Chris Cooper's Blog, page 36

What Top Gym Owners Say in Tricky Situations

Ever wished you could ask an experienced gym owner exactly what to say when you have to fire a staff member?

Or when a client smells bad?

Or when you want to get two PT clients to train together to increase your hourly rate?

You aren’t alone. We regularly see entrepreneurs asking for advice like this in our private group for Two-Brain clients.

This is a very high-value group where top gym owners and expert mentors solve a ton of problems fast. I regularly go in there and see amazing solutions to very tough problems, and I often think “I wish I had seen that a decade ago.”

I want to help you get out of some tough spots fast, so I’ve mined our group for great answers to very common questions.

Enjoy!

Questions and Great Answers

Question: “I try to deal with objections during consultations, but sometimes a lead leaves and says, ‘I will get back to you later.’ What should I say as they leave or immediately afterward?”

Answer: “When this happens I usually send them a text within a few hours just to thank them for considering our gym, and I say we hope to see them back in there soon. Then we put them into our automated lead-nurture sequence from the Two-Brain Toolkit.”

Answer: “I’ve been honest about what happens to most people if they leave without making a decision; i.e., they don’t come back before trying other things that don’t work, wasting more time, money and energy.”

Question: “An enthusiastic lead said she was very committed to taking action, said our on-ramp price was ‘not bad at all’ and signed up and paid by credit card. We did an InBody scan, then booked all her sessions and 90-day goal review. She then messaged later in the day to cancel after talking to her husband about finances. How do I respond?”

Answer: “You mentioned this being a money issue. Is this more you don’t have the money in the bank at all or are you worried that you’ll part with this money and not reach your intended result because you’ve failed in the past on cheaper products?”

Answer: “Sorry to hear about this. When would be a good time today or tomorrow to hop on a call and discuss some other options for how we can help you?” Then, go back over why she told you she’s ready to start and ask what’s changed.

Question: “How do I fire a staff member?”

Answer: “[NAME], I’ve made the decision to end your employment effective [DATE]. This decision is not for cause [OR INSERT REASON HERE], and I’ve prepared a letter for you in this envelope with all the details you need. Your last day will be [DATE OR TODAY]. Take the letter with you, review it and reach out to me directly if you have questions. [NAME], I want to thank you for your contributions in the time you have worked with us and wish you the best of luck. [STAFF NAME] is going to go with you to help collect your things.”

Question: “How do I fire a client?”

Answer: “Hey [NAME], can I bounce something off you real quick? You don’t seem comfortable here lately. You don’t seem to be in a great mood. What are your thoughts on the gym lately? Are we doing something wrong?”

This allows the client to present an answer without taking the blame. Let them speak, then let more air out of the “anger balloon” by repeating something they said as a question.

“So you’re saying you don’t like the programming anymore?”

Do this at least three times to let them get it all out. In some cases, this process will prompt a client to “fire themselves.” If not, say this:

“We’re not the right fit for you anymore, and I think you’ll be happier somewhere else. I’ll refund the remaining time on your membership today.”

Answer: “Dear [CLIENT]. Please accept this email as a formal cancelation of your membership. Due to recent circumstances, we will be waiving your cancelation fee and the remaining payments of your contract, parting company immediately. The remainder of the current month’s membership fee is being returned to you, and your account will be deactivated. Regards, [OWNER].”

Question: “What do I say if another member asks about a client I fired?”

Answer: “[NAME] has moved on; we definitely wish them the best.” If the person keeps digging: “We don’t make a habit of discussing details, but if you have something you’d like to share or discuss, I’d be happy to address your concerns.”

Question: “I have a coach who constantly tells me he need to make more money and work more, but when I offer stuff, he seems reluctant and can never fit it into his schedule. What do I say?”

Answer: “I’ve noticed that you say you want extra money. It seems to me that when I offer something, you’re too busy. Can you help me understand what would work for you?”

Question: “What do I say to a client who smells bad?”

Answer: “Hey [CLIENT]. I noticed you’re working up a smell when you’re getting after it. I’ve had the same problem at times. You might try replacing some of your older workout clothes, and you can definitely use the gym shower before class if you’ve had a long workday. I’ve got body wash in there, as well as spray deodorant you can use before and after working out.”

Answer, as a pre-emptive strike in a message to all clients: “We’re heading into the deep heat, and summer smells can get funky. Take a moment to wash those knee sleeves and wrist wraps. While you’re at it, spray some odor killer on your gym shoes and in your gym bag. Swing by the front desk this weekend and grab a FREE on-the-go deodorant spray to keep handy. Lastly, double-check your workout gear to see if passes the ‘sniff test.’ Those wicking shirts and performance fabrics can pick up smells over time, so please replace anything past its prime.”

Question: “What do you say to a client who wants to hold a membership for summer?”

Answer: “Hey [NAME], we understand that summer is a busy time of year. However, you have made so much progress on [INSERT SPECIFIC GOAL FROM GOAL REVIEW SESSION], and I would hate to see you lose that over summer. Let’s get a goal review set up so we can figure out a plan that allows you to continue making progress and accommodate your busy schedule.” (The gym owner who said exactly this has prevented five clients from going on hold so far.)

Question: “How do I launch a semi-private program with current PT clients? I would like to have groups of three that I can continue to hold and fill out as needed.”

Answer: “Hey [NAME], you’re doing great. You’ve improved [THING 1] and [THING 2] so fast in our time together. I think the only way to really drive you further is to get you a training partner. You’ll push each other to the next level. I have a perfect candidate—similar background and very similar goals. Want to try a session with them? If you hate it, we’ll go back to 1:1 until I find you a better match.”

Peers Helping Peers

These are just a few selections from our private groups for Two-Brain clients. These high-value groups are packed with questions and answers as gym owners present problems and receive great solutions from helpful, experienced peers who have navigated similar waters.

The interactions help the gym owners who are asking the questions, but a host of others usually post something like this below a great response: “Wow—this is great. I’m dealing with the same issue, and this advice is so helpful!”

Or I see this: “Wow! I’m literally writing this down so I have it handy when I deal with this situation.”

That’s problem solving at scale, and I love to watch it happen.

I hope this selection helps you solve problems at your gym. And if you want access to our private groups and all the tactics and resources in our toolkit, click here to talk about mentorship.

The post What Top Gym Owners Say in Tricky Situations appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Scenario Solutions: Say Exactly This to Grow Your Gym!

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
The jerk store is out of you. Do you ever wish you had the exact line you need in a certain situation and didn’t say something dumb? Like maybe when you need a referral or you want to sell some PT? Well, Two-Brain Founder and CEO Chris Cooper is here, and he’s going to solve your problems today by telling you exactly what to say in certain situations that come up so often in gyms. My name is Mike Warkentin. I’m here with “Run a Profitable Gym.” Please hit “subscribe” wherever you’re watching or listening so you don’t miss a single show. Chris, are you ready to tell people exactly what to say?

Chris Cooper (00:30):
Yes, I was super ready, but I’ve got to ask you what your opening joke is going to be every time. Yeah, totally ready. So ready. This is going to be awesome.

Mike Warkentin (00:38):
Yeah, and if you don’t remember, anyone who was out there, the jerk store was the classic “Seinfeld” line where George gets stuck in a situation, thinks of what he thinks is the perfect line, delivers it, and just gets kicked back in his face. It’s happened to me in the gym setting so many times. Chris, I know you’ve had it too. I think I recall a blog where you said something like, you literally used to tell people, “I’m a terrible salesperson,” and you really thought maybe I shouldn’t do that. Maybe I should just learn to sell. So, let’s go through a few things. I’ve got a big list of stuff that you’ve said, and we’ll talk about this because these scenarios come up in gyms all the time. I’ve dealt with them, you’ve dealt with them, and people out there, you are going to deal with them if you haven’t already. So, here’s a big one, and this one is—literally the answer is going to make you money. Chris, someone says, “Do you offer discounts?”

Chris Cooper (01:21):
I just say, “No, we don’t offer discounts.” And 80% of the time, that’s it, that’s the end of the conversation.

Mike Warkentin (01:30):
Why is it so hard to say that? It seems so hard to say that sometimes. Why is that?

Chris Cooper (01:34):
Well, because you get into this trap and it’s like, “Oh, I do offer discounts, but not for you.” It is really hard to say. So, if you offer discounts for firefighters and nobody else, what quickly happens is you find yourself trying to justify giving a discount to everybody else. So, “Do you offer discounts?” “Only for firefighters.” “Well, God, I’m an ambulance driver. That’s the same thing.” And then it’s like, “I’m a nurse. I’m a teacher. You don’t value teachers?” Right? Like, it’s actually just easier to say no.

Mike Warkentin (01:59):
And then you start getting defensive, right? I always feel like that where I’m like, “Oh, well, it’s just,” and then I start fumbling, and then I ended up giving everyone a discount.

Chris Cooper (02:06):
And that’s what happened to me. Yeah. And you know, one thing that I learned way back in the day when I was selling treadmills is to say, if people really press you on it, just say, “Our service is as inexpensive as we can make it for the level of service we provide.” And what you’re doing there is creating a difference in their brain. So, if they’re like, “Well, that guy down the street, he offers 20% for first responders,” you say, “Our service is inexpensive as we can make it for the level of service we provide.”

Mike Warkentin (02:35):
Now, you didn’t say cheap.

Chris Cooper (02:36):
No, no, I never say cheap. Never.

Mike Warkentin (02:38):
There’s a big difference because high value services aren’t cheap, and we don’t want to imply that they are. So, what you’re saying is inexpensive for this level of service. That’s a value statement, right?

Chris Cooper (02:48):
Yeah. You know, when I was selling treadmills, my boss told me to say, “We don’t play those games.” But what she was doing there is we were selling a high-end treadmill against a piece of crap department store product, and she wanted to provoke a response, like “What are you talking about? What games?” from the buyer. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to call anybody else cheap. So, I use the term inexpensive on purpose.

Mike Warkentin (03:10):
That works. So, guys, that one will save you money right now if you just tell people, “We don’t have discounts. The price is the price.” You will save—that’s easy. That’s like a rate increase in a lot of ways. Eliminating discounts is very much a rate increase. Onto the next one, so starting a conversation. This used to be a little bit easier back in the day before screens and cell phones where everyone’s down looking like this, but how do you—you’re out and about and you just, you might want to talk to someone and maybe eventually tell them about your business. How do you start a conversation?

Chris Cooper (03:37):
I say, “Good morning.” And because nobody’s ever going to have a negative reaction to good morning, right? And even if it’s like 1 p.m., I’ll just be like, “Good morning!” and then I’ll say, “Oh, I guess it’s not actually morning anymore,” whatever. And I do this when I’m on my bicycle. I do this when I’m buying a coffee. I do this when I’m meeting somebody who’s walking down the sidewalk in front of my gym. I will literally be the one to go first. And this is like—it’s so rare now that it’s almost a surprise that somebody would make eye contact and greet them. And I’ve never had anybody ever not smile and say “good morning” back. Even if they’re kind of flustered. It’s a skill that’s called going first. And I teach it to my kids. I teach it to all my staff too. Like, go first, say, “Good morning.”

Mike Warkentin (04:25):
And what happens after that? Because the conversation, you know, inevitably, inevitably goes somewhere. How do you get it into the realm of your gym? And if it doesn’t get there, that’s fine, but how do you do that?

Chris Cooper (04:34):
Well, it depends where we are, right? So, if I’m buying a coffee at a coffee shop, I’ll say, “Good morning.” Usually that leads to a little bit of conversation after. None of us are taught how to start a conversation, but we all know how to respond to good morning. You say, “Good morning,” and you smile. And then from there I’ll just be like, “How’s your day going?” You know, just natural and it takes practice. And then if I’m somewhere around the gym, I’ll be like, “Hey, by the way, I’m Chris, and this is my gym. Have you ever been in there?” And so literally this morning, OK, so this guy had a bunch of laptops accidentally delivered to my gym. He works next door, and he shows up, and I’m on a call, and I’m like, “I’ll be right with you.”

Chris Cooper (05:17):
I walk out to the lobby—his name is Mike—and I’m like, “Hey, Mike, great news. I’ve got your laptops.” He’s like, “Thank God. I thought the Amazon driver blah, blah, blah.” So, I’m like, “Let me help you carry them to your car.” So, he’s got like eight laptops, we’re carrying them to his car, and I’m like, “Yeah. So anyway, I’m Chris,” shake his hand, “This is my gym. Have you ever been in there before?” “No, that was my first time in there.” “Hey, fantastic. It’s probably not like the Good Life gym up the street, right?” “No, it’s not. I’m a member there.” “Oh, that’s cool. How are the workouts going?” You know, and it’s like we’re all too polite to say, “Get lost. I’m out of here.” And so, you know, you just start a conversation.

Mike Warkentin (05:56):
And it might not give you a new client right then, but that person knows about your gym, knows who you are, knows you’re a good person, and maybe down the line that will equal something, right? And so, it’s just planting these seeds. And I love the idea of what you said, going first. That’s so uncommon these days when everyone is locked into a screen. Just going first and having a conversation is going to give you opportunities to talk about your business. It doesn’t have to be a hardcore sales thing, but it’s just branding essentially. “Hey, that’s my gym.” He’ll tell someone, “I saw this great cool gym down over on—Catalyst there. It was amazing,” right? And then maybe someone’s interested.

Chris Cooper (06:28):
Yeah. And you know, the big hangup for me as such an introvert was I was always trying to think of like, “What is my desired outcome here?” And it’s like going on a first date with a girl and you’re like, “OK, what are the steps from first date to marriage?” OK, let’s think about it. And that paralyzes you. The outcome is that you have a nice conversation, and they feel good. That’s it. You know, that’s the goal.

Mike Warkentin (06:50):
My advice here, say what Chris says, and my advice is remember the lines and don’t be weird. Just be a normal person. React like a normal person. Don’t be weird.

Chris Cooper (06:58):
Do as I say, not as I do that. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (07:02):
So, here’s the next part of the scenario. So, you’ve got this person, and they start talking to you, and they start talking about their goals. And maybe they mention, like maybe laptop guy is like, “Ah, man, my back kind of hurts when I carry these eight laptops,” or whatever. How do you take the next step? Like how do you get that person who mentions a goal or a desire into your gym?

Chris Cooper (07:19):
Yeah, so a different guy, again this morning though, he came in for something else. He was picking up a key for something, and he’s got two ribs out on one side, and now he’s walking with a cane. And last week when I saw him, he wasn’t, so I’m like, “Scott, dude, things are getting worse.” And he’s like, “I know, my doctor, they’re telling me to see a chiropractor. And I mean, any fitness pro listening to this sees the opening before me here, right? But basically, whatever you say is like, “Look man, I think I can help.” That’s the line. So, in this case, it was, “Look, Scott, I think I can help. I don’t want to see you in pain walking around with this cane. I can either get you a referral to a physical therapist to take a look, or we can come in at 2 p.m. on Monday.”

