought, man, that’s such bad luck. Some of my clients are not going to like this, you know, it could affect some of my staff. And then I saw the way that the mandates were delivered in other provinces. And it was the same thing, except gym owners were given the choice whether to open and impose the mandate themselves or not. And I quickly realized like, wow, those people are actually in a worse spot than I am, because if I agree with the mandate, OK. But if I don’t agree with it, at least I can blame the government. Those poor gym owners and other provinces are stuck in the middle and they really can’t win either way.

Chris (07:52):

So, you know, that perspective actually helps. And I think that’s something that you only gain in time. Like, yeah, something kind of bad happened to me, but it might be saving me from something even worse, you know? And here’s some great examples. Like this is very true with staff too. So let’s say that a staff person does something really dumb and you know, like they swear at a client and the client quits, you know, that sucks. And you wind up like removing the staff person. That’s like the third strike or, you know, whatever they gave you a reason to remove them. And that saves you from something bigger later on. Like maybe they go work for another gym and they do something even worse. Well, sometimes you have to realize like a small mistake now could be saving you from something worse later.

Chris (08:40):

So another sign, the third sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur is that you understand that there’s a balance between business concepts. So the concepts that I’ll use are the concept of abundance and the concept of protecting yourself, intellectual property. There’s a balance that you have to maintain there. And, you know, we publish every single day for free. There’s podcasts. There’s blog posts. You’re probably consuming Two-Brain stuff on one or more channels. Thank you for that. And people ask me all the time, like, how can you give all this stuff away for free? And I said, because knowledge doesn’t make the difference. Knowledge builds trust. It demonstrates to you that we do know what we’re doing. And hopefully my knowledge is enough to help you make enough money to pay for mentorship, which will make the real difference. On the other hand, we don’t let people copy and paste our materials.

Chris (09:30):

We don’t let people take our videos, replicate them, and then sell a competing service. There are people who say that a mindset of abundance means that you give everything away for free. And it would be easy for me to just say like about those people have never built anything were stealing or whatever, but the reality is you have to balance giving things away with protecting the things that matter most to your audience. So entrepreneurial maturity is realizing that there are no extremes, that there are balances. There are dichotomies like this all over your business that always have to be managed instead of solved. The fourth thing is that you know you’re maturing as an entrepreneur when you understand that retention is more important than sales, that eventually in a local marketplace, you will run out of good will. You will run out of audience.

Chris (10:21):

You will run out of high value clients. So let’s say that, you know, you’re running a special discount offer and you’re getting people in really quickly, but you’re not running a great service. You’re not retaining them. They’re not converting to long-term care in your gym. And I made this mistake early on. I had this very low entry point and people would come in, they would sign up, they would do this like two day kind of intro to CrossFit on ramp. They would be absolutely demolished. Cause we would do like five workouts in two days they would go home and they would never come back. And 10 years later, I guess that was 13 years ago now, they still say I did CrossFit. And it wasn’t for me. Good entrepreneurs understand that you might have 70,000. You might have 10 million people in your city, but not all of those people are going to want your service.

Chris (11:13):

The people who want your service are a subset of that total and you can work your way through them pretty quickly and even more effective or more impactful is that a lot of those people know each other. So there’s like one degree of separation between your best clients now and your future best clients. And if you do a bad job early on with people who are great clients, your future great clients are going to find out about it. Conversely, if you do an amazing job with your best clients right now, your future best clients are going to find out about that too. So it’s really more important that you’re great at retention than you are at getting people in the door, turning through them fast and basically burning through your audience. The fifth sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur is that you’re flexible with your service, but you’re committed to your audience.

Chris (12:02):

This was a blessing that COVID lockdowns actually gave a lot of entrepreneurs in the fitness industry was that their audience is loyal and they trust them and they trust their authority and their influence more than they care about the actual service being provided. So for example, while a lot of gym owners in 2019 would have said, I have the best equipment. I have the best location. I have the best gym setup. I have the biggest brightest cleanest, all that went away and the best gym owners it turned out to be the people who had the closest connection with their audience, not the equipment, not the program, even, it was the people who could connect with their audience best. So the method became flexible, went online. A lot of gyms introduced like accountability or yoga or whatever. And that didn’t matter. The service was flexible, but you are entirely committed, focused and rigid about protecting your audience.

Chris (13:00):

The sixth sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur is that you understand that you can learn from your competition. And I would just kind of stay away from other business consultants in the space when Two-Brain Business was a lot smaller and their business was around the same size. I would just ignore them. Like I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near them. And you know, most of the time it was because they were so different from me that I was like, oh, I don’t want to pay attention to that person. But the reality is that you can probably learn something from them, even if it’s just, I don’t want to be like that. You know, I’ve been in mastermind groups where that was the number one lesson that I took away was I don’t want to behave like some of these other people in the group.

Chris (13:41):

And then I learned to refocus myself on groups or mentors who were more like the person that I wanted to be. So you have to learn that you can learn from your competition. You can also learn from bad influences and you can learn from good influences too.

Chris (13:57):

Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by AGuard, providing elite insurance for fitness and sport. AGuard offers coverage for functional fitness facilities, mixed martial arts gyms and even events and competitions. You can also get access to healthcare insurance, discounted AEDs and discounted background checks. AGuard’s coverage options are designed to keep you safe. To find out more, visit affiliateguard.info.

Chris (14:22):

Another sign that you’re becoming more mature as an entrepreneur. And this is number seven, I think. You have the discipline to finish one thing before starting another.

Chris (14:31):

And I’m getting better at this personally, but I’m still not immune to these amazing distractions. So this is actually really more common in people who are at the tinker phase of entrepreneurship, because when you’re still in the founder phase, I mean, you got your head down, you’re working, you’re grinding. Your sole focus is like, get through today and make a dollar. And then you get into the farmer phase and you’re busy. Like you’re focused on, you’re trying to grow your gym. You’re trying to manage people. You’re trying to bring new people in. You’re trying to retain them. You’re trying to build systems so that you’re not just scrambling with that for your whole life, but like you’re focused. When you get to tinker phase, suddenly you’ve got free time. You’ve got an enlarged amygdala. That’s constantly looking for threats, stimulus, right? And, you’ve got some money.

Chris (15:21):

So you’re attracted to all these ideas. Oh, I should put money in index funds. Oh, I should buy an Airbnb. Oh, I should be buying crypto, should be starting another business. Oh, I should be writing a book. And when you first hit tinker phase, you’re like, I want to do all that by Christmas. And so you just try to do way too much. What you have to do is redevelop your discipline to finish one thing before you start the next. And that’s why we tell entrepreneurs in the tinker phase and in our tinker program work in a 90 day sprint, You can do everything, but you can’t do it all at once. So here’s some signs that you still have a way to go. You know, and we all do. I’m not pointing fingers just at you. I’m looking at myself in the mirror here too.

Chris (16:05):

The first sign is that you pay too much attention to what others are doing. You’re so fixated on them that like it comes through in the content that you publish, it comes through in your message to your staff. You’re talking about them all the time instead of talking about your own vision in your own future. The second sign that you still have a ways to go is you’re trying to impress the wrong people. So you’re making Facebook posts, but they’re targeted at other gym owners or, you know, you’re so distracted by what another gym owner said in a Facebook group that you’re not paying attention to the client that’s standing right in front of you or, you know, you’re so like worried about what other people are doing in your town that you’re not focused on like doing the best thing for your client.

Chris (16:50):

Here’s a great example. When I first opened my gym, I said to my partners, like I’m going to take every client from that gym down the street, I’m going to shut them down. I’m going to put them out of business. All their clients are going to come here. That was the wrong approach to take. But every morning at 4:30 AM, I would be on the second story of our gym, looking out the window, like pressing my cheek against the glass, kind of looking down the street to make sure that I was open first. Well, guess what? That didn’t matter. But I was so focused on them. I could have been focused on making a better client experience. You know, instead of looking out the window, I could have been cleaning showers or something. The third way that you know that you still have a long ways to go, as do I, is you still chase novelty.

Chris (17:32):

So you see a new idea somewhere and you totally like forget the current plan that you’re on. And you chase that new idea. You know, Clubhouse, I think was a great example of this. Back in January, February. Gym owners had a marketing plan. They were doing affinity marketing in their reviews. They were getting referrals. They were upgrading their offer. They were selling specialty programs. They were setting up a Facebook funnel and suddenly Clubhouse. And now they’re like two and a half hours a day listening to this thing instead of growing their business. And, so you really need to like, not be distracted by novelty. Believe me, that’s a very tough one. The fourth sign that you still have a ways to go is you make your business a political platform. Now I don’t want to make this podcast my political platform. So I’m not going to go too deep into this, but you need to understand that if you want to change people’s lives, the best thing that you can do is give them a space that is free from politics and all the noise that they’re hearing from the media around them.

