Chris Cooper's Blog, page 30

Masters of the Squat-Press-Deadlift of Marketing

If you wanted to be a great powerlifter, here’s a solid plan:

Find out who’s the best at deadliftingFind out who’s the best at bench pressing.Find out who’s the best at squatting.Find out who’s the best at all three.Copy what the specialists and generalists are doing.

We take the exact same plan with sales and marketing in gyms.

Here, I’ll show you stats from the very best gyms around the world in three areas:

Set rate: the number of people who visit your site and set an appointment. These are people who are interested enough to sit down and hear your pitch.Show rate: the number of people who book an appointment and actually show up. Sadly, this is rarely 100 percent. The people who show are serious about signing up.Close rate: the number of people who buy.

After that, I’ll give you the exact breakdown for three gyms that appeared on all three of this month’s leaderboards. You’ll see their marketing chains and learn how to analyze your lead flow so you can add more members to your gym.

First, our data from July 2024:

Those are impressive numbers—think of the leaders in each category as the best squatters, bench pressers and deadlifters in powerlifting.

So who has the “best total”?

A few gyms appeared on all three leaderboards. Here are their marketing chains:

1. Denmark: 59 appointments set—55 shows—26 closes2. U.S.: 56—50—293. U.S.: 46—28—23

You should note the following:

All had lots of appointments booked—about 1.5 or 2 per day for the month.The top two gyms had very high set rates—only four and six people, respectively, failed to show up for appointments.The third gym dropped 18 bookers but closed at a very high rate: Only 5 people who showed up didn’t buy. That’s 82 percent!At the top two gyms, 47 and 58 percent of people who showed bought.On average, these gyms added 26 members in July—about one new client per day!One of the top three gyms has an average revenue per member of $244, so 26 new clients represent about $6,344 in revenue.

If you look at these three “generalists,” you see great numbers as well as opportunities to improve them further:

Gym 3 closes at an amazing rate, so any improvements to set rate will result in new clients.Gyms 1 and 2 got a ton of appointments, and almost everyone showed, so any improvements in the sales office will result in more new clients.

I love looking at data like this because it provides absolute clarity. You don’t have to ask, “What should I work on?” The numbers answer the question for you.

Here’s a graphic representation:

And here’s your assignment for today: Run your own numbers for set rate, show rate and close rate.

Which is your weakest area?

That’s where you should focus your efforts.

And if you aren’t sure how to move the numbers up, we can help. A mentor can tell you exactly what to do right now. To hear more about that, book a call here.

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Knee-Capping Staff Development With Confusion

“So how long does the apprentice program last?”

A coach-in-training asked that question years ago, and I only had a vague answer.

I mumbled some sort of “Mark of Zorro” stuff about the pupil being ready when the master says he is ready.

It was a bad answer, but I didn’t have a good one because I was making up my staff training on the fly.

After starting a gym and filling the coaching staff with a group of talented friends, we needed more coaches, and I was trying to lead them to success with an apprenticeship program that was better than nothing but less than ideal.

The greatest omission: Apprentice coaches had no way to measure progress, gain momentum or feel success.

I was reminded of all this last week when gym owner and Two-Brain mentor Karl Solberg shared a precisely documented coach ascension plan with me. His spreadsheets would have allowed me to say this to coaches:

“The first part of the program lasts about two to four weeks, and you’ll reach the next level if you score 80 percent or better on an evaluation that will happen in 15 days. You’ll spend about six months in the next level, with advancement contingent on my evaluations and acquisition of another external credential. Most people reach the final level in about two years. When you do that, you’ll get a raise.”

So, here’s a question:

Do you have a coach ascension model or are you using a vague, choose-your-own-adventure development plan just like I did?

Make a Plan!

Karl showed me a host of incredible documents that guide new trainers to become master coaches at CrossFit Medis and CrossFit Sickla. His plan is clear and detailed. Yours might not be at the start.

That’s OK. You don’t have to create a masterpiece right away.

