Chris Cooper's Blog, page 45

Monster (Recurring) Revenue: January Leaderboard

Our monthly revenue leaders for January 2024 took in between $58,330 and $125,606 USD, with five different countries represented on the leaderboard.

Those numbers are great—but here’s what’s better: They’re sustainable.

I get worried when I see a gym owner have one great month and make an annual projection based on a glorious 30-day stretch.

“If we can keep this up, we’ll gross $500,000”—except they can’t keep it up.

For example, we work with one affiliate owner who once used a trending marketing technique to gross over $32,000 in one month. It was an all-time high, and $32,000 a month for 12 months is $384,000.

Except that gym owner never cracked $300,000 in annual revenue and couldn’t afford to pay himself a dime before we helped him optimize his business.

Now the owner is using a more sustainable model to produce consistent, predictable monthly revenue with a much better profit margin. And he’s earning more than $100,000 a year.

Don’t misunderstand: There’s nothing wrong with a standout month. You’ll have one “best month” every year, and you should feel great about it.

The problem comes when you base your annual plan on a one-hit-wonderful monthly revenue total.

The revenue numbers from our Top 10 gyms are sustainable, and that makes me happier than the actual numbers themselves:

We interviewed the owners of these gyms, and here’s what they had to say about their January numbers:

“This should be around our baseline now as we’ve been focusing on increasing average revenue per member.”

“The numbers are not extraordinary; we are just doing the basic things well.”

“Our February revenue is looking like it was $57,000/$58,000, so looking like this trend should continue.”

“It’s actually quite ‘normal’ for us to be around this—+/-$7,000 USD, actually.”

And here’s a good one from a unique gym owner who has some seasonal fluctuations in revenue but plans for it (and still posts Top 3 numbers in “down months”): “We are on our way down from highs in November, (when apparel sales are very high). Also, we are delayed being paid for bigger-ticket items that rolled to another month.”

Sustainable, Consistent Revenue

I want your gym to last for 30 years or more. I want it to help thousands of clients, create careers for staff, and provide financial and time freedom for you.

That won’t happen with one great month.

But it will happen if you consistently generate the revenue you need and maintain a great profit margin (we target 33 percent).

If you had a spectacular January—many gyms do—congratulations!

If you want to learn how to hold onto the “January joiners,” acquire more high-value clients throughout the year and generate revenue in slow months to produce an amazing annual total, book a call here.

The post Monster (Recurring) Revenue: January Leaderboard appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Smart Marketing: Getting Leads on a Shoestring Budget

John Franklin (00:02):
Welcome to this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.” I am your host, John Franklin, the CMO here at Two-Brain. And it’s a good thing I am the CMO because today we are going to be talking about getting leads on a shoestring budget. With me, I have a very special guest, Kieran O’Dwyer—emphasis on the “w” and the “y,” so I’m told—of Bathurst Strength and Conditioning in Bathurst, which I didn’t know of until 20 minutes ago. It appears to be a very tiny town of 30,000 people that’s about three and a half hours from Sydney. So, a lot of these strategies today will apply to gym owners who are operating in smaller markets. But I’ve personally seen a lot of the work that Kieran puts out. If you are running this playbook in a bigger market, it’s going to work as well because a lot of these strategies are evergreen. Now, I will stop talking and let Kieran introduce his gym to the gym world here.

Kieran O’Dwyer (00:59):
Thank you, John. That was beautiful. You got my name down pat. Introducing my gym to the gym world: I run Bathurst Strength and Conditioning. For the audience who listens to “Run a Profitable Gym,” think of it similar to a CrossFit gym. We just focused a little bit more on the strength side of things, but everything else is quite similar: the community, the vibe, the onboarding, the personal training. It does very well in my town. And I also own another one in a smaller town, as well, called Orange City Strength and Conditioning. There you go.

John Franklin (01:32):
Yeah. A lot of people think that Two-Brain is all about selling personal training and doesn’t necessarily like a group model, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Kieran operates a group model. He has over 200 members. His gym is pushing over three quarters of a million dollars of Aussie dollars. So, I don’t know, that’s probably—I don’t know the conversion rates, and I’m not going to look it up, but it’s a big number, and it seems like the overwhelming majority of his leads come from organic, and he still manages to have a very high average revenue per member. So, based off of the conversation we had, it sounds like you are pushing around 300, and how do you get to that number?

Kieran O’Dwyer (02:16):
300 in terms of average revenue per member a month?

John Franklin (02:19):
Yeah. How does that break down, and how do you package your price?

Kieran O’Dwyer (02:22):
Yeah, so we have a group training for 69.95 a week, which in monthly is 300. We also have our weightlifting club, which goes from anywhere from 50 to 90 per week, which would be 300+. Sorry, in Australia we do everything weekly as well. We also have—

John Franklin (02:40):
You guys were early to that trend. You guys were ahead of the time.

Kieran O’Dwyer (02:42):
Yeah, yeah, 100%. But mainly in terms of that is the group training and then the other variations of group training, weightlifting and youth, which kind of span around that number. And then of course, our high-ticket onboarding, which starts at 550.

John Franklin (02:57):
And do you live—is Bathurst just like a loaded town? Is it like the American equivalent of the Beverly Hills? Is everybody just super rich out there?

Kieran O’Dwyer (03:06):
Not, not even slightly. No. Every small town considers themselves not well off. And I’d say that we’re the same.

John Franklin (03:14):
So, a lot of people will say 300 to 400 a month in a small town for group training sounds astronomical. How do you sell that?

Kieran O’Dwyer (03:23):
We just do a really good job. And from the whole funnel, man. So, in terms of the brand building, we’ve done a really good job of being professional, number one, getting people interested, demonstrating authority, and then through that, from the second they speak to us, by the time they get into the sales consultation, because they’ve just been hammered with love and communication and professionalism, if they need it, they’re going to pay for it. Some people obviously can’t afford it, but pricing is not—it is an issue. People say it, but if people—you know, the doctor has told them to go to the gym, right? The doctor has told them to get their health in order, or they have an injury they need to fix, or if they need it for their mental health or whatever: Pricing for them then is not the main thing even if they present it as the main thing; the main thing is health.

John Franklin (04:13):
So you consider yourself—or you are known around these parts as a positioning and branding expert. You said that is one of the two most important parts of your process that you’ve used to be successful in your town. Maybe talk about the thought process that goes into how you brand and position yourself. And if you need me to pull up stuff from your site, your Instagram, whatever, just shout out at me. I’m your assistant. I will pull up whatever we need to help the people out who are watching on YouTube. And if you are listening on the podcast, I will do my best to explain what I’m seeing.

Kieran O’Dwyer (04:50):
My own assistant. This is awesome. OK, so I like to think the brand awareness piece from three different angles, essentially: So firstly, you have simplifying—keeping things simple. So, let’s use Instagram. And if you want, you can just pull up Instagram at any point during this conversation. But let’s use Instagram as the main concept for our conversation. It’s that firstly people make it too complicated from an action point of view. So, gym owners do, “I don’t know what to post. I don’t know how to go about it. Do I use reels versus posts? Do I use stories versus—What cameras should I use?” Honestly, it should be just, “I’m going to get my target market onto my screen and show them winning.” That’s the first step. So, as you can kind of see here, if you scroll down a little bit or you get my face out of the picture, you just see who we’re trying to hit. So, John, what would you say our age bracket is? If you go up a little bit.

John Franklin (05:46):
So, as I look through—well, let’s go from the top. You got the top line here, which I like a lot. So, your three pinned posts are “How to start,” “What people say” and “How we help.” And so, you’ve got coaches who are smiling; they’re wearing collared shirts with the logo on it. So, instantly I’m getting a whiff of professionalism. I already think this might cost a lot of money just based off of these fancy polo shirts. We go down a little bit—our next row, I’m seeing some mom vibes.

Kieran O’Dwyer (6:18):
There you go.

John Franklin (6:20):
And then I see a lot of kids, so there’s some family-oriented stuff, so it looks like you can bring the whole fam. But as we continue the journey down, it seems like the overwhelming majority of the people that you are targeting, I would say, are in the 35 to 45 mom category, and it looks like you encourage them to drag their husbands along based off of what I’m looking at.

Kieran O’Dwyer (06:44):
Yeah, man, that’s 100% right. So, the idea is to keep it simple for the audience to see what you’re about. So like when someone looks at your Instagram, they should kind of know that they’re welcome. Your target market is welcome, number one. I should also kind of know where it is. So, Bathurst. 100%. They should also know how to talk to you: “Book a No Sweat Intro.” And here, we’ve taken the guesswork out even more and just pinned it. “Here’s how to start, what people say, how to help.” So, the idea is that whether I come from a Google ad, whether I come from seeing a friend’s tag—which we’ll talk about later as well—I jump on here, and it’s simple for me. They do exercise; they’re obviously professional. They’re in Bathurst. If I want to talk to them, I click there, and it’s people my age.

John Franklin (07:31):
I’m with you so far. And a lot of these pictures, are these professionally done, or are these done by a coach at the end of the class here? Because it looks like you got a mixture going on here.

Kieran O’Dwyer (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it’s all done by the coaches. We have one camera that we just bought for $900 that I use. So, anything that kind of has—

John Franklin (07:52):
So, that’s a coach pic, this guy deadlifting? That’s all—

Kieran O’Dwyer (07:56):
Yeah, that’s a coach pic. Yeah. He—my coach brings his camera; he likes it. He’s got a pretty good camera, so we use that for a lot of those. And he just does it during the class sometimes. And then—

John Franklin (08:06):
This guy happens to be a photographer. The guy you photographed with the good-looking photo.

Kieran O’Dwyer (08:13):
Oh, he happens to be a photographer as well. But the coach likes photography at the same time. So, we got lucky there. But most of them are done on an iPhone or a camera that I bought that I just take or the coaches take as part of their SOP.

John Franklin (08:27):
OK. So how do you do that? How do you go about collecting these photos that you post on the social here?

Kieran O’Dwyer (08:33):
So in your class SOP it says on it: greet everyone with a smile, say hello to everybody, get three photos or get three videos. And then we post them to the Instagram stories after that, and we tag the members. And it’s just part of the daily class checklist really.

John Franklin (08:50):
So this is all stuff—let’s see.

Kieran O’Dwyer (8:52):
Yeah, so you click through the stories—

John Franklin (08:53):
I’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 stories going on right now. And so, you maintain that rhythm?

Kieran O’Dwyer (09:02):
Yeah, 100%. So, we have three to five per coaching block. So, there’s two coaching blocks a day. That’s 10. And another thing that is very—

John Franklin (09:11):
So, it looks like he did squat yesterday.

Kieran O’Dwyer (09:13):
One hundred percent. Another thing that’s very important, John, that I try to hammer down to gym owners is that you need—when you get stories up there, you need to be tagging people. Because let’s say I get 300 eyes on this, and then young Scotty puts it on his story. That’s another 200 to 300 eyes. Now that’s done like five to 10 times a day; that’s near a thousand eyes, and all I’ve done is taken a story and popped it up.

John Franklin (09:39):
So for those of you who are listening to this, we are walking through the gym’s story. Looks like they did squats yesterday. They have about 15 different things on the feed. Most of them are just members squatting. They are tagging the member and saying something funny or insightful about that member. The idea is the member then shares it to their story. So, you guys will get about 300 views. The member will get some views, and that just creates a lot of like inbound eyeballs to the gym on a consistent basis in a way that you’ve like systematized, right?

Kieran O’Dwyer (10:13):
Exactly. And that’s all done during the class and then 10 minutes after the class, and it’s just on clockwork like that all the time.

John Franklin (10:21):
And so are the coaches the people putting it onto the story, or do they feed it to somebody else who manages the account?

Kieran O’Dwyer (10:29):
Nope, the coaches do it. We all do it in-house.

John Franklin (10:31):
So everyone’s logged into the Instagram account and manages it collectively.

Kieran O’Dwyer (10:36):
Work phone. We have a work phone, and the Instagram is on the work phone.

John Franklin (10:40):
So there’s a burner. Yeah. So, you’ve got a burner phone at the gym that everybody operates off of.

Kieran O’Dwyer (10:45):
Yeah, 100%, a burner phone. And that’s kind of the point I’m maybe trying to make here is that there’s always an answer to how to go about this because a lot of people say, “I don’t know what to post,” or “How do I get my coaches to do it?” Just put it as part of the SOP and get a work phone and then—

John Franklin (11:01):
Alright, so it sounds like that is a thing you do. It’s just: Every coach is required to get collateral during the class and post. And so that creates some inbound stuff. What else are you doing, and how are you thinking about the actual posts themselves?

Kieran O’Dwyer (11:16):
One hundred percent. So, scheduling. So, the way I like to go about it is I kind of follow this schedule, which is Momentum Mondays, Technique Tuesdays, Winning Wednesdays, Testimonial Thursdays, Feature Fridays and Super Saturdays. Just the alliteration makes it easy for me. And then every day I kind of know I can just clock on in my mind and be like, “Oh, I’m going to post that.” So, for a Momentum Monday, it’s easy. It’s just a group video of people working out with a nice tune, tag them on it, say something motivational, say something happy, and post that. And if the person likes how they look, they’ll repost it, and there’s more eyes. So, scroll down to—go to maybe “Remember the Goal.” Oh no, don’t go—no, go down. Yeah. “We Love Getting Stronger” with Brooke right there.

John Franklin (12:00):
Did I go past it? Oh, here’s a Monday. “We Love Mondays.”

Kieran O’Dwyer (12:03):
There you go. So, then it’s just—see: iPhone videos, people benching, people using the cables.

John Franklin (12:09):
Cool. And then it’s just like a little affirmation here, and then it says, “Train with intent, live with purpose,” and then you tag all the people in the video.

Kieran O’Dwyer (12:16):
Yeah, so this kind of goes back to the idea that you are just trying to—when people click on your page, and they want to see what you do, you need to be showing them what you do through videos. Not just like Canva images all the time or whatever, but videos of the people working out.

John Franklin (12:32):
And then Tuesday is the tip.

Kieran O’Dwyer (12:35):
Yeah. Technique Tuesday. So there, “Help. I feel my back.” There’s yours truly being incredible.

John Franklin (12:41):
Alright. So now you’re telling people how to do barbell good morning here.

Kieran O’Dwyer (12:46):
Exactly right.

John Franklin (12:47):
Alright, there we go. And then this will be our Wednesday one.

Kieran O’Dwyer (12:53):
Yeah. Which is like “Winning.” There’s Caesar; he had to clean a PB three times. And there are also, other winning ones with people holding whiteboards as well, which really, really helps because they reshare it.

John Franklin (13:09):
So, they’ll be holding a whiteboard listing out some social proof that they got going on.

Kieran O’Dwyer (13:14):
That’s exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it’s actually—I’ve essentially been listening to you and Kaleda talk for a long time, and you say about—you know, you like before and afters; you need proof that your gym actually does something. You need to show your results. Before and afters can be a bit tricky with some of our members. So, “Whiteboard Wins,” where they explain it themselves, like you can see Donna in the top right or Paul right there, it just works really well. Person smiling.

John Franklin (13:37):
So this is a guy holding the whiteboard, says, “Gone from no training to five sessions a week since joining. Bench press increased 35 kg to 50 kg. 50 kg times eight in that time. Feel so much better mentally and physically.” So, just explaining all the benefits of going to your gym.

