Chris Cooper's Blog, page 46

5 Things That Actually Improve Retention in Gyms

Does a 300-workout badge improve retention in gyms?

Maybe.

How about free coffee in the lobby?

Again, maybe—but probably not.

Will your shiny new bikes and sandbags help you hold onto clients?

It’s tempting to say “maybe” here again, but I know the answer is actually “no.” Equipment is not a retention tool.

In the gym world, we can point to lots of things that might improve retention, but mentorship and “might” don’t mix.

So here are five things that have been proven to improve retention in gyms:

1. Results
2. Fame
3. Compatibility
4. Consistency
5. Referrals

1. Results

Obvious? Wait a second before you say that.

You can’t just get “some results” for a client. You must get the client the exact result he wanted when he signed up. You must solve the big problem.

You can’t use a bench-press PR to retain a client who wants to lose weight.

2. Fame

Your clients must feel like they matter in your coaching business. They can’t be “faces in the crowd.”

You must go out of your way to put clients on podiums so they are seen and recognized.

3. Compatibility

You must have excellent product-market fit.

Most gym owners don’t think about this and try to get every single person to sign up. That’s a trap.

You cannot retain the wrong clients. It’s impossible. The ultra-competitive former college athlete will not stay at your gym if you specialize in helping 40-plus professionals lose weight.

To retain more clients, sign up the right clients.

4. Consistency

If your clients don’t show up regularly, they soon won’t show up at all.

And consistency is about adherence to a program, not just raw attendance figures. More is not always better. If your client signed up to come three times a week, you’ll retain that client if she comes three times a week.

Review each client’s adherence to the program you’ve prescribed to produce swift results. Is the client using they package they purchased? If the answer is “yes,” the client is likely to stay. If the answer is “no,” take swift action or you’re likely to lose the client.

5. Referrals

People who stay longer refer more people—and they’re invested in the success of the people they refer. The new people are more likely to stay because the referrer is part of your retention crew.

Further, if people refer friends, they are creating additional ties to your business: Cindy won’t quit a month after referring her best friend Sam.

If you have a system in place to encourage clients to refer others, your retention numbers will improve.

Use Surefire Tactics First

Can you improve retention in other ways? Yes.

But I know these five things will get measurable results fast because we’ve tracked retention data in thousands of gyms for years.

If I were you, I’d hit everything on the list above first.

After that, you can try other tactics—our mentors have a huge toolbox for clients, and we pick the right tactic at the right time.

But we don’t skip past these “five pillars of retention” because we know they produce measurable results fast every time.  

My new retention guide comes out today! Head to Gym Owners United to get “Never Lose a Client Again.”

The post 5 Things That Actually Improve Retention in Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Never Lose a Client Again: The 5 Pillars of Retention

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Hey Coop, if I wanted to improve just about every metric in my business, from average revenue per member to length of engagement, what would I focus on today?

Chris Cooper (00:11):
Retention.

Mike Warkentin (00:12):
Just that?

Chris Cooper (00:13):
That’s what I’d focus on first.

Mike Warkentin (00:15):
Alright guys, you heard it here first from Chris. We are going to focus on retention today and tell you what it means, how you can improve it, what actually matters. We’re going to give you some actual steps you can take today to improve retention in your business measurably, along with a host of other metrics. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” I am Mike Warkentin, and please hit subscribe before you go further. With me today, as always, is Chris Cooper, Two-Brain founder and CEO. We’re going to get right into retention. So, Chris, start by telling me what is retention here? What’s churn, LEG—like, what are we actually measuring, and why does it matter?

Chris Cooper (00:45):
Yeah, well let’s start with why it matters. You know, every gym owner that I talk to says, “I want more clients,” and they think that they have a marketing problem, but they actually have a retention problem. And that’s the problem that we want to solve. Like, you can get people in your door, but if they’re quickly leaving again, then you get in this never-ending marketing flywheel. And a lot of experts are out there, and they’re telling you, “You need to do this. You need to have a mapped client journey,” and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is there’s a lot of advice out there to do things that don’t actually matter to people. And to get to what really matters to people, you have to understand psychology, you have to understand how the brain actually works, you have to understand connection and community, but more than anything, you have to understand the data. And so, there are great ideas out there; we’re going to give these clients badges and great initiatives—they do take time, they take money and maybe they matter, but maybe they don’t. And so today, we’re going to talk about things that are proven to matter and backed by data to actually improve the length of time that a client is with you.

Mike Warkentin (01:49):
Look, I can confirm exactly what you’re saying. I just last week talked to one of our top gym owners: 512 clients at a CrossFit Gym in Denmark. And I asked him, “How did you do this?” He said, “Retention.” How was it? It was retention, and he’s got a marketing plan, but he said retention first laid out his exact plan. So, what you’re saying is backed by data and real-world stuff that we’re getting from ground zero at gyms.