Chris (18:32):

The other thing that you need to do is stay open for 30 years, right? Like, yes, you can wave a political flag one time and you can, you know, totally stand up and shut out your beliefs on Facebook, knowing that you’ll lose half your clients, you know, good for you. I guess if that’s what you want to do, but you gotta know, like you’re harming your ability long term to serve people. Probably. I don’t want to get any deeper than that, but I will say this, I am politically active. None of my clients know how politically active I am or who I support or how I’m doing it. And that’s OK because you know that’s not what I’m trying to do here. Finally. The fifth sign that you still have a ways to go in your entrepreneurial maturity is you’re still suspicious of success.

Chris (19:19):

So you see somebody who’s more successful than you, and maybe it’s your jealousy, but instead of just a healthy skepticism, you’re pessimistic about their success. You know, they must have stolen something from somebody else. They must have cheated somebody. They must have lied to become successful. And this sucks because the common public sees entrepreneurs this way. If the entrepreneur is successful, they did it on somebody else’s back. Right. Unfortunately that’s like just a product of our education system, but even entrepreneurs aren’t immune, we see somebody like Grant Cardone and we’re like, wow, I don’t want to be a billionaire because being a billionaire means I have to be like that or somebody else. Right? Like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, I respect the guy. I’m not his biggest fan. I don’t want to be like Gary V, guess what? He doesn’t care.

Chris (20:09):

Right. But if that’s the only way to become a billionaire, I don’t want to do that. So while it’s good to like maintain a healthy skepticism about people who tell you how successful they are. Definitely. You also want to make sure that it’s not just like jealousy and that your own suspicion of them is not stopping you from being successful. There’s always a way to do this, right? There’s always a way to become successful by practicing help first, by being like a servant leader by being quiet instead of outspoken, by building your business, instead of tearing somebody else’s down, by being tactful and polite, instead of being a firebrand, by going with the culture, instead of being counter-culture, all those things are OK, you can still be successful. It’s hard to see it when you’re not a mature entrepreneur yet. So while I do advocate like some skepticism, you know, you should always question authority.

Chris (21:11):

You should always question success. You should do that from a position of what can I learn from this instead of how can I tear this person down? Or why can I disqualify this person’s success? And that’s a great sign that you’re maturing as an entrepreneur, no matter what happens in your life, you can learn from it. And that’s a sign of maturity too. The great thing is that real maturity only comes from making mistakes and spending time. That’s something that I know we’re all doing. And so, as we mature, we’re all gonna be more successful.

Mike (21:42):

That was Chris Cooper on Two-Brain Radio. Remember to subscribe for more shows. And now here’s a final message.

Chris (21:49):

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 7 Signs You’re a Mature Entrepreneur (and 5 Signs You Aren’t) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Top Books of 2021 for Gym Owners

Read these books before 2022 to get a jump on your competition!

What are the Top 5 lessons you’ve learned from books that have actually helped your business?

My current Audible library hit 150 books (I’m on my third account now). My bookshelves at home and work are overflowing (and I try to give books away after I’ve read them). I listen to at least an hour of podcasts every day, I read blogs, I take courses—and I doubt I’m alone.

So what, in those thousands of hours of acquiring knowledge, has actually made a measurable difference in my business?

As I was preparing this list for 2021, I struggled with that question. I don’t just want to give you a list of popular books or well-written books—I want to give you a list of books that actually created more money or time for me.

So here we go: my best books of the last 12 months for gym owners, with the specific lesson (and value!) included.

“$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No” by Alex Hormozi

Get it here.

If you’re thinking about selling a “high-ticket” item—or you just need to understand why some gyms can charge 10 times what you’re charging, this is a great book and an easy read.

The second and third sections are particularly helpful because they force you to see your business through the eyes of your client and rearrange your services accordingly. Your value is determined by your client, not by your price.

The best exercise in the book: Think about the problems your clients will encounter when they’re trying to lose weight. Brainstorm all the ways you could solve those problems (even including living in their houses). Then identify the strategy that will get the client the desired result but take up the least amount of your time. This “client-centric” approach is a real dose of reality for professionals who just want to coach classes all day (like me).

“Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown

Get it here.

We all overdeliver. But are we really best to give our clients everything—or would we be better off giving them only the exact thing they need when they need it?

I’m super guilty of this: Our Two-Brain Roadmap has over 400 courses on it because I want to give gym owners everything they could possibly need, curated by proof and arranged in order of impact. But no one needs all 400 things. And if you give gym owners a list of 400 things they could do, they’re gonna try to do them all!

After reading Greg McKeown’s book, my fears were confirmed: I need to give people only the most important things to do.

In your gym, this means removing options instead of adding them. It means telling your clients exactly what they need with full transparency (instead of just suggesting what you think they can afford). It means constantly auditing your time and using measuring sticks like Effective Hourly Rate to keep you focused. Value doesn’t always mean “more.” In our current age of overwhelm, value usually means “just enough.”

“Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for all the Performances in Your Life” by Michael Port

Get it here.

How will a book on public speaking make you a better coach? I mean, you can already yell really loud, right?

Think of your one-hour class or your 30-minute appointment as a performance. That performance has an introduction, a slow build of excitement leading to a climax, and then a finale that leaves everyone happy.

Planning your sessions this way means your clients will be more excited about your service (and Port breaks it all down step by step). It will help you keep clients coming back. And for me, it meant no more boring conversations in client sessions. You know what I’m talking about: You have five personal-training clients in a row and start the same conversation with each one over and over. You get bored and then tired. Port’s book changed all that for me.

When you lead a class or a session, you step onstage. Most of the time you’re with a client, you’re onstage (they rarely ever see “backstage”—and they shouldn’t). They won’t remember how much you know but how engaging, how interested and how entertaining you were. Bored clients quit. That doesn’t mean you need to wear tap shoes, but it does mean you should think about how you present yourself.

“Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day” by Jay Shetty

Get it here.

This was the first book I’ve ever finished and replayed right away. (I actually went through it three times before I moved on to another book.)

Shetty takes all the mysticism out of meditation, mindfulness and inner peace. He gives you great stories from his time as a monk but then provides specific exercises to calm yourself, refocus and destress. This book is like an operating system for the modern brain; you don’t need to learn to meditate (though Shetty talks you through it), and I use his quick exercises every single day.

In my office, I keep a few boxes full of books to give away. I keep a dozen copies of “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and “My Super Me” (for kids) on hand and give them away to any entrepreneur who visits. Shetty’s book is the fourth that I’ve purchased in bulk for that purpose.

“The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Get it here.

I read this one because Jocko headlined our Summit in 2021. It was a huge surprise. I liked this book more than “Extreme Ownership” (which I really liked). While “Extreme Ownership” can be summed up on the back of a napkin, this book was a revelation: Great leadership is really about clarity in the moment but balance in the long term.

It’s easy for me, as a business mentor, to answer every question with “it depends.” But this book is an amazing illustration of the dichotomies many leaders face, how opposing answers can be “right” at different times, and how to maintain a balanced perspective for a long time.

Great leaders have playbooks, but they know which plays to call and when.

“Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” by Jordan Peterson

Get it here.

I was a fan of Peterson’s last book, but this one made me a fan of Peterson. In this book, Peterson actually argues in support of a perspective that’s opposite the position in his first book. That takes a very flexible mind.

For example, Peterson says this (I’m paraphrasing): “It’s OK if you don’t want to go to church. It’s OK if you’re not a Christian. But what system of values are you replacing Christianity with?” Any answer, according to Peterson, is fine—but if you don’t have a system of values that you follow and can explain to others or teach your kids, then you don’t really have a system of values. That means you’re acting on whims all the time, and you’re unpredictable to the people around you.

Peterson isn’t arguing for or against religion; he’s advocating for systems. Many people attend church because they like the routines, the processes, the atmosphere or something else. They’re comforted by the predictability of church: They know the people, they know the hymns, and they know when to kneel and when to sit and when to stand. These are all systems, and we can learn from them. Clearer systems are better.

Of course, these systems can be taken to the extreme (and Peterson shares those examples, too). But putting rules in place in your gym doesn’t make you OCD; rules make you trustworthy and predictable.

“Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork” by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Get it here.

This book is one of many good entry points to the Dan Sullivan rabbit hole (I followed this book with a stream of five more Sullivan books in rapid succession).

Sullivan is big on systems, so this isn’t another “just get the right people on the bus” book. Instead, Sullivan suggests finding “doers” and then mentoring them to success. For example, Sullivan gets pitched on a dozen new ideas every week. Most of them sound like “you should do this!” But occasionally, someone will say, “Hey, Dan. I could do this thing for you if you give me permission.” That’s extremely different. In these cases, Dan gives the person permission, time or money, and they build something that he didn’t have time to build on his own (this book is a great example).

Top lesson: You can’t just hire people and expect them to move your business forward. Instead, wait for the right people who can tell you exactly what they’ll do, and then remove barriers for them.

The book is really just a clearer version of Sullivan’s “Simplifier-Multiplier Collaboration,” but I also recommend his books “Always Be the Buyer” and “Who Do You Want to Be a Hero To?”

“Get Different” by Mike Michalowicz

Get it here.

Michalowicz celebrated his book launch in our Tinker group a few weeks ago, and he didn’t disappoint.