Kieran O’Dwyer (13:58):
That’s exactly right. And we probably do that once or twice a week. Yeah. And then you can see the testimonial to the left there.

John Franklin (14:05):
Yep. It’s just right off of a Google review, I’m assuming.

Kieran O’Dwyer (14:09):
You’re exactly right. Nothing complicated about it. That took five minutes. Yeah, that’s really—

John Franklin (14:13):
What did we miss? What did we miss? Does that get us through Friday? What was the weekend? There’s a—what are all these group shots? This looks—

Kieran O’Dwyer (14:20):
The weekend is where you do group shots or just anything that you kind of want to chuck in.

John Franklin (14:26):
OK. Yeah.

Kieran O’Dwyer (14:28):
So, I just—

John Franklin (14:28):
So, if you’re someone who doesn’t post a lot on social, group shots always do well. Like, it’s very tough to beat a group shot, especially in gym, right? Because members like to see themselves and so—and they like to feel like they’re a part of something. So, these are always easy to get if you got a packed class and always going to perform well.

Kieran O’Dwyer (14:49):
That’s exactly right.

John Franklin (14:52):
Alright, let’s pop over to your Google map because it looks like you’ve put some thought into that. You got 145 five-star reviews. How are you getting all these five-star reviews?

Kieran O’Dwyer (15:01):
I ask people every single week as part of the SOP.

John Franklin (15:04):
And what does that mean? How does that work?

Kieran O’Dwyer (15:08):
So, technically I’ve got this marketing operating procedure that I kind of follow. It says post five business profile, Instagram posts a week, post on my personal Facebook five times a week, do the stories—and then part of it’s also outreach to kind of build the Google SEO and then also just to build the brand awareness around the gym. And that includes asking five members a week for a Google review, and maybe one to two do it. They all say yes, but one to two do it. And it’s a nice easy stream of Google reviews. And then I can use that to post on social media as well.

John Franklin (15:45):
Yeah, it looks—this page looks fairly built out. So, you’ve got all your Google reviews, you’ve got question and answer from the community. So, it looks like somebody’s there. You’ve got your popular times, got some information published from the owner. Looks like that’s been updated in the last 22 hours, which is great. You’ve got your phone, your address, your email, your hours, your calendar, and then if we go to photos, you got a ton of them. And the first one is just a big smiling image of all the coaches, again, looking professional with their polos. And then you’ve got photos of your avatars doing lifting. These are still coach photos here? Because these all look pretty good.

Kieran O’Dwyer (16:21):
Yeah, yeah. Just happens to be. Some of them are the camera that I use and some of them—the camera that my coach uses, his camera is better. But that camera was done by me; that was done by me. To most people, you can’t really tell the difference. I know you can.

John Franklin (16:36):
I—no, that’s why I’m asking. So, we’ve got some group shots, we’ve got some—a bunch of members lifting, smiling. We’ve got kids, we’ve got—looks like we’re hitting all the avatars with this one. So, definitely showing a wide range of ages and body types. And then stitching in photos of your coaches here. So, yeah, looks good. You see this place, and it’s not—you know, the gym looks clean; everybody looks like they’re smiling. Everybody’s having a good time. Definitely feels like a more premium facility. Even though I haven’t done a thorough market analysis of the Bathurst gyms, I’m assuming this would rank on the better side of the competition in terms of positioning.

Kieran O’Dwyer (17:20):
Yes.

John Franklin (17:20):
Awesome. All right. What else do we need to know for brand? It looks like there’s some consistency here with your colors. You’ve got this baby blue color and black. Seems like those are—you maintain consistency across all the different posts that you make in all the different places you post. Is that just something that happened accidentally, or is that something that everybody knows to focus on?

Kieran O’Dwyer (17:45):
It happened on purpose, but like, number one, the gym is just the colors that they are. So that helps. And then when we use Canva, we just set that—the standard template we use is the … colors, and we just press that button on everything, and then it auto-populates. And it’s just really easy.

John Franklin (18:02):
So you have a gym Canva account with all the social media templates that you run, and then all the hex codes are pre-populated in there. So, everybody knows you can instantly click and have your colors show up. So, there’s consistency, right?

Kieran O’Dwyer (18:16):
Yeah, 100%. That’s it.

John Franklin (18:18):
OK. All right. I think that this stuff’s all—the stuff that you can see here, that’s the tip of the iceberg, right? And so, from just the tip, it looks solid, but we’ve got to go a little deeper, right? That’s the top of the funnel. What are we doing to push people down? How are we turning these pretty social media posts into some people we can reach out to? How are we starting conversations?

Kieran O’Dwyer (18:44):
OK, so number one, obviously, if we’ve done a good enough job with somebody already, then they’ll click on the post and then they book a No Sweat Intro. That’s good, and for some people that works, especially if they’ve come from Google and then they’re already looking. But for other people, that’s not enough because they’re not ready yet. So, we do a couple of things. We either make Instagram posts such as, “Hey, I’ve got 10 keys to fat loss to give away.” Or “I’ve got a six-week running program. If you want it, drop a thing down below or DM, and I’ll send it to you.” Now, that’s most usually where I either send it to them via email, or I add them personally on Facebook—just get their name and type it in. And then I have them on Facebook. And that’s kind of where it really gets juicy, so to speak, as in the idea is to get people off of that storefront into a container of some sort, however you do it—email, website, Facebook. I just happen to use Facebook—Facebook groups, and my VA—

John Franklin (19:46):
Just so people can see if you’re listening along, this is “Five Keys to Fat Loss.” And then if you want a free download, DM us with the word “keys,” and then you’ve got a lot of people commenting “keys” here. So, here’s some hot old leads. Alright? Cool. Got it. We’ve got a visual.

Kieran O’Dwyer (20:04):
Yes, exactly. So, we have that. Some people write under it, but where it gets really vast is if we were to go into Facebook, and my virtual assistant is adding every new person who follows us on my personal Facebook. So, then I have them. So, then they say the stuff that I write as well. And then my virtual assistant also, for the longest time—and I was as well—just typing in the word “Bathurst” into Facebook search and adding like 25 people a week. And I just find it; if we have mutual friends, I add them, so then they can kind of see some of our stuff first. I can invite them to my free Facebook group, and that’s where I can really send them things. So, to condense all that, I’m trying to get everybody off Instagram, onto Facebook and into my Facebook groups, so then I can talk to them personally.

John Franklin (20:52):
So you’re pushing everybody here; you’re adding people. So, it looks like all the stuff you’re posting’s about your gym. I see a lot of the same photos that were over on the Instagram, which is cool, so you’re repurposing a lot of that content. And so, I guess the second piece of the funnel is move people from Facebook over your personal profile, get them on there, and then you invite them over to your Facebook group, correct?

Kieran O’Dwyer (21:18):
That’s exactly right. Should I share my screen and show you how that works?

John Franklin (21:22):

Let’s do it.

Kieran O’Dwyer (21:23):
I just press share. Are we on? Oh, right. Cool. Sorry, I couldn’t say it. So, then this is my Facebook group—the one that I run: Bathurst and Orange Free Fitness Tips. This is part of the organic funnel. It’s in the toolkit on Two-Brain as well. Now I add 50 people to this a week. Just go to invite and just add people. Some people don’t accept; some people do. And then once per week, I give them something, such as, “I’ve got a chin up program for you.” And they write under it, “Chin up, please. Chin up, please.”

John Franklin (21:55):
So looks like this gets a little more, a lot more attraction than the stuff you’re posting on Instagram—looks like it’s pretty vibrant.

Kieran O’Dwyer (22:01):
Yeah. And this is where it really starts to take shape is that Instagram and Google, in my opinion, is your storefront, but you need to get people into the store, which is your world. So you can give them free things, give them free samples—not your service, but eBooks. Things that they may not do, but they give them that feeling that they’re going to take action before they then talk to you. So now I try and get everyone here. So here: 8-week program download, lots of comments; nutrition care package, lots of comments.

John Franklin (22:35):
For those—these all have like 60, 70 comments. And there’s not a ton of members in this group. What does that say? It’s like 900ish.

Kieran O’Dwyer (22:43):
Yes, yes.

John Franklin (22:44):
Yeah. So, these things are churning up a lot of leads. That’s a lot—like obviously some of those comments are replies to people sending out stuff. But to have essentially a 3% conversion rate off of a random Facebook post for a lead magnet, that’s very difficult to do. That’s high engagement. So, it sounds like you got your finger on the pulse. So, how do you make these lead magnets, and how do you know what’s going to do well?

Kieran O’Dwyer (23:13):
I’ve really no real idea what’s going to do well. I have determined that things like recipes and things like body weight—anything that’s easy—does well; things that are like, “Why strength training is good for you,” and things like that that people can just find on the internet by typing it in, they don’t really do well. They won’t opt in. But if it’s something that they can do, like a running program, that works really well. And the way I write it is I go into ChatGPT, and I say, “Write me a program.” They write me a program, I chuck it into the Canva template, I then edit that template, just make sure it looks good, make sure the metrics are right for Australia and everything, and make sure it looks OK. And then I post it. And that roughly takes 40 minutes to an hour max.

John Franklin (24:02):
To make something from scratch is what you’re saying.

Kieran O’Dwyer (24:05):
To make something from scratch. When I didn’t have ChatGPT, of course it took me a lot longer because then I had to do the typing, but now I just ask ChatGPT to do the bare bones for me, and then I make sure that it’s good, I edit it and we’re good to go.

John Franklin (24:18):
Did you know Canva has its own GPT now? So you might be able to save a little time from that.

Kieran O’Dwyer (24:24):
Oh, there you go. See I’m learning on this as well.

John Franklin (24:27):
Here, if you stop your share, I can show you where to find it. Just so maybe other gym owners will benefit from that because if you have something prompted up or in the system already, you can connect your Canva account directly.

Kieran O’Dwyer (24:39):
Cool. There you go. I’ve stopped it. All yours.

John Franklin (24:41):
So you just go over to “explore GPTs” here and then “trending GPTs.” You just go to the “Canva GPT,” and then it gives you special prompts that you can give it, and it’ll interface with Canva and help you out there. So, maybe we’ll do a full tutorial on that one day, but just FYI, that’s a thing that’s there. It’s definitely not perfect now, but like everything else, it’s getting better every single day.

Kieran O’Dwyer (25:06):
Yeah. So that is one piece—

John Franklin (25:09):
Throw your screen back onto that group. Let’s see that. Let’s see that sucker. So, we pop it on there, we write a little—are you writing the captions, or are you using ChatGPT for that as well?

Kieran O’Dwyer (25:20):
I write the captions, but a lot of it is copy and paste from what I’ve already written in the past. So, I’m spilling the secrets here—hopefully members don’t see this—but if I’ve written one maybe like a year ago, I’ll scroll down, grab that, come to the top of the page, pop it in there, and just change the words to match the thing.

John Franklin (25:40):
I don’t think that is—like a lot of people think that you have to always come out with fresh stuff over and over again. I was at a conference this weekend; one of the speakers was a fitness influencer with close to a million followers across all the social media platforms. And he said, that’s just like a—and he’s been doing it for a while, like over 10 years. And he said that’s the cornerstone of part of his content. If something works, he republishes it literally every three months. So, he’s just got this big backlog of stuff that’s gone viral for him, and he just hits it over and over and over again. And he said he’ll get messages from people who’ll be like, “I’ve seen you post this like 20 times, but every time you post it, I needed to hear that today. So, I appreciate it.” So, and the idea that people care enough about your gym’s social media platform to know everything you read and consume, everything that you write, is ridiculous. So don’t feel bad about posting or reusing content, especially if it’s something that works well because stuff that works well will probably continue to work well for a very, very long time.

Kieran O’Dwyer (26:41):
Yeah. There is one more piece of this puzzle as well, which is really important. So, I use the Facebook group and then whatever I post here, I then go to my town’s Facebook group, which has 28,000 members. Everybody has a town Facebook group. Yep. If I show you my name, I just post that same thing. Sometimes I get—sometimes I get like only a few hits. And then this is also where I do things like 5130 posts for all our promotions. And then it acts like this “Connect the Dots” thing as well. So, I post in here, anybody that likes or comments, I send them; I start talking to them. I also add them on Facebook, and then I try and get them into that Facebook, the other group, at the same time.

John Franklin (27:30):
Who—like did you get permission for this? Or do you know the owner? Like I know some of these town Facebook groups run different rules. Like how do you go about that? Or is it just like in the Wild West of Australia, you can post whatever shit you want on the town Facebook group?

Kieran O’Dwyer (27:47):
So, there’s like five town Facebook groups. So, this one—there’s like four others. This was the only one that didn’t get mad at me, so I just kept doing it. The other four didn’t like it.

John Franklin (27:58):
So, it was an ask for forgiveness type situation—is the approach you took with it?

Kieran O’Dwyer (28:04):
Yeah, man, especially when I started this—and where a lot of gym owners are at now—is that I needed money, and I needed members. So, it didn’t matter. Like, I just stopped thinking, stopped caring about what I posted really, or where. I just needed—and I put it everywhere. And this is what’s happened.

John Franklin (28:24):
And I think that’s a very important point. Like creating the content is only one piece of it. In the beginning, distribution matters a lot. You have to be able to scratch and claw for those eyeballs, right? Just because you make the best piece of content in the world, you post it to the internet, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to get seen. So, you really have to grind out for every single comment, every single eyeball, every single lead. And then you kind of fall into a system like this where it runs itself and looks like you got leads on autopilot, and all of this aside from a VA, who I’m assuming—is that someone out of the Philippines or something like that? Or is that somebody local in your gym?

Kieran O’Dwyer (29:04):
Philippines. Yes, exactly right.

John Franklin (29:06):
So that costs you a couple hundred bucks a month, I’m guessing?

Kieran O’Dwyer (29:10):

Yeah, yep. Exactly right. She—in terms of this, she just sends the PDFs. I could, but I do the rest of it, but she sends the PDFs.

John Franklin (29:21):
So this is something where—I don’t want to say—we said shoestring budget in the beginning. That sounds like a shoestring budget to me. The reason a lot of people don’t do this is because it takes time, but in the beginning, your time is worth next to nothing. And if you don’t have members, it’s even worse. Probably every hour you’re spending in your business is a negative return. And so, and then once you’ve built a system like this and you have traction, this is still—it becomes higher value because every time you make one of these things—I mean, you said you do one of these weekly or monthly?

Kieran O’Dwyer (29:54):
I do—I post one weekly. I don’t need to create as many anymore because I have ones from like a year ago, but I post one weekly. I probably create once a month or once every two weeks.

John Franklin (30:06):
And across Instagram, this group, your other group, what type of traction do you get every time you do one of these? On average?

Kieran O’Dwyer (30:13):
A lot. So, if I scroll down—this group, so the town’s group is the most, the Facebook group, which I run, is the second most, but I get a lot—like this one here. And here’s actually another point is that the PDFs are to, again, build brand awareness. Like people like us, people know that we’re giving away free stuff in the exact same way that Chris Cooper has done his forever in Two-Brain. Like that’s how everybody joins Two-Brain: They get a free guide; they do a little bit of it themselves, then they can’t do the rest, and then they get coaching. So, I just took that same idea, and then when I post this, the 5130 post, “I’m looking for five teenagers,” people have seen everything else, and then they jump on it. So, I had a lot of comments on this one.

John Franklin (31:03):
Almost 100 comments for those who are listening there. Basically, looking for teenagers who want to improve their sports performance without injury is more or less the hook.