All you need to start is a schedule of evaluations at intervals and an evaluation sheet so coaches know what you’re watching for. That alone would have improved my gym.

I evaluated the coaches irregularly because I wore too many hats and didn’t have time to watch their classes. That slowed their progress, and my inability to set up a schedule was likely perceived as disinterest in their development. It wasn’t a good way to light a fire under a new trainer.

Similarly, I didn’t have a concise evaluation form to show apprentice coaches. Evaluations generally came down to a lot of “I would have done it like this,” which is really just a great way to confuse people and kill motivation.

To avoid these two mistakes, create a form and share it with your coaches—or borrow this one. Then tell your coaches exactly when you’ll evaluate them, stick to the schedule, and be sure to go over the form with them after you’ve filled it out.

A great piece of advice: Tell every coach you will always provide a focus for improvement regardless of score. I often felt handcuffed if I gave a coach good grades across the board, and too often I said “everything is great” when I really meant “everything is acceptable at your current stage of development, but we can improve this thing to ensure you keep improving your skills.”

One more piece of advice from Karl: Once you get a basic evaluation form in place, consider creating additional versions of the form that are more applicable to advanced coaches. Karl evaluates new coaches with a basic checklist, but evaluations for upper-level coaches are much more detailed because more is expected of them.

With clear evaluation criteria laid out and a schedule of evaluations in place, your coaches will be motivated to improve, and they’ll know how to “win.”

When that happens, you’re well on your way to creating careers for coaches who add more value to the business by helping clients get results faster.

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Hire, Develop, Retain: A Stellar Staffing Plan for Gym Owners

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Intrapreneurialism: Success Stories From Real Gyms

“Intrapreneurialism” is a key concept for a gym owner: Staff members are mentored to “grow the pie” on your strong, stable platform.

That means you teach them how to sell themselves, pursue opportunities, serve clients and earn more while your business shields them from all the risks of entrepreneurialism.

In return, your gym earns more, too, because you pay trainers a maximum of 44 percent of the new revenue that is created.

Numbers are important—for staff members who want to create careers and business owners who deserve to increase their profit and net owner benefit (NOB)—so I’ll provide three examples.

Example 1

Two-Brain mentor and former gym owner Peter Brasovan helped someone develop a yoga program under his and his partner’s brand about five years ago. The program grew so large that it contributed $190,000 to an annual gross of $1 million.

Almost 20 percent of gross revenue was generated by an intrapreneurial coach who saw free space, a market and an opportunity.

We recommend owners pay coaches a maximum of 4/9ths, or 44 percent, of program revenue. If Peter paid the yoga program creator 44 percent of $190,000 gross, that’s an income of $83,600. The gym keeps about $105,000, which is divided between fixed costs and profit.

In this scenario, the clients win because they’re getting access to a service they want. The coach wins by earning more than $80,000 without having to lease a building, set up a business and build an audience.

The gym owner wins, too: In exchange for providing essential infrastructure and mentoring a coach to succeed on a stable platform, the business takes in more than $100,000 after the coach has been paid.

This scenario isn’t made up—you can hear the whole story here.

Example 2

One Two-Brain mentor started a new coach in February 2024 with a few classes, on-ramps and PT clients, but the goal was to help him create opportunities for high-value hours.

The mentor knows the coach’s “target number” and wants to help him hit it to establish a career (knowing this number is key!).

To start moving toward the coach’s earnings goal, the mentor expanded a program for older adults, and the coach makes $66 per session (a percentage of program revenue).

The gym also added a kids program: The coach is paid a percentage of revenue here, too, and he makes $57 for a session with five kids and $138 for a maxed-out session.

The trainer can see a clear path to earning more: Find more kids for the small session and he can more than double his earnings for that session.

How can you help a coach grow a kids program? Start by forwarding this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.”

Example 3

Another Two-Brain mentor put together a starting package for a coach to earn about $500 a week through PT, group classes, kids classes, cleaning and onboarding of new clients.