Chris Cooper (02:09):
Yeah, and I mean, I’ve had my gym for 20 years, and if I count all the number of clients who’ve been through my doors, it’s close to 3,000. So, why don’t I have 300 or 200 clients even right now? Well, it’s not a marketing problem, it’s if I had kept this person just a little bit longer. Now you’re never going to keep everybody forever. And that’s why we want to look at how long you keep people instead of your churn rate. So maybe we can just talk about those terms first, Mike.

Mike Warkentin (02:39):
Yeah, like what is churn, and why are we kind of not prioritizing that and looking at length of engagement instead?

Chris Cooper (02:45):
Yeah, I mean churn is the percentage of your clientele who leave every month. OK so, that’s like if you have 100 clients and three leave, then you have a churn rate of 3%. And the people who popularize churn rates are really software companies. And if you’re a software company, churn rate is a valid metric because all your clients are faceless. Like you don’t know them, right? And so, you want to know how many people are quitting every month so that you know how many people you have to add every month. In a remote way, that’s kind of valid for a gym, but that’s not the primary metric that you want to track. What you actually want to track is how long people are staying. And the main reason is you want to know that they’re staying long enough that you can change their lives.

Chris Cooper (03:25):
If somebody’s with you for seven months, you’re not changing their life. We know that it takes at least two years to build a sustainable habit. And if you’re listening to this and you’re a gym owner, I just want you to think for a minute. Like the people who were with your gym for two years and then left, did they quit your gym, or did they quit fitness altogether? I think in my gym—maybe in yours too, Mike, you can tell me if I’m wrong here, by all means—but if they’ve been with me for two years and then they quit, it’s probably because they’re going to go do something else. Like in my gym, a lot of people go ride bikes, maybe they start running, maybe they do triathlons, maybe they move to—they want to do weightlifting, right? But they don’t quit fitness. And that’s my goal. Like the mission is to get people fit. If they want to go do that at another gym, it’s still mission accomplished. But the people who come to my gym and they leave after like three months, they quit fitness. It’s like they haven’t built that fitness habit. So, the first reason that we’re tracking LEG is we want to know that we’re actually changing people’s lives here.

Mike Warkentin (04:22):
Yeah. One of the things that I don’t really like about churn is it doesn’t really give you a sense of who’s leaving. It’s like people are leaving, but who are they? Right? So like if five—if I have like 5% churn and I’ve got 10 people left, I got 200 members or something like that, and those 10 people were all 18-month members, that’s really different than if they were all three-month members or one-month members. You know, that’s a whole different story because if you’ve got people leaving at that later stage, after two years, yeah, they might be moving, life changes, they got married, moved to another city, whatever, or even moving on to like doing triathlons. But if it’s those people that are leaving in the first three months, you probably have a client journey problem. They might quit fitness altogether, and they’re probably unhappy, and you probably could have solved those problems.

Mike Warkentin (05:01):
So, I think length of engagement gives you a whole lot more insight into who’s leaving, when and why, and allows you to put a client journey in place that says, “OK, we know the first 30 days, first 90 days are critical. If we get them to this point, they’re probably going to get to this point. If they get to this point, they’re going to get to this point,” and so on. And you can build an entire business on that and reduce marketing problems by having that client journey. Whereas churn is just like, “People are leaving. I need more people.”

Chris Cooper (05:22):
Yeah, I think that you just led us into the second point, Mike, which is you need different retention strategies depending on where the client is in that journey with your gym. Like the thing that’s going to help you retain the member at the two-year mark is not necessarily the thing that’s going to help you retain that member at the two-week mark. You need different strategies almost at each phase. And so, in Two-Brain, we map out the client journey step by step with, “Here is exactly what you need to do on day two. Here’s exactly what you need to do on day 270.” And we’re going to share some of those with you, I know, today.

Mike Warkentin (5:56):
Yeah. What actually matters?

Chris Cooper (5:57):
Yeah, exactly. Like, what is proven to matter? Does having the “100 Workout Club,” the “1,000 Workout Club,” does that matter? Maybe, but we don’t know. And so, it’s not going to be the first thing that we’re going to tell you to do. Instead, we’re going to say like, “We know this works; let’s do that first.”

Mike Warkentin (06:13):
Alright, let’s get into it, and let’s talk about what actually matters and what the data says. And again, I’ll give you an example. Like, I started putting in an automation in my system: You made 100 workouts or whatever it was. And inevitably what happened is it started going out to the wrong people for whatever reason because the tracking system didn’t work. And people were like, “Haha, that’s super funny, but I’ve been here for five years,” and I’m like, “This is embarrassing for everyone.” And it probably made more retention work, right? So, it’s these things that, like, they kind of mean something, but they kind of don’t. But if we look at the data, we know that those things—we can do some of those things, but we’re better to start off with these five or eight, whatever, things that we know actually get results. So, let’s dig in.