Kieran O’Dwyer (31:13):
Yes. Exactly right.

John Franklin (31:15):
And calling their parents. Got it. Cool. Alright.

Kieran O’Dwyer (31:17):
And talk to them.

John Franklin (31:19):
And then what happens?

Kieran O’Dwyer (31:20):
Then I get them into my DMs. Some of them book in; a lot of them don’t, for whatever reason. It’s just—you just go through the process, and then you just kind of talk to them. So, every now and then, the ones who don’t do a No Sweat Intro straight away or maybe the pricing is too expensive or whatever after we’ve had a little conversation, and then about six months later, I just have it on my checklist—or no, it’s not six months. Sorry, like six weeks later. And then again, in six weeks or six months, I then check on them: “Hey, how’s your fitness going? How’s this going?” Almost like a friend checking up on a friend, you know what I mean? And then I get a little view from them and then they see our posts, they see what I do here, and then when they’re ready, they book in. And a lot of the people who book into a No Sweat Intro I already have on Facebook.

John Franklin (32:07):
And how do you do the reminders, right? Because a lot of people forget because there isn’t really a great way to automate Facebook messaging or Instagram DM nurture, right? It’s not like email or text where you could use a product like Kilo or Gym Lead Machine to help you do one of those things. This is something you really have to tackle manually. So, how are you doing that?

Kieran O’Dwyer (32:28):
Yeah, I have a lead list just on Excel. We have a similar version to Gym Lead Machine, an Australian one that I’ve had for years and years, that we kind of use. My mind just works better with the spreadsheet, so pop them in that, and then there’s a little column that says if I followed up with them or not. If it’s unticked, I’ll then follow up with them and tick it, and then I go to the next column, which is “follow up with them again.” Yeah.

John Franklin (32:55):
So you have your own manual CRM?

Kieran O’Dwyer (32:58):
Yeah, manual CRM. I should probably use the digital one; I like the automated one better. But yes, at the moment, it’s manual.

John Franklin (33:07):
Alrighty. Now let’s talk about your lead-to-book-to-show-to-buy, because it seems like you are nurturing them well. They see a lot of information coming from you, and it shows based off of what your show rate looks like. So, what I have here is this strategy is bringing in about 60, I would consider, hot leads a month. From there you’re booking 25 consultations; 23 are showing, which is crazy. And from there, about 18% buy.

Kieran O’Dwyer (33:44):
Not 18. Oh, 18% total?

John Franklin (33:47):
18 buy out of the 60 is what I have on my data sheet here. Alright. And so, 18 of the 60, it looks like—for every lead you get, about 30% go on and buy, which is solid. At what point—especially considering it’s 300 bucks a month, right? And so, at what point are you dealing with pricing and handling those objections?

Kieran O’Dwyer (34:10):
Most—well, we don’t face too much pricing objection in the consultation process because most of the people, especially through this funnel, have a very good sense of what we’re doing. And if they go through the referral funnel as well. And they’ve probably already spoken to me in some capacity. I’ve given them an idea around pricing. If you’ve been talked to—so John, if you’ve been talked to by a gym owner for six months, and they’ve sent you like free guides and everything, and then you finally pull up the courage of, like, “I’ve tried everything, and I can’t do it by myself,” pricing might not be the main thing on your mind when you sit down with me. You might just be like, “Oh, I just need to do it.” And that’s kind of what I’m finding. I don’t have to price object too much, even though we have a pretty expensive onboarding. It starts at 550.

John Franklin (34:59):
We didn’t talk about that. So, your onboarding is separate than the weekly price. So, what does your onboarding look like? So, what are you selling? When I come in for a consultation, what am I buying?

Kieran O’Dwyer (35:10):
It just depends on kind of what you want, but it’s some variation of training—either personal training or it’s—

John Franklin (35:16):
I want to look good naked. Man, I want to look great naked.

Kieran O’Dwyer (35:18):
Well, you’re already there, but I’m sure I can help you with feeling better. But if anybody who—we just kind of go through the standard NSI template: find out your goals, prescriptive model, and then, yeah, it’s just based on their time. We ask them, “Would you prefer group training or PT?” They essentially let us know. If they want PT, then we pretty much get them onto a PT or semi-private membership straight away. And if they want group training, we say, “That’s great.” We’re going to do the onboarding package first, which is X amount, and there’s three levels of that.

John Franklin (35:51):
Got it. And so, it’s around 550 is what you’re saying?

Kieran O’Dwyer (35:54):
The first one’s 550. So, our bronze is 550, our silver is 1,100, and then our gold is 1,500.

John Franklin (36:02):
OK. So, 550 is the base; 1,500 is the top end. And that’s for what period of time?

Kieran O’Dwyer (36:07):
The four—so the bronze is two to three weeks, so six PTs, and then the other two are variations of six PTs plus extra PTs and then group. It’s kind of like a big paid exploration into what they need and what will work for them.

John Franklin (36:26):
Got it. And push—and then from there, they will just renew into one of those memberships that we talked about at the front end of the show.

Kieran O’Dwyer (36:33):
That’s exactly right. When they decide which route they want to go down to.

John Franklin (36:36):
Awesome. And so, I think we covered the—I think that gets us from no lead to point of purchase. Is there anything else that we’re missing that a gym owner would find helpful that we should talk about while we’re going back and forth here?

Kieran O’Dwyer (36:49):
Yeah, what they’ll probably find helpful is, although it seems robust in terms of the daily commitment, it’s 30 to 40 minutes for me a day at the moment. A little bit longer when I have to create something. But at the moment, I do most of this by myself purely because I like it and because of my own personal reach: 30 to 40 minutes, yeah, a day—maybe an hour sometimes.

John Franklin (37:14):
That’s it?

Kieran O’Dwyer (37:14):
Yeah, that’s it. That’s in terms of creation, conversation—I just schedule when I’m on Facebook. Obviously, the sales process would be another hour on top of that. But in terms of the actual marketing, 30 to an hour a day and then a little bit longer if I have to create an eBook.

John Franklin (37:29):
Wow. That’s less time than I would’ve guessed.

Kieran O’Dwyer (37:32):
It’s just because this is a lot less than it seems. It seems big now, but it’s just a few Instagram posts and then a few conversations really. And then one post, which I do the same post in all the areas, like for the Facebook group and everything.

John Franklin (37:48):
Well, it is a lot. It just sounds like you’ve baked it into a very systematized process. So—

Kieran O’Dwyer (37:54):
Yeah, 100%.

John Franklin (37:55):
Let’s go back, and you and I will summarize together everything we went through, so people understand. So, at the top of the funnel, we have the Google My Business where it is well laid out; it looks like somebody’s there. You are asking five members to leave you a review every single week. On the Instagram, you have a clear call to action in the bio. You developed a process for your coaches to take three pieces of media collateral, post it onto your Instagram story and tag your members. You post exactly every single day using a content calendar, which we laid out where Monday is motivation, Tuesday is a tip. Wednesday is our—what was Wednesday?

Kieran O’Dwyer (38:40):
“Winning Wednesday.” “Testimonial Thursday.”

John Franklin (38:43):
“Winning Wednesday.” What’s Friday and Saturday?

Kieran O’Dwyer (38:45):
Feature Friday. And then Super Saturday, which is group. One thing that I probably didn’t say is that anytime I can, which is a lot of it, I’ll just schedule all those in the one block as well.

John Franklin (38:56):
OK, so you’ll make all that in a block, schedule them. Alright? About once a week, you will post a guide onto your Instagram that is a guide on a topic that is relevant to your avatar. So, “Getting Your First Pull Up” is an example of one that we saw there. And then over on the Facebook side, anybody who engages on Instagram, you have an admin who adds them personally to your Facebook account. You look for—you search for your city, and you add 25 people who have mutual friends every single day. In your Facebook group, you add 25 to 50 people a week. Is that a week or a day?

Kieran O’Dwyer (39:40):
It’s a week. It’s a week. Once a week, I jump on.

John Franklin (39:42):
Yeah. Alright. So, we do a big bulk invite in the Facebook group. In a local city Facebook group, you offer the same guide that you did on Instagram. When people comment, you start a DM conversation; you act normal and try and push them toward a No Sweat Intro, which is a sales appointment. And then once you’re at the sales appointment, you sell them on a higher ticket onboarding package that renews into one of your memberships. If you don’t hear from them, you follow up with them every six weeks. And you have just like a spreadsheet that you use to keep track of all the leads you’re working at any given time.

Kieran O’Dwyer (40:18):
Yes, I will say, where the funnel—where I lack sometimes is the follow up. But in terms of that, I definitely try to stay on top of that. I just think about it as earning the right to coach them. So, we’ve gone through this whole process, they’ve seen our stuff, they’ve seen the care and the professionalism, and by the time they’re ready, they just trust us.

John Franklin (40:40):
Got it. And that’s it. We broke down the whole process, and it took—and all that can be yours, gym owners, for 40 to 45 minutes a day—30 to 45? What was that? Is that what you said?

Kieran O’Dwyer (40:54):
It just really depends. Look, because it’s easy for me, 30 to 45, but starting out, they would need to give themself a minimum of an hour a day just to work through all the limitations.

John Franklin (41:06):
Alrighty. Any other tips? If we haven’t overwhelmed them already. We let them peek inside the Komodo. If they’re—if you’re starting from—I’ll give them a tip because this is a lot. If you’re starting from scratch, don’t try and implement all of this at once. How long has it taken you to build out this process?

Kieran O’Dwyer (41:24):
Three years.

John Franklin (41:25):
Yeah. So, this is something that you develop over time. If you try and do all this, you will burn out. If you—depending on where you are now, pick one element, kind of do that consistently for a month and add another element, and then over the course of six to 12 months, you could build a system like Kieran’s, and yeah, you would’ve done it three times faster than him. And just watch this podcast over and over and over and over again to do that. Or even better, you can become a Two-Brain client and work with Kieran directly. Anything else we should let the people know? Any other tips in terms of implementing this system?

Kieran O’Dwyer (42:00):
Two things. Number one: Don’t let perfectionism take over. Like at the beginning, you just set a timer for 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour and just get to work. If it doesn’t sound amazing, just post it anyway. If the photo’s not that good, just post it anyway. Consistency is key. And if there’s one thing that gym owners could do today that would be very easy for them, it would be to post Instagram stories of their members doing cool things and looking cool and tag them. Let the members do the work for them by sharing and talking about it.

John Franklin (42:37):
Got it. And so, if you were—if there was a gym member who’s like, “I’m so overwhelmed by this. I just need a starting point,” would that be the post consistently to your stories? Would that be what you would tell them?

Kieran O’Dwyer (42:48):
That. Obviously making sure that the Instagram has the basics—where they live and everything, of course. But yes, Instagram stories and then posting a minimum of three times a week as a standard post. If they can get to five or six, then that’s awesome.

John Franklin (43:02):
Awesome, Kieran. This has been super helpful. Where do people go if they want to follow you or find out more about your life?

Kieran O’Dwyer (43:11):
To Kieran O’Dwyer on Facebook, in the Two-Brain group on Facebook, or Bathurst Strength and Conditioning on Google, Orange City Strength and Conditioning on Google—any of those places. And that’s how they can find me.

John Franklin (43:23):
And so you know, listeners, “Run a Profitable Gym”: We have a Facebook group; it is called Gym Owners United. You can go to gymownersunited.com and join there. Kieran hangs out in that group as well. So, if you have any questions from the episode and you aren’t a Two-Brain client, feel free to post in there and tag Kieran, and he’ll do his best to answer. And if not, one of the other 8,000 or 9,000 gym owners in there will certainly have an opinion to put it on there. So, Kieran, thanks for taking the time to do this. This has been awesome—ton of value packed into this episode. Guys, this has been this week’s “Run a Profitable Gym.” If you haven’t, like, subscribe, leave a review. We appreciate you, and thanks for sharing your most valuable resource, your time. We will see you next week.

The post Smart Marketing: Getting Leads on a Shoestring Budget appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How Many Members Can You Serve at an A+ Level?

Here’s a critical question for gym owners:

How many clients can you serve at an A+ level?

Let’s be real: This is a finite number.

You, your staff and your business systems have hard limits. When they are pushed too far, service declines.

It’s nice to think you’ll always be able to deliver A+ service, but it’s not realistic.

 So exactly how many clients can you serve at an A+ level?

I haven’t met many gym owners who’ve capped membership. But they exist.

I got to interview one of them recently: Jeroen van Duijn is the co-owner of CrossFit Leiden in the Netherlands, and membership is now capped at 400 in that gym.

Why?

Jeroen told me that he and his staff have decided that 400 is the maximum number of relationships they can maintain.They’ve also determined that their 5,300-square foot facility is full at 400.Finally, they are comfortable with income levels and see a path to earning even more without adding additional staff and clients.

The first point is important: The more relationships you have, the harder it is to maintain them. You know this already—consider your personal life. Same deal in a gym. At some point, people just become “faces in the crowd.” That’s bad for retention.

The second point: The gym is at its physical limits. CrossFit Leiden has full classes and very few dead hours. Adding more people will just add stress to the system: Overfull classes and waiting lists, less coach-client interaction, etc.

The third point: Jeroen told me current member levels allow him to live the way he wants and create good careers for staff members. But he’s not sitting back and relaxing. To generate even more revenue, he’s focusing on delivering more value to current clients through nutrition coaching, personal training and other services. And he recently acquired a second gym where he’s working to replicate the success of CrossFit Leiden.

Your Number

Don’t think 400 members is a common cap. This is, in reality, a huge number. The average microgym has about 150 members, and even that total can strain systems.

CrossFit Leiden has staff and systems that allow them to deliver A+ service to 400 people. They built up to this number over time, and Jeroen said they’re always making adjustments to ensure their business remains a well-oiled machine.

I would not set “400 members” as my first goal. For most gym owners, 150 members is an excellent first target.

With 150 clients, you will run into all kinds of problems that are challenging but not unsolvable or overwhelming. And you can make a great income with 150 clients—$100,000 or more is common in Two-Brain gyms.

With 200 or more clients, you’re going to run into much greater challenges: staffing, space and equipment, marketing and sales, retention. It’s not uncommon for gyms that hit 200 clients to fall back down to 150 because their systems are completely overloaded and service declines to a C level.

I’m not suggesting you cap membership at 150. But I am suggesting you make this your first target: Deliver A+ service to 150 people.

At that point, you can determine your next target—which should not be “more.” Pick a number that works with your space, staff and systems, then work toward it while keeping a close eye on all key metrics in your business, not just gross revenue.

Does length of engagement improve or decline when you add more members? What about average revenue per member? Does your ROI on staff go down because coaches get overwhelmed and quit?

Remember: Your coaching business has a client limit, whether you set it or not. At some point, service will start to decline and people will leave.

The best way to ensure your business can reach 150 clients and handle more if you want to? Work with a mentor to build the systems that will allow you to deliver great service to each and every member.

So how many clients can you serve at an A+ level?

And if you want to serve more clients at that level, what are you doing to become a better entrepreneur?

The post How Many Members Can You Serve at an A+ Level? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Energizing Elite Coaches: The Two-Brain Summit

One of the greatest things you can do for your business is bring your coaches to the Two-Brain Summit, get them fired up and then give them one great idea to focus on.

At our summit in Chicago on June 8 and 9, coaches will learn about athletic training, sales, programming, behavior modification, building programs for older athletes and more.