Based on the coach’s goals, the owner created a list of opportunities, including acquiring new PT and semi-private clients, filling kids classes, learning to perform No Sweat Intros and sell, and filling a new class time.

She committed to supporting the coach by spending more on ads and dialing in lead nurturing; the coach learned to sell himself, made himself available and eagerly pursued all opportunities.

The result: The coach added about $800 in weekly income (and counting) to the $500 starting point—and the gym earned more money as well because the coach is paid a percentage of the gross.

Be a Mentor!

I see stuff like this very regularly in our private groups for gym owners.

But success stories like this don’t just appear.

You must care enough to take action and help your staff members.

Instead of abdicating responsibility, giving them “room to grow” and hoping they solve the career riddle on their own, you must be a CEO, a leader and a coach.

You must care enough to say this:

“I’m going to mentor you through this process of growth so that you can make this your career.”

If you do that, your clients will get better service, your coach will earn a good living and stick around long term, and your gym will generate more revenue and profit.

Everyone wins.

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When Fitness Coaching Is “a Real Job”

What if fitness coaches were viewed the same as firefighters, warehouse workers, transport drivers, accountants and teachers?

And what if the trainers themselves considered coaching to be their profession for life?

That’s my dream.

I’d be thrilled if our industry could retain its best people for 30 years instead of hold them for two years before they decide they need to sell real estate or fight fires to support their families.

As more Two-Brain clients build strong, stable, profitable businesses, it’s become clear that employment at a gym can become a key part of staff members’ retirement strategies.

In 2024, a well-run gym can shelter trainers from risk as they build great careers that generate more income for everyone.

But the owner must create careers for staff members. They won’t just appear. You must hire the right staff members and give them opportunities to get started. You must show them how to help other people and be rewarded for it.

You must do more than encourage them: You must lay out the exact process and break down the math. This is best done in Career Roadmap meetings.

Career planning is not the same as performing a staff evaluation. Evaluations are important, too. They are a key part of staff development and ascension, but reviewing a trainer’s performance coaching a group workout is very different than sitting down and showing a trainer exactly how to build a long-term career.

Here are the essential elements of a Career Roadmap meeting:

1. Ask 

Ask your coaches where they want to be in six months. How do they want to live? What will fulfill them long term? Learn what “successful career” means to each staff person.

2. Analyze

Determine how much each staff person needs to earn to reach those goals. Calculate a goal number. A number makes it real.

3. Plan

Work backward from that number. Use a spreadsheet (we have one for clients). Keep a running potential income total as you lay out opportunities to coach classes, complete programming or admin work, do personal training, run specialty programs, run semi-private or small-group sessions, create high-value platinum-level service packages, and so on.

4. Start

Determine the starting position. What will the coach need to learn to capitalize on this plan? Will they need a certification before starting a kids program, for example? Or would sales training be a better investment? Make a list and start crossing things off.

5. Measure

Measure progress. Perform regular reviews as part of Career Roadmap meetings and help coaches learn how to keep building value. Example: “Eight of our clients mentioned they’re doing a fun weightlifting competition in November. Why don’t you create and sell a high-touch, high-value, three-month prep program, including technique work, strength training, nutrition coaching and meet prep?”

6. Empower

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 them step out from under your protective umbrella if they want to.

Mentor Staff to Succeed

The best way to help your coaches build careers is to mentor them to success.

It’s much more common to abandon coaches and watch them flounder, then get frustrated when they leave to “get a real job.”

The process I laid out above is simple but effective. Staff members see numbers and understand the exact steps they must take to hit those numbers.

That alone is much better than saying “see if you can drum up some PT business.”

If you combine the spreadsheet work with a development plan, a starting point and regular check-ins, you’ll be able to guide a staff person to create a fulfilling career that benefits the gym and its clients, too.

We call this concept “intrapreneurialism,” and I’ll lay it out for you in even greater detail in the next post in this series so you can see how it creates wins all around.

To start, set up Career Roadmap meetings with your staff today. Ask them what they want, and then help them achieve it.