Chris Cooper (06:49):
Yeah, man. So, these are the five things that we can prove get results. And again, we’re drawing from data from over 15,000 gyms. And if you say like, “Ah, there’s an average of 100 people at each one of those gyms,” which is a low count, we’re really looking at data from about 150,000 clients worldwide.

Mike Warkentin (07:05):
Yeah. And that’s low for sure.

Chris Cooper (07:06):
Yeah, exactly. Like it, it’s probably 150ish. So, you’re looking at closer to a quarter of a million clients worldwide in our dataset. These are the things that people give as reasons and how we overcome them. OK? So, there’s five things that we can do to actually improve the length of time that people spend with us. The first is results: seems obvious, but we’re going to dig into that a little bit more. It’s not enough to just get them some results. You have to get them the results that they want. Second is fame: They have to actually feel like they’re important, that they’re seeing that they’re a part of what you’re doing and not just a face in the crowd. The third is compatibility: You’ve got to have good product market fit. We’re going to talk more about that in a moment.

Chris Cooper (07:50):
The fourth is consistency: Let’s face it, they have to show up, and we measure a secondary metric called adherence. And it’s not just “How often are they there?” that matters; it’s “What package did they buy, and how much, how well are they using that package?” And then fifth is referrals: Surprisingly, people who stay longer are also the most likely to refer. And that’s not just correlation, that’s causation. Like if I bring you to the gym, I’m going to stick around long enough to make sure that you’re getting the results that I told you would happen. OK, so results, fame, compatibility, consistency and referrals.

Mike Warkentin (08:25):
So results seems obvious to me, but I can tell you in practice it wasn’t because I thought people just showed up and wanted to do Fran just like I did. I didn’t actually ask them what they wanted to accomplish. And some of them wanted to lose weight, didn’t care how they did it, and I didn’t know that. So, talk to me about results and what we can actually do to make things better for people here.

Chris Cooper (08:41):
Well, the key, Mike, is like—and I copied your gym a lot. Like Mike’s got a pirate flag, I’m getting a pirate flag.

Mike Warkentin (8:49):
I still have it.

Chris Cooper (8:50):
Mine’s folded up somewhere, I’m sure. Because I thought that I was my own best customer. And so, what that means in my brain is like, “Everybody wants the results that I want.” So, a woman especially would come in, and she’d be very nervous about this kind of gym. And I remember one of my first clients when I opened my gym—her name’s Tiffany—she comes in: “I just want to tone up. What the eff is that?” And she’s looking at a power cage that has chains hanging from it because I was doing like the west-side accommodating resistance thing. And I’m like, “Don’t worry, you’ll use those next time.” She’s like, “The hell I will.” Gone.

Chris Cooper (09:26):
So what’s really important is that you ask the client what results they want to get and then you track their progress toward those results and then you show them that they’re getting those results. So, I think everybody listening to this, watching this, you’ve had this instance where this client is doing amazing: They’ve been with you for five or six months, they’re down 20 pounds, they’ve got lots of energy—they quit, and you’re like, “What? You’re killing it. You’re getting these results,” and they don’t see it because they’re inside the problem. So not only do you have to get them the results that they care about—might not be their deadlift—so you have to know what they want. You have to prove that you’re getting those results, so you have to talk to them every quarter, measure their progress, but then you actually have to say to them, “You are getting good results,” and celebrate that in front of other people. And if you don’t do that, they’re not just going to naturally realize how well they’re doing. And that was a big misunderstanding that I had when I started.

Mike Warkentin (10:22):
Yeah, and you really can’t improve this without an intake interview, like a free consultation where you find out goals, a prescription—the prescriptive model where you tell them, “Here’s how we solve your problems.” And then a 90-day goal review session where you say, “Here’s the problem we laid out. Here’s the path we took. Here’s where we are. Are you happy?” “Yes, let’s keep going.” “Are you not? We’ll make an adjustment and go further.” If you don’t have that system in place, it doesn’t work. And again, the gym that I spoke to with 512 members: goal review sessions, that’s what he focused on. He gave his CSM hard targets: 15 additional goal review sessions every single month. He’s got something like 200 booked or something like that every month now or whatever it is. And he says that this is the absolute key to growing his gym because he’s retaining members, and he’s selling more in those sessions. So, I don’t think you can do it without that stuff.

Chris Cooper (11:04):
Yeah. And I think a lot of people are scared to do a goal review because I can remember when I was a new trainer, I would be terrified that a client would ask for a body fat calculation or they’d ask to get on the scale because it’s like, “Oh, what if we’re not getting results?” But the reality is it’s better that you discover that the client’s not getting results and then say, “Here’s what we’re going to change,” than for the client to uncover that on their own and be like, “This isn’t working.” You know, Brian Bott once