Chris Cooper (08:04):
“I’ve got an opening, and we can try something.” Now, in Scott’s case, I would refer him out. But for somebody else who I was running into who’s mentioned fitness, “Oh, I’ve heard of your gym.” Like a contractor who was working on one of our buildings last week. I’m like, “Oh yeah”—Scott is his name—”Scott, what are your goals with fitness?” “Oh, dude, I love doing these workouts at home. I’ve got this garage set up.” I’m like, “Great. What program are you following?” “Oh, I just kind of make it up.” I’m like, “Dude, let’s talk about your program. I’ve got an opening at 2 p.m. Monday. Do you want to come in then? And we’ll hang out.”

Mike Warkentin (08:39):
Is Scott coming in?

Chris Cooper (08:40):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, he’s also a contractor who wants me to hire him. But yeah, I mean, this has worked for me dozens and dozens of times.

Mike Warkentin (08:47):
Quid pro quo, Scott.

Chris Cooper (08:49):
Yeah. The key there is not, “Hey, well if you ever want to talk about your fitness,” like you can’t just leave it vague and open-ended, or it’ll never happen. It has to be, “You know what? I’ve got an opening Monday at two o’clock. Do you want to come in?”

Mike Warkentin (09:02):
And I love the part about help. “I think I can help,” and they can make the offer. And it’s just going first. It’s the same principle again. I like that one. So, let’s talk about someone who’s actually a client now. You’re doing a goal review with a client. Thrilled with progress, right? And you’re just—this person is just—like you say, “Hey, are you happy with your progress?” “Yeah, I’m happy. I want to keep going.” And you kind of think that maybe we could talk about referrals and friends. What do you do in this situation? What do you say?

Chris Cooper (09:25):
Well, the first is you want to know that client really well. So, in my brain I’m like, “OK, who are the people closest to this client?” So, who’s her spouse, right? Who does she work with, and who does she hang out with? Well, I happen to know that Bev’s spouse is named Alan, that she’s an accountant at the lottery corp, and that she hangs out with, she has a whole bunch of first cousins who are all the same age. I know that because I talk to my clients.

Mike Warkentin (09:54):
You’re a good coach. Yeah.

Chris Cooper (09:55):
First I’m going to talk about Alan because Alan’s her husband. I know what she makes. Therefore, I know what Alan makes. I know where she lives. I know, right? Like I know her hobbies, and I’m like, “Hey Bev, I’m so proud of you, number one, proud. I’ve heard you mention Alan a couple times. I know he is getting ready for golf season. What do you think it would take to get Alan to come in here and try a workout with you?” And then she’s going to tell me how to sell Alan, right? Because there’s a chance that she’s been trying to sell Alan and can’t do it, but she’s going to give me the language to do it.

Mike Warkentin (10:25):
Yeah. And the key here is that you know your client, and you can ask this stuff because you’ve been a good coach, and you’ve had these conversations

Chris Cooper (10:31):
One thousand percent. So, what I would say there, and there was a time when I would’ve been really nervous about this, but you’ve got to keep in mind Bev wants her husband Alan to come to the gym. She wants him to feel good. She wants him to be healthy. So, what I would say is like, “Well hey, while you’re here, why don’t we shoot Alan a text and just see when he wants to join you?” And she’ll be like, “Oh my God, he is going to kill me,” right? Like, OK, “Yes, he is. What’s his number?” And then you just text him, “Hey Alan, sitting here with Bev. We’re just talking about you, dude. I’d love to have you on Wednesday when she’s back at 11 a.m. Will you join us?” That’s it.

Mike Warkentin (11:09):
It’s weird if you pull that with a client who’s not happy with progress or a client who you don’t know anything about. So, you’re just sitting there and you’re like, “Hey,” at the end of class, “Yeah Bob, you got any buddies who want to join?” Like, that’s weird. Like that’s the jerk store, right? Like that’s not a good way to do it. If you know the client, it’s just a natural thing to say, “Oh, your spouse has been golfing for years, and he’s always been talking about hitting his drive further, and he’s never been able to do it. What if we got him in here? Let’s do it today.” And she’s like, “I’m pumped up about my progress. Let’s get him in here.” It’s not—you know, you have to pick your spots, right?

Chris Cooper (11:41):
Yeah, it is. And if I were talking to you, I would say something like, “Hey Mike. Hey, I know Crystal got really into biathlon over the wintertime, and I was just cycling this weekend with a guy who does biathlon. We were talking about training. I really think that I could give her some stuff that’s going to help. Do you think she’d come in with you so that I can show her this stuff next Wednesday?”

Mike Warkentin (12:01):
And I’m immediately interested.

Chris Cooper (12:03):
If you care about the person, it’s easy.

Mike Warkentin (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, I mean, the downstream is having these conversations. The upstream is being a good coach, communicating with your clients and knowing what they’re about and who they hang out with. You’ve got to know your clients, so don’t use this stuff if you’re not doing that first. And I’ll say that the key linchpin here is those goal review sessions. You have to do those things so that you get a chance to speak to your client face-to-face in those settings. If you don’t, you’re not going to have those chances. So, I would strongly recommend that. And then Chris, one of the things I pulled out from a blog he wrote a long time ago was asking someone to refer a friend, not a partner. And it was just, and you said it was a text or email and it was—subject line is the client’s name. I love that because if someone sees the friend’s name is the subject line, they’re going to open it. And you just said, “Hey, lead name. I was just chatting with client, and we agreed that we’d love to have you in for a partner workout. Her next appointment is July 14th. Can you make it?” And that’s a simple one, right? And then all of a sudden, you’ve got access to like a buddy.

Chris Cooper (13:02):
Yeah. And it’s not, “Do you want to?” It’s not, “Let me barf a bunch of information about fitness,” or say something like, “We all want to lose weight this time of year.”

Mike Warkentin (13:14):
Whoa.

Chris Cooper (13:14):
Yeah. Like my biggest mistake early on was always like, “I’m going to impress you with my knowledge, and then you’re going to want to join my gym.” No, it’s just, “This person cares about you. Can you make it?”

Mike Warkentin (13:26):
And if it’s a yes, you’ve got a really good chance to land that client because they’re already locked in with this person. They know about your gym. They trust their friend; they implicitly trust you because their friend trusts you. It’s probably an easy sell. So that’s a huge one that can make you money. Here’s one where you can get a group, and I love this one. So, your same scenario, goal review session, but you’ve got a client, and you know that this client’s kids are into sports. How do you get access to a client’s kid’s sports team? Because this can be a big money one.

Chris Cooper (13:53):
Yeah. So, when I’m teaching this to my staff, I call it thanking up, which is just kind of scaling up your client book by using a thank you. So, we did this so many times especially around like—hockey figure skating were kind of our biggest two, but we also saw a lot of sprinters and basketball players for a while. So, what we would do is this: “Hey Holly, thank you so much for being such an amazing client. I was trying to figure out what I could do to say thank you. And I thought maybe the best thing would be to invite your daughter’s basketball team to come in. I know it’s getting close to the end of their season, and we would just have kind of a fun team party here for them.”

Chris Cooper (14:32):
“What do you think?” Now what you’re doing is you’re solving a massive problem for that team because they have to throw a team party anywhere. The parent is like, “Hell yes. This is amazing.” And you are meeting another dozen parents. Every kid that comes in is going to sign a waiver with their parent’s name, phone number and email address on it. And you can even say, “Hey, if the parents want to come in and watch, that’s totally cool.” And you can invite them too. You know that the kids are going to have an amazing time. It’s not going to be like a salesy relationship, but it’s an amazing conversation starter. And what’s bananas about this tactic is that most kids play more than one sport. So, if you invite 12 kids in, number one, there’s a great chance you’re going to sign up half of them for your kids program. If you don’t have a kids program, you’re going to sign up one or two of their parents anyway. And that kid is also on the swim team. And so, then you say, “Hey, this has been awesome. You’re such a great family to have around our gym. What if we invited your swim team in?” You know, same thing.

Mike Warkentin (15:36):
And would you spend an hour to get 20 or 30 leads? I would. And the worst-case scenario—that’s what you’re doing here—even if no one signs up as a result of this, you’ve probably got 10 kids’ and 20 parents’ email addresses, and all of a sudden you can send those people all sorts of info and warm them up. And if they don’t sign up, then they might see something down the line. “Oh, you run a cycling program in summer? Holy crap, I want in on that.” Right? So, you could spend an hour to get leads, and you’re probably going to sell some people too, but what Chris said there is really important. Make sure they’re signing something, and you’re getting some contact info, and you can even say, “I’m going to send you some stuff from time to time.” Away you go. And then that’s a perfect way to get a ton of stuff.

Chris Cooper (16:14):
You know what’s funny—and it’s just a sign that I’ve owned this gym for 20 years now—is quite often when somebody comes in for an NSI, they’ll say, “Chris trained my kid,” and now they’re retired or whatever, you know?

Mike Warkentin (16:27):
Oh, that’s funny.

Chris Cooper (16:28):
It’s amazing.

Mike Warkentin (16:29):
Yeah, that is interesting. But that’s being the vocal local and getting a referral network; that’s the result. So, that’s the long game. You’ve been doing it long enough that you’re getting the rewards from that, like the boomerangs are coming back. And that’s because you started tossing boomerangs 20 years ago. So, if you’re out there right now, start doing that because the rewards will come back. Next one here, this is an interesting one. You get a client, and this client is a group class person—or even in a free consultation; it’s a prospective client who’s going to sign up. Actually, I’m going to ask you for this one first. This is the million-dollar line. So, guys, I’m going to just blow this up. This line has been said by our marketing officer that this line made him a million dollars. So, we’re going to ask you for this one. Chris, free consultation, you presented a workout plan, and you want to close the sale and see if the client is interested in PT. What do you say?

Chris Cooper (17:13):
Yeah. So, you’re framing this by saying, “Given your goals, here’s what I think is the best course for you. Are you more comfortable doing these workouts one-on-one with me or in a small group setting?”

Mike Warkentin (17:25):
There it is.

Chris Cooper (17:26):
That’s it. And you know, according to John, that made him, that question made him well over a million dollars at his gyms when he had them because you were just giving people options, and one of those options was not yes or no. And what happened was—you’ll find like 30% of the time people will be like, “I’d like to start one-on-one,” and then they stay one-on-one.

Mike Warkentin (17:46):
Use that line, present the plan in a free consultation, not a free trial, and ask the person, “Do you want to do this with me or in a group? And every person who says “with me” is probably going to be what—4x the value or something like that. It’s going to be much greater value. They’re going to get better results. It’s a win for everybody. Remember that line. If you do nothing else from this podcast, remember that line.

Chris Cooper (18:08):
For me, saying, “Would you be more comfortable?” performs best? But that might not—it might be “would you prefer” for other people. But for me, testing this hundreds of times over the last 20 years, it’s, “Would you feel more comfortable doing these workouts in a group setting or one-on-one with me?”

Mike Warkentin (18:26):
There you go. So, this is related to that one: If you are partnering someone up, so let’s say you’ve got a one-on-one client and you want to start shifting into a semi-private or a small group setting, and you want to try and maybe float that past this one-on-one client, what are the lines that you can say to start launching this program?

Chris Cooper (18:44):
Yeah, so I actually learned this from Greg Glassman. This is how he went from doing one-on-one training to small group training, which is what CrossFit always was when he was doing it. So, what he would say is, “Hey Mike, you’re doing amazing. In fact, the only thing that I could think of that would make you get more fitness faster is if I partnered you up with somebody at the same time. Now I’ve got the perfect match for you. She’s around your age, she’s very close to your fitness level, and you guys would be a great collaboration because I think you’d push each other to do a little bit more without it feeling competitive anyway. Do you want to try partnering up with her for a session? We can always go back to one-on-one if you don’t like it,” and that’s it.

Chris Cooper (19:26):
And so then he would bring people in, and “Mike, meet Crystal. You’re going to work out together, and it’s going to be super fun.” And then he would never say, “Well, what’d you think? Do you want to go back?” And nobody ever went back to one-on-one. He never said it’s 10 bucks cheaper to do a semi-private. He did charge 10% less or whatever. But that was just kind of the cherry on top for people. He always positioned it as “this is best for you because,” and then they tried it, and that’s how they did it.

Mike Warkentin (19:56):
And that’s an interesting way, if you’re charging $80 an hour for PT and you get two people together, and you charge instead of 160, you charge 140, each person pays 70—yeah, whatever the math is—they get a small discount that’s basically irrelevant, but it’s something, and you get to double that hourly rate more or less. That’s a pretty cool one. And then they’re—the other thing is they’re going to get better results because it’s going to push them; there’s a little bit of retention built in there because they’ve got a training partner. There’s a lot of good stuff that can come from that. So, if you ever want to start doing semi-private or small group training, that’s the line, and that’s the way to do it. Now Chris, do you have some more there?

Chris Cooper (20:28):
Well, so when we started semi-private at Catalyst, it wasn’t actually that long ago because I didn’t understand that that was the original CrossFit model, but when I decided we did want to start it back in January, we got 12 clients like that using that exact line.

Mike Warkentin (20:42):
It’s been tested; it does work, so remember that one. Here’s one that I think people will struggle with, but I don’t think it’s as difficult as they think. We’re going to talk about asking a client for a video testimonial. So, you’re in a free consultation, client is happy with progress and results, and you just high five, and let them go out the door. That’s a mistake. How do you get that client to give you some marketing assets that will allow you to get more clients just like that person?

Chris Cooper (21:06):
Yeah, I think “testimonial” is what throws people off here. So, here’s what you do.

Mike Warkentin (21:10):
Sounds churchy.

Chris Cooper (21:11):
She’s sitting in front of you, class is over, and she’s leaving. And you mentioned some result that she’s had: “Jane, you just deadlifted 200 pounds. I’m so proud of you. I really think your story could inspire other people, especially people just like you. Can I share your story?” And she’ll be like, “OK,” and then you just pull out your phone, and she’ll be like, “Oh my God, I didn’t think you meant right now.” And I’m not picking on women because guys are worse.

Mike Warkentin (21:43):
Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Cooper (21:44):
“Let me run to the bathroom and comb my hair,” right? And so, you’re like, “Hey, tell me about—you just deadlifted 200 pounds. I’m so proud of you. Why is this an important milestone to you? Why do we care?” And they just start going. They never end in under two minutes. It always winds up with like, “And Catalyst is my favorite place on earth.” And it’s funny, I was visiting this team in Minneapolis years ago called Sabertooth, and we were talking about testimonials. I was sitting in their coach’s room on the couch, and there was this personal training client leaving, and she’s a physician. And I’m like, “There’s your ideal client right there. How are you not getting a testimonial?” “Well, we ask people for testimonials, and they never give them to us.”

Chris Cooper (22:26):
So I got my phone out, and I walked out of the office, and I’m like, “Hey, I’m Chris. These guys were just bragging you up in there. Do you know how proud they are of you?” And she’s like, “I can’t believe they even talk about me.” I’m like, “Seriously, there are so many women who need to hear your story. Would you share it?” “Oh, I don’t know. I’m all sweaty.” I’m like, “It doesn’t matter.” And she’s like, “OK, OK.” Hit record, and they had their testimonial right there from a female physician who probably inspired another 300 women.

