Chris Cooper's Blog, page 116

Active Isn’t Enough: What Gym Owners Know and the Public Doesn’t

“Two-thirds of Americans believe they are currently active.”

This was by far my favorite line in “The Next Fitness Consumer Report” recently published by ClubIntel and sponsored by the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) and ABC Fitness Solutions.

You can read a summary of the report here or get the full report here for the low price of your contact info.

The line makes me laugh because of the word “believe.”

I’m not sure if the publisher intended to throw shade at survey respondents, but to me the term suggests that some people who believe they are active aren’t really active at all.

Here’s another line that adds more detail: “66 percent of consumers are currently exercising, working out or staying active in some regard.”

It’s an interesting stat, but it’s kind of worthless because “staying active” is so vague. It’s like saying this: “66 percent of survey respondents don’t drink at all or drink less than 10 beers a week.”

Eh?

Activity and Actual Training

Let’s be clear: productive exercise and general activity are not the same thing. To be fair, they’re both important, and I’d never criticize anyone who lives an “active lifestyle.” I want people moving.

But we need to remember that gardening, walking the dog and other activities do not produce the same results as actual physical training. General activity is part of health, but it isn’t the same as a focused plan to maintain or improve health. And, to be honest, most gym goers don’t really have a clue how to systematically improve fitness, though their random training is far better than not training at all.

My argument is that general consumers don’t know what proper physical training actually is, so gym owners have a huge opportunity to tell them.

Physical training is not:

Doing some yard work twice a week.Playing with the kids or dog.Riding the bike to work.Hitting the gym and doing the same routine three times a week all year (though this is certainly a step in the right direction).

Physical training for improved health and fitness is:

Following an optimal diet and exercise plan that clearly and consistently moves all key metrics in the right direction as people accomplish their goals.

My definition above puts the finer points of physical training and eating properly outside the province of the average person.  

And that’s my point. The average people do not have the skills to create nutrition and fitness programs that improve health. They can certainly make progress, but it won’t be optimal without the help of an educated coach.

I‘ve been there: I used to do the same workouts every day for months because I saw them in some muscle mag. What I did was better than nothing, and I made some progress. But it wasn’t optimal progress, and I made lots of mistakes because I wasn’t switching up my routine, addressing weaknesses, eating properly and sleeping enough.

What I really needed was someone to guide me—or way more education. I chose the latter route eventually and opened a gym. Most people need a guide—but they don’t know it.

Gym owners and trainers need to start conversations with people and explain what physical training and productive activity actually are. Remember, 66 percent of Americans “believe they are currently active,” yet the U.S. adult obesity rate was 42.4 percent in 2020. Something isn’t going according to plan.

If there’s one thing gym owners should do to build their brands, it’s this: Show people how a nutrition and fitness expert can help them make measurable changes to their health.

Two-thirds of Americans believe they’re active—and likely wonder why they aren’t healthier. You can tell them why—and how they can change their lives.

If you need help figuring out how to tell your story to your audience, Two-Brain can help on Aug. 26. Check out our Storytelling Workshop.

The post Active Isn’t Enough: What Gym Owners Know and the Public Doesn’t appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Eric Roza: How CrossFit LLC Can Help Gym Owners Most

Chris (00:01):

Hey, it’s Chris Cooper from Two-Brain Radio. Today my guest is Eric Roza, the owner and CEO of CrossFit. Stay tuned for a great show. Before I welcome Eric, I’d like to thank you for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Please subscribe for more episodes. And if you want to hear more about how mentorship can help your business book a free call with a member of my team twobrainbusiness.com.

Chris (00:23):

So Eric, welcome to Two-Brain Radio.

Eric (00:25):

Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris (00:26):

It’s a real pleasure. To jump right into it, you took over the company in kind of a turbulent period. You know, how difficult has it been for you as a new owner and a CEO to rebuild trust while you’re doing all these other things?

Eric (00:40):

You know, it’s a lot to take on and the way that we’ve tried to approach it is just keeping communication lines open in both directions. And, talking to, frankly, to a ton of people through a variety of channels, everything from small group sessions and one-on-ones to this, you know, to setting up the email boxes, you know, right. We got started last June before the transaction closed. Eric@crossfit.com where we’ve heard from thousands of people, literally. And so it was extremely helpful to get a lot of input. And then as we kind of coalesced to able to share out what we were thinking about the future, and as much as possible, that dovetailed with the efforts that we were actually doing, the actions we were taking. So it didn’t seem like a separate effort.

Chris (01:29):

Is it hard to take over a company where you’ve kind of got this figurehead icon and it’s about them and now you’ve got the opportunity to move toward like this broader vision, but you’re on stage with the camera on the whole time. Is that tough for you?

Eric (01:46):

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. It was really important, I think for people to understand that there was someone here, not be the man behind the curtain, if you will, but by the same token, by no means have this be kind of all about me. And frankly, I get a little uncomfortable when things that I had very little to do with personally get attributed to me. You know, for example, there was, you know, there’s been a lot of nice commentary around this year’s Games, which I thought were fantastic, but it’d be hard to understate my role in pulling off the Games this year. And so I don’t feel, you know, we’ll be willing to own leading the ship at this point, but most of what’s getting done, you know, it’s not so much attributable to me as it is to the team.

Chris (02:41):

And that right there, I think is a new perspective that those who have been around, you know, CrossFit HQ in the past are not used to hearing. So that’s great, Eric, thank you. By that token, like up until now, it’s been a very laissez-faire approach to affiliate management to the least, right? Like Greg’s position was that he could help affiliates most by letting them operate and do whatever they wanted. And that meant avoiding best practices and fighting larger battles to defend the name and attack bad science, but you’ve shown a lot of interest in helping affiliates. So, you know, now that you’re the owner, where can home office help affiliates most?

Eric (03:21):

You know, we thought a lot about this and I think, you know, Chris just, I mean, your business with Two-Brain, right, has been born on the fact that there are common needs that affiliates have that can be addressed in a systematic way. The biggest thing for me, I was informed a lot by my own affiliate ownership over the last almost nine years and feeling like I would never have done an affiliate if I had detailed, mandatory instructions of what I needed to do. But boy, once we got started, it was challenging and frustrating at times that there weren’t best practices codified and it didn’t have, you know, I didn’t have a mentorship network of other affiliates to talk to about things. And, you know, so those are the kinds of things that we’re trying to address.

Eric (04:13):

As well as putting in infrastructure around, you know, around things where we think it’ll be helpful to have people all on the same page. And one example is CrossFit Affiliate Programming, where we say, you know, wouldn’t it be great if everyone who wants to can have a single source of great programming, which has daily coach development included, and now all your members are part of this global network of people doing the same workouts, which is really cool. And it’s never been the case of CrossFit. But what’s key here is not mandating it. And we know the animal we’re dealing with and I am that animal, right? None of us. And you’re that animal too Chris, right? None of us want to be told what to do. So if we can provide really compelling products and services and opportunities that are not mandated, we feel like we’re in good shape.

Eric (05:08):

And we have this credo now, right. Tools over rules. Which isn’t to say there’ll be no rules. There have always been some rules for CrossFit gym owners, and there may be more over time. But really what we’re trying to do is provide tools to people who want them. And one of them is quite simply making it easier for folks to talk to each other. And this roundtables effort we have is a key part of that where we, I don’t know if you track this at all, but we had over 400 affiliate owners in a pilot program we ran and this fall we’re launching much more broadly these, these forums, these roundtables of about eight folks. And we have I think about 1200 affiliates currently on the waitlist for this, which I’m thrilled about, but I frankly think success here will be almost everyone joining this.

Eric (05:58):

And the beauty of it is it’s not a top-down kind of thing where we’re saying, oh, this week you must talk about X, and this is a way to promote what the agenda items we want. The whole point of it is that each group kind of self-organizes and has a real, an atmosphere of trust and vulnerability where they can in a confidential environment, get help and support from each other, which includes emotional support, which sounds, you know, wow. You know, do CrossFit, gym owners really want emotional support? Well, it turns out they’re human too. And when you make things confidential and get the right moderator in and all the moderators by the way are affiliate owners as well. So it’s pretty cool.

Chris (06:39):

How does that tie into the country managers, Eric, just so that I have a really clear picture of what is coming up?

Eric (06:45):

Well, I think, the country managers, who are affiliate owners are also going to, a lot of them will be leading these roundtables as will the US representatives. But, those will be in the minority. I mean, I think if we have, let’s just say, we end up with, I’ll round upward. If we end up with 1600 affiliates in this next phase, and I don’t know that we will, you’ll have 200 groups and so roughly 200 moderators, so it’s going to scale much more. And that’s daunting when I say that out loud, I’m like, wow, we’ve got to train 200 moderators, but that’s part of the cool thing is as an affiliate owner, you’re going to get moderator training at no cost to you, certainly plenty of cost to us, but no cost to you. That’s going to make you better at facilitating conversations in general. And you know, it counts as CEUs for your CrossFit credentials and all that too. So it’s kind of a cool benefit and it’s a way to give back and get more engaged. And it’s not for everybody, but we have a lot of interest in people holding those roles too.

Chris (07:50):

That’s great. So it seems like the theme here is like if you’re investing in the affiliate owners, that’s what’s going to grow the brand and the platform.

Eric (07:59):

That’s what we think. And I certainly think this again as an affiliate owner, not as a, you know, not just as a Johnny come lately to the CEO role in the last year, but as a nine-year affiliate owner and, you know, CrossFit Sanitas has, we’ve done pretty well. You know, pre-COVID, we’ve been close to 400 members and so on, but there’s still so much that we didn’t know about how to operate a gym and had to learn for ourselves. And didn’t really have the net—you know, I came from the tech world, so I didn’t really have the network of other gym owners to go to. So we think that everyone will do better. We think everyone can, you know, do a better job for their members, get their members more fit, have them you know, reduce churn, increase lead generation and make their members happier and their staffs healthier and all that provides, you know, great opportunities. And frankly, I’m sure, you know a lot of these people too, Chris, people who have been around as long as I have, or you’ve been around even longer, what year are you in gym ownership?