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Coach Ascension: How Top Gym Owners Create Careers for Staff

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A Coach Ascension Plan: The Key to Careers at Your Gym

A coaching credential doesn’t equal a career.

That’s been proven over and over, and too many great people have left the industry because they couldn’t make a living helping people become fitter.

That’s a tragedy.

So what’s the missing link?

It’s really an ascension model that allows coaches to earn more as they develop their skills as trainers. Better trainers get better results for clients and create value, which allows the gym to earn more and pay staff members better.

If you combine that concept with Intrapreneurialism and Career Roadmaps—I’ll cover those in the next posts in this series—you have a very clear way to retain outstanding people who can earn the money they need to support their families.

Here, we’ll dig into coach ascension, with the help of Karl Solberg, co-owner of CrossFit Medis and CrossFit Sickla in Sweden.

3 Essential Wins

Karl, a long-time gym owner, has created a detailed ascension plan for his coaches. His internal evaluations match up with the external CrossFit LLC level structure, but you can apply the same principles with any credentialing system.

Karl runs a pair of CrossFit gyms with partner Oskar Johed, who is a member of CrossFit’s Seminar Staff, so the connection makes perfect sense for them.

Here’s the guiding principle that applies regardless of method:

“In everything we do, we try to create a win for our clients, a win for our staff and of course a win for the business,” Karl explained.

He continued: “We think that if the coach increases their coaching skills, and also all of the time if they’re moving forward in their career, that will benefit the client. And if it benefits the client, she will stay longer and maybe spend more money, which benefits the business. So there we have the win-win-win situation.”

You can make four great mistakes at this point:

1. Assuming that an entry-level credential is anything more than proof of a minimum level of competence.

2. Assuming that all coaches will pursue professional development just because they want to learn more.

3. Assuming coaches will develop on their own without regular evaluation and mentorship.

4. Evaluating entry-level coaches against the A+, 10-out-of-10 gold standard for expert coaches.

Don’t worry: Almost all gym owners have made one or all of these mistakes.

Evaluation and Mentorship

The reality is that a credential will not create a career, but a great gym owner can work with a trainer to create an amazing career that benefits both parties—and the gym’s clients, too.

The key is a development and ascension plan that’s tied to regular evaluation.

“The first very rudimentary thing you can do is to tell your staff what you expect from them in terms of getting better at their craft,” Karl explained.

You can’t just hope they want to get better. You must define better, help them achieve it, and lay out timelines for progress.

Karl’s detailed system has five levels, running from orange to black, just like a belt system in a martial-arts gym. To move through the levels, trainers must coach a certain number of hours, perform well in evaluations and acquire new credentials.

When trainers reach the upper levels—two years is a ballpark timeline—they receive a raise and financial support from the gym for external certification.

Remember, Karl is investing, not just spending: “If the coach improves his or her skills, they will bring more value to the client.”

And he’s fulfilling his gyms’ mission: He and Oskar have promised to improve clients’ lives, so they’ve put clear timelines in place to ensure staff members are always becoming better at doing that.

“You … need to have plan in place for how you develop skills over time,” he explained, likening the process of coach development to the athletic progression all fitness coaches understand. You don’t start an inexperienced client with heavy snatches and overhead squats, right?

Don’t Expect Elite Skills From Beginners

Before I give you a peek at Karl’s level system, a word on Mistake No. 4, laid out above.

Karl at first documented the gold standard for a perfect class and evaluated all trainers against it.

They all failed, and they were miserable.

So Karl realized he needed to make adjustments to recognize the coaches’ current levels and keep them moving forward.

“How can I do this in a way that motivates people?” he asked. “We don’t tell an athlete to do that hardest thing right away. We tell the athlete to do something that they can be successful with, and then they get motivated when they succeed.”

So check out the Prep and Workout sections of Karl’s evaluation for orange- and brown-level coaches, respectively:

Orange LevelBrown Level

You’ll note the evaluation points for orange-level coaches are limited; they reflect the coach’s experience and provide building blocks for development.