Mike Warkentin (22:58):
“Share your story” is different than walking up and saying, “Would you like to do a testimonial and say good things about my gym?” Like, that’s awkward, right? That’s again, my line: “Don’t be weird,” right? Like, just make it natural. “I’d love to share your story and tell other people about you.” Chris, some of the other stuff that you said is—I’m looking at my note here. Maybe you just—“Could you tell someone something you wish you’d known when you started here six months ago?” That’s a really great one. “Any wisdom that you could give someone who’s just starting their fitness journey?” Like little tips where saying, “Hey, could you help someone else?” And it’s not so much as like, “Say good things about my gym.” It’s like, “Share your story.” That’s different, right?

Chris Cooper (23:33):
Yeah, man. And one of the best I ever saw, and this is one of those ones I wish I’d come up with myself. So, they were just grabbing people as they were leaving the gym, and they would say, “You’re doing great. Do you feel like you’re making progress?” “Yes, I am.” Camera comes out. “What advice would you give to the person you used to be a year ago?”

Mike Warkentin (23:54):
Oh, and that’s good.

Chris Cooper (23:55):
They all cried.

Mike Warkentin (23:58):
Yeah. Tears are good for marketing. That emotion is good. Yep.

Chris Cooper (24:03):
Yeah. That’s so good.

Mike Warkentin (24:06):
I would—I love that. “Share your story” is so much more powerful than some of the other awkward approaches to that. “I’m proud of you. Can I tell your story?” “What can you say to your former self?” Like, these things are all great questions. Remember them and use it, and it won’t be awkward the next time you want to ask for a quote unquote testimonial. Do it the easy way. Here’s another one. Chris, this is another big one. This is the—we talk about kids, how it’s a 10-for-one kind of thing. This is the peer group, right? Where it’s like nurses travel in packs, accountants travel in packs, whatever it is. So, you’re in a free consultation again, client’s happy with progress and results. This person works with a large group of people or in an office or has a bunch of peers: How do you get access to the peer group?

Chris Cooper (24:46):
Well, it’s like, what can I do to help this shift worker or this office group or whatever it is, right? Like, that’s what you’ve always got to be thinking about is, “How can I help this person best?” So, the way that we’ve done this in the past is—especially with nurses and accountants, it’s worked extremely well. So, at certain times of the year, their workplace gets even more stressful than normal. So, we had this group of accountants, and it was in like a government thing, and I had the client in for a goal review, and I’m like, “What’s going on?” “Oh my God, the gym is good. It’s my sanctuary.” You’ve heard this if you own a gym. “This is my safe place. I come here to de-stress.” and I’m like, “Yeah, it’s March. Are things even worse at the office right now than normal?”

Chris Cooper (25:28):
“Oh, Chris, you wouldn’t believe it. My god. Between the stress of getting the stuff done, blah.” OK. And you think, “How can I help this person who’s suffering right now?” Well, the best thing that I could do is probably teach her people how to eat healthier so they’re not on this caffeine and sugar rollercoaster all day. Maybe I could teach them some stretches or how to relieve stress at their desk. OK. “Well, the best thing I could do is actually come into your office and teach people how to reduce their stress in 30 minutes a day. Why don’t I just do that?” And of course, this woman was like, “Oh man, that would be a miracle.” And I’m like, “No, I’m really willing to do this. Who should I talk to at your office about setting this up?”

Chris Cooper (26:13):
So, she connects me to her manager, and I talk to the manager, “Hey, I’m willing to come in. This is not a sales pitch. I am going to end—I might do a draw or something, but I’m not going to be there to pitch Catalyst.” And she’s like, “OK, let’s call it a ‘lunch and learn.’ They can bring their lunch, and they can listen to you if they want.” Like, wonderful, so I go into this building. I go through all the security. There’s 30 people sitting in this classroom. This is the first time I ever did it.

Mike Warkentin (26:36):
30 leads.

Chris Cooper (26:36):
Yeah, 30 people right there. I’m like, “OK, we’re going to be moving a little bit, so please sign this waiver. OK. I don’t want you suing me or your boss. Haha.” And then I’m like, “Look, this is a stressful time of the year. I appreciate you guys giving me your attention. I don’t want to waste a second. Everybody stand up.” And we just go through, “Here’s how to do a little squat. Here’s how to stretch. Here’s how to eat to reduce your stress.” “Fantastic. Thank you all for coming. By the way, you guys have been so great. Write your name on a slip of paper and throw it in this brown paper bag. I’ll draw somebody and give them a free membership. And what I’ve got there is 30 leads. Like no Facebook ad is going to get me 30 accountants who earn more than $120,000 per year who live in this area code, right? But that’s what I just bought myself.

Mike Warkentin (27:20):
And I think I’ve heard that story before. Didn’t that result in a large amount of money over the years for you?

Chris Cooper (27:25):
Yeah, that one was ridiculous. So that one, the first lady who put her hand up says, “You coached my kid. I saw you at the hockey rink.” And like, “Hey, the kids on your bench had a lot more energy than the kids on our bench. How’d that happen?” And then I was like, “Well, I’ll write down what I tell my kids, and you can share it with your team.” And that became this piece of content called “How to Feed a Hockey Animal.” And of course, that got distributed to like every hockey playing kid in town, which was incredible. But another time it was like, “Hey guys, we’re writing this book on how the brain and body work together in exercise. Can I buy your staff lunch?” And I sent this to a physical therapy practice. They immediately started referring people to us who were on insurance plans. And that earned us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few years. And it wasn’t me coming in saying, “Let me pitch this program to you.” It was, “Can we have a conversation about this? I really could use your advice. I’ll buy you lunch in exchange.” But really, that tray of sandwich just got me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mike Warkentin (28:23):
Make connections, meet people, talk things, don’t be weird, have conversations. It is going to result in downstream effects for your business. Chris, I asked a few questions in our Growth group for Two-Brain clients. I got a few really good answers, and I want to throw a couple of them at you. Two in particular because there’s two scenarios that are always cut. One is just squidgy. No one likes it. And the other one is a real opportunity for gym owners to hold onto some revenue. So, I’m going to give you the scenario or the question and the answer. So, “What do I say to a client who smells bad?” And if you’re like me, my stomach drops, and I’m just like, “Oh my god, I’ve got to deal with this.” Horrible, right? So, here’s the answer, and now I want you to tell me what you think of this: “Hey client, I noticed you’ve been working up a smell when you’re getting after it in the gym. I’ve had the same problem at times. You might try replacing some of your older workout clothes, and you could definitely use the gym shower before class if you’ve had a long work day. I’ve got body wash in there as well as spray deodorant you can use before and after working out.” What do you think of that?

Chris Cooper (29:18):
I think that’s fantastic.

Mike Warkentin (29:20):
Right? You’re just giving someone a friendly, kind bit of advice and not making it awkward because it can get awkward on that one. Another person said they use a preemptive strike in a message to all clients. So, when it’s starting to get warm, they say something like this in an email newsletter or something: “We’re heading into the deep heat. Summer smells can get funky. Take a moment and wash those knee sleeves and wrist wraps. While you’re at it, spray some odor killer on your shoes and in your gym bag. Swing by the front desk this weekend and grab a free on-the-go deodorant spray to keep handy. Lastly, double check your workout gear to see if it passes the sniff test. Sometimes things get past their prime and need to be replaced.” Solving problems before they happen. What do you think of that?

Chris Cooper (29:57):
Amazing. Like, that’s more my style. Like how can I solve this before it becomes a problem? I love that one. So good. Who did that come from?

Mike Warkentin (30:04):
I believe that was Brandy Forbes, I believe.

Chris Cooper (30:08):
Oh, of course it was. She’s so thoughtful and so empathetic. Yes. Amazing.

Mike Warkentin (30:14):
I think that was from her, and apologies if I’ve got that wrong, but I believe that was from her. Here’s a really good one, and I can tell you this comes from—the answer here comes from Jolene Bingham who is our Tinker lead and a great gym owner. This is great because she’s literally used this to save five people from holding their membership over summer. So, that’s five people who are still paying. So, the question was, “What do you say to a client who wants to hold a membership for summer?” And for me it was like, “Oh, I guess.” And then the person—I lose three months of revenue or whatever it is, and then for half of them they don’t come back, so I lose all the revenue. It was a disaster. Here is what Jolene said: “Hey name. We understand that summer is a busy time of year. However, you’ve made so much progress on insert the goal that you know from a goal review session.” So, “You’ve made so much progress on your squat strength. I would hate to see you lose that progress over summer. Let’s set a goal review so we can figure out a plan that allows you to continue making progress and accommodates your busy summer schedule.” What do you think of that?

Chris Cooper (31:11):
I love it so much. Yeah, so good.

Mike Warkentin (31:14):
Five people didn’t cancel because of that. There was one person, Jolene said, who had a legit—like was deployed to a war zone or something. It was like—the hold was legit, right? Where it’s one of those ones where you’re like, “Ah, you’re good.” Astronaut or something. But this one, most of them, five of them, saved just from using those lines. So, guys, those are two bonus ones that come from our Growth group with strong influence from our mentor team. Use those ones as well when they come up.

Chris Cooper (31:39):
Can I add one more there?

Mike Warkentin (31:40):
Yeah, please.

Chris Cooper (31:41):
For people taking a short-term vacation. So, one thing that’s always worked extremely well for us is, “Hey, can I put my membership on hold? I’m going on a cruise for two weeks, or I’m going to California for a week, or I’m going on holiday to this place.” And what we always say is, “Why don’t you find me the names of three gyms near where you’re staying. I’ll contact them for you, and I will pay for your drop-in fees because I don’t want you to lose your fitness.” And one time in five, they’ll actually do it. The other times they’ll just keep their membership running.

Mike Warkentin (32:13):
There’s another one you guys can use. It is the summer season. You are going to get asked for holds. Use those lines to retain members. Chris, as we close this out, if someone had some questions, where could they go to ask questions like this of a great group of gym owners and mentors and even you?

Chris Cooper (32:27):
Well, the best is in our mentorship program. That’s where all these responses came from. But the next best is gymownersunited.com, which is our free group that we run for gym owners. There’s 9,400 gym owners in there right now, and if you ask these specific questions in there, you’ll get a lot of good responses.

Mike Warkentin (32:45):
There you go. If you do one thing now, go over to gymownersunited.com. If you want to go further than that and go further faster, head to twobrainbusiness.com and book a call to talk about how a complete plan can help you run your business better. This has been “Run a Profitable Gym.” Chris, thanks for being here.

Chris Cooper (32:59):
Thanks buddy. This is awesome.

Mike Warkentin (33:00):
Alright guys, hit “subscribe” on the way out so you don’t miss another show. We’ll be back just in a few days.

The post Scenario Solutions: Say Exactly This to Grow Your Gym! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Your Say-This-Stuff Guide to Growing a Gym

Ever have anxiety as a gym owner because you’re not sure what to say in certain situations?

I’ve been there, too.

I remember giving “sales pitches” that involved haphazard gym tours, some confusing tidbits about “accommodating resistance” and then an awkward moment where I fumbled to suggest the person should join.

In some of my pitches, I actually told the prospective member that I was a terrible salesperson. 

Here’s what would have helped me: A cheat sheet of “exactly what to say” in situations where the right words would help me grow my business.

I’ll give that to you today.

Example:

They ask: “Do you offer discounts?”

You say: “No, we don’t have discounts.”

That’s a very simple line, but it’s valuable.

Do you know how often gym owners fumble to answer questions about discounts? Answer: All the time. Having a solid response handy solves a lot of problems.

You don’t have to say my lines word for word in a monotone voice like a programmed robot—but you can memorize them and drop them naturally as needed. Or feel free to make small adjustments to the wording so it suits you and the situation.

Whatever path you choose, I’d recommend you role-play situations with a staff member or partner and practice saying the lines.

If you do, everything will be much smoother when it’s real.

Start a Conversation Anywhere

Scenario: You’re out and about and want to start a conversation.

You Say: “Good morning!” (This is literally my No. 1 new-buddy opening line. It works every time.)

Make Friends With Neighboring Businesses

Scenario: You’d like to connect with the staff and owners at nearby businesses so they’ll say nice things when their clients ask about you (they will).

You Say: “Hi! I’m [NAME] from [GYM] down the street. I wanted to introduce myself, and I brought coffee for your staff. How’s business?”

Invite Someone in for a Free Consultation

Scenario: You’re chatting with someone who mentions a fitness goal or problem.

In Person, You Say: “I think I can help. I have an opening tomorrow at 2 p.m. Would you be open to talking about the next step?” 

Online, You Say: “I can help with a personalized program that will get you to your goals fast. Let’s talk about it. I’m free right now. What’s your number?”

Invite Someone to Work Out With You and Do a Free Consultation

Scenario: A person you’ve met is talking about their fitness goals.

You Say: “Those are great! I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we work out together at my gym? Just you and me. How’s Thursday afternoon?”

Invite a Client’s Friend for a Workout

Scenario: You’re doing a goal review with a client who’s thrilled with progress, so you ask if she knows anyone else who might need your help. She mentions a friend. You ask if it would be OK to connect with the friend, and she provides contact info.

You Say: “Hey, Alen, I’m sitting here with Joan and we were just talking about you! She’d like to invite you in to work out with her. What do you say?”

By Text/Email, You Type: Subject line: [CLIENT’S NAME] Text: Hey [LEAD NAME], I was just chatting with [CLIENT], and we agreed that we’d love to have you in for a partner workout. [CLIENT’S] next appointment will be [EXACT DATE AND TIME]. Can you make it?”

Ask a Client to Refer a Partner

Scenario: You’re doing a goal review with a client who’s thrilled with progress, and she’s regularly mentioned a spouse who might benefit from fitness coaching.

You say: “Jane, I know your spouse loves to play [SPORT]. What if we invited him in to do some exercises and stretches that would help him perform better? Just a little bonus from me to you. You think he’d go for it?” Then get the spouse’s contact info, text him an invite, and set him up with an appointment.

Get a Sports Team Into Your Gym

Scenario: You’re doing a goal review with a client who’s thrilled with progress, and she’s got a kid who’s involved in sports.

You Say: “Jill, I just wanted to thank you for bringing all of your friends in here. It’s so awesome. I know your daughter’s team is just starting [SPORT] practices for the season. Do you think they’d like to come in for a free mobility drill after practice? So if their practice is at 5 p.m. and they’re done at 6, I’ll wait here. They can all come in. I’ll teach them some mobility and some stretching—the stuff the coaches don’t really wanna get into. Or I can give them a seminar: I can come to them and I can talk to them and their parents about nutrition. What do you say?”

Ask a New Client to Do PT Instead of Group Classes

Scenario: In a free consultation, you’ve presented a workout plan. Now you want to close the sale and see if the client is interested in PT.

You Say (This is Literally a Million-Dollar Line): “Would you prefer to do these workouts one-on-one with me or in a small group setting?”

Ask a Client for a Video Testimonial

Scenario: In a free consultation, a client is very happy with progress and results. You’d like her to record a video you can use on social media and your website.

