Chris Cooper's Blog, page 42

Riches in Niches: Why Bill Parisi Focuses on Making Kids Faster

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
What happens when you know your niche in the fitness industry? Well, you can serve more than a million athletes in more than 100 facilities around the world and help more than 130 NFL draft picks perform at an elite level. That’s possible. My guest today on “Run a Profitable Gym” is Bill Parisi. He’s one of the founding fathers of youth performance. Bill was an elite javelin thrower. He earned a finance degree, he worked as a strength and conditioning coach, and then he developed his own system and brand, Parisi Speed School. Now you want some big names. If you travel in NFL circles, you’ll know these guys. Bill’s helped the likes of Phil and Chris Simms, Wayne Chrebet, Amani Toomer, Chris Long, and I love this story. In 2005, Bill helped Fabian Washington run a 40 time in the 4.2s. Now that’s super-elite, world-class numbers, and it came with a hefty signing bonus when he was drafted in the first round. Bill, did you lose your mind when you saw him put up a 4.2 in there?

Bill Parisi (00:54):
Yeah, I mean, the whole team—it was a team effort, right? A team of coaches that really worked with those guys, and that was amazing. It was an amazing time. We had an amazing 10-year run working with NFL Combine athletes from 2000 to 2010. And really, I feel helped kind of pioneer that industry as well and set the standard there with the team that we created to come up with the strategies on how to run Combine testing.

Mike Warkentin (01:22):
And for people who don’t know, running in the 4.2s is worth millions of dollars. Like that is like Bolt, I think, ran a 4.22 or something like that in a sweatsuit. But like, these are world-class Dion Sanders numbers, and if I could run a 4.35 right now, the Oakland Raiders would probably call me even though I’m 47. It’s incredible stuff that you’ve done in this niche. And so, I want to dig into this whole thing with you because you’ve specialized and created this incredible program working with youth performance athletes who get amazing results at the super-elite level and every other level. And it can help gym owners figure out what their niche is and how they can specialize. So, I’m going to ask you this: A lot of young gym owners, we try to get every single client, and it costs us because we’re fractured. We don’t know what we want to do. In your bio, it looks like you had your niche nailed like in your twenties. Like how did you manage to do that?

Bill Parisi (02:09):
Yeah, I mean, I grew up as an athlete in high school. You know, football and then went out for track to get faster for football. Found my passion in throwing the javelin, and that led me to compete and train on an elite level. Going to Europe, going to Finland in the summer of 1989 and really learning a lot of techniques, training modalities, that we all know today. But I learned them in the 80s and early 90s. Quote unquote functional training and training connective tissues. Now, there were a lot of things I learned back then that I didn’t understand, but I understand now at a high level. And that was really the impetus; that was the foundation. You know, I went on to become a Division I All-American for two years, went to the Olympic trials, competed at this elite level, and that allowed me to just take this training and bring it to field and court sport athletes. Because as a 5-foot-10 Italian javelin thrower, North Jersey Italian javelin thrower, we’re not supposed to throw the javelin really far. They’re normally 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5 Norwegians, Germans, Swedes, Fins. You know, North Jersey Italians, we’re supposed to lay brick, make pizza, right? Give high interest loans for cash, collect garbage. That’s what we do in North Jersey, not throw the javelin too far. So.

Mike Warkentin (03:27):
So you learned some stuff early from personal experience, but you know, Chris has talked about focus being such a key entrepreneurial skill, but it’s so hard. Like, were you ever tempted as you were developing this to start thinking, “Oh, maybe I’ll do power lifting for strength instead of speed?” Like how did you stay focused on what was important to you?

Bill Parisi (03:44):
Yeah, I got laser focused on speed because speed is the underlying athletic performance indicator that really separates kids from making teams or getting playing time on most field and court sports. So, at that youth level from say eight years old to through high school, if you’re fast, you’ve got a huge advantage to making the team and starting on the team and making an impact on the team. Now, when you go to college at the higher levels, you’re not on that team unless you’re fast for the most part, for your position. And pros, everybody’s fast. So, at a Division I college, everyone’s fast; pros, everyone’s fast. But at that youth level, that’s where we focus, and we make massive impact and change lives by helping athletes improve their speed.

Bill Parisi (04:30):
Because that’s the number one physical attribute, along with the specific sports skill, of course. You know, you’ve got to know how to dribble a basketball and shoot a basketball, and you’ve got to know how to hit a baseball. You’ve got to know how to block or catch a football and defend. I mean, those are sports skills, but the foundation for all athletic success is speed, strength, and injury resiliency. And strength is a byproduct of being fast. I mean, to be fast, you’ve got to be strong, but you’ve got to know how to get strong, and you’ve got to know how to apply, really got to know how to recruit and apply that strength to fight against gravity and create ground reaction force to optimize your body’s movement over time.

Mike Warkentin (05:17):
You must have crossed paths with Louie Simmons from Westside Barbell over the years, I’m sure. Is that correct?

Bill Parisi (05:23):
100%. Yep.

Mike Warkentin (05:24):
Yeah, and the reason I ask is because what you’re saying, I had the privilege of visiting Westside—not as an athlete, obviously, I’m not strong enough—but to talk to Louie, and he said the exact same thing. And I always thought that powerlifting was about strength, and it is to a degree, but he was so hyper-focused on speed, and it blew my mind. And you obviously got the same thing. Speed is the thing.

Bill Parisi (05:43):
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s speed of the bar or intent. You know, velocity-based training is very important now: how fast we can move bars. It’s being measured anywhere from 0.1 meter-per-second up to 1.5 meters-per-second. And there’s five different ranges on how fast you move the bar, whether it be absolute strength or speed strength or strength speed, power—you know, all these things are measured. But yeah, that plays a role from a strength training standpoint to get faster. But then there’s this skill of movement—you know, how you accelerate, acceleration technique, maximum velocity, sprinting techniques. There’s multi-directional speed. So how well you can decelerate. You know, you wouldn’t get in your car if it didn’t have any breaks. Why would you have athletes go and compete in sports if they didn’t understand and train their body to decelerate?

Bill Parisi (06:31):
Because your quickness, your agility, is a direct correlation to your ability—so, we teach deceleration. It’s a very important physical quality that we teach or as part of our movement literacy program—our motor vocabulary that we develop with our athletes. So we really have a system of training athletes to perform all these skills around speed, which are acceleration, maximum sprinting speed—you know, if you’re running at maximum speed, something really good is happening on the field or something really bad is happening on the field, depending on what side of the ball you’re on and what you’re playing. But then there’s multi-directional speed, which is the ability to change direction. The curves—curvilinear running. I don’t know if you know, but Patrick Mahomes runs faster on a curve than he does straight ahead.

Bill Parisi (07:19):
So curvilinear running is very important. That’s a skill. And tissue has got to be prepped to run on curves. And then there’s agility, which is reactionary or more cognitive. You know, not knowing what direction you’re going to go in, where change of direction determined, it’s closed chain. You know where you’re going to go. It’s the offensive wide receiver running a pattern, and agility is more reacting to the visual stimulus. So, all these things we teach, we break down in a very methodical way. And now it’s a specialty, and it’s a niche that is very attractive to parents, and they can really understand, “Hey, yeah, my kid does need speed. Like we do need to get him faster.” Because they can relate to why that’s important to getting playing time or making the team. There’s nothing more important to parents than their kids’ self-confidence and self-esteem. And that’s ultimately what we do. We use athletic speed development for field and court sports, all field and court sports. We develop an athlete’s speed to ultimately improve their confidence because when you improve a competency, you improve confidence. So, the market, the parents out there, what’s more important than confidence and self-esteem? So, and that’s where the niche—you know, I obviously focused on this niche for 30 years, but it really starts there. And that’s our end-product, and that’s what we work on.

Mike Warkentin (08:42):
So is it fair to say that you see the results and the efficacy of the program, and that’s what keeps you on focus? Like you see these kids literally start at 10 years old and end up in the NFL? Is that how you stay laser focused on the speed program?

Bill Parisi (08:55):
Yeah. I mean, less than 0.1 of 1% end up in the NFL, right? Even less than that. I mean, we’ve trained over a million athletes, so our focus is really about helping kids reach their potential, their God given ability, and some of those kids, their potential is to be a high school athlete, some is to be college, some is to be professional. But we feel we can make any athlete, if they’re committed, a productive high school athlete, and your high school experience is really the real big thing for us because there’s 50 million, over 50 million, close to 60 million kids that play organized sports between the ages of seven and 18. 60 million. There’s only 8 million that play high school sports. So that means over 50 million kids get cut or dropped. It’s our goal to help those youth athletes compete and get a great high school career.

Bill Parisi (09:51):
That’s pretty important for parents. Because you know, that builds teamwork, it builds work ethic, comradery, collaboration—all those great skills you get from high school sports. And that’s really our mission. And when you explain it to parents in your community like that, that you can help kids improve their skill sets to excel at the high school level, that’s real. I mean, we don’t really talk much about scholarship. Yeah, parents have dreams and whatnot. For us, it’s really maxing out their high school—now, if they do well in high school and they’re playing at the varsity level as a sophomore, alright, now, OK, now we can say, “Yeah, there’s an opportunity to play in college.” Or if they’re playing at the varsity level as a junior and really doing well, alright. Because you know pretty quickly once kids get to high school, freshman, sophomore year, it’s a big eye opener for parents and for kids. You know, you’ve got to be a strong varsity athlete before your senior year if you’re going to go and play in college—for the most part. There are outliers and exceptions to that where kids develop late. I’m not saying that can’t happen, but in my 30 plus years of experience and training, our organization trained over a million athletes, we have a pretty good handle and understanding of what it takes to play at the high school level and then ultimately at the college level.

Mike Warkentin (11:12):
Yeah. So, you’re making an impact early, and that’s going to sustain them throughout life. And that applies to some of our listeners as well, where they have kids’ programs where they train, maybe not young sports performance athletes, but just young general people and want them to be fit for life. So, that really does link up with our gym owners. I’ll ask you this: In the functional fitness world or the gym owner world, we’re often tempted to discount kids’ programs. They’ll charge less than adult memberships for that, if you can believe that, in a lot of gyms, and it’s odd. Would you say that’s wise? Or how would you help them understand the value of youth services in a gym setting?

Bill Parisi (11:43):
I think the value of youth services is how I built my business. I started $50,000 in debt out of a van living in my parents’ basement. And I went around teaching speed to high school coaches, and I opened my first facility in 1993. It was 3,000 square feet, and it was youth performance focused. 1997, we did $957,000 in 3,000 square feet. In 1997. With 600,000 of that being youth performance, 300,000 being adult training, and that was in 1997. Then I opened the second facility, a third, a fourth, and then I had an $8 million business on my hands with 20% margins, and my clubs grew to an average size of about 25,000 square feet. But that facility that I opened in 1993 is still in existence today and is still, with all the additional facilities we opened—we opened about five other Parisi facilities in that market area.

Bill Parisi (12:44):
That facility is still doing 850 to 900,000 today, 30 years later, in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and anybody can come by and check it out. And our other flagship, and that facility is about 3,500 square feet of training space, and it does close to 900 today and five miles down the street, we have a 30,000 square foot facility that does over a million dollars in youth training. So, we dominate this market in New Jersey, and obviously we have a lot of facilities around the country, but we understand the youth, and that drives the adult market. You know, in my presentation I’m going to be talking about the power of family memberships and the power of having a family come to your gym—a parent doing training, group training, or one-on-one or whatnot, and then the kid is coming into the sports performance program. It’s how I grew my business from nothing from a van to an $8 million four club business averaging $2 million a club. Youth performance was the driver, and then we realized we had something special, so we started offering an affiliate program to that.

Mike Warkentin (14:01):
Listeners, Bill is referring to the Two-Brain Summit. He is going to be speaking there, and there are very few tickets left at recording time. So, if you want one, go to the show notes right away, and hopefully there are still some left, but you will be able to hear from Bill in person in Chicago June 8th and 9th. So, you’re obviously, you are showing the success of niching down and what that’s done. Your singular focus has made you a world leader in this, and you’ve got the financial metrics that obviously prove it. Have you seen other people in maybe other disciplines or other niches that say like, “I’m going to become the expert”—and this could be even at a lower level in like just a small town or somewhere—“I’m going to be the local expert who trains hockey players or football players” or any other niche? Have you seen specialists do that, and then become that local expert to end up having lower-level financial success simply because they’re focusing on a small segment of the market?