The essential concept: If an orange-level coach can consistently do these essential but basic things, they are ready to move from orange to blue. In blue, all the requirements from the orange level are present, as are new requirements, such as “suggest scaling options for each athlete.”

This process continues from blue to purple, brown and black. Through evaluation, the coach is guided to improve and add skills, and coaches are always evaluated against criteria that reflect their experience.

To drive the concept home, here are the Prep, Whiteboard and Warm-Up sections of Karl’s evaluations for orange-, blue-, purple- and brown-level coaches, respectively:

You’ll note that the lower levels have basic requirements, while the upper levels are much more robust—but even the brown level doesn’t seem overwhelming when you recall that coaches have been guided through a progression to reach that level.

They’ve never been abandoned. They’ve been mentored to ascend.

Your First Steps to Coach Ascension

Karl’s complete development plan is incredible—I’ve just shown you a few snapshots from his evaluation form, without digging into the associated coach journey and onboarding documents.

The point: Coaches won’t build staircases on their own. But they will climb a staircase you build if you help them. When that happens, you’re ensuring your trainers are always improving their skills, which will have a massive effect on client results and retention.

Remember, you sell results through coaching, so when clients get them faster, your gym—and your service providers—will earn more.

You won’t be able to build Karl’s plan overnight, so here’s your starting point:

Create a simple coach evaluation form (or download mine here).Schedule and perform regular coach evaluations. Could you manage two per year as you develop your full ascension plan?

If you evaluate coaches regularly, you’ll be ahead of a host of gym owners, and you’ll be well on your way to creating careers at your gym.

I’ll give you two more essential tools—Intrapreneurialism and Career Roadmaps—in the next posts in this series.

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When You Don’t Know Why Your Clients Are Leaving

“I need more members!”

That’s the most common statement gym owners make when they’re bleeding clients.

But it’s the wrong statement.

Here’s the right one:

“I need to figure out why my clients are leaving.”

Marketing is important, but it’s less important than retention. If you’re great at marketing but bad at retention, your gym will still be empty. Make sure the boat is free of leaks before you fill it.

I did it the wrong way: We filled our gym before we had solid retention systems in place, and when people started leaving in waves I looked to six-week challenges and other marketing gimmicks to replace them.

If I had a time machine and could go back to 2013-2014, I’d take clear steps to prevent members from leaving.

In my case, we focused too much on competition, and we invested our best hours in a very small group of people. “Regular people” didn’t feel as important, and competitive athletes below the top tier felt like they didn’t get the attention they needed to reach the next level.

To prevent the problem, I could have stopped spending large amounts of time at competitions and investing my best hours in special training sessions and programming.

Those freed hours could have been spent partially on onboarding, but, in truth, our on-ramp was pretty good. Most of the people who did it bought ongoing memberships, and in almost all cases they re-upped those memberships in three or six months.

My retention problems were greatest between 12 and 24 months of membership. I could get a conversion out of on-ramp, and I could get about two six-month membership renewals, but after that it was hit or miss.

The time frame is important because Chris Cooper has stated that no single retention tactic fixes all problems. Gym owners need different tactics at different times.

Had I knew that in 2013, I would have realized novelty was fading for some clients. They were on to “the next thing.” Others had reached a certain level and didn’t know where to go next—so they went home and stayed there.

The greatest problem: I didn’t know what my clients wanted to accomplish.

So when some people left at the 12-month mark to try bootcamps or Orangetheory, I figured “their time was up.” But if I knew why they came in the first place—lose 10 lb., get a first pull-up, etc.—I could have helped them make the progress that would have sustained them when novelty failed. Or I could have told them how to speed up progress toward their goals.

With others who were further along in their journeys, I could have celebrated their past goals and helped them set new ones that would have kept them in the gym for more than 24 months. Instead, they got a first pull-up but felt like muscle-ups were too far away, so they quit. Or they lost 10 lb. and needed someone to help them figure out what to focus on next.

