Chris Cooper's Blog, page 135
January 14, 2021
How to Give Your Staff a Raise
You earn more money by creating more value for more people.
Your staff can do the same.
In this series, I’ve been telling you how salaries and sales bonuses aren’t the best ways to create opportunities. The best way to create opportunities for your staff is to allow them to grow the pie, not to take a larger slice.
Here’s how to get them to do it.
The Path to a CareerBefore we get into this, I don’t want you to assume that every great coach is a full-time coach. A great coach can work part time. Read more here: “Gym Management: The Case for Part-Time Coaches.”
Now, here are the steps to building the careers they want:
Step 1At your quarterly Career Roadmap meeting, ask your coach: “What do you want now?” Ask the coach to tell you about his or her Perfect Day. Ask how your gym can support that Perfect Day. Ask where he or she would like to be in six months.
(If you’re not doing quarterly Career Roadmap meetings, start. We teach you how to do it in our Mentorship Program.)
Step 2Determine how much the coach needs to earn to reach those goals. Using tools like the Happiness Index (and his or her personal budget), calculate a goal number.
Step 3Use our Career Roadmap tool (we give it to you in the RampUp program) to work backward from that number. Create opportunities to do personal training, specialty programs, nutrition coaching or more groups. It’s all laid out in our free “Intrapreneurialism 101” guide, which you can download here.
Step 4Determine the starting position. What will the coach need to learn in order to capitalize on this plan? Will he or she need a certification before starting a kids program, for example? Will the coach need to take the Two-Brain Coaching First Degree before he or she can work with 1:1 clients?
Step 5Measure progress. Perform regular reviews as part of Career Roadmap meetings.
**Step 6**Give the coach an opportunity to open his or her own business under your brand. After you’ve taught the coach how to be an “intrapreneur,” you can help him or her step outside your protective umbrella and open a gym. Read “Go With Them.”
Communicate and LeadThe key to all of this is asking your coaches, “What do you want now?”
Some might want more money. Some might want more opportunity. Some want consistency; some are willing to take risk in exchange for equity. But no one wants the same thing forever.
The best way to help your coaches build careers is to mentor them to success.
The wrong way is to pay them “bonuses” based on metrics they can’t control or 1940s ideas like “seniority.” According to data in our “State of the Industry” guide, most gym owners aren’t profitable enough to give their staff members raises. The average coach income in our “State of the Industry” report was $21 per class coached. That’s not enough—but the businesses can’t afford to pay them more.
The best way for coaches to earn more? Help grow the business.
How to Pay MoreLet’s consider this question: What can you afford pay per class?
Take all your group or class revenue. Multiply that by 44.4 percent. That’s your total class budget for staff.
Now divide that budget across all the classes you offer. Because each coach is teaching the same programming and following the same plan, they should all be paid the same amount for classes. They’re delivering an identical service at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m.
If the resulting per-class rate is too low, you have three choices:
Raise the price of your group-training classes. Put more people into the classes. Deliver fewer classes.Which should you choose? Back to our first rule: You make more money by creating more value.
1. If you deliver far more value than you charge for group training, raise your rates.
2. If adding more people to a class will increase its value, focus on marketing.
3. If you find yourself delivering 1:1 coaching at group-class rates, kill the class.
Raising your rates increases your salary cap. Adding more clients increases your salary cap. Delivering fewer classes spreads your available spend better. It’s not the long-term solution, but if keeping coaches is your priority, it might be the best solution right now.
Everyone Can WinI know you: You’re generous. You put other people ahead of yourself—your clients, your family and even the people who are paid to put you first: your coaches.
It’s not wrong to do so. Your team is critically important to your gym’s success. But it is wrong to undermine the gym’s stability or sacrifice your family’s income by paying coaches too much.
Coaches can have a great career in your box, especially when the relationship is good for everyone.
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January 13, 2021
Should Your Gym Pay Sales Commissions?
Most gym owners hate sales and marketing. I did, too—until my perspective changed.
I wrote my book “Help First” to talk about that change. But until you’ve experienced the same epiphany, you might do the same things that I did to avoid being the “salesperson”:
Running free trials so people can “experience” your coaching, then hoping they whip out their credit cards.Telling people how to sign up online instead of calling them when they inquire.Telling coaches it’s their responsibility to fill their own classes.“Incentivizing” coaches to get their own clients by paying them a higher revenue split.Trying to outsource sales. Advertising “No sales pitch ever!” Literally telling people, “I’m bad at sales. Just come and see for yourself.”And, worst of all, I tried to hire someone else to sell my service for me. I offered salaries and commissions. And it didn’t work.Who Sells?
If you have fewer than 150 clients, sales is your job. Don’t hire someone else to try and do it better than you.
Coaching means telling people the answer. And “you should sign up!” is the first right answer you provide your clients.
If you’re not good at sales, you should work to improve. You should learn how to help people get started in fitness. In this post, I tell you how to get clear on what you’re selling, how to sell without feeling like a salesperson, what tools you need and how to sell more.
But eventually, you’re going to replace yourself in the “sales” role. This means someone else should be trained to perform your No Sweat Intros with your future clients and Goal Reviews with your current clients.
Here are the steps:
1. Train your staff to close sales as well as you do. If your staff members are closing at lower rates than you are, they should be trained before being put into sales roles.
2. The staff person’s primary incentive is that he or she gets a new client. If you’re following an Intrapreneurial model, every new client starts with a 1:1 coaching program. If your sales staff is made up of your coaches, then that’s reason enough to sign people up. (Get our “Intrapreneurialism 101” guide here.)
3. If you have a staff person dedicated to sales, then give him or her control of the full sales process—from lead generation to lead nurture to appointment setting to follow-up. Only then would you pay a commission, and that commission should be less than 10 percent. Here’s how to hire and train a dedicated sales person: “Building a Sales Engine.”
“If you’re not spending 40 hours serving your clients every week, you need to spend 40 hours getting clients every week.”
Why Do Some Salespeople Get Commissions?
Remember: You’re not selling a product but a service. Commissioned salespeople usually sell products.
When selling a car or a refrigerator, the salespeople are dealing with cold traffic. The most aggressive salesperson is going to win—and will probably never see the client again. Those salespeople are being rewarded for risking their time in people who are unlikely to buy. They’re the people who usually make a commission.
In contrast, your “sales force” is dealing with a very warm audience who can greatly benefit from a long-term relationship with your service. Sales-force turnover is really high for products—either you become good at it really quickly or you’re gone. But that’s not what we’re dealing with here.
Until you reach 150 clients, sales is really the owner’s job. Bonuses and commissions won’t create a big difference in your close rate unless you’re dealing with super-cold leads that won’t ask for a refund later.
But if you’re ready to hire someone else to manage your sales, remember this: Gym owners should always replace themselves in each role with people who are better at that role if they want to get time back.
The post Should Your Gym Pay Sales Commissions? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
January 12, 2021
Should Your Gym Pay a Salary?
Salaries are really about risk.
If you pay your staff salaries, you bear all the risk for their performance. You’re incentivizing them to show up. It’s a fragile model, because it limits their upside and puts them at high risk when cash is tight.
The alternative is Intrapreneurship: If staff create value for your business, they’ll be truly irreplaceable.
Every staff person should generate at least 2.5x what they’re paid or create the time for someone else to do it for them.
Get our free “Intrapreneurship 101 Guide” here.
You can use the Intrapreneurship model to give your staff the freedom to earn money without a ceiling and without the time-cost of becoming an entrepreneur. You shield them from risk and give them a high-leverage opportunity: They use your platform and your audience to deliver their excellent coaching.
But when you have around 150 clients, you might want to make your first salaried hire: a general manager. This is someone who’s responsible for maintaining the excellent delivery of your service while you focus on growing your gym.
When people receive a salary, they also carry the burden of responsibility. The salary creates some time flexibility but also time risk: A salaried person must be willing to solve problems instead of report problems.
For example, if a staff member is going to answer the phone in the middle of the night, rush to the gym to meet the plumber and stop the flood, then that’s worth a salary because that person is taking responsibility for solving problems and is no longer constrained by a checklist or schedule.
In other words, the GM is not trading money for time anymore; now the person is trading money for responsibility. In return, by paying a salary, you, the owner, take on the burden of risk: You pay the salary whether the business is profitable or not. That means the salaried person gets paid even if you don’t.
Should You Pay a Salary in Your Gym?
Right now, in the COVID Crisis, few gyms should take the risk of paying a salary. Gyms in the middle of a shutdown, or even those making a large pivot, should reorganize to meet the new service they’re offering.
In “normal” times, the biggest errors gym owners make with salaries are really about abdication (I’ve made this mistake twice myself).
The owner thinks, “I hate doing sales! I’ll delegate this.”
Or, “This coach needs to earn more money! I’ll provide some cleaning/admin/bookkeeping/management/sales/etc. work to fill the schedule.”
So the owner pays a salary to buy 40 hours of the person’s time and then tries to backfill those hours with a hodgepodge of little tasks. But it rarely works because each of those roles requires a unique skill set, and work expands to fill the time allotted to it. If the person you put in charge of your billing software doesn’t understand it well, it will take him or her 10 hours every week to generate reports.
This is the true risk of salaries: You’re incentivizing people to show up and do work they don’t like slowly. And then, of course, the coach is often bad at those things. So the owner loses the manager and the best coach.
Most gyms are owner-operator businesses. You can hire people to replace yourself in low-value roles, and you can hire to replace yourself as coach. But these are all hourly jobs until you reach 150 clients. Then you require a “management layer” of staff, and that manager carries the burden of responsibility.
Until you’ve reached that point, the only salaried person in your gym should be you.
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January 11, 2021
The Best Certifications for Personal Trainers
What’s are the best certifications for personal trainers?
The answer is important for gym owners because the numbers don’t lie: Fitness businesses with personal-training programs can earn more. Data from Two-Brain’s State of the Industry ebook showed that personal training generates 24 percent of revenue on average in gyms that offer the service. The number can be as high as 57 percent of revenue in some gyms.
In order to build a profitable personal-training program, gym owners need qualified, credentialed coaches who can succeed in one-on-one or small-group sessions.
For trainers, earning a credential can increase knowledge and coaching skill, but it also provides legitimacy in the eyes of the public and allows access to insurance coverage. These benefits are balanced by the initial cost of obtaining the credential, maintenance costs, and renewal and continuing-education requirements.
Below, we’ve rounded up six of the best certifications for personal trainers and collected everything gym owners and coaches need to know about each one.
Resource: Indeed.com Personal Trainer Salary
Resource: Create a Personal Trainer Business Plan
The Top 6 Credentials for Personal Trainers
American Council on Exercise (ACE)
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) is the world’s largest exercise-professional and health-coach certification organization. Its certifications are accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), widely accepted as the gold standard for accreditation in the health and fitness professions.
The ACE Personal Trainer Certification is one of four professional fitness certifications the organization offers and is “designed for health and exercise professionals providing one-on-one or small-group fitness instruction to individuals who are apparently healthy or have medical clearance to exercise.”
To become an ACE Certified Personal Trainer (ACE-CPT), individuals must pass the ACE Personal Trainer Certification Exam, which covers material across four domains: interviews and assessments; program design and implementation; program modification and progression; and professional conduct, safety and risk management.
Once certified, ACE personal trainers benefit from a variety of career resources provided by the organization, including profiles in the United States Registry of Exercise Professionals and the national “Find Your Trainer” database, discounted liability insurance and educational programs, and more.
More information: ACE Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: US$849-$1,499 depending on package, with seasonal sales.
What you get: All three packages (Basic, Plus and Advantage) include access to ACE University (a digital learning platform featuring course tracking, video demonstrations, quizzes and a practice test), digital copies of the “ACE Personal Trainer Textbook” and “ACE Personal Trainer Study Companion,” and access to ACE Answers (an on-demand study support program featuring answers to common study questions, exam preparation articles and digital study groups).
Plus and Advantage packages also include hard copies of the textbook (the Advantage package includes an audiobook) and study companion, as well as a supplemental course (Exercise Science 101) and extra ACE Answers features including live Q&A webinars.
Features exclusive to the Advantage package include Ace Answers facilitated study groups and access to one-on-one support from an ACE Advantage representative.
Currently, all three packages include the option to take the exam from home with live remote proctoring.
Prerequisites:
Must be at least 18 years old at time of registration.Must hold an adult CPR and AED certificate with live skills check. Online CPR/AED courses not accepted. (AED only required in U.S. and Canada.)Must present a current government-issued photo ID with signature (driver’s license, passport, military ID).Must have completed high school (or the equivalent).
Expiration:
Renewal requirements:
What Two-Brain clients are saying about it:
“It’s a good intro to how to be a coach, and they have ample opportunities for continuing ed.”