Instead of Mike’s usual tactical approach to business, his marketing book went broad, teaching some foundational lessons for entrepreneurs. In “Get Different,” Michalowicz shares a few lessons that are both important and timeless.

For example, his “DAD” framework for marketing is really simple—but a lot of gym owners actually fail at marketing because they don’t provide an affirmative answer to one of these questions:

Does it differentiate?Does it attract?Does it direct?

For example, can clients tell the difference between your gym and the one down the street without setting foot inside?

Are they attracted by the pictures and media they see or are you pushing people away?

Do you tell them exactly what step to take next?

These “duh, I should have thought of that” revelations are what make Michalowicz books worth reading. Genius makes the complex simple, and Michalowicz does a great job of simplifying marketing in this book.

Books You Can Skip in 2022“BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company” by Jim Collins

More info.

I wrote about my voicemail from Jim Collins in last year’s “Best Books” guide. Jim’s kind of a hero to a data-driven entrepreneur like me. What makes Collins’s books such epics is that he uses the data to tell a story. This book was written to update what he originally wrote, but it’s not a dramatic upgrade.

“Leading From Anywhere: The Essential Guide to Managing Remote Teams” by David Burkus

More info.

I was really excited to get this one because I have a huge remote team. Leadership in person is hard; keeping people excited and engaged over Zoom is unknown territory. So I was excited to read some proven best practices. Unfortunately, this book was full of ideas (unproven) and really obvious strategies.

Click here to read Chris Cooper’s 2020 list of best books.

Knowledge—and Action

I love books and courses and seminars.

But there’s a difference between acquiring knowledge and knowing the answer. We like to feel smart; we like to show off our reading list. But success really comes down to the application of knowledge: Do you know which tactic to use right now?

A mentor can help with that part.

The post Top Books of 2021 for Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two-Brain Client Spotlight: William Graham

William Graham had benefited from a mentor’s guidance before, so calling Two-Brain Business for help was a no-brainer.

The former soldier and military physical training instructor got his civilian start by coaching a couple of PT clients outdoors; that same pair offered to help him make a business of it.

Graham recalled: “I’d always had a plan to have my own gym, so when they offered to help set this up (they happened to be multi-millionaires), I told my wife. And she said, ‘Well, I hope you told them yes!’”

The clients mentored him for the first two years: “I didn’t know anything about business, so they helped me out quite a bit.”

William had heard a lot about Two-Brain Business, however, and he decided to make the jump just before lockdown last year—which effectively shuttered his Edinburgh gym, CrossFit Murrayfield.

“I think that was one of my best decisions, to be honest,” he said.

Growth and Success

Graham said his mentor, CrossFit NIKA owner Ashley Haun, has seen him grow—and Haun agrees.

“We spent time during his RampUp practicing his leadership skills and helping him to find his voice amongst his team,” she explained. “Once he did, a lightbulb switched on for him, and it has made all the difference.”

Graham suddenly had confidence to let go of clients and staff members who were dragging the business down. 

“Before, I was at the gym at 5 a.m., didn’t leave till 7, 8  p.m. It was me being busy but also not trusting the staff at that point,” he admitted. “Now it’s going quite well. I’ve got a GM—he’s doing amazing. He’s really good at the sales part. It’s put me a bit more at ease running a business, because I was stressed before. It’s given me more focus.”

Graham feels better about things, but he’s got data to back up his good vibes.

“My business is stronger: This month alone, we’ve taken on 22 new fundamentals,” he said back in April. 

He continued: “My (average revenue per member) is a lot bigger than it was. Before Ashley, it was at $64, $65. Now I’m just over that 100 mark, which is amazing because I’ve always struggled with that. And hopefully the next few months will get a lot higher when everything fully opens up.”

Like many other gym owners, Graham has had to weather a series of COVID-related closures in Scotland.

“We learned a lot in that first lockdown,” he said. “We retained more members this time around—we’ve been shut down for five months this time—and we only lost 10 percent of … memberships. Not one asked for a reduction in rates.”

Now, he’s very close to living his Perfect Day. 

“I’m not working as many hours as I was. I get more time away,” Graham said. “I didn’t really have holidays before. Now I’ve got more time off, more weekends away, and I do more stuff for myself rather than spend all day at the gym like I used to. 

“I’m more relaxed when it comes to leaving it—it was like my baby, and I didn’t want to leave it with people. But now I’m more confident because I’ve got processes in place. I know everything is getting done. I was away for a week in April for my birthday; by the time I got back they had already signed up 14 new clients.”

The post Two-Brain Client Spotlight: William Graham appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two-Brain Client Spotlight: Kate Spinner

Kate Spinner (formerly Rawlings) was out of shape and slogging away at a corporate 9-to-5 when she started CrossFit. 

“Fast-forward three years: I qualified for the 2010 CrossFit Games. Somehow, I’m not really sure how it happened, but I walked away with a contract from Reebok,” she said. “I was 27 and didn’t really need a paycheck anymore.” 

Rawlings decided to sell everything she owned and open her own gym: Coca CrossFit in North Ridgeville, Ohio.

There have been lots of ups and downs. 

“Five years ago, my husband and I lost our daughter at 22 weeks. Obviously I was in a very deep, dark hole—while running the gym. It just wasn’t the same. We weren’t losing money, but we certainly weren’t making money.”

When the business started to ramp back up, Rawlings got pregnant with her son. 

“That whole year—trying to transition to motherhood—dipped us down again because I was really unfocused. I didn’t have any systems in place. I had coaches, but I was not a leader.”

Then the pandemic hit.

“My husband is a part-owner of a bar. So he got shut down before I got shut down. We found ourselves basically at zero income as a household. We really had to take some hard looks: We either double down or we get out,” she said.

“I had my eye on Two-Brain over the years, but it started hitting my radar consistently; I started seeing more articles, more blog posts.” 

When Kate and her husband decided to go all-in, they took the plunge based on trust. 

“They’re like minded. It feels right. If we spend this money and it flops, at least we tried. But fuck it—let’s go.”

Kate’s mentor, CrossFit NIKA owner Ashley Haun, had her focus on formalizing SOPs. 

“She made it clear that no one can help me if they don’t know how to do it.” 

Coming from stuffy corporate America, Kate was wary of systems and policies, but she decided to give them a try. 

“That made the biggest difference,” she said, “because coaches could come in and see the expectation.” 

Becoming a CEO

Like many others, Kate struggled at first to stop wearing every hat in the business and move into a CEO role.

“The biggest challenge was getting out of my own way. I thought no one could coach a class the way I can, no one can clean the gym the way I can. … Now, I’m doing the least amount I’ve ever done as far as client-facing interactions, and it’s the best Coca’s ever been as a business, so clearly I was the limiting factor,” she laughed. 

“We were averaging about $7,000 per month when we started with Two-Brain. Now we’re averaging $16,000-20,000. Some of that was mindset shift, too … . (The concept of) ‘pay yourself first.’ Everything that Two-Brain has recommended I do has worked. Now when Two-Brain makes a recommendation, I just do it.”

Trusting her mentor is key. 

“She’s on Team Kate and wants to see me succeed. I consider Ashley a friend—family, even. She is that friend that you can verbally vomit on, and she’ll help you make sense of it. She’s been through it, too,” Spinner said.

Now, Kate is coaching less and has more time to focus on her vision: developing more perinatal/postpartum offerings.

“My coaches are doing a great job. Now, I have the ability to build new programs. … It’s nice to have the freedom to pick and choose what I want to do and not do.”

The post Two-Brain Client Spotlight: Kate Spinner appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

CrossFit Affiliate Playbook: Chris Cooper’s Review

Andrew (00:02):

It’s Two-Brain Radio. In this episode, Chris Cooper reviews CrossFit LLC’s new affiliate playbook. Chris, a longtime affiliate owner, digs into the playbook and offers his thoughts right after this.

Chris (00:13):

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 (00:39):

Hey everybody, Chris Cooper here, and today, I’m excited to be talking to you about the new CrossFit affiliate playbook. That’s right. Excited. But if you’re not a CrossFit affiliate, this episode is still for you because I think it illustrates the value of having consistency and having your business outside of your head and written down into a playbook format. I have been a CrossFit affiliate since 2008 after opening my gym in 2005. In 2020, I actually thought about de affiliating.

Chris (01:07):

I took the CrossFit name off my big billboard off the front of my gym, off our business cards and t-shirts and stuff. And I called CrossFit HQ and said, you know what? I think I’m done. Like this is just, it’s a personal choice after having, you know, interacted with some people and talking to my clients, I think it’s the right time for me. And Dave Castro said, give us three months. And at that time, I think maybe Dave knew that the business is going to be sold. I didn’t. And he didn’t share that with me. And then when Eric Roza bought it, the day after he called me and said, give us six months. And so I kept hanging on and finally my renewal date came up and I said, OK, I’m just going to keep renewing because I want to see what happens.