If you bring your crew, you’ll be able to sit down on Monday morning after the summit and point an inspired coach at a new project that will improve your business:

“Let’s focus on developing a system to train high-school athletes.”“Semi-private training is the perfect way for you to earn more. Let’s set it up.”“You’re going to crush our new 50-plus program. Let’s get to work on that right now.”

And so on.

The summit is about creating careers for coaches on your platform. When that happens, your coaches earn more and stay longer, your clients get better service, and key metrics at your gym improve.

I’ll put the spotlight on a few speakers, then give you the whole lineup.

Bill Parisi

Bill Parisi is the founder of Parisi Speed School, which has more than 100 locations around the world.

Bill’s created a genius strength-and-conditioning progression system to help young athletes, high-school athletes and college athletes achieve their goals.

I could listen to Bill talk for hours, so I booked him for 60 minutes to help your coaches.

Mayhem Nation

Mayhem is our programming sponsor this year, and I can’t wait to see the energy their coaches bring to our morning workouts.

These pre-conference sessions were a huge hit last year, so they’re back. Mayhem team members will be up bright and early to lead attendees through morning workouts that will energize them for the day.

We had so many people at these workouts in 2023 that we literally had to start pushing tables aside to accommodate everyone.

Beyond that, Josh Malone and Mayhem team members will be on stage to help coaches learn how to handle the most difficult challenges in a coaching gym. It’s not “how do I teach my client to squat?” It’s “how do I get my client to change behavior?” or “how do I get my client to pay attention to my cues?”

Mayhem’s crew will help your coaches solve a ton of problems and produce better results for clients in your gym.

The Complete Lineup: Coaches Stage

Here’s the rest of the lineup on the stage for coaches (subject to change):

Day 1 Chris Plentus“Unreasonable Hospitality in the Microgym Industry”Bill Parisi“New Science: Stand Out in the Coaching Crowd”Matt Temby“Sales: Oxygen for Your Career”Brian Bott“Creating Client-Winning Semi-Private Programming”Peter Brasovan“Career Roadmaps: Growth and Financial Success for Coaches”Day 2 Oskar Johed“From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Crafting World-Class Coaches”Aleksandrina Angelova-Brandt“Getting Clients to Change: A Guide to Transformative Communication”  Mayhem Nation“Handling the Most Difficult Coaching Challenges”Brian Foley“Growing a 50+ Program in Your Gym”Josh Martin“Building a Career in Coaching”
Get Tickets Today!

If you’re a gym owner, you’ve got to get your coaches to Chicago for the summit.

We have less than 300 tickets available at press time, and both owners and coaches rooms will be packed.

Get your tickets now and bring your crew to Chicago!

Two-Brain Summit tickets for owners are $100 off until April 1!

The post Energizing Elite Coaches: The Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Brian Chontosh: Virtuosity in Leadership at the Two-Brain Summit

We’ve got Jason Khalipa, Jonathan Goodman and Carrie Wilkerson speaking at our summit on June 8 and 9.

But there’s more—much more.

The theme of our summit is “virtuosity,” so I went after more all-stars who can help gym owners and coaches.

Get tickets to the 2024 Two-Brain Summit here.

Brian Chontosh

It’s tough to summarize “Tosh.”

He served in the U.S. Marines for more than two decades. In Iraq, he earned the Navy Cross for heroic actions, and the battle citation reads like a scene from a movie. He retired a major.

He’s completed the Arrowhead 135 and other ultramarathons.

He rowed across the Atlantic in 2023 with three other men in just under 34 days.

On the USS Dubuque, he once boxed 160 Marines in a row back to back to toughen them up.

He’s the founder of the Big Fish Foundation, which helps veterans thrive after they leave service. (This is our charitable partner for the 2024 summit.)

He provides “customized leadership experiences” at the Crooked Butterfly Ranch.

He has a master’s degree in leadership education, and he worked on CrossFit HQ’s Seminar Staff.

The list goes on. And on.

Tosh is an incredible, inspiring guy.

I can’t think of a better person to close out our summit. His talk title: “Virtuosity in Leadership: Basics, Not Bells and Whistles.”

Ben Bergeron

Owner of CrossFit New England, founder of CompTrain, CrossFit Games competitor, coach to Games champions Mat Fraser and Katrin Davidsdottir in the mid-2010s, Affiliate Cup-winning coach—Ben Bergeron has done it all.

The former triathlete and author of the book “Chasing Excellence” will be in Chicago to deliver this talk: “The Simple Solve for Team Accountability.”

If you’re struggling to get all your horses pulling in the same direction, you aren’t alone. Ben’s advice is essential for entrepreneurs who want to create careers for coaches and mentor incredible staff members to serve clients in world-class businesses.

The Complete Lineup: Owners Stage

Here’s the rest of the speakers you’ll see on the stage for owners (subject to change):

Day 1 Jason Khalipa“AMRAP Mentality”Kieran O’Dwyer and Nick Habich“Find More, Sell More”Jonathan Goodman“People Who Buy… Buy Lots”Joleen Bingham“Creating a World-Class Client Experience”Chris Cooper and John Franklin“The Gym Owner’s Playbook to $1M Net Worth”Day 2 Carrie Wilkerson“Building an Impactful Business & Life You Love With the Three Margins”Brian Bott“Leveraging 4 Personality Types to Boost Sales, Training and Teams”Ben Bergeron“The Simple Solve for Team Accountability”Kilo, Pushpress, WodBoard, WodifySoftware provider panelBrian “Tosh” Chontosh“Virtuosity in Leadership: Basics, Not Bells and Whistles”
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The post Brian Chontosh: Virtuosity in Leadership at the Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two-Brain Summit Speakers Revealed!

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Coop, you nabbed some unreal speakers for the Summit this year. Am I right?

Chris Cooper (00:06):
Yes. My favorite lineup ever.

Mike Warkentin (00:08):
Is it really? Oh man, I’ve got to hear this, and so do our listeners. I’m Mike Warkentin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is here, and he’s going to give you the lineup for a 2024 Summit for gym owners and coaches. It goes down June 8th and 9th in Chicago, Illinois. You can get tickets in the show notes, and I’m going to give you a special note. Those tickets are $100 off until April 1st. The clock is ticking, so head there, if not right now, right after you hear this lineup. Enough of that. Coop, get to the lineup. Who did you manage to lock down for this Summit?

Chris Cooper (00:38):
Yeah, man, so I’m super stoked about this. In years past, we’ve had Jocko Willink, we’ve had Seth Godin, Lisa Nichols, Dan Martell—massive, massive speakers, but I’m actually most stoked about this one.

Mike Warkentin (00:50):
Really?

Chris Cooper (00:51):
Yeah, man, because—for a couple reasons. Like these guys are big names in the fitness industry—guys and girls, of course. But also, I know exactly what they’re going to be talking about, and it’s exactly what gym owners need to hear right now. Like, our theme is virtuosity. Let’s get into the one-on-one presentations here.

Mike Warkentin (01:07):
Yeah, let’s do it. Roll.

Chris Cooper (01:09):
OK, man. So, Jason Khalipa is one of our favorite speakers of all time, and this year he’s actually going to kick the Summit off. So, he’s going to be talking about virtuosity in the gym business. And I’m not sure he has ever shared this story before with gym owners—for what he’s going to talk to us about—but he’s going to give good examples of expanding an empire really, really quickly, condensing it down to its most important parts, and then building back up and the lessons that he’s learned from that. It’s an amazing story. Jason’s actually a pretty humble guy despite all his success, and he’s totally transparent with this stuff.

Mike Warkentin (01:42):
And man, he’s got some energy, like he brings energy to this thing. Like, I saw him leading the workouts like 5:30 last year, and he was fired up to go. And I had to get my A-game going to photograph that guy with a wide-angle lens because of his arms.

Chris Cooper (01:55):
It’s very hard to keep up to this guy. He calls me once a week to talk about this—like, he is stoked, and he adds so much to the Summit. It’s going to be good. I mean, if you flew in, you listened to Courtney’s warmup—hilarious—you listened to Jason and then you flew back out again, like the flight and ticket would be worth it just for that.

Mike Warkentin (02:13):
You’d be ready to run through a brick wall with him speaking first, I think.

Chris Cooper (02:16):
Oh, 100%. Like, yes, he’s going to improve your business, but he’ll probably put 10 pounds on your clean and jerk while he’s there. Like, he’s that good at this. Another speaker that I’m super stoked about who we haven’t had on stage before, but we’ve been close with for years is Jon Goodman. So yeah, Jon works with online trainers around the world. He’s written some really amazing books, and right now, he’s especially focused on things like Instagram. He’s got this brand-new book coming called “The Obvious Choice,” and he’s going to have a lot of copies of books there to sign, and we’re going to give them away. Obviously, we’re going to buy them for a lot of attendees, and he’s going to get up on stage, and he’s going to talk about “People Who Buy … Buy Lots. And it’s really about knowing who your ideal client avatar is, and then just giving them more and more and everything that they want to solve their actual problems and becoming the obvious choice for those people in your market. If you haven’t heard Jon speak before, you’re going to be blown away. Like, this guy is a genius at making complex tasks like marketing, really, really simple and actionable. And so, Jon’s talk will pay for all of your travel and Summit tickets and everything else too if you just take action while you’re there.

Mike Warkentin (03:29):
Well, that topic lines up exactly with Two-Brain Business stuff—what we’re talking about. Find your ideal clients and then serve them to the nth degree to give them the value they want. Your gym is profitable; like, that sounds like a perfect matchup.

Chris Cooper (03:41):
It’s so good. Yeah. And you know, we’ve been exchanging ideas and stuff for years, but yeah, “People Who Buy Buy Lots”: That is absolutely in line with you providing the best value to your best clients and giving them everything that they need so they don’t have to try 50 different gyms. You’re just solving their problem for them. Jon’s a master of that.

Mike Warkentin (04:01):
That’s an average revenue per member booster right there. I guarantee it.

Chris Cooper (04:05):
One thousand percent, man. So good. Another big name that we’re bringing in this year is Carrie Wilkerson. Carrie is my business mentor, and she’s been doing this for a long time. She’s the author of “The Barefoot Executive,” and she’s spoken at our Tinker meetups before. She’s a fan favorite. She’s going to talk about “Building an Impactful Business and Life You Love With the Three Margins.” So, this is really interesting. And Carrie’s, she’s a professional presenter. You know, she goes on stages; she does this for a living, and I haven’t heard this talk from her before—the Three Margins—so I’m super stoked for that.

Mike Warkentin (04:39):
What’s the short version of how you found her? How did you find her as a mentor?

Chris Cooper (04:42):
Yeah, I had to pass through several places. So, I was working with Todd Herman who wrote “The Alter Ego Effect.” Before that I was working with Dan Martell, who just wrote “Buy Back Your Time,” and they were kind of in this secret group for business coaches. And I joined that group after working with the two of them for about five years. And then in that group, one of the coaches—so the person who’s coaching the business coaches who coached the business coaches—was Carrie. And she’s been doing this for a long time. She’s very senior. She knows how to get action from people. She’s also an amazing storyteller. And that’s why she’s such a fan favorite, and I’m stoked to have her there.

Mike Warkentin (05:23):
Me too.

Chris Cooper (05:23):
Yeah. Also on the owner stage: Brian Chontosh. I mean, this guy literally just rode a boat across the Atlantic for his Big Fish Foundation. Big Fish Foundation is our title charity this year. But Tosh is just an incredible guy with such an amazing set of stories in the background. Like, I don’t even want to share all of them here, but his military stories are the stuff that you used to read in comic books.

Mike Warkentin (05:52):
Guys, it’s incredible.

Chris Cooper (5:53)

Yeah. Storming a nest of machine gunners and taking them all out by himself. Like it’s this kind of stuff. And these are the stories and the experience that Tosh brings. But more than anything else, he’s just such a great role model. Like, you hear him and his humility, and you know his background, and you leave, and you think, like, “I just want to be like that guy.”

Mike Warkentin (06:11):
He’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Chris Cooper (06:12):
Yeah. I mean, you’ve got more experience with him than I do, Mike, but—

Mike Warkentin (06:16):
You know what? I’ve never met him actually. It’s funny; I’ve been in so many of the same places and Nicole O’Hara was like, “Oh, you’ve got to meet Tosh, and he’s over there somewhere,” and I never got a chance, but I’ve bumped into and around him so many times and like the stories and stuff—and if you guys don’t follow him on Facebook or Instagram, check him out because he posts some really cool stuff. You know, just as an example, I saw a video of him: He had a trail camera and a cougar came by, I think, and took a pee. And so, Tosh went out and checked his trail camera and peed in the same spot and just said, “It’s on.” That’s the kind of guy he is.

Chris Cooper (06:44):
This is the guy. Yeah, you want to follow this guy. I mean, all of these people really: Follow them on Instagram. Jon Goodman especially, you want to be there; you’ll learn just by watching him go. And Tosh just makes you want to be a better human, you know? And then, these are the speakers we brought in, but honestly, our mentor team is so good that we’ve put a lot of them on stage too, and they’re so passionate about this; they all get speaker training, so they’re professional presenters. They’re not just going up there and winging it and boring the audience. Like they’re getting up there, they’re presenting a topic, they’re doing it extremely well, they’ve had success, they’ve coached other people to success in using these things, and you’re going to actually work with them. It is more of a workshop than a lecture.

Chris Cooper (07:29):
So, you’re given work to do while they’re on stage. And these presentations were so good this year, honestly, Mike, that I couldn’t even get on stage. Like I made a pitch, and it wasn’t in the top five. That’s how good these guys are; they’re so good. So, Kieran O’Dwyer and Nick Habich are actually teaming up. Kieran is so, so, so good at the social media funnel, and he’s going to tell people what to do, and he is going to give them an exercise to have them actually making their social media posts there. And then Nick is going to get up and talk about non-slimy sales. Nick has become extremely good at coaching people to buy memberships at his gym, coaching people to buy coaching, and he is going to teach you how to do it. These guys are both super organized, super tactical, and they’re a lot of fun too. And that’s why I love having them up on the stage.

Mike Warkentin (08:23):
You know what’s funny about Nick, and I believe I saw this in his pitch, I think he said he used to be an Army recruiter, if I’m not mistaken. He said, “If I can sell people into that job, I can sell people into a gym, and I can teach you how to do it too.”

Chris Cooper (08:35):
It’s funny, man. I often say a gym membership is the hardest thing to sell. Like, nobody wants to do it. It’s going to be hard. It’s not going to ever get easy or fun, but I think it’s probably the second hardest thing to sell behind the Army.

Mike Warkentin (08:48):
Yeah. But Nick’s a great guy, and he is going to help people out. And teaming up with Kieran is amazing because I saw in our last office hours for clients, he had a huge crew of people working on their social media funnels, and it was a big deal. People were fired up to get out of that meeting.

Chris Cooper (09:01):
Yeah. Kieran’s a young guy; he’s brilliant at creating systems, and people in Two-Brain often just copy what Kieran does, and Summit attendees are going to get to do that too. So, I’m stoked for these guys. We actually have a panel too. So, for the first time at Summit—we do this in the Tinker Group sometimes: We’ll bring together three or four experts, put them on a panel, and then I’ll just ask questions and you’ll get different perspectives. Now, often we don’t do this because I want you to have the answer, like I want you to just go and do the thing, but sometimes it really helps to get some context on things. So, what we’re doing is we’re bringing up the founders of Kilo, Wodify and PushPress, and we’re going to put them on stage, and we’re going to ask them specific questions about metrics.