Bill Parisi (14:48):
There’s no doubt. There’s lots of niche opportunities for sure. Whether it be drilling down to football wide receivers, like that’s a niche, right? Drilling down to infield play in baseball. Drilling down to soccer skills, basketball skills, shooting, shooting labs, if you will, out there, right? So, there’s lots of niches, and in niches there’s riches. For the facility owner, speed development is a great niche. Focusing on speed. And we created a system that clubs can offer this service right in their club, in their existing space. If they have a non-motorized treadmill and a little turf area, we can get kids faster. You know, that’s all you need, and if you don’t have a non-motorized treadmill, that’s just one modality that—we couldn’t do maximum sprinting training, but we can do acceleration training; we can do multi-directional speed training.

Bill Parisi (15:47):
So, it’s really understanding movement literacy and understanding how to get a young athlete strong and how to progress them to get them strong in a safe, effective manner. And yeah, I mean, definitely getting a niche and being known in your community as someone who really understands how to develop these skills in athletes. But also, the big takeaway is the underlying motive is really to empower these kids and raise their self-esteem and doing that through proper training. So, my example that I give a lot to everyone is that the science is important, and we’re knee deep in science. We have so much science in terms of evidence-based training modalities; we’ll point to the research studies. We have all that. So, we have a lot of meat in our product, right? But I want to give you an example.

Bill Parisi (16:39):
If you were to have a barbecue, would you buy your hamburgers from McDonald’s and serve them? Or would you go out and buy some good quality meat and make some good thick patties and serve them? Right? I would assume you go buy; you can make a better hamburger than McDonald’s. You wouldn’t be buying McDonald’s hamburgers. If you can make a better hamburger than McDonald’s, why not open up right next door to them? You know, why not? If you’re that good, and you know, absolutely, and I know you can, because McDonald’s, what makes them successful is their delivery system, not necessarily the quality of their product. So, to be successful in this industry, one, you’ve got to have quality product; you’ve got to have good training, good science, but you’ve also got to have an exceptional delivery. And we know there are some people out there who maybe don’t have a great quality product, but are really good at delivery.

Bill Parisi (17:28):
And they’re successful despite themselves. Now it catches up to you when somebody gets hurt or someone better comes to the market and gets better results. So, we understand that process of delivery. I mean, I have two full-time PhDs in educational psychology and sports psychology who work in our program, who develop our delivery system on how to communicate and motivate kids. The product is motivation. What we’re lacking out there is not science, but it’s people who truly know how to motivate and have a love to want to empower kids. If you have a love to want to motivate and inspire kids and get them successful on the sports field, this is a niche you should look at. And we just don’t have enough of those people out there because kids are getting beat up by their coaches and sometimes by their own parents. They’re not good enough. They’ve got to work harder. You know, coming to a facility where you’re getting empowered and you’re learning skills on how to improve your agility and your speed, that’s life-changing for a kid. And when you do that for a kid, those parents become raving fans. They tell everybody about your facility. And that’s how we’ve grown from negative 50,000 in debt to $8 million with virtually no marketing.

Mike Warkentin (18:38):
Wow. So rather than the idea of like the scarcity mindset of saying, “I need every client, every single thing to make my gym go,” digging down and drilling into like a tiny vein of the market, becoming an expert, is actually going to give you better effects, and it’s going to be a financial success for you.

Bill Parisi (18:54):
Yeah, I mean, even—like we have gyms in our network that do an average, you know, our top facilities probably average 60,000 a month in youth training, right? And then you go to the next tier, they’re probably in that 30,000 a month. And then you go to that other tier that it’s just a program. These are gyms that just do youth performance. That’s their whole business, just youth speed training. Then you got the other gyms that are just running it as a program. You know, they average an extra 10 to 20,000 a month in their gym, just running a program. This is a program, just running a program. And what’s powerful about this is when you attract a young athlete and you get results with that athlete, they tell friends, but now their parents are talking about it, and their parents become members if you have a good, strong adult business. So, it really feeds each other. And that’s why we’ve been successful offering this program. We make it easy for coaches to become speed experts. I mean, you’ve got to put time in, right? But we have a complete system on getting them educated, certifying them, giving them the tools and resources, the online programming, all these things to ramp up fairly quickly in about six to eight weeks of education to be able to train a young athlete to get faster.

Mike Warkentin (20:16):
Have you formalized that referral program or a developmental thing where a young kid becomes an older client at your program, maybe after sports, or if they don’t make the next level? Or have you formalized that program where it’s like the kids’ parents or their friends come in or their parents come in? Or is that just something that happens organically for you?

Bill Parisi (20:32):
I mean, really both. I mean, we have over 100 affiliates, so a lot of facilities work it in different ways, but the reality of it is a lot of our facilities, they’re so successful in youth programming—I mean, the standalone ones that are—it just happens organically, you know, where parents are coming in. But when sometimes parents are coming in as members and you have a youth program, now they’re bringing their kids in and vice versa. But we found that parents, their main goal is really giving their kid the advantage. They really—they’re going to spend on that before they spend on themselves, and that’s been the ultimate driver. And a lot of that is also in terms of getting the parent involved, it depends on staff. You know, we all know staffing is always the challenge.

Bill Parisi (21:19):
You know, it’s all about finding and hiring and retaining quality coaches in this industry of—whether it be running a fitness club or studio or gym or sports performance facility. And we have a pretty cool recruiting and development process in that area for those people out there who want to coach kids. It’s a great gig for PhysEd teachers part-time to make extra money. They’re already in the industry. They already have benefits. They already have a full-time job. But to give you two, three hours a night, three nights a week, eight, 10 hours a night, that’s a great part-time gig for a PhysEd teacher, and they’re developing their skill sets to bring back to their job and their teams that they coach. So, with the right strategy, finding talent, going to every PhysEd teacher and asking if they want an opportunity to work as a performance coach in your facility,is a great way to add another 10,000 a month to your business as an existing club.

Mike Warkentin (22:19):
OK. That’s a good tip right there. Listeners, write that one down. You’ve got a finance degree, Bill, you’ve got a track record of success, hundreds of affiliates around the world. What would be your top advice for a young trainer right now or gym owner who’s listening and wants to grow a practice or is maybe thinking about opening a gym?

Bill Parisi (22:34):
Yeah, one, I would—you know, whatever you’re budgeting, add another 30 to 50% because the pricing is just outrageous, and you’re always over budget. Number two, hire slow and fire fast. Check references, do a deep dive in the hiring process. Most gyms fail because they just don’t have the right people, or they hire the right people; they fail to manage them correctly. So, they fail to provide the proper tools and resources. They fail to give feedback, and they fail to hold them accountable. So, communication skills, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, truly understanding how to hire is really key. And then knowing how to inspire your people and get them bought into your culture, your vision, and your mission. A successful gym really starts with a positive culture. And it really has to be built around the mission of the owner and the vision of the organization of the team.

Bill Parisi (23:39):
And they have to be on the same page, and you have to have weekly meetings, and you have to constantly be developing your team from an educational standpoint, a cultural standpoint. You know, your business is like a newborn baby. You have to take care of that baby. You have to hold its hand. You have to feed it; you have to change its diaper. You have to do everything for that baby until that baby starts to mature. And it takes about 20 years before you let that baby go on its own. And that’s the same with a business where it’s going to take a good amount of time to get a business to be able to run itself. I’m not saying 20 years, but it’s going to take some time where people think, oh, they’re going to own a business, and they’re going to be the owner, and they’re going to build it up and sit back and collect.

Bill Parisi (24:23):
Well, in this business, unless you have an incredible manager who’s completely bought in, that you’re incentivizing correctly and have open dialogue with him every week and every month, and his bonuses are good and he’s happy, then you’re pretty good. But finding that manager, keeping that manager on point and keeping them inspired and motivated, I mean, that’s what we really do. I mean, our core competencies are really to help find, develop, and maintain staff. And we do it around performance. You know, all of our resources around helping coaches become better performance coaches—and what’s kind of cool, I would say about well over 50% of our content, probably more like 75, is used in the adult setting. Like you can use a lot of our training, especially if you’re a functional-type gym. You know, your client isn’t the 60-year-old who’s way overweight, and a big workout is just walking on the treadmill. That’s not our client, right? I mean, that’s a Planet Fitness client. That’s not who we’re training. And a lot of the clubs that are part of your organization, the Two-Brain group, are training adults who are relatively in the functional training space, and a lot of our content applies to them. So, it’s universal in a lot of ways.

Mike Warkentin (25:42):
Do you have a client avatar actually written out in your business? Or is it something that you just know from your experience? Do you have that person even by name or by definition laid out?

Bill Parisi (25:51):
Yeah, it is interesting. We do. And when you really think, first, when you look at our business, the parent is the client. The child is the consumer of this service. So, that’s what’s unique about—because when you think of a child, you know, whether it be anywhere from seven to say 20 or 22, who decides what food they eat? Who does the shopping? Who decides what schools they go to, where they live, what time they have to go to bed? Like that parent is the client. Because they’re making the decision. And typically, most of the time the parent finds us and brings the child, and the child isn’t even familiar with what’s going on 80% of the time. And after they come through our system one session, that trial session, the child’s completely bought in. But the client is typically, to answer your question, is probably around 12 years old, not doing that great in sports or wants to do better in sports.

Bill Parisi (26:49):
Definitely not the star. Someone who’s trying to make the team or trying to earn a starting spot on the team. And that could be any team, a club team or a town rec team. Someone who is a little behind maybe in terms of getting on that team. And that’s where we see incredible results and life changing experiences with these kids. Now we get some of those other athletes who are obviously higher level, but when you really look at that athlete pyramid, there’s only the top 10% of the top 10%. Those are the quote unquote stars who are going to probably go on to compete at the college level. We’re focusing on all these people down here—these 60 million kids playing youth sports. There’s less than a million who play college sports, less than a million. There’s 59 million kids down here; there’s 8 million who play high school sports. There’s 50 million who play youth sports. That’s where the market is. Let’s get these kids down here. That’s our avatar. Those kids. And then working with them through high school. And then once they get to college, they’re at college; they’re busy. If you’re playing a college sport, it’s 12 months a year. They’re very seldom around. They’re not a high paying client at that point.

Mike Warkentin (28:09):
Right. So, by knowing your avatar, you’ve built a business that’s well into the seven figures and you’ve got affiliates all over the world. How would a gym owner right now today—like give them something actual—how could that gym owner start dialing in on a specific part of their market? What would you tell that person? How could they get more specific?

Bill Parisi (28:26):
Yeah, I would say—are you talking about youth performance? Is that the goal?

Mike Warkentin (28:30):
Or anything. So, our audience is everything. We have 1,000 gym owners in the Two-Brain family. They run all kinds of gyms from access gyms to functional fitness gyms, one-on-one coaching gyms. But all of them need to know exactly who they serve, so they can tailor their offer, get their client journey in place. How would you tell them to do that today?

Bill Parisi (28:48):
I would say, what aspect of fitness or recovery are you passionate about? You know, what really excites you about this industry? And I would say once you identify that, then do a deep dive into that. And it could be anything from youth performance training. It could be anything from recovery strategies. I’m really big into fascia and connective tissue and managing connective tissue. That’s where a lot of our pain comes from. A lot of fibrosis is created within the paramyosin and the connective tissues. And there’s lots of opportunities for revenue through recovery and different stretching programs. You know, obviously, yoga. I mean, there’s all these different modalities. What is it that you’re passionate about? And then go learn everything you can about that specific modality and that specific service and really understand the science.

Bill Parisi (29:45):
You know, really do a deep dive into the science of that modality. And then you figure out how to monetize it, right? What kind of service you can do to bring that modality to your market. But you’ve got to own it from an educational standpoint. And I think people get into this without truly owning it. And to own it from an educational standpoint, you’ve got to go to the workshops, you’ve got to go to the seminars, you’ve got to, in person, got to unpack it. And then obviously the online courses are important. I mean, we offer an online course and then to get our certification, it’s a three-day live, in-person education on top of the six-week online program, which is about 10 hours in length of self-study. Then you’ve got to really apply it. So, once you do that and you have a service that you’re passionate about, because that passion’s going to drive the motivation to go and follow up and do these things to learn more, then you create your service lines around that skillset, and you price it out, and you start lecturing on it.

Bill Parisi (30:50):
You start going out and educating people on that modality or that specialty and why it’s beneficial and how it can help. And you kind of uncover and unpack all the benefits around it. And you’ve got to link those benefits to the problems your market has. So, to be successful, you’ve got to solve a problem, right? So, my problem that I solve in youth performance is kids aren’t getting enough playing time. They’re not making the team. You know, like how many parents out there are not happy with the fact that their kid isn’t getting enough playing time, or not on the team, and why is that? Well, they’ve got to get stronger, they’ve got to get faster, they’ve got to get more confident. It’s very simple. I’m solving that problem. And that’s a really important problem in the household today: the kid having a positive experience in sport.