Athletics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA)
The Athletics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA) has been certifying group and personal trainers for over 35 years. Formerly known as the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, the organization was acquired by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM, see below) in 2015.
The Personal Fitness Trainer Certification is one of six certifications the AFAA offers, although its Group Fitness Instructor Certification is its most robust and comprehensive. And while the latter is NCCA-accredited, the AFAA lists no accreditation for the Personal Fitness Trainer Certification.
To become certified, individuals must pass an exam covering the human body and exercise physiology; behavior modification and communication skills; fitness screening, health assessment and injury prevention; and the basics of nutrition and weight management.
More information: AFAA Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: $499
What you get: The cost of the exam includes access to 14 video lectures, a digital study guide, sample multiple-choice questions and a free digital subscription to “American Fitness Magazine.”
Prerequisites:
CPR and AED certification.Valid photo ID.
Expiration
Renewal requirements:
American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is a nonprofit sports-medicine and exercise-science membership organization providing NCCA-accredited certifications, networking opportunities and continuing education.
ACSM offers three “health fitness” certifications in addition to clinical certification and specialty certifications. Its personal trainer certification grants the certificant “the practical and scientific knowledge to work in a variety of fitness facilities, including health clubs; gyms; university, corporate and community or public fitness centers; and positions ranging from freelance personal training to full time and beyond.”
To become an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer (ACSM-CPT), individuals must pass an exam covering four domains: initial client consultation and assessment, exercise programming and implementation, exercise leadership and client education, and legal and professional responsibilities.
More information: ACSM Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: $279 (members), $349 (non-members).
What you get: Study resources are not included in the price of the exam, except for a free digital outline of the exam content.
Registrants have the option to purchase additional study materials, including textbooks, access to PrepU (a digital practice quiz platform) and various workshops and webinars.
Prerequisites:
Must be at least 18 years old at time of registration.Adult CPR and AED certificate.Valid photo ID and secondary ID with signature.Must have completed high school (or the equivalent).
Expiration
Renewal requirements:
Or:
International Sports Science Association (ISSA)
Founded in 1988, the International Sports Science Association (ISSA) offers 12 fitness certifications and has certified over 300,000 trainers in 143 countries.
Its personal training certification is accredited by the National Council for Certified Personal Trainers (NCCPT) and qualifies certificants to provide clients with “customized training programs based on their individual health and fitness goals.”
To earn the ISSA Personal Training Certificate, individuals must pass an exam encompassing basic and applied sciences; client assessment; special populations; program design; nutrition; and professional practice, drawing-in phase, and fiscal fitness.
More information: ISSA Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: $133.17 per month for 12 months, with seasonal sales.
What you get: The cost of the ISSA Personal Trainer Certification includes access to several additional resources, including “Fitness—The Complete Guide,” a 759-page ebook covering the exam material.
It also includes access to online practice exams and quizzes, audio and video lectures, and an online student forum. Upon successful completion of the exam, certificants receive a customizable website and ongoing support from ISSA staff.
Prerequisites:
Must be at least 18 years old at time of registration.Adult CPR and AED certificate.Current government-issued photo ID with signature (driver’s license, passport, military ID).Must have completed high school (or the equivalent).
Expiration
Renewal requirements:
National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
Over its 30 years, the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) has educated more than 1.3 million fitness professionals in more than 80 countries around the world.
It offers NCCA-accredited certifications in personal training, group fitness, nutrition and injury prevention in addition to several specialty courses.
Candidates who pass the NASM Personal Trainer Exam are allowed to include the certification credential “NASM-CPT” behind their names and use the title “NASM Certified Personal Trainer.” The exam covers six domains: basic and applied science and nutritional concepts, assessment, program design, exercise technique and training instruction, client relations and behavioral coaching, and professional development and responsibility.
More information: NASM Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: $799-$2,199, depending on package, with seasonal sales.
What you get: Registrants can choose from four packages: Self-Study, Premium Self-Study, Guided Study and All-Inclusive.
All four packages include access to the NASM-CPT digital textbook, content learning videos, the exercise video library, and practice exams and quizzes.
Premium Self-Study, Guided Study and All-Inclusive packages include exercise-coaching demonstrations, guarantee of a job within 90 days of successful exam completion, and a year’s access to NASM Edge, a personal-training mobile app.
On top of those resources, the Guided Study and All-Inclusive packages include the option to participate in a 10-week course led by an NASM fitness expert, an exam retest, a hard copy of the NASM-CPT textbook, access to an NASM mentor and access to bonus materials.
The All-Inclusive package features all of the above in addition to exam prep through NASM Edge, 80 hours of internship experience and recertification for life.
Prerequisites:
Adult CPR and AED certificate.Current government-issued photo ID with signature (driver’s license, passport, military ID).Must have completed high school (or the equivalent).
Expiration
Renewal requirements:
National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) is a 43-year-old “nonprofit association dedicated to advancing the strength and conditioning and related sport science professions around the world.” It serves a network of more than 45,000 fitness professionals.
It offers three certifications accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Strength and Conditioning Education (CASCE), including personal training. The NSCA describes its personal-training certification as the ideal credential for those wishing to work with the general population to train clients of all ages who seek “to improve their personal health and fitness goals.”
Certificants must pass the NSCA-CPT exam, which covers four domains: client consultation/fitness assessment, program planning, exercise techniques, and safety/emergency issues.
More information: NSCA Personal Trainer Certification
Cost: $300 (members), $435 (non-members).
What you get: Study resources are not included in the price of the exam, except for a free digital outline of the exam content and sample questions included in the certification handbook.
However, registrants can choose from three study-package options for purchase: NSCA-Essential Package ($240.30 member/$290.70 non-member), NSCA-CPT-Essential Plus Package ($455/$511) and NSCA-CPT Digital Package ($152/$202).
The Essential and Essential Plus packages include copies of “Essentials of Personal Training” and the NSCA-CPT Study Guide, in addition to more than 200 practice questions. The Plus package also includes a copy of “Exercise Technique Manual” and additional unnamed resources.
The Digital package includes just the NSCA-CPT study guide and practice questions.
Prerequisites:
Must be at least 18 years old at time of registration.Adult CPR and AED certificate.Current government-issued photo ID with signature (driver’s license, passport, military ID).Must have completed high school (or the equivalent).
Expiration
Renewal requirements:
What Two-Brain clients are saying about it:
“I feel that the NSCA definitely gives a candidate an advantage.”
Best Certifications for Personal Trainers: Comparison Table
ACEAFAAACSMISSANASMNSCACostUS$849
-$1,499$499$279 or $349$133.17 per month$799
-$2,199$300 or $435Education
PrerequisitesHigh SchoolNoneHigh SchoolHigh SchoolHigh SchoolHigh SchoolExpiration2
Years2 Years3 Years2
Years2 Years3
YearsRenewal Fee$129$99 or $399$45$0 or $99$99 or $399VariableCECs20 Hours15 Hours45 Hours20 Hours2 Units (20 Hours)VariableBest Certifications for Personal Trainers—Comparison Chart
Gym Owners Sound Off on PT Credentials
89 percent of respondents in a poll in Two-Brain’s private Facebook group for gym owners listed the NSCA credential as the one they regarded most highly of the six credentials profiled here.
The NASM credential was listed as best regarded by 11 percent of respondents.
The other four credentials—ACE, AFAA, ACSM and ISSA—did not receive any votes.
The Best Certifications for Personal Trainers: The Missing Element
Credentials look good on resumes and can inspire confidence in clients. And some provide better education than others. But it’s important to remember that even the best certifications for personal trainers are just pieces of paper.
“Credentials don’t tell me anything about how good you actually are at delivering results,” said one Two-Brain Business gym owner.
Happy, fit, healthy clients are ultimately the best proof of coaching skill.
And in the end, some prospective employers might not care exactly which credential trainers choose—especially if they’re passionate, personable people who make clients smile while they squat.
“I’m happy to see any sort of credential on a resume,” said another Two-Brain gym owner. “To me, what that says is the applicant is … invested in the craft of coaching and at a basic level understands the value of education and training.”
Trainers need some sort of credential, but they definitely don’t need all of them. A basic foundation of knowledge is important. But once it’s in place, there’s really no substitute for experience with actual clients and the mentorship of a great coach or gym owner who can help trainers grow their practices and serve clients better.
For a host of free resources—including an ebook on generating more personal-training revenue—click here.
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Five-Figure Clients: How CrossFit MASS Does It
Mike (00:02):
Average long-term value of a client at CrossFit MASS is over $10,000. Owner Joe Venuti will dig into his amazing number with us right after this.
Chris (00:12):
Back to the show in just a minute. The people at Incite Tax know you’re working long hours to improve health for the world, but it can still be hard to turn a profit. You just can’t focus on your mission without money in your account. So Incite founder John Briggs wrote “Profit First for Mirogyms” and created a system that increases your cashflow so you can be home for dinner with a thriving fitness business. Bookkeeping, profit first, cash flow consulting, taxes, whatever your financial needs, Incite can help. Join their free five-day challenge at profitfirstformicrogyms/five days to get a snapshot of the financial health of your gym. That’s profitfirstformicrogyms/five days.
Mike (00:53):
Welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Two-Brain’s top gyms know that an average client is worth 8,000 to over $11,000 long term. We call this LTV: long-term value. Joe Venuti was one of Two-Brain’s LTV leaders in November with a five-figure score. Joe, welcome to Two-Brain Radio. Are you ready to help some gym owners increase their long-term value?
Joe (01:16):
I hope so, Mike, anything I can do.
Mike (01:18):
I appreciate your time. And I’m going to get right into the first question. Many gym owners don’t even know what long-term value is. Why did you start calculating it, or how did you even find out about this number?
Joe (01:29):
Well, that number was reported to me by the crew at Two-Brain when they started breaking down the numbers I was giving to them each month in the dashboard.
Mike (01:40):
So you found out about this and found out you’re one of the leaders. What did that do for you? Did that start to change your opinion of what this number—is it a number that you’re going to continue to track? Does it mean something to you now?
Joe (01:52):
Yeah, I think so. It just means that I’m doing something right. But now that we have the number, now you want to kind of pull it apart a little bit and see if you can kind of see what makes it tick, because obviously it’s good if you’re in the group of all these fabulous Two-Brain gyms and you’re leading something, anything, that’s a positive, so we try to keep good going.
Mike (02:17):
So let’s pull it apart a little bit. And I don’t know if you’ve had a ton of time to dig into that number yet, but let’s talk a little bit about some of the things that you think might go into it. Have you done any digging already to see where that number might’ve come from?
Joe (02:28):
Yeah, a little bit, you know, so when you look at the average lifetime value calculation, it’s the ARM times the LEG of paying clients, it’s really just two factors. And I know we had a decent ARM. I know it’s not the best ever, but sometimes it peaks, you know, depending on what we’re running for specialty classes, but I knew our LEG was good. And I think we’ve always kind of worked when we look at those to bring both up in parallel.
Joe (03:00):
We never really tried to crush one or the other, one at the expense of the other. So I think we’ve always sort of incrementally over the last 12 years, sort of goosed each one up a little bit, whenever we add a new service to the gym.
Mike (03:15):
So you’ve been around for 12 years now. That’s a significant accomplishment. And one of the things that we realize, obviously for long-term value, the longer you’re around, the more value the clients that stay with you will have. Survival is one of the things that goes into being a leader of this thing, because it’d be tough to have a long-term value in your first year as a gym owner, but you’ve been around for 12 years. Do you know offhand or even just a guesstimate of how many clients are still around from the very beginning, if any?
Joe (03:48):
One of my coaches is still, two of my coaches are still with me from the first year, so they’re not clients anymore. I don’t count them amongst that. My oldest pure client just turned 10 years this month in December of 2020.
Mike (04:04):
So that’s huge. So you’ve got some clients that have been around, we’re measuring it more in years than months then. And so that’s obviously something that’s going to be involve in that score is you have long-term clients, which is fantastic. Do you have, like is your length of engagement, is it one of those super high numbers or do you track that number closely?Joe (04:24):
What’s a super high number, Mike, right? So I do, you know, it took me a couple of years to figure out how to pull it out of Zen Planner because of the way ZenPlanner does memberships.
Mike (04:33):
Oh, tell me about it.
Joe (04:33):
It’s a little challenging, but what’s our average length of engagement. Let me go back to get some spreadsheets here. We’re 41 months right now, the last time I updated the dashboard. So yeah, I guess that’s pretty good number. Right. And, you know, does that help?
Mike (04:56):
Yeah, it definitely does. 41 months is great considering that I think Chris has talked about the length of engagement a lot of places is, you know, clients will leave after three months, right. In a lot of gyms. Two-Brain gyms are obviously above that. So 41 months is fantastic. You said your ARM is something that you’re working on. Have you done anything specifically to change that right now? Or do you have any projects, speciality programs and things like that?