Instead of asking “why?” and solving retention problems, I made bad assumptions and turned to marketing tactics to replace the departed.

It was a bad plan in 2013, and it’s a bad plan now.

If you want to build a very profitable business, figure out when your clients are leaving and why. Plug the holes, then work to add more high-value clients who stay for three years or more.

A mentor can help you do this, but I’ll give you a starting point: Check out Chris Cooper’s article “When You’re Bleeding Clients, Do This!” It’s got a Length of Engagement Cheat Sheet you can save to your desktop.

Analyze your length of engagement to find out when clients are leaving, then use Coop’s recommended tactics to solve the problem.

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Action Plan: When a Coach Leaves to Open a Gym

You think losing clients is bad?

What happens when a coach leaves—and opens a gym down the street?

You’ll probably lose a bunch of clients, find yourself pulled back into coaching and worry about the rest of your staff.

Here’s why coaches leave and what to do when they say, “I’m opening my own gym.”

Part 1—Why Coaches Leave

Like me, you probably opened a gym because you wanted a career in fitness and couldn’t see any way to make a living without being an owner.

For many of us, opening a gym created the opportunity to get started as an entrepreneur. But it’s our job to turn the gym into a business that sustains our family and our staff.

If coaches can’t see a way to make a living—own a house and car and pay for their kids’ braces—they’ll leave. And we can’t blame them. Any employee making less than they need to live will pursue more money out of necessity.

The next reason most staff quit their jobs: They “run out of future” because they can’t see any opportunities to grow their careers in your gym.

What kind of ascension model do you have in place? I don’t just mean the path to earning more but the path to developing their passion.

Most staff quit their jobs when they’re offered a different plan by someone else: the opportunity to learn and explore new paths.

Finally, if they’re not learning, they’re leaving. If you mentor them to earn and learn, they won’t churn.

Part 2—How to Prevent It

1. Every six months, ask coaches “what do you want now?” at a Career Roadmap meeting.

2. Have them work through the “Perfect Day” exercise.

3. Ask which coaches want more opportunities: personal training, a nutrition specialty program or focused groups such as kids, weightlifting or sport-specific training.

4. Offer them roles that allow you to level up and build your business.

You need to build opportunities for your coaches to make more money while expanding your platform instead of taking a larger percentage of the existing pie. We call this Intrapreneurship, and we build those opportunities with you in our mentorship program.

Set up Career Roadmap meetings with your staff to paint a picture of the future and tell them how to get there. Think of this as “programming” for your coaches’ careers.

Remember, coaches earn more by creating the revenue to cover the increased wages and boost overall gym revenue. We consider coaches an investment, not an expense. 

Part 3—What to Do When They’re Leaving

For many, the siren song of ownership is just too strong. They want to roll the dice and answer this question for themselves, “Can I do better on my own?”

As a friend once said, “Everyone thinks they want our job. But they don’t actually want our job.”

Of course, if a coach leaves to start their own gym, it’s hard for them to come back—unless you go out of your way to make a return trip possible.

Think about it: How many times in the last three years have you wished for a parachute? We all do it. In those moments, if you knew there was a secure coaching job available with a friendly former boss, would you take it? Many would.

After talking with hundreds of box owners, I’m 100 percent certain many would happily give up ownership for a secure position coaching.

They don’t want the burden of ownership; they just want security in a coaching position. Many have bought themselves a job instead of a business, and now they regret it.

Step 1—Keep the door open. Sadly, many coaches—and owners—burn bridges with gasoline and then stir the coals afterward. Fear of loss, confusion over emotional decisions and misplaced feelings of “trust”—they make for hard times.

Step 2—If the coach is open about intentions, offer to purchase a share of the business. After all, your counsel is very valuable: You can save them hundreds of hours of wasted time and thousands of dollars in blown income. You know what they need and how to avoid many of the startup pitfalls. Why not offer to fund 20 percent of the gym and then take a monthly retainer as a consulting fee? This will stop client poaching, protect membership rates in the area and help the coach who wants to try it alone. It also provides an out: If the gym doesn’t work, you’ll be there with an escape route.