Chris (09:01):

Gym ownership 15, CrossFit affiliate, 13.

Eric (09:03):

13 years in the CrossFit affiliate, which is awesome. Thank you. But you know, there could be some fatigue that sets in too, and so we think we can reinstill the fire and passion in folks who have been around a while and, you know, are still grinding it out. And even with affiliate programming, you know, what we heard over and over is, you know, every Sunday, I’m bringing out the pencil for four hours to kind of figure this stuff out. And if we give people their Sundays back and then give them this support network, they’re going to be better at running their businesses. You’d have to try really hard to not be more satisfied and more effective at running your business. I think.

Chris (09:43):

Was affiliate programming, kind of a low hanging fruit first opportunity to give gym owners some time back and some value, or is this part of like a series of things that you plan to do to help gym owners build a better lifestyle, increased revenue, whatever.

Eric (09:59):

I think it’s part of a series, but it was, to your point, it was pretty low hanging fruit. Cause I, you know, we just kind of thought about it and said, wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to spend your Sunday doing this? I think one of the things, one of the insights with the affiliate programming was who the heck has time to do, you know, weekly, let alone daily coach development and who does the best job with coach development? It’s seminar staff. So why not have seminar staff delivering daily coach development to every coach at one of the gyms who’s implementing this. So that was part of the thinking. And to your point, I do think that we absolutely will have a roadmap where other things come in. We try to think about who are our stakeholders, right?

Eric (10:43):

So we’ve got affiliate owners, we’ve got coaches, we’ve got the members of gyms. We’ve got people who aren’t members, but still identify as CrossFitters. That’s just to name some. And we want to really think about for each of those groups, what really matters to them. And the best way we can learn that is actually by either having been talking to people who are, or have been one in one of those groups and getting their input. And in fact, we’re going into a strategy off-site with our board in a few weeks where we’re going to be really thinking about it that way, instead of saying, Hey, we’re in this business or that business, we’re actually going to start with an organizing principle of who are our key stakeholders and what does a coach want from us over the next five years? And how do we incorporate that into what we’re doing? So try to really break it down into almost the personas of the folks who are, uyou know, making the CrossFit magic come alive.

Chris (11:38):

That’s great, man. So, you know, to support that, obviously like some data would be helpful. Do you have any idea of how affiliates are doing financially or plans to figure that out?

Eric (11:50):

I love that. Be helpful to have some data.

Chris (11:55):

Two-Brain Business, that’s all it is.

Eric (11:58):

It’s a fair question. The answer is we’re getting more data all the time and still have less data than we would like. So we’ve been, you know, pretty frequently now surveying different elements of the population. And you know, a lot of it’s qualitative, but some’s quantitative, and we’re learning more and more all the time, but we still have a lot of room to improve on our data capture. And so on. There was, you know, we had very little data when we came in in terms of even knowing the basics about our affiliates.

Chris (12:34):

Well, I mean, that’s a great answer, man. Thank you. So we all as affiliates, I mean, we know that the program works, so how do we solve the real problem of like getting people in the gyms to do it and staying long enough to get the result that we know that we can create?

Eric (12:50):

Yeah. You know, I think of it in, to oversimplify, you know, you’ve got two steps, which is to get people in the door and you obviously there’s a whole funnel around that happening with referrals and other kinds of lead gen and then converting those people. So, but let’s just talk about one is getting people in the door and then two is keeping them and keeping them engaged. Those are, if we break down those two and even the keeping them engaged, you have to look at different steps because you have the first hundred days of the journey when attachment rate’s a little bit lower. And then after a hundred days, somebody, you know, you’re in pretty good shape keeping ’em, for the most part. And I think we’re still learning and we have a lot of work to do to kind of codified best practices around both of those things.

Eric (13:36):

But I can tell you that those are key priorities. We just hired a chief marketing officer who we’ll be announcing, in September by name and so on. They’re still finishing up their prior role. And a big part of that is partnering with the gyms on lead generation. How do you, you know, how do you get new people in the door? And I think we have both, we have the specific tool that we announced on ramp that we’re just finishing product testing on. And we should have that in market by the end of the year, and then, more broadly, building the brand of CrossFit so that it feels more accessible to people. And we know for a lot of people, it feels unattainable still. They’re not ready for it. They’re worried they’re going to get hurt.

Eric (14:22):

They’re worried they’re too old. They’re worried their ego’s going to get in the way. I hear that so much too, that my ego is going to get in the way. I have friends who do this, it’s changed their lives, but like, I don’t know if I can handle this and I’m probably going to push too hard and hurt myself and it’ll be my fault, but I don’t want to deal with that. So how do you get over all that stuff that I need to get in shape before CrossFit or it’s passed me by? And a lot of that is actually the, just, you know, kind of classic brand building of getting word out about what CrossFit is and what it isn’t. And I always, you know, what I always tell people is assume that all your perceptions of what CrossFit is are only semi informed at best.

Eric (15:02):

So the only thing you really need to do is come in and try it once and see what you think. And that’s the best. I think that’s the best sales tool we have is to have somebody come into the gym once and have a really great experience. But getting them into the gym is part of it and then ensuring great experiences is the other. And I think there’s a lot that the home office can do to support especially that first person is getting people to try CrossFit and letting that magic sell itself. And as you know, it’s not an area where CrossFit has really played historically, but it’s one you’ll see us increasingly playing in.

Chris (15:41):

Oh, that’s going to be great news to a lot of people listening to this. So thanks Eric. Any, just empirical observation on how the on-ramp trial is going so far that you want to share.

Eric (15:52):

You know, we’ve had people like it quite a bit who have done it. It’s still a small group, you know, it’s a hundred ish people who have been playing around with it. We have, you know, some of the things we’ve learned is the tension between being thorough and having too many, too much, frankly, too many classes before we say, OK, go into the gym now. And what’s interesting about that is it it mirrors the experience people have with their own foundations and on-ramp classes. And I can tell you, I don’t know what you guys do, Chris, but like at CrossFit Sanitas, we’ve gone from six sessions to three to two to, you know, one-on-one versus group and so on. And to be clear, the intention that, you know, the name on-ramp, I think is maybe a little misleading because we’re not intending this to replace an on-ramp.

Eric (16:43):

This is really for people who don’t feel comfortable coming in the gym yet to say, you can do these movements, going to the gym and then have the gym take them on their journey to wherever they’re going. I talked to an affiliate owner recently who doesn’t believe in any kind of on-ramp program. And they’re like, you know, we and our coaches need to be ready to take anybody into a standard class and basically bring them along for the ride without any on-ramp. There are others that won’t let you work out even on a trial basis without it. And then there’s some who say, you can do a trial, but then you’ve got to do the on-ramp. And so we’re not trying to replace all of these. We’re just saying, Hey, this is going to get you into the gym. And yes, you’ll know what a squat is. And you’ll, you know, you’ll know what a lunge is and a few, you’ll know how to do a push-up well, but ultimately, this is really just a tool to drive people into gyms. And I think it’s going to do a really good job of that.

Chris (17:37):

Thank you. More from Eric Roza in just a moment. 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. I’m in there all the time to offer tips and tactics. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook. And now back to Eric Roza. So, you know, like a lot of affiliates last year, we really kind of had to worry about retention before we could think about expansion. And from the outside, looking in, it appeared that home office had that same challenge. How did you meet that challenge of keeping people affiliated, keeping people engaged and keeping people excited about the future?

Eric (18:18):

Well, it’s been a process and a journey. We realized last fall that there were, you know, frankly, thousands of affiliates that we hadn’t heard from in a long time. And as you mentioned, there was more, a little bit more of a laissez-faire approach. So there wasn’t a lot of outreach. So what we started to do was outreach really proactively to folks we hadn’t heard from in a while, and this was irrespective of what country they were in or how big we thought they were or anything else. It was just like, it was just a touch point. And you know, frankly, thousands of phone calls, not just emails and a lot of it was, it started with just compassion and allowing people the opportunity to talk to us, there were, this sounds like I’m making it up, but I’m not.

Eric (19:05):

There were a lot of tears on those calls, right? With people literally had poured their heart and soul into their affiliates. And weren’t sure if they were going to survive or at some level, maybe in some cases had already given up. And we were just there for them, you know, and sometimes it wasn’t as much what we did as just letting them know how much we cared and then they would see examples of what we’re doing. We’ve seen a lot with the roundtables, a lot of cases where affiliates have been motivated to hang in there and stay in business and stay affiliated based not on things we said to them because we’re not sitting in the meetings based on what other affiliates in the groups kind of support them with. So it’s been, you know, the one-on-one and group support and outreach and just a feeling that we really care and that we’re on the field with them because it’s, I mean, it was brutal for the team to make these thousands of phone calls and the process goes on.

Eric (20:06):

It’s just, we were way in the hole. You know, I think there were, you know, probably over a thousand gyms that hadn’t signed their renewal agreement. We hadn’t heard from them. We didn’t know, are they gonna sign? Are they not going to sign? And every one of those was a conversation. And the good news is we’ve consistently seen affiliates coming back and we’ve had over 2000 that were kind of, I would say, you know, let’s just call them out of touch, come back since then.

Chris (20:34):

Great. So are you saying like the new growth is coming from previous affiliates or are new people affiliating right now? Like starting new gyms?

Eric (20:42):

It’s both. We’re seeing about in a typical week. It obviously varies, we’re seeing about 20 new affiliates open up each week around the world, more, a little bit more outside the US than in the US. Now we actually have more affiliates outside the US than in the US. We’re starting to look because Europe is such a big market for us. We’re really starting to think about the affiliate groups as you’ve got the U which has about 300 million residents. You’ve got Europe, not just the EU, but all of Europe, including the UK and other countries that aren’t in the EU, that’s about 700 million. So a little more than twice as big, but still fewer gyms than the US but has the potential to grow dramatically. And then you have the rest of the world where we have a few thousand gyms and 6 billion people.