Joe (05:22):
So right now, especially programs are at a minimum because of the restrictions with the coronavirus and you know, how many people can have in the space at a time. When we got locked down, we switched everybody to one-on-one coaching via True Coach. And we continued with that when we brought everybody back in. So what’s happened is I kept all the previous members, I call them legacy members, on their current group membership costs. But now once we were back open to the public, everyone came in on a individual design type program, s so we were able to drive our revenue per member up because of the enhanced services.
Mike (06:07):
So that’s interesting. So I’m looking here at some of the stats that Chris had in a recent blog and the length of engagement leader was 58 months. And he’s asking people to rate themselves in this blog article and he said, you get an A if you’re above 35-plus months in length of engagement. So put your number in perspective, 41 is a great number to have. And so that’s obviously going to be a great part of your long-term value score. So that’s fantastic. And it’s very interesting to see as people pivot in the COVID period, what kind of changes are happening. And like Chris said, it’s kind of a reset where you do have a chance to make some corrections and changes to membership fees. And that’s something that a lot of people notice that, OK, my rates were too low, but this COVID hiccup, to call it something, gives them a chance to make some corrections. And that can even come in the terms of cutting costs that maybe weren’t offering a lot of return on investment and different things. Did you find any other corrections that you could make because of COVID? In addition to that individualized programming?Joe (07:13):
We did have to scale the staff back becase now we’re not running classes the way we were running before, and most of the staff had—I shouldn’t say most of the staff. We had a couple of trainers that had day jobs that they didn’t mind at all. So we just refocused the team down to a much smaller nucleus so that probably helped us a bit there. There you go. That would probably be the main thing where we saved some costs.
Mike (07:40):
Talk to me a little bit about your retention. So you’ve got a high retention number, 41 months, and that very much influences the long-term value. Are there any special things that you do to keep members in the gym? I talked to a gym owner, Emily Cabral, another one of our long-term value leaders, and what she told me was she has an amazing personal relationship with each member. Her challenge of course, is to step back and not be the person and the icon in her business. But I’m wondering how you have achieved 41 months of retention.Chris (08:13):
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.
Joe (08:46):
A combination of things. I’ve been with Chris, I started talking to him in the beginning of 2014, so all those old school concepts have been going on here for six years. So, you know, quarterly goal reviews, things like that. That’s all part of what we do here. In fact, we try to do them now monthly, trying to ratchet things up a little bit. But I think the long-term goal, because like, if I look at my LEG from back in August, I have like how many people is that? I have about 15 people that are over that 41-month mark driving my numbers up. So what we do that’s a little counter to what’s generally recommended is I’ve been in business for 12 years. There are people, that guy that’s been here 10 years, I’ve never raised my rates on him. So he’s paying the original, like been working out of the garage 10 years ago, 12 years ago, type of rate. I do constantly enhance services that we deliver. And when I do that, I raise the rates on incoming clients, but they’re getting the value there. Right. So they—does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.
Mike (10:13):
Yeah, it does. And it’s an interesting perspective because often when we do a rate increase, the mentors will recommend that they bring everyone up to the same standard and just have consistency across the board, but you’re taking a slightly different approach and you’re grandfathering or grandmothering as we either way you’re putting people in at those old rates. So does that, you think that has a retention effect where they see, because I did the same thing at my gym. We had, I want to say 10 or 12, and we did a rate increase. We had 10 or 12 original members, and these were the people that showed up with like $7 and 50 cents cash in their hands to pay me for a bootcamp I was running in a globo gym, and I didn’t raise rates on them because it was kind of a badge of honor for them. And I left them at a rate that was kind of half of what others were paying. And again, our mentor recommended that we didn’t do that. I did it only because I had a very small number and it diminished about three or four, but these are people that have been there for 10 years. And they gave me a chance when I had nothing. And so I kind of stepped outside for that. Do you find that this, your approach has some retention, value to it?
Joe (11:16):
Yes, I think so. Because, like I said, I’m looking back at some of these people and they were back when I first went to a public space, you know, I don’t have anybody from the—well, I have that one guy from the original garage days, but those people still bring people in, too. Right. So that guy that’s been with me 10 years, his wife joined like three years later and she actually upgraded to a much higher membership off of that you know, a few years later when she had some health issues. So, I think the benefit’s there. I mean, there are definitely people, I’ve seen some of the stories in the growth group about people and what their rates are and what their ARM is. And they started out too low. When I started, I was charging say, I was doing four nights a week out of a garage, right.
Joe (12:04):
So there’s only four classes, four one-hour classes, out of you know, a 220 square foot garage. I was charging a hundred bucks a month. That was a fair price for that. Right. But so if you stayed with me, you’d still have that price. But as I added more classes to the schedule, or I went to a public space that was bigger, went up to 150 and then added a few more days. We went from four days a week to five, six days a week, went up to 185 and then 200. And then we went to individual design when COVID reopened and that went way up. Right. So that’s kind of how we’ve been doing it, incrementally when it made sense, you don’t just kind of juice people. With the natural turnover of a gym, yeah. It drives it up.
Mike (12:52):
So if we talk about the average revenue per member and how it relates to long-term value, your long-term valu is probably supported, I’ll say more in the sense by length of engagement, but the burden of ARM falls more on your new members, is that correct?
Joe (13:11):
Yeah. But I mean—that would be correct. Yeah. But it averages out pretty smoothly as it goes, but yeah, the newer members and the new programs will bring the ARM up. For sure. If I had everybody at that original garage rate, I would have been out of business a long time ago for the services I’m offering now.
Mike (13:32):
That’s really the key that I want to get at is, you know, I’m not certainly—the mentors always have their formulas and they’ll help each person figure out the exact right path, whether it’s a consistency across the board thing that works in terms of a rate increase, or if there are some rare exceptions, generally we say, you know, the mentors will tell you do not do discounts. I certainly, I chose not to listen to that. And, you know, honestly, I eventually started to regret it a little bit when I was looking at my average revenue per member, but I really had to think like you did where these people have been with me for so long. So there are some ways to kind of adjust this, but again, I wouldn’t recommend, I’m not saying do this and, you know, do exactly what Joe and I did.
Mike (14:09):
You should definitely work with your mentor and find out the exact right plan for you. And there are formulas for this. So again, this is an interesting experiment, though. And the reason I kind of want to dig in is because you have one of these really cool scores. And so I kind of wanted to figure out what you’ve got going on in there. Do you think that number is going to change now, now that you’re paying attention to it? Is it something you’re to work to actively change? What do you think will happen to it?
Joe (14:32):
So no, I think if you chase the number itself, you’re going to run into problems, right? So, it becomes an objective. And so it’s like chasing a 500-pound back squat when really you’re in the gym for health and longevity, right? You’re going to end up jacking up your back and your shoulders and your hips and stuff, and you’d be tired and cranky. You’re not going to be producing at work. When I go back and look at why those numbers are the way they are, the result of, A, you know, trying to connect with members in different ways as far as the retention and, and honoring them, you know, you invested in me when we only offered X, so your reward for being here 10, 12 years is you’ve paid into the system for that length of time. I mean, do the math, if you’ve got somebody that’s paid a hundred dollars a month for 12 years, that’s a lot of money that you’re not going to see out of somebody that’s only going to be there 18 months. They’ve kind of paid their dues. Right.
Mike (15:36):
Yeah. And you kind of, sorry, go ahead.
Joe (15:39):
Go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say.
Mike (15:42):
Going to back to what we were talking about there with the keeping original members at their rates, it’s an interesting thing to kind of look at, because you can only do that when you’ve been around for a long time, essentially. And you know that like you and I both said, if we had kept, if we had not raised our rates on incoming members, we would be out of business. I wouldn’t have survived. You wouldn’t have survived. Right. Cause a hundred dollars a month rate and mine, I think it was 84 originally. Those would not have worked. And even in, I want to say in 2012, for me, I already realized my rates were too low. Even the rates, not even my old school rates, but my rates that I had set randomly without the help of mentor, those were too low in 2012.
Mike (16:22):
And I didn’t correct them, I think until 2018. So we made some real mistakes there and we managed to survive and we did leave people at that number. We had, you know, like a small number of people, but they were essentially outside my area on calculations at that point. Right. And they were some of my seed clients. They were some of the people that were doing the greatest affinity marketing for me. So there was additional value in there like you said, but the point being, you have to stay around for a long time to be able to make these decisions. And if you don’t have the right rates in place for the majority of your members, you’re probably going to be in a tough spot. Is that accurate?
Joe (16:59):
Oh yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You have to go do that perfect day. You got to figure out what you need to run the gym when you start your initial rate. Right. You’re starting to—I got lucky, you know, I actually had a small garage to run out of. So the overhead was very low, so that a hundred dollars made sense, and it was all gravy. But when I went to the public space, I said OK, I need to kind of keep paying the bills, plus the rent and now I gotta do, I have to have a CPA and you have to do all that work to see if it makes sense to you and crunch the numbers. And, you know, there were times when it was big in the Two-Brain community to like do that rate increase and you know, people had to write their letters and you saw those pains. And I went through the numbers and I said, well, what happens if I bring everybody up to where everybody else is, and just because of the normal attrition over 10, 12, whatever years, right? It didn’t make sense. It just wasn’t that big of a bump up percentage wise.
Mike (17:55):
And so that’s important right? You work through the numbers and you figured out what was right for your business. And that’s the part that I love. And that’s why we’re kind of doing this interview on long-term value is that the data says what you need to do, right? So you work through it and you figure out, OK, this isn’t going to bump the needle as much as something else, you focus on something else. That’s the whole principle of the Two-Brain roadmap, finding the thing that’s going to help your business right away. So I love that you said that where you looked at the data and ran the numbers, I kind of did the same thing where I said, if I got these like few number of people, if I leave them, no big deal, kind of look forward to that, but then get it right going forward for the new people coming in. And then if a new gym owner is listening right now, the idea of launch properly, and we have a whole founder’s club plan that helps gym owners figure out exactly how to price their services, how to get people in the business, how to reach break even and even profitability right away as fast as possible. It doesn’t have to be a guessing game anymore like back in the day, when you were in your garage, how did you come up with that original number? Was it just a guess? Because for me it was.
Joe (18:58):
Oh, you know what? That’s so long ago. Yeah, let’s just say it was a guess because I can’t think of a reason that I had beyond that at that point. I probably did, but I can’t tell you what it was.
Mike (19:15):
Yeah. Well, you know, so what I’ll extrapolate from our discussion here on, we got into kind of pricing and rates and so forth and rate increases, but what it really comes down to is, like I said, your long-term value number comes from a place of survival, retention and data where you’re analyzing things and figuring things out, which I love that you kind of know these things. Let me ask you this. Now that you know that you have a pretty good, you know, industry leading number for long-term value, does that change any of your decision-making with regard to say, you know, retention gifts for members or, you know, purchasing advertising or anything like that, does that change the way you think about it?
Joe (19:52):
No. With anything purchasing advertising, I’m taking a step back on that because everybody’s drowning right now with the shift in the market. So advertising is abhorrently expensive. I’m trying to run the gym higher value, smaller number of members right now. So I’m really poured value into the members to justify the rates we have and potentially raise them as time goes on. If that makes sense. Yeah. Instead of trying to like, just drag in 30 new members in January, I’d much rather get five that are going to stay with me for three years.
Mike (20:32):
Let me ask you this. When things kind of calm down and maybe we’re back to a new normal, whenever that might be, if you know that a new incoming client is potentially worth X over the long term, does that give you any confidence in the new scenario in terms of what you would pay for the cost of a lead?Joe (20:51):
Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a really good question. I don’t know, man. People are so like everyone’s an individual and everyone has their own stuff going on. How long they last is tough. That’s really tough. I mean, yeah.
Mike (21:12):
Well, the reason I ask is that, you know, the old Netflix story, right, where Netflix knows that people stay for X months and are worth whatever the dollar value is. So they can afford to pay a fairly high price to acquire a client and they’ll lose for the first little bit, but then they’ll make it up as the client stays for longer and fulfills that length of engagement kind of thing. So it’s really interesting to think about that. And I know that the marketing guys like Mateo and John of Two-Brain Marketing, they really get you to look at those numbers. So I’m curious as we get through the COVID crisis, what that might do, and we’ll have to talk to you again about this, because right now I’ve asked Emily Cabral the same question, again, another one of our long-term value leaders.
Mike (21:51):
And she didn’t know either because she’s in Southern California in a saturated market where advertising is crazy. Right. So she was in a weird situation too, and you’re in a situation where it’s like, well, COVID, how do we deal with this whole thing? So it’ll be very interesting to see later on how that plays out, but I’ll ask you this about retention. In terms of like, do you do any gifts or, you know, Christmas cards or holiday cards, or, you know, 10 year anniversaries or five-year anniversaries, do you do any of that kind of stuff for retention for members?