Chris Cooper (09:45):
So we’re not going to say, like, “What features does your software have?” It’s going to be like, “What do you think is the most important metric that a gym owner can track, and why is that?” And each one of them has a different perspective, but they’re all good. And they’re all heavily involved with gyms. Two out of the three started as gym owners. They all work with thousands of gyms around the world. And so, they’ve got kind of this unique perspective. And so, I’m really stoked for that panel because it allows each one of the three of them to give some brilliant insight on what they think is most important and why.

Mike Warkentin (10:16):
And those three companies were a big part of our State of the Industry Guide this year and provided a ton of data. So, that report, which you can get for free is incredible, and it’s full of data from Two-Brain of course, but then also from the software partners who give us all sorts of insight into popular class times, revenue, retention, all this other stuff. I think that’s going to be really cool, and it will be really interesting to see the different perspectives because, like you said, they’re all a little bit different.

Chris Cooper (10:40):
They are, yeah. And so, I listened to Dan Martell talk about the North Star metric of client adherence. And it really makes me fired up to get people to class more, and then I listened to John at Kilo or Kaleda, the CEO of Kilo, and they talk about retention and engagement. It makes me really, really stoked to go out there and just send my clients more text messages, send them more videos, get them engaged, map out their journey. And then I listen to Brendan, and I think like, “Man, I can really do a lot for my clients that will also benefit my business too.” Like, these people are all absolutely brilliant. They have different areas of focus, and they just get you stoked up to think about numbers, honestly.

Mike Warkentin (11:25):
Well, and one of the things you brought out when you got Brendan Rice on the podcast recently was passing on processing fees to clients. He’s got apparently just—you can click a button now, and it shows you: “This is what you could save by making this small little change to pass on processing fees.” What a great feature for gym owners to at least see what they’re actually giving up and how they can use that to either make more money or put that price into their membership fees or whatever, so they’re not losing money on processing.

Chris Cooper (11:49):
Yeah, I mean, and that’s it. It’s these conversations that I have with them. Brendan just mentioned this to me one time, and record scratch, it’s like, “Wait a minute. You can add about 7% profit to a gym’s bottom line just by flipping this switch here? And you’re going to tell them how to do it?” And very minimal kickback. I mean, this is adding thousands of dollars to a gym owner’s bottom line every year. And it comes out of these conversations. And that’s why I really want to invite the thousand gym owners and coaches who are there to sit in on this conversation with me and just kind of get the value of everybody playing together and jamming. It’s awesome.

Mike Warkentin (12:29):
I bet one of our clients comes up with some crazy idea or question, throws it at these three people, and all of a sudden, they are out in a race to build something cool for gym owners. I bet something like that happens.

Chris Cooper (12:37):
It happens, yeah. I mean, one of the greatest things about the collaboration between these companies is that, you know, we all add data to the State of the Industry. We all work together for the betterment of microgym owners around the world. Like CrossFit HQ can’t do that, FitBody bootcamp—like they all the franchisors, they can’t do that with as much breadth and depth and power as the four of us working together. And that’s why I’m super stoked to get these guys up on stage, collaborating together, answering questions, and just kind of almost brainstorming.

Mike Warkentin (13:11):
Rising tide floats all boats. I love it. Who’s next? Who else you got?

Chris Cooper (13:15):
Well, I know you’re going to love this one. Brian Bott is going to talk about “Leveraging the 4 Personality Types to Boost Sales, Training and Teams.”

Mike Warkentin (13:21):
I like Brian. Yeah.

Chris Cooper (13:23):
It’s so good, so good. And more and more, if there is a trend in the coaching business, it’s probably toward semi-private small group right now. And we published this guide—first, a series of podcasts and then a guide several months ago called “The Four Client Avatars.” And so many people said, “I get it now.” And it solved so many problems for them. And they started using this guide, and they started coaching people better. They started signing people up better, they started keeping people better, and they also applied the guide to their coaches. And it’s like, “Oh yeah, this coach is the expert introvert. This coach is the passive extrovert. Oh, now I know how to relate to them better.” And it’s just a simple model for working with people. It’s brilliant. And that’s why I love it, and that’s what Bott’s going to present on stage to the owners is these four personality types to boost sales, training and teams.

Mike Warkentin (14:16):
Those posts—when we talked about those avatars; there were four of them—we put them together, and we talked about how you can use—like, how to sell to an extrovert or something like that. Different things. We put them up on social media. They were a huge hit. People were super interested in them. That guide was a huge hit. And Brian is a very funny, very great speaker. So, I saw him for the first time last year at the Two-Brain Summit. He was great. He was talking just on semi-private stuff there. This is going to be really, really fun. And I think he’s just going to be entertaining, but also super insightful.

Chris Cooper (14:43):
Yeah, man, he’s so good. And it’s so helpful just to understand this. You know, that’s one of the most popular free guides we’ve ever published is “The Four Avatars.” If you want it, you just go to gymownersunited.com, search for “avatars” in that group, and we’ll just give you the guide. You know, it’s so helpful. Also on the owner stage this weekend is going to be Joleen Bigham talking about “Creating a World-Class Client Experience.” What we want to believe as gym owners is, like, “If we give people results, if we help them lose weight, if we help them get stronger, if we help them like do their first box jump, we’re going to be successful.” Right? And that’s what we want to all believe. That’s not what actually happens. Like what actually happens is you have to do things to retain a client.

Chris Cooper (15:24):
It’s really not the reality even of what’s happening, but the way that the client experiences that—that’s important. So, if a client is getting amazing results, but your lobby is dirty or the door lock system doesn’t work and they can never get in when they want to get in, they’re going to quit. It’s almost like the results come secondary. And so, Jolene is going to talk about creating world-class client experience because if you’ve got a world-class client experience, you’re going to keep people at your gym longer, they’re going to get better results, they’re going to love it more, they’re going to refer more friends, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this is kind of like the operating system on which you should be running your entire business.

Mike Warkentin (16:03):
Yeah, I like Jolene a lot because she is super detail oriented and super focused, and she pays attention to small things. She’s just like—if I asked her right now, if I sent her DM and said, “Hey, where will you be in 73.5 minutes?” She could literally tell me based on her crazy schedule, how organized she is. And I love how she brings that in a presentation that’s just clear and focused, and you can take action. So, she’s going to be a great one.

Chris Cooper (16:25):
Yeah. One thing all these people have in common is they are geniuses at making complex ideas simple and actionable. Like you could take any one of these presentations and make an entire business book about it—300 pages—but what they’re going to give you is the one-page “Do this right now,” and in most cases they’re going to say, “Let’s do this together right now.” So, the reason that people love the Summit and why there’s already 700 tickets sold, and it’s the beginning of March and like it’s going to sell out at 1,000 tickets this year, is because it’s not just lectures. You’re not sitting there: “You should be signing up for my nutrition coaching products, software,” whatever. It’s, “Let’s work together, and let’s actually do these things right now.” It’s more like a workshop. The cool thing this year too is that what’s going on in the coaches stage really, really supports and aligns and supplements what’s going on in the owner stage too at the exact same time. So, we can get into that too if you want.

Mike Warkentin (17:22):
Yeah, let’s do it. I love it. The coaches side is very—it’s a different audience, but there’s just a synergy between the two sides. And you can’t—if your coaches are on your page as an owner, your business will succeed.

Chris Cooper (17:32):
Yeah. You know, the greatest thing that you can do for your business, honestly, is bring your coaches to something like this. Get them stoked up and give them one good idea. So, if, for example, your coaches show up in Chicago with you and after listening to Bill Parisi, spoiler alert, they’re like, “Oh, we need a system to train high school athletes. Here it is.” And they’re stoked up to do that. Wow. Like, you’ve just added another leg to the chair of your business here, and you’re letting them pursue their passion. It’s growing the pie for everybody. And now you’ve got an excited staff member who’s excited to grow your business. I mean, there’s nothing better in the world. So, I already gave that one away, but Bill Parisi is going to be speaking. He’s the founder of Parisi Speed School. They have just over 100 licensees, affiliates, in the States right now. They work with young athletes, high school athletes, college athletes. They’re a strength and conditioning program that works kind of like a belt system, so there’s a progression that they’ve built. It’s, again, absolutely genius. Bill is a very popular speaker, but he’s never been on our stage before, and we’re really stoked to have him.

Mike Warkentin (18:34):
Yeah. Speed School. So, he gave them a 20-minute slot instead of 60.

Chris Cooper (18:38):
Exactly. Yeah. It’s like when you’re listening to this podcast, and you hit double 2x speed. Yeah. So that’s—

Mike Warkentin (18:43):
No one does that. They want to slow it down so they can get more without—

Chris Cooper (18:47):
This guy is so chock full of knowledge; I could talk to him for hours and hours and hours and just learn and learn. So, it’s awesome.

Mike Warkentin (18:55):
Alright, who’s next?

Chris Cooper (18:56):
Another big headliner this year is Mayhem Nation. So, Mayhem is, yeah, I know. So, Mayhem is our programming sponsor this year. So, they’re going to show up, they’re going to lead the morning workouts, they’re going to follow Mayhem programming, they’re bringing some coaches: Christi Novak and Darren Hunsucker are going to lead a session on the coaches stage about “Handling Some of the Most Difficult Coaching Challenges.” This is awesome because it’s not just like form correction, it’s like “Client doesn’t do what you tell them,” “Client isn’t listening,” “A client thinks they’re doing it right, but they’re not.” Like, these are very experienced coaches from Mayhem who are going to help your coaches and really get your coaches super stoked. Like, there’s definitely a fan quality here where your coaches are going to be excited just to meet Christie and Darren from Mayhem.

Mike Warkentin (19:43):
Yeah. And this is like a nice technical thing. Like we—on the coaches side, we talk about business stuff as well, building careers and things like that. But this is a nice technical coaching side where it’s like, “Here’s—yes, it’s not enough to see that this person’s doing it wrong. Here’s how you actually fix, get them moving; here’s why they might not be listening to you.” Things like that. Like I love that coaching side of it too, and it’s a great way for the coaches and that hands-on way to get moving and probably practice things.

Chris Cooper (20:05):
Yeah. I mean, I would love to have two of me at Summit just to go do the coaches side stuff too, like more than ever this year. So, what they’re learning is making them excited, but it also helps your business. You know, the first speaker is Chris Plentus, and he’s going to talk about “Unreasonable Hospitality in the Microgym Industry.” He’s going to talk about the things that make us different from the big chains—the things that we can do that add personal touches to the client. Like knowing their kid’s name, knowing that their dog was sick last week. These are really important things, but it’s unreasonable to expect that you would get this from a business, right? I mean, and that’s what Chris is going to talk about. So, Chris is a Tinker. He is a very high level Two-Brain mentor and client, and he follows these principles all the time in his own gym. These are from the books “Unreasonable Hospitality” and “Setting the Table.” And he’s going to tell you how to apply those in your gym. So, if you’re a fan of those books or you’re a fan of the TV series “The Bear,” you’re going to see a lot of this stuff coming into play, and he’s going to tell you how to do, like, “The Bear” in your gym.

Mike Warkentin (21:08):
Wow. Chris is a great speaker as well. I’m super looking forward to that one. I’ll give you guys, listers, something to try right now to get it ready for Chris’s presentation. Take a look at your last group picture from your holiday workout. Go through as fast as you can, everyone in the picture, and name what they do for a living. And if you can’t, you might have a thing where you want to just start digging into your membership and finding out more about your members. Try that. Alright, what else we got?

Chris Cooper (21:30):
Just being curious about your members is a massive tool that you can use for retention and that’s something Chris is going to talk about. Next, Matt Temby is going to come up. So Matt is actually the head of sales for Two-Brain. This guy gets coaching and mentorship in sales, and he’s going to talk to the coaches about why they should want to sell and how to sell better. I know a lot of owners get good at selling; some are uncomfortable with it, whatever. We want the coaches to feel comfortable about the process. In a gym, selling is just coaching. Like, the first act of coaching that you ever get to perform with somebody is getting them to pay and show up the next day. And so, Matt is going to help your coaches understand that, help them through the process, help them encourage people to upgrade, et cetera.

Mike Warkentin (22:17):
So Matt’s not going to get up there and recreate the “Glengarry Glen Ross” “Always be closing!” scene, is he?

Chris Cooper (22:23):
No, no. That would be funny. But that’s not Matt. That’s not Matt.

Mike Warkentin (22:27):
Alright.

Chris Cooper (22:28):
The thing about Matt is he is another guy. You just want to be like him. And so, if he’s a salesperson, I want to be a salesperson. You know, he’s awesome. And then, Brian Bott’s going to present to the coaches too, and he’s going to talk about programming for semi-private. Now, he talked about semi-private last year. He’s going to talk about semi-private from the business side on the owners stage, and now he’s going to teach the client or teach the coaches how to program for clients in semi-private. It’s a really interesting model. So as an example, you know, I’m a client of semi-private at my gym, Catalyst. And so, when I go over there today at 11 a.m., there will be three other people in the group. One, she’s a busy entrepreneur with four kids. Another person is like one week away from having a baby, and a third woman is—she just lost her husband, unfortunately, to Alzheimer’s and so she’s worried about lifespan and health span.

Chris Cooper (23:16):
We’re all at completely different levels, and we’re all following our own programming. I train for cycling, but we’re going to share one coach. And so, we get this kind of little community where everybody cares about each other. I’ll walk in, and it’s like, “Coop, what’s up?” You know, it’s a lot of fun. I’m doing back squats; they’re doing something else. We’re sharing one coach, and that’s what semi-private is. And so, he’s going to talk about how to build programs for each of those four different people in that group. And I think a programming talk is probably long overdue on the coach’s stage.

Mike Warkentin (23:46):
Yeah. And if you were there last year, you saw Brian talk about semi-private programming—he brushed up against a little bit of this stuff in his overview of the whole thing, but this is going to be detailed on the programming side. So if you happened to see him last year, know that you’re going further this year, and if you weren’t there, he’s going to bring you right up to speed and then show you how to dial this in as a coach, which is a really, really cool way for you to make more money as a coach and for the owner to make more money. Whenever I’ve messaged Brian literally and said, “Hey, what are you paying your coaches at your gym?” And he’d tell me these hourly rates that are crazy, and then he’ll give me—

Chris Cooper (24:15):
It’s like 80 bucks. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (24:15):
Right. And then he’ll give me the amount of money that the gym is retaining, which is also crazy. And everyone is winning, and the clients are winning too. So, this is a really great system. If you haven’t heard of it, come check it out.

Chris Cooper (24:26):
Yeah. What’s crazy is we just published our leaderboard for profit, and Brian was on there. And we don’t publish a leaderboard for how much the coaches are making, but if we did, his coaches would also be on there. And so, where people are like, “Oh, the 4/9ths model: I want to pay my coaches more.” Ryan is a living example of a gym owner making a ton of money. His coaches are making an income that’s more than double the industry average. They’re making a good career, they love their jobs, they’re not getting burned out or overworked, they’re not leaving to go start their own gyms, and his semi-private model is a way to do that. The other beautiful thing about this programming is it’s not just like, “Let’s come up with the spiciest, hardest, most killer workouts.” That’s not it at all. It’s like, “Let’s look through the lens of who that client is, which avatar they are, and program something that they will like, that they will do and, and will provide success for them.” I think it’s a unique perspective on programming in the industry that’s sadly needed.