You Say: “Jane, I’m so proud of you! I think your story could inspire a lot of people! Do you have any idea how special you are? Look, I have my camera right here. I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you give some wisdom to those who are just starting their fitness journey? Maybe just something you wish you’d been told when you started here six months ago?” (Hold up the camera and press record.)

Get a Peer Group Into a Gym

Scenario: In a free consultation, a client is very happy with progress and results. You’d like to connect with the people he works with.

You Say: “I know work is crazy right now. Why don’t we invite your colleagues to come in and blow off some steam in a special class just for them? Or I can come by your office and do a nutrition seminar at lunch. What do you think?”

Be Prepared to Grow Your Gym

These are just a few of the many scenarios gym owners find themselves in regularly, and it always helps to be prepared.

Being prepared will ensure you take advantage of the many, many everyday opportunities you have to build your business.

My advice: Rehearse and role-play. Don’t do this so you can spit out “pre-recorded lines” that sound awkward and forced. Do it because practice will allow you to be calm, smooth and natural.

If you’ve already practiced operating in a situation, you’ll be much more relaxed when real life appears.

And you’ll earn more new clients!

The post Your Say-This-Stuff Guide to Growing a Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

4 Major Gym-Owner Mistakes and 1 Simple Fix

Here’s a short list of mistakes that cost me a lot of clients and cash:

1. I thought most clients had the same goal: “Do hard workouts and get fit.”

2. I thought all clients understood how my workouts and coaching would move them closer to their goals.

3. I thought all clients logged workouts and recognized incremental progress toward larger goals.

4. I thought all clients’ goals stayed the same over time.

I was wrong in all four cases.

One single thing could have corrected all the errors.

Goal Review Sessions

Had I done goal review sessions with clients, they would have gotten better results, and my profit-and-loss statement would have looked far better.

Here’s the exact way each of my errors would have been eliminated had I met with my members for 15 minutes every three or four months.

1. I would have discovered my clients’ actual goals, and I could have measured their starting points in order to show measurable progress in the next meetings.

2. I would have laid out an exact plan to accomplish the goals, and the value of my coaching would have been very clear.

3. I would have been able to show clients clear progress toward major goals and celebrate their minor wins along the way. And I could have modified plans to help them reach goals faster.

4. I would have been able to change plans when clients altered their goals.

You can see how all of that would have improved retention in my gym. Reduced churn alone would have decreased marketing and onboarding costs, increased gross revenue, and driven up lifetime value.

I also would have sold more personal training to clients who wanted to make swifter progress but didn’t even know more attention was available.

I don’t even want to think about how much money my mistakes cost me.

Podcast with Chris Cooper: “Why You Absolutely Must Do Goal Reviews With Clients.”

Start Now!

You do not have to follow my path.

If you start doing goal review sessions next week, you will avoid my mistakes and see measurable results very quickly.

I can say this with confidence because we interview top fitness entrepreneurs on “Run a Profitable Gym,” and every gym owner who uses goal reviews points to clear improvements in key performance indicators.

So set aside some time to do these sessions with your current and incoming clients. Two-Brain data shows this time is a great investment.

But you don’t have to trust us if you aren’t ready.

Run a test if that helps: Do goal reviews with five or 10 clients. Our data suggests about 30 percent of them will upgrade services by about 30 percent if you follow our plan.

Then put follow-up meetings on the calendar in 90 days. When you’ve gone through the entire cycle, review the metrics for these clients.

Did they purchase more services? Did they renew memberships? Did they make faster progress? Did they refer a friend because you asked them to at the end of a great goal review session? Are they happier? Is the ARM for your test group higher than your ARM for your other clients?

I’m confident you’ll get positive results. If you do, implement goal reviews with all clients, and do them every 90 days forever.

The worst plan?

Do nothing and make the same mistakes I did.

The post 4 Major Gym-Owner Mistakes and 1 Simple Fix appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Easy Ways to Earn More Per Client Starting Today

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Do some quick math. Multiply your client count by $500. It’s a huge number, right? Today we’re talking to a gym owner whose average revenue per member, or ARM, is well more than $500, and he’s going to share his secrets with you in just a minute. Welcome here. My name is Mike Warkentin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I talk to the best gym owners in the world every month and every week, and I want you to find out what they have to say. So please hit “subscribe” so you don’t miss a single episode. ARM: It’s a huge deal, and know that wherever you are, you can add value for clients, and even five bucks a client drops right to your bottom line, and it’s going to make a huge difference in your business because it doesn’t come with any additional expenses. So, George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway runs Brainstorm Fitness in San Diego, California. George-Anthony, can we add five bucks to every listener’s ARM in the next 30 minutes?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (00:50):
I believe so.

Mike Warkentin (00:51):
OK, let’s do it. You made our top 10 leaderboard in April for ARM, and it was a huge number, and I want to help people out. So, let’s get into the details here. I know that you’re in a high-income area in San Diego, but you’ve got tons and tons of competition in the gym market. So how do you find these high-value clients who contribute to your ARM number?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (01:09):
One of my biggest things for finding new clients is referral base. Ah, setting up those goal review sessions, sitting in with your clients because like-minded people spend time together, right? So, the majority of the time, if they’re a high-value earner, if they are consumed and very much willing to make a decision on their health and wellness, they have one or two or three or five friends who think and feel the same way that they do. So, stepping up and sitting down with my clients and making those goal review sessions and opening up that conversation was probably the number one thing that led us to where we are today. We were already at a bit of a higher price point, but in order to be able to provide the value and show them that we can actually change their lives, it afforded that opportunity for that conversation.

Mike Warkentin (01:59):
So I think you just made people money right away in the first six minutes of this show because goal review sessions have been proven to increase ARM and retention, length of engagement, the whole thing, and I said this on the Two-Brain Summit recently: if you’re not doing one them with clients, you’re wasting money, and you’re literally not doing everything that you could do to increase value and increase length of engagement. So, you’re doing goal review sessions and you’re getting referrals out of them. That’s a huge deal because referrals don’t cost any money. You don’t have to spend any money on ads. You’re just asking people, “Do you have anyone else in your life I could help?” Right. Tell me a little bit about your goal review sessions. When did you start doing them, and did you see your numbers, your metrics, start to improve as a result?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (02:37):
I pretty much saw—I started doing them almost immediately after hiring my coach from Two-Brain, which is Nick Habich.

Mike Warkentin (02:45):
Good guy.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (02:46):
Awesome guy, awesome guy. And I was upset for a long time, to be honest, because prior to that, I always thought that my clients should be referring me business. I’m like, “How come they aren’t? Why aren’t the coaches bringing new people in? Why aren’t my clients telling people?” And it’s because I never asked.

Mike Warkentin (03:02):
So you start asking, and what happened?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (03:04):
Started asking, right? And we have a saying, right? They say, “Closed mouths don’t get fed,” right? So, you have to speak it, you have to say it right? And a lot of time, I think we have these reservations about it because we already think that we’re great, but we don’t want to impress that upon people by saying it, right? So, the goal review session, what it does, it allows them to cheerlead for you to you, right? And then when they say it out loud, they’re like, “Wow, I actually was able to accomplish this with your help. I do know someone,” right? Because maybe they had a conversation with someone else just recently that has a similar issue that they had in the very beginning, right? So, it affords them to—it brings, being able to say it out loud kind of brings it into fruition, right? Because it makes them think about it all over again.

Mike Warkentin (03:55):
You can’t expect people to bring clients to your door. I did this for a decade. It just doesn’t work, right? You just sit there, and you think, “I’ll be a great coach, and they’ll show up.” It never happens. When you start asking people and saying, “Hey, your spouse, he’s having trouble with his golf swing. He’d like to be a little bit stronger. I can help with that.” And they’re like, “Really?” Boom, it happens. So, and in the goal review format, it doesn’t feel unnatural, right? It feels very natural to say, “You’re having amazing success. You’re crushing it. Congrats on your PR. We’ve set some new goals. Here’s the plan to get there. Hey, do you have anyone else who might benefit from something like this?” And with you, you said literally people say like, “Yeah, I just talked to someone who has the same problem. Can we get them in here?” Easy day. So, your metrics, your numbers, when you started doing this, you saw everything start to move?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (04:39):
Hugely, hugely. Two-Brain has honestly changed my life completely. And it went from, especially post-COVID, because I’ve been open for about seven years now. After COVID, we were lost all over again, especially here in San Diego. It was pretty strict. I know in Canada it was pretty strict as well, but we had to change the game of it when the time came, right? We had to pivot from doing mostly classes to doing more private, so more semi-private. And for me, that was one of the things that let me know that I still had a business that could make it.

Mike Warkentin (05:16):
So right there, listeners, referrals, goal review sessions, those two things right away. If you start doing them now, you will make more money. That’s a guarantee. Our stats show that this happens. Start doing it. And George-Anthony is the proof. Now, George, you said that your ARM is slightly higher than normal for this reporting period, which was in April, but your normal target would still put you easily on the leaderboard. So, what effect did this month’s number have, and then what’s the bread and butter in a standard month?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (05:40):
We had a contract with a school, a local school nearby, right? So, a colleague of mine brought us in to do some of the strength and conditioning for the school and we ended up moving on from that project and looking for others. But that was a big chunk of change for us, right? It was a substantial number for us. However, I will say this: Although we removed that chunk, it kind of allowed us to refocus now. And instead of looking at it as a loss, it’s actually a new opportunity to be able to now fill stuff into it, because at the school we were having to travel, so there was two or three hours of a day that we weren’t here within the business. So, it now actually affords us a bit more time to be able to get more bread and butter, which for us, now that that’s been removed, are one-on-ones and semi-privates.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (06:33):
So my studio focuses on bridging the gap between physical therapy and personal training. So, the majority of our clients come to us because they’ve had some injury or ailment in the past that’s been kind of an ongoing thing for them. So, some of them have done PT and love it or hate it, and they’re looking for something that’s a bit more sustainable, or they are trying to avoid it, right? So, some people have had an acute injury, maybe a back injury or hip or a knee, and they say, “Well, you know what? I want to work out because I know it’s important to me, but I don’t want to do the traditional thing that has led me to this to begin with.”

Mike Warkentin (07:14):
OK, so you’re bridging a gap, and you’re offering a very specialized service. That’s high value, right? Anything that solves problems and bridges gaps and fills holes in markets and gets people where they want to be or produces swift results quickly, anything that does that is a high value service, and you can charge more for it, right? Dumping people into a weight room and saying, “Here’s your— $20 gets you access to all my equipment.” That’s one thing. Providing a personalized one-on-one plan to get someone through and past an injury within your scope of practice, of course, that is a high, high, high value service, and that puts you on a leaderboard. So, tell me a little bit about your gym and your business model. Like what are you selling, how much space do you have clients, all that. Just give us the 411 on what you’re doing at your gym so we can understand.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (07:57):
So we have a very small studio. So, it’s about 1,020 square feet, right? To include this office that I’m in right now. Like I said, we’ve been open for about seven years. So initially one of the things that we really focused on was what I called at the time group classes, but there was a cap to that because of limited space. So, we used to max out the class at about 12 persons, and we had a couple of one-on-one sprinkled in. Post-COVID, we pivoted quite a bit, right? Because now we have to say, “OK, we need to be able to, one, recoup some funds and set realistic targets that didn’t rely on something that was very high volume,” right? Because you had a CrossFit-style facility previously, correct?

Mike Warkentin (08:40):
I did. Yep.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (08:40):
A lot of CrossFit gyms have a volume advantage that we don’t have just because of limited space, right? I can only fit so many barbells on so many bodies in a thousand square feet. So. what we now do is one group class a day, right? That’s a 7 a.m. class. Now we do packages of class sessions, or you could do our unlimited membership. Unlimited membership is a really smoking deal. It’s a high-value, super affordable deal. And we have our long-time clients who have been here since almost day one. Then we provide one-on-one personal training. So, I have one now. I just literally sat down with a new coach yesterday, so about to be two coaches. I would be the third for one-on-one specialized injury prevention post-rehabilitative care and getting people to be what we call “Brainstorm Strong” within our facility.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (09:34):
So that builds confidence and movement without the restrictions that come with traditional exercise, right? So, a lot of times we look at movement patterns in terms of squat, hinge, push pull, but we live in—those are one dimensional movements, right? Single plane movements a lot of the time, and we incorporate a lot of transverse stuff, right? And then we also do semi-private training. So semi-private training allows for up to four persons in our same time slot. And we try to pair those with someone who has a similar goal, or perhaps they are a couple, or perhaps they are a group of friends and we get them in at what for some people is a more affordable rate than one-on-ones, but it still has the same schedule flexibility that the one-on-ones have without having to lock them into a class time slot. And they still get some personalized training in there as well.

Mike Warkentin (10:22):
So, you pulled out something that I want to highlight. Group training is your discount option, correct?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (10:28):
Yeah, that’s correct.

Mike Warkentin (10:28):
Yep. And that’s cool. That’s because for me it was the other way. Say that again.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (10:32):
It went from the top to not the bottom, right? But it changed places. It used to be our priority, and now it’s part of the conversation when someone comes in, and like we said, many, many times at Two-Brain say, “You are the professional, right?” You’re the person that they already trust the second they come into the door, they have trust in you, right? The second they show up for that NSI, they have trust in you already or else they wouldn’t walk in the door, right? So, they are trusting us to provide them with a solution for their problem. So, if their one no, if their one reason, is price, or cost I should say, then we can say, “Well here’s a reasonable alternative,” right? It’s not just, “OK, well bye,” right? It’s almost like a good, better, best, but good is still great, right?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (11:20):
Because the fact of the matter is, I think the majority of people just need to move, right? So, another person comes in, and I said, “I think you should train three times a week.” And he said, “Well, I can’t really afford three one-on-ones.” “Awesome. Well, how about one one-on-one per week. And then I’d love to offer you unlimited classes. And our classes are very scalable, very friendly, and they meet you where you are in your fitness journey,” and they go, “Well that sounds great. How many times can I come in?” I say, “Well, you come in up to six times a week for our class.” Right, so now, in the grand scheme of things, if you did one single one-on-one, and you know what my numbers are, right? So, and that’s kind of a sweet spot for us. One one-on-one a week plus unlimited classes almost gets you down to, if you really take advantage of it, that gets you $25 a session, right? Which is a steal if you were to train five times a week, right? But of course it gives you the opportunity to do so without breaking the bank for most people.

Mike Warkentin (12:13):
What a great way to drive up your ARM. Buy a group class plus one, one-on-one session, right? Like for the average gym, an average group class membership is like 160 to 169 bucks or something like that. Average PT is 75. Put those numbers together, all of a sudden, you’re looking at 225, 230. You can make a very good living. You can make more than 100 grand a year if you have 150 clients who are paying $225, $205 a month, right? So, this is an easy way and you’re doing it as this incredible dropdown sell, we’ll call it, where you can say, “Hey, I get that you can’t do personal training with me four times a week at a high rate. However, how about one plus this?” So, you get group people in that slot.