Joe (22:19):
So not for retention. I mean, literally just as appreciation, we’re going to put something together for that ten-year guy. Other than that, I mean, we just try to be kind of decent human beings. Like before this, if you got sick, you would have gotten a message from one of my coaches and me, or one of the other coaches would have dropped a package of chicken soup on your front steps or something like that. Like just seeing if you need something, cause you’re all relatively local, you know, we’re just trying to be, you know, just good to people, right? Not, I’m not going to say, Oh, here’s a stress ball or something like that. To go back to your question before, however, like I’m really bad at like even printing up t-shirts, I get clubbed by my members all the time. They’re like, when’s the next t-shirt?
Joe (23:05):
Just lift your weights and stay out of the hospital. So one thing we are going to try to ramp up and we’re meeting about this next week is we’re just going to try to, because things have shifted and people coming in, we can’t have as much close contact as we did before, and we don’t really run on ramps, but we’re going to try to up the attention we give to new people coming in in the first 30 days, too. And just like an added value without upcharging them at all to help them get up to speed faster. And it’s something we did, you know, it’s basically an on-ramp, but can’t really do an on-ramp with this model. But to get them up to speed faster, more success, and just feel better, more integrated and less, a little lost, which I think we have a little bit with this model, but again, you don’t have that like, Hey, this is your coach for the next 12 classes kind of deal. If that makes sense, right?
Mike (24:04):
Yeah. It’s such a transitional period for everyone to try and figure out how to kind of navigate things. And you know, our business running the online model, we’re figuring out how to get clients into that. Right. Because we can’t do that. We can’t run on ramps, you know, it’s with a local government restriction. So yeah, it’s a fascinating time to kind of reconsider everything. Well, let me ask you this question. What would you recommend to a gym owner who’s starting to look at long-term value? And I know it was a number that you said surprised you, to find out that you had a really good one, but if a gym owner just, you know, randomly sent you a message and said, Joe, how would I start driving my number up? What would you tell that person?
Joe (24:42):
I would say don’t look directly at that number, look at the two components equally and what can you do that helps the client, right? That meets with your sort of mission, but also parallels what the client needs. Right? So adding more classes or giving them more attention, right. Doing more no sweat intros, like I said, we’re doing it monthly now. And they’re extended. They get an InBody scan and a consult with the coach. You know, that’s a half-hour long every month. Whatever that is, get that to them. And you’ll see those numbers go up, right. Don’t just chase that number.
Mike (25:24):
So it’s essentially the, you know, the help first model that Chris has talked about so often where you find out exactly how to help this client get to the goals and as a function of that great service and value that you’re providing, you’re going to see results both in retention and in average revenue.
Joe (25:42):
Absolutely. Yeah. If you just chase the number, you’ll break it, or you’ll break something in your gym, right? That’s like salespeople that are just chasing the sale versus a person that just wants to help you. And by that they make a living and the person. So you’ve created a win-win scenario, right, when you’re trying to help the person. Whereas if you’re just trying to sell them, that’s a problem.
Mike (26:04):
Let me ask you this. I want your perspective on this, that Emily told me, she thought that her retention and the relationships that she had, which were very strong, she felt like that came from knowing exactly who her ideal client was and attracting ideal clients, meaning she didn’t have a lot of, I call them fitness tourists who pop in for a couple months and check out. She found, basically replicated her seed clients and found that these the right clients sustained this long-term value number. Do you have a specific client avatar that you target and do you agree with her about that?
Joe (26:38):
I’m just looking kind of at the people that I got on my list that are nine, eight, seven years. And they’re also different in a lot of ways. And I know who I like to personally work with and my other coaches have their own sort of seed clients or concepts. I think it’s a good thing. I think for me, it’s work ethic, the people that come in and they want to take personal responsibility for their health and fitness, and it’s hard to like put them into a demographic. Right. Does that make sense? I have trouble. I think the seed client thing is good, but what I find to be my seed clients, it’s hard to market to them because it’s more of like a philosophy, work ethic. And it’s not like 40-year-old PhDs or something.
Mike (27:34):
So it’s less for you about demographics than character, I guess we could say, what does that do for you?Joe (27:40):
Yeah, that would be what I would say when I’m just scanning over the list as we’re talking here, that’s what I see are these people just want to come in and they’re no muss, no fuss. They come in and bust their butts and they just keep at it for years at a time.
Mike (27:56):
That’s interesting too, because often when I talk to people, they say, you know, I am looking for, you know, 30 to 50 year old people who are interested in weight loss or, you know, athletes of 20 to 30 years old or something like that. So that’s interesting. And it almost reminds me of one of the old CrossFit quotes, where we’re screening for character, you know, it’s those people that want—and you’ve been around long enough as a gym owner that you probably understand that one, but that’s really interesting where you’re looking for people of true grit, honestly.
Joe (28:22):
Yeah. That’s it man, you know. You don’t have to be a tough guy, but you gotta be able to like, you know, like, Hey, this is what’s important to me and I’m willing to work for it. I’m not here for the flash and pizzazz. I’m here to make a difference in my own life.
Mike (28:37):
So you definitely know your ideal client. It just isn’t a certain age group or profession or something like that. Correct. That’s cool. And I’m sure that that does figure into your retention because people who have that character, that hard work, like you said, no fuss, no muss, no flash. They just come in and do the work. Those people are going to come in and keep doing the work. And there’s a bit of a built-in retention driver in those people because they have that character. That’s interesting.Joe (29:03):
Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there.
Mike (29:07):
Joe, thank you so much for your time. I want to check back in with you later on and see how this all plays out as your long-term value, as you dig into that number. Will you talk to us again sometime?
Joe (29:17):
Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you.
Mike (29:19):
Yeah. Thanks for being here. That was Joe Venuti on Two-Brain Radio. We track everything at Two-Brain and we just published Chris Cooper’s State of the Industry guide. This 84-page book is packed with data from over 6,000 gym owners. You can use it to make smart decisions, avoid mistakes, generate more revenue, and see where you stack up in the gym world. It’s hundred percent free and you can get it at twobrainbusiness.com/research. That link is in the show notes. Click it right now. I’m Mike Warkentin and I’ll see you next time on Two-Brain Radio.
The post Five-Figure Clients: How CrossFit MASS Does It appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
What Are You Incentivizing?
People do what they’re incentivized to do.
In this series, I’m going to talk with you about sales bonuses, discounts, “free memberships,” salaries and other ways we incentivize our staff to create value.
Some of them work and some of them don’t.
As an entrepreneur, you’re not rewarded for the time you spend or the units you produce. You’re rewarded for the value you create.
Creating value for your clients creates wealth for yourself. But what about your staff?
In the old industrial model, employees were paid to act like machines. They were taught how to conform in school. Then they earned a regular shift doing a repetitive job. They got a raise every few years as a reward for being the same. The best models of conformity and sameness were rewarded by being put in charge of everyone else. Sometimes, going above and beyond spec resulted in a commission or bonus. Licenses were a barrier to earning more money. And unions kept everything cemented in place.
But that model doesn’t work anymore.
Doing a job for a long time doesn’t necessarily make you better at it. Seniority doesn’t create value. Sales bonuses and commissions don’t grow your service business. Unions and licensure can’t hold back the tidal wave of change created by the leverage of new technology. The emerging gig economy and untethered workday mean our children have huge opportunities, and so do our staff members if they’re the best and if they demonstrate their value.
If they grow the pie, everyone wins.
If you cut into your profit margin to pay them more, everyone loses.
People do what they’re incentivized to do. For our parents’ generation, security was the primary incentive. For our generation, wealth is the primary incentive. So how do you create wealth—the freedom of finances and time—for your staff? By growing your platform and allowing your staff to grow with you.
The post What Are You Incentivizing? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
January 7, 2021
Long-Term Value: What If Every Client Spent $10,000 in Your Gym?
Mike (00:02):
Would you change your behavior as a gym owner if you knew that every phone call or email might be worth $11,000? I bet you would. In this episode of Two-Brain Radio, we’re digging into the long-term value of customers. The secrets to five-figure clients come right after this.
Chris (00:18):
Hi, this is Chris Cooper, and I founded Two-Brain Business to make gyms profitable. Over the last years, as we’ve compiled more and more data, more and more tools, gotten better and better at mentorship, we’ve really made a lot of gyms, hundreds around the world, thousands over the years, profitable, doing better. What hasn’t kept pace is the quality of coaching in a lot of gyms worldwide. There are great programs out there that will introduce you to a method like bootcamp, kettlebells, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, running, whatever that is. And so we can make coaches who know the subject matter, but that doesn’t make them a great coach. To be a great coach, you have to be able to change somebody’s habits. You have to be able to change their behavior and to do that requires deep understanding of their motivations to do that means amazing adherence by the client. And it means amazing retention because as gym owners, we know it’s harder and harder and more expensive than ever to get a new client. Retention is more important than ever. Referrals are more important than ever. Peer to peer marketing, word of mouth is more important than it’s ever been. How do you get those things? Through client results. So I founded Two-Brain Coaching with Josh Martin to get coaches the skills they actually need to make a career in fitness instead of just familiarity with a methodology. Twobraincoaching.com has courses to help you start a career with personal training, to scale up with group training, both in person and online, and to diversify with nutrition, coaching, and mindset coaching. We have the best programs in the industry that will prepare you and your coaches to deliver any method that you love now or you might love 10 years from now. Twobraincoaching is really a project of love for me. And if you visit twobraincoaching.com, you’ll get a ton of free resources, just like we produce every day on twobrainbusiness.com.
Mike (02:16):
Welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin . Do you know how much each client will be worth on average over the long term? Emily Cabral of Chalkline CrossFit does. She’s here to talk to us about why long-term value is important and how she’s become one of Two-Brain’s LTV leaders. The owners of these top gyms know that every time they sign up a client, he or she is worth 8,000 to $11,000 on average. Welcome Emily, are you ready to help some gym owners increase LTV?
Emily (02:44):
I’m ready.
Mike (02:44):
Excellent. I’m going to ask you this right away. A lot of gym owners don’t even know what LTV is. How did you start to calculate it and why did you do that?
Emily (02:55):
Well, I am one of them, and I started calculating it because I was told to. That’s pretty much the easy answer. I can honestly say up until probably the last few months, I think once, you know, once the COVID thing really kind of started hitting all of us really hard, I started realizing that it was more of a priority and paying more attention, but for the most part, it’s literally something that it was in my calculations that I did because I had to as part of my metrics, but I never really paid much attention to it up until recently.
Mike (03:35):
So it was instructions from your mentor. Now, do you have any tips for calculating it? Do you use like a certain software platform or are you a spreadsheet kind of person or how do you do it?
Emily (03:44):
I literally just use the spreadsheet that’s provided to us from Two-Brain. And what I do with the membership system that I use is I just export my membership data and kind of, you know, adjust it as needed and then import it into the spreadsheet that they provide and it calculates it automatically.
Mike (04:06):
OK, excellent. So you’re one of Two-Brain’s top gyms in the LTV category. You scored $9,100 in October. How did you achieve such a great number? That’s the answer everyone wants.
Emily (04:19):
I wish I had an amazing answer for you. One of the questions that was asked of me once it was clear that I was going to be on the leaderboard for this was, did I think it had more to do with the ARM calculation or the LEG calculation or a combination of both? And my answer to that is for me personally, I think it absolutely has to do more with the LEG, the length of engagement calculation, because my ARM calculations, which is average revenue per member is not very high, especially with everything that’s happened this last year. However, I do retain members, apparently, very well. I would say the majority of my members have been with me with for two to three years. Some have been with me since the very beginning, so close to seven years, and I really think that’s the secret to me. Is keeping people around longer.
Mike (05:22):
Yeah. So you mentioned two key elements there. So you could have an LTV of $12,000 if you had a high value client of a thousand dollars a month and kept that client for 12 months. You could also do it the other way with other things. If you had a hundred dollar member and kept them for a very long time, you could also get to that 12,000 member number. And then there’s that combination where you have a very high ARM and you’ve got a lengthy length of engagement. So yours predominantly comes from retention and length of engagement. You think. Do you have any secrets? Do you do anything special in terms of retention that generates that length of engagement? Like how do you manage to keep people for such a long time at your gym?