Mike Warkentin (25:25):
I can’t wait to see it because I am at that stage where I just can’t stand the “hard for the sake of hard” workouts. Everyone, you know—I like the tailored approach to things, and I love the way Brian has created this, especially because it’s creating careers for coaches and great incomes for gym owners. It’s like a perfect storm for me.

Chris Cooper (25:42):
Yeah, it’s awesome. Then we’re going to bring Peter Brasovan up to the stage, and he’s going to talk about career roadmaps. So, what he’s actually going to do—

Mike Warkentin (25:49):
This is big.

Chris Cooper (25:50):
Yeah, it’s massive. I mean, what typically happens in the industry is you hire a coach, you get them trained, they become a good coach, and they say, “Well, I really can’t make very much money here. The industry average is still under $24,000 a year. Like, that’s not enough. The only way that I can make more money is to go and start my own gym.” And that’s exactly what I did back in 2005. And that’s exactly what’s happening 20 years later. And what Peter’s going to do is actually help your coaches map out their career path so that not only do they see, “I can make a good living at this gym,” but also, “I can probably do better with less stress working where I am instead of going out, starting my own thing, potentially bankrupting myself and then folding in five years.” So, he’s going to do a career roadmap exercise with them. The beautiful part is that the way that these coaches make a better income is by growing the pie also for the gym. And so, the owner benefits, the coach benefits, and most importantly, the client benefits too.

Mike Warkentin (26:46):
It’s—I’ve literally seen this conversation so many times, and I’ve had them personally in the past where a coach will say, “Hey, I got a job offer here for this and that, and I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem very good. What do I do? I really want to make a career.” This is how you do it. You find a gym and a gym owner who can do this career roadmap session with you, and you create a career. And we have breakdowns for this. Like Two-Brain has published exact examples of how this works. This many classes, this much admin, this much social media, this much programming, this much personal training, whatever: $80,000, which is way beyond. And I’m not making those numbers up. Like we’ve seen people at our Two-Brain gyms put together these packages where coaches are now making $60-80,000 with benefits and actually having careers that support a family instead of picking up applications for the fire department on their way home from the gym where they didn’t make any money. It’s a game changer. So, gym owners, you want your coaches to see this, and then you want to learn how to do it so that you can create this amazing business that gets careers and profit for everyone.

Chris Cooper (27:42):
It’s also your best way to keep your own business growing is to keep the coaches that you have making careers under your roof. I mean, the model for a lot of franchises and even for CrossFit affiliates is like, you have somebody you get them passionate about your thing, they take their certification, and now they want to go open their own gym. And that’s how they keep expanding, right? Well, that works great if you’re CrossFit HQ or you’re the franchisor of Orangetheory or F45 or whatever; it doesn’t work great if you are the franchisee or the licensee or the affiliate because you’re just basically churning through these coaches and starting your own competition all the time. So, what you actually want to do here is help your people make good careers, and that’s a win for them: They get to keep doing what they love and serving the people they love.

Chris Cooper (28:31):
It’s a win for you: You don’t spread out the whole market. And it’s a win for the client because they get to work with the best coaches too. It’s such an important concept, and I’m really proud that Two-Brain is leading the charge on this. And I’ll give you guys the dream scenario because this just happened to me for the first time. A guy comes to my gym, hand delivers a resume: “I really want to work here. Please call me when you’re hiring.” OK. When we’re hiring, we call this guy up. “I’ll be right there. I can be there this afternoon for an interview.” OK. This is a trainer at two other gyms in town. He’s working part-time at both trying to make a career for himself and his wife who moved to Canada to find a better life. And he can’t do it at these other gyms. We sit down, and I say, “Why do you want to work at Catalyst so bad? Like, you’re knocking on my door, you’re coming into classes. Why?” And he’s like, because I read the Two-Brain stuff, and I know that I can make a career at a Two-Brain gym.” It wasn’t about Catalyst at all. It was working at a Two-Brain gym that attracted him, and that was—it was amazing for me.

Mike Warkentin (29:34):
Did you hire him?

Chris Cooper (29:35):
Oh, 1,000%. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (29:37):
Are you bringing him to Summit?

Chris Cooper (29:38):
Absolutely. You can meet him. His name is Felipe. He has broad shoulders, green eyes, just an amazing smile, and he will probably shake everybody’s hand in that room. But again, what attracted him was he wanted to work at a Two-Brain gym more than he wanted to work at Catalyst, so.

Mike Warkentin (29:53):
Oh wow. That’s incredible. So, he checked all the boxes and away we go, and I’m excited to see what he does after he spends some time in that room.

Chris Cooper (30:01):
I know.

Mike Warkentin (30:01):
Have we got more? Did we get to the—

Chris Cooper (30:03):
We do, man. Yeah. So, Oskar Johed, who’s on the CrossFit Seminar Staff, is going to be teaching “From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Crafting World-Class Coaches.” Oskar teaches L1 and L2 seminars, but in Two-Brain when people are studying for their certified CrossFit coach—they used to call that the L3, the L4—he’s the one that runs those sessions, and he helps people pass those exams. He is used to ascending his coaches. They have the most L3 CrossFit certified coaches in Sweden—definitely possibly in Europe—and he is amazing at elevating and ascending coaches up to high levels. Yeah, you want your coaches in front of this guy.

Mike Warkentin (30:42):
It’s an area of passion for him. I know he loves training coaches and teaching coaches, and he is an amazing gym owner at the same time. So, I can’t wait to see him get back up there.

Chris Cooper (30:50):
He is one of the most successful CrossFit affiliate owners in the world. And then after that, Aleksandrina Angelova-Brandt—she’s from Germany; she’s going to be talking about “Getting Clients to Change: A Guide to Transformative Communication.” So, she has a very successful nutrition coaching program, and what we’ve learned over the last decade is that coaching nutrition is not really about the food; it’s about the habits. And Angelina—Aleksandrina, sorry; she has a lot of nicknames. We all just call her Alex.

Mike Warkentin (31:20):
Alex, yeah.

Chris Cooper (31:21):
Alex is an expert at behavior change, and that’s what nutrition coaching is really all about. And more and more, I think that’s what fitness is really all about. And so, she’s going to be giving people a really unique perspective and instead of standing up there and selling her nutrition coaching program, she’s going to teach them, “Here’s how you build your own nutrition coaching program or your own habits coaching program,” or “Here’s how you improve what you’re already selling with exercise.”

Mike Warkentin (31:46):
Yeah. And I think you said one time: What’s the best workout in the world for the client? And it’s the one that they’ll do. And even if you’re not a nutrition coach, learning how to change people’s behavior, modify their behavior and change their habits is going to help you in any coaching scenario because like you said, it’s not just about teaching the squat; it’s getting someone to do the squat or whatever they want to do to get toward their goal. So, this is going to be really, really important for coaches to give them a new perspective on modifying behavior.

Chris Cooper (32:13):
It’s an amazing skill to have, and it even helps with your parenting. Like, my kid who’s away at college will send me pictures of her dinner just because we both like food, and I can look, and it’s like, “There’s a protein, and there’s—” You know, it’s amazing. If you know how to change somebody else’s habits, you change their life.

Mike Warkentin (32:34):
The psychological aspect of this stuff is so cool. And we had Bonnie Skinner last year speaking about that stuff. People were so into Bonnie because that whole psychological angle of mental game is so important, and I think this is going to be a great compliment to that.

Chris Cooper (32:47):
Yeah. She’s actually speaking on the Tinker stage, which is like the private stage for the high performers that happens Friday. She’ll be there this year. And then also on the coaches stage, Brian Foley is going to talk about “Growing a 50+ Program in Your Gym.”

Mike Warkentin (32:59):
Oh, there’s one.

Chris Cooper (33:00):
It is, and honestly, this is the fastest growing demographic in the microgym industry. I love our program. It’s called Prime; yours is called Legends, I think. And you know, it sells out every single time: 12 to 14 people, age 50 to about 84. They always want to be there. They don’t want to miss a class. They don’t show up late. You know, they want to buy every T-shirt we make; they want to refer their friends. It feels like CrossFit 2013, honestly. And nobody is like, “Let me make it to the Masters Division of the CrossFit Games.” That’s not who they are. They are people who have a little bit of disposable income. They see their own parents struggling later in life, and they don’t want that to be them. Like they have the best motivation to succeed, the best incentives, and they are amazing clients. So, Brian’s going to tell you how to build that.

Mike Warkentin (33:50):
Yeah. And it’s so important. They may be the most fun clients in your gym, and you get such a reward from coaching them because you literally see how it changes their lives, or they go from—and we had this: People went from walking in with a cane to not needing that cane anymore. And then they’re such driven, passionate people full of vitality that want to do great things as they age. And it’s like they become these aspirational characters in the gym where the rest of your clients are like, “I want to be like that 72-year-old dude who’s still squatting,” and it’s just such a cool thing that happens in a gym.

Chris Cooper (34:19):
Yeah, I think we’ve all got a story like that. You know, Linda comes in the door, she can’t get up off the floor by herself, and a year later, she’s doing the Intramural Open. And what’s amazing here is that not only can they progress so far, so fast, but any little incremental progression has a measurable effect on their quality of life right away, but also how long they’re going to live. Like, you know, going from that “Can’t get up off the floor” to “Now I can get off the floor without help”: That means another five years where they’re not in a nursing home, which probably adds another five years of being depression free and independent another five years where they’re not paying to be in a nursing home and possibly like five years of life on the end too. Like, there’s good research on this. So yeah, it’s my favorite. Plus, they get my jokes, which are all outdated, right?

Mike Warkentin (35:06):
Yeah, that’s right. You know, and let’s be real. They have time; they’ve got a little bit of money. They can definitely be available at 10:30 in that open slot where your gym is dead. They’re a perfect, perfect market that you can target, and coaches love them.

Chris Cooper (35:19):
Yeah. There’s really no downside. And so, Brian’s going to tell you how to grow that program in your gym. Quick confession, Mike: We started running that program at 4 o’clock, and it got so full so fast that we actually had to kill our kids’ program. This is the first time we haven’t had a kids’ program at Catalyst in like 17 years.

Mike Warkentin (35:37):
Wow. That’s saying something.

Chris Cooper (35:38):
Yeah, and honestly, I can’t fit my kids’ program back in right now because the Legends, Prime at Catalyst, is so massive. So, and then finally, Josh is going to wrap it up—Josh Martin’s going to talk about “The Refined Art of Coaching,” which is his company. And what they do is they teach coaches how to deliver with passion and empathy instead of just tactically. So yes, you need to know to tell people, like “Push your knees in on the squat,” but you also need to do that the right way if you’re going to keep people around and have them feel like they have a coaching relationship instead of just being part of this industrial machine. And that’s what Josh’s specialty is. So, he’s going to wrap the weekend up with “The Refined Art of Coaching.”

Mike Warkentin (36:18):
And Josh has some great stories. I think his dad struck out Pete Rose on three pitches in the World Series, if I’m not mistaken, something like that. So, Josh is—he’s got a ton of great stories as a coach and gym owner, and he’s passionate about this thing, and it’s going to be an incredible presentation. I love listening to him talk.

Chris Cooper (36:34):
Yeah, man. I love all these guys. Like there’s nobody that I’m not excited for. And in the past, we’ve had headliners like Jocko, Todd Herman, Seth Godin—like these are personal heroes of mine, and so of course I’ve been excited for them. But you know going in, “Like, OK, I’m going to get fired up. It’s going to be awesome. Maybe I’ll get to shake their hand.” But you also know, like, “This is not going to give me like a tactical exercise that’s going to literally grow my business.” All the speakers now are selected exactly for that. Yes, they’re going to get you excited. They’re going to stoke your fire to own a gym again, but also they’re going to improve your gym while you’re sitting in the room. And then of course my favorite part is there’s a thousand of us altogether. Like you actually see the industry take a big step forward every time we do this Summit. It’s amazing to be in the room.

Mike Warkentin (37:21):
Alright, listeners, you heard it. That is the release of the lineup for the Two-Brain Summit. It goes down June 8th and 9th in Chicago, Illinois, which is an easy place to get to from just about everywhere. Remember the Summit tickets are $100 off right now, but that ends April 1st. You can get them through the link in the show notes. Click that; bring your coaches. It will pay for itself. Thanks for this, Coop.

Chris Cooper (37:42):
Yeah. Twobrainsummit.com—that’ll take you right there. And look, I know whenever somebody’s talking about their event, they always say, “Things will sell out.” I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. We had 700 tickets sold before the start of February this year, and our cap is like 1,000. We’re negotiating with the hotel right now to say, “What else can we do? How can we arrange chairs differently?” But the reality is this will be full, and it’ll be sold out. So, get your ticket now. Please bring your coaches. It’s going to be life changing for them. They will love you for it, and I hope to see you there.

Mike Warkentin (38:17):
Alright, this has been “Run a Profitable Gym.” We’ll see you in Chicago at the Summit.

The post Two-Brain Summit Speakers Revealed! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Jason Khalipa, Jonathan Goodman, Carrie Wilkerson to Speak at Two-Brain Summit

The Two-Brain Summit has featured some incredible speakers over the years, but the lineup for the 2024 event is our best yet.

The speakers you’ll see onstage in Chicago in June include some of the biggest names in the fitness industry, and their words are exactly what gym owners need to hear right now.

Our theme this year is “virtuosity,” and each speaker was selected to help you become an elite entrepreneur.

Get tickets to the 2024 Two-Brain Summit here.

Jason Khalipa

Jason is back for a second year after he and the NCFIT crew killed it at the summit in 2023.

The 2008 CrossFit Games champion and entrepreneur has a ton of infectious energy, and he’s going to share his experiences to help you build a better business.

Jason will tell his tale of swift empire building, calculated contraction and then rebuilding with additional strength. That process taught Jay how to focus on the most important parts of a business, and you’ll learn how to identify and strengthen the essential pillars of your gym.

If you flew in, just saw Jason and left, I’m confident you’d say, “That was worth it.”

Jonathan Goodman

Jonathan Goodman works with trainers all around the world, and he’s got an incredible social media presence. The creator of the Personal Trainer Development Center, Jonathan has developed a host of programs and written 11 books.

“Ignite the Fire” is Amazon’s top-ranked book for trainers, and his “Wealthy Fit Pro” series has helped a ton of coaches build better careers in fitness.

Big news: Jonathan will have copies of his upcoming book “The Obvious Choice” available—and we’ll give a pile of them away.

Jonathan’s biggest insight: People who buy from you buy a lot—if you know your client avatar and provide everything these great people need to solve their problems.

Remember: You don’t need every client. You need the right clients.

Jonathan’s talk is going to provide huge ROI: You’ll be able to listen, take action and generate more revenue fast.

Carrie Wilkerson

Carrie’s my business mentor, and she’s already wowed our Tinker mastermind group for top gym owners. Now I want to share her wisdom with a huge group of fitness entrepreneurs.

Carrie is the author of “The Barefoot Executive,” and she’s going to explain how her “Three Margins” concept can help you build an impressive business and live a fulfilling life.

Carrie has a wealth of experience: She literally coaches the business coaches who coach the business coaches, and I can’t wait for you to engage with her.

Get Tickets Today

I’ve got more speaker announcements to come, but I’ll tell you this now:

We’ve sold 700 of 1,000 tickets, and we literally had to rearrange the room to make more space for people. We’re going to sell out, and I don’t want you to miss this chance to improve yourself and your business.