Mike Warkentin (12:51):
You fill that up. You’re making money there. Then you’ve got your semi-private, which listeners again, is people can be doing the same program or they can be doing their own program in a group of three to four where a coach circulates, and that’s a very high value service. Again, that’s a nice dropdown sell as well. Then you’ve got your top tier, which is one-on-one, my attention, personal training for the hour up to whatever many times a month. And those memberships are thousands and thousands of dollars. You’ve got this incredible package, and you can see how that ARM number starts to come up very, very quickly. Group class. Do you mind telling me how much your group class membership rate is? And if you do mind, that’s fine too.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (13:26):
200 a month unlimited.

Mike Warkentin (13:27):
Yeah, so 200 a month—that’s already more than most gyms are charging for group class memberships, but then if you tack on that single personal training session, it goes up by a huge number. Which of your clients out there, listeners, does not need a single personal training session a month to help them get through a sticking point? All of mine did. I just never told them about it. And my average revenue per member was $123 a month, not over 500. So, this is a huge win right off the bat. So, there’s more secrets right there that you can take and put in your gym: offer premium services, and when people can’t afford them or don’t want them, drop down a little bit, but tell them about the best way to get results first. When you sell stuff, George-Anthony, do you do that? Do you give them the best prescription right off the bat saying like, “Hey, it’s one on one”?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (14:12):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they say shoot for the stars and land on the moon, right? Right. But at the end of the day, it’s the same thing, right? And honestly, once your clients trust you, and even doing this with existing clients, right? Whether it’s offering your PT clients classes or offering your class clients PT, right? It flips it on its head in terms of revenue, right? It’s a huge uptick in revenue, right? It takes it from what could be, again, 200 to 400, 400 to 600, 600 to 800, right? Depending. And doing it with your existing clients, I think, in order to affect your ARM, is that they already trust you. They already trust you. They already love you. You’ve already got them results. And this is one suggestion that you can make to get them to the next level.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (15:01):
So when you sit down for that goal review session and you say, “Here’s where we’re at,” right? And they say, “OK, well, I was hoping to get there a little bit quicker.” Maybe summertime’s coming. “I’ve got an event coming up.” I have literally—I just had a friend yesterday, we’re going on an event this weekend. And he is like, “How do I gain muscle and lose fat by next week?” And I’m like, “Had you been training with us for the last two months, you’d have been got it done.” You know, but it’s already there, right? They’re already in the room. You just have to walk to the conversation.

Mike Warkentin (15:32):
Yeah. Do you get some bleed over from your group class membership into that semi-private PT stream? Like do people eventually say, “Hey, I want to stop the gas?” Yeah, they do?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (15:40):
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that’s one of the best places to get PT is in your classes, right? Sit down. Because a lot of times we think the goal reviews are just for the already PT clients. The people who are already only doing one on one. No, ask a question. Even if you’re not the one coach in the class for the moment, especially as owners, right. For those who are in the owner’s room at the summit this year, the conversation is slightly different, but all of your clients should know you. They should know your face. They should trust you. I actually stepped in to teach a class this morning, and one of my clients came up and she goes, “This is what I pay for.” And I’m like, “That’s awesome,” so they have that trust in me, so it affords the opportunity to say, “Well, how’s it going?”

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (16:23):
And they say, “Well, I’ve been having this one issue, I can’t get this one move, or I have this one kink that has been bugging me.” “Well, you know what? How about I get you in for a one-on-one? I have a slot tomorrow.” And I think those little pieces are also crucial because it adds a little bit, I won’t use the word pressure, but it affords them, “Oh wow. He’s going to open up his thing just for me,” right? So, it allows us to say, “Hey, you know what? I have an opening tomorrow at three. I’d love to give it to you. Come in and let’s sit down and have a conversation.” And now you just doubled your number potentially, right? And even if it’s just for one month, two months, three months down the road, but now they know anytime that they do have an issue, they could come back to you and do it again too.

Mike Warkentin (17:08):
Yeah. And it’s hard to find new clients, right? Because they don’t know you. They may not like you. They may not trust you. And to sell them a huge package, that’s hard, right? It’s hard to do. It’s doable. Like Nick Habich, your mentor, is a great salesperson; he could definitely do it, but it’s not easy. But if you have current clients, and Chris Cooper has said this so many times, selling more to them, providing more value to them, is way easier because they already know you. So, an easy win, gym owners, you’ve got clients: Do they have kids? Yep. Can you help their kids? Yep. Do they need a kids program? Probably. Ask them. And if enough of them say, “I want a kids program,” start with a six- or eight-week kids program, test it out. If you fill that thing three times in a row, put in a regular kids program.

Mike Warkentin (17:47):
That’s just one example. Spouses, same thing. There’s all things. Parents, older adults, 50 plus programs—we talked about this at the summit. All these different ways to help your current clients more and help their circle because they have this—they love you, right? And so, you’re a perfect example of that. I want to ask you about retaining high-value clients because you get them, they’re amazing, they’re paying you five, seven, $800,000 a month, whatever it is. How do you keep these people long term? What are you doing specifically to make sure these people don’t go away?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (18:14):
So, I’ll actually start off by discussing losing some of them. Because I think that’s important, right? It happens sometimes. So, I recently had a client who left because he had his reasons. And I said, “OK, well I had black and white proof that showed that we met his goals.” And that’s why these goal review sessions are important as well. So, you can sit down, and it becomes their decision, not based on something that you did or didn’t do, right? So, in order to—it then allows you an opportunity to figure out “What do I need to do to keep them?” Because anytime—I think exit interviews are important, as we talk about as well. When a client leaves, “Hey, is there anything that I can do better?” And those are the things that you focus on making changes on in order to keep your existing clients.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (18:58):
So in order to keep those existing clients, it starts off by having a conversation about what’s most important to them, right? “Hey, is weight loss most important to you? Awesome. Now we have metrics for weight loss.” “Is pain management important to you? Awesome. Now I can create an intangible goal for you that’s based on a scale of one to 10. Hey, how did you feel by the beginning with this issue that you came in with, right? 10 being the worst. Was it a five or a six or a seven?” And then in 30 days, “Hey, remember that same issue that we discussed? Where are you at now?” And hopefully they’re not still at a five or a six or a seven, right? So, it’s being able to quantitatively and qualitatively show proof in the pudding as we say, right? Show that you are able to get them the result that they need.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (19:44):
And even more important, I think, is building the core of building a relationship with that client. Give a gift card, take them out for a coffee, develop a human relationship both in and out the gym, right? Because then, not only did they trust you from a professional standpoint, they just trust you as a person, right? I used to have a colleague who said, “You need two things to be successful in this industry: likability and credibility. And you can’t have too much of either one.” So, I think for my highest value clients that I’ve been able to keep—and we’re just now getting these numbers right, I’m just now starting to see these metrics for LEG, for length of engagement—it’s developing that relationship that doesn’t just tie to the workout, that doesn’t just tie to the nutrition plan that you gave them, that doesn’t just tie to the WOD of the day or programming, right? It’s about developing a genuine relationship and getting to know that person on a different level.

Mike Warkentin (20:38):
You said something really profound that I’m going to repeat. Measure the thing that your client cares about. Again, you’ll hear this in our blog all the time. I did not do this. I thought people just want to do the same workouts I was doing, and I hadn’t come to my gym. I didn’t measure what they cared about. I measured like deadlifts and Fran times and other things like that, which wasn’t a bad thing, but it wasn’t the stuff that they cared about because some of them, many of them, cared about weight loss or cared about looking a certain way or cared about something other than the stats that I was measuring. If you measure what your clients care about and then show them the progress along a scale, you were a three, now you’re a 10 or whatever it was, you’ve lost five pounds, you’ve lost eight pounds, you’ve improved your deadlift, whatever they care about, you show them that metric, you’re going to retain more members because the progress is obvious to you, but it’s not always obvious to your clients.

Mike Warkentin (21:24):
And it’s certainly not obvious if you are not measuring the thing that they care about. So that’s a huge one to take away from this show: Ask the client what they care about, then measure it and then show them the improvement. If you do that, you will keep more members, and you’ll sell more. I want to ask you this one, you talked a little bit how—you said Two-Brain mentorship change your life. Talk to me a little bit about what that means. What specific stuff have you done that really moved things forward? And you talked about COVID and the whole thing after that. What have we got on the table here that really made your business better and made you see huge ROI in mentorship?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (21:56):
I can almost sum it up in one word, and that word is accountability, right? Nick and I—when Two-Brain first presented to me my options for coaches, they said that based on the things that you put in, here are three people who we think would be a good fit. Nick happens to live in the same town that I used to live in before I moved to San Diego. One, Nick is a military veteran, so am I. Two, Nick owns two gyms already. Three. So, he’s been through what I’ve already been through in so many different ways, and I feel responsible to him to accomplish the things that we plan together because more often than not, we are the leaders in our own spaces, right? So, we don’t have necessarily an accountability partner like we are to our clients, right? For our clients, we’re the ones going, “Hey, you missed a meeting. Hey, you missed a session. Hey, what’s this? What are these numbers? What’s this? What’s that?” And so on. And that’s what having a Two-Brain member did for me the most was provided me that accountability. Someone else that I had to respond to, someone else who I had to be able to show up for, right? And it was for my own benefit, just like we do for our clients.

Mike Warkentin (23:12):
And it’s needed. I’ll give you an example. Did you sign up for any of the Summit workouts in Chicago?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (23:18):
I did not.

Mike Warkentin (23:19):
But that’s OK because we checked—but I was standing there, and we were checking the sign-ins at 5 a.m. and every time people sign in, and then they don’t show up at 5 a.m., and they show up at 6 a.m., and on Sunday, it’s worse because people are hungover. And it was funny because we were talking about this: As gym owners, we all complain about clients who don’t show up for workouts when they’re traveling, or they don’t do their workouts when they’re traveling, or they sign in for a class and don’t show up, and then we had a group of gym owners, and many of them did the same thing. And again, it doesn’t matter because they had a great time in Chicago at the Summit. So, I’m not making fun of them.

Mike Warkentin (23:51):
But the idea is that that accountability, every coach needs a coach. And if someone had said, “Hey, if I called that person at 4:45 in the hotel and said, ‘Hey, I know you’re hungover, but we’re downstairs waiting on you,’ that person would’ve run down the stairs and worked out.” But we didn’t do that obviously because we had 1,000 gym owners. But you get the idea. So that accountability is a big one, and we saw proof of that. I’m going to close this one out. You’ve given a ton of info already. I’m going to ask you for something specific. So, if you go back to a period when your ARM was much lower, you weren’t on the leaderboard, way lower, what’s something that you would do to increase it by just $5 or $10? And I want to give this to the listeners so that they can take this and take a small step today. What do you got?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (24:29):
Introduce something to your clients that you already practice, and you already trust, right? And it could be something simple. It could be something that doesn’t necessarily cost a lot, right? It could be just a piece of advice. It could be signing up for a newsletter. It could be, “Hey, we’re adding this one little thing.” So, for me, one of the things that I did was I purchased a fridge, and I filled it, I stocked it, with coconut water and a couple different types of energy drinks that I personally am into, right? So, if there’s something that at the beginning of the workout, my client sees me taking a sip and they’re like, “Hey, what’s that?” “It’s this.” Awesome. Buy that drink. You are already buying it for yourself. For example, buy a case, right? Costs only a couple bucks, but you can pick your number that makes sense, throw it in the fridge, and say, “Hey, grab this.”

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (25:14):
And before you know it, that $5 is $10. That $10 is $20. Because they’re doing one every single time that they come in. Now that’s one that comes with a little bit of cost. What I think even if you were to just say, “Hey, add something intangible,” right? Even if it’s a scale. Say, “Hey, you know what? Something we’re going to start incorporating this month is daily weigh-ins or daily challenges.” And you say, “It’s only this much to sign up for that challenge.” At the end of it, you can reward them with something that doesn’t necessarily have a cost. And it could just be acknowledgement, right? It could be something that’s they, they go to the top of the leaderboard, but in order to sign up for the challenge, it’s five bucks to sign up for the challenge. And the majority of your clients, again, they know you, they trust you, and they’re willing to kind of go a little bit with …

Mike Warkentin (26:01):
It’s a great one. And I’ll tell you a couple of things guys. You don’t have to stock inventory for certain things. Supplement sales work great unless you lose money on them, right? You could work with a supplement provider who just—

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (26:14):
Drop ships.

Mike Warkentin (26:15):
Yeah, drop ships you the stuff. So, someone orders, and it’s like, “There it goes,” right? You get a commission or whatever it is. Don’t lose money on supplements and inventory. You could definitely start selling some extra stuff. And if you don’t sell supplements, they’re going to go to the mall and the kid at the mall is going to give them crappy advice about this thing that they need, which they don’t. And you can get them the things that they want. So that’s an easy one. I’m going to piggyback on what you just said. Another easy one: quarterly or even twice a year, apparel orders with pre-order, sell them a T-shirt. Every one of your clients will buy your T-shirt for 25 bucks or whatever it is. Preorder, so you don’t have to stock inventory because I always lost money on that. Easy win. These are easy small things. Put them on your annual calendar. Do you sell t-shirts, George-Anthony?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (26:54):
I do. They sell really fast, a hit with these hoodies. A lot of people love these hoodies. They see them and they say, “Wow, I need that.” And we even do seasonal colors for example. I just did a seasonal color to where “Hey, these are limited.” Then you’ll say, “We’re only doing these for this month because spring is almost over or summer is coming,” right? And then you can transition throughout the year. If you did a pile drop quarterly to say, “Hey, in the wintertime we’re doing hoodies. In the summertime we’re doing tank tops and hats,” whatever the case might be. People want to support you, right? Your clients want to support you, and they’re willing to spend it.

Mike Warkentin (27:34):
And the key there, do the pre-order. Do the limited quantities, limited time offer. Don’t stock inventory unless you’re really, really good at it. Maybe if you’re in Hawaii or Las Vegas, at a destination, you can do that. But I couldn’t do that. Preorder the stuff, get it out, go onto the next thing. Don’t offer a ton of stuff. Hats, hoodies, done, whatever it is that works. All those little things work. And then the other thing that you said that’s great: Offer something else. Just a small challenge, something like that. Do something else. And what that is is adding value for clients. If clients are getting more, they’re willing to pay more. And that’s an easy one. So, we’ve given them some really big stuff like focusing on your avatar, having high-value services, dropping down to discounted options like group training, and we’ve also given them some very small tactical stuff. George-Anthony this has been a huge success, I think.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (28:20):
Absolutely, and it’s funny you said the kids program. We start our kids program today.

Mike Warkentin (28:25):
Oh.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (28:26):
It’s summertime. We start an eight-week kids program today. Today is the first day of it.

Mike Warkentin (28:31):
Did you have to market that at all, or did you fill it with clients’ kids?

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (28:34):
Clients’ kids, man.

Mike Warkentin (28:35):
Yeah, you just funnel in. So, zero marketing cost.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (28:37):
They already trust us. And the trick is it gets their kids out of the house a bit, right? It’s the summertime right now; the kids aren’t in school. For us, at least, here in San Diego. The kids are on summer break, so the parents are like, “I don’t want these kids in the house. Take them.”