Emily (06:00):
I’ve been thinking about that over the last couple of days, knowing that this interview was coming up. And one thing that I’ve heard floating around a lot, and you know, it’s definitely been within Two-Brain, but also just in other kinds of gym owner communities is the notion that quote unquote, your members aren’t your friends. And that has always bothered me a little bit for two reasons. One, because I kind of think they are my friends and two it’s made me feel like they shouldn’t be, you know, like, I need to adjust that, I need to fix that. And I was having a conversation with a friend and a fellow gym owner recently, and she feels the same way and we were just chatting about it. And what I came to is that for me, it isn’t that my members aren’t my friends it’s that they have to be members first and friends second, meaning you always have to have some degree of a professional boundary and relationship when it comes to things at the gym, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have meaningful personal relationships with your members at the same time, but again, there’s always kind of that delineation between, OK, this is where we’re talking about business and dealing with business.
Emily (07:18):
Now we’re just shooting about whatever is happening in life. And I think I must just do that pretty well, because I’ve never had any major blow-ups or issues dealing with gym stuff. Even members that have left, I’ve maintained fairly close relationships. And it’s just, I don’t know. I think that’s kind of the secret sauce for me. So to pin that answer down a little bit more, and this is also a two-sided, you know, double-edged sword is I think the key is actually me and I don’t mean that to sound kind of, you know, coming from an egotistical standpoint, but one of the things that I’m also struggling with is how to maintain that retention and that length of engagement and be able to pull myself out of the business a little bit more. So that’s going to be interesting to see how I manage that in the coming years.Mike (08:15):
Well, I have a question to ask you about that, but I’ll just jump in quickly and explain, when we’re talking about friends and clients and so forth, Chris Cooper’s written about this in his blog and his experience with this was he started a gym with his powerlifting buddies. And, you know, they took advantage of them because they were his friends, right. They, I don’t have to pay my membership. I don’t have to do this. We’ll play the music, not clean up and that kind of stuff. And a lot of us, when we started gyms, myself included, we kind of did the same thing, you know, and it was like put cash in the envelope on the desk whenever you feel like it. And we really kind of treated it like a friendly relationship, but no business whatsoever. And so the idea of having friends first, you know, can put you in some tough situations, especially as someone maybe treats you like less than a friend when they’re a client.
Mike (08:56):
So I really love what you said there, where you can forge these incredible personal relationships with people. And that’s really the basis of what we do in coaching. But they’re member first, right? They have to pay the bills, they have to follow your rules. They have to do the things that you require of them. And the other side of that contract is you’re going to give them incredible service. So I love the way you put that. It’s really a really important point for people, especially as we change from just gym owners to coaching businesses, which COVID has kind of forced us to do. The question I want to ask you is, do you do most of the stuff in your business, you talked a little bit about the icon that you are and how you have these relationships. Are you the only person coaching, or tell me a little bit about your staff. So people get a sense of what you do in the business.
Emily (09:36):
Yeah, absolutely. I am not the only coach, but I am the only functional member of the business right now from the backend. I have a small stable of part-time coaches, but I’m still coaching the majority of the classes. You know, I think at this point it might be like a 48 to 52 split. And on the backend I do everything. I’m starting to fix that a little bit. I’ve now got a nutrition coach who’s going to be taking on some nutrition clients for me. And I’ve started, since the pandemic I’ve started building up the personal training side of things, which I’m not doing at all. And only having my coaches do that. But otherwise the business is a hundred percent me, which means from a customer service standpoint, I’m the go-to for everything. And so, you know, all of those members, whether they’re new and we’re just establishing our relationship or they’re, you know, seven year members and we have the relationship, if it’s billing, if it’s membership holds, if it’s, you know, anything having to do with the business, I’m the go-to.
Emily (10:49):
And so that’s, you know, where you mentioned that kind of icon issue. It is, you know, especially now that I’m looking at this data and have been recognized for this data of having, you know, a high lifetime value, it’s like, Oh, shoot. Now I have to figure out how to keep that if I step back. And so that’s my next challenge.
Mike (11:11):
So I guess your challenge will be to identify either is your greatest value in this role and then hiring people around you to fill other roles that allow you to create these relationships, or do you replace yourself in this role and find someone who’s got who you can train to be hopefully as good as you are, if that’s possible and then move yourself into other roles. Do you have a sense of which way you’d go on that?
Emily (11:36):
Kind of. You know, again, this is really the first time that I’m sort of looking at this. I’m one of those people, I know there’s a lot of people out there that, you know, are perfectly happy to have a completely distanced relationship with running their gym. And I don’t know that that will ever be me. And just I’ll clarify, I actually have a five-year plan, which involves moving away from California and buying land in Washington. And so my husband and I are planning for that. The decision will be, you know, do I build the gym to a degree where I could sell it if I want to, or do I build the gym to a degree where I could step away from the daily operations, but still retain ownership. And I’m leaning towards that because it’s hard for me to imagine not being involved in some degree, you know, even if it’s just, you know, kind of being the cheerleader or, you know, a face of the gym or something like that.
Emily (12:34):
So I do think, and I think Coop and I may have talked about this recently in a quick chat where, Oh no, it was actually, I think it was one of his emails where I read it where, you know, when it comes to like the initial contact and like sort of the sales aspect and being that first point of contact for people, I can definitely see myself kind of maintaining that role. And I think where I go from there is as soon as they’ve had contact with me, I then put them in someone else’s hands for, you know, specific things. So they know that I’m the, you know, if there’s a huge issue or there’s a big problem, they know they can come to me. But if they have membership questions, they go to my GM, or if they have coaching questions, they go to the head coach or, you know, something to that degree. I think that’s probably how I’ll end up trying to build it.
Mike (13:23):
That makes a lot of sense. And then, so in that five-year plan, you’ve got at least right now, you have your attention problem. You’re doing a great job. Like there is no retention problem. You have a long length of engagement. You said your ARM is potentially lower than you’d like, or you’d like to drive it up. Do you have any ideas for how you want to do that or timelines for how you can do that?
Emily (13:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Building the personal training and nutrition side is the first step. That’s going to be the main focus because I’ve greatly lacked in putting any effort into that up until now.
Mike (13:53):
And do you think that will be personal training nutrition services sold in addition to your current clients, or will it be new personal training and new nutrition clients from outside the business?
Emily (14:02):
New.
Mike (14:02):
So I understand from the interview you did before this, that you’ve acquired a lot of members through ads, is that correct?
Emily (14:11):
Not a lot. I wouldn’t say a lot. The market that I’m in in Southern California is incredibly, incredibly difficult for paid advertising. And I have done my share of it over the years, including, you know, like the, I won’t mention any names, but you know, big businesses that push six week challenges and stuff like that. I’ve done those and had varying degrees of success. But I really have found that, I’d say the majority of people come either through, I guess it’s about a toss. I would say it’s an even like third split between paid advertising referrals and just organic traffic. And I will say I’ve done a very poor job up until this year of any kind of organic marketing. I’m just now starting to try to get myself to be more consistent with social posts and blogs and stuff like that. So, I’ve really been lucky in the sense that, you know, we’re in an area where people seem to seek us out.
Mike (15:19):
I’ll ask you a question related to that. So do you think—have you noticed any difference in length of engagement with clients that come from those different avenues, whether it’s ad advertising clients or affinity marketing slash organic clients, does either camp stay longer with your business, do you think?
Emily (15:38):
No. I think really, if I had to, and this could just be what I’ve paid attention to. Because like I said, prior to, you know, the last year or two, I haven’t been super consistent with tracking things or paying super close attention, typical gym owners’ syndrome. I think the bigger factor in people that stick around longer is making sure that they’re the right fit. And I know that that’s a big push, you know, especially through Two-Brain is making sure that, you know, you’re bringing in seed clients and that you’re speaking to your avatar. The times that I have come from a place of, you know, more like desperation, like, Oh, I need members like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just sign these people up. And they definitely haven’t been the right fit. Obviously they just don’t stick around as long. And so when you really listen to not only your gut, but pay attention to, you know, the seed clients that you serve, when you get more of them, they definitely stay longer.
Mike (16:46):
So that’s again, that’s finding the right clients. So if we take a step back, long-term value tied to length of engagement, but that length of engagement is tied to finding the right clients in the first place. Because if you find tourists, I call them fitness tourists, who are just trying the next thing and you don’t build a relationship with them. They’re in, they’re out. They kind of do the on-ramp, and they’re gone and they never have any connection to you. That’s going to drive down your long-term value because that client might’ve been worth the $400 on-ramp fee or whatever. So I really liked that. That’s really interesting where you’re trying to find the right clients. And obviously if you’re doing that and driving up your LTV, your advertising is attracting the right clients and your organic marketing is as well. So that’s a really fascinating thing. And that’s probably, again, we talked about this in a previous show. It’s hard for gym owners, and it was very hard for me to not want to get everybody, but you need to get the right people in the door and the right people will drive that LTV number upwards, the wrong people will pull it down. So that’s a fascinating observation that you made. Let me ask you this. How has your LTV number changed since you first calculated? And do you expect it to go up down, stay the same?
Chris (17:53):
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Emily (18:26):
Well, again, I haven’t really paid a ton of attention to it. I’ve been way more focused, I will be completely honest and say that ending up on the leaderboard for this has made me go, Oh, well, that’s probably something I should pay attention to. It hasn’t been my focus and I am definitely in a position, you know, my gym is struggling. I mean, we might be breaking even right now with everything that has happened with COVID and were struggling before that too. Um, you know, we haven’t been in a really good place financially. I’ve been very, very, very focused on trying to drive up revenue per member. And I’ve just been very narrow-sighted in that. But the good thing is that I’m still in the gym every day. I’m still the face of the gym. I’m still in contact with almost every member almost every day.
Emily (19:28):
So that obviously helps with retention and LEG and keeping people engaged and keeping them around. So it’s kind of been an accidental strength. Now that I’m focused on it, I definitely see the value in keeping that number, at least where it is or driving it up. And I think if I do things right, it’ll go up.
Mike (19:49):
I think I agree with you there. I mean, I think you’ve got a huge part of the problem solved where length engagement, if your length if engagement is good, that is a huge deal because you’re keeping clients for years. And you’ve said you’ve had some for seven years already, which is an amazing accomplishment. If you drive up the ARM and let’s even say that, you know, you do a rate increase on incoming members of $10 or something like that, and do the same job of keeping them with your retention, your relationships, you’re going to drive your LTV up just as a function of that. So that’s a really cool plan that you’ve got a huge part of it already is solved because you have that length of engagement. So that’s a really important part of it. Now that you know what this number is. And you said you were surprised by it, but now you know that you have a good one. Talk to me a little bit about how it’s changed your mindset in terms of decision making. Like, does it, I’ll give you example, does it, when you’re thinking about, say advertising, do you tend to maybe spend a little bit more because you know that if you acquire a client, you have this long-term number?
Mike (20:48):
How does it make you think about say retention gifts or any of the little things that you can do to keep this number high?
Emily (20:54):
That’s a very poignant question because I’ve actually been hyper-focused on both of those things over the last week or so. Advertising, I wouldn’t say spending more necessarily, because again, I’m in a position right now where, you know, I do have to kind of pinch the pennies a little bit, however, it did give me the confidence to actually start advertising again. I’ve not run any ads this entire year. And, just, you know, kind of leading into the new year, I sort of felt like, OK, maybe now’s the time. And so I actually did some research in my very small little area and found that I think there’s only one other kind of small boutique type gym, even running ads currently. And so I said, OK, well, now’s the time, you know, let me, I’ll get more bang for my buck, knowing that I’m not up against, you know, even like the bigger ones, like 24 hour fitness and stuff like that.
Emily (21:48):
Cause literally nobody’s advertising right now. So, I have thrown some ads up and I’m getting decent response from that. Yeah, so, I mean, it’s not phenomenal, but you know, like they’re trickling in and that’s more than I’ve had in a year, so that’s great. And as far as like, you know, retention gifts and stuff like that, I’ve always been kind of stuck in the way it looks. Like, Oh, well, if I’m going to do these gifts, then I have to do it this way. And literally just this weekend and I’ll actually out myself a little bit. I’m 52 years old and my husband just got me hooked on Tik Tok. And I’m like a little like disgusted in myself that I’m now hooked on Tik Tok is a mature woman, but I’m like a big crafter.
Emily (22:33):
I love to do DIY projects. And in this process of kind of like nerding out on Tik Tok, I actually got inspired to do retention gifts differently. And I’ll give a little bit of a shout out to Mary and Andrew in Massachusetts because she was the first one that kind of put this on my radar. I’m actually going to buy a cutting machine and a heat press so that I can print and create gifts one at a time and save a ton of money that way and have them personalized to members at different. So I’m now starting to plan out like, you know, is it going to be a one-year, thousand classes or five-year club, whatever it is, I can actually create a gift specific to that member and that cycle in their membership and do it myself rather than having to spend a ton of money on, you know, having things in stock, in different sizes so that I have what I need for people. So it’s definitely changed.