Get tickets to the Two-Brain Summit today (they’re $100 off right now): Join us in Chicago on June 8 and 9!

The post Jason Khalipa, Jonathan Goodman, Carrie Wilkerson to Speak at Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Clearing the Air: How to Deal With Smelly Clients

“I have a very stinky member, and other clients are complaining.”

I’ve made this statement, and I bet you have, too. It comes up from time to time in Two-Brain’s private groups for gym owners, too.

The smelly-member situation is not uncommon in the gym world, but it causes stress every time it pops up.

Here’s how to deal with it.

1. Educate in Advance

The best way to deal with most problems is to get in front of them.

Start by adding a note about hygiene and odor in your onboarding package.

Here’s the key part: You must remember that nothing is “obvious.” Spell it out as if you were educating a young kid about general grooming practices.

Some people just don’t know what they need to know to keep smells in check at your gym. Lay everything out. Like this:

“Shower at least once a day and use deodorant. Reapply deodorant as needed throughout the day or before working out. Launder sweaty workout clothes right after training. Or rinse them and hang to dry, then get them into the washer ASAP. Don’t keep sweaty shoes and apparel locked in a gym bag or hamper. And don’t reuse sweaty clothes—wash before reusing.

“Regularly sniff workout clothes and footwear for foul odor, and replace as needed—workout gear doesn’t last forever. If you have any doubts, ask a trusted confidante or coach ‘does this smell bad?’”

You can even let new members know that foul odors will result in a very polite, helpful conversation with a coach.

To back up this on-ramp education and hit your current members, write a blog about odors. Keep your tone light and helpful. Don’t make fun of people. Avoid shaming or mocking.

Republish the blog annually and share it in your members-only group. Send it to your mailing list. Have you coaches mention it. Get the message out.

From there, provide deodorant or body spray in bathrooms so people can freshen up before training. Make it easy for them to smell good.

2. Address Issues With Kindness

Bad smells are always going to appear in a gym from time to time.

In some situations, you can decide if you need to address the issue or if it’s a one-time thing that won’t happen again. Like if the usually well-groomed Sam shows up to train right after a 30-hour, six-country flight on planes with air-conditioning problems, you might choose to consider the stinky session a “one off.”

When a certain person smells bad all the time and members start dreading their appearance, you need to have a kind conversation immediately.

Being kind means you’ll try to help someone even if doing so involves an awkward chat.

Here’s an example:

“Hey, Kim. Just a quick note: Your body odor is quite strong during classes. I’m just telling you because I care. It might be time to get some new workout clothes and hit the deodorant a little harder. I’ve got some in the bathroom!”

Another: “Hey, Dana. I know you’re killing it working outside in this heat. I don’t know how you do it! Do you mind hopping in the shower before class to clean up? I’ve packed the stall with shampoo and soaps!”

You should have these conversations in private. If you have a problem with an individual, talk just to that person instead of carpet-bombing a group. Address the problem head on. And avoid saying “everyone is complaining,” which can cause embarrassment. Just be the honest, authentic, caring coach that you are.

In some cases, you might have to educate a person. Here’s an example:

“Performance fabrics are great, but they trap bacteria—especially when you forget about wet clothes in a gym bag for a week before you wash them. This website has some instructions for deep cleaning of synthetic fabrics. If nothing works, just replace the clothes, hang new ones to dry when wet and wash them ASAP after training.”

Smells Like Problem Solving

I’d bet you’ve had a bad smell at your gym already—I can tell you more odors are coming.

And if you haven’t dealt with this issue yet, I know you will.

Either way, get out front of future problems with regular education, then deal with the situations that arise directly and with great kindness.  

The post Clearing the Air: How to Deal With Smelly Clients appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

“We’re Full”: Why CrossFit Leiden Has Capped Membership at 400

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
CrossFit Leiden has capped its membership up. They are full, and they have a waiting list. One of the owners is going to tell us how he did it. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “Subscribe,” so you get all of our shows. Our December 2023 leaderboard, the client count—it ran from 324 to 1,034. That’s 1,034 members. I’ve got one of the top 10 gym owners with me today. His name is Jeroen van Duijn, and he’s the co-owner of CrossFit Leiden. That is south of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His gym is full, and you can take a number if you want to join because he’s capped his membership. We’re going to get into that today. Jeroen, thank you for joining me today. How are you?

Jeroen van Duijn (00:40):
Very good, Mike. Thanks for asking me. I am feeling very honored to be here.

Mike Warkentin (00:44):
I am excited because it’s rare that you see a gym that actually caps its membership. So, you’ve done this magical thing; you’ve reached a place where you actually don’t want more members. I’ve got to ask you, why don’t you want to increase your client count? What’s going on?

Jeroen van Duijn (00:56):
Well, first of all, I never thought we would be a 400-member gym at all. Like, it all started off as a hobby, you know, thinking I knew business, but never thought we would be at 400 members. So, but once we got to 350, 400, we changed. We’ve been changing a lot over the years: pricing, number of people in the class. The one thing we noticed growing to 400 is that it’s exponentially harder to keep all the relationships. So, my team is like—sometimes they feel like their heads are exploding with all the relationships they have to maintain with the members. So, talking with the team, they felt 400 is a great number. But if you look at actually a number, so if you want to have—like, it’s nice that my staff doesn’t want any more members, but actually I can’t have any more members because the way we organize it right now we have a regular, a bigger group class with 14 people in there.

Jeroen van Duijn (01:56):
And currently we have—I think it’s—I’m reading it down somewhere, but we have 65 classes per week, and they’re almost always full. There’s still some spots left, but we can’t have any more members than 400 to make sure that everyone can come and visit us three times a week. So, that’s part of “the gym is full”: the regular group. We also have a small group offering or a semi-private setting. We still have some spots over there, but it’s like on times that are less attractive to potential clients. And you really need a—like, you need a good coach. And we love the team we have right now. We love the number of members. Our bottom line is—it’s perfect. So, for this gym, we feel great; we just want to maintain this right now.

Mike Warkentin (02:48):
OK. Tell me a little bit—how many staff members do you have, and how much space do you have? Like, I want to get a sense of why you’re bursting at the seams and packed and don’t have any more room.

Jeroen van Duijn (02:56):
OK. So, I have 10 staff members. From the top of my head—I should probably know every detail, but we have around four full-time employees. One of them is more like a contractor, but making full-time hours. And then, the rest is part-time. But part-time means—like, on average it’s still 15 to 20 hours a week. The space of our gym is around 500 square meters. I have no idea what it is in your metric.

Mike Warkentin (03:31):
Oh times. You know what? I’m not even going to hazard a guess. I think that’s going to be—you know what, I’m not even going to hazard a guess. We’ll just go with 500 square meters.

Jeroen van Duijn (03:40):
So, 500 square meters. And on a day like Monday, we have around 23 classes. And of those 23, there’s around eight—I would say seven to eight time slots that have two classes running at the same time. We basically only have between 1 and 4 that there’s no class running at all. And now we’re offering services to firefighters, rugby teams, schools. So, we’re filling up those times with those kinds of customers actually.

Mike Warkentin (04:16):
OK. So, you’re physically—you’re full. And even in those few hours when you have a little bit of extra space and time, you’re now filling them with special groups like firefighters and corporate programs. And then you recognize that maintaining relationships with these 400 people is more important than adding people. That will definitely make it confusing, and you might end up losing people because you’re fractured. Have I got that right?

Jeroen van Duijn (04:41):
Definitely. In a perfect world, I don’t want to lose anyone and don’t invest anything in new members. But, you know, life happens. We’re in a city that has a lot of experts, students, so there’s always people on the move. So, we lose around 2.8% per month. I think that’s the attrition we have right now. So, we have to maintain our current level of members with adding around 12 members per month, which we don’t have a problem with at all. So, we don’t have to invest a lot of time in that. So, all our time currently goes to our current members. We invest a lot of time in our current members.

Mike Warkentin (05:21):
So that’s interesting. So, you have very good retention, which is one of the reasons why you’ve reached this number. But you only have to replace 12 members a month, which is pretty doable. If you have a good sales and marketing system, getting 12 more people isn’t that difficult. So, you can maintain this number pretty comfortably. And if you wanted to add to it, adding two people per month, getting 14 people, probably wouldn’t be that much of a stretch if you wanted to. So, you’re in this great position. I’ve got to ask you this: You said your financials, bottom line, are great. So, I’m guessing your coaches are making careers, and they’re happy with the money they’re making as well. Is that correct?

Jeroen van Duijn (05:52):
We probably—like the fitness industry, of course, everyone knows it’s not the best paying industry, but we pay above the fitness standards so our coaches can just make a living from working at our gym, which is special of course, especially also in the Netherlands. Like in the Netherlands, private fitness, I think, is maybe even less paid than on your side of the Atlantic. Personal training is something that has been growing only in the past. So, paying coaches very well is something that has not been done very much so, yeah, I think there’s more gyms like us that are really—I’m really proud of having coaches stick with our gym and feel they get paid well for it.

Mike Warkentin (06:34):
OK. That’s amazing because you often hear about that—where coaches aren’t making enough to have a career at a gym. So, for you to get enough members so that you are happy, live the life you want, and for them to make careers, you’re in a pretty great spot, and now you can focus on other things. So, the question is—obviously you’re focusing on retention because you want to keep the number that you need and you want: What else are you focusing on? Like are you looking at driving up average revenue per member? Or what are you trying to do now to enrich your member experience, maybe make more money or whatever you want to do?

Jeroen van Duijn (07:02):
You know, it’s multiple things. One of the projects I’m working on right now is adding more nutrition to our offering. We’re already offering nutrition, but I always find it a challenge to have more members doing nutrition. I’ve been talking to my mentor and Two-Brain as well, and you notice it’s a common theme among the gym owners, but like going into Two-Brain, there’s been some great stuff on adding more nutrition to it. And we’re doing this group thing right now that we’re testing, and we hope to get at least 10% of our members into the nutrition coaching so that we can drive up our average revenue per member. But also, of course, in the end, the goal is to give them more results. So, we know the people that join our nutrition coaching, they get great results. So, it’s also finding a way to get people in there, and they have that same experience.

Mike Warkentin (07:59):
So, it’s adding value.

Jeroen van Duijn (08:01):
Exactly. Adding value. So that’s one of the things we’re focusing on right now. We also just like to do a lot of fun stuff. So, adding in more and more events. We’re doing the Intramural Open, of course, again this year, which is great. We have currently—we have 130 members actively joined. So, they signed up. So, that’s that the way of doing the Open Two-Brain prescribes. It’s a great way. We’ve been doing that since 2018, even before we joined Two-Brain because I’ve always been reading Cooper’s emails and stuff, so I’ve always been using his stuff. So, but that’s one of the things that is a game changer for your community and also increases the ARM as well.

Mike Warkentin (08:46):
So it’s neat because you don’t have this pressure to add more people. You’ve got this great number now where you can just focus on making their experience better, and then you’ll get compensated for doing so. So, adding in nutrition so they get better results, adding in more events, adding in special things that make them healthier and fitter and happier. They pay a little bit extra. Your coaches win. You win. And the clients win because they’re having a great experience. So, it’s a really neat position to be in. And I know so few gym owners that are here. I’ve got to ask you: What does your client journey look like? Like how do you get these people into your business and get them to stay for so long?

Jeroen van Duijn (09:17):
Well, obviously the first thing we do with them, we talk with them. So, we don’t do any free intros.

Mike Warkentin (09:23):
Like a free trial where you work out with them?

Jeroen van Duijn (09:26):
Yeah. So, we don’t do a free trial workout at all. We don’t believe that you can get the experience of coaching by doing, doing just one class. So, we always start with an intake or a No Sweat Intro, or if you are a friend of a client, you can come to our Flex Friday sessions.

Mike Warkentin (09:42):
I’m going to ask about that later. We’re going to talk about that.

Jeroen van Duijn (09:44):

I’ll talk about it later. Yeah. So, it’s a great way to get referrals. But so basically, everyone, even coming from the Flex Friday, you start with a No Sweat Intro. You talk with our general manager for around 30 minutes. You do some movements so that we understand where your starting position is at. We really want to understand what you are looking for and create a connection from the beginning. So, from the beginning, create that connection. Then after the No Sweat Intro, we go into—for us, it’s a 28-day program. It’s a kickstart—basically kickstart of fitness and nutrition, increasing the connection during the month. So, you train with the same coach in the small group for three sessions a week. So, we want you to have the right frequency immediately from the start.

Jeroen van Duijn (10:33):
So training three times a week, we believe that it’s the best frequency that you can have. And then working on your nutrition at the same time for four weeks so that you get the best results you could have in that first month. All thanks to coaching accountability—basically a team that is supporting you and all the attention that comes with it. And then after that first month, you can go into our regular membership or you go into our semi-private membership, but basically into a membership. But then, it doesn’t stop; then every three months, we like to have new members going into a goal review to talk about what they achieved in the last three months and what they want to focus on in the upcoming three months.

Jeroen van Duijn (11:16):
Maybe helping them add in more PT or putting them in semi-private or just creating that connection. Even if it’s just a 30-minute talk, having that connection with a coach at your gym is a great way to stay connected and never feel that barrier to get into the gym that you feel like—you know, we took over a second location, and they’re not doing that at that gym. And then you really see people struggling to get back in, and they don’t really have that connection with the coaches’ team, with all of them. And that’s something we want to have from the beginning. And then during that journey, we always celebrate. So, if you go to our Instagram, there’s a lot of pictures with gifts that members get. So, if they have 50 visits, they get—I don’t know; I think we give them socks. I don’t know all the visits. I don’t know all the gifts because I’m in a happy position that I don’t have to know every day of the gym. But basically every 50 to 100 visits, you get something, like a little gift, an appreciation, and a celebration, and something that keeps the journey in the spotlight of all the other members and puts a little target for others to achieve as well.

Mike Warkentin (12:23):
So you don’t have to know what the gifts are. Who’s handling this whole thing? What is that position in your gym?

Jeroen van Duijn (12:30):
Well, it’s the team—the day-to-day operation manager, Saskia. She has to do everything that keeps the day running day by day.

Mike Warkentin (12:41):
Is she your client success manager, or does she have a different position?

Jeroen van Duijn (12:44):
Yeah, I call her my “general client success manager.” So, it’s like a mix of CSM with the general manager function. She’s not coaching at all, so she’s only doing GM and CSM tasks. And I have another coach, she’s called Rochelle, so that’s one of my coaches. She’s also adding some CSM work. So, they are both responsible for the CSM.

Mike Warkentin (13:06):
So you have two people in your gym that are your—and they have other additional roles, but they are responsible for making sure the clients are happy, making sure clients are retained, making sure clients understand how they’re progressing through the business, upgrading their services. So, you have these two people. Do you see those—I’ve asked, I think I know the answer. I’m going to ask the question anyway: Is the pay that you pay a CSM—do you get a return on that investment?

Jeroen van Duijn (13:30):
Well, definitely. So last year we hired Saskia. She was over a year ago. Uh, I was still doing what she was doing, and we were at that point: “OK, so I want to create some space for myself to do something else—to maybe start a second business or acquire another gym,” which ended up in acquiring another gym. And we’re at this point where we’re like, “OK, so we have to invest in a general manager, but we have to pay another full-time salary.” We were a little bit—I wouldn’t say afraid; it was exciting or a little scary—but in the end, last year was even better than the year before, even with that extra cost of a GM full-time. It’s a full-time contract. So, we had the best year ever, and it’s thanks to my whole team and adding in Saskia as a GM. So, I would definitely, definitely advise people to—or advise other GMs to add a role in like that.