Chris (01:49):

And I am interested. I’m not confusing the methodology with the model. I know that CrossFit has always left the business part of owning a CrossFit business to the business owner without any help at all. And while I do feel like it’s kind of the responsibility of CrossFit HQ to at least gather data on its affiliates and present them back to the affiliates, that’s never been the case. And a couple of years ago, I realized that that’s really been up to me as a position that I hold that was both close to CrossFit HQ and a position of trust with affiliates, that it was really up to me to gather that data because nobody else was going to do it. And so we’ve started doing that. We’ve put together the state of the industry report. The second annual one is coming out right now.

Chris (02:34):

And it talks about more than just CrossFit affiliates. It talks about data across the entire industry, focusing specifically on micro gym owners. However, one of the very first things that I’ve always taught to CrossFit affiliate owners, to yoga gyms, to bootcamps, to strength and conditioning gyms, to every type of micro gym owner is the need to build a playbook for your business. This is a lesson that I learned at the foot of my first mentor. I thought that when I signed up, he was going to give me some marketing lessons. Instead he said, the first thing we need to do is build a playbook. And I didn’t understand how that was going to create a better business for me, but what it really does is it creates a solid foundation, which means that your business can stop slipping backward. And then you can start taking the steps to move it forward.

Chris (03:22):

The problem in my case was that the business was all in my head and none of my staff knew how the business ran and none of my clients knew how to behave properly because I left it all in my head. I didn’t tell them. I sure got mad when they didn’t read my mind and didn’t do exactly what I thought they should do. I thought that, you know, they would just have quote unquote common sense, not realizing that that didn’t actually exist. And so when I built my actual playbook, things started to turn around for me because I wasn’t always taking two steps forward and two steps back and two steps forward and two steps back. And so in 2012, when I was recruited to mentor other gym owners through a website company at the time, I thought about the 10 big things that had made a difference in my gym.

Chris (04:07):

And one of those very first things was a playbook. And so if you’ve worked with me through that old website company, or starting in 2016 through Two-Brain business, you’ll know that building a staff playbook has always been part of our curriculum. In the early days, the early incubator was like 1200 bucks or something. And one of the very first things that you did was you wrote your own playbook. And even now the playbook is part of our ramp up program. Although now we give you a more complete template for you to just customize a little bit, instead of starting from scratch because a playbook’s a lot of work. And here’s why this is so important. I have never ever met a CrossFit gym or a yoga gym or a personal trainer or a bootcamp owner, a Pilates instructor who wasn’t good at their job.

Chris (04:54):

I’ve never met one who wasn’t passionate. I’ve never met like a bad coach who didn’t want to be better. And I’ve met very, very few bad coaches in my career. I’ve never met a coach who intentionally harmed anybody. I’ve never met a coach who wasn’t invested in getting their clients results. That’s never been the problem. Likewise, I’ve never met a gym owner who was greedy, who was only in it for the money. I’ve never met a gym owner who, like, you know, put money ahead of their clients who didn’t want to be good at coaching their method. I’ve never met that person, but I’ve met a lot of gym owners who have failed. And in fact, you know, just speaking about the CrossFit affiliate playbook, over 10,000 CrossFit affiliates have failed in the past. And unfortunately the lessons that they’ve learned were never passed on to anybody else.

Chris (05:45):

Like their hard lessons, their mistakes. They died with those affiliates because nobody was actually taking the lessons, recording them and teaching them to everybody else. One of the reasons that they failed was not because they were not good at coaching CrossFit, right? It was because they didn’t have a playbook. They didn’t have an operational system. And so if you looked at their business and the six ways that we now measure gyms, you would see like they had common strengths, but also common weaknesses that were causing them to fail. So strength, coaching, they were all pretty darn good coaches, right? That’s one thing that CrossFit fixed. It made better coaches. They had a good method that actually worked, you know, before high intensity interval training, a lot of people were just using like bodybuilding plus jogging and they weren’t really getting their clients results. So those weren’t the reasons that these affiliates fail.

Chris (06:35):

The reasons that they failed were operational reasons. They didn’t have a standardized set of operations. And so if you graded these affiliates up until this point, what you would see is they would be like an eight out of 10 in coaching. And they would be like a nine out of 10 in method. And they would be like a two out of 10 in operations. They just didn’t have a business. A lot of the times they would confuse the method, CrossFit, Pilates, yoga, for the model, which was actually a business. And so this CrossFit affiliate playbook is going to help affiliates. It won’t help every affiliate. It won’t help the affiliates who are at the top, who already have good systems, who have a playbook, who have solid ops, but it will certainly help the affiliates who are still scoring like a two or a three in operations, but should be making a better living because they’re an eight or a nine in coaching.

Chris (07:29):

And while this playbook definitely will not bring them up to a 10 operationally, it might move them from a two or a three up to a five, to a level of sustainability that will let them stay in the game a bit longer, make a bit of money, reinvest in mentorship or coaching or help from other business owners who have been more successful and eventually thrive. More than anything else, having this playbook will show affiliates the need to have a playbook. And in fact that the method is not the model. So while I am very aware that this playbook is the intellectual property of CrossFit HQ, and I can not reveal any very, very specific parts of this, I’m also aware that the playbook has already entered the public domain, that other people have shared this before, and talking with a national or regional manager, whatever they call them.

Chris (08:21):

I brought it up that this thing was already out there and that non-affiliates had it. And he said, yeah, we kind of knew that would happen. So I’m going to be general. I’m not going to say on page 16, the CrossFit Affiliate playbook says this phrase. What I am going to do is talk in broad terms about what’s covered in the playbook, why it should be there and the top lessons that I hope people take from it. So the very first thing is you need to have a playbook, right? It’s great. And so the playbook opens with a self-reflection exercise on why do you want to open an affiliate? And there’s a good balance here between I want to make a living in fitness and I want to create an impact in my community. There are good questions. Like how will I balance my family and business?

Chris (09:06):

And these are expectation-setting questions. A lot of people, they think about entrepreneurship and they just see Gary V standing on stage with his slouchy hat and his, you know, fashionably ripped jeans. And they’re like, wow, that’s the life I want. You know, you grind grind, grind, and then you’re famous. But what they miss is that you have to learn how to operate a business. What they miss is that being a good coach is not enough to make a good living in the fitness business. And I think the affiliate playbook sets those expectations really well early. One of the questions is what sacrifices and risks am I willing to take on to be successful? And if nothing else, this is just a good reflection point for the future affiliate that there are sacrifices and risks necessary. The next thing is, you know, there’s a section on what gets you excited about opening an affiliate?

Chris (09:55):

And then what does success look like to you? And this is a really important question to ask because success to me might mean sustainability. I just want to keep my gym open long enough to have a meaningful impact on my local community. To somebody else, it might mean I want to be financially successful because I want to retire earlier. I want to be financially successful so that I can open multiple gyms and expand my impact. And we have a number of these people in our program right now. The problem is that CrossFit HQ doesn’t give us a definition of what a successful affiliate means. And so it’s really important as you’re going through an affiliate playbook or any like survey based, you know, opinion piece like this, that you understand that the definition of success from the people who wrote the book might not be the same definition of success that you have.

Chris (10:51):

I believe in an objectively measured definition of success, which is the freedom of time and money, to be more specific. I think that at minimum, if you own a CrossFit affiliate, you should be able to make a hundred thousand dollars per year in net owner benefit and work 40 hours a week or less. That’s how I define success. It’s very important that you understand when you’re going through an affiliate playbook like this, that not everybody giving opinions in the playbook has met that definition of success. Because my definition of success might not be theirs. They might have day jobs. They might not make a dollar from their gym, but they might still be portrayed as successful because that’s not what they want in life. OK. My mission is to make gym owners wealthy and by wealthy, I don’t mean you’ve got a yacht. By wealthy,

Chris (11:45):

I mean, you are objectively successful and measurably so. The next part of the book is writing core values, mission statement, and vision statement. And while this is important, it’s important not just that you have these things, but that you write them down and writing them down is, it’s a good exercise because iit forces you to stop and think about these things. And basically it’s like, you know, what do you want to get? Now while there’s not a lot of help in writing a mission statement and there’s not a lot of explanation on why you should do that, I definitely agree that that should be done because if your goal is to help 7,000 people in Sioux Sault Marie extend their lives in a meaningful way, which is my mission, then everybody on your team can work toward that mission. Now, 7,000 people, we can ask like, how many people do I need to serve at once?

Chris (12:35):

Is it 700? Is it 7,000? Or is it 70? And I know that I’m going to own this gym for 30 years. And so I know that I only need to serve 150 people at a time given my retention rate and how long it takes to have a meaningful impact on somebody’s lives. So, you know, the affiliate playbook does cover that.

Chris (12:53):

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

Chris (13:31):

The other thing that it does is talk about culture. Now, now culture is kind of this shifty term that a lot of business book writers are talking about right now. It’s a really easy topic to talk about. You can generate a book on culture because it’s indefinable. In general, we all know that we want a happy, upbeat culture, but we also want a culture of accountability. We want a culture of fairness. We want a culture of generosity, but we also want to know that everybody’s paying the same amount and that they’re all paying enough to keep the owner around and fed, right? So while inclusivity is amazing and you know, you want to think about that as part of your culture, meaning you don’t want to discriminate based by gender or race or skin color or political preference or anything like that.