Eric (21:30):

And so, you know, if you said, where could the growth be over the next five to 10 years? You take markets like China, India, South Korea, Japan, and they all have, you know, a lot of people in a financial position to do CrossFit. There’s an increasing interest in countries like China in working out, cause I think 20 years ago that wasn’t really a thing in China as I understand it. But we still have fewer than a hundred affiliates in each of those markets. And so those are massive opportunity. I mean, there could be many thousands of affiliates in each of the markets I mentioned, but we’ve got to meet people where they are culturally. And in other ways, even economic in Brazil, we’ve lowered the price point. And so on. Coming back to your point about the laissez-faire nature historically, it worked in developing markets.

Eric (22:23):

It’s very much the same as it worked in the US is somebody would, you know, they’d find their way to CrossFit. They’d take a Level 1 and then they they’d come to the website and say, Hey, I want to open a gym. What we’re trying to do now, you mentioned the country managers earlier, and now we have regional leaders of multiple countries now as well, in addition to the country managers and the same in the US actually, where we now have east and west leaders, as well as the US reps underneath them, we’re really trying to be more actively engaged in people’s journey as affiliate owners, we talked about the customer journey. Well, here’s the affiliate journey, right? And one of the things we’ve done is we found that 30 or 40% of people who take an L1 have a stated desire to open a gym at some point. Well, we never followed up with them before.

Eric (23:14):

It was kind of like, well, that’s nice to know, you know, good luck. Well now, when we hear that from someone, we actually follow up with them and say, Hey, what does your timing look like? What are the key issues that you’re working on? And we increasingly will have mentorship with them to help them get through the process and figure out if they don’t know, you know, there’s a certain thing that’s a sticking point. Maybe they don’t have the financing and they need to get a silent partner, who knows. We’re going to be there to help them, both encourage them, but give them data as well.

Chris (23:45):

That’s great. I do think that the biggest gift that CrossFit ever gave the world was the ability to be an entrepreneur. And even though it wasn’t a really clear path, such an easy entry point.

Eric (24:01):

Sorry, Chris. It’s so cool again, that there weren’t all these rules, because I don’t know about you, but I just, I had no interest in doing something that was cookie cutter. I just wanted some best practices in the community around me. Right. We have, you know, one thing we haven’t talked about at all, and I don’t know if you track this, but we recently announced the new playbook. Have you heard about that? And it’s, you know, it’s a start, but we basically brought in a couple dozen affiliate owners to help us and just say, Hey, here’s why a mission statement’s important. Here’s what that should look like. Here’s how you should think about real estate. Should you have full or part-time coaches? What happens if you have a financial partner? How do I think about lead gen?

Eric (24:46):

How do I think about social media? And it’s, I would say this is, you know, this is version one, but it’s pretty revolutionary in terms of giving people a toolkit, because none of this is you must do. It’s all here are ideas, and it’s all. We were actually at the Games, we were busy filming affiliate owners talking about each of the sections. So in their own words, what’s been their experience. And so this is, you know, the more we can be in the by affiliates for affiliates mode versus here’s some, you know, corporate person who has a point of view who hasn’t owned an affiliate. I think the better off we are and the better off the affiliates.

Chris (25:27):

So even though it’s tools, not rules, which is great. The value proposition of being an affiliate is definitely going up a lot. And so for right now, you know, the price is the same. I can still pay my, I think I pay a thousand a year, but even newer people can pay like three grand a year and they’re getting more and more value for that. Is there a point where the affiliate rates go up?

Eric (25:49):

You know, the way we’re trying to do it is actually structure things as options. So as an example, the affiliate program, we’ve already stated, will probably be around $150 a month starting in January, but we told everybody, Hey, you know, try it now for free and see what you think of it. We now give people the ability to pay their affiliate fees monthly rather than annually. And right now that’s about the same price, but it’ll be a little bit more expensive. Cause obviously we’re, you know, we’re taking the risk and the time value of money out of there. So I think you’ll see things like that. That’s the plan right now is to add more value in optional areas. And try to include what we can in the base fee.

Chris (26:36):

Do you have a sense that more of the original affiliates are eager to take on these additional options? Or are they more reluctant?

Eric (26:46):

So it’s early to tell, but we’ve been actually surprised by the uptake from, and I don’t, you know, Chris, you’re in a pretty select group, right. Cause you were there before the price went up to 3,000, how many affiliates are around that have been around as long as you or longer, a few hundred, maybe? Not a thousand. Right.

Chris (27:09):

It’d be tough to guess. I mean, honestly,

Eric (27:12):

I should know that, I shouldn’t be asking you, but we don’t know, you know? Yeah. I would guess it’s hundreds. Cause if you started in 2008, I would guess it’s probably hundreds. Right? So we’re actually seeing a good number. Given how small the population was a good number, for example, with the roundtables, we’ve actually structured them so that you have both older and newer affiliates and bigger and smaller affiliates and no one competitive. Cause what we found is, when we were planning these, the affiliates who had been around longer, said, look, I’m not going to be interested if I’m in a roundtable, that’s me and seven people who have been around for a year or two. But what they said is, Hey, I’d love to do some mentoring and even learn from one or two in my group. I just don’t want to have eight in my group. So we’re seeing kind of a balance across the spectrum from an age perspective, but obviously the new affiliates as they come in are, you know, a lot of these things are going to be, I think kind of must haves from their perspective, getting the peer mentorship, having the playbook, having the programming, et cetera.

Chris (28:26):

Yeah. That’ll be especially valuable and leverageable for new affiliates, but that’s great that veteran affiliates are open to that too. So, you know, my primary reason to talk to you, Eric, is about affiliation, but there are a lot of kind of peripheral things happening at the same time. And I’m just kind of wondering, how you’re keeping all these balls in the air. My buddy, Josh Murphy called me and he’s like, oh yeah, we’re doing something amazing with the CrossFit Foundation again. And so, I actually brought my piece of a desk that I made when we were working in Kenya to ask you this question, but what’s happening with the CrossFit Foundation now?

Eric (29:01):

I am so glad you asked that because I’ve been, the last few business days, I’ve been really focused on the foundation more than usual. So on Thursday, I couldn’t have teed that question up better for timing wise. On Thursday, I went out with the deputy director of corrections for the state of Colorado and Sergeant Erin Brill, who’s been instrumental in this program to visit one of the prisons in Colorado that has a CrossFit gym inside it. And we now have four correctional facilities in Colorado that have CrossFit gyms already. We have three on the docket that are starting to put it in place. And I was on a call earlier today. I was with them on Thursday and I was on a call a couple hours ago. And the head of kind of recreation for the Colorado prisons wants to see this everywhere now in Colorado.

Eric (29:59):

And so I estimate that close to 5% of Colorado’s inmate population is doing CrossFit already. And so what I asked the team is what would it take to get this to 20%? And I’ll give you one amazing anecdote around this. We have about 23 people in Colorado prisons who have taken their L1 and about eight who have taken their L2. And we currently have a demand of 60 people ready to take the Ld who are current inmates. And what they’re seeing is incredible results in terms of recidivism, right? People getting released and coming back into prison, we’re seeing a huge reduction there. We’re seeing a 25% at prison Lyman that I visited. They’ve seen a 25% reduction in violence there and a 20% reduction in kind of infractions by prisoners that they attribute directly to CrossFit.

Eric (31:01):

So, and you’re seeing, I could talk about other foundation focuses too, but this one, I have so much recent data on. You also see a couple amazing things. One is the staff is now allowed to work out with the prisoners at Lyman, like pause for a second and, you know, think about the Shawshank Redemption, whatever movies we’ve seen, right? I mean, so you have almost as many staff members as prisoners working out at Lyman and they’re working out together, and that is game-changing in terms of we, but we see it right as CrossFitters, this recognition of common humanity. And it just, it changes everything. The other thing they’re seeing is these incredible, two of the big divides in prisons, and I’m new to all this information. One is along racial lines. And so they basically said, you know, traditionally at prisons, at least at this prison, because I can’t speak to others.

Eric (31:56):

I haven’t been to them. Is, you know, you have the Black prisoners, you have the Latinx prisoners, you have the white prisoners and they, if they’re intermingling, it’s not in a positive way. Right. And then you have another interesting divide, which is young versus old. And again, there’s no intermingling there. And I was, I worked out with the guys on Thursday. We had several meetings. We worked out together and in my little, in my pod, which was two teams, the other team was a 20-year-old African-American guy with a guy who was probably about 65. He was a little guy with a white beard. And they were working out together as a team. And someone pulled me aside and said, you have no idea that this just doesn’t happen on both the dimensions of race and age. It’s inconceivable without CrossFit. And probably for all of us who are CrossFitters, we just nod and say, of course, but imagine if you’re the warden, if you’re Terry the warden of this prison and you see this going on, you’re like, oh my gosh, this could be game changing. So that’s one of a number of things we’re doing with the foundation. Really, really exciting. And I’m spending a lot of time personally there.

Chris (33:05):

That was great, Eric. I actually, had the same experience at a prison and I think it was 09. We used to go in and do powerlifting needs with the inmates twice a year. And I wore a CrossFit hoodie and this guy comes back from lunch with this here’s my CrossFit workout today. So I can say, Michigan is probably on board too.

Eric (33:27):

Chris they’ve actually created basically a network of affiliates now and they’re called Redemption Road CrossFit. They feel like they’ve created, they started to codify a formula. You need a core team that’s really devoted. And then you can start to drop the, you know, drop the seeds of CrossFit to these different prisons. So it looks like it looks like this could be, you know, nationally and ultimately globally scalable approach to doing this. I don’t want to get too excited about it this early, but it’s really, it’s really cool.

Chris (34:03):

Yeah. This to me is the most exciting thing that HQ can do. You know, building schools in Kenya and helping inmates. It’s amazing. What about things like the RRG Eric? Like, I haven’t heard anything about the RRG in years.

Eric (34:18):

You know, I haven’t spent much time with the RRG to be honest. So, I am aware that the that the levels of insurance required, especially outside the US and developing countries can still be a real barrier for some people. But to be honest, I haven’t spent time there to have a point of view at all.