Mike Warkentin (14:32):
The reason I ask is because people who are not at your level, where they’re still looking for members, they have all these things they want to do; they look at the expense of a client success manager sometimes and say, “Oh, I’m paying extra money. What am I getting for this?” But every successful gym owner that I speak to who has a client success manager says the role pays for itself many times over. And so that’s why I wanted to ask you that question. I’m going to ask you this one. I’m pretty sure I know the answer. I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you have a precise list of systems that you use for your managers to take care of business and make sure that everything, including retention, is taken care of? Do you have a staff playbook that’s just laid out perfectly?

Jeroen van Duijn (15:08):
Well, I wouldn’t say perfectly, but there’s definitely a staff playbook. There are checklists; there are overviews—there’s a lot. And it’s always a work in progress. It’s one of my more challenging tasks because I love to start a lot of different things—completing stuff is a little harder. That’s why I need employees to actually finish stuff. But, yeah, they’re definitely there, they’re always being updated or changed, but without that, it would not be possible.

Mike Warkentin (15:38):
And every gym owner that I speak to who’s successful has systems. That’s just like—it’s without doubt. Every single time I talk to a leaderboard gym owner, they have systems in place. So, listeners, if you don’t have those systems, start with basic stuff. How should my business run? Lay it out and then get people to do it that way. I’m going to ask you—we’re going to circle back now to Flex Friday, and how do you acquire clients? So, you don’t have to acquire a lot to maintain your number, but you had to acquire 400 to get there. How do you find these great people?

Jeroen van Duijn (16:05):
Well, one of the things that we do is the Flex Friday session. It’s every week at noon and in the evening at 8 p.m., and I have two great coaches who are running these classes. And the idea behind Flex Friday is that members can bring a friend. They want to try out CrossFit, and it’s not really a tryout because they still need to go into the free No Sweat Intro, but they get a feel of the vibe of the gym, and they come with a friend. And the Flex Friday session is a low-skill session. So, we won’t do any snatching or those high-skill movements that might scare people away. We want to have a fun session. We want people to win. We actually allow more members in that class than in the regular class because we want to have a lot of fun.

Jeroen van Duijn (16:55):
So we say more people, more fun. And because of the lower scale, it’s possible to have more people in there as well. And my coaches, they always make a surprise workout. So, people have no idea what’s coming up, but they make it—it’s my coaches who are actually making it a great session, putting in a lot of effort in those sessions. And after the session, especially in the evening, it’s like people are going out, they have some drinks together, they chat, they meet new people. And Friday was our slowest evening for years. And now, it’s our most busy evening of the week. And I don’t know any gym that has a Friday evening as their most busy evening—like here, it’s buzzing. It’s really a fun evening.

Jeroen van Duijn (17:40):
And because remember it’s a nice way to go out with a friend as well. You have a workout; you hang out afterwards. You can drink a beer if you want, but it’s also just—we have a nice belt bar area where people can hang out and chill. So, people love it. And that brings in a lot of friends because the most important people—most important thing for our new memories is that they walk out with a smile, and they usually do after a Flex Friday session.

Mike Warkentin (18:11):
OK. So, do you actively tell people, like your members, “Hey, you should bring your friend Bob” or whatever, or is it just so ingrained in your culture now that they just do it? Like how do you make sure that people keep coming out to these events and bringing friends? Because a lot of gyms have trouble generating referrals.

Jeroen van Duijn (18:26):
It’s ingrained. I mean, we’ve been working on this for years, of course. So usually like a few years ago, we had to really tell people, but now, because it’s so part of our culture, like we are—now that we took over the second location, you start to see the differences, right? And now you’re like, “Wow, our culture—like the culture we’ve built is—” It’s like people just know Flex Friday, bring friends, have fun. If we have a potential new member, they go there. Like the people talk with each other. So, it’s all in the culture.

Mike Warkentin (18:56):
OK. So, listeners, if you want to start a bring-a-friend program, know that you cannot get to this level right away. You have to bring—put it into your culture. It’s probably going to take many months, if not years to do that. So, I would recommend when you start these bring-a-friend events, actively target people and say, “Hey, Tim, your sister Cindy—you said she’s running a 5K. I think I can help her. Why don’t you bring her to a bring-a-friend workout,” and actively target people. If you do this enough over a period of months and years, eventually you’ll get to this point where CrossFit Leiden’s at, but you’re not going to start there. So, make it a very active process.

Jeroen van Duijn (19:27):
Yeah. So, I have to add something in. Yeah, because what we do with our new members to make this part of the culture—like from the start, new members, they join Flex Friday. So, the way we do this, they train three times a week. So, we want them to do three sessions a week. That’s part of our vision or our belief system. And the third session each week is the Flex Friday. We want them to go in there and join with existing members. And because of the low skill, the new members can easily join that session. Then they see friends coming and they just—from the first month, they understand what is happening.

Mike Warkentin (20:06):
So that’s a key part. That’s a really important part. Yeah. Like you just said.

Jeroen van Duijn (20:09):
Yeah, really important.

Mike Warkentin (20:10):
New members see this bring-a-friend program in action, and they have fun in it, and they think, “I could bring a friend.” And now you start to see how this snowball starts going downhill. That’s a really, really cool one. I love that idea that I haven’t heard before, and that’s having your new members come to these bring-a-friend events, have a good time, and be encouraged to bring their own friends. When these people finish these workouts, what happens? Do they just walk out the door and go about their evening? Or do you collect email addresses to contact them? Or what happens?

Jeroen van Duijn (20:37):
The way that the members sign up their friends, we have a little form in our mobile app. So, we always collect upfront, but we don’t do anything that night. We’re not about selling after a Flex Friday session. We just want to keep it easy until—you know, don’t be that gym owner that starts to try to sign people up while they’re having a nice evening. We prefer to call them the next week. So, after the weekends, we call them or send them a message if they haven’t already got in touch with us—again, if they didn’t already get in touch with us. So, we do have their data, everything.

Mike Warkentin (21:18):
Yeah, if you’re listening and you start one of these events, you need to find a way to connect with these people. And,you have to know your market and where you’re at. In some places, you can actually talk to people on the spot and get them to book. You could do a No Sweat Intro that evening, or you could book it for another time. Or you could do what CrossFit Leiden does, and you can contact them after the fact with either in-person or a nurturing sequence or something like that. But you have to get the contact info and then do something actively to say, “Hey, did you have a good time? What can we do to help you?” And away you go. So, know your market, know your niche, know your people, and then set something up that works. And I did the math in my head while we were talking here. Your space—500 square meters, I think, is in the range of 4,500 to 5,000 square feet. So, if you guys were looking for some perspective on that, it’s in that range. So that’s a decent sized gym, but it’s not 10,000. It’s not massive. You’re making good use of good space. 400 people and about 5,000 square feet. That’s probably getting towards the capacity limits of 14 people per class, something like that.

Jeroen van Duijn (22:11):
Happy to hear it fits the math.

Mike Warkentin (22:13):
Yeah, it’s something like that. I may have it if—someone, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s pretty close to it. I’m going to ask you—you talked about your intake process for new clients, but have you adjusted this intake process over the years to make sure that it retains people? Like when you started, did you notice that, “Hey, there’s some things I could do better to make people stay longer?” Did you make those changes?

Jeroen van Duijn (22:33):
Oh, definitely. Oh man. We’ve been changing so much. I’ve been having different mentors as well. And actually—so I started Two-Brain last year, like over 30 months ago. I think this has been my best experience so far because it completely covers everything. Like everything I need basically. And so, over the years I’ve been changing. We did intakes and then we sold them into 10 to 30 PTs. We’ve been playing around a lot, but over the last year we’ve been changing the intake process in such a way that people go into a flow of three times per week training for four weeks. So that’s our kickstart program. They either do that in a small group, in a one-on-one setting or in a PT first setting, and then going into the big group. This has been our last fine tuning. And since then, we’ve had the best success, but we have had so many variations, like I can’t even remember. And then having COVID in between.

Mike Warkentin (23:40):
So, let me ask you this. How does your 28-day intake session, how does the price of that relate to the price of general membership?

Jeroen van Duijn (23:48):
So, for CrossFit Leiden, our 28-day kickstart is around 550 euros if you do the small group variation; that’s for four weeks. Our regular membership for three times a week is at 129 per month.

Mike Warkentin (24:07):
OK. So about like three to four times—something like that. That makes sense. Sure. And is that priced—is that intake done one-on-one, or is that done in a group setting?

Jeroen van Duijn (24:17):
No, it’s in a one-on-one setting.

Mike Warkentin (24:19):
There you go. OK.

Jeroen van Duijn (24:20):
The intake is one-on-one setting—takes about 30 minutes.

Mike Warkentin (24:23):
OK. Let me ask you this. Would you ever add more than 400 members? What would it take for you to bump that number up?

Jeroen van Duijn (24:29):
A team that wants to or that needs to have more members, but I don’t see why I would need more members; I would rather increase the price. It gets too hectic. So, if my team wants more members, I can do it. If I have a bigger space and I can add in maybe another small group, then I would definitely add in a small group because that’s easier to manage. You have one coach that is actually managing that small group, and that’s easier in the relationship management. But if those clients go into the big group, I wouldn’t add any more members. No, it’s too much. Like I don’t want to go there.

Mike Warkentin (25:07):
Managing lots of clients is very difficult. And that’s not to say you can’t do it, but it’s very hard, and you have to be a great business owner. You can’t just do it as a hobby. You have to have systems and staff. You have to be very good at it. That’s why Two-Brain, we always talk about: Target 150 members first; charge a good amount of money. $205 is a great starting point. You can make $100,000 a year with those numbers. That’s not to say you can’t go further. We have lots of gyms like CrossFit, Leiden with 400 members; we have ones that have 1,000 members. You can do that, but you have to be really good at it. I would recommend you start with 150, then decide, “Do I want to go further?” And what you’ve done, Jeroen, is amazing—where you’ve got 400; you’ve decided, “This is the max that I want to deal with right now.”

Mike Warkentin (25:48):
“I don’t need to go bigger. I can make their experience better. I can make the money than I need and more with this group, and I don’t need to hassle myself with tons of marketing, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more—additional relationships.” And now you’ve got a stable, profitable business that allows you to do other things. And you said you kind of like doing that stuff. So, let me ask you this question as we close it out. If someone was out there, a gym owner was looking at getting—they just wanted to increase their client count. Wherever they are, what’s the thing that you would tell them to focus on most? What would you tell them if they wanted to just get more members in the door?

Jeroen van Duijn (26:22):
Creating the best experience they can imagine. So, we’ve always been focusing on the gym experience and keeping members in. And the better they experience, the happier the clients, the more likely they will refer their friends. So, I would definitely—that’s the first focus.

Mike Warkentin (26:40):
So, is it fair to say that’s a combination—that’s a retention in a sense, right? You’re making them so happy that they want to stay and tell their buddies about it.

Jeroen van Duijn (26:47):
Yes, definitely.

Mike Warkentin (26:49):
Yeah. And I interviewed another gym owner who’s also in Europe. He’s in Denmark. Rune Larson was his name. He was also on the leaderboard. I asked him what—he has a ton of members. I think he’s got 500 now. And I said, “How did you do it?” He said, “Retention”—exact same thing you did. Nobody on this list has said marketing. They’ve said, “Hold on to clients first.” Yes, there is marketing, and there is some other stuff going on, but retention first. Thanks so much for sharing all this. This has been really fascinating, and it’s so neat to talk to someone who has exactly the number of members they want. Thank you.

Jeroen van Duijn (27:17):
Thanks. It was nice meeting you, Mike.

Mike Warkentin (27:19):
My pleasure. That was Jeroen van Duijn, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thank you for watching and listening. Please subscribe for more shows wherever you’re at. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.

Chris Cooper (27:29):
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 “We’re Full”: Why CrossFit Leiden Has Capped Membership at 400 appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

5 Things You Can Do to Improve Retention Right Now

In the previous post in this series, I laid out the five pillars of retention.

Today, I’ll give you a simple action item for each pillar to help you keep more clients longer.

Remember, the rewards for retaining clients are massive:

You change lives by ensuring people develop lifelong fitness habits.You create a stable, profitable business that provides for your family.You provide great careers for staff members.

Here are the pillars one more time:

1. Start Doing Goal Reviews and Change Prescriptions

Here’s the simple system: Ask clients what results they want to get, track their progress toward those results, and show them that they’re getting results.

The Prescriptive Model is the key here. You need to have a system in place so you meet with clients regularly to set goals, track progress, celebrate results and make changes to their programs to produce better results.

Do This: Get five clients to do a Goal Review Session. (Then book more sessions with more clients.)

2. Brag About 5 Clients This Week

You must use your platforms to make people famous.

You can mention them in a newsletter, post about them on social media or your blog, celebrate them in front of the group—the exact action doesn’t matter.

What matters is that these five clients feel seen. They must know that you know they are doing great things, and they must feel like they’re being singled out for recognition.

Do This: Make a social media post about a client as soon as you get to the end of this post. Schedule four more posts later in the week.

3. Use the Pumpkin Plan

To ensure a great product-market fit, you must identify your best clients and replicate them.

I have an easy exercise that will help you find your “seed clients.” And I’ll even tell you the exact questions to ask them over coffee if you want to find more people just like them.

Here’s the exact plan: “Your Best Clients.”

Do This: Pull out a piece of paper, click the link above and complete the simple but incredibly helpful Pumpkin Plan exercise.

4. Set Adherence Goals

As part of your on-ramp, get all new clients to commit to a plan with attendance goals. Maybe the long-term goal is “lose 20 lb.” That’s great—but set a short-term goal, too. If the client signs up to train 12 times a month, set a goal of perfect attendance.

Then track attendance, show them what they accomplished and celebrate the achievement: “You hit all 12 sessions despite the blizzard and that wild week at work. Way to go!”

Consistent training will produce progress toward big goals. So start setting adherence goals with clients. These short-term wins will build momentum and carry them to big wins down the line.

Do This: In your next on-ramp, help a new client set an adherence goal. Ensure you have a system to track progress, congratulate the client and set a new goal.

5. Actively Generate Referrals

Referrals don’t just happen.

Make the process active. For example, you can ask PT clients to bring a spouse or friend in. Use a name: “Hey, would your buddy Phil be interested in joining you for a session to see if we can help him run faster in that relay you’re doing in June?”

If you don’t know the names of clients’ friends and family members, start asking more questions to build your relationships.

While you’re doing that, you can run a bring-a-friend event and book No Sweat Intros with attendees. (General instructions are here.)

Do This: In your next PT session, ask your best client to bring in a spouse or friend.

Take Action Now!

I know each of the tactics listed above will work—they’ve been used in thousands of gyms around the world with great success.

But your metrics won’t improve if you don’t take action.

Pick one of the tactics listed above and get moving today, then block off time to address the others.

If you need a quick win to gain momentum, do this right now:

Open your gym’s social media account and make a post to congratulate a member on a recent accomplishment. Tag the person and celebrate loudly.

If you do just that today, then take another small step tomorrow, you’ll be well on your way to dramatically improving retention at your gym.

My new retention guide is out. Get “Never Lose a Client Again” here.

The post 5 Things You Can Do to Improve Retention Right Now appeared first on Two-Brain Business.