Mike Warkentin (28:54):
And kids programs should be priced higher than adult programs because it’s a specialized service, so you can make way more money on that. Zero marketing costs if you get your clients’ kids. You just have to ask them. And I’ll tell you guys, if it’s too late for you right now, wherever you’re at, to get a kids program in place for summer, put it on your calendar. If you do this right now and say January, February, put a calendar notification that says, “Start planning kids program for 2025,” you will make money in May, June, July, whenever school is out for you guys. There’s another one. George-Anthony, I’m going to let you go. Thank you so much for all this. This has been an awesome show with tactical stuff, my friend. Thank you.

George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway (29:30):
Awesome. Thanks very much for the opportunity.

Mike Warkentin (29:32):
My pleasure. That was George-Anthony Dulal-Whiteway. This show has been packed with stuff that you can use to literally make more money at your gym. If you want to hear more stuff like this, please hit “subscribe” to “Run a Profitable Gym” with my thanks. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.

Chris Cooper (29:46):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.

The post Easy Ways to Earn More Per Client Starting Today appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Want to Win the Gym Game? Be Different.

Your gym must be different.

It must be the unicorn in a field full of horses.

If it’s not and you look like every other gym, you’re going to compete on price—and you can’t win. You don’t even want to win that race to the bottom of the market.

This issue increasingly affects CrossFit affiliates, which were once unicorns among all the globo gyms.

Intense exercise has now been commoditized by F45, Orangetheory and all the similar chains. The result: Consumers make decisions based on price. This is not good for independent coaching gyms who can’t compete on those terms.

You must look different to a consumer so you can create more value, and you must set your rates according to what you want earn, not by copying everyone else.

You must establish value in the marketplace, and then you must offer consistently great service to your clients so they are constantly reminded of that value.

It’s almost impossible to do this if you’re dead set on filling huge group classes with 25 members. That’s not coaching. It’s crowd management, and the spin studio down the street does it better.

Here’s a great plan:

Publish a ton of media that shows how you’re different, and establish the value of coaching as the best way to get results fast.Set your rates according to value and target 150 clients.Use the Prescriptive Model and goal review sessions to improve retention and reaffirm and drive up value.

Protip: Head to Facebook and request my guide that lays out clear paths to $100,000 earnings with just 150 clients.

At that point, you will have a very solid business underneath you, and you’ll be earning six figures.

What next? Whatever you want.

You can earn more from your 150 clients (we can show you how) or target 200 or 250 with a clear plan that will ensure you don’t reduce value and start bleeding clients.

With a sound business running well, you have all the options, and you’re in control.

Whatever you do, do it with a plan. Don’t let someone else—such as a franchisor, an affiliation program or an internet guru—sell you on the big-class, if-you-build-it-they-will-come myth.

That myth doesn’t support gyms. It supports the people who perpetuate it, and the individual gym pays the price.

You Need a Plan

Just like your clients, you need a specific, data-backed plan if you’re going to help people as a gym owner.

You also need someone to hold you to the plan so you don’t run around chasing every idea or spend all your time trying to guess which guru or franchisor is gambling with your livelihood.

We can help.

Start by requesting my data-packed guide “5 Ways to Make $100,000 a Year From Your Gym.” It’s got executive summaries, pros and cons, spreadsheets and insight—hard data you won’t find anywhere else.

Review that guide, and when you’re ready for a plan tailored to your unique business, book a call to talk about that.

The post Want to Win the Gym Game? Be Different. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Gym Model That Improves Every Major Metric

What happens when people who join your gym don’t understand the value of your services?

They leave—and fast.

This is bad for many reasons.

The worst of the bunch: Clients who try something and leave after six or seven months don’t develop a fitness habit that will meaningfully change their lives. You’re failing people who need your help.

Beyond that, the gym suffers financially. Yes, you lose recurring revenue when people leave.

But there’s more: When you’re always bleeding clients, you put huge strain on your team and your systems. Instead of serving clients, you must spend a lot of time and money trying to acquire clients, and then you have to onboard them.

This problem is very common in gyms that run the big-group model: You try to pack as many people as possible into large group classes.

This model has major flaws. I know: It sounds amazing to have 20 people paying $10 a class so you can make $200 an hour, but most gyms struggle to fill big classes. It’s more common for gyms to have one larger class a day and several others that barely bring in enough money to cover the cost of the coach.

And there’s a trap: Big classes increase churn—big time.

Our data shows that retention is best with one-on-one clients. Larger group classes have worse retention, but churn is limited if classes have between seven and 13 clients. When classes are larger than 13, retention plummets.

So if you’re chasing huge classes, you’re setting yourself up for churn, marketing, onboarding and stress. And you aren’t changing as many lives as you could.

A Better Way

If you want to hold clients for a long time and make a difference in their lives, you must build value as they learn about your gym before they join, you must solidify that value when they become members, and then you must remind them of that value all the time.

The best way to do that: The Prescriptive Model. You can find the full details here, but I’ll give you the short version below.

Every client needs a goal, a plan and someone to hold them to the plan. So when you meet with a prospective client who’s seen your media and learned about your services, you ask about their goals and present your expert plan to accomplish them. (This alone will set you well apart from other gyms.)

Then you provide coaching and accountability to ensure the client sticks to the plan. At intervals, you get clients into goal review sessions in which you review progress, highlight successes, offer congratulations and optimize the plan to ensure additional progress at high speed.

This process holds incredible value for the client, and it’s been proven to increase revenue and retention. The stats: About 30 percent of clients who do goal review sessions will spend about 30 percent more on your services. And all gyms that implement this model see improved length of engagement.

There’s more: Gyms that use the Prescriptive Model in combination with PT and semi-private/small group training often have average revenue per member per month in the $500-plus range.

If you don’t use this model and just chase huge groups, your coaches will see clients for about an hour a day every couple of days. That’s not enough contact to hold someone to a plan. And 60-120 seconds of coaching sprinkled throughout a group class holds limited value.

If you start using the Prescriptive Model today, your clients are going to see your value, they’re going to stay longer, and they’re going to get better results.

They’ll win. And so will you: Your retention, average revenue per member, gross revenue, lifetime client value and profit will all go up, and your marketing budget and onboarding costs will go down.

To hear more about how a mentor can help you build a solid business model and improve all key metrics, book a call here.

The post The Gym Model That Improves Every Major Metric appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Race to the Bottom: How to Set Your Gym Apart From Competitors

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Are you in a race to the bottom of the fitness industry? Now, I know you just said no in your head because I said it too, but the fact is I was racing to the bottom of the fitness industry, and I didn’t even know it until a mentor explained what it means. So, I’ve got today Two-Brain founder and CEO Chris Cooper to help us figure out how to rise to the top of the fitness industry. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you are watching or listening, so you don’t miss a show just like this. Now, Chris, welcome to the show. I’ve got to know, what does it mean to race to the bottom of the fitness industry, and how did it affect me when I thought I was doing such a great job, yet I was not doing that at all? What are we doing here?

Chris Cooper (00:39):
When we say racing to the bottom, what we’re really talking about is the client’s perception of value. So, the easiest way to explain it is with a product. So, let’s say that you are buying this fork from Amazon, and today this fork might cost you 40 cents. And then tomorrow, you see another ad for a fork that costs 38 cents. And then it becomes this downward spiral to the bottom, and we call this commoditization. People who are looking at the forks on Amazon can’t tell the difference between the forks. The only thing that makes them look different is the price. And so, obviously we’re going to choose the lowest price option. And so, what happens over time is that the margin gets thinner and thinner and thinner until somebody folds, somebody goes out of business. And if you’ve ever followed the Walmart story, Walmart has done this to a number of companies, including Vlasic Pickles, including Rally bicycles or Schwinn bicycles, like they bankrupt these companies because the company keeps saying, “Oh, we’re going to sell it for less, but we’re going to make it up in volume.” And so, their margin gets thinner and thinner and thinner. And unfortunately, we’re really seeing that in the fitness industry right now, especially with group coaching. We used to see that in the fitness industry with gym memberships where I would price mine a dollar less than you and just get you to sign up on a long-term contract. And now we’re seeing it more than ever, especially with group coaching.

Mike Warkentin (02:00):
So I thought I was building value, like I thought I was doing this great job. I was staying extra, giving people extra instruction, doing all these things that I thought were building value, but I don’t think I was actually doing it. So, what are some of the common things that gym owners think build value, but maybe don’t at all and push them into this commoditization problem?

Chris Cooper (02:18):
Well, we fool ourselves because we don’t understand what the clients actually value. And so, either we project what we value—certifications or master’s degrees, or whatever, or a certain equipment maybe, or we have extra space, or we have this great community. We value those things because we’re on the inside. We know all about fitness; we’re already experts, and so we think that our clients value the same things, and they don’t. In fact, from the outside looking in, a client can’t tell you what the difference is between two certifications. And a client, if you took the brand off your website, they probably couldn’t tell the difference between your CrossFit gym or your Fit Body Bootcamp or the F45 down the street or even Orangetheory. And so, when they can’t tell the difference on something, it becomes a commodity in their head, and they’re going to choose the only differentiator they know, which is price, which means that boxes just keep pricing themselves lower and lower, and they are racing to the bottom and then dying.

Mike Warkentin (03:13):
I survived this mistake because when I started making it, it was like 2010, and there were maybe two gyms that were doing what I was doing. So, I was able to get away with a lot of mistakes because it was a city of like 800,000, 2 gyms, and you either go to that one or mine, and it didn’t really matter what we did at that point. So, what’s causing this trend now? Why is this showing up, and why is this becoming an increasing problem in the coaching business?

Chris Cooper (03:35):
Well, when you and I opened our gyms in 2008, and we were both CrossFit affiliates, we were the first to market. And so, we captured all these early adopters: firefighters, military people at my gym. A lot of women who had done P90X for example or Beachbody I think it was called, and now they wanted to try the next thing, right? So, they’d all come in and they would try CrossFit with me. And so, it felt really easy. Like we didn’t have to do marketing; we didn’t have to do lead gen. The leads were already being generated because they were just interested in novelty, and we didn’t really understand that. Like these early adopters are always looking for the new thing. And so, they’re not going to stick around for very long.

Chris Cooper (04:14):
And by now, 15 years later in North America, those early adopters are long gone, or they’ve opened up their own CrossFit gyms, or they founded their own F45s. And you are starting to see this cycle repeat itself. So, three years ago, if you opened up a CrossFit gym in Stockholm, let’s say, you would have a big influx of new people, and you’d feel like “I know a lot about business; I’m successful.” And they were the early adopters. Now, if you’re just running the same group classes as everybody else, you’re starting to see this commoditization problem. And if you look at, you’re heading east, you look at Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, you’re seeing gyms open up in those markets. And I’m not just picking on CrossFit here, but CrossFit gyms are exploding in those markets. They open their doors, and they immediately have 30 clients on day one and a hundred clients at the end of day 90.

Chris Cooper (05:05):
And then they have 300 clients their first year. And they think like, “Wow, I get it. I know this business.” But if they carefully look at the history, they’ll see this cycle repeating themselves, and they should be setting them up against this commoditization problem that’s sure to follow. And it’s killed tens of thousands of small gyms. And it’s across the board, like it’s FitBody Bootcamps, the F45s, CrossFit—these all have high churn, and it’s mostly because of this commoditization effect, and they’re racing to the bottom on pricing. I can remember even four years ago a gym in Atlanta telling me that you can’t sell CrossFit for more than $79 a month in Atlanta. But some did, and there was this small group of independent gym owners, they were all CrossFit affiliates. They came to Two-Brain, they changed their rates, and they were selling CrossFit at like $200 to $250 a month in the same market as these gyms selling it for $79. And the difference, the primary difference, is they understood their value, and they understood how to teach clients how to differentiate them from everybody else. And those are really the keys. That’s what stops the race to the bottom.

Mike Warkentin (06:12):
I was really scared when more CrossFit gyms came into the market, right? Because you’re like, “Oh, there’s two, now there’s seven, now there’s eight, now there’s nine.” I started to get really panicky about that, and that was like a really stressful time for me. I got even more stressed when I started to see the Orangetheories and the big franchise corporate ones show up because they were kind of doing the same thing that I was doing, but they had better marketing, they had better systems, they had cooler stuff, they had more equipment, they were cleaner, and I was like, “How do I compete on this?” And I got really nervous. And that’s kind of about the time that I hooked up with you and Two-Brain because I needed to figure out, “What am I actually doing here?” So, the question I’ll ask you, Chris, is if you’re an independent functional fitness gym or CrossFit affiliate or any of those things, what are you actually selling? Like a lot of us thought, like I thought it was my program. I’m like, “You’re going to do Fran,” and that’s what I’m selling, but when I saw someone else doing thrushes and pull-ups and maybe not calling it Fran, I was like, “I can’t compete with this.” So, what are people selling?

Chris Cooper (07:05):
There’s always somebody who can starve for longer than you can. What we’re actually selling is coaching, and coaching is more than programming. Programming is the workout that you put up for your group classes every day. And if that’s all that you’re selling, like if that’s what people can buy from you is group class programming, they are going to be jumping around between you, F45, the HIIT gym down the street because they don’t understand the value of coaching and you have to show it to them. So, the number one step is you need to talk to clients the first time they come in the door. You need to sit down with them and ask them about their goals, and then be a good enough coach to map out, “Here’s what it’s going to take to get there,” not “Here’s what we have to sell,” or “Here’s a free trial,” or “Here’s a sample of what we have. Come and try it for a week and tell us if you like it,” because all that does is it exaggerates the commoditization effect. You’re offering them a free trial. They can’t wait to get bored and try the next thing. So, the very first thing that you need to do—

Mike Warkentin (08:04):
But you can’t show them a fork, right? To go back to your analogy, you can’t just show them a fork. It’s $100, right? Because they’re like, “I can get that fork for 40 cents,” like you said. So, you actually have to show them, you have to educate the market to know what you are actually providing. And it’s not just the fork; it’s how to use the fork and get the food in your mouth to get the results that you want. Is that accurate?

Chris Cooper (08:26):
Yeah, man. And there’s some steps to doing that, but the first step in person with the client is not a free trial because that’s just—

Mike Warkentin (08:34):
That’s using the fork.

Chris Cooper (08:35):
Exactly. Yeah. It’s like, “Here’s the fork. Do you want to buy it?” And I did this for the first five years. It was like, “Come in on Saturday. We have this free community WAD, and come in with your friend.” And they would come in and try it, and then I’d go stand at the desk like this waiting for them to come over and be like, “I can’t wait to join. Here’s my credit card.” Like that doesn’t happen. Instead, and we were doing this with our personal training clients at the time, is you sit down with them, you talk to them about their goals, you draw like, “OK, here’s your goal. Here’s where you are. Here’s the journey it’s going to take to get there.” And then you say, “Would you be more comfortable doing the workout portion in a small group setting or one-on-one with me?”