Mike (23:36):
That’s Mary and Andrew Boimila at Tradewinds, correct? Yeah. We have a show from them in our archives. They were owner lifestyle award winners this year. So if you guys are hearing more about some of the cool stuff they’re doing, check our show archives, sorry to interrupt you there. Emily, please continue.
Emily (23:51):
No, no. So the basic answer to your question is yes, it’s definitely changed my outlook and allowed me to just shift my perspective and see things a little bit differently and that there’s a different way to execute things. Whereas prior to this, I thought, you know, you could only do it one way and you needed to have this much money to do it, et cetera. So it’s given me a lot more creativity, I guess. Yeah.
Mike (24:19):
And the principle behind it is really interesting because if you know the average LTV of a client, then you can kind of make some decisions with more confidence. And we’ve talked about this in previous marketing shows with Mateo Lopez who tracks metrics relentlessly, and it’s that whole, you know, we’ll call it the Netflix principle where let’s say you have to spend a hundred dollars to acquire a new client, which sounds like to me, a lot of money. But if you know that that client is going to stay and give you a thousand dollars, then that a hundred dollars becomes an investment. And you don’t feel quite so afraid of it. Now that’s not to say that you should always, you know, spend your face off until you acquire a whole bunch of clients. You want the right clients and so forth, but you can definitely adjust your marketing based on the fact that, OK, if I spend even $250 and I still get 10,000 out of this, that’s a pretty good investment.
Mike (25:06):
So it really does affect that, the marketing metrics, and the other thing is like retention. Sometimes you look at as a gym owner like, Oh man, sending these cards or this gift of this coffee cup is going to cut into my profit margin. But again, if that gift furthers a relationship and drives this length of engagement up and creates this solid relationship where this client isn’t going to leave, now that $10 coffee mug equals $10,000 down the line and it starts to really help you understand what you should do to acquire clients and what you should do to keep them. I really find that fascinating, especially for you. You said you’re in a very tough market and you’re in a very tough market in a very tough period where you’ve got the whole COVID thing. So without getting too far off track, I want to ask you with regard to your ads, are the numbers that you’re seeing equivalent or sort of equivalent to what you saw when you were advertising pre lockdown or how do they reflect from that?
Emily (25:58):
No, they’re definitely different. My cost per lead is down significantly. I wish it was down, you know, I see some numbers from gym owners where they’re in, you know, like under $10 per lead. And my jaw drops, I think I’m right now, somewhere around like 16, like 13 to $16 per lead, but that’s down from like, it’s usually over $20 per lead, in my area. And so it’s a significant improvement there and then the numbers, it’s hard to, to kind of compare because I’m doing ads a little bit differently this time. Instead of doing a six week offer, I’m doing a 90 day transformation and I’m using all the stock stuff from Two-Brain. I didn’t really customize anything. But I’m definitely, the targeting is a little bit different. And I’m kind of 50/50 focused on lead quantity and lead quality, which before I’ve kind of primarily focused on just quantity, which is never huge in my area. I rarely get leads flooding in. So it’s usually a trickle.
Mike (27:13):
So what do you, uh, tell me a little bit about that six week offer versus the 90 day journey, is the price for the 90-day journey that you’re selling now, is that above what the 60 day intro was before or the six week intro?
Emily (27:27):
I haven’t done a six week in quite some time. And I think I’m trying to remember what my price point was. I think it was like around the four or $500 mark for the six weeks. The 90 day for me, for me, not necessarily for the people that I’m advertising to, just works better. In my area, the six week thing is just played out and even with a 90 day transformation offer the initial response that I get, you know, in comments and texts and emails is, you know, what’s the catch, what’s the cost. So people have been like beaten to death with the six week offer and the bait and switch, you know, mentality and all of that. So what I’m really using these ads for, especially now in, in a time where people don’t have as much freedom to, you know, just go to the local gym or whatever is I’m really using these the leads that come in as a way to connect with people and let them know that what we’re offering is different and that it’s not a cookie cutter program and the way I’m actually handling the leads when they come in is, you know, the prescriptive model.
Emily (28:39):
I don’t really have like a set it’s this much for this period of time, because it’s all gonna be goal dependent. And I actually, that is one thing that I wanted to mention earlier when we were talking about, you know, getting the right clients. I think it’s important to mention too a lot of times we focus on getting the right people in the gym, like in the appointments, but you also have to be willing as a gym owner to not sign people up at a no sweat intro if they’re not right for the gym. And that’s the hard part, you know, you were speaking earlier and we both mentioned kind of being in that like, Oh, I have to take everybody. If you’re sitting across the table from somebody that just is not the right fit, you have to be willing to say, you know what? I don’t think this is the right place for you. Let me help you find someplace else. And even just doing that sets you apart from your competition, you know, even if it’s just in your principles.
Mike (29:36):
Well, and Chris has talked about that, and setting up referral programs essentially where he’s had clients at his gym that were just not right, but he didn’t want to just kick them out. He’d call other gyms and send these clients there and refer them out. And eventually some gyms started referring clients back to him and it’s as simple as like, I don’t handle competitors, but you do, or I have a seniors program and you don’t and vice versa so that you can set up those referral networks. And that definitely does help. And Chris, you know, Chris has talked about this a lot, so it’s in your best interest essentially to contact, you know, gyms around you and figure out who you can send where and build those relationships with other local businesses and then stand by your principles obviously, and happily send people elsewhere when they’re not a good fit for your gym.
Mike (30:21):
And I really think that it’s interesting, what I was going back to there with the 90-day journey was we discovered in the Two-Brain data that longer introductory programs often result in better retention. And we’ve talked about that in some of our previous shows with Brian Zimmerman about his onboarding program, if you guys want to listen to that great info about onboarding stuff, but I really liked what you said there, where part of it is you just want to get people in to talk to you. And then at that point, you have that conversation, use the Two-Brain prescriptive model, and potentially this person doesn’t need a 90 day journey. They just need one-on-one personal training starting right now, or they need a nutrition program, or they need whatever, or maybe they do need a 90 day program. But the idea is that you talk to them, you find out their goals, then you assign the right program to them and away we go.
Mike (31:08):
So it’s a really interesting system. Yeah. And I love talking to you about how it works in different markets, because, you know, the Los Angeles market is a crazy area and CrossFit has been so big in California forever that it’s saturated, especially with those six week challenges. So that’s really interesting. What I was kind of asking about there was, I was curious if your 90 day journey’s price was going to be something that was going to drive up your LTV, but it’s interesting, you’re saying that mainly you just want to have those prescriptive conversations. So I really liked that idea. I won’t keep you too long. I’m gonna ask you one more question here. If you’ve got a gym owner who looks at these numbers and says, wow, these are incredible. And just says to you, Emily, what would I do to start driving up my LTV? What would you tell that gym owner?
Emily (31:52):
Retention. I mean, I think retention is going to be different for every single gym, because so much of it depends on your clientele and your customers. You know, my gym skews is a little bit older. I would say probably 35 and up, so, you know, parties nights out of bars, you know, competitions and stuff like that. That’s not what’s going to retain my members, but it might be for somebody else. So really, I guess actually, as I’m talking, I’m saying, so yes, you want to focus on retention, but you need to get to know what that means for your member base. Like you really, and I think that takes you back to focusing on your seed clients, you know, who are, and I take a little bit of a different view on seed clients too, because a lot of the idea of a seed clietn is, you know, who sticks around the longest, who loves your services, who, you know, buys everything you sell, et cetera.
Emily (32:58):
But whether I should or shouldn’t, it’s also like, who are my favorites? You know, who are the people that I would want more of in my gym, personality wise, attitude wise, you know, just being good people. Like I want more of them, even if they may not be my highest value clients, you know, maybe they have my cheapest membership option, but as a person, they build up our community and bring a lot to the table. So I think it’s really getting to know, you know, who your ideal clients are and what they want more of, you know, ask them, ask the people that have been with you the longest what’s kept them there. And then just do more of that for everybody.
Mike (33:41):
That’s honestly, it’s such a simple principle that you outlined, but so few people do it. And if you ask your best clients what they might want, and 10 of them say, I need a running program to get me ready for the marathon. You’ve got yourself a specialty program, which drives up your ARM and you’ve got retention because these people are going to stay with you to finish the marathon and do their stuff. And you’re giving them what they need. All of a sudden LTV becomes this giant snowball and away you go. So I think you’ve got it. I think you’ve got it figured out.
Emily (34:12):
Hopefully, knock on wood.
Mike (34:14):
Thank you so much for sharing your time. I wish you all the best, you know, as the pandemic continues to come out of this on the other side and get that property in Washington, that sounds like an amazing story. We’ll have you back on the show to talk about that.
Emily (34:26):
Awesome. I’d love that. Thank you, Mike. Have a great day.
Mike (34:32):
That was Emily Cabral on Two-Brain Radio. We track everything at Two-Brain and we just published Chris Cooper’s State of the Industry guide. This 84-page book is packed with data from over 6,000 gym owners. You can use it to make smart decisions, avoid mistakes, generate more revenue, and see where you stack up in the gym world. It’s 100% free and you can get it at twobrainbusiness.com/research. That link is in the show notes. Click it right now. I’m Mike Warkenttin and I’ll see you next time on Two-Brain Radio.
The post Long-Term Value: What If Every Client Spent $10,000 in Your Gym? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
January 6, 2021
300 Problems, No Profit
Earlier in this series, I suggested that you start with a target of 150 clients.
Many of you wrote back (thank you!) with questions and comments that really got my wheels turning, and I’d like to address the most common themes here.
Hope this helps!
Issue 1
“I can’t charge enough to make it in my area. I live in the poorest (area, county, congressional district, state, country) in the (state, country, universe)!”
My response: Yes, you can.
You don’t need everyone in your area to join. You just need 150 people. The average family income is irrelevant; every area has professionals. If your area doesn’t have 150 professionals living nearby, don’t open a gym there.
Issue 2
“My clients won’t pay more than they’re paying now!”
My response: Yes, they will.
The greatest change people see in our mentorship program is a reframing of their service, which allows them to charge a lot more. And they’re always shocked—and delighted—when the first new client pays twice as much as what they thought clients would pay.
You can raise your rates, or you can add personal training or nutrition coaching. You have other options, too, and our mentors help clients find the path that’s best for them.
Issue 3
“But none of the other local gyms are charging this much!”
My response: That’s because their service doesn’t warrant charging more.
Here’s a tip: Instead of asking, “How much can I charge for CrossFit?” ask, “What service can I sell that’s worth $205 per month or more?”
We’ve helped gym owners make this transition hundreds and hundreds of times. It’s best done with a mentor to guide you through it.
Issue 4
“But if I raise my rates, I’ll lose all my friends!”
My response: No, you won’t.
Your friends won’t quit over a 10-15 percent increase (which is the average recommended increase in most Two-Brain gyms). If they quit, they’re not your friends. (Surprise: Your clients aren’t your friends anyway. Friends don’t pay for friendship; everyone pays for membership.)
Issue 5
“My coaches will rebel!”
My response: No, they won’t.
By increasing the value of your service, you’re “growing the pie,” which means there’s more money available for coaches. They’ll actually make more when you charge more (if you follow our Intrapreneurialism model). Click here to get our free ebook “Intrapreneurialism 101.”
More Members, More Marketing and Turnover
I get it: it’s very easy for me to say, “Make $100,000 per year off 150 clients.” It’s very hard to actually make the changes required.
But mentorship provides clarity and guidance through change. That’s why we have data. And that’s why we’re a mentorship practice.
There are many gyms out there making a great living from 150 clients. There are a few gyms out there making a great living from 300 clients. There are gyms with 150 clients but no profit. And there are gyms with 300 (even 600!) clients but no profit.
Remember this:
Gyms with more members have higher turnover.Gyms with more members need more marketing.Gyms with more members have to train “green” clients more often.Gyms with more members have to “always be closing.”
Still, you might make the choice to pursue more than 150 members.
Whatever your model, use it with the intention to be profitable, not the intention to pump members in and out.
The post 300 Problems, No Profit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
January 5, 2021
Should You Run a Free Trial?
Gyms go out of business all the time.
New gyms also open all the time.
That means many of the old myths reappear every few years as “new ideas.” One of those myths is the free trial class for onboarding new gym members.
Today, I’m going to tell you why the free trial is a bad idea and why the idea keeps showing up every few years. Then I’ll tell you what you should do instead.
Ten years ago, a “free trial” was a great entry point. Early adopters to CrossFit, novelty seekers and gym hoppers just wanted to dip their toes into functional fitness. They had already jumped through several hoops:
They had decided they needed to exercise and were probably already exercising.They were bored with their current routines.They were adventurous enough to try something they knew nothing about.They had already done background “research” on CrossFit (and they were pretty much sold when they walked in the door).