Step 3—If the coach is cagey about intentions but leaves quietly, announce their “retirement” and stick to the high road. You have nothing to gain from belittling their memory. Your feelings might be hurt; either get used to it or stop having feelings (just kidding, but it does get easier to avoid becoming emotional). Try not to feel threatened. Amp up the energy in your classes and eliminate all reasons for clients to follow.

Step 4—During your exit interview, remind the coach of their duties under your non-solicitation agreement. You have that, right?

Step 5—If the coach lights the plane on fire before diving out, that’s a different issue. It’s hard to stick to the high road, but consider this: No one can “poach” a client. If one of your members is so attracted by a low price that they’ll quit, they probably weren’t a great member. If they’re more attached to your coach than to your brand, you have the “Icon problem.” And if your service is exactly the same as the coach’s new service but more expensive, you’re selling a commodity, and people don’t want to pay more for commodities. Move to the Prescriptive Model. Now.

Step 6—Let’s say the worst happens: a coach leaves, it’s a surprise, and they’re messaging your members about lower rates and better service. You realize you could have prevented this problem if you’d heeded the advice, but it’s too late. What then?

Here’s the plan.

First, find bedrock. Who are the clients who won’t leave, no matter what? Interview them to find out what they value most, and then focus on that with everyone else.Start doing Goal Review Sessions. You’re in the results business, not the sales business. If people are leaving because of a price war, get out of the sales business and start talking to them about their results. Don’t go public. You can’t win in a social-media war because you’re playing defense. Win in the face-to-face war. You have a huge advantage: Most members are showing up at your gym today. Talk to your best clients and explain the situation and its impact on your gym family. Let the message trickle down from them (it will have more authority coming from them than from you).Focus heavily on messages of family, community and home. If you’ve read anything on psychology, you’ll already know these elements have powerful effects on retention.
An Ounce of Prevention

You can’t ever go back in time—but you can take preventive steps now so problems don’t appear.

Here are the steps:

1. Create horizons for your staff.

2. Give them continuing education and opportunities to grow under the safety of your umbrella.

3. Put every coach on a contract with a non-solicitation clause.

4. Continually ask coaches about their goals. 

5. If a coach does leave, ask how you can be part of the new venture. Use the support, counsel and resources provided by a mentor to manage any situation and keep improving your business.

It’s never going to be comfortable when a staff member leaves to start a new business. It’s an emotional issue.

If you stay in front of the problem, you can usually avoid it.

But if you can’t, go with them.

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When You’re Bleeding Clients, Do This!

Last month, you lost more clients than you gained. Uh-oh.

Maybe it’s a longer-term trend: You’re starting the fourth quarter with fewer clients than you had in June. S***!

Maybe, year over year, you’re down. Or maybe you’re still blaming COVID lockdowns—but those were two years ago. 

Whatever your timeline, it’s time to fix your client churn problem for good.

We’re going to take a scientific approach here. That means:

1. Isolating the problem.
2. Looking at the data to create the solution.
3. Testing the solution in your gym. 

First Ask “When?”

First, answer this question: When are people leaving?

People quit for different reasons at different times.

We want people to create long-term habits that change their lives. That means we need different retention strategies at different times in their “journey” as a client at your gym.

One of the best meta-studies on this can be found on PubMed: “Making Health Habitual: The Psychology of ‘Habit-Formation’ and General Practice.”

And James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits,” breaks the process down here.

It takes different strategies to keep people around for 21 days, for 66 days and for 254 days. 

The takeaway: Retention problems cannot be fixed with a single, one-size-fits-all solution.

The good news: There is a model you can use to maximize retention. I’ll share that with you in a moment.

Clients Leaving Before 3-Week Mark

Reason: They’re overwhelmed. They’re thinking things like “I can’t do this” or “it’s all too much.” They’re probably getting crushed in workouts. Some might feel dumb because they think they aren’t getting up to speed fast enough.