Chris Cooper (09:15):
And they’ll tell you. And then from there you can build your own prescriptive model, and you can decide what services that you need to sell because the clients are going to tell you what they value. It’s not the programming you have. It’s not 2007 anymore. It’s not the community, the smiling faces that they see on their website. Nobody is out googling “best community in Sault St. Marie.” What they’re buying is like their individual goal and the benefits or your coaching to get them to that goal. They’re buying your solution to their problem. They’re not buying the next thing in fitness. If that’s what’s dragging them in, they want to try the new thing, they’re going to try the next new thing three months from now too. They’ll be gone.

Mike Warkentin (09:55):
So the prescriptive model, that’s what Chris just explained. You ask about goals, you give them a prescription, there’s a lot of steps in there. I’m going to put a link in the show notes to an article that will lead you step by step, how to use this thing to build value when you talk to new clients and when you work to retain your current clients. So, the link will be in the show notes for you. But Chris, here’s an interesting thing. You’ve mentioned the value of coaching a bunch of times. There’s a missing link between the value of coaching and the client’s perception of that value. Because I thought forever that if I was the best coach, everyone would just regard me as the best coach, and they would run over, like you said, and throw their money at me because I had so many certifications, so many credentials, and I was so good at it. What’s missing there? Because it didn’t happen like that.

Chris Cooper (10:33):
Well, it is that the client can’t tell the difference. And to be honest, it’s a fallacy that the more certified you are, the better coach you are for every single client. What I would challenge you to do is walk into any gym—let’s use CrossFit because we’re really familiar with their certification levels—walk into any CrossFit gym and go to a different class every day for a week. And at the end of the week, write down the coach’s name and what credential you think they have. Like there’s no way you’re going to say, “Well that guy clearly has his Level 4, and Mike clearly has his Level 2, but Chris only has his Level 1.” And the reality is that what actually provides value to the client might be enhanced by the credential, but that’s not the value.

Chris Cooper (11:18):
You know, when I was struggling to get clients from my personal training business, when I first started back in 2001, I said, “I’m going to go get my master’s degree.” And an instructor at the local university said, “For what? How is this going to possibly make you more money?” And he was right. Like, that’s not it. That’s not what brings the client value. So, the other thing is equipment, and selling access is a completely different story. You need to know what brings the client value, and you are a bad guess of that. So, you need to sit down at a No Sweat Intro and say, “What is your goal?” And then you need to tailor your service to getting the client to that goal. Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t use group classes. Group classes can be awesome. The majority of the people in your gym will probably want to do their workouts in a group, but not on the first day. Not when they’re nervous, not when they’re debating. And it shouldn’t be your only option. You should have a one-on-one option. And more and more of us are doing semi-private or small group options too.

Mike Warkentin (12:18):
Now, you’re seeing stuff that’s different than a lot of other groups are saying, right? So, I hear a lot of times when I go online or look on social media, “Oh, get more credentials, do more stuff, build value. You need to have more credentials to be a better coach.” What are you seeing? Like what kind of data have you got that gives you this position, and who benefits from the other position?

Chris Cooper (12:38):
Well, we have a ton of data. We have the biggest data set in the world. We publish a report for free every year with 15,000 gyms called the “State of the Industry.” And what we see from that is that there’s a certain breakdown of client retention. So, client retention is one really important metric that can show you the difference between a prescriptive model or just selling a commodity big group class that looks the same as everybody else. So, number one, retention in the average Two-Brain gym is about 21 months. Now, there are people listening to this right now who say, “Oh, my retention is five years.” If you think that your retention is five years, you have a problem because you’re either not measuring your retention, or you’re not getting any new customers in, and you haven’t had any new customers in five years because that pulls your average down. When you’re just selling these big group models where people come in, they do group workouts, and that’s the option, you’re churning out a client in just under eight months.

Chris Cooper (13:35):
So what happens is that every eight months, you have to replace every client that you have, and you become this high churn marketing machine where you’re thinking about marketing, marketing, marketing all the time because you have to constantly get more and more clients in. And what makes it even worse is that when you’re running these big group models, you have to have a lot of space. So, your overhead is bananas. And so, if you aren’t getting a new client every single day, well you’re underwater, and that’s what’s causing these big problems and these boxes to fail. So why is this message out there? Like why do you see F45, Fit Body Bootcamp, CrossFit actively promoting these big group models? “Don’t have an on-ramp. Don’t do one-on-one. Don’t do semi-private. Don’t do small group.” And that’s because the model benefits them. If you think about—like somebody goes into a F45 gym, they try it, they love it, “I want to own this franchise.”

Chris Cooper (14:29):
That’s where the new F 45 gyms come from. If you look back in the history of CrossFit, where do all the CrossFit affiliates come from? From existing affiliates. And so, you see this big group model, you’ve got 10% of the people in that gym who are interested enough that they might want to go get their L1. Wonderful. They go get their L1. That benefits HQ; it might benefit the affiliate because the affiliate might get more coaches out of it, but then they find out, “Oh well, there’s 12 coaches here already. How am I ever going to make a living here? How can I make a full-time living? The owner isn’t even making a full-time living. I’m going to go start my own box.” Well, again, that benefits HQ. That does not benefit the individual affiliate because now you’ve got two people in the market who are both doing commodity pricing, and the race to the bottom speeds up and up and up.

Chris Cooper (15:15):
And so, you constantly have to be looking at, “What is the message that’s being given to me by my franchisor, my license, or my affiliate provider, and who does that message benefit? Does it benefit me, the affiliate owner, or does it benefit them, the company that’s making the money from the model?” And that’s why this myth of “We need to have big group training, or CrossFit is big group training,” like that’s why these myths keep getting perpetuated not because they benefit the individual gym owner; they benefit the person that’s selling the certifications and the licenses or the franchises.

Mike Warkentin (15:51):
And it’s hard, like from ground level, I needed 6,000 square feet at my gym for my 5 p.m. class only. But I had it for the other 23 hours a day, and it was never full. And that was bad because then when I started, I’m like, “OK, I’ve got to pay. I’ve got to get more revenue.” I look for more clients. We get more clients. They all come at 5 p.m. All of a sudden, I’ve got this gigantic 5 p.m. group that’s completely unmanageable, and I can’t even coach anymore, right? It’s just crowd control—you’re just like, “Don’t trip over that. Don’t do the snatch over there, over the guy doing pushups.” Like it’s crowd control. And that one class kind of devalues the coaching that I was selling. Then in the other hours of the day I’d be coaching—when I say coaching, what I mean is personal training two or three people in a group class.

Chris Cooper (16:34):
For $16, right?

Mike Warkentin (16:36):
Like I was losing money on those classes. The clients were getting incredible value there, and they knew it even though I didn’t; they figured that out. Because, like, “If I come to the 8 a.m. class, I get Mike one on one,” right? Like the same thing happened to you where people are like, “Hey Chris, are you coaching the 10 a.m. tomorrow?” And you’re like, “Yeah, just for you. It’s $7,” right? So that big group model, like, I mean, I interviewed recently Sarah Snellman over in Switzerland. She’s doing this. She’s got a big group model, but she’s like the only one that I’ve spoken to in a really long time. And it’s exactly like you said: She’s in that European market where it’s still a little bit early. She’s a great business owner, she’s got an amazing gym that’s just systems across the board.

Mike Warkentin (17:15):
But that didn’t work for me after like 2011 here in North America. It just didn’t go. And I got into such a bad spot because I had to keep trying to fill these classes, but I couldn’t fill the hours that, you know, the 10 a.m. slots, and it was a really, really big problem. Talk to me a little bit about how do we fix some of the errors. Like you talked about the Rx model to establish value. How do you establish value even before someone comes to your gym? And then how do you keep building value every single day for your current clients outside of that initial first prescription?

Chris Cooper (17:48):
Well a lot of that is the media that you produce. I mean, you and I both worked in CrossFit, so we’re going to refer to the CrossFit example again. But the bottom line is you have to either be expensive or be free. And so, you want to be publishing content every single day.

Mike Warkentin (18:04):
What do you mean by that? Expensive or be free. Tell people what that means because sometimes people don’t get that one.

Chris Cooper (18:08):
Yeah, yeah. So, 95% of the work that I produce is free. This podcast, the books are as cheap as I can make them. I don’t make any money from books. We publish a blog every day. We’ve done that since June 12th, 2009. We publish YouTube videos twice a week. All of that is free, and it’s helpful information. The mentorship program by comparison is expensive. And that’s because that’s coaching, right? Knowledge is not enough to get people to the result. I wish it was. If that was the case, we’d just be selling courses and books. But the reality is that I sell coaching, you sell coaching, and everybody listening to this sells coaching. And so, what you want to do is be publishing, as often as you can, free information to help get people fit. Maybe it will help them get started on their own.

Chris Cooper (18:56):
Maybe it will inspire them to start, or maybe it’ll be mean that you have a better local brand. So, when the time is right for them to start at a gym, it’s going to be your gym. And that’s why Catalyst, which is going to turn 20 next year, is still not doing a lot of paid ads or any other type of marketing because we’ve been publishing free content for so long that when people are ready to start their fitness journey, they start with us. Two years later, they might be somewhere else, they might be riding bikes, they might be starting their own gym or selling personal training out of their garage. Wonderful. Mission accomplished, but they start with us. The gym stays busy, we have full-time staff and yeah, the rest of it.

Mike Warkentin (19:34):
OK, so if people are out there today and they want to start establishing value and stop racing towards the bottom of the industry, they’re going to do it by giving away free stuff and lots of it on their social media platforms, their blog, their podcasts, their YouTube channel, whatever they’ve got, and the idea there is they’re just defining their business and branding and saying, “Here’s what we do, and here’s why we do it, and here’s who we help, and here are some results and social proof and my happy clients.” Is that a decent summary of how they could start today?

Chris Cooper (20:00):
Definitely. We make it look good, and that intimidates a lot of people. And I think the reality is though, that all you have to do is a five-minute voice recording podcast twice a week to get started or you write a blog, and you and I are not big fans of AI, but if that’s what it takes to get started, then you start with that, and you use it if you need it. And the other thing is too, you can be highlighting how great your coaches are. Like I’d never ever want to say it’s OK to have a bad product or that your coaches should stop trying to be better. Having good coaching, a good product is necessary but insufficient for growth. So, you think about your coaching, having good coaching is a retention metric though.

Chris Cooper (20:45):
You can’t tell people we have better coaching than anybody else; that won’t sell them on anything. What sells them is showing that you have good coaching by bringing them in, sitting them down, having a conversation about their goals, telling them the best way to get there, and then meeting them again in three months and measuring their progress, and then changing that prescription if you need to. And you can do that in any kind of gym. You can do that in yoga, you can do that in barre, you can do that in Pilates, you can do that in spin class, you can do that in CrossFit, you can do that in F45. In fact, we work with some FitBody Bootcamps, we work with some F45s too. And sometimes what you get is the headquarters of these franchises, they start paying attention to what that affiliate’s doing.

Chris Cooper (21:26):
What are you doing with Two-Brain? Rx model? What’s that? Oh, you want to try selling personal training? Let us know how that goes, and then the smart franchisers say, “Holy crap, that’s working.” And they just onboard that system for everybody else. And you are starting to see that with FitBody Bootcamp, but other franchises, they don’t do that. You know, “It’s our way or the highway. We’re going to tell you you run classes; you don’t sell personal training. This is it.” And that’s why you see such a high churn, like 50% going out of business.

Mike Warkentin (21:53):
Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, “I have great coaches, or my coaches have credentials, and they’re experienced,” but there’s that second—there’s that link that you just laid out where it’s like, “My coaches have great credentials, and that means they’re going to be able to help you lose weight faster. They’ve done it with these 60 people on the wall behind me. We’ve lost 1,400 pounds in total,” or whatever it is. Because I see people saying, “We all have these credentials.” It’s like no one really cares what a CSCS is outside of the CSCS club, right? Like no one cares. I think you had it right. You got rid of it, did you not?

Chris Cooper (22:25):
Yeah, I did. And I was even like an exam proctor for ISSA for a while. And so, my business card had like alphabet soup, 25 letters at the bottom, and people would look at that and say, “That’s got nothing to do with me. How’s that solve my problem?”

Mike Warkentin (22:37):
And I’m not slamming any certifier out there because they’re all—like, all the education and professional development you get is very helpful, but it’s not helpful to bulk up your business card, which we thought it was, right? It’s like a Level 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you tack all this stuff on. No one cares about that. All they want to know is “Can you help me lose weight for the wedding?” or “Can you help me get stronger to pick up my grandkids?” And if you can do that, it doesn’t matter if you have a Level 6 or a Level 2 or whatever it is, it just matters that you can get the results. And so that’s where people miss that step: “I have these credentials, and I can help you get the results you want. And here’s the proof.” And that’s a really interesting way where I see some of these pictures of Two-Brain gyms with No Sweat Intros rooms, and they’re doing these free consultations in these rooms that have literally wall to wall images of their client’s first pull up, lost 30 pounds, accomplished my goal, high fiving it.

Mike Warkentin (23:21):
So, when someone says, “I don’t know if this is for me,” they’re saying, “You wanted to get your first pull up. There’s seven people right there who just did that. Why wouldn’t this work for you?” And that’s where the coaching and the value starts to be built. You touched on something, I want you to dig into it just a little bit further, establishing value for current clients. So, you went back to the prescriptive model and talked about this cycle saying, “Here’s how far we’ve gone. Here’s where you want to go. Here’s the progress we’ve made. Here’s what we’re going to do to make faster progress.” Dig into that just a touch so that people understand that you are building value for clients every single day and every single interaction. It’s not just a one and done thing after that first consultation.

Chris Cooper (24:02):
Yeah, so, as Brian Bott tells all of his clients, “The best program I’m going to write for you is the second program.” And what happens is it’s like buying a new rifle. You buy a rifle, and you think like, “Oh this rifle’s going to help me shoot straighter,” but you’re still going to have to sight it in. And so, nobody is under the impression that every program is the best. What you actually do to build value over time with your clients is you continually refine. So, you meet with your client, you make a prescription, “OK, I think on-ramp is best for you.” “OK.” They come back in three weeks, you have another consultation, it’s called a goal review, nd you say, “OK, now I think—like this program is going to be four days a week, two days of zone two aerobic, two days of high intensity interval training and weights is best for you.”

Chris Cooper (24:52):
“Do you want to do this in a small group setting, or do you want to do this one-on-one with me?” And then three months later you meet up again and you’re like, “OK, things are going well. Your body fat percentage is improving, but not as fast as I’d like. Your strength is going up, your performance is great, but I know your goal is to fit into that bathing suit. I would like to add another day per week of zone two, and I think it’s time to talk about your nutrition.” They might go for all of that depending on their budget and their time. But more than anything else, they know that the true cost of quitting is starting over with somebody else. Think about going to your doctor. and the doctor is trying to get the right prescription and the right dosage for your medication.