Chris (34:39):

That’s fine. I’ve got two questions from other affiliate owners. One was from somebody in Minnesota and he says, since the members of the CrossFit diversity and inclusion board were announced last year, I haven’t heard much about it. What are they working on and what are their priorities?

Eric (34:56):

We’ve just hired a head of, a full-time head of diversity, equity and inclusion for CrossFit. And so I think we’ll be, I’m going to make myself a note I’m actually meeting with her boss. Who’s our head of people, later today. And I’ll make myself a note around when we’re going to get, you know, get a little more visibility. I can tell you, the group has met three times. They’ve established some key priorities and we’ll be sharing those in the near future. And I just don’t know when we’re going to be sharing them because I need to get an update from Trish. It was very important that we get someone full-time focused on this. Trish spends a lot of her time on this, but she has other responsibilities as well. And our full-time head of DEI literally started the week of the Games.

Chris (35:45):

And that actually leads me to my last question. And this is one that I know Greg struggled with. Everybody has always struggled with, which is how do you balance the larger mission with the need for revenue, like, you know, Monster sponsors drinks at the Games, OK. The Games are the primary marketing vehicle for affiliates right now. We need to do the Games. We need to pay for the Games; they’re willing to pay for the Games. How do you balance that, Eric?

Eric (36:12):

Well, one way that you balance it is making sure that you have a long-term perspective on things. And, I was very fortunate that I was able to bring in some investors with a very long-term time horizon. So, we’ve been, I’m happy to say that we’ve been meeting our financial goals. So, but in that environment, the first year, we’ve had a really productive dialogue. And when we said, you know, Hey, we’re gonna, you know, we’re going to spend a couple million dollars launching CrossFit Affiliate Programming, and we’re not even going to charge for it in the first year. Some investors would not have been thrilled with that approach, but we’ve largely had support for that. We were just talking about the foundation, we’ve kind of funded that with over $7 million now. And most of that is actually coming from our balance sheet.

Eric (37:05):

So, I think we’re going to continue to make investments in core areas that we think are really important, but, you know, we still do have financial goals and we’ll continue to honor them and hopefully, you know, achieve and beat them. So there’s always a balance there, but the nice thing is we are not, we are not running this ship to maximize profitability in the coming years, by any stretch. What we’re really trying to do is build CrossFit to be, you know, as big and impactful as it can be.

Chris (37:38):

That’s great. OK. Well maybe I’ll ask you one more thing, and this is what a reporter asked JFK after his first year, you know, is it what you thought it would be a year in? Are there any big surprises?

Eric (37:51):

It’s always interesting when people ask me that, because I don’t know that I had a granular view of what it would be. It turns out that leading CrossFit, you still have to answer emails and texts and have meetings and hire people and give people tough feedback and all the rest of it. So from that standpoint, it’s, I get asked sometimes for the parallels, I was speaking with a youth group yesterday, and they were asking me for the parallels and differences between leading a tech company and leading CrossFit. And I said, well, in some ways it’s completely different, but in terms of what you do day to day, there’s a lot of overlap. You just might not work out as much or whatever, but there’s so much, I think there is every bit. So the day-to-day work, I didn’t really have a great sense of what that was going to look like.

Eric (38:41):

But I would say that meaning that I’m deriving from doing this and this feeling that I’m aligned with what is most important to me and what I’m, you know, not to get to a highfalutin about this, but what I’m kinda meant to be doing, you know, in this one life I have now that I’m over 50 and all that, I couldn’t be more, I couldn’t have higher conviction that this is the right choice for me. And that the opportunities for CrossFit are kind of endless, right? They’re only limited by our imagination and our execution, which are, those are big potential limiters, but I think we’re trying to, as much as we can, to kind of, you know, explore the balance of those things and continue not just to grow CrossFit as it is now, but envision what adjacencies CrossFit can have in the future as well.

Chris (39:30):

You sound just like an affiliate owner, when you say that, Eric, and I’m glad that you stayed an affiliate owner. I mean, I’m sure that’s challenging.

Eric (39:37):

Yeah. Awesome. And yeah, I was in there this morning. I love it.

Chris (39:45):

That’s great. Well, hey, thanks for coming on and giving us so much time and answering so many questions that are, you know, I know top of mind for a lot of affiliates right now.

Eric (39:54):

It’s, a pleasure to be here, Chris. I love what you’re doing. I think you’ve been you and Two-Brain have played a very important role in helping your affiliates become more successful as well. And so I’m grateful to you for doing that.

Chris (40:07):

Thank you.

Chris (40:07):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. I want your business to succeed. So I’ve created a huge pile of free tools that you can use to hit the easy button as a gym owner. Use them to avoid mistakes, earn more money and help more clients. You can get them all for free at twobrainbusiness.com. Click free tools at the top of the page, and you’ll get access to tested, data-proven resources that can save you years of struggling. That’s free tools on Two-Brain business.com.

 

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The Authority Ladder: A Story on Every Rung

How do you build a personal brand?

By telling stories.

Good stories spread. Good stories outlive bad stories. And good stories help people to know you, like you and trust you.

If you want to build a personal brand, you have to be a storyteller.

On Aug. 26, Mike Warkentin and I will lead a Storytelling Workshop. Click here to register.

The path to building your personal brand goes like this:

1. Get really clear on your audience.

Who are you speaking to?Who will you dedicate the next year to?

This is your niche. Tell these people stories about your journey.

2. What questions are people in your audience asking?

Which can you answer?Which answers do they like most?

Tell them stories to make your answers stick.

3. Which problems can you solve for your audience better than anyone else?

How can you turn your knowledge into results for them?What’s the value of those results?

Tell stories about your clients’ success.

4. How will you know your solution is working?

Audit your program. Iterate again and again.

Tell stories about your clients’ journey.

5. Do it for years. Get better and better. Always give your clients your best.

The Conversation Continues

This is how we built Two-Brain Business: a 10-year conversation with gym owners like you.

The most important part of building a personal brand is consistency. And that’s also the part where most people fail.

You must speak to your audience daily. Authority is a game of momentum, not impression. If you stop telling stories, everyone will think yours has ended.

You don’t have to tell the best stories. You don’t have to be the best storyteller. You just have to start.

Building a brand requires a plan. We call that plan the Authority Ladder. And it’s based on storytelling.

Jump into our Storytelling seminar Aug. 26 here.

The post The Authority Ladder: A Story on Every Rung appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Conversations for Retention: Start Talking, Stop Losing Members

You can’t build a business on one-night stands. Conversations are also required for retention.

In the previous post in this series, I said you have to feed your relationships to keep them alive. You feed all relationships with conversations.

Starting Conversations With Your Current Clients

If you’re not asking clients about their goals and tracking their progress, they won’t be clients for long.

Start with your five best clients. Ask to take them out for coffee one by one.

Start with these questions:

“What led you to my gym in the first place?”“What else have you tried that you didn’t like as much?”“How can I serve you more?”

Then, tell their story. Interview them and make them famous on your website and social channels.

We teach this process in depth in our RampUp program.

Then move to the rest of your clients. Book quarterly Goal Review Sessions with each of them to talk about their goals and measure their progress.

Remember, just because they swiped right one time doesn’t mean they’re ready to marry you; keep dating your clients forever. Lack of conversation is the No. 1 predictor of divorce—in marriage and in business.

We teach the Goal Review process in our RampUp program, too.

Starting Conversations With Your Former Clients

If you genuinely and authentically care about people, you’ll check in on them.

Maybe your brother really pissed you off last week. But sooner or later, you have to send him a text to ask, “Bro. What are you up to?”

Maybe your feelings were hurt when a client left. But unless they burned the bridge on the way out, they’re probably going to come back someday—and they might be waiting on an invitation.

Start with a story: “Hey, Joe. I was just remembering the time … .”

Or, “Hey, Jess, a memory just popped up on my Facebook feed. … Remember that time? How are things going?”

We shut out our former clients because our egos are bruised when they leave. We feel like we need to “win” the relationship. But you don’t need to win the battle to win overall. You win when they come back.

Of course, there will always be the 10 percent of former clients you don’t want back. Just let their stories end.

So … What’s My Lead-Nurture Strategy?

I started this series on conversation marketing with a question: “Coop, what’s your lead-nurture process?”

My process is this:

Tell a story.Start a conversation.If the conversation is positive, invite a potential client to take the next step.

But everything starts with a story.

The very first blog post on my gym’s website was titled “It’s all About the Story.” I wanted to give people in my city the opportunity to write a better story about themselves and their lives.

On Aug. 26, Mike Warkentin and I will teach a Storytelling Workshop for the first time. You don’t have to be a Two-Brain client to attend.

You’ll leave the interactive one-day online workshop with a full 30 days of high-quality content for your business—and a precise plan to keep your media machine running all year to build your audience and make more sales to much warmer leads. 

This workshop is essential if you’re struggling to create content for your business or want to scale up and tell more prospective clients how you can help them.

I can’t wait to share all this with you:

A distribution plan to maximize ROI on time.A step-by-step plan to create an annual content calendar.A sample 30-day content calendar.Fully licensed stock images you can edit and use.Fully licensed blogs you can tailor to your exact business and audience.Social-media theme bank.Video topic list and scripts.And more!

Register to learn to tell your story!

The post Conversations for Retention: Start Talking, Stop Losing Members appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Conversation Marketing: 4 Steps to New Sign-Ups

You build trust through conversations.

Conversations bridge the gap between advertising and sales.

You can call it “lead nurture” or you can call it “affinity building.” Call it whatever you want. But we’re all in the relationship business, so we have to be good at this.

Step 1: Start a Conversation

How do you meet someone new?

By going first. Good entrepreneurs aren’t always great salespeople, but they’re always good at making someone feel welcome and heard.

That means sharing a personal story online or offering your hand to shake in person.

Here’s exactly how to do it:

1. In Person

My favourite new-friend pickup line?

“Good morning.”

This was not an easy skill for me to learn. I’ve always been shy and introverted. But wishing someone a “good morning” bears no social risk. No one will say “who are you?” or “get lost.” Offering a hand to shake is irresistible, even in the post-COVID era.