Chris (14:20):

You also have to understand that you are selling an exclusive service and exclusive in the sense that not everybody will want it. Not everybody will afford it, and it will not solve everybody’s problems. Not everybody will want to do what you do and that’s OK. They might want something else. Not everybody will be able to afford the service you’re offering. And that’s OK. Not everybody coming to your gym is actually equal, you know, financially, or just maybe they have a longer drive to the gym than other people are. Or maybe they have a bias that would prevent them from getting results. And that’s OK. Right. You can be giving, you can be open. You can be generous. You can believe in equality, but you have to know who your target audience is. OK. And so, while it’s really important that in this affiliate playbook, they talk about being open to everybody.

Chris (15:15):

You still need to balance that against knowing like your job is not to give free memberships or to have like a scaled rate for people who quote unquote can’t afford your service. Your job is to make money and then be generous with that money as an entrepreneur. And these are two different things. All right. The next part of this book that I really like is like how to serve people better. You know, how to listen, how to be a professional, how to educate and inform, how to overcome obstacles. But there are also very specific things here about brand consistency, how to know everybody’s name and how to have gym hygiene. Now it seems like these are very basic things. You should have a clean gym with floors that aren’t covered in sweat and chalk dust, right? But nobody has ever told us this before.

Chris (16:08):

And if nobody tells us, then we tend to think like, well, you know, maybe that’s not critical. And until I had an affiliate playbook, I actually thought that to be quote unquote, counterculture, I needed a big pirate flag over my bathrooms, and I didn’t want super clean floors. I wanted chalk dust around and I wanted dirty hand prints. And I wanted pictures of ripped hands on the internet. I used to tell people, if you puke in your first workout, you get a free hat. And that was a point of pride. Instead, that actually kept a ton of people away from my gym, because who wants to puke in front of strangers? Nobody. So this is a great member experience checklist. It’s very basic, but again, most gyms fail not because they’re not good at coaching and not because they’re not passionate, but because they do not have a minimum set of standards, right?

Chris (16:59):

Like make sure your music is not offensive. If nobody tells you that you might play offensive music or your coaches might, or your members might come in and crank up, you know, some offensive music and that actually hurts your business. So even though we think this stuff is like common sense, maybe 10 years ago, it certainly wasn’t. And it’s not common sense for everybody today. For example, having a positive first impression, right? Safety and security, these are important things. And if we don’t spell it out, we can’t be sure that it’s going to happen every single time. The next section of the CrossFit affiliate playbook is it’s a business plan and there are some sample business plans I think for people to download. I’m going to tell you right now that the pillars that they list, while similar, are not the same six pillars that we teach at Two-Brain Business. Our pillars are based on data.

Chris (17:51):

And we know that there are six ways to actually grow a gym. Yes, getting more members is one way, but keeping members longer is another way. Having a high client value, ARM, is another way, minimizing business expenses or matching expenses to ROI is a fourth way. A fifth is operational excellence and a sixth is paying the owner. There are good examples of all six of these, where a client might have really great client value, but they don’t have enough clients. Or there are other examples where a gym might have 400 clients, but the client value is so low that they have massive churn. And the owners still can’t make a dollar. There are other examples where the gym is sitting on like $30,000 in cash. And the owner’s family is starving because the owner is paranoid that something’s going to happen. And so they hoard cash.

Chris (18:45):

You know, there’s lots of examples where any one of these six strategies, if done improperly can kill you. And at the start of this episode, I said like this playbook exists to address one of the six strategies, operational excellence. There’s no playbook in print that will tell you how to address all six. I tried to do my best with the gym owners handbook, my last book, I’m trying to do my best with my next book, which is start a gym. But the bottom line is that strategies change over time. What’s really important here is that you understand that there are six strategies and that the specific tactics might change or might be different for each gym. For example, I said that one of the six strategies is get more clients at my gym. We don’t run ads except for maybe twice a year.

Chris (19:30):

There are some outlying experiences, but generally we have built a referral culture and we use affinity marketing to turn those referrals from passive into active. And so we don’t need to run ads. Twice a year, August and December, we will run ads to build up a little bit of momentum before the busier periods of September and January. And then when our gym reopened in May, there was a bit of confusion around what was allowed. And so we ran some ads to educate our audience about what we were doing. In the CrossFit affiliated playbook, there’s a bunch of stuff about how to write a business plan, right? Like how do I identify who the ownership is? An executive summary is like what your business does, right? Then there’s a paragraph on your target market, really though your target market is everything. You don’t open a gym just to teach a method.

Chris (20:23):

As much as you open a gym to serve an audience and a client centric business means that while your audience grows and expands, it also deepens. And as you understand your audience better, you might change your method. You might change your model. You might change what you offer to match that audience best. That’s really important here, instead of doing like a local market analysis and measuring demographics and trying to figure out what the average person earns and then extrapolate to what should my prices be based on what people can afford. Look that doesn’t work. What you have to actually do is ask who is my ideal client. And if you already own a gym, you start with your three best clients and you say, what do these people want? And then you duplicate them over and over. The SWOT analysis, that’s in the CrossFit affiliate playbook.

Chris (21:11):

Again, it’s good. And it will take you from a level two to a level four, but it will not make you the best gym owner in your town. The seed client exercise is way more effective than this. But again, you know, if you’re operating, you’ve never done a client avatar, you don’t know who your ideal clients are. You’re trying to get everybody in. You’re trying to compete on price. You think that the guy down the street is your competition, then yeah. This will take you from like a three to a five. One of my favorite things in here is the revenue model. Now the CrossFit affiliate playbook does not give you a revenue model. We give you a great revenue model in our ramp-up program, and we give you industry averages in our state of the industry address. What this does though, is it gives you some big questions to ask.

Chris (21:59):

Number one, do you have access to experts in the field? You know what the best people are charging. Number two is how and why is the product or service priced this way? I think this is a really important question for CrossFit affiliates to ask, because most of us set our rates based on what everybody else was charging minus $5 or 5%. And we mistakenly fell into this trap of decreasing prices across the world, because instead of saying, what should we be charging? And using math to figure that out objectively, we said, what have other people charged? Not realizing that they didn’t do the exercise either, right? They just kind of guessed. The other question that the playbook asks is what are the associated costs and what is the profit potential? A lot of us got into this because we wanted a job coaching forever. Instead of asking ourselves like, how much can we actually profit?

Chris (22:50):

How much do I need to profit to make sure that I stick around long enough? We just said like, what am I supposed to charge? And so there’s no specific financial plan in this CrossFit affiliate playbook. We give you that in the ramp up program. Again, the affiliate playbook does a great job of triggering that question and also setting the expectation that you should profit. The next part of the playbook is an opening roadmap about how to find location. Should you buy or lease equipment? You know, what should you expect from a lease when you’re signing it? How do you get out of a lease? What’s a good faith clause. Do you need a partnership? What kind of legal entity should you set up? And then how to build out an affiliate. These are great. And they take advice from a lot of affiliate owners and they put little videos in, which are great.

Chris (23:40):

The thing that you’ve got to understand again, is that the people who are making recommendations based on their experience are well-meaning longstanding affiliates. That does not mean they’re successful in the same way that you want to be successful. Right? You have to understand that. Also their model might not be your model. So this, this book gives you lots of different options. When you watch the videos, you need to understand that there’s more than one way to do it. And I haven’t watched the videos myself. So I don’t know if they’re are any good or bad, but what they probably do is say here is the model that I have built out. Now. Here’s what I’ve noticed from the affiliates that are featured by CrossFit home office. Now a lot of these affiliates go after the big group model, they want 300 clients. Everybody’s coming to a group.

Chris (24:29):

If you read the state of the industry and you look at objective data, this is not the model that is most successful for the most people. Most of the people who said this is the best model didn’t really do well long term, and especially through threats, like COVID, the model of just having like big group classes is inherently fragile and it’s susceptible to retention problems. You have to have a mixed model of one-on-one training, maybe some nutrition coaching and group to build a sustainable, but scalable business. You also have to have a really solid way of onboarding new clients that usually involves some one-on-one coaching. Now there’s different ways to do this, of course, but what you have to understand is that the model of just big group classes is actually a risky model because that tells you you should rent a big space.

Chris (25:24):

You should have a billion pieces of equipment. You should have a dozen coaches when really you don’t need to do that. And that’s not even what Greg Glassman did. And so if you’re presenting an objective view, based on data of what’s actually been proven to work, you might hear from different experts than who’s chosen for the CrossFit affiliate playbook, you might not, right. These people might be actually successful using the big group model. They might have something else. They might be successful with partnerships, you know, but how do you resolve that dispute? And how do you overcome the data showing like 70% of partnerships in this model just generally don’t pan out, right? So there are some, actually some good tips in here about like preventing a broken partnership and addressing expectations and stuff like that. And these are very useful, especially at starting a new affiliate.