Chris Cooper (25:31):
Well, maybe they don’t get it right the first time. And so, you go back to the doctor and they’re like, “OK, let’s raise the dosage a little bit. OK?” And you come back in two weeks and it’s like, “OK, well it’s going pretty well, but it’s making you groggy. Alright, well, let’s try taking it every 30 hours instead of every 24 hours.” And the longer you spend with this doctor, the more dialed in your prescription gets, the less likely you are to seek a second opinion and go find another doctor because you’ve got all this time invested in finding the right answer with them. And a lot of coaches are scared like, “Oh, if I don’t get the answer right, what are they paying me for?” No client expects you to have the perfect program right out of the gate if you demonstrate value by consistently showing them refinements to the program or “Hey, you’ve made great progress on this, but now it’s time to go to another level.” They’re just going to trust you more and more and more. Like there’s a reason that I’ve had the same cycling coach for four years. He’s got all of my data. He knows where I’m at and what I should be doing for the next three months.

Mike Warkentin (26:28):
If you establish value for clients every single day, your retention’s going to go up. And if you use this process, you’re going to sell more. Every time I have a gym owner on the show, and I ask them about the prescriptive model, they talk to me about these goal review sessions and how it’s the perfect time to say, “We can make faster progress with something else.” And it’s usually one extra PT session, three extra PT sessions, switching to one-on-one coaching, adding nutrition coaching. All of these take average revenue per member from in that 150 to 205 range into the $300 range, which is life changing for these gym owners. So, Chris, that’s an important thing that I want you to explain to people. When you start selling coaching and building value and separating yourself from the high intensity commoditization, what does that do for your client focus and the avatar of the person that you’re trying to get? Like you’re not looking for every single person who can afford 29.95 a month. You’re looking for something else. What is it?

Chris Cooper (27:20):
Well, over time you start to identify who your ideal client is because they’ll tell you, number one, and number two, you’ll start to see these recurring patterns. So, you’ll say, “OK, we brought these five people in.” At my gym, somebody who comes in and they say something like, I want to do CrossFit competitions,” we already know they’re not going to fit in with our culture in our community. 2014, I would’ve been so excited to have them, but now a decade later we’ve learned that’s just not our ideal client. That’s not who I like to coach, et cetera. So over time what we’ve learned is the people who they want to do an NSI, they’re eager for their new programs, they’re eager to get their progress measured, they actually become the best clients who refer other clients. And so, what’s interesting there is they understand our value almost better than we do.

Chris Cooper (28:09):
And so you have to ask them, “Hey, what do you like best about my gym?” And you’ll often be surprised at what they tell you. You know, the first time I ever did this exercise, I got results that shocked me. And this was five or six years ago. I had just read “The Pumpkin Plan” by Mike Michalowicz, and I grabbed my three seed clients. “What brought you to my gym? Why do you stay at my gym? And what turns you off working out at other gyms?” And I thought they were going to say, “Oh CrossFit, it’s so intense, or it feels like a game, or the community,” right? Because we had all those things and instead it was like, “This is the only time in my day that somebody says I’m doing a good job,” or “This is the thing that I talk about at the dinner table that my kids will listen to.”

Chris Cooper (28:53):
And what that immediately did was it kind of reframed “Who’s my ideal client?” It’s these people. Like there are people who will come into the gym, they’re going to stay five or six months, they’re going to hit the WADs really hard, they’re going to have a good time, and then they’re going to go. Good for them. But I haven’t changed their life. I haven’t made a dent in their habits. They had the habits, whatever. It’s the person who comes in, they’re absolutely terrified, but they’re at the bottom of the barrel. They think, “I’ve tried everything. I can’t lose weight. I can’t feel good about myself. I feel weak. I’m depressed. I need to do something. This is like my last effort.” And then three months later they love it, and six months later they built this habit, and nine months later they’re doing their first 5K.

Chris Cooper (29:35):
Like those are the people we want to attract. And now that we’re doing the prescriptive model, it gets easier and easier and easier to attract those people. And the last part of the prescriptive model that really helps is that you use affinity marketing to grow your business. And so, you’re not just attracting cold audiences because you’re not desperate for clients anymore. You’re keeping people longer, so you’re not on this constant churn cycle. And so, you can say like, “Hey, I know your husband, he came to watch you do that workout. What would it take to get him in the gym?” And then you can just make an in-person introduction to the husband. You can ask, invite them, bring them into the gym. You just don’t get these opportunities when you’re running this high churn, group-only model. Instead, you get the downward spiral of bring 30 people in, keep three, one of them gets their certification, then they quit and open a gym, and then you lower your prices, and they lower their prices, and you just keep going around and around until you’re going down the drain.

Mike Warkentin (30:34):
Affinity marketing listers. The essential definition: You’re using your current clients to get more people just like them. They’re better clients, they’re higher value clients, and your marketing costs are very, very low. So, you could definitely do that. As you start to focus on the right people, you can get more of the right people. I’ll give you this too guys, as you’re thinking about this, if you have on your website, “We have a great community,” or if you are constantly telling people you have a great community, that’s part of your marketing push, think about that. Is anyone really coming to your gym to look for friends? Maybe one person who moved to the city and needs to branch out. In general, what people are looking for: They’re self-interested, they want to solve their own problems, and it’s almost never community, right? It’s almost always weight loss, strength, knee pain, depression, things like that.

Mike Warkentin (31:18):
People are self-interested. So, solve their problems. Don’t promote stuff that you think is great. Yeah, the community is great, but I’m not going to come to your gym for that. I’m coming because I want to get stronger, right? So that’s an interesting one. Chris. Let’s give someone an actionable thing to do. Let’s focus them on one thing that they can do. They’re going to hit stop on this show. What would be a thing that they can do right now to stop doing the race to the bottom and start coming up to climb the value ladder? What do we got?

Chris Cooper (31:43):
There’s a few things, but the first thing that I would do is take your five favorite clients, go one-on-one for coffee with them, and say, “What are your goals?” And then measure where they’re starting from, and then just for a minute, forget what you’re trying to sell and think blank slate—money’s not a problem, calendar’s not a problem—“What would I tell this person to get them to their goals faster? What if there was a deadline? What would I tell them?” And that’s the services that you should be selling. Never mind what your franchisor tells you you should be selling or CrossFit HQ tells you that you should be selling. Sell the thing that will actually get the client the results. And if that’s nutrition, great. If it’s one-on-one, great. If it’s semi-private, if it’s big group, whatever, but ask the client, “How do you prefer to exercise?” after you tell them, “Here’s what you need to do.”

Chris Cooper (32:33):
So the process would be like this. Number one, stop offering free trials. Have everybody sit down with you, and then say, “What are your goals?” Measure their starting point. “OK, what are we starting from here?” And then say, “As a professional coach, the way that you’re going to get to these goals is you need to do three workouts a week, and you need to cut your calories by 10%.” You’re the coach, you tell them, and then you say, “I want to make sure that you can get to this goal. Are you more comfortable doing the workouts one-on-one with me or in a group setting?” Some will say group setting. “Wonderful, we can get you there.” Then you say, “Doing this nutrition, do you think that if I just check in with you every once in a while? Is that enough to keep you on track, or do you need a formal diet plan?” “I don’t think I need a formal diet plan.” “OK.” You tell the client when they have options, and you tell the client when they don’t. Like, “Here’s the path.” They’ll trust you more. You will build authority; you’ll keep them around because I guarantee nobody else is doing this in your town. They’re all running that same downward spiral race to the bottom, and you will stand out by being the only one who sits down with them and talks to them about their goals. I guarantee it.

Mike Warkentin (33:47):
So I’m going to put that link in the show notes. Again, the prescriptive model, click it. Everything Chris said is laid out there in very great detail, and you can use that to start making changes to your business right now. And they will have effects. Tour average revenue per member will go up; your retention will go up. Everything is going to get better. Your income and revenue and all those things will go up. This is not just stuff that I’m saying. We have data that shows once people start doing goal reviews using the prescriptive model, all the key performance indicators go up in gyms. Chris, thank you so much for this. Tell people where they can go now if they want to continue the conversation, ask more questions of you and the Two-Brain mentor team and hang out with people who are just like them.

Chris Cooper (34:25):
Gymownersunited.com is our free public group. There are 9,300 gym owners in there. It’s absolutely free. We publish free materials in there every single day. Every few weeks we publish a step-by-step guide on how to improve a part of your business. You really can’t afford not to be in there. And yeah, we filter out the bums and the critics, and it’s a very supportive group. You’re going to find answers that will solve your problems. I almost said it’s an amazing community.

Mike Warkentin (34:53):
It’s true.

Chris Cooper (34:54):
That’s what keeps people in the group, the amazing community. But it does not encourage you to join it.

Mike Warkentin (34:58):
It’s an amazing community because people are in there helping each other solve problems. That’s what it is. And it’s that self-interested thing. “Where can I find people who are going to solve my problems?” So, hit subscribe on your way out the door. Visit gymownersunited.com, and then click the link in the show notes about the prescriptive model, and we’ll see you next time on “Run a Profitable Gym.”

The post The Race to the Bottom: How to Set Your Gym Apart From Competitors appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Value: Race to the Bottom or Rule at the Top

Here’s the No. 1 problem in most coaching gyms: pricing.

As Bob Burg wrote, “Price is an echo of value.” So what happens when you know your services are valuable but your members and prospective clients don’t?

You struggle to reach profitability. Or you go out of business.

This value problem is more common than most people think. As gym owners, we know we’re changing lives, preserving health and improving fitness. We’ve seen critical metrics move and we’ve seen dramatic transformations. In our heads, we’re providing lots of value.

The problem is the customer doesn’t understand the value.

“The gym down the street charges $30 a month.”

This is not the customer’s fault. For decades, gyms have sold access for rock-bottom prices and hoped clients stay at home on the couch. They’ve employed slick campaigns and carpet-bombed the market into thinking “gym equals cheap.”

You run a gym—a coaching gym—and you need to tell people what that means and why your membership holds far more value.

But most of us don’t do that. Most owners of coaching gyms make these three mistakes:

1. We never talk to people before they sign up, and we don’t explain our value to our audience. We know we’re different, and we expect clients to figure it out. (They won’t.)

2. We underprice our services even though we know they produce results, so the value conversation never happens. (Call it a “self-esteem problem.”)

3. We don’t establish our value when people do sign up, so they leave quickly in search of “cheaper.” This is our greatest failure as coaches because the departed don’t understand the value of fitness, haven’t established lifelong habits and will probably get duped by the next fad. Or they might quit working out for good.

Fixing the Problem

To establish value—and charge more—you must educate, nurture leads or “upgrade your audience.” Whatever you want to call it, this process involves publishing and getting your message in front of people.

This is where your media plan comes in.

You can’t just run your business and hope people show up ready and willing to give you 10 times what it costs to get access to a globo gym.

You must teach and establish your value before a client signs up. You do that by regularly telling stories and showcasing results, solving problems, and establishing expertise. You must commit to this plan and keep the conversation going forever.

Here are a few simple examples to help you understand:

Show off the successes of your current clients: “John lost 10 lb. of fat in three months and accomplished a major goal! Here’s how he did it.”

Explain exactly how your services provide great solutions for your avatar client: “Our 30-minute PT sessions and post-workout takeout meals allow busy downtown professionals to get fit fast whenever they have time.”

Make sure people know that you’re an expert—and that your expertise will help them get results: “Ever seen this machine at a gym? Most people use it incorrectly. Here’s how our coaches help clients use this machine to get better results.”

You’ll notice that 95 percent of the stuff I publish is free. That’s because we want to start ongoing conversations with smart, hardworking entrepreneurs who will see our value and come to understand that mentorship is an amazing investment.

I’d recommend you start a similar conversation with your audience.

If price is the echo of value, you’re going to need to start making some noise in the marketplace.

Stay silent and you’ll always be fighting it out in the bargain basement with access gyms that only want a credit-card number and don’t care about getting results for clients.

The post Value: Race to the Bottom or Rule at the Top appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Small Gyms: When Every Square Inch Counts

I love hearing about gyms that make lots of money in small spaces.

Here’s a snapshot of a very cool model:

About 1,000 square feet of space.A focus on personal training and semi-private training (high-value services).An average revenue per member of $500 or more.

It doesn’t take a business wizard to see the elements that contribute to profitability:

You don’t have huge overhead.You don’t need a lot of gear.You don’t need a lot of clients.You don’t need massive marketing campaigns.You don’t need a huge team.

Despite all that, I couldn’t have come up with this formula when I opened a gym back in 2011.

In 2011, I had a growing number of clients for a bootcamp I ran out of a globo gym. I decided to go big on a space and rented 6,000 square feet.

To be fair, rent wasn’t much back then—especially in my town. So I got away with a lot of mistakes as a new gym owner.

Many times, I said this: “I’m so glad we rented more space than we need so we don’t have to move as we grow.”

I thought I had saved renovation and moving expenses by occupying a large warehouse early in the life of the gym. But as the years rolled by and rent increased, I realized that I had far too much space. And it was rarely filled.

Sure, my noon and 5-p.m. classes were big. Sometimes we’d get 20 people, and the extra space was fantastic. But from 7 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m., the space was almost always vacant.

So had I “saved moving expenses” or committed to overpaying for a lot of unused space for a decade?

It was the latter.

Small-Gym Superstars

I was reminded of my mistake recently when I spoke to two gym owners whose average revenue per member is well over $600 per person. In back-to-back interviews, they laid out their businesses for me, and the commonalities were obvious:

About 1,000 square feet (in very high-rent areas).A focus on personal training and semi-private training.Small number of team members.Very clear focus on a well-defined avatar.Niche expertise and special skills.Regular goal review sessions with clients.Steady streams of referrals.No marketing budgets.

Sounds amazing, right? Were I to open a gym today, I’d probably use this model. In fact, we eventually moved out of our warehouse, decreased space by about 90 percent and focused on a fewer clients who get better results faster. (Yes, the business is more profitable now.)

So what’s the kiss of death in a model that seems like a sure winner?

Too few clients and bad retention.

An ARM of $1,500 would be impressive, but a business would die if it had four $1,500-month-clients and lost two per month.

To go with a “small model,” you’ll need three key things:

A plan to acquire a small but clearly defined number of clients.A plan to deliver great value and make sure clients see that value.A plan to retain high-value clients for a long time.

A mentor can help you create a plan that’s specific to your business. But I’ll give you a few general Two-Brain resources so you can see how these problems can be solved:

Client acquisition: “How to Get Referrals”Value: “How to Charge What You’re Worth”Length of engagement: “Retention: What Actually Matters”
Optimize Your Space

Can you run a profitable business in a very large space? Yes, but the risks are greater. You’ll have to acquire and retain a lot of clients and manage a large team—many fitness entrepreneurs struggle with this.

The best plan is to do the opposite of what I did: Start small and make use of every square foot of space while serving high-value clients who stay for years.

If you do that, you have every option available to you. If you want to expand and go big, you can. If you want to stay small and earn more by delivering more value, you can do that, too.

And if you have too much space right now, I wouldn’t be afraid to consider downsizing if that improves profitability. It’s not a mark of shame—even though I was worried about what people would think if I reduced the size of my gym.

To run a very profitable business, you must find the optimal amount of space and then maximize revenue per square foot. And different spaces work better with different models.

I didn’t get all that years ago, so I understand if you’re unsure if your space works with your model.

To get an expert’s insight and find out how a mentor can help you optimize your business, book a call here.

The post Small Gyms: When Every Square Inch Counts appeared first on Two-Brain Business.