Try this: Pick up four coffees at a local drive-thru.

Walk next door to the business closest to yours.

Hand over the coffee and say “Good morning! I’m Chris from next door.” They’ll respond—usually with a question. Answer the question and take it from there.

2. Online

Make a “milestone” post.

Like this: “Today is my 100th consecutive day of practicing morning meditation!” or “I’ve been married to this wonderful man for 17 years today!”

The milestone doesn’t matter as much as the sharing. Include a number!

When people comment on your post, ask them if they’ve ever tried what you’ve been doing or achieved something similar. Move to private chat when it’s warranted.

We learned this strategy from Richmond Dinh in our Tinker program. It works because “milestone posts” tell a story. The more stories you tell, the more conversations you start.

On Aug. 26, Mike Warkentin and I will be leading our Storytelling Workshop for the first time. Read more about it here.

Step 2: Listen

Get them talking.

The reason we’re all scared to start a conversation with a stranger? We don’t know what to say.

The solution? Don’t talk about yourself! Listen instead.

Try these “Feel-good questions” from Bob Burg, author of “The Go-Giver”:

Bob Burg’s 10 Feel-Good Questions®“How did you get your start in the widget business?”“What do you enjoy most about your profession?”“What separates you and your company from the competition?”“What advice would you give someone just starting in the widget business?”“What one thing would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail?”“What significant changes have you seen take place in your profession through the years?”“What do you see as the coming trends in the widget business?”“Can you describe the strangest or funniest incident you’ve experienced in your business?”“What ways have you found to be the most effective for promoting your business?”“What one sentence would you like people to use in describing the way you do business?”

Step 3: Invite

If you think you have a great coach-client fit, tell them so and invite them to take the first step.

In person: “Those are great goals. I have an idea. Why don’t we work out together at my gym? Just you and me. How’s Thursday?”

Online: “I think I can help. I’m making my schedule up for next week, and I have an opening on Thursday at 2 p.m. Would you be open to talking about the next step?”

(We provide a full sell-by-chat template in our Growth and Tinker programs.)

Step 4: Sign Them Up

Start changing their lives!

In person (face to face or Zoom): Ask about their goal. Find out why that goal is important to them. Make a prescription to get them to their goal. Tell them the price. Receive their money and start delivering on your promises.

(We provide a full No Sweat Intro template in our RampUp and Growth programs.)

Start Talking!

To become clients, people must know you, like you and trust you. Conversations help you check each box.

Advertising might start the conversation, but advertising is a monologue. Conversations are a dialogue.

Your goals:

Start conversations.Guide conversations.Build relationships.

Every relationship you have must be fed or it will weaken. Feed relationships with conversations.

In the next post in this series, I’ll tell you how to keep feeding the relationships you already have.

The post Conversation Marketing: 4 Steps to New Sign-Ups appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Simplicity Scales: The Next Level of Gym Business Isn’t More Complex

Andrew (00:00):

Welcome to Two-Brain Radio. Today, Chris Cooper is here to tell you how to scale your business up once you’ve got it running like a top. The key: it’s not more complexity, it’s simplicity. Coop explains right after this.

Chris (00:13):

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

Chris (00:29):

Hey everybody, it’s Chris Cooper. And today we’re going to be talking about scaling. So more and more now we’re hearing from gyms who are really benefiting from the surge. They’re getting these new clients in, they’re seeing some success and you know, maybe they’ve been building to this for 10 years. Maybe they’ve seen some quick success in one year, and they’re reaching what we call the tinker phase of entrepreneurship. In the tinker phase, you’ve proven that your business idea works. You built a business that can more or less run itself, that can pay you as much as you need, or maybe a little bit more, like a hundred thousand a year. And now you’re saying, what’s next? You’ve achieved some freedom of time and money. Congratulations, less than 10% of entrepreneurs ever make it to this stage.

Chris (01:20):

And for most of us, we’ve determined that our next step is we want to duplicate what we’ve already done. We want to build a second gym, a third gym. How do we do that? Well today, I’m going to tell you the answer. Our tinker program is set up to address questions like this, to help you identify what the next stage of your entrepreneurial journey looks like, to help you build a platform of wealth for you and your family, to help you build a legacy in your local community. And to help you scale. A lot of the people in our tinker program are looking at multiple locations and they’re asking questions just like this. And so I thought it would be helpful to share this with everyone listening to Two-Brain Radio. The key concept today is that simplicity scales. If you listen to the owners of great franchises, the founders, one thing will strike you.

Chris (02:07):

OK? They’re probably not smarter than you are. They probably didn’t have a super, super original idea that nobody else thought of. But what they did was took something complex and made it simple. And the simpler you can make your idea, the easier it will scale. Let’s say that you own a CrossFit gym, and you want to open 10 CrossFit gyms. You can do that. Now the new CrossFit home office is totally down with that. OK. Let’s talk about how you spread your idea. Describing CrossFit is tough, right? So if I locked you in an elevator with somebody and I said, OK, between the first floor and the fourth floor, you’re going to pitch your service to them and get them to sign up. That’s tough. OK. What’s CrossFit. It’s a constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity. Well, what the hell do those words mean?

Chris (03:00):

And so you’re trying to say, oh, it’s like fun exercise. And it’s a different workout every day. And it’s really hard, but it feels like a game. And like people get great results. OK? Well, that’s not enough to make the person able to picture themselves doing CrossFit. It takes a lot of research before somebody decides I want to do that. Think about when you found CrossFit, you either found it one of two ways, your friend drug you into class, you had no idea what to expect, but you went along and because you trusted your friend, or you saw an ad, you did some research. You thought about it for like three months before you finally said, OK, this is for me, maybe you saw the Games, maybe saw something on Reebok or ESPN, but you watched for a long time, it took a lot of convincing.

Chris (03:46):

You had to familiarize yourself with the model before you could understand it, before you could sign up. That is not the case with franchises like SoulCycle. That is not the case for franchises like Orangetheory or Jazzercise. And the reason those companies can scale and the individual locations can scale is because it’s very easy for a potential new client to place themselves in the picture of doing that thing. Because that thing is simple to understand. Describe Orangetheory for me. If you’re listening to this podcast, you could probably describe Orangetheory in a sentence, even though you don’t own an Orangetheory franchise, you show up to a gym, you put on a heart rate, monitor you exercise, and you watch your heart rate on the big scoreboard. That’s Orangetheory, soul cycle. You show up to ride a bike. You have motivating instructors, you’re in a darkened room and you leave feeling amazing.

Chris (04:42):

OK? I can picture myself doing that. Jazzercise is exercise using dance moves with an instructor, OK? Piece of cake. I can get that. Peloton. You are attending a spin class from the comfort of your own home. I can get that. I can put myself in the picture. Now say CrossFit to somebody who’s never been to a CrossFit class, or even somebody who’s been to a CrossFit class for five years and ask them to describe it. It’s chaotic. And if you ask five people to describe it, it’s going to be like the analogy of five blind men describing an elephant. Each of them are going to describe the elephant differently, depending on what they can smell and taste and touch, which part of the elephant they’re standing nearest. Right? And that’s because an elephant is big and complex and hard to understand.

Chris (05:30):

And so is most studio fitness businesses. If you say, oh, you should do personal training. I can picture myself doing personal training. It’s one-on-one. We have an appointment. You see your coach. They tell you exactly what to do, and you leave. Easy to describ. CrossFit class is a lot tougher, right? Simplicity scales. So we’re going to start this conversation with the question that I get asked a lot by people in the tinker phase is can I scale CrossFit? Can I scale this brand of yoga? Can I scale, you know, my bootcamp, or do I need to start my own brand? And the answer is this. If you could describe your service more simply by using a brand like CrossFit, then use a brand like CrossFit and have 10 CrossFit gyms and scale that way. If you can describe your brand more simply by using something else, then do that.

Chris (06:25):

So for example, I was just talking to a gym owner entering the tinker phase himself. And he said, you know, we have CrossFit at my gym. We also have like a high ticket transformation program. And then we have like this separate nutrition thing that we do. And we also have a kids program and that’s too complex. He needs to rebrand and rename what he’s doing under his own model. And that model has to be simple for his clients to understand. So when you want to grow beyond about two gyms, you probably need your own brand. You probably need to define what that brand means. And you probably have to boil it down to its simplest explanation. This will help your future clients, but it will also help your staff. Now let’s talk about behind the curtain, what you have to do to scale.

Chris (07:14):

Once again, simplicity scales, the easier it is for your staff to understand your systems th,e more your staff will adhere to those systems. The easier it is for your staff to understand your vision, the more they will walk toward that vision. So the first thing that you have to do is systemize your operations. You have to write everything down. You have to get that out of your head. You cannot scale beyond 50 to a hundred members if you don’t have a written playbook for your gym, because every time you add a new staff member, you’re going to get friction. You won’t be operating from the same playbook. You’ll do things differently. You’ll disagree. And that’s why most of these big chains don’t hire fitness experts to be their coaches. What they do instead is they hire amazing, happy people. They train them not to understand the mechanics of cycling

Chris (08:08):

better, not to understand how to fix the bike, not to understand here’s how you explain like the metabolic, you know, effect of this workout. They train them to remember people’s names. They train them to remember that John went to the Bahamas last week. They train them to remember birthdays. They train them to remember, Hey client, you had such an amazing ride last week. It was so awesome. They train them to make people laugh. And that’s how they scale.

Chris (08:36):

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

Chris (08:59):

When you are an expert coach, you’re a technician and you hire another expert coach who’s another technician, you’re going to have trouble scaling because your way is not their way. And I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m just going to say it’s going to be a little bit tougher. It doesn’t mean you have to hire low paid staff. It just means that you have to get your operations and your playbook out of your head onto paper so that everyone can follow it. It also means that you need to make decisions once. And that’s it. If every decision has to get remade every time, if you’re the only one who can answer a question about, Hey, this guy wants a refund.