Chris (26:19):

What they don’t tell you though, is how to use a partnership to optimize it and become more than the sum of its parts. Right? So again, if you’re just starting out and you’re thinking about taking a partnership as I did, here’s some tips for maybe figuring it out. But it doesn’t tell you whether you should do it or not. OK. The next thing is calculating membership to break even. So this is this the part of the affiliate playbook where I struggle. So for example, they’re saying like figuring out your financial calculator, figure out what it’s going to cost to operate your location, and then choose your membership fees based on market rate in the area. This is a flaw. This is probably the weakest part of the affiliate playbook because it presumes that somebody along the chain has figured out market rate and they haven’t. Even the biggest affiliates with the most members in the world did not start by figuring out what the market will bear.

Chris (27:15):

They started from what is the minimum that people will pay with the intent of raising value and raising prices over time. But none of them actually did that. And so what happens is that new affiliates coming in, start with a slightly lower price. I’ll give you an example. When I was speaking with CrossFit HQ’s traveling road show in France, we were visiting a gym. It was an awesome gym and they were charging about $170 per month for their peak service. OK. In the room were about 200 CrossFit affiliates. And we were talking to them about price and most of them were charging like 130 a month, which is not enough. And it’s actually below the world, average of 154 per month. When I said, why aren’t you charging more? They said, well, because you know, we’re at Daniel’s gym and he charges 170 and we can’t charge more than him because he’s the best.

Chris (28:09):

And I said, well, what do you mean he’s the best? And they said, oh, he’s got all these certifications. But none of them said, what is the value of what I’m selling? They said, what is the ceiling? And the ceiling was artificially low. You know, Daniel’s gym could have been charging 300 a month. They could have been charging way more. But the affiliate looked at the 170 and said like, this is what the best charge, you know, compared to him, I’m running a B plus affiliate. So I need to be charging 10, 15% less than that. And that’s how people set their rates. It’s not what the market will bear. Definitely not. You should not look at other affiliates to set your rates. I promise you they’re way too low. Usually by about half. Then the affiliate playbook says, check your membership potential. And it says, what are the realistic prime hours of the day?

Chris (28:59):

The realistic prime hours of the day for any business are the times that their customers are available. So that’s before the customer’s workday begins and after the customer’s workday ends and on the customer’s weekends, that’s what it really comes down to. And then, you know, the recommendations kind of flow from there, again from this like high volume model that we know is pretty fragile. It doesn’t actually work most of the time. So I’m going to end my review there. And because it gets into pricing structures and models and stuff, but basically what it goes down to is they want you to, or they propose and promote this model of, you know, like a high volume class, because that is quote unquote CrossFit. This is a big myth. And while the CrossFit affiliate playbook will help you get better at that model, you have to ask yourself like, is that the actual model that will make you objectively successful, help you stick around

Chris (29:56):

long-term, make you flexible enough to pivot in times of crisis like global pandemics and do the best job for your clients? I don’t think it is. I think that you need to have a prescriptive model where you’re meeting with clients, you’re reviewing their goals. You’re not just selling them workouts in a friendly community every day, but you’re actually making sure that they make progress. Changing that prescription over time, between nutrition, one-on-one, online, accountability and group classes, whatever, and tailoring your options around what your clients need. If you’re selling a big group class model only, then you’re probably selling a service that is not significantly different, at least to the uneducated consumer, from the guy down the street. And when you’re selling the same thing as the guy down the street, you’re selling a commodity. And what happens when you’ve got a commodity? Price drops to approaching zero.

Chris (30:53):

If you really want to make a living here, you can’t go with the big group class model anymore. You have to have differentiated service at the bare minimum. You have to have one-on-one available. This is what scales, this is what makes you resilient. This is what makes you flexible. This is what creates enough client value that you don’t need 400 people to be profitable. That you can make a hundred thousand dollars a year with 150 clients. And if you want to see a roadmap on how to do that, you can watch a video that I’ve got in the show notes here, how to make a hundred thousand dollars with 150 clients. If you start with that, then you can always get more clients, but you have to start with client value at the core of your business. And what is valuable to the clients? You have to ask the client. Building a client centric business does not mean selling one type of class to 400 people.

Chris (31:45):

Building a client centric business means identifying who the best clients are for you to serve, identifying what’s most valuable to them, and then building your service around that. That’s the real playbook to success. And the CrossFit affiliate playbook does definitely shadow that in certain areas. If you don’t have a written playbook in your business, the CrossFit affiliate playbook will take your business from, you know, having a weak, operational link in your chain, you know, from a two or three and operations to about a five. It’s certainly better than nothing. It is not a roadmap to success, but it will definitely lift you up if you’re weak in operations. So kudos to CrossFit HQ or home office for providing this, kudos to the people who don’t need it because they’re already past it. And I hope that this brings everybody up to the bare minimum, sustainable level so that they can actually thrive, own several affiliates and make a bigger impact down the road

Andrew (32:44):

Two-Brain Radio’s your source for the best advice in the gym business. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And now Coop’s got a special invitation for you.

Chris (32:52):

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 CrossFit Affiliate Playbook: Chris Cooper’s Review appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two-Brain Client Spotlight: Tina Ferringer

From earthquakes to roof collapse to getting COVID, Tina Ferringer has weathered her share of challenges over the past few years.

With two fitness studios—in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska—Tina had a full plate. Then she was devastated to learn that one of her managers was copying her business model and opening up a competing studio less than a mile away. When this happened, “30 percent of our clientele walked out the door.” 

She recalled: “I grew too quickly. I put the wrong person in a position of leadership.” 

Then COVID hit. 

“I called Two-Brain. I said, ‘This is what happened: She took my exact business plan, then she undercut us.’ (The mentor) said: ‘Raise your prices.’” 

That simple guidance fueled the mindset shift Tina needed. First, she focused on her own leadership: “That was my goal last year: to become the best leader I can,” she said. 

Then, she refined her business model to focus on quality over quantity. She hired a sales manager. She immediately pivoted to offer virtual classes, going as far as delivering 110 bikes to clients all over Alaska. 

“Our team is amazing. Our instructors showed up, threw the bikes in the van. We were up in the mountains, getting stuck. But we didn’t lose a day. We just kept on grinding,” Tina explained.

Two-Brain taught Tina that she didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. With the help of Certified Two-Brain Fitness Business Mentor Peter Brasovan, Tina accessed ready-made playbooks, templates and resources that put her on the fast track. 

“Now, I’m able to ask for help,” she said. “Two-Brain’s already done it; I don’t need to work my ass off to figure it out.” 

Her work paid off: In January of this year, despite having to operate at 50 percent capacity, she passed her largest monthly gross ever: $66,000. 

“But the real payoff is the fact that we had three people come to me in private and tell me that our fitness studio, community and culture saved them from dying by suicide. Exercise saves lives. No matter how hard it’s been, …  I always just told our team, ‘We’re going to show up. People need us more now than ever.’” 

Now, Tina has her sights set on helping others like never before. 

“We do huge fundraisers: We’ve raised over $100,000 for the local Alaskan community. I want to become a million-dollar company because I know what that means for our community,” she said. “The more resources you have, the more good you can do.” 

The post Two-Brain Client Spotlight: Tina Ferringer appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

FOMO Alert: Three Minutes for Marketing (and Retention)

Today, you’re going to pick up your phone and make money.

First, you have to skim through this column.

But if you’re feeling TLDR and don’t care for the reasoning behind my instructions, trust me and take this shortcut right now.

1. Send this text to three members you haven’t seen in a week: “Coming to the gym today?”

2. Send this text to three members you’ve seen recently: “Hey [NAME]! I’ve noticed how hard you’re working in the gym—way to go! What’s your next goal?”

3. Send this text to three departed members: “Do you still want to improve your fitness this year?”

4. Send this text to three people on your lead list: “Hi [NAME]! It’s [COACH] from [GYM]. I haven’t forgotten about you. Want to talk about personal training or nutrition?”

If you aren’t going to send those messages right now, read on the find out why you should.

I get to talk to a lot of successful gym owners and fitness business experts on Two-Brain Radio, and when I hear the same things from a bunch of them, I take note. When a large number of very intelligent, very successful people are doing the exact same thing, you might want to consider doing it, too.

Two-Brain Business takes a scientific, data-based approach with stuff like this: We analyze the actions of successful gym owners, test them and then recommend those actions if they’re proven to work.

In the limited space of this column, I’ll jump over the research and just tell you that the best gym owners in the world are doing the things I’m recommending. If you aren’t, you’re probably missing out.

Retention: Where Have You Been?

John Heringer of Method3 Fitness is just one of many successful entrepreneurs who prioritizes retention of current clients. Every week, he runs a report to find absentees and then calls, emails or texts them. Simple, right? (John’s revenue in August 2021 was $86,000. Listen to him talk about it here.) You don’t even have to run the report. Just do a mental review, pick three members you haven’t seen and fire off texts.

Podiums: You’re a Star!