Bill Parisi (31:36):
And we, I mean that’s why we’re so successful and have such a long-lasting brand, 30 plus years, because we’re solving a specific problem. It’s not about ego; it’s not about training the NFL guys or anything like that. That’s what most people think it’s about. You know, they think that’s what makes you successful. No, I was with Bobby Stroupe three weeks ago. We did a joint seminar. Bobby Stroupe trains Patrick Mahomes. He’s been training Patrick Mahomes since he was nine years old. And he shared with me that training Patrick Mahomes doesn’t do anything for his sports performance business.

Mike Warkentin (32:09):
Really?

Bill Parisi (32:10):
Yeah. Yeah. Like it wasn’t—in some ways it was the distraction.

Mike Warkentin (32:15):
That is fascinating, Bill.

Bill Parisi (32:16):
Yeah. I mean, and Bobby and I—he spoke at a clinic I gave, and he’s aligned, we’re both aligned in empowering youth. And really what’s most important to a parent: that this trainer trains Patrick Holmes, or what are you going to do for my kid? You know, that’s great, and Bobby trains Patrick, but the guy who’s training Patrick Mahomes isn’t going to train your son. You know, I mean, he is busy training pros. Well, who’s the guy training my son? That’s most important. So, finding that trainer who’s bought in, who’s tied to a mission and a vision of an organization that’s really bought into helping that kid feel better about themself, not that how many NFL guys he’s training or how cool he is. Because he had his athlete jump on a 50-foot box, and he is going to post it on YouTube or on Instagram. It’s changing the paradigm, and that’s where the hiring process comes in. Find people who really are just stoked about empowering kids, not training an NFL Combine athlete.

Mike Warkentin (33:23):
Listeners, if you can solve problems for a segment of the market better than anyone else in the world, you’ll become a very successful gym owner. I can tell you that based on what Bill just told us. Last thing to ask you, Bill, Two-Brain Summit, June 8th and 9th in Chicago: You are speaking there. What are people going to learn from you at that talk?

Bill Parisi (33:41):
Yeah, we’re going to get into the new science of how to stand out in a crowded coaching crowd or crowd that’s crowded by coaches, right? How do you stand out? And we’re going to go over and unpack some of these strategies. We’re going to identify new scientific discoveries around the body’s fascia system that’s going to allow you to point to some evidence-based, non-negotiable science once you get your arms around it and be able to communicate it to get coaches, sport team coaches and parents and club presidents and booster club presidents, and all these people around teams—we call those “steers of influence”—how to really get them to say, “Wow, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.” And then how to take that information and bring it into a free trial. How to really get a team or an athlete to experience this training modality that’s really amazing.

Bill Parisi (34:40):
Because when you go through a specific speed development warmup and you go through a protocol that really prepares the body’s fascia system and prepares the muscles in a way, and you start to teach and unpack movement literacy just in a very fundamental first session approach, it’s life-changing for an athlete. They feel faster immediately in one session. So, understanding how to deliver that one-hour session where a kid is moving faster and easier; it’s easier for him to run faster. And we have a methodical approach over 30 years, a million athletes, that we teach, and we’re going to uncover and share these strategies on how to do that and the importance of doing that. And that’s how we took a gym of 3,000 square feet and brought it to 980,000 in revenue by doing that over and over again.

Bill Parisi (35:36):
You do that right, one session, one hour: Boom. They’re buying a 10 pack for 800 bucks, or they’re buying a group pack for 600 bucks, or they’re signing up for a membership, which we average 200 bucks a month, like our youth membership is 199 a month on average around the country for a typical six-to-nine-month commitment in our program. So, you’re selling $1,200, $1,800 packages all day long if you can just get that kid to take your free trial, and you get that kid to understand how to move a little bit more efficiently, understand how to just put force into the ground effectively in the right direction, at the right speeds, they’re going to catapult their body faster. It comes down to physics, comes down to biomechanics. It’s the laws of nature that we make really simple to understand.

Mike Warkentin (36:28):
Listeners, June 8th and 9th in Chicago, Bill will be there to talk about this. Very few tickets left. Get them. Bill, how can a gym owner find out more about Parisi Speed School programs?

Bill Parisi (36:37):
Yep. Parisischool.com. We have tracks for athletes; we have tracks for coaches. Very simple. If you want to develop yourself as a coach, we have a whole track for people to go on for education, mentorships, affiliation, and then we have obviously tracks for athletes to find one of our facilities and train in one of our facilities. So, we’re super excited to be part of Two-Brain You guys—I’ve been in this business for 35 years. You guys are by far the best consulting mentorship group out there, bar none. And I’ve seen them all. I’ve seen them all. So, you give the best value; you give the best information. We have about five of our facilities right now online with you guys and more coming. And we just had one or two that stepped out of other mentorships, quit those to join yours. So, we’ll have about five facilities of Parisi at this event. They’ll be happy to answer questions as well.

Mike Warkentin (37:32):
Oh, perfect. That website one more time, Bill?

Bill Parisi (37:35):
Parisischool.com. It’s Paris with an “i,” Parisi School, S-C-H-O-O-L.com. And yeah, there’s a ton of info about our programs for athletes and for coaches on that site.

Mike Warkentin (37:47):
Bill, thank you so much for teaching us the value of the niche. Thank you so much for this.

Bill Parisi (37:52):
My pleasure. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Warkentin (37:53):
It was Bill Parisi. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host Mike Warkentin, and my request on the way out is hit “subscribe,” so you don’t miss another show like this because we have world-class experts like Bill on here all the time. Hit “subscribe” on your way out, and now here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final message.

Chris Cooper (38:08):
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 Riches in Niches: Why Bill Parisi Focuses on Making Kids Faster appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Mine the Masters Niche

What if I said you could add a revenue stream that does this at your gym?

Equals or exceeds the average revenue per member of your core program.Contributes 10 percent to your gross revenue.Reaches full capacity quickly.Attracts participants who have a higher length of engagement than members of other programs.Fulfills the coaches who run the sessions.Delivers on your gym’s mission of helping people live longer, better lives.

That’s exactly what’s happening at Activate in Kerry, Ireland, where Brian Foley has created and filled a thriving 55-plus program.

Don’t Do Everything!

I’ve long stated that gyms shouldn’t run every program under the sun. It’s a mistake to dilute your focus.

But a very strong specialty program is a huge win in a gym as long as the core programs are locked in place and running smoothly.

In coaching gyms, it’s very common for specialty services to target kids, older adults or people who need nutrition help. You’ve got other options, but those three are obvious winners—if you set them up properly.

Many gym owners don’t do that. For example, we have clients who generate 10-20 percent of their gross revenue with nutrition coaching. Yet the industry average is just 4.3 percent, with almost nothing left for the gym after the nutrition coach is paid.

In other cases, specialty programs start off hot and then crumble, becoming time sinkholes and money pits.

We work with a client who started a yoga program years ago with 28 people, only to have it bleed out to two regular attendees who didn’t even cover the cost of the instructor. He doesn’t offer yoga anymore—his mentor keeps him focused on fitness and nutrition coaching only.

We teach Two-Brain clients exactly how to build, price, market, staff and sustain specialty programs so they generate revenue and profit. But I want to give you a few tips here.

The first: You don’t need every program. You need the right program.

So use Goal Review Sessions to find out what your clients—and their friends and family members—need. If your best clients all have kids between 8 and 12, you’ve got an obvious opportunity. If your top members don’t have kids but mention older parents who could use help, there’s another opportunity. And so on.

Next, you’ll need to set up and price your program. You’re a fitness expert, so I won’t tell you how to help clients get results in the gym. I’ll just remind you that if you use Goal Review Sessions to show clients that they’re getting results, you’ll solve your retention problems.

And here’s a huge reminder: Specialty programs are not worth less than core programs. It’s common for gyms to charge less for kids or masters training, but they don’t need to. Expertise in special areas is not worth less than expertise in general areas. It’s actually worth more.

Then you’ll have to lay out your funnels: How will you get people into the program?

At Activate, Brian knows exactly how to get clients, and his program is at capacity:

1. He uses referrals from current clients. This is a documented, active process, and Goal Review Sessions are the key. Brian does not wait for referrals. He works for them.

2. Brian uses content in a local paper to build trust in his expertise and generate leads. He did his research and knows that a large number of 55-plus people retire to his area, and they are not receptive to ads. So he creates content for them, and he knows they read the local paper.

3. Brian created a web of high-value local connections: “We linked in with local physiotherapists, local general practitioners, orthopedic surgeons and rheumatologists—(they are) kind of main go-to’s who work with this particular demographic. So we made sure that we made a lot of referral links with these particular clinicians.”

One other big step: Use free consultations to build trust with prospective clients. This is good policy with every demographic, but it’s essential with older adults. Similarly, one-on-one on-ramps are best practice with every new client; they are non-negotiable with the 55-plus crowd.

This is simple stuff but it’s not easy. Too many gym owners skip steps, and their programs flounder.

Need Help?

If I boil it down, your specialty program will thrive if:

You know your market and set up clog-free funnels.You price your program according to the value you deliver.You bring people in with free consultations and one-on-one on-ramps.You get results and show them to clients.You stay focused on the right specialty program, not every program.

I hope this info helps you.

Our mentors help clients set up new specialty programs fast after market research and testing. In fact, Brian—who is also one of our mentors—believes you can make huge progress on a 55-plus program in about a week, if you do it right.

Get started today! And if you want a mentor’s help generating new revenue with high-speed, done-for-you resources and accountability, book a call here.

The post How to Mine the Masters Niche appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Don’t Read This. Respond to a Lead Instead.

What’s the fastest way to boost your marketing metrics?

If I were a gambler—and every entrepreneur literally has money riding on the answer—I’d wager that this is the easiest, best way to sell more gym memberships:

Contact leads sooner.

I talk to a lot of top gym owners as one of the hosts of the “Run a Profitable Gym” podcast.

Here’s what I’m hearing more and more often from the gym owners who are posting the best metrics:

“I call leads as quickly as possible—within five minutes if I can.”

One top gym owner takes it even further:

1. Call all leads once an hour until contact is made—try every hour between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

2. Always call twice back to back to increase pickup rate.

3. Nurturing SMSs and emails are only used from Day 2 onward. First contact attempts are always by phone.

4. Call every day for at least six days.

His gym is doing very well, by the way. He has well over 500 members.

You might read the list above and think, “That’s too much.”

And I’ll agree: The plan is intense. It’s also an ideal: Its creator admits it’s not always possible to call leads every hour. But that’s OK because everyone on the team knows speed and follow-up are important, and they know what perfect execution entails.

If someone misses the 11-a.m. call because she was working on retention—also very important—it’s OK. She can just pick up the pursuit at noon.

Overall, the four-step plan shows the relentless approach to marketing that characterizes top gym owners in 2024.

I can recall letting a phone in the office ring because I wanted to finish wiping off the squat rack.

I remember mentally writing off a person who didn’t show up for a free consultation—I just started a workout and never messaged him again.

I know I checked our Facebook inbox several times and found months-old messages that read “how do I get started?”

I got away with that stuff in 2011. I wouldn’t dare try it in 2024.

Try Harder

If you’re struggling with marketing, or even if you’re not but would like to do better, try harder.

You don’t need secret tips or advanced tactics from sales gurus.

To start, you just need to contact leads early and often—and keep trying until you get a “no.”

That’s it.

Some will suggest doing this will annoy people. And maybe a few people will be irritated. But who cares? Anyone who entered your funnel did so by choice. You’re just holding up your end of the deal by connecting to give them the info they need to get fit.

If you get through to the person, you might earn a high-value client who stays for years—and you might change a life.

If you pass on follow-up, someone who needs help might never get it.

What Will You Do With Your Next Lead?

You’re going to get a new lead in the next 24 hours. It could be a person who books a free intro, or it could be someone who brushes up against your business but still shows interest by visiting your website, requesting a lead magnet, calling or DMing you, commenting on your social media, sending an email, or joining your mailing list.

How fast will you respond to that person? And how many times will you try to make contact to find out how you can help?

I hope the answers are “immediately” and “a lot.”

If you have different answers, I really think you might be missing the easiest way to help more people and generate more revenue.

To learn more about how to grow your fitness business, book a call.

The post Don’t Read This. Respond to a Lead Instead. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Marketing Leader After Just 6 Months of Mentorship!

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
We know a free consultation is the very best way to get clients into your gym. Two-Brain data shows that gyms that use free consultations, sell more and retain clients longer. Today, I’m going to give you exact sales stats from a gym in Europe. We’re going to look at the entire funnel and break it down: What’s good and why, what could be improved, and how? This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “Subscribe” so you don’t miss a single episode. I want to help you grow your gym every single week. Now to start real sales stats, these are from Calisthenics Amsterdam: 76 appointments were set, 37 people showed up and eight people bought. Those are set, show and close rates, and we have leaderboards for this every single month. We’re going to dig in now because the gym owner is here; Wesley Kalkhoven is here from Amsterdam. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Wesley Kalkhoven (00:48):
Thanks. Thanks. Good to be here.