Solution: You need a 1:1 consultative meeting with people so you can tell them what they should expect. Then you need a high-touch onboarding period. Onboarding is best done 1:1 with a coach. The coach should teach the basics in private sessions and check in with the client daily (or as often as possible). We call this “on-ramp,” and we teach you how to build your perfect on-ramp in our mentorship program.

Remember: When they signed up, they wanted this to work. You have novelty and excitement on your side. But you’re burying them. Don’t throw them straight into group classes; guide them step by step until they’re up to speed.

Clients Leaving Before the 3-Month Mark

Reason: They’re not seeing progress quickly enough. Or they’re struggling to fit their workouts into their routine. After two months, clients will start to ask themselves, “Is this worth the time and money I’m putting into it?” and you need to answer that question for them because they don’t have the skills to measure their own progress.

Solution: Book a goal review to show them their progress, review their goals and paint a picture of the next stage for them. Clients leave when they run out of future—when they can’t see where they’ve been or where they’re going. Put them on your Inbody, take their measurements and walk through a list of accomplishments. Then tell them how you’ll optimize their journey for the next three months. 

Clients Leaving Before the 1-Year Mark

Reason: The novelty’s worn off. At this point, they might not be quitting fitness—but they are quitting your gym to “try something else.”

Solution: Keep meeting with them every three months and adjust their client journey (and your recommendations) based on their progress. This creates a “sunk cost”: They give up all their progress with you if they start over somewhere else. Be sure to explain the “why” behind your programming: Publish an internal QuickCast each week to walk through the group programming, and take extra care with 1:1 clients to explain why their workouts are changing based on their progress.

You also need to help them build bonds within the gym. Between 90 days and the nine-month mark, they need to create a bond with the owner, their coach and at least one other person in the gym. It’s best if that “third person” is someone they bring in themselves. So, yes, asking for referrals actually helps retention.

Clients Leaving After the First Year

Reason: They’re successful at your program but they’re not reaching higher in life. They’ve seen some success (they’ve lost 10 lb. or hit a deadlift PR), but they’re not elevating their goals to strive for something new.

Solution: Give them a way to level up in life because they’ve already hit the top level of “their old self.” The goal should be fitness-related but doesn’t have to be competitive. At a goal review meeting, suggest they try their first 10-km run or marathon, or suggest they work on a specific weakness, or recommend they do a competition, or ask them to consider attending your Advanced Theory Course for coaching candidates.

This is also a good time to use a “level system” to show them a path forward—like a belt system in martial arts—and acknowledge their past attendance (idea: “100 classes club” patches and T-shirts).

Clients Leaving After the Second or Third Year

Reason: They might be leaving your gym, but they’re probably not quitting fitness. If so, this is a “mission accomplished” for you and your team. While it might hurt to lose the client, look at the big picture: You got a client past all the points where people quit fitness programs and helped them build a lifelong habit. They’re going to be healthier for the rest of their lives because of you.

Solution: Give them a gift to say “thank you” and a reason to come back. Congratulate them on changing their lives. They are now proud alumni. Make sure they know they’re welcome to come back if they fall off, and promise to follow up with them each quarter for a while. Get them to film a testimonial and ask if you can speak at their workplace.

The Right Strategy at the Right Time

We track length of engagement (LEG) because that will tell us how to solve your retention problems better.

I hope you see that applying a good retention solution at the wrong time won’t work.

For example, encouraging a 21-day client to enter a CrossFit competition is a bad idea, but encouraging a one-year client to try their first 5-km race is a great idea.

So how do you put this all together?

You adopt the Prescriptive Model.

You start with a consultative process.You guide clients through an on-ramp period.You meet with them quarterly.You ask for referrals at the right time.You upgrade their prescription as they upgrade their fitness.You never, ever assume your product will retain people on its own. It’s what goes on around the class that keeps people coming back. 

In our mentorship program, we help you implement the Prescriptive Model in your gym. To find out more about that, book a call here.

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