For years, Chris Cooper has been telling gym owners to make their clients famous and put them on podiums. Your gym might be the only place in the world where they feel special. So take a minute and high-five three people. You’ll give three members a warm fuzzy that will last all day and strengthen your bond. (Want to read more about showing appreciation? Click here and here.)

The 10-Word Message

Just send this thing to departed clients: “Do you still want to improve your fitness this year?” It’s a kind of magical marketing message. Chris Cooper talks more about it at 4:59 here. But if you only have time for one action, skip the podcast and spend your time sending the message.

Follow up With Leads

When it comes to marketing, I’ve heard a relentless drumbeat for years now: Contact your leads quickly and keep trying until you get in touch with them. Without fail, the gyms that sell more get in touch with leads in minutes, not weeks. And they attempt to contact leads many, many times before writing them off. I bet some of your leads could use another quick text. Pick three and start thumb typing. (Want more info? Check out marketing expert Mateo Lopez on Two-Brain Radio; he covers lead-nurture texts at 30:47.)

Take Action

I bet it would take you less than three minutes to send these 12 messages. And some of you will literally make money in those three minutes.

A disheartened member will perk up and give you a chance to re-engage and prevent a cancellation email.A valued member will feel noticed and appreciated—and less likely to cancel a membership or miss a workout.A departed member might jump at the chance to reconnect with you and get back to training.A lead might see your message and respond, giving you a chance to book a consultation.

At some point today, you’re going to spend three minutes doing something useless—probably checking Facebook or TikTok. Instead, take those three minutes to improve your retention, reacquire departed members and nurture leads.

And when you hit a home run with these tactics, remember Two-Brain has hundreds of others that will help you solve every single problem in your business.

To hear more about those tactics, book a free call here.

The post FOMO Alert: Three Minutes for Marketing (and Retention) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Only Reason Chris Cooper Would Buy Another Gym

Mike (00:02):

Chris Cooper pulls the curtain back today on Two-Brain Radio. He’s generally against buying another gym, but he’d do it for just one reason. He’ll tell you what it is right after this.

Chris (00:12):

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

Chris (01:05):

Hey everybody, Chris Cooper here. With the surge of new business combined with the lockdowns from COVID, which are still going on in a lot of places all over the world, we’re seeing a lot of gyms sell to other gyms. Now this is great. And I want to start with this message. This is what’s supposed to happen in a free economy, open market, kind of a libertarian approach to business. This is to be expected and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. So when I was working for CrossFit, I actually brought this question up to Greg and he said, Chris, it’s not a bad thing. My question was something like, are you concerned with the number of affiliates that don’t make it? And he said, this is what’s supposed to happen. So, a gym who has a passionate owner, they’re teaching fitness, they’re changing lives, three years in they’re broke. They can’t afford to go on. How is that a good thing? Well, if they close down, their clients are already in love with fitness. And so those clients won’t just quit doing fitness. They’ll go to another gym and that other gym will do better and become more profitable.

Chris (01:56):

And the coaches who are passionate about changing lives and teaching fitness will go to that other gym too. The good ones will, and the owner can probably get a job coaching. And in that scenario, which of course, I’m seeing this through rose colored glasses, that scenario works out great for everybody. Now, sometimes it does work out that way. Most of the time it works out where a business closing is good for somebody, but it might not be good for everybody. And that’s OK too. No matter what the reason, a lot of gyms are getting purchased right now, a lot of gyms are getting sold. And so more than ever, people are asking us for our free guides, how to buy a gym and how to sell a gym. And you can get those for free on Two-Brain business.com. You just go to the free tools section.

Chris (02:37):

You can download them. The most important part of that package is a business valuation tool that came from Rigquipment. Even if you’re thinking about selling, it’s worth doing this business valuation to figure out like what you could reasonably expect to get for your gym. Right now, gym valuations in general are a little bit higher than normal. And that’s really due to like the cost of equipment. You can’t buy used equipment for 10 cents on the dollar like you used to, there is a shortage. That’s going away, but for right now, you’re still paying a premium on used equipment. In a lot of cases, people are paying the same for used as they would for new because they can’t buy new. So we published this guide. The guide is full of warnings and red flags. And like, maybe you shouldn’t buy a gym. You know, why it’s easier to just start from scratch again.

Chris (03:23):

And so after reading this guide, a lot of people have come back to me and say, Chris, you sound like really down on buying a gym. And it’s true. There are very few instances where you should buy another gym, but the questions were like, what would make you buy another gym? And so I thought about it and there’s really only one reason. And that is audience acquisition. My mentor, Todd Herman told me that once you know how to build an audience, you’re set for life. That’s a direct verbatim quote from him. And a lot of my friends actually do this with their business. So they’ll build their business big enough that they’ve got really good cashflow and then they’ll go buy it like a competitor or a smaller version of themselves. And they’ll just buy that audience. Now this works with a product or a service like websites because people are generally, you know, bought into some kind of contract with the website provider or changing websites is something that they only do every three to five years, it’s different in a fitness business.

Chris (04:19):

So what would make me buy a fitness business? First off, I would want their clients to be on contracts. Now I know I’ve been teaching don’t have contracts since the dawn of time, but let’s face it. If you can buy a business that has clients on contracts, then you are buying guaranteed cashflow. Now maybe some of those people will bail when you take over, you know, and having the contracts can also be a catch 22, because if the contracts are too low, then you’re locked into servicing those contracts. And when the contracts are up, you might not be able to raise rates on people and they might go away. Anyway, if they’ve got contracts, though, you can at least be sure of some cashflow when you get going. So buying an audience that way is, you know, it’s a little bit helpful. There are some barriers to buying an audience though.

Chris (05:06):

So for one thing is like location. You know, are you buying an audience across town? Number two is mistakes. Are you buying the wrong audience? Are you buying these people who are signed up for that gym because they’re attracted to the low prices that you don’t have at your primary gym? Another one is like the wrong flavor of audience. Are you buying a gym where everybody’s focused on competing at American Ninja Warrior and the rest of your clients are not, your high value clients at your gym are focused on like improving their lives and losing weight and all that stuff. So you have to be very careful with this. But another thing is like, what other mistakes are you buying? So maybe you’re buying an audience of a hundred clients, but to buy that audience, not only do you have to pay the current owner, but you also have to buy the lease, you know, maybe they’ve committed to another two years on the lease.

Chris (05:55):

You also have to buy their other mistakes like that. The things that are losing them money. And so when you say holy crap, this business is actually worth less than $0. It would have been easier to just start from scratch. Now you’re committed to losing money for a while, and there’s no guarantee that you can bring your best practices to that gym without losing the audience anyway. So I want to give you a couple of examples of where I’ve seen audience acquisition really work in a fitness business. And the first one comes from the Boston area. I was very fortunate to be part of this negotiation. I flew down to Boston. We sat down with some gym owners and I was just kind of in the room as the conversation for buyout taking place. And the best one that worked, went like this, Gym A was doing really, really well.

Chris (06:40):

Gym B was doing not so well. They had a lease renewal coming up and the owner was like, I’m done I’m out.

Chris (06:46):

Chris Cooper here to talk about Level Method. When it comes to owning a gym, it can be really tough to show your members their progress and keep them engaged long term. Level Method provides experienced gym owners with a visual step-by-step fitness progression system that’s fun, engaging and easy to use. With Level Method, your clients can reach their fitness goals faster and safer than ever before and become raving fans of your gym. It’s a total game changer that creates powerful moments that you’ll never forget. I use it at Catalyst, it improved my conversion and my retention. Go to levelmethod.com to find out more.

Chris (07:20):

So we did a gym valuation and gym B was worth let’s call it $50,000. I thought that was a very generous offer for what gym A would be getting, but they’re generous people.

Chris (07:30):

So they offered $50,000. But here’s how it worked. First. They would offer, they would honor gym B’s rates, but only in gym A’s location. So the people in gym B’s audience couldn’t go back to that same gym. Obviously they didn’t want to take on the new lease either. So they had to go a few blocks down the road to gym A, OK. And they got the same rate for the length of whatever term they were on. OK. Then gym A paid the owner of gym B half of the $50,000 upfront. So 25 grand, here you go. The rest was contingent on retention. So after three months they audited retention. And if retention of gym B’s clients at gym A was 50%, then they would pay 50% of the balance. And if the retention was at a hundred percent, then they would pay a hundred percent of the balance.

Chris (08:20):

And to give the old owner of gym B every opportunity to improve that retention and maximize his payout, they gave him a job as a coach. And so all he had to do was like show up at this new gym and coach the clients in classes and stuff, keep them around and he would get maximum payout. And I thought this was a really great way to do it. I thought it benefited everybody. So that’s one way to do it another way to do it. And I’ve seen this actually in Canada is that I will just basically pay you per client of yours that shows up. So let’s say that I’m buying your gym. So, I’m going pay you the value of that client’s membership for up to three months, if they join my gym. So basically you just shut your gym down.