Mike Warkentin (00:50):
I am thrilled. I love talking about the marketing stuff and digging into the leaderboard because these are real stats, and I like hearing the stories behind them because they help other gym owners. So, I’m going to just dig in right off the top. 76 appointments: I never ever did that. I never even came close to this when I was running my gym. You did 76 appointments. Where did these people come from? How did you get so many?

Wesley Kalkhoven (01:10):
That’s a good question. So, I’m quite new at Two-Brain, and I switched to the software Kilo quite fast. For me already, that was kind of normal, or I was still a bit in the middle, like, “Is this, me? Or is this maybe—” I have a bit of a different gym, of course. I do calisthenics. I look at a lot of CrossFit gyms and how they do it. Maybe it’s the weather. For me, it wasn’t like a magic something; it was just following the formula, following the steps. The marketing campaign went really well. I have some engagement also, share some things on my own social, and of course from my own gym. So, I think somewhere just in the boring part is where the magic happens.

Mike Warkentin (01:52):
OK. So, you used software to start, so Kilo was the software that you used, and did you use paid ads at the very top of the funnel, or how did you get your name in front of people right away?

Wesley Kalkhoven (02:02):
So, I am kind of the only calisthenics gym in Amsterdam, so I have a kind of a monopoly, let’s say, there. So, if somebody looks up calisthenics in Holland itself, probably my gym will pop up first. So, that’s definitely—it’s different than a CrossFit as well. So, and to combine that with the paid marketing. Yeah, that worked really well, apparently. So, I think a lot of people come from the ad, but a lot of people also follow us on social because it’s kind of—calisthenics is quite popular on social media, and it looks cool for the unknown eye. Like they see people do certain stuff. It’s different than weightlifting. And weightlifting is like, “OK, other people can do it. They’re strong. I’m not strong,” but what I hear some people: “I see that, a handstand or whatever; I want to learn that.” And then they’re going to Google, and they come to me. So, I think a mixture of those both.

Mike Warkentin (02:56):
OK, so you did social media. So, you’ve got a great social media presence. You also have an organic advantage in that you are in a very special niche where people, when they look for you, they’re going to find you. You’re probably Google Page 1, am I right?

Wesley Kalkhoven (03:08):
Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (03:09):
Yep, so that’s a huge advantage. But you’ve earned that by dialing into your niche, and then you use paid ads. Do you have an idea roughly of what you spend on paid ads per month?

Wesley Kalkhoven (03:18):
600 euros.

Mike Warkentin (03:20):
600 euros. OK. And did you start at that, or did you ramp up to that spend?

Wesley Kalkhoven (03:23):
No, I started immediately with that. When everything was set, when the website was done, when the analytics was done, when everything was all together, then I started it, and I just kept on going.

Mike Warkentin (03:33):
OK, now when you did this, did you expect a great response from the ads? And did you get it?

Wesley Kalkhoven (03:41):
Oh, this is a good question. I think every now and then my brain says, “Well, there’s 600 euros. If I just skip that and just—” I did not know because—and still maybe depends on the weather or on whatever, that a few weeks it’s busy and a few weeks it’s not. And when it’s not, I’m like, “OK, stop the ads.” But I do see, like, I hear people during the No Sweat Intro, like, “Yeah, I saw your ad a while ago, and now I felt the moment was there.” So, I was like, “OK, just keep it going.” People know about it, they follow social, they see the ads and all these little nuggets they’re—it’s in their brain. They’re like, “OK, now I want to start.” Boom, plan a No Sweat Intro.

Mike Warkentin (04:18):
OK. Do you track the return on investment on the ads? So, when you look at that 600 euros, can you say, “I made 8,000 euros from that 600?”

Wesley Kalkhoven (04:25):
No, I don’t.

Mike Warkentin (04:26):
OK. Are you going to start doing that?

Wesley Kalkhoven (04:28):
Probably, yeah.

Mike Warkentin (04:29):
OK, yeah, because that’s an interesting question because I didn’t do that either at first. And then when I started doing it, and there was a whole calculation, I started saying, “OK, I can track all this revenue to this, and it makes perfect sense to keep continuing.” And that’s what kept me honest when I wasn’t getting maybe the sales and leads I wanted, I still knew that it was a good investment. So that’s something that I tried, and it did work for me, but it was something that I didn’t start with because I just started with a very small campaign. It was like $5 a day or something like that, and I just didn’t worry about it. But if you track your metrics, you see what happens, it’ll be interesting.

Wesley Kalkhoven (05:00):
Yeah, yeah. What I feel I’m becoming a bit—because it goes well, I don’t—like, I focus on other things. So, I’m not nitpicking the statistics on that part because apparently it goes well. But there is, for me—I need to dive deeper in those specific things.

Mike Warkentin (05:15):
You can’t do everything at once. And that’s exactly it. And if you’re getting a good response and you’ve got this many people setting appointments, you definitely have something that’s working. So, that’s—the proof is there. And if you dig in, you’ll probably find more numbers. Do you happen to know how many people came to your gym from the ads versus from social media or their website? Do you have an idea of that?

Wesley Kalkhoven (05:33):
Oh no, I didn’t track—

Mike Warkentin (5:34):
That’s a tough question.

Wesley Kalkhoven (5:35):
Yeah, no, I don’t know that.

Mike Warkentin (05:36):
What’s your gut sense? Do you think it was more ads or social media? I’m asking just based on what you’ve talked—spoken to people.

Wesley Kalkhoven (05:42):
Yeah, I think it’s half, half a bit because I do see in Kilo that they come through the ads only. I don’t have the specific number for that, but if I look at all the people or the bookings and the No Sweat Intros, I think it’s kind of half, half. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (05:57):
And that’s probably about right, just in general. And they do bleed over into each other because someone might see your ad and then happen to bump into your social media. And sometimes there are connections between social media and ads and how they get funneled and so forth. So, you might see that, but I was just curious about that. Give me this one. Before we go any further, what do you sell at your gym? Like what’s the 60-second summary? We’ve talked about calisthenics. What are you actually offering, and why do people come to you?

Wesley Kalkhoven (06:20):
What I like to tell them is with calisthenics, we focus on skills, and what I already said, like, people love to see a handstand or a pull—a muscle up. And for most ladies, for example, they want to learn a pull up. They’re like the tough chicks that like, “I just want to do a pull up. I want to be functional with my body. I don’t have to deadlift like 300 kilograms. But I definitely do want to do some pull-ups.” Muscle ups. There are certain skills—front lever that you hang on the bar with your legs like this, it looks cool. And I say, “Imagine it’s a carrot hanging in front of you.” And that’s that muscle up you want to learn. Then looking better, losing weight, getting stronger, that’s all part of the journey, but it’s not the main focus.

Wesley Kalkhoven (07:02):
And that’s what I sell. The idea of like, “How good would it feel, would it be, if you can do that perfect pullup, or you can do five pull ups?” Or just to narrow it down in the journey. Yeah. In what calisthenics is. Calisthenics is training with your own body weight. Most of the time I’m not—it’s not the thing we do always because I think like training needs a bit more intensity, so we use weights for that. But the main focus is a lot of people, they don’t want to bulk up, or they don’t want to be too bulky. And they see calisthenics people, they’re really lean, and they’re like—I also call it urban gymnastics. And when they think of gymnasts, they’re like, “Oh, this looks nice. I want to be that. But not too extreme. I just want to—” So yeah. So, somewhere in that vision, that’s how I try to present the Calisthenic Amsterdam journey. For men and women, it’s a bit different, but yeah, to become lean, to become strong and functional.

Mike Warkentin (08:05):
Do you do parkour, or is it more gymnastics and bodyweight movements?

Wesley Kalkhoven (08:08):
No, no, no. Not parkour. No, it’s really gymnastics and body weight. Because the average age is about 30, 35.

Mike Warkentin (08:15):
OK. That’s very interesting. Tell me a little bit—how much space do you have in your gym, and how many staff members do you have?

Wesley Kalkhoven (08:22):
Yeah, so we’re a team of eight people. And our location is a bit different. Like, I’m at an old container platform, so where back in the days, people stored their stuff. It’s really old. So, they don’t really do that anymore. Probably in the future, they’re going to build there. But now I am there on—the owner probably thought I was starting a bootcamp class or something, and I borrowed a few containers. I made it a dressing room. I made it a storage room. I made it a studio. So, we have an indoor and outdoor section, and the outdoor has a big roof over it. And it’s really urban. It’s literally in containers with a lot of rust. And definitely not child friendly, but that’s what people want. It’s on the outside of Amsterdam. It’s—people sit behind their laptop and they’re in their, let’s say, cubicle.

Wesley Kalkhoven (09:07):
And then now they go and go outside. It’s rough. It’s tough. It’s cool. But yeah, and of course, the social aspect—everybody is there because they want to learn things. They want to learn from each other; they’re going to help each other. There’s not a super competitive element to it. And that invites certain people of like, “Oh, this is nice. I don’t feel the pressure that I already have for my work. I can just focus on good technique and having a good time.” But how big the gym is is about 150 square meters. I don’t know how it is in—

Mike Warkentin (09:37):
150. So, times about—it’s about three. So, that’s about 1,600 square feet, something like that. Does that sound about right?

Wesley Kalkhoven (09:43):
I think so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Warkentin (09:44):
OK. Something like that. So small space, but very cool space and very dedicated space to your clientele.

Wesley Kalkhoven (09:50):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (09:51):
OK. Can people see pictures and, and videos of what you do on Instagram? And if so, where can they—what’s your account?

Wesley Kalkhoven (09:57):
Absolutely. Calisthenics Amsterdam or Calisthenics_Amsterdam. Yeah. Yeah. We post regularly what we do, stories, how it looks. And now the focus is more on personal training because the gym is almost full now, because thanks to Two-Brain, it’s amazing. But, yeah, social media is definitely an option.

Mike Warkentin (10:19):
OK. This is good. So, guys, check that out and take a peek at that. Make sure you follow along because you’ll see some cool stuff. And I’m going to check it out right after this because I want to see the shipping containers Now, so you have top of the funnel, you had 76 appointments; then when you go downstream, you’ve got 37 show up. So, tell me, first of all, how did you get those people to show up? Because that’s a pretty good number, and not everyone who books shows up. And then second, how will you improve that number in the future? What do you got going on?

Wesley Kalkhoven (10:42):
Well, again, with Kilo, I really see the messages that they get, that it’s almost rude not to come. If you get emails and text messages and it’s a lot when people are like, “Well, you’re stalking me almost,” to a certain extent, you know, and it’s in a good way. And then I call them and it’s like, well, it’s the system, but it also really works because people feel invited. And so that’s definitely a big difference with how I did it before. I just try to call them if I didn’t. If they didn’t pick up, it’s like, OK, I sent them an email, didn’t respond, and now you just see that it flows much easier, and people are much more engaged. So, when I call them, it’s like, “Oh, Wesley. Oh, wow.” And they feel like you call, you SMS, you email. So that’s already—the first few steps are already made.

Mike Warkentin (11:24):
So you’ve got the automations running through Kilo, and then, but you personally call them, correct?

Wesley Kalkhoven (11:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Warkentin (11:30):
OK. And how soon do you do that?

Wesley Kalkhoven (11:32):
So, going through the sales part in Two-Brain Business—I prefer, of course, within the first five minutes, but that’s not always reasonable. But I love the app. The app says, “Boom, you got a new lead.” And if I have the time, I’m like, “I’m just calling them from my phone just to have a talk, just to see,” because I see later on when they’re like, “I’m interested in calisthenics,” within—after five minutes, they’re doing something else, and just to get them back and like, “Oh, who was this? Who?” It’s so much easier when their thought process is like, “Oh, this looks cool,” and then they get a call at the same time. It’s like, “Yes, I want to do this. Or at least to sit with you.” So ideally in the first five minutes, but now actually I’m working on that part.

Wesley Kalkhoven (12:12):
Before that it was even one or two days—has a bit to do with my own thought process of like, I had something like—yeah, my ego it’s kind of a thing with sales and ego. It’s like, “Well, I built something cool; you can be happy to go to my place.” But of course, it doesn’t work like that. They really want to feel invited. Some people think it’s scary, and some people think it’s new. So, but preferably, within the same day to give them a call, that really works to make them feel welcome, make them feel seen, make them feel—they’re in the moment to catch them in that part.