Chris (09:48):

Hey, you know, the coach hasn’t shown up for 6:00 AM. What do we do? You can’t scale. Everything’s in your head. You need to write them down. And so after you scale your operations, then you go to systemizing your sales. So you need to have about three sales options, three packages that you sell. And that’s it. You can also do this in groups of three. So if you’re using a prescriptive model, you can say to somebody, OK, do you prefer to work out one-on-one, in a small group or at home? And that’s a choice of three. And then if they choose one of those three, then you can offer three options that go along with that. But you can only present three options at a time. That’s how you systemize your sales. You need to train your staff on how to sell and you need to measure how well they’re doing it.

Chris (10:34):

You can’t just say, oh, everybody here’s a salesperson. Anybody that walks in off the street can be sold by any staff. You know, that’s not true. You need people coming in to actually make the decision to trust you and to commit to changing their lifestyle for you to be able to save them. And so that’s sales, it’s coaching people to make the right decision to trust you and follow your guidance. Everybody in your organization needs to be trained in it, which means it has to be a system that they can follow. Instead of just like, Hey, try your best. And we’ll see who can sign people up best. OK? So first you systemize your ops. Then you systemize your sales. Then you have to systemize your marketing. And what I mean by systemizing your marketing is you need to have a marketing plan.

Chris (11:19):

So first, every client should be making referrals. You need to have a referral strategy. You need to set this in place and build your calendar around it. You need to get your coaches ready to get referrals, record them and follow up on them. OK? Then you need to be able, you need to have an affinity marketing plan so that you can reach out to coworkers, friends, et cetera in your area, and you need to be doing this on a regular basis. Then you need to have an advertising plan. So it’s, you know, we’re going to spend this much on Facebook ads. We’re going to track these metrics. We’re going to spend this much Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever. We’re going to track these metrics. We’re going to use Sell By Chat or an email list. We’re going to automate this and we’re going to track these metrics.

Chris (12:03):

Instead, what most people do is they say, oh, I just saw an ad on Facebook for this company that’s going to do Facebook ads. I guess I’ll try that. Try that for three months. Maybe you see some success then. Oh, I saw an ad for another company. That’s going to do an Instagram 30 day challenge. I’m going to try that. OK. So you’re jumping back and forth and you’re never getting any momentum with your marketing because you don’t have a system. You just have a bunch of random piece together ideas that don’t form a picture. So your marketing plan doesn’t have to be complex. It should be simple. It should be easy to follow, easy to understand, easily tracked. So you know when it’s effective, but you have to have a system. So when you’re going to scale, ease, simplicity, you need to systemize your operations so that all the decisions are made in advance, you need to systemize your sales process.

Chris (12:51):

And then you need to systemize your marketing. And the final thing that you need to do is you need to scale your staff. So how do you scale your staff? It’s not by getting people certified to be like a level 12 black belt. It’s not qualifying people to be the best athletes in your box. It’s knowing the attributes of staff that your clients actually care about. So I mentioned that when soul cycle hire their staff, they did not go after the premium spin studio instructors in New York city. They went after the happiest people with the biggest personality, and they train those people, not on the biomechanics of cycling, not on the metabolic effects of high intensity interval training on a bike. They train them to remember people’s names. That’s what scales. That’s what’s important. The method that you use is less important than the people who are delivering that method.

Chris (13:42):

CrossFit works, bootcamp works. Pilates works, bar works, spin classes work, all of them work, but none of them work if they’re delivered by a coach who lacks empathy or who can’t connect with people or who can’t explain, here’s why we’re doing this right now. A PhD in whatever functional fitness, you know, you’re a doctor of CrossFit will not help you grow your gym. This is the curse of the technician. We believe the more that we know about the method or the model, the more people will flock to us. The more people will recognize and pay for our expertise. It is not true. It’s the connectors who are successful. If you look at people who have scaled their fitness business in the past, you kind of do this forehead smack, right? It’s like Richard Simmons. It’s Suzanne Somers. It’s Kathy Ireland. It’s the people who own soul cycle.

Chris (14:36):

These were not biomechanics experts. These were not business experts. OK? But they were connectors. If you look at the people who own orange theory franchises, these are not fitness coaches. These are not personal trainers by and large. These are people who are just good connectors. They understand the value of a franchise. They know the value of a brand. And the average orange theory opens up and has 400 members within their first year, while the CrossFit gym down the road struggles to get a quarter of that. And it’s not that one instructor knows more than the other. That is not the problem. The problem is simplicity. And if you’re a technician, like I am, you enjoy biomechanics. You’ll get down on the ground. And you’ll draw a graph about like, ATP and the aerobic metabolism of fat that doesn’t convince anybody, because nobody can repeat that. ll you’re doing there is like, it’s like mental masturbation.

Chris (15:36):

You’re showing people look how smart I am. Instead of look how fun this is. Look at the results that you’re getting. Look at this person that you’re becoming. Simplicity scales. I want you to take that away. Most of the mentorship that we do for people who are looking to scale from one gym to three gyms is not up and out. It’s not adding complexity, adding more services. Most of the mentorship that we do is digging down, auditing what they’re doing, finding the core, defining the vision, making it simple, and then duplicating that simple nugget over and over and over again. This is the secret to great franchising. It’s the secret to building a bigger platform. It’s a secret to scaling and the secret to legacy: simplicity.

Andrew (16:27):

Thanks for listening Two-Brain Radio. Please subscribe for two great episodes every week. And for more industry insight and tactics from Chris Cooper, join the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Chris is constantly posting articles, instructional videos, and advice in there. And these resources will literally help you make more money. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook join today.

 

The post Simplicity Scales: The Next Level of Gym Business Isn’t More Complex appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Conversation Marketing: Let’s Talk About Underpants Gnomes

“Hey Coop, can you tell me how your lead-nurture process works for Two-Brain?”

I got this email a couple of weeks ago, and it made me smile.

I’ve been writing love letters to gym owners for over five years. Every day, over a dozen people write me back with questions like this. I also interview interesting gym owners on our podcast. And we tell stories about great gym owners on our YouTube channel and on social media.

A few times every day, I pop into Gym Owners United to answer questions and share resources wherever I can. Every single day, I get Facebook messages from 30-40 different people asking for guides or resources. It’s all part of my conversations with friends like you.

The average person has a six-month conversation with me before buying anything from me. Usually, people wind up asking for mentorship when the time is right for them.

The answer to the emailed question about my lead-nurture process?

“You’re in it.”

What the Gnomes Didn’t Know

If you want to get good at marketing, you have to get good at conversations.

Conversations bridge the gap between advertising and sales.

Advertising gets someone’s attention. Sales gets their money. But the space between the two has always been clouded in mystery—like the business plan of the Underpants Gnomes from “South Park.”

Phase 1: Steal underpants.

Phase 3: Profit.

What’s Phase 2?

Phase 2 is conversations.

Conversation marketing is part content marketing, part lively chat and part persuasion. Some would call it a “lead-nurture strategy” or “trust building.” I call it “winning hearts and minds.”

Before people will buy from you, they have to know you, like you and trust you. How do you get to know someone? How do you grow to like them? And how is trust built over time?

Through conversations.

In this series, I”m going to give you some tactics to bridge the gap between awareness (they’ve heard of you) and purchase.

Then I’m going to invite you to spend a day with me and my friend Mike Warkentin so you can learn exactly how we use conversations to build a business.

Two-Brain Storytelling Workshop

The post Conversation Marketing: Let’s Talk About Underpants Gnomes appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Doping and Delusion: Are Russians the Only Cheaters?

Are Olympic athletes using performance-enhancing drugs?

Absolutely—even if the testing at the Tokyo Games has yet to catch a high-profile athlete.

Maybe not all the athletes have used drugs, but if the whole truth ever came to light, I think the casual fan would be surprised by how many athletes have used performance-enhancing substances of some sort.

It’s just part of sports, even if everyone—from athletes to officials—claims sports are clean.

Behind the Curtain

Back in 2013, I interviewed Dick Pound in Toronto. Pound, a lawyer, is a Canadian Olympian who helped found the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). He served as its first president, went to war with Lance Armstrong (and eventually won), and wrote the book “Inside Dope.”

It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest Pound is the world’s foremost expert on doping. At the time of the interview, Pound had already seen it all and heard every single ridiculous excuse as to how certain chemicals got into athletes’ systems. He was matter of fact and blunt when answering questions. Some might say he was cynical, but I don’t agree. I think he was actually realistic in suggesting doping was widespread in both professional and amateur sport.

As proof of that, you’ll recall Russia’s incredible state-sponsored doping campaign was exposed after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The country was consequently banned from the Tokyo Olympics, though some are still questioning whether clean athletes are competing.

At present, it’s fashionable to mock the Russians as outliers—the few who broke the rules. It’s very likely that many people who are pointing fingers at the Russian Bear are doing so to take attention away from their own actions.

I’ll pull the curtain back a little further: Inside many sports, it’s widely understood that banned substances are just part of the game. Casual fans don’t get that info. But the higher someone climbs in sport, the more he or she learns about what’s actually going on at the top level.

For example, here’s what former pro cyclist Jeff King wrote about his time spent racing in Europe in the late ‘90s.

“My first weeks in Belgium made it perfectly clear: If you were going to race bikes competitively in Europe, you were going to race on drugs. From aspiring amateurs to entry-level pros to the celebrity athletes in the biggest races, drugs were simply part of the kit, like a spoke wrench, a pump and extra tire tubes.”

And that wasn’t even at the top level of the sport. The Lance Armstrong debacle eventually showed what was happening there.

More info, this time from the fascinating book “Speed Trap” by Charlie Francis, Canadian coach to disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson and others:

“I arrived at a central premise … : An athlete could not expect to win in top international competition without using anabolic steroids. … They had become an essential supplement at the world-class level, an indispensable ingredient within a complex recipe.”

Francis, who is now deceased, backed up his claims with all sorts of examples. And you can watch the film “9.79*” if you want even more insight. (I also recommend “Icarus.”)