All those people did a free trial. It was enough back then. Now it’s not.
In 2021, a “free trial class”—or even a “free trial personal training session”—is no longer the best way to acquire long-term clients. Here’s why:
We’re now into the third tier of client engagement with a new idea (the “late majority”). Members of this group have preconceptions about CrossFit but probably haven’t done thorough research.Members of the late majority are less fit than the early adopters were. A free trial workout is more likely to discourage than encourage them.A free trial doesn’t show anyone how you’re going to solve their problems. “You’re overweight? Let’s make you throw up!”
Think about this: how did you choose your dentist, lawyer, accountant, wedding planner, T-shirt printer? Through a “free trial” or through a consultation?
Why Does This Myth Keep Coming Back?
The free-trial myth pops up from time to time for two reasons: Gym owners hate “selling,” and most of our entrepreneurial role models sell products instead of services. But you and I sell a service, not a product.
Back in 2010, most of us were using the free trial as our sales process. We just hoped clients would love it so much they’d whip out their credit cards and say “sign me up!” But most people don’t buy that way anymore. You have to talk about their goals, then about how you can help accomplish them. And then you have to “prescribe” your workouts in that context.
Putting a free trial in that mix just kicks the buying decision further down the road. It puts the onus back on the client to say “sign me up” instead of the coach saying, “Do you want to sign up?” And it drops your retention because you’re just selling the same thing as everyone else, so clients will leave for convenience, novelty or price.
“Try before you buy” works with products. You’re not selling a product. The closer you are to a customized service, the more stable your business.
What to Do Instead
We’ve been tracking data for hundreds of gyms for years. The best way to meet new clients, help them plan their training, sign them up and keep them is the No Sweat Intro. We even have data on the name!
Mentoring clients get the full script and training for themselves and their staff. They have the philosophy of the Prescriptive Model drilled into them until they’re rolling their eyes. It’s a big deal. We’re not just guessing about this. Here’s the rough overview:
Start by inviting people in to talk before they do anything else. Ask for their story—the whole thing. Listen. Write down the stuff that’s important to them.
Measure what they want measured. Tip: No one in 21 years has ever told me, “I want to move better.” Think twice about using a movement screen here.
Make a recommendation. It must be based on what the client wants—not what you like—and then schedule a follow-up visit.
Start the client’s path to fitness. This might be training in a group but could just as easily be personal training or nutrition coaching or anything else you offer.
Reinforce the client’s journey—heavily at first. Overpraise in person. Call him or her according to the Bright Spots strategy.
Three months later, review their progress. In person. Don’t run a “goal-setting seminar”—they already have goals. Groups don’t have goals. Your individual clients do.
You’re in the relationship business. Your services—bootcamps, CrossFit, challenges—will come and go. But your relationship with clients as a coach should supersede any of these.
So kill the free trial class. Stop handing out samples. Start coaching people.
Is this something different from what you’re currently doing? My friend, it’s the tip of the iceberg. RampUp gives you all the tools—including the No Sweat Intro—you need to build a 30-year business.
The post Should You Run a Free Trial? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
January 4, 2021
The Future of Coaching
Chris (00:01):
Hey, welcome to Two-Brain Radio. It’s Chris Cooper hosting an episode, my first hosting in a long time. And I really wanted to be the one to welcome Josh Martin from Two-Brain Coaching back to the podcast. So welcome Josh.
Josh (00:14):
Thanks, Chris. I’m happy to be back.
Chris (00:15):
And you and I get to talk about every week about the coach of the future, and we’re going to share three big topics with the audience today about how coaching has changed in 2020 and what it looks like in 2021. And you know, through 2023. We’ll get back to the show right after this.
Chris (00:33):
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Chris (00:50):
Why don’t we start with, how did COVID and the 2020 year, I almost said era, because it feels like 30 years, how did 2020 change coaching, Josh?
Josh (01:05):
I think the biggest thing that COVID, I want to use this term blessed us with for the coaching profession, is it really revealed that the coaches that have great relationships with their clients did the best at retaining those clients. I don’t think we retained all of them, but the coaches that had the deepest, best relationships and could pivot and not just focus on like one thing, one what we call pillars, just focus on one pillar of like movement, those are the coaches that ultimately came or have come out of this thing most successful.
Chris (01:44):
Let’s just describe what these pillars are because you and I have been talking about this internally in Two-Brain Coaching and also in Two-Brain Business, but not everybody in the audience knows what the pillars are.
Josh (01:54):
Yeah. So there’s four of them, the way that we see it and we call it sleep, eat, move, and manage. And we’ve kind of internally, like you said, referred to this as the SEMM model. So S E M M. The manage piece is what we’re referring to there is managing your stress. And what we’re really looking for in each of those four pillars is that you do them well and you do them enough. So for sleep, we want you to sleep with good quality and we want you to get enough of it, same thing for eating, for movement, and then for stress management. So those are really the four pillars. And so when we look at world-class coaches, as we define it, it is that you are as a fitness coach working with your clients on all four pillars to get them to their goal.
Chris (02:41):
So we’re all used to coaching the exercise pillar, right? Like the movement part. And I think a lot of us love that. And that’s why we got into the industry. What does a coach have to do to be able to coach the other stuff like sleep, nutrition, self-management.
Josh (02:57):
Yeah. So I think there does need to be curiosity from the coaching or from the coach themselves of, you know, almost using yourself as like a little guinea pig. You know, I noticed when I got 10 hours of sleep last night, that I felt way better. I would guesstimate that if my clients got a little bit more sleep, that they might feel better too. It’s also a realization that maybe saying to your client that is running a company, has multiple kids, that is only sleeping six hours a night tonight. It’s not right to say you need to sleep eight hours. It might just be, you need to sleep in a cooler, darker room. So to answer your question, like how does a coach get to that point? I think there needs to be an education process that happens. And to me, that is really through curiosity.
Chris (03:48):
So first when you say sleep only six hours. I mean, my goal on my habits app is to get six hours of sleep.
Josh (03:56):
Right? Yeah.
Chris (03:58):
So, you know, we love coaching exercise and why can’t we just do that? You know, why can’t we bring these entrepreneurs or these CEOs or whoever, you know, these moms, these grandmothers into our gyms and just teach the movement?Josh (04:15):
Well, you could. I can speak for myself. That is when we first opened our gym—actually yesterday, just as a side note was the nine-year anniversary of our gym, I just realized that. Thank you. And I did do that for a long time, and I think that the part that sometimes gets missed and you learn this as you’re around longer and longer, is that you can do that and get results for people. But in all the gym owners that we talked to, we all want to be the best. We want to be the best option for our clients. We want to prescribe the best service for them. And I believe that if you are staying true to that belief, it has to be more than movement. You have to recognize that from the movement perspective, when they’re in your gym, they’re only there for an hour, right? So let’s just say that they’re in your gym five times a week for an hour. So that’s five of the 168 hours that somebody has in a given week. What are they doing with the other 163? And so if we’re saying, we’re going to offer you the best service to get you to your goal, we have to take into account those other pillars because, and in my experience, those are the ones that can ultimately have the biggest impact when combined with movement to getting your client where they want to go.
Chris (05:43):
That’s interesting. And, you know, from a personal training background, I know that sometimes these conversations just happen organically, even if not intentionally. How do you do this in a group training background?
Josh (05:56):
It takes a really well-defined system and it takes a lot of focus. You know, you can’t just take it for granted that, Oh, well, I’ll just wait until it pops up. You know, we’re really good at planning out I want this number of thrusters. I want this number of pull-ups because this is the stimulus that I want. We need to be just as diligent as, OK, this is the point when I’m going to talk about, you know, what this stress is going to do to the body and how it interacts with all the other stresses. Like we have to be deliberate in talking about that in the group environment. So, you know, I can talk about, Hey guys, how did you sleep in the first five minutes of class or whatever it is, but it really boils down to planning ahead and integrating that part into the class.
Josh (06:46):
There’s also a psychological component that we talk about in the first and second degree courses, where in particular with the group, you’re not just talking to the group, that is part of it, but you’re also speaking to each individual within the group. So there’s the psychology of the individual and the group as a whole, and really, really great coaches recognize that and they’re on the floor being deliberate with these conversations. Like you said, in a one-on-one PT setting, they just happen to come up. I think that you have to be much more deliberate in the group setting.
Chris (07:22):
So I’m a coach and I’m coaching five, six hours a day. Right? And that, for me, that would be enough to burn me out. After 24 years, I still love coaching, but I can’t do that much. It sounds like I have to do extra work here. You know, why should I start doing all this extra stuff?Josh (07:41):
Well, if you really love this coaching thing and you want to make it a career, this is how a professional continues to level up. So your service is becoming more and more and more valuable. Now I would also say that if you’re delivering a higher valued service to your clients, you should be charging more for that service. So if before, all I was doing was writing some workouts, saying three, two, one go and, you know, calling out names so I can write their score on the whiteboard. OK. It was X dollars. Let’s just say a hundred dollars just to put some sort of figure on it. Well, now I’m talking about nutrition. Now we’re talking about their sleep and stress management. So I’m really a much more holistic coach. Maybe I charge 50% more. Maybe I charge a hundred percent more. Now, ultimately we need to show the client how much more value they’re giving. But if I’m a coach and I want to make this a career, I have to make a professional wage to do that. And so continuing to develop and get better, deliver more value to the client, is really the way to do that.
Chris (08:56):
I think that’s a really important point, Josh. And, you know, from the business side, you know, more and more as we get through the biggest data set ever collected in the fitness industry, period, it looks like the model is emerging is about 150 very high value clients. And what stops most gyms is not, you know, how to price it or how to raise my rates, but it’s how do I deliver the value that’s going to help me make a living with 150 clients? And I think this is probably one of the ways, so maybe you can give us some examples of that. Like where have gyms implemented systems like this, or even added one of these, you know, these foundational pieces and seen an increase in revenue and profit.
Josh (09:37):
Yeah. So I’ve actually got a great example of this. So on the Two-Brain Business side, one of the fundamental things that we talk to people about is what we would describe on the business piece as diversifying your revenue stream. And so if we’re just coaching movement, a very logical next step is to coach nutrition, the eating portion. And so we have an example of a client who implemented our nutrition program. So they went through the Two-Brain nutrition coaching course, and they took their—they did about 56,000 in revenue for nutrition in all of 2019. And as of, let’s see, October 31st, I was just talking to her as of October 31st, she at her gym had already done 115,000. So over doubling the revenue. And there’s still two months ago. And by the way, this is in the season of COVID. So just by adding and upgrading their nutrition coaching service.
Chris (10:44):
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Josh (11:30):
Yeah. It was a big, big mindset shift. You know, for so long what we’ve seen done in gyms is that people were getting prescribed macros and meal plans. And just kind of like we were talking about at the beginning that you can just coach movement and get some results. But if we want to deliver what the best services for the client, it’s not macros and meal plans, it’s establishing habits that the client can maintain for a lifetime. So that was really the big shift in what we teach in the Two-Brain nutrition coaching course is how to create sustainable habits that lasts a lifetime. So that’s the big difference there.
Chris (12:08):
I think teaching it that way also is really important to establishing value. I think if you’re prescribing meal plans and macros and stuff, that’s OK, but it will always be seen as a separate thing that you’re selling instead of part of the whole. And you know, from my own perspective, I have a coach who’s been coaching at Catalyst now for, I think, eight years. This is all she does. This is her career. I want her to stay with me for the rest of her life. And when COVID hit, she went online. And when we were finally able to reopen about four and a half months later, she said, I want to stay online. But she realized to make the same income doing online only she would have to change. And so she actually pivoted to the Two-Brain nutrition coaching course away from what she was doing with nutrition and the gap for her has been now I can make a full-time living online. I think her business is going to grow, and she’s actually going to make more just saying online, but for now, you know, it was enough to plug that gap. And I think that extrapolates out to gyms that are trying to make revenue too.
Josh (13:14):
Yeah. You know, and something that I was actually thinking about as you said that Chris is, you know, the whole macro and meal plan thing. I spend a lot of time looking just at the fitness space in general, and it’s really become commoditized. I mean, I know you back in the day, you could go on, you know, what was it, T-Nation or bodybuilding.com. And like, they would have these rudimentary macro calculators and it might spit out a sample meal plan. But when you go to something that is habits based, what that necessitates is you developing and nourishing a lasting relationship with that client because you’re really digging into their life. And so it’s not a commodity, like you can’t commoditize one-on-one relationships with your clients. And so the value that you now give to the client has gone up exponentially.
Chris (14:09):
You’ve just drawn a really interesting line for me there. And I think probably the listeners got there before I did, but what I understand, and you can tell me if I’m wrong here, is that selling like a diet or a macro space is just like selling online programming, right. It’s a commodity.