Mike Warkentin (12:44):
OK. So, gym owners, if you’re listening right now, imagine that I picked up my phone and I went to your website and I booked a free consultation. Would you get a notification that that had happened? How soon would you get that notification? And what would happen? Would I get a message? Would I get a text? Would I get a video message? Would I get a DM? Would someone call me? And we’ve actually done this on the show before we actually did this and played with a couple of gyms, and we went and entered their lead funnel. And in some cases, we got phone calls right away. In other cases, we got nothing. So, the question is: What are you doing at your gym right now if a lead goes into your funnel? And if you’re not getting a notification, and if you’re not calling them right away repeatedly until you get an answer, you’re leaving leads on the table, and they’re not going to show up as much. So, Wesley, do you think that’s accurate, what I just said?

Wesley Kalkhoven (13:28):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It can be time consuming, but if you can between trainings or whatever, then if you find that sweet spot of just calling the people, just have a quick talk, book them immediately, that can really work. But again, that’s the ideal thing. I’m still working on it to mix it in. But it makes a big difference.

Mike Warkentin (13:51):
Yeah. So how do you find the time for this? Like, do you coach a lot at your gym, or are you the head salesperson? Or how does that break down? How do you find the time to do stuff like this?

Wesley Kalkhoven (13:58):
What I love about Two-Brain, the first question is: If you got hit by a bus, can your gym still run? And that was like, no, nope. That’s like—I’m fully, like, if it doesn’t go—so that means if I’m on holiday, I am always in my head like, I cannot relax because nothing is happening. And it gives me a lot of, now looking back, a lot of stress actually—or a lot of not being present, especially now having a daughter, I’m like, “Wow, I need—Daddy needs to stop working to be with her.” Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Mike Warkentin (14:22):
Yeah, just how do you find the time? Like, do you coach classes in your gym? So, if you get a notification, like are you coaching a class, or do you have other responsibilities, or who’s responsible for that? And how do you find the time to respond very quickly?

Wesley Kalkhoven (14:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now, I’m in the part where a lot of things are going really well, and for the last month, I pulled myself quite back from teaching, so I only teach two hours a week just to get all the small things ready, and to what I said, also to call a lot of people because we’re almost full. And I’m somewhere in my head, I’m like, OK, when we’re full, that’s a big luxury for what I can do. And that’s, that’s, that’s 20 more spots-ish, and then I’m going to create more hours. But and then I want to come back to the gym because I love teaching, but I do feel I have a lot of time. I can be with my family, and now I’m integrating the part that I can just be doing the intakes, doing the goal review sessions, but also giving my trainers the attention that they deserve and get them—I see my trainers as my second family. I believe if I treat my team as my family, magic can be happening, and they share it with the clients again. So yeah, it’s—I got a lot of time because the trainers are doing super well, and that gives me space to go with—to do a lot of No Sweat Intros.

Mike Warkentin (15:40):
Did your mentor help you find that time and pull you out so that you could get the time to build a business like this?

Wesley Kalkhoven (15:46):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was really me against my ego the whole time of, like, I’ll keep it short, but in the beginning, it was like, “Oh, if I can’t do it, how can it happen?” Because I’ve been doing this for so many years. And I was like, especially again when I became a dad, I was like, “I need to step up, and I need to press my ego away of, like, there are more people, more successful than I am who have more knowledge than I do. So be humble and start learning from others.” And that was the best step I’ve ever made. I’m dead serious. It was so nice to step out of that bubble and to see there’s so much knowledge, and there’s so much good people with good intentions who can help me. Gary, my teacher, my mentor, I’m super grateful for him. And the whole way of how Two-Brain got me into contact with him and my mindset in the beginning was like, “Two-Brain, really? Is that a thing?” And now I’m sold big time.

Mike Warkentin (16:43):
Did Gary help you get more time with your family? Is that safe to say?

Wesley Kalkhoven (16:47):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (16:48):
And more income?

Wesley Kalkhoven (16:50):
And yes. Double. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (16:52):
Double? Really, you doubled revenue, your income? Wow, that’s incredible. I was going to ask you what changed when you got a mentor on board, but obviously those are some big ones, but people don’t know if they’re listening: You’ve only been with Two-Brain for about six months, is that correct?

Wesley Kalkhoven (17:05):
Yep. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (17:06):
So, talk to me about what’s the biggest change between the pre-Two-Brain period and now? What’s different in your business?

Wesley Kalkhoven (17:13):
Chris Cooper said it beautifully somewhere in this video; it’s like, I’m just keeping it together. You know, I’m doing a little course on sales and then a little course on personal training or how to—and it’s not, it wasn’t structured. It was like me giving myself a feeling of like, “You know, if I do these things, maybe my revenue goes a bit up.” But I was just like—it’s really time and energy consuming just to find things that I think will work. But there’s not a—they’re all different things. Like people you see on social media, they sell you one thing, and they’re good, but it doesn’t fit together. And what I love about Two-Brain is they look at all the aspects and especially how to keep people longer, to give them more value, and therefore create a bigger, better community.

Wesley Kalkhoven (17:59):
And all these things that make so much sense now in like a year later. So yeah, the structure, what Two-Brain gave me, as you can hear, like I’m quite—I can be all over the place, but just the focus, that gives me a lot of peace, and therefore I can give that peace much easier to my clients and the value that I give from my different side, and not only like, “Oh, you want to stay here. Don’t leave. Oh, no. You need to—” And now, it works. Yeah. It’s much easier to share that part.

Mike Warkentin (18:27):
Did Gary tell you step by step, did he just say like—because you said you can be all over the place—did Gary say like, “Do this thing right now,” and then did he say, “Did you do it?”

Wesley Kalkhoven (18:35):
Kind of. Kind of. Because that was my fear. Like I’m my entrepreneur. I made a decision not to work for a boss because “Don’t tell me what to do.” But that really also works a lot against me because I’m like, “I’m the only one who could tell me what to do, dah, dah, dah.” But my mentor was just really like, “Well, this is the outcome, what can be there, but it’s up for you to do it.” And yeah, it’s not rocket science somewhere. And that makes a big difference. Like, I just need to do it. And I was really eager to do it as well because I was really excited, because I love data and I love all—I start understanding the whole picture. And that gave me a lot of energy to go through all these phases. So, it wasn’t really that he said, “Do this,” but he just gave me—what I do actually with my intakes. Like, I show them the end result, and he did it for me as well, and if I have that picture clear, then it’s much easier for me to work toward that because it makes sense.

Mike Warkentin (19:32):
So he laid out the path to your goal.

Wesley Kalkhoven (19:34):
Yes.

Mike Warkentin (19:35):
Yeah. So that makes sense. So, I haven’t spoken to someone who’s been with Two-Brain for six months in a little bit on this show, so I’m going to ask you this: We’ve tried to set up the Stage 1 and Stage 2—like the early stages of mentorship, those programs—to get quick wins for gym owners. So right away we want you making money, making more sales. Did you find that was the case when you started?

Wesley Kalkhoven (19:53):
Yep, yep. Absolutely. That was, yeah. It’s simple. Like, I don’t know if it was the timing or anything, but more the structure and then just follow the steps, and it’s depending on my own business strategy of course, but a lot of things worked much better, and clients felt seen, and the trainings were better, and the trainers know what they had to do. So yeah, the whole package clicked quite fast for me, and now I’m just doing the fine-tuning parts. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (20:21):
That’s so good to hear. Let me ask you this now: So, we’re going downstream, get into the sales office: eight closed sales. Tell me: Are you happy with the number, and what are you going to do to improve it or change it? What’s up?

Wesley Kalkhoven (20:32):
I’m happy. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and be humble in the process, really. Like that’s my thing. Like, it goes really well now. OK, now I can lean back because—and so I really feel I need to stay sharp, listen to the feedback of certain clients. If it’s a bit different or whatever, modify, stay in contact with my mentor, and every time, of course, I get homework to boost up the revenue, to boost up the value. Yeah. So, just following the steps.

Mike Warkentin (21:03):
So you said you only need 20 more members to be full, so you don’t need—like, you’re not looking to close every sale necessarily; you’re looking to find the best clients. Is that accurate?

Wesley Kalkhoven (21:12):
Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We’re—so for group classes, when we’re full, I want to—it’s a luxury now. I will start like a waiting list and next to that, when we go full on personal training—because for personal training, we have quite some space left, but for group classes, if that’s full, maybe we can do something with the membership prices. Yeah, I can cherry pick kind of indeed what type of people I want. Of course, everybody’s welcome. But yeah, it’s a different position than I was in like half a year ago. Absolutely. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (21:43):
Do you practice sales?

Wesley Kalkhoven (21:45):
Yeah, it’s definitely a big part of me because sales, it’s me understanding the value that I can give from a rational perspective towards my kind of insecurity the whole time. Because when people started talking about money or it’s too much, I take it personally, and I’m like, “Why am I taking it personally?” I’ve done it so many times, but I need to keep this fresh or something in my brain that it’s not about me. And so, I feel that when I’m on a streak, it goes effortlessly, and I can just tune into the people. So, sales really gives me a perspective of how I’m standing in life, and it becomes—it was a bit of a negative part, sales. It was manipulative and those kinds of things. And now I’m like, “Wow, no. It’s literally showing people the way that can be possible through my voice or my eyes.” So, yeah, I am working on that, and I probably still, I will never stop in that because it’s on so many levels. I understand, like, this is big. Sales is enormous, and it’s a beautiful practice.

Mike Warkentin (22:48):
So one of your people shows up to an appointment and leaves without buying. What’s the most common reason? What are you finding?

Wesley Kalkhoven (22:55):
Prices still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s still too much.

Mike Warkentin (22:59):
And what are you charging if you don’t mind telling us?

Wesley Kalkhoven (23:02):
Yeah, yeah. So, for two times a week, they pay 82 euros a month.

Mike Warkentin (23:07):
I think that’s about 100 U.S., I think, or something like that.

Wesley Kalkhoven (23:10):
I think so, yeah. Yeah. And then for 20 times a month, they pay 140 euros.

Mike Warkentin (23:15):
And is that a lot compared to the other things? You said you’re kind of a unique gym, so is that a lot to your closest competitor?

Wesley Kalkhoven (23:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, a normal, like a gym-gym where you just come in, you pay like 20 euros.

Mike Warkentin (23:26):
OK. That’s interesting.

Wesley Kalkhoven (23:28):
Yeah. But I think compared with regular CrossFit gyms, maybe I’m a bit above that because CrossFit of course is a different niche. I’m a bit above that, but it also depends what type of gym it is.

Mike Warkentin (23:39):
OK. So that’s interesting. So, you’ve got a pretty unique specialty service that’s unique in your area, and you’re charging a premium rate. So yeah, it makes your numbers make sense. When you get some leads, some people are going to come in and say, “Oh, that’s too much for my budget.” And that’s fine, because those aren’t the clients that you’re looking for. You’re looking for—you’re nearing capacity. So, you’re looking for a specific amount. Would you consider eventually adjusting your marketing to weed out certain people so that you only get those sorts of high-value clients? Or do you like this numbers where you have a large amount that you can kind of weed out organically down the funnel? What approach would you use in the future?

Wesley Kalkhoven (24:14):
I never thought about it, but more, I think, the group classes—so this is something I haven’t discussed. So, we have a few calisthenics parks throughout Amsterdam. There are public parks, and we have our main location, and we have trainers on now one, and we have three actually, who teach in those public parks. But we are located in the north, but in the west, we also teach, and there are two more. So, in the south, actually on every place we have four places. So, for me, it’s more like if I know that we are expanding, I’m using a new park to create new classes for new people. So, there is place to grow. And that feels really nice because it’s a public park. I only pay for the trainer, and that’s a thought process. But my real focus goes to personal training because that makes a big difference. And yes, then I need to change my marketing campaign to more high price tickets and the audience of that.

Mike Warkentin (25:09):
Yeah, and that’s great feedback because I asked the question because you’ve just started doing this and you’re into this, the whole process for six months—just got the software in place and so forth. You are in the stage of like absolutely optimizing stuff. And there’s lots of ways–I’m not a marketing expert. John Franklin, who is the other host of the show, is an expert on that stuff and would start to dial in exactly on how you get the most, how you pre-qualify people, get the right people in the sales office, close a huge number of them, but you’re just starting out and getting a huge number of leads, getting a bunch of them to show up, that is a huge, huge win right off the bat. And because you’re nearing capacity, you’re not under that pressure to close every single person. I was just curious to see how you might adjust that down in the future.

Mike Warkentin (25:45):
So eventually we’ll have you back, and you’ll tell us like, “OK, I changed my offer a little bit, and I changed my marketing, and I got in 20 leads, they all showed up, and I closed like 19” or something like that. I would love to hear something like that just to see if eventually that’s what you do. But at the beginning, listeners, if you’re out there, just getting a funnel going and making sure it works, and that’s the main thing. You start tracking the metrics; then you can optimize. But right off the bat, getting a ton of leads and getting people to show up is huge. Wesley, the culture in Holland—do people tend to book appointments and not show up? Is that a common thing, or what is that like?