Drugs in Sport: Not That Rare

I’ve personally talked to award-winning bodybuilders who told me exactly what they were taking—but this is the “free space” on the bingo card of steroids in sport. Bodybuilding is rife with drugs, and it’s obvious.

I’ve also talked to a world-record-setting lifter who saw others literally taking steroids during a “drug-free meet.” Another told me he’d been on drugs for many, many years.

A high-level fitness competitor told me some gains weren’t acquired just through chicken and protein shakes.

A top coach told me “‘drug tested’ does not mean ‘drug-free.'”

A world champion once told me “steroids are awesome.”

I won’t even get into the professional leagues Pound criticized as having “deliberately weak” drug policies. You can draw your own conclusions about what wealthy pros do to get an edge in leagues that aren’t interested in what they inject as long as they show up to fill the stands every night.

My conclusion after talking to Pound, reading as much as I could, and talking to many athletes and coaches personally? Sports are generally not “clean” at any level.

I know for a fact people have used banned substances to get an edge at low-level fitness competitions where the prizes are a bag of protein bars and a cheap red ribbon.

It would be foolish to think athletes follow the rules when the stakes are far higher.

Cleaned Up?

I bring all this up not to taint the accomplishments of any Olympic athletes but to put elite sports in perspective.

Beyond all the posturing and virtue signaling about testing and honesty and fairness, another reality exists. We’d do well to remember that when comments like this come up:

“I don’t know if (the race) was 100 percent clean,” U.S. swimmer Ryan Murphy said after taking second place behind Russian Evgeny Rylov in the 200-m backstroke in Tokyo.

The race probably wasn’t 100 percent clean. But if it was dirty, it wasn’t because of just one rogue Russian athlete.

The problem is greater than that, and it most certainly goes beyond just one nation.

Let’s be real for just a moment: Russia is not the only country whose athletes are using drugs. Russia might be the boldest country, but its athletes are definitely not alone in searching for ways to win without following the rules.

The post Doping and Delusion: Are Russians the Only Cheaters? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Chris Cooper on Clubhouse, Sell by Chat and Next-Level Sales

Andrew (00:00):

It’s Two-Brain Radio. And Chris Cooper is behind the mic to deliver the results of recent tests. Coop will give you his data-backed recommendations on Clubhouse, Sell By Chat and sales and free consultations right after this. Back to Superman

Chris (00:13):

Back to Two-Brain Radio in just a minute. Chalk It Pro is a fitness app designed and built by gym owners for gym owners to solve annoying problems that make running a gym hard. It’s an all-in-one app that manages your members, including remote members. It also takes care of programming and it will help you keep clients engaged for longer. Use Chalk It Pro to increase value and build your bottom line. Add more personal training and remote coaching clients. Build a thriving community through social engagement and save loads of time on the backend. Do all this with one app, not three or four. Get your free trial at Chalkitpro.com.

Chris (00:48):

Hey, it’s Chris Cooper here. And today I’m going to talk about failure. The bio on Amazon for most of my books used to start out with, “If Chris Cooper has a superpower, it’s that he’s failed more often than anyone else.” And it’s a really common myth in entrepreneurship that you have to fail and fail and fail, and eventually you’ll be successful. And you have to get these failures out of the way first and the faster you can fail the faster you’ll eventually be successful. I want to tell you that is not true. It’s an absolute lie. Instead, what is actually true is that to be an entrepreneur you’re going to fail, but your ultimate success depends on your ability to learn from failure. If you’re not learning from failure, if you’re not auditing what you’re doing, if you’re not saying, does this work, or could I use my time better?

Chris (01:35):

Or what would work better than this? You will not get anywhere. It took me a long time to get this, because my ego wouldn’t let me evaluate what I was currently doing. And so I was running this gym. It was paying me $40,000 per year. And I thought, well, I’m successful because I’m not literally starving to death. My gym is making money, technically it’s profitable. And so this is what success must mean. Until I said, well, what if there’s a better way? What if somebody else has figured this out before me? What if I don’t need to reinvent this all from scratch? And when I did that, I started realizing that others were doing it differently. Now I still had to get over the hurdle of, oh crap, am I really going to risk what I have to get what I want? And that’s a story for another day.

Chris (02:22):

Change is a scary thing. And that’s what a mentor’s job is to do, help you manage change. But today I want to talk about audit. I want to talk about testing and it’s a really important topic to me right now. And so I’m just going to kind of riff on this for one second. The reason that testing and proof is so important now, more important than ever before is that the market is being flooded with these business coaching pyramid schemes. And so what you get is like this chief kind of business coach who has a great idea. And then he says, I’m going to sell this idea to other business coaches. And I’m going to teach those business coaches how to sell it to other business coaches. And then those business coaches are going to sell it to gym owners. And so by the time an idea hits the gym owner, it’s been passed from hand to hand through this kind of game of telephone from one person to the other.

Chris (03:10):

Unfortunately, usually those ideas haven’t been tested at all and the people who are buying them have no actual experience in business. They can’t say this worked for me and they really don’t own a gym. What they’re doing is they’re selling you an idea. This would be absolutely fine. There’s nothing wrong with good ideas. There’s nothing wrong with finding inspiration in new ideas. It would be fine if a gym owner had unlimited time and resources to try everything, but we don’t. And so the question that I’m always asking myself is if I had one hour today to grow my gym, is this the best use of that hour? We set up our mentorship programs to basically set you up to optimize that hour. So our ramp up program, the intent is that you create that hour for yourself. You build a foundation where you can try these ideas and work on growth, and then you move into growth phase and you spend that hour a day working on your business with marketing and sales and elevating your team and intrapreneurialism and all those things that will grow the pie.

Chris (04:12):

But you still only got about an hour a day to do that. Your time resources will always be finite even when your financial resources become greater. And so today I’m going to talk about testing. One of the most important things we do at Two-Brain is we perform objective tests on new strategies and ideas. And these go on behind the scenes. They usually run for about three months at a time. And what we’ll do is we’ll pick up an idea from the mentor team or from outside Two-Brain or even from our own clients. And we’ll say, well, that sounds really interesting. Like it has a lot of potential. Let’s test it to see if it’ll actually help gym owners. And sometimes the answer is yes. And so we put that in our curriculum and sometimes the answer is, Hey, it really helped the original gym owner, but it doesn’t extrapolate to everybody.

Chris (04:57):

So we go back and we work on it some more. And sometimes the answer is just, no, this actually doesn’t work at all. And so today I’m going to share some of the results of the testing that we’ve been doing, because I’ve got this bad habit of only talking about the stuff that works. Instead, I want to talk today about some of the stuff that doesn’t work, so that I can save you some time, some resources and you know, probably some money and a lot of headache and stress by stopping you from going down the wrong road before you discover the right road. So I’ve actually got three things that we’ve been testing recently. Some of these are ideas that I love and they’ve been proven to work. Some of them are concepts that I think might work, but we’re still kind of in a testing phase.

Chris (05:39):

And sometimes there are things that just won’t work at all. So we’re going to review a couple of things today. The other thing to keep in mind here is that sometimes something will work if you’re in the tinker phase, something is more appropriate if you’re in the farmer phase, sometimes something will work if you’re in the founder phase, but a lot of the time something won’t work or should not take up that hour of your day if you’re in the founder phase, because it’s a more advanced strategy or it takes so much time to get it going, that there are lower hanging fruit that you can take advantage of. If you’re not familiar with these phases, founder, farmer, tinker, and thief, just send us an email and I’ll point you to my book by the same name. So the first thing that we’re going to review today is Clubhouse.

Chris (06:22):

Clubhouse was super duper popular, around January, 2021. A lot of people were still in lockdown at that point. And the platform looked promising because we could all walk around with headphones in all day. The problem with Clubhouse is that there is no native instant messaging way to reach people. Also, there was no recording. So if you wanted to talk to people on Clubhouse, you had to be on Clubhouse all the time. Now, the biz coaches who were primarily the people saying the Clubhouse was working for them. These are people who are spending literally 12 to 16 hours a day on Clubhouse. And so when we tested this, we set this up with a few different mentors. We hosted a couple of chat rooms daily. And then we said, can this translate into sales for gyms? The problem was when you’re on Clubhouse and you’re talking, you say, OK, to continue the conversation, DM me on Instagram, or send me a message on Facebook messenger or whatever.

Chris (07:15):

You know, you have to take them off platform to have a real conversation. So, you know, we tried this and we actually did get one conversion in one gym, but ultimately if you weigh the time spent on Clubhouse to the actual conversion rate, it’s really not worth your time. So Clubhouse for us was not recommended for founders, not recommended for farmers, and it’s not recommended for tinkers either. The next thing that we tested was a new sales process called Sell By Chat. So if you’re thinking about a marketing funnel, I don’t have to tell you guys like what goes into a marketing funnel. But the top of that funnel is awareness, right? You’re capturing people’s attention. They hear about you. The second phase of that funnel is to have a conversation and that conversation might come through email. I love email. If you’re on my email list, you get an email from me every day or every week.

Chris (08:03):

You know I love email. But you can also have that conversation through chat or DM. It’s a little bit tougher, but sometimes it can work. And so looking at results from other industries outside fitness, we saw that the conversion rate of Sell By Chat was around 3%. Meaning if you started a hundred chats, about 3% of those people would eventually buy. That sounds like a really low number, but chat doesn’t take very much time. And so the cost time benefit really balanced out to make Sell By Chat maybe a little bit promising on our radar.

Chris (08:40):

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

Chris (09:12):

Now these chats can happen in different ways. First, you could set up an automated chat bot on your website. So a client goes on your website, the chat icon pops up. You’ve seen this, how can I help you today? And you start this chat conversation. Second, you can interact with people who like your Instagram posts. So they hit like, or they make a comment and you DM them and you start a conversation. And the third way is to start a container like a Facebook group, invite people into that group, give them a lot of value in the group, like a lot, build up the affinity in your audience and then start chats with people. So for example, maybe you say I’ve got a free fat loss guide, join my group to get it. When people join the group, you welcome them. You send them the guide and you just start a natural conversation.