Josh (14:26):
Yeah, exactly. And we know just by how quick, you know, the tech world continues to accelerate everything, it’s just going to be a race to the bottom.
Chris (14:35):
Yeah. I mean, back when I started reading CrossFit Journal, they were having you go to Barry Sears’ website, I think it was zonediet.com, enter your BMI or something. And they would spit out like a zone prescription. And now you can just do that at anywhere basically. It’s a very interesting line to draw. I think there’s been another really interesting development that I didn’t see happening in advance, Josh, and that is the coaches that go through this type of coaching, who understand my job is to be a coach, they also start producing content for their clients. And non-clients.
Josh (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah. So the content creation piece is interesting because as owners, the people that started our gyms, we knew that we had to do that in order to show that, Hey, I have an answer to the problem that you are experiencing. Come sign up for my service. And I will, you know, walk with you every step of the way to it. Some of the challenges, and I experienced this personally at my own gym in the early days when I was bringing on new coaches was getting them what we call us to establish their authority. And they thought that it was just going to be, I hold out my hands and Josh plops clients into my hands and I go off and train them. But what we actually found is that the coaches who—and it doesn’t even have to be anything fancy.
Josh (16:02):
And I know that our listeners can’t see this, but I’m taking my phone out and putting on, you know, the selfie camera recording, something as simple as, Hey, if you want to get better at your pull-ups, try this grip versus that grip. Like that little nugget right there produces some authority, maybe not to everybody, but if it’s enough to change one person’s mind, well, guess what, that’s an opportunity to provide more value to that client. And so what we’ve actually had happen in specifically the first degree course with Mike Watson is part of the homework that he’s giving to these coaches is to produce content and full disclosure. This is not something that I wrote into the course upon creating it. Mike and I were just kind of getting together one afternoon, just kind of recapping, I like to check-in see how things are going.
Josh (16:55):
And so he shared this story with me. He goes, yeah, I was talking to these coaches and they needed to get comfortable producing content to bring their authority up. So people would seek them out. And I was like, wait a minute. So you’re on these calls with these green coaches and you’re having them produce content already? And he’s like, yeah, yeah. And they’re taking it to the owner and showing it to them. And I was like, OK, right there, that is worth the price of admission and that’s speaking, just from an owner’s perspective that if I put a coach or a coach went through this course, and the only thing they learned was how to produce content that was valuable to our audience, it’s worth its weight in gold right there.
Chris (17:38):
Yeah. It’s interesting. I’ve put all of my coaches through the first degree program now, and many of these people have been with me for over a decade and they’re producing content for the first time. So these are people who have heard it from the source since day one. They’ve had me hold up a camera and say, talk to their face and they’ve never done it on their own until now. It’s great. Absolutely great. And do you think Josh that that’s part of establishing a valuable service?
Josh (18:04):
Absolutely. I mean, it’s so easy these days to record a video, record a podcast like we’re doing, write a blog and get it seen. And especially when you’re—and I’m just speaking for Two-Brain gyms right now, but if you’re a coach at a Two-Brain specific gym, you’ve got an amazing platform. Take this content to the owner and they’re going to put it out on every channel that they possibly can. And that’s when either current clients are going to seek that coach out for some additional help or new clients are going to see that, Oh my gosh, at XYZ gym, there’s this coach that’s providing a solution to this problem that I have. I want to go.
Chris (18:46):
So building affinity coming from the coaches, which also builds value. Amazing. So Josh, you know, from this dataset, we have seen that about 63% of micro gyms are now offering some kind of nutrition coaching service. Very interesting. And that’s a huge shift from three years ago when that number was below 5%. The other cornerstone that you mentioned is mindset, and that’s kind of a broad topic. What’s included in mindset or mindfulness or that kind of coaching.
Josh (19:17):
Yeah. So I guess I could say it publicly is that by the time I think this podcast goes live, we will have a mindset course available for coaches to go through. And that was created by Colm O’Reilly. He created just this amazing course because we know that mindset is such a big piece of the puzzle when we’re getting somebody to buy into what we are helping them with. So sometimes clients get very bogged down in what they’re seeing just out in the world with, I need to be on this, you know, diet or this exercise plan, and maybe you’re telling them something completely different. So it is you’re asking the client to make a big mindset shift. But the question for coaches when I talked to them has always been OK, I get it. I understand that. How do I actually coach mindset?
Josh (20:19):
And that’s what this solution is providing. So he has actually built the course to walk a coach from, this is where you’re starting from, the first interaction that you’re going to have with a client, all the way up to, you know, step 29 or step 200, that this is what it’s actually going to look like in practice. So we talk about the theoretical side of it, but then also the tactical side. What’s the system, how I put this into practice, you know, X’s and O’s is the sports analogy maybe that we can use to say this is how you’re actually going to do it.
Chris (20:56):
So is coaching mindfulness, Josh, just a matter of like leading a daily meditation or is it telling your clients to meditate or is it something bigger than that?
Josh (21:05):
It’s definitely something bigger than that, because I think we talked earlier about establishing the value that you were providing. And so you need to be deliberate with talking to your clients like, Hey, Chris, it really boils down to your mindset whenever we’re talking about using this plan to get you to your goals. And so I do think that we need to do some deliberate work on your mindset and here is what that’s going to look like. Step one, step two, step three. Now that may be a daily meditation practice. It might not be, but the point of the course is to teach the coach, OK, how do I interact with this client? And how’s it different than this one? And how’s it different than that one?
Chris (21:51):
It’s interesting the way that you just broke that down. To me, the bare bones of value is having a person who says, do this thing right now. And through COVID personally, I really needed somebody checking in on me every day saying go meditate for 10 minutes at nine o’clock. And that’s a lot of the value that I think these coaches can provide is really a framework. I think everybody is aware of their own mental state. I think everybody kind of realizes that maybe they should meditate, but they don’t know what to do or how to get started.
Josh (22:23):
Yeah. You know, I’ll share a quick story, just from our interaction. And it was just yesterday. I brought something to you that I was kind of struggling with in my head. And it was really just like a question, a vent or a rant is how I put it. And I didn’t really ask for any specific feedback or anything, but you said a couple of very key points. Do this thing was like the CliffsNotes version of it. And it was very clear and it was very calming to me because instead of worrying about all the other things that I had in my head, which exist, it was just, that’s great, but let’s do this thing. And since looking at that and just focusing on doing that thing, the other stuff is just gone. And I think that’s super powerful to be able to do that as a coach, but you do need the continuing education to learn how to actually create a system to put that into practice.
Chris (23:27):
That makes a ton of sense. The interview that I did with Alison, who wrote, “An Economist Walks into a Brothel,” and I’ll link to it in the show notes, she was talking about the trainer that she paid for through Equinox. Now she’s paying more than double what most gyms listening to this would charge for group training. And the extent of what she gets from her coach is basically two texts a day. One text says, here’s your workout. Here’s why it’s important. Do you have any questions? And the second text is something like, what did you eat for dinner? Or send me a picture of your lunch. These are personalized, but this is what provides tremendous value for Alison. It’s not let’s do squat therapy, which might provide value for somebody else, but for her, it was really that accountability. And that’s what I’m looking for as a client too. And I think more and more, that’s how people find value.
Josh (24:16):
Absolutely.
Chris (24:16):
Well, that’s great, Josh. I mean, do you want to talk about tech a little bit too, because with all these different things, I think clients are starting to get overwhelmed and more and more, the way that you show your value as a coach is to just say, this is the answer, do this thing. How does tech feed into that positively or negatively?
Josh (24:37):
I think that it can definitely be a force for good, for a lot of a lot of things. So we can gather data on how often our clients are showing up. We can gather data on, OK, do I notice patterns on what days they’re showing up, based upon the workout, we can look at the seasonality of our class schedules, things like this. Where I think that we look for tech to provide solutions that they shouldn’t be is in scaling relationships and in automating the personalized value that coaching really provides when done right. And this was a really, really hard lesson for me to learn just in the past couple of years, I kind of leaned away from having a ton of like personal interactions with clients and things like that, because in my head it was like, OK, I can automate this process.
Josh (25:37):
And so I can get more clients and get more things done, serve more people. And that sounds great in nature, the whole serve more. But what I really found out was that it—and this is just personally for me, I really like the depth versus the breadth. And so tech is really good at allowing the breadth to scale the number of people, but in a really high value relationship based service, like we’re providing with fitness coaching, I think the depth is really the answer. So if you can use the tech to see some of the patterning and like the data that we collected Two-Brain, great, but then kind of the implementation comes from the personal relationships. And so far, like tech can’t replace this conversation that we’re having, you know, the relationship that you and I have built over the years. And I wouldn’t want it to.
Chris (26:31):
That’s interesting. I think that a lot of coaches hire tech to do something that they can’t do. You know, I just saw an ad this morning for sign up for our software and get clients back. Well, I mean, if you can’t pick up the phone and call a client and say, how are you doing then the tech is not going to solve your problem. I’m thinking more of things like Whoop, Josh. So a lot of people use Whoop. I’ve got mine on right now.
Josh (26:56):
I’ve got mine on.
Chris (26:58):
Beautiful. I don’t know if it’s like the super secret decoder ring that we press them together and there’s a big explosion or whatever, but how does using something like Whoop add to, or take away from your coaching practice?
Josh (27:11):
I think it is amazing because it provides an opportunity to educate the client. So if you’re just, if you notice, like I noticed this really early on when the gym first opened, you’ll appreciate this, being a cyclist, because cyclists are a decade ahead of everyone else when it comes to like tech and usefulness of it. I noticed clients coming in with polar heart rate monitors on that had the endurance cycling background and it just provided opportunity for conversation. And I could speak to the usefulness of it. OK. What are you noticing? OK. Here are some ways that we can adapt your training. And it provided that space for the client to be vulnerable and say, I’m using this Whoop, I’m using this heart rate monitor, this Apple watch. I’ve got clients that have all three on, believe it or not, at one time, and this is why I’m using it.
Josh (28:11):
And so then as the coach, it’s not just like, all right, high five, like, I hope you like the pretty colors. Now, when I’m checking in with them, I’m thinking, Hey, what was the difference that you saw with your watch, your heart rate or a chest monitor and your Whoop? Hmm. That’s interesting. OK. Well, let’s try this. And so again, I’m deepening that relationship. So it’s not the tech that is actually providing the education to the client. It’s me. It’s still the coach. I’m just leveraging what the technology is telling them to deepen my value to that client.
Chris (28:48):
That’s incredible, Josh. If you’re listening to this, you’ve just heard exactly why Josh Martin is a better coach than I am. Because if a client had come into Catalyst wearing a polar heart rate monitor in 2005, I would have used that opportunity to prove that I was smarter than them by telling them why they were wrong or why heart rate monitoring was stupid. Instead, what I should’ve done was used that opportunity to slowly start a conversation and educate them, or even use that data to guide their training. So for example, Josh would have taken that polar heart rate data and said, OK, the workout that we’re doing today is geared to help you improve blah, blah, blah. And if you’re wearing your heart rate monitor, this is what you will see. He could have leveraged that technology instead of trying to compete with it. That’s something that’s taken me decades to learn, Josh, congratulations, man, glad people are getting this right from the source.
Josh (29:43):
Oh, you’re welcome. It took me a long time to figure that out too.
Chris (29:47):
You know where that hit me, just being candid. I was doing that and doing that and doing that with everything that came into my business, I saw it as a competitive threat. If somebody was doing a diet, then they were buying a competing service. And I had to like slam that diet. You are wrong. You have to do it my way. And for a few years, I was against bariatric surgery. I wrote articles about it. I would talk to clients about it. If a client came in and said, I’m thinking about bariatric surgery, I say, don’t do it. You’re crazy. And then one day, this fantastic woman pulls me aside and says, you know, Chris, I’ve had it. Now, this woman was competing in masters CrossFit. She and her whole family came to the gym. One of her kids was coaching for me and I couldn’t believe it.
Chris (30:32):
And I said, what do you mean you’ve had bariatric surgery? Like there’s no way. And she said, yeah, I had to do it before I felt confident enough to join your gym. Wow. Yeah. And that really changed my perspective, but you know, not everybody gets to have that smack in the face to say, wake up stupid and you know, come alongside your clients instead of competing with them. So good for you, Josh. And I hope that everybody from this podcast episode, you know, takes what Josh just said. Uses technology, uses these four cornerstones to become the coach of the future instead of just fighting against what your clients want to do. Josh Martin from Two-Brain Coaching. Thank you so much for coming on here. Really simplifying a massive, massive topic and telling us exactly what to do.
Josh (31:18):
My pleasure, Chris, it’s always a joy to talk about coaching with you.
Andrew (31:23):
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