Wesley Kalkhoven (26:17):
So in Amsterdam, we have a lot of expats, and I think a lot of women, especially, they feel the need to, if they cannot come, they will let me know.

Mike Warkentin (26:28):
That’s good.

Wesley Kalkhoven (26:29):
Most of the time—yeah, absolutely—it’s most of the time the man, and especially when if you don’t live in Holland yet, and you’re not—there’s a bit of a social thing, you know, if there’s this guy who never shows up that—so I see women are also, most of them, really nice. They let me know at least in advance. And yeah, I think Dutch people, most of them, they’re like, “Oh, sorry, I have official appointment,” or “I’m busy,” or at least something. So, no shows are definitely there. But yeah, again, I don’t—I cannot really compare it. I do know that I’m like sometimes a bit pissed, like, “This is not nice,” but it doesn’t happen that often.

Mike Warkentin (27:07):
Yeah. And the reason I ask is every area is a little bit different, and I know that some countries have like a culture where it’s like, if you book an appointment, you will probably show up or a call. And the other cultures it’s very flippant where it’s like, “Ah, I booked it on, you know, 3 a.m. when I was drunk, and I don’t care,” you know, and they just don’t—they just walk. And that’s the end of that.

Wesley Kalkhoven (27:21):
Well, that is funny though because I can see when they booked it, and if it’s on a Saturday at 3 p.m.—at 3 a.m. that I know like, alright, these people are scrolling, and they were like, “I really need to start.” And they sign up, and I cannot call them; they don’t pick up. It’s like, OK, these people probably won’t show. So that is definitely something to measure.

Mike Warkentin (27:38):
It happens. So, I’m going to ask you this; this is a perfect lead into my next question: The people that didn’t show up, are they still getting nurturing campaigns? Are they still in that funnel with Kilo? Are they still getting info about your gyms so that they might rebook or show up again?

Wesley Kalkhoven (27:51):
Yeah, absolutely. This is something I’m not even thinking about anymore. And that’s the nice thing. I just swipe them to abandoned, and they just go through a funnel where sometime when the pain comes up again, they’re like, “Oh, I really need to start working out,” and they see this ad or a newsletter or whatever. So, these things, I know they work, but I’m already so used to it that it’s like, “Yeah, it is what it is.” But definitely people are like, “Oh yeah, I saw and sorry, … last time I couldn’t da da da, and I really want to come.” So that works like a charm. Absolutely.

Mike Warkentin (28:22):
Yeah. No—in the gym business, free consultation world, no does not mean no; it maybe means “No, not right now.” And if you keep nurturing these people and pre-automated, you know, automated campaigns that are pre-written and just go out in the background, you don’t even know about them. Those things can actually bring clients in. So, I’ve written these campaigns, and I’ve put them in systems, and the clients just say, “Hey, a message from Wesley: ‘Hey, how’s your fitness?’ Ah, it’s still not so good. Maybe I should consider his gym again.” Those little nurturing campaigns do pay downstream dividends. Maybe not right away, but that’s OK. Maybe down the line. Wesley, I’m going to ask you this question: What is the number one thing that you would tell gym owners out there if they wanted to get more people who book appointments to show up? What would they—what should they do?

Wesley Kalkhoven (29:05):
Well, what I said in the beginning, I think: All these little nuggets from the emails to the messages to the calls to social, it—I try to think that everybody’s busy. So, we’re just going, and we are being imprinted with certain ads or with certain things that we’re interested in. And if it’s only one time that something sticks, it’s probably not going to stick too long. But if it’s every time just a bit, not too screamy, but then something will—like a seed has been planted, and it will grow slowly or for some quickly, and it’s up for the people then to use that thought or to make an action on it. So, I highly believe in these little things. They will make—they’ll definitely make the difference.

Mike Warkentin (29:44):
So if I summarize that and said consistent follow up with new leads, would you say that’s accurate?

Wesley Kalkhoven (29:49):
Yes, correct.

Mike Warkentin (29:50):
There you go. You heard it here. This is Wesley Kalkhoven, and he was one of our leaders for set/show rates this month. Got a ton of people, a ton of leads, got a bunch of them to show up, and he’s closing enough sales that he’s approaching 20 spots remaining, and then he can start thinking about other aspects of his business. So, a really cool model. If you are not tracking your metrics in leads set, show and close rates, start doing that. That is step one to improving them. After that, the best way to improve them is to work with a mentor who can tell you exactly how to improve them by doing this thing right now. Wesley, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I hope you’ll come back in a while and tell us what happens after maybe a year that you’ve done all this stuff. Is it a date?

Wesley Kalkhoven (30:29):
Yeah, it will be amazing, Mike.

Mike Warkentin (30:31):
Alright, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. You can continue this conversation in Gym Owners United, and here’s Chris Cooper to remind you of just that.

Chris Cooper (30:41):
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 gotogymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.

The post Marketing Leader After Just 6 Months of Mentorship! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Marketing: Taking Courses Vs. Taking Action

I’m not into sales courses.

I’m not saying they don’t have any value. They can help.

But mentorship has more value when it comes to sales and marketing. I want to offer clients the best results at the greatest speed, and I don’t like half measures.

For example, I could ask all the marketing experts on the Two-Brain team to create an amazing, world-class, definitive advertising and sales course for gym owners. We could build it fast and market it to the public. I know it would sell.

But would all that knowledge help you improve your gym?

You’d get something out of the course for sure, but I bet you’d be overwhelmed with all the things you could do or perhaps should do. Instead of doing “the best thing right now,” you might just do “something.”

And there’s a good chance you’d do nothing.

I know this because I sold a course to help gym owners fix their businesses a long time ago. When the people who took the course failed to take action and get results, I started offering one-on-one mentorship instead.

I know mentorship produces action because I saved my failing gym business only by working one on one with a mentor.

We have a mountain of sales resources for Two-Brain clients—enough to fill several marketable courses for outside gym owners. But we don’t just send our clients into the pile, and we don’t offer the pile to the public.

Instead, we tell our clients exactly which tool to use when, and we ask them if they completed the assigned tasks.

We do that because it gets measurable results.

You Are Different

This week, I’ve been showcasing our Top 10 leaderboards for set rate, show rate and close rate in February 2024. Every time I present a leaderboard, I give you direct quotes from the gym owners who earned spots.

You get to hear exactly what they did to reach the elite ranks in a mentorship practice that serves 1,000 gyms.

You might have noticed that some gyms use different tactics than others.

For example, some are focusing on perfecting their Facebook ads, while others are working hard to improve response time when a lead enters the funnel. Others are alone in their sales office filming themselves as they practice free consultations. And a few are hiring salespeople.

That variety is to be expected: We offer mentorship instead of a bolt-on system that prescribes one method for everyone.

Your gym is different, and you are different.

The sales and marketing strategies you use should be carefully curated for your preferences, culture and style.

A mentor can guide you to the strategies that will work for you.

Even better, a mentor can help you track progress toward your goal and adjust the plan as needed. Along the way, you’ll get messages like this:

“Did you practice closing sales in free consultations five times today?”“Did you adjust your website so the ‘book a consultation’ link is more prominent?”“Did you use our cut-and-paste scripts to create lead-nurturing automations?”

You won’t get that in a course. You’ll just get knowledge. I want action, too, because that’s what actually gets results.

You don’t get any new clients just for taking a course.

You only get new clients when you take action.

To improve your sales and marketing—and the rest of your business—let’s talk about mentorship.

The post Marketing: Taking Courses Vs. Taking Action appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Our Sales Leaders Did What? How?

If you want to get people into your program, you need to get them to walk through your door first.

Here are the three critical stages to transforming prospects into clients:

First, they must set appointments to meet you.Second, they must show up for those appointments.Third, they must sign up for your program.

This sounds like a simple progression. But most gyms bleed prospective clients—a lot of them—at every stage, and then the owners say, “I need more leads!”

In a few cases, a gym owner needs more leads—and we can solve that problem.

In most cases, the gym owner just needs to do a much better job with the leads the gym is already getting.

For example, a gym owner spends time and lots of money on Facebook ads or media content or other advertising. They drive prospective clients to the gym’s website:

And then the potential client doesn’t book an appointment (set rate).Or the lead doesn’t show up for the booked appointment (show rate).Or the lead shows up but doesn’t sign up (close rate).

If a Two-Brain mentor digs into that business, here’s what might be evident immediately:

The gym’s website isn’t set up for conversion, and the booking link is buried or even broken.No one follows up with leads to confirm appointments.The salesperson doesn’t practice selling and instead overwhelms the client with unfocused offers: “Which of our 50 options do you want?”

We see this stuff all the time.

The good news: We know how to fix problems fast.

When we remove the clogs in a funnel, the gym starts acquiring high-value clients quickly. We don’t use marketing tricks or secret deals. Just data-backed tactics that have been proven effective in gyms around the world.

On that note, I’ll give you our marketing leaderboards for set, show and close rate one more time, and then I’ll give you direct quotes from the gym owners who made our Top 10 lists in February:

And here’s how the leaders posted these numbers (note the relentless focus on simple but effective tactics):

Speed: “We really tried to reach out to new leads as fast as possible, and we have double confirmation before the appointment.”

Speed: “We contact the leads as quickly as possible and follow up. Contact consists of text, call and email.”

Speed: “We try to contact all leads within 20 minutes. Yes, we have automations set up to help with lead follow-up, but nothing beats a call and human contact.”

Speed and fundamentals: “I am the sole lead-nurture and sales person. The two things I focus on the most are: One, call the lead as fast as possible, making sure to write notes of our conversation so I can keep lots of convos straight. Two, practice NSIs all the time, mostly to my camera, so I can have a smooth sales pitch once I get the lead into the gym.”

Clarity/Consistency: “We are consistent with new leads and have a clear path for all our leads. We have narrowed our offering for new members, and there is less confusion for the lead and our staff that are doing the No Sweat Intro (NSI).”

Using data: “We created a new Facebook lead campaign based on some graphics recommended by (mentor) Colm O’Reilly, combined with some variations of a 5130 post. We then split-tested this for women, men, mixed. In addition, we have started Google ads, but 80 percent of the success comes from our Facebook advertising.”

Relentless follow-up: “In the perfect world where we have the time, our lead follow-up is very intense. One, call all leads, once an hour, until contact is made. Two, always call twice to increase pickup rate. Three, SMSs and emails are only used from Day 2 onward. Four, ideally try every hour between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. every day for at least six days. Of course we don’t have time every hour. But that says something about the volume and attention I’m willing to give each lead to help them get started.”

Using staff to scale: “When we hit on this effective marketing that has multiplied our leads, I hired a ‘meeting booker’ that I pay per show combined with a small hourly rate. She can book NSI interviews directly in my client success manager’s (CSM) calendar in order to keep up. My CSM does nearly 200 Goal Reviews per running 90-day period now, so that’s why she is not doing all the lead follow-up anymore.”

Help First: “I’m doing pretty close to what Two-Brain teaches—just trying to perfect it every time and having a genuine Help First mentality.”

Tools and tactics: “We recently joined Kilo and also started running paid ads. We think this was directly responsible for the metric. I expect the coming months to be the same if not better.”

Doing the work: “Two-Brain teaches this: I decided to really double down and get out of my comfort zone and call the leads rather than just rely on text and email. I ask them a few questions (almost qualifying them) and then invite them into our gym. Instead of asking them to come to our gym, we invite them, provide a few times we have available, then book it.”

Doing the work: “We really just do everything we are told to do by our mentor, and that makes us successful. We consistently tell stories on social media, we engage with our clients through Kilo using our own voice, and it all just works!”

Fix Problems Fast

If you aren’t doing the things our leaders are doing, you probably don’t need more leads. You need to focus on fundamentals.

We have entire courses on marketing, as well as a huge toolbox of tactics to boost set, show and close rates.

The key?

Track metrics and work with an experienced expert who can spot problems, prescribe the exact best fix and make sure you do the work to unclog your funnel.

To hear more about how a mentor helps with marketing and sales, book a call.

The post Our Sales Leaders Did What? How? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How Top Coaching Gyms Close 20+ Sales Per Month

Chris Cooper (00:02):
How are the best gyms in the world getting leads right now? Well, I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And today I’m going to tell you. We’re going to start with “Who are the best gyms in the world at getting leads?” and then I’m going to tell you how they do it, but we’re also going to go deeper. We’re also going to say, “Who are the best gyms in the world at getting those leads to show up for sales appointments?” and “Who are the best gyms in the world for getting those leads to sign up for membership?” They’re not all the same gym, but we asked every one of them, “How are you doing this better than anybody else?” And today, I’m going to share that with you because today is our leaderboard show. Every month, we collect data from thousands of gyms around the world, and we look for who’s doing the best at different things.