Chris (09:59):

There’s obviously an art to this and people who are great on chat will be better at this than other people. My close rate is lower because I just like talking to people. And most of the time, honestly, I don’t think of them as a client that I would want for mentorship. So I don’t post them to, you know, buy mentorship. And it’s the same with my gym. The thing with the gym is that if somebody joins my free Facebook group for Catalyst or fitness in Sault Ste. Marie, they’re going to get contacted. I know that they’re going to be interested and I know what the barrier might be, time or price. So Sell By Chat is going to have a different effect in different groups or at different stages of your entrepreneurial journey. Here’s what we found. If you’re in the founder phase, the people who talk to you are very interested.

Chris (10:47):

They’re going to come to you through your personal Facebook profile, through your personal Instagram account. If you’re a fitness coach, they might even come to you through Tik Tok. That’s starting to grow. But the key is that their interest on that platform is not enough. That’s all it is. It’s interest. They’re raising their hand and saying, tell me more. Your job is to start a chat conversation with them. Really find out what they want and then convert them into a consultation. This is probably best done virtually. So, Hey, do you have 20 minutes right now? Or I’m setting up my calendar for the next two days. Do you have 20 minutes tomorrow at nine or one where we can have a chat about your goals? OK. And then from there you need to sell them on your program. So in the founder phase where all of your leads are mostly organic, they’re very high affinity.

Chris (11:36):

It’s probably people you know, in real life or they’re a fan of your service. Sell By Chat should just happen organically. You shouldn’t push it, but your conversion rate will be high. In farmer phase you probably don’t have time for this. So if people reach out to you organically, definitely have a chat conversation. We’ve got a template for this in our growth progra, on the roadmap, but don’t build a public Facebook group and spend hours every day, curating that group and building content to add value to that group. You don’t have time for that. There’s easier strategies. If you’re in the tinker phase, though, this is probably an idea worth exploring, and you should do it yourself. We give you a template. We give you like chat scripts and everything on the tinker phase roadmap, you should test this yourself and then hand it over to somebody on your team

Chris (12:22):

only after you’ve got the system dialed. Mistakes to make: You hire a VA company to do this for you. So they log in under your account and they chat, chat, chat to people as you, or they just go out trying to cultivate leads that have absolutely no affinity to your brand. You need to do this yourself first and get it dialed in before you hand it off to somebody else. All right. The third tactic that we’re going to talk about today is what we call next level sales. And so we teach a sales process called the no sweat intro at Two-Brain. I started talking about it in my very first book back in like 2012, it’s been upgraded. It’s been refined. It’s been tested and proven for well over a decade. Now we just had a brand new innovation on this from Gilbert Dougherty.

Chris (13:07):

Who’s in UAE and he is a great, great, closer. He’s amazing at selling people for his gym by showing them value. And one of the ways that he shows them more value during a no sweat intro is to use his iPad. So here’s what he does. He brings people in, he asks the client to sit down and then he opens up his iPad. Then what he does is he says, OK, you know, what are your goals? And he asks them deeper questions, deeper questions. As we do in the no sweat intro. Then from there, he says, you remind me of blank. And he opens up his iPad and he shows a profile of somebody who has a very similar goal to the client in front of him. Now, really, if you think about it, this sounds complicated, but it’s notC Probably 70% of the people who come to catalyst are saying like, I have a goal to lose weight or firm up or tone up or whatever.

Chris (13:59):

All I have to do is pick a testimonial from either a male or a female. Pop that up on my iPad and say, Hey, Joe reminds me of you. This was his goal. Here’s his result. OK. That’s an amazing ability when somebody is sitting right in front of you to share a testimonial. So then what you do is you say, how committed are you to your goals? And you show a slide showing like a little bit committed, committed, or super committed, and they pick one. And then from there you say, OK, you’re super committed. Here’s what I prescribe. You make your prescription. And then you swipe on your iPad and you show them the price. This does a lot. Number one, it helps you overcome that fear of saying the price and it helps you establish a true value. Second, it makes you look a lot more professional because your client knows that everybody’s paying the same rate, that you’re not just pulling a number out of your ass.

Chris (14:49):

And you’re not just randomly handing out discounts to people in your gym. Nothing undermines client trust in you like, Hey, that guy’s paying less than me or the feeling that you’re just making it up as you go along. You have to look professional if you want to establish trust, and you have to establish trust if you’re going to sell for your true value because you’re a professional. So then the next step, if you’re using an iPad is you can say, here’s the rate. Are you ready to start today? You swipe to the waiver they sign and you’re done. It’s all done. And you’re not shuffling papers. You’re not trying to find your pricing charts. You’re well-prepared, you look professional, you’re sharing success stories. And the result here is that we’ve tracked close rates. So, Gilbert is amazing at his metrics and he actually takes his staff off-site for one day every month.

Chris (15:39):

And they practice making prescriptions. They practice sales. Now this isn’t the usual used car salesman sales, it’s are you a good enough coach to make a prescription that will get the client results? And then, and this is part of your coaching job. Get the client to commit to doing that program. So when I say sales, it’s really coaching that I’m talking about. Now, the close rate is how many people trust you enough to say, yes, I will follow your plan. Here’s my credit card. Close rate for Gilbert was around 72% on no sweat intros. Now he is selling to a very cold audience. People in the Emirates are not familiar with his service nearly as much. They’re a lot of the times just walking in off the street. So 72% close rate is actually amazing. But when he started using this iPad in his sales presentation, his close rate jumped to 83%.

Chris (16:32):

That means out of 10 people who just walked through his door, one more committed to making the life-saving choices that he, as a professional coach, said that they should make. That’s really profound. And not only does the iPad strategy make things a little bit easier for you as a novice presenter or a novice salesman, it makes things easier for the client to trust you. And to know that they’re going to be able to get the results that they want, and then to take the steps necessary to change their lives. That’s what sales is. So the iPad presentation, we recommend it in founder phase, farmer phase, and tinker phase. And so we’ve now added a sample presentation with the updated script and white labeled slides to our growth roadmap and our tinker roadmap. And you’ll be hearing more from Gilbert too if you’re in Two-Brain, he’s going to teach how to use this.

Chris (17:24):

He’s going to be running some role play sessions for us in growth. And, yeah, you can get the benefit of those too. So to summarize, there are a million ideas out there. You’re probably seeing Facebook ads for, I will grow your gym. I’ll do it for nothing. You pay nothing. You know, whatever. I know that you’re seeing this stuff cause I’m seeing it too. The point is though that if you had unlimited time and resources to pay for all these programs, it would be awesome, right? You could try stuff all day long. You could experiment. You could be creative, but you don’t. I don’t, nobody does. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, if I had one hour to grow my gym business today, is this the best use of my time? This testing stuff, it’s not sexy, but we do it because the individual gym owner can’t possibly test everything.

Chris (18:09):

When you’re on an online Facebook chat group, there are a lot of other gym owners jumping in to give you help and support and ideas. And that’s amazing. You really don’t get that in most fields. And I love it. The downside is that you’re getting their N equals one experience. This worked for me. That doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. And so we do these big tasks so that we can say, yes, this will work for you. Or maybe, Hey, it only worked for that person. Or maybe this doesn’t work at all. It’s a scam. I’m Chris Cooper. We put this together because we think it’s our responsibility as a leader in the fitness industry. I hope it helps you. And we’re going to keep reporting on stuff that works and doesn’t work on this podcast because people are asking us for it. Thank you for that.

Andrew (18:52):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Please subscribe for two great episodes every week. And for more industry insight and tactics from Chris Cooper, join the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Chris is constantly posting articles, instructional videos, and advice in there. And these resources will literally help you make more money. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook join today.

 

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Managing Risk and the Cost of Failure

By Colm O’Reilly, Certified Two-Brain Fitness Business Mentor

This might be hard to believe, but most of my jokes fall flat. In fact, if I get 30 percent of them to elicit a chuckle or groan, I consider them a success!

But my misses don’t matter because the cost of failure is pretty low when you’re telling a bad joke. For example, comedians Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld do smaller shows for months to refine their jokes and routines until they’re ready to do a big tour. 

What does this have to do with business? There are two important points:

Business is a constant stream of iterations.We need to manage the cost of failure.

In business, we’re never going to reach the stage where everything runs perfectly. We’ll need to adapt to changing circumstances (hello, COVID!) or simply improve in an important area. The key is knowing what to focus on, determining how much work will be required, defining what success looks like, and laying out the conditions for cancelling the mission or rolling it back. 

It’s tempting to want to launch a new service—like nutrition or a kids program—and imagine all the extra revenue that will roll in (which, in your mind, will be pure profit). It’s vital that we investigate what work is required to get the program running, how much time and money it will cost, and how long it will take to see a return. We also need to ask a key question: Can you afford all this this right now? 

None of this is intended to deter you from trying new things. In fact, you need to try new things constantly. You cannot just keep doing the same old, same old. If you stagnate, it’ll be too late to try new things and you won’t have the skill of adapting and iterating. I simply want to protect you from disappointment and “failure” up front by getting you to plan your actions.

In my business, we could launch secondary revenue streams (nutrition, kids and mindset coaching) because we could afford the time and capital expenditure to nurture these programs. Our primary revenue stream supported the work. We also review all programs to ensure the time invested is giving us a return, and we are prepared to refocus our energies based on those reviews.

What’s just as important is knowing and understanding the cost of failure for everything.

Coca-Cola reportedly lost US$34 million on New Coke but survived the disaster. As a small-business owner, you want to avoid disasters completely and minimize the costs of failure.

For example, launching a weightlifting program might cost you up to five figures in new bars, bumpers and platforms. It could take a long time to recoup that money, and you might not do it if the program flops like a bad joke. A nutrition certification at $1,500 is a much lower sunk cost, and you can offset much of it with a stellar program launch (Two-Brain tells clients exactly how to launch a program to give it the best chance of success). Which program would carry fewer risks and offer greater potential benefits for your business?

When planning any changes or expansions, work with your mentor to determine what’s worth it right now, when you should wait, what failure will cost, and how you’ll recover if things don’t work out—or how you’ll capitalize if they do. 

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