Chris (09:05):

You heavily recommend that your clients come to me and maybe I even give you a job coaching at my gym. For the next month, every one of your clients that comes to my gym, you get their membership. Now you have no expenses. So you’re actually collecting like a hundred percent of the value of their membership yourself. And maybe that continues for two months or three months, and then that’s it. So first you’ve got an incentive to bring clients to my gym, which might be a better experience, you know, and maybe that’s why I’m still in business. Second, you’ve got an incentive to keep them at my gym because that’s going to maximize your payout. And third, you’ve got a great job coaching, which is probably what you wanted when you opened a gym anyway. So those are two great ways to do a buyout without putting a bunch of upfront cash in that will probably keep everybody happier.

Chris (09:53):

The third way is if you’re already in Two-Brain. So if you’re a Two-Brain client and you want to sell your gym, I would be the first buyer because I know that you’ve already got systems and policies in place that are very similar to mine. But even if they’re not exact, you’ve already got pricing that’s probably within 10 or 15% of mine. So if I have to make a correction there, it’s not going to cause like everybody to quit. You’ve probably got high quality coaches instead of 12 very part-time people working for like trades against their membership. You’ve probably got like a couple of real standouts and you’ve probably got somebody handling like your social media for you. If you’re selling and you’re in Two-Brain, it’s probably just because you had another business and you didn’t have time to grow your gym. Or, you know, after 10 years, you’re just going to do something else or, you know, whatever.

Chris (10:42):

But generally I only have to fix one thing if I acquire your gym and that’s probably new client acquisition, or maybe it’s sales, or maybe it’s like onboarding, but it’s not 20 things. A lot of us make the mistake of buying another gym and we wind up buying the other people’s problems. So we take over this gym, OK. There’s a hundred clients in ZenPlanner. Whoops. Only 85 of those are actually paying us a membership. Oh, whoops. A lot of those have discounts. Oh, whoops. There’s no systems. So I wind up just buying myself a worse job for less money when I acquire your gym. What we’ve seen though is in one or two cases in the last few months, one Two-Brain gym owner will actually acquire a gym from another Two-Brain owner. And that gym’s valuation is much higher because it runs without the original owner.

Chris (11:28):

They can be pretty confident that the clients are going to stick around. They’re already high value clients working with high value staff on great systems. Just maybe we need to help them with marketing, or maybe we need to improve our sales process, whatever it is like one thing. OK. So those are the three ways that I would potentially buy a gym. The key though, is you gotta know what you’re buying. Yes. Maybe you’re buying their used equipment. OK. You know, you can buy used equipment almost anywhere online. Just Google it. Yes. Maybe you’re buying their clients. OK. But that doesn’t always work out. Quite often, the clients will leave when a new owner comes in or quite often you’ll have a tough time enforcing a non-compete against the original owner. And he just goes down the road and opens another gym. Maybe you’re buying like an established brand, but I don’t think so.

Chris (12:15):

Like, especially, this is true for bootcamp and yoga, but it’s especially true for CrossFit because you don’t really own your brand. Right? CrossFit HQ could take your name away from you whenever they want to. You have to be careful about that. But if you want to buy an audience, the best way is to not just think about like, what is the value of the audience today, but what is the value of the audience a month from now and three months from now. Will they still be around? Will I get a good return on this? Maybe they’ve got contracts. OK. Maybe, you know, it’s another Two-Brain gym, or maybe you wind up hiring the owner. Maybe you wind up structuring the deal so that the owner gets paid for client retention, whatever it is, these are the only ways that I would ever buy another gym.

Chris (12:58):

And let’s face it. For the cost to start a new gym being less than $20,000, if I’m going to take on the risk of signing a lease, which is the major risk, the major expense, I would probably be better in most cases to just start myself. And unfortunately, this is something that you’ve got to think about. If the gym down the street is closing, there’s a great chance that you’re going to get their clients anyway even if you do nothing, if you want to reward the owner by offering them like a three month buyout for recommending that their clients come to you or whatever, that’s totally fine, but you have to ask yourself like, what am I actually paying for? Hope it helps.

Mike (13:36):

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

Chris (13:44):

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 The Only Reason Chris Cooper Would Buy Another Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

By the Numbers: Lifetime Value (Five-Figure Clients)

What’s the average client worth to your business?

When you see the answer, you might think about each client differently.

While every client is more important than the money he or she spends, you do have a transactional relationship with your members. They’re not paying you for friendship. Tracking your average client lifetime value (LTV) serves a few of goals:

It tells you if your service is becoming more valuable over time.It puts marketing costs (or “cost of acquisition”) into context.It might change your perspective when you’re talking to clients.

To calculate LTV, multiply your average revenue per member per month (ARM) by your length of engagement (LEG). (Click here for more on these key metrics.)

Five-Figure Clients

When I was a treadmill salesman, I had a very gruff, fast-talking boss. She was great at sales, and I wasn’t.

One day, while she was visiting the shop, a shipment of new treadmills arrived at the loading dock. Just as we started unloading the treadmills, the phone began to ring.

It rang once. I kept moving boxes. She didn’t say anything.

Then it rang again. I continued to move boxes. She stared at me.

When it rang a third time, she sprinted to the front desk and answered the phone, out of breath. She spoke with a potential client for 10 minutes. Then she put the phone down and made a beeline for me.

“You always answer the phone,” she yelled. “There’s always a $10,000 client on the line!”

After that, I answered the phone every time—unless I was talking to a customer in person. But you can bet that I returned phone calls fast. The perspective on a person’s potential value added an urgency to my care for clients.

Three Reasons to Track LTV

The reason the top gyms in the world track LTV is simple: They want to know what every client is worth financially.

The value they provide to the client is unmeasurable: health, energy, vitality, self-esteem, etc.

But the value the client provides in return is measurable. And there are good reasons to track it.

First, you’ll know what you can afford to spend to acquire a client. If you live in an area with high turnover (or you just have poor retention), then you’ll have to buy advertising to grow your gym. But how much? And where do you invest your marketing dollars? Knowing your LTV is the first step.

Second, instead of looking at clients as walking dollar signs, you’ll actually be more patient with them, you’ll give them more individual attention, and you’ll try to increase LTV. Simply knowing the number will help you make it better.

Third, you’ll stay focused on your clients instead of worrying about the Black Friday discounts your competitors are running. You’ll stop chasing headcount and start thinking about how to keep the best people training with you.

I promise: Your perspective will change when you look at a client and say, “That person will spend $12,000 here over the next few years.”

The post By the Numbers: Lifetime Value (Five-Figure Clients) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

By the Numbers: LEG (How to Keep Clients Forever)

Gym retention is a critical stat, but it’s often poorly tracked if it’s even tracked at all.

Many software platforms don’t make LEG tracking easy or even possible, and some gyms actually use DIY spreadsheets to get their numbers. We track LEG through the Two-Brain Dashboard, our own app.

We track LEG because it has predictive value. For example, in 2020 we discovered that if you can get clients past the eight-month mark, you’ll probably keep them for 14 months. And if you can keep them past the 14-month mark, you can probably keep them for 24 months.

We’ve done the math: In 2018, the average gym owner who filled out our Gym Check-Up would have earned an extra $45,000 that year simply by increasing average retention by two months.

You can also use LEG to calculate how much you should spend on marketing and advertising (I’ll give you the details in the next post in this series).

Length of engagement is important. Here’s how the top performers in the world earned such great LEG numbers:

“I hired a (client success manager) to focus on reaching out to 10 members a week. I also have her reach out to people you don’t see attending—she has access to the system; she posts our bright spots board; she’s tracking all that stuff.”

“I was on the leaderboard a year ago for retention, and I went out and asked the members why they stayed so long. There were 83 answers that all fit one theme: We gave a shit about them. I know their name, their families. If someone leaves a water bottle we will know whose it is. We celebrate the shit out of them; we have an amazing client journey mapped out from their (No Sweat Intro) to their 2,000th class!”

“Our constant communication with our 125 members is what I can attribute this number to. Yes, we do goal reviews—but only officially for 15 months. Prior to goal reviews, it was all about being in tune (with) the needs of the members. We offer an extensive schedule of group classes and keep class sizes between 8-12 to allow lots of focus from each coach. But more importantly, I was emailing and texting members every week if I didn’t see them in class. If someone didn’t show up at 8 a.m. that normally is there, then I would be texting them. Now we have a GM who does this.

“We run a report each Thursday to show people who haven’t been in that week (4 days ago) and we reach out to them via text mostly. Mondays, my GM will message those who need a little extra accountability and make sure they are signing up for classes for the week. We also have events every few months that are free for members to attend (on top of the ones that cost them extra). We believe in making it more than a gym. We host a member appreciation week each year around our anniversary (11 years) and utilize our relationship with wholesale vendors to offer lots of giveaways.”

“LEG isn’t built in 6 months—it’s what you’ve done for the last 2-3 years that will impact it. Play the long game; create stickiness—they can’t imagine going somewhere else.”

Improve Your Business—and Change Lives

If you want to build a client-centric business, you have to keep a client around long enough to make a difference.

Measure LEG, and you measure the difference you’re making in their lives!

The post By the Numbers: LEG (How to Keep Clients Forever) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.