Chris Cooper (00:50):
It’s like you’re programming for your gym, and you’ve got data from all these athletes, and you say, “Who’s the fastest runner? Who’s the best at deadlift? Who is the best at Fran? Who’s the best at kettlebells?” And then you interview each one and you say, “What are you doing that makes you so good?” Then we turn around and we share that all with you so that you can copy them. You can follow their business programming, do what they do and become successful too. We do that by starting with actual metrics because I’m sure you’ve heard from 500 gym owners who say, “I’m amazing at getting leads; let me help you.” And you know by now to be skeptical of those. We want to start with actual proof and numbers so that we know that we’re telling you the right things. So, the first thing we’re going to do is look at our leaderboards.

Chris Cooper (01:35):
We’ve got three different leaderboards for you today. One is on appointments set: These are the number of people who came through a website and booked a No Sweat Intro. The second thing is appointments showed: So, of those people, how many people showed up for their No Sweat Intro? And the third thing is appointments closed: So, how many of those people actually bought? The reason we break these three things up is because every single day I’m in gymownersunited.com—that is our free group; you can join it—and people will ask questions about “How do I get more leads?” But as a mentor, my job is to dig deeper and say, “What is the actual problem here?” And many times, people say, “How do I get more leads?” when they really mean, “How do I get more customers?” And when we look at their funnels, we don’t see a problem with lead gen.

Chris Cooper (02:23):
We see a problem with leads that don’t go anywhere or leads that never book an appointment or leads that don’t show up for an appointment or leads that don’t actually sign up. And when we break the problem down like that, we can solve it. We can solve it easily, and we can solve it forever. The metrics that we track for marketing are—or leads of course—set rate, show rate, and close rate. Leads are how many people get from the universe to your website. Set rate is how many people who go on your website book an appointment to come talk to you. Show rate is how many of those people show up for their appointment, and close rate is how many of those people buy. If we look at those things in sequence, we can make your business so much better. We can make your marketing so much more powerful.

Chris Cooper (03:09):
And today I’m going to tell you how the best in the world do it. So, let’s start here with our leaderboards. We’re going to talk about appointments set first. And the reason that we’re looking at these separately instead of “Who gets the most leads and closes them all?” is because we want to learn from the best in each case. If I want to get a bigger deadlift, I want to talk to the best deadlifter in the world. If I want to get the best 400-meter runtime, I want to talk to the best 400-meter runner in the world. If I want to be good at both of them, I want to talk to both of those people, not necessarily the person who is currently the best at doing both of those things. Hopefully that makes sense. So, if I look at who is best in the world at setting appointments, wow. Canada is represented, which I’m proud to say. U.S. is represented, but none of the Top 6 come from North America, which is amazing for this.

Chris Cooper (04:00):
So, let’s start at number 10. We’ve got people, two Canadian gyms, getting 39 and 40 appointments booked last month. That’s pretty good. If you think about it, that’s like more than one appointment every day, and if you’re open 25 days out of the month, you’re getting close to two appointments a day. Imagine if you had two No Sweat Intros every single day, how much better your business would be doing. As we travel up the leaderboard, we see more appointments set. 40, 41, 46 in Denmark. 47 in Great Britain. 49 in Sweden. Oh, proud of those guys. 76 in Amsterdam, 87. And the number one ranked gym worldwide for getting NSIs set is—it’s a tie. Two gyms have 87. What’s really, really interesting is that one of these gyms is in South America, and one of these gyms is in Europe. You know, I often hear “There’s no market for my thing,” you know, fitness, HIITs, CrossFit, whatever your gym is, semi-private, “in X, Y, Z.”

Chris Cooper (05:02):
I’ve heard every kind of gym in every kind of country. There’s no excuse for your marketing not to be working. We’ve got two gyms here: One’s in Europe; one’s in South America. They’re both getting 90 or 87 NSIs set last month. Amazing. Now let’s talk about show rate because this is a different skill. So, number one, if you want to get a lot of appointments to show up, I’m going to give you their top tips in a moment. But you have to be good at generating leads. You have to have like four marketing funnels, and your website has to be good at converting them into appointments, OK? Those are the two big prerequisites. To get people to show up is another skill set that’s called lead nurture. So, you might use a CRM for this, or you might have like a staff person that’s in charge of doing sell by chat or another lead nurture.

Chris Cooper (05:45):
OK? So, if we go up the leaderboard this time, here’s what’s crazy interesting. There are a couple of gyms from the states who are really, really good at lead nurture, and they got 26 people to show up for their gym. The top Canadian is somebody on the mentor team. He got 33 people to show up. So, what’s interesting here is if you take that gym, he’s not on the top 10 for most appointments booked, but he is in the top 10 for most appointments showed, which means he’s great at lead nurture—maybe a more important skill. Then, I see 37 appointments showed. 38, 40, 50 and 76 appointments showed. OK, we’re going to learn from all these people. So not only does this person have dozens and dozens of appointments booked, but 76 people actually showed up for their appointment. OK?

Chris Cooper (06:34):
Now your show rate should be around 70% or better. If you’re doing free trials, that show rate’s going to go way down to below 50%. What you want is an appointment that’s on somebody’s calendar, so they’re showing up and meeting you, and they’re expecting to, but you also have to talk to them on the road to getting there. Now, let’s talk NSIs closed. So, these are people who said, “Sign me up; here’s my credit card,” and they became clients. Alright? If we look top 10 and we work our way up, we see some crazy numbers here. A gym in Great Britain, 20. A couple of gyms in the U.S. 21, 22—different parts of the country. A gym in Denmark, 22. Then we keep going up. Another gym in Europe, 23. A gym in the U.S., 24. A gym in Canada, 25. A gym in Great Britain, 28. Another gym in the States, 31, and the top gym is actually in South America.

Chris Cooper (07:26):
They had 55 new clients actually join last month. Now, here’s what’s crazy. This is not the stuff that you see on Facebook: “I will flood your gym, I will get you 30 new clients guaranteed,” right? These are not cold leads. People who are going to come in for a severe discount or like try your thing and be gone in six weeks. It’s not a bait and switch. These are real clients coming in for real coaching. They want to be coached. They are high value; they’re signing up for personal training or group coaching classes. They’re going to stick around, right? It’s not the “flash in the pan” ad agency crap that you see out there. Now, I’m going to get to their top advice for you, but before I do, congratulations to all these leaders. You are really impacting these people. If there is one person, five people, 10, 20, 55 people joining your gym in a month, those are lives saved.

Chris Cooper (08:23):
Those are not just cold leads coming in and “try before you buy.” These are people who are going to stick around long enough to meaningfully change their lives. That’s amazing. And that’s why I love the gyms that do have a lot of clients because I know they’re meaningfully changing their lives. It’s not just like the up, down, up, down, up, down that you get from novelty buyers. Let’s talk about their best tips. When somebody is giving their best tips for getting people to show up, the first quote is speed. They said, “We really tried to reach out to new leads as fast as possible, and we have double confirmation before the appointment.” So, they send texts and emails saying, “Hey, we’re going to be waiting for you. Can’t wait to see you. Reminder: 3 p.m. Monday. We will be there.” OK? They’re also good at clarity and consistency.

Chris Cooper (09:10):
They said, “We’re consistent with new leads, and we have a clear path for all of our leads. We have narrowed our offering for new members, and there is less confusion for the lead and our staff that are doing the No Sweat Intro.” We recently did this at my gym too. I’ll tell you exactly what we did: When somebody comes in the door now, they do their No Sweat Intro, which is what we’ve been doing for 20 years. The only thing that they are sold is either personal training or an on-ramp program to get them ready for group. The salesperson has a very easy job. They recommend one of those two things. After they go through their on-ramp, they meet with our team again, and they say, “Would you prefer to continue one-on-one with me? Or do you feel ready for group training?” If they start out with personal training, mission accomplished, like they just stick with personal training.

Chris Cooper (09:59):
And then, of course, every client has a goal review every 90 days where that prescription or their membership might change. Next, this person is great at getting leads to book, and they said, “We contact the leads as quickly as possible.” So that’s two votes for speed. Contact consists of a text, a call, and an email. So, they’re not just setting up an autoresponder; they’re actually picking up the phone and calling the person. And if you really want to be successful at anything in business, this is it. You have to care enough to have the hard conversation. Somebody just put themselves out there; they filled in the form on your website: “Oh, oh no, OK, send.” They’re literally waiting for you to call and extend your hand. Give them a lifeline and say, “Don’t worry. We can help. I got you.” And that’s what you’re doing with a call.

Chris Cooper (10:43):
People feel weird about these calls. Like, “Oh, I’m being a pushy salesperson.” You’re answering a cry for help. People are in the water waving their arms; you are tossing them the life ring, and they’re waiting for you to do that. If you’re not doing that quickly, it seems like you just don’t care. This person also said, “Doing the thing is important.” This is his direct quote. Two-Brain teaches this. “I decided to really double down and get out of my comfort zone and call the leads rather than just relying on text and email. I ask them a few questions almost like I’m making sure it’s a good fit, and then we invite them into our gym, and instead of asking them to come to our gym, we invite them, provide a few times we have available and then book it.” I think that’s really important because it really shows you the framing that’s in that gym owner’s head about inviting people to their gym.

Chris Cooper (11:34):
You know, when I got good at affinity marketing—that I started with curiosity and then went to invitation. So, I would talk to people mostly at hockey games or whatever sports my kid was playing. “Oh, you’re the guy who owns that gym.” “Yeah, yeah. Do you belong to a gym in town?” “No, I don’t. I really blah, blah, blah.” I would be curious: “Oh really? Why not?” or “What do you think the problem is?” And they’d give me a reason, and then I would just invite them like, “Hey, I’ll tell you what: I’m going to be at my gym on Monday. I know I’m free between 10 and 12. Do you want to just come in and chat there in private?” And it doesn’t work every time, of course, but many times people will accept the invitation on the spot, and many other times they’ll come back to that invitation later because they know that invitation is open.

Chris Cooper (12:18):
Next, so, this is a gym in Denmark. This guy is consistently on top of our revenue leaderboard or our client headcount leaderboard. But one reason he’s there is he’s good at booking appointments, having those appointments show up and then closing them. And he says, “I followed data-backed tactics. So, we created a new Facebook lead campaign based on some graphics recommended by Two-Brain, combined with some variation of a 5130 post, again taught by Two-Brain. We then split tested this for women, men and mixed audiences. And then in addition, we’ve started Google Ads, but 80% of the success comes from our Facebook advertising.” So, this is what we teach in Two Brain is we give you the ad copy and pictures and everything to use to get set up, but we also teach you to test it and make your ads work and tailor them over time.

Chris Cooper (13:06):
You don’t need different ads than everybody else. You need to get good at running ads, and eventually maybe you outsource them if you want to. But don’t start by hiring an ad agency. Start by getting good at this, acquiring this skill and then practicing it. Getting reps. It’s not as scary, it’s not as mysterious, it’s not as mind numbing as it seems. It’s a skill just like a snatch—way less technical than a snatch. You can learn it; you can get good at it. The same person also says, “Speed.” We’ve heard that before. He says, “We try to contact all of our leads within 20 minutes. Yes, we have automation set up to help with lead follow up, but nothing beats a call and human contact.” You know, we’re three for three recommending that. He also says, “Relentless follow up. In a perfect world where we have the time, our lead follow up is very intense.”

Chris Cooper (13:54):
“One, we call all leads once an hour until contact is made. Two, we always call twice to increase the rate at which they answer their phone. Three, texts and emails are only used from day two onward. Four, we ideally try every hour between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. every day for at least six days. Of course, we don’t have time every single hour, but that says something about the volume and attention that I’m willing to give each lead to help them get started.” Again, invite, help. This is the skill that this gym owner has mastered. He also recommends having staff to scale. When you get to this level, he says, “When we hit on this effective marketing that’s multiplied our leads, I hired a meeting booker.” You might call them a setter in North America. “We hired a meeting booker that I pay per showed appointment combined with a small hourly rate.”

Chris Cooper (14:47):
“She can book No Sweat Intros directly into my CSM’s calendar in order to keep up. My CSM does nearly 200 goal reviews per 90-day period now.” Wow. “And so that’s why she’s not doing all the lead follow up anymore.” Now, that person outsourced a lot of their marketing and also their goal reviews. You might be tempted to jump to that, but you need to do this work yourself first so that you know what it is that you’re delegating, and you can help them when they run into trouble, and you can coach them on getting better. OK? Systemize means you do it yourself. You record exactly how you do it. Optimize means you try a couple of tweaks. You change your ad copy; you change your lead nurture, your sell by chat. And then automate means you give it to another human. You delegate it to them.

Chris Cooper (15:30):
Here are some tips. Another person who’s really good at both booking NSIs and closing. He says, surprise, “Speed and practice.” He says, “I’m the sole lead nurture and salesperson. The two things that I focus on the most are: One, call the lead as fast as possible, making sure to write notes of our conversation so I can keep lots of the conversations straight. And two, practice No Sweat Intros all the time, mostly just to my camera so I can have a smooth sales process once I get the lead into the gym. Speed and reps make him better and help him get such a high close rate. He also says to practice Help First. He says, “I’m doing pretty close to what Two-Brain teaches. Just trying to perfect it every time and having a genuine Help First mentality.” Help First means approach with curiosity. Make an invitation to help.

Chris Cooper (16:22):
You and I know that we can help people by giving them advice, but they won’t take it. We really need to invite them to come into our gyms, and that’s what Help First is all about. Another person from Amsterdam gave us a little bit of advice. So, first they use specific tools. He uses Kilo, which is a CRM and a website company, and they started running paid ads. So, they’re setting up like lead gen. They’re setting up kind of a capturing funnel, and he said, “We think this was directly responsible for our high metric. I expect the coming months to be the same, if not better.” That’s right because he’s not doing a “bait and switch,” you know, “shot in the dark” tactic like a lot of gym owners got sucked into back in 2018 and are still getting sucked into. Now, if somebody says, “We’re going to get you 30 leads this month, guaranteed,” I guarantee you it is a short term tactic that is going to harm you in the long term because you are not learning how to do this yourself.

Chris Cooper (17:12):
And then the person also reinforced: just do the thing. He said, “We really just do everything we’re told by our mentor, and that is what makes us successful. We consistently tell stories on social media. We engage with our clients through Kilo using our own voice, and it all just works.” Well, surprise, surprise. The reason all this stuff works is because we start from data. We collect “What are the best actually doing?” We codify that and mentor gyms on how to do it, and then we hold them accountable for doing it. That’s why Two-Brain gyms are accelerating way faster than anybody else. We’re not out here guessing. We’re identifying, we’re copying, we’re approaching with curiosity, we’re codifying and we’re teaching it. In other words, exactly what I’m telling you to do: systemize, optimize, and then automate. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I hope this podcast has been helpful to you. Even if this is all advice you’ve heard before, maybe this time is the time that you’ll do it, and I hope that it is. Thank you for your service.

The post How Top Coaching Gyms Close 20+ Sales Per Month appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Real Sales Stats: How Does Your Gym Compare?

Is your marketing working?

If you’re not measuring these metrics, you can’t answer the question:

Set rate: the number of people who set an appointment for a free consultation. These are people who are interested enough to sit down and hear your pitch.

Show rate: the number of people who book an appointment and actually show up. Sadly, you will never get every single person who books to show up. That’s OK: The people who show are serious about signing up.

Close rate: the number of people who buy.

In a competitive market full of distracted consumers, you will never get every single lead to book, show up and buy. However, if you know your numbers and track them every month, you can diagnose the problems in your marketing.

For example:

Finding a weak link like that is a big deal because we have proven strategies to solve problems. Below, you’ll find some of the many ways you can improve each part of your marketing funnel.

If you need more leads in your funnel, you can:

Increase your ad spend.Refresh your creative.Test an alternate offer.DM people who like/follow/comment on your social-media platforms to push them down the funnel.

If you need more appointments (set rate), you can:

Improve your speed to contact.Improve your call to action on your website.Make sure the booking link on your website actually works. (Yes, an entire funnel can be destroyed by a typo in a URL.)Increase your outreach volume.Call leads faster.

If you need to improve your show rate, you can:

Send personal messages through video or text.Build rapport through email, text or DM.Create some scarcity or urgency before your appointment.Set up an automated reminder sequence.Get people who book into appointments as fast as possible.

If you need to improve your close rate, you can:

Practice selling and handling objections.Pre-frame their problem before the appointment.Prequalify your leads.Build rapport.Clarify their problem.Clearly tell them how you’ll help.Create conviction and ask them to sign up.

Of course, not everyone needs to do all of these things at once. A mentor can help you choose your top priority and improve your metrics fast.

What should your numbers be? Here are the stats from the top Two-Brain gyms for set, show and close in February:

We present these leaderboards separately because we can learn from the gyms that post the best numbers in each category. We share the scores publicly so that you have something to aim for (and our clients see the names of the gyms, too).

So how do your numbers compare?

If you don’t have any numbers, start tracking metrics today. That’s the first step to improving them.

And if you want an expert to help you improve your marketing numbers, let’s talk about mentorship.

The post Real Sales Stats: How Does Your Gym Compare? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Should You Outsource Your Gym’s Programming?

A gym’s group programming used to be sacred to its owner.

“Only I can create the perfect blend of thrusters, pull-ups and deadlifts for my clients.”

I’ve said things like that over the years, or at least thought them, but I realize now that I was making the decision based on emotion. Pride of authorship definitely played a part.

It used to be very hard to give up responsibility for what was long viewed as a signature part of gym and affiliate ownership. But it became easier as more high-quality outside options popped up and experienced owners started to realize that they could get a better return on their time if they worked on other aspects of the business.

That said, a great gym owner can have very good reasons for doing the programming personally or keeping it in house. To me, the best ones are:

The owner’s programming gets measurably better results for clients.The owner absolutely loves programming.The gym has equipment/space/philosophical considerations that can’t be accommodated in an outsider’s programming.

Josh Martin of The Refined Art of Coaching listed 11 reasons he’s never outsourced coaching here.

So what are gym owners doing in 2024?

A recent Morning Chalk Up article referenced data from a “quick poll of CrossFit affiliate and functional fitness gyms.” Here it is:

49 percent of the 305 surveyed gym owners do their own programming.37 percent pay another company for programming.12 percent use CrossFit Affiliate Programming.2 percent hand programming off to a coach.Overall: 49 percent of owners program and 51 percent do not.

I ran a similar poll in our private group for upper-level gym owners who track metrics, including the return they get on their time and expenses. I got 204 responses:

42 percent pay another company for programming.32 percent of the gym owners do their own programming.18 percent pay a coach to program.8 percent use CrossFit Affiliate Programming.Overall: 32 percent of owners program and 68 percent do not.
How to Decide

So what’s the best way to decide how to handle group programming at your gym?

Let’s be CEOs:

Write down a list of all the jobs you do in a week.Assign an hourly value to each role. (Example: Coach: $25 an hour.)Do a time valuation and determine how much time you spend in each role each week. Multiply hours in each role by its hourly value. (Example: Cleaner—5 hours x $15 per hour = $75 replacement value.)Find the role with the lowest replacement value, hire a person to fill the role and reinvest your time in higher-value roles.

At some point in this exercise—we call it “the Value Ladder”—you will run into programming. In some cases, you will realize that you spend a lot of time in this role but could offload it at a very reasonable price, whether you pay a staff member or an outside company.

At that point, ask yourself two questions:

1. Does my programming produce measurably better results for clients?2. Am I so passionate about programming that I get out of bed and can’t wait to do it?

If both answers are “yes,” consider keeping the job—but make sure you actually have data for No. 1.

I answered “yes” for years, but when I finally handed programming off to a great coach, clients got equal or better results. My ego was bruised but my business was better, and I had more free time.

I also held onto programming too long to avoid more important tasks that intimidated me. It was easier to program Fran than fix my marketing funnels, but the funnel fixing was true CEO work that would have improved my bottom line significantly.

If both answers are “no,” decide whether to offload the role to a staff member or outsource the work to CompTrain, Mayhem, NCFIT or any other provider. Delegating programming can be part of career creation in your business (we have tools to help gym owners create careers for staff members). Or you can just pay a fee that’s usually very reasonable to receive programming from a provider.

Once you’ve offloaded the task, use the free hours to generate the revenue you need to pay for the programming—and more.

The key: Take emotion and ego out of the equation.

It’s fine to offload programming or retain the role yourself. Either choice is valid. But it’s no longer OK to make the decision based on hunches, suspicions and ego.

Two-Brain mentors help clients make decisions on data all the time. To find out more about the business systems used by the world’s top gym owners, book a call.

The post Should You Outsource Your Gym’s Programming? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Let’s Get Tactical: How High-Speed Mentorship Works

When you buy mentorship, you’re buying speed.

I know this because a mentor quickly helped me solve problems that I had been struggling with for years.

As I struggled alone, the knots grew tighter, and I got more frustrated.

Things got so bad that I found myself on a park bench after a 13-hour day. Exhausted, I realized I could work really hard, but I wasn’t making much progress.

I took a gamble and hired a mentor.

It was like going into light speed in a “Star Wars” movie. Everything changed and the business leapt forward.

Now I get to help others have that same experience. Here’s an example:

 “I ‘retired’ from teaching one week and was at the Two-Brain Summit the next—and left with a mentor! I hired them because I knew I would grow faster with a mentor than if I stumbled through on my own,” Cameron White said.

I wish I had done something like that in 2010.

Mentorship and Tactics

This is the thousand-foot view of how mentorship works: You set a goal with a mentor, the mentor provides a plan and all the resources you need to accomplish it, and the mentor makes sure you take action.

I laid out our entire mentorship process in detail here.

To show you what mentorship looks like at ground level, we asked some of our clients for details about how a mentor saved them time and stress. Here are a few examples.

One gym owner with a huge number of clients was spending an excessive amount of time creating his weekly coaching schedule. His mentor helped him adjust the process to save him four to six hours every week. That’s 16-24 hours a month!

Another gym owner reported that his mentor provides accountability so he enters critical metrics in the Two-Brain Dashboard every month. The result? He makes informed, “non-emotional” decisions based on data, and he avoids lots of mistakes.

Another gym owner wanted to put in a smoothie bar. Her mentor helped her evaluate the plan and determine it was not a great idea (smoothie bars in gyms rarely succeed). She refocused on how she could actually serve her clients better and avoided a costly mistake.

One gym owner knew he needed to implement a rate increase but was struggling to act. His mentor said “do it next Monday.” The owner raised rates and earned more money right away. He said he would not have moved so swiftly without support and encouragement. Sample math: Let’s say this owner waited six months to raise rates $10 a month for 100 clients. That’s $6,000 left on the table.

Time is Money

I’ll give you another example that’s happened too many times to count: A busy, stressed gym owner can’t find time to grow the gym—or sleep. A mentor prescribes a time audit, and the gym owner lists all the hours spent on a host of tasks.

Looking at the data, a mentor says, “Hire a cleaner. You will buy back 20 hours a month for $300. In those hours, you’re going to sell 6 hours of personal training at $80 an hour. You’ve now covered the cost of the cleaner and earned an extra $180. You still have 14 hours free. Let’s look at your metrics and decide how to spend your newly freed time to grow the business.”

Allow me to extrapolate: That one piece of advice alone—hire a cleaner and sell PT in some of the recovered hours—would generate $5,760 of new revenue in a year if the gym owner sells just six hours of PT each month (we teach clients how to market and sell services, too). Subtract the cost of the cleaner, and you still have $2,160 in revenue.

And the owner would also have 168 free hours that might have been spent scrubbing toilets.

That’s just a simple example that doesn’t take into account subsequent tactics the business owner could employ during free hours with a mentor’s help. Could someone generate even more revenue with 168 hours and a precise plan from a mentor? Yes!

Let me give you something more concrete to show you what happens when a gym owner works with a mentor and executes on a customized plan:

“The biggest thing that coaches provide—that saves years of time—is perspective and experience. These little bricks add up and build much more than any one piece of advice,” said Ian Smith of Mountain Speed, Strength and Fitness.

“Before I started working with (my mentor) Karen one month after we opened, our total revenue was $826. Fast-forward 14 months: In January we hit $17,000. I went from almost no clients to working 70+ hours a week to working 20 hours a week after hiring staff.

“I’m able to spend every day with my boys, which means everything, because that is the time I will never get back.”

Remember when I said buying mentorship is buying speed? More speed equals more free time—and that’s your most valuable resource of all.

Your First Steps

I want results like this for you—and I’m not patient at all. So I set up our mentorship program to get results fast.

If you start working with a Two-Brain mentor, you’ll spend about six weeks in our Stage 1 program, which is designed to produce quick wins and momentum.

You’ll be in close contact with your mentor: You’ll connect every seven to 10 days, and you’ll have an exact plan to literally make the money that pays for mentorship.

I’m not making this up. In the first stage of mentorship, we teach you exactly how to make the money you need to pay for program. We’ll build marketing funnels that work and help you create and sell a solid front-end offer. The goal: Make money quickly.

In Stage 2, you’re going to build a rock-solid foundation for your business in about 11 weeks.

I won’t go further (you can read more about our entire process here). I’ll just be a mentor and tell you how take the first step to improving your fitness business at warp speed:

Book a call to find out exactly how a mentor can help you create the business you want fast: Click here.

The post Let’s Get Tactical: How High-Speed Mentorship Works appeared first on Two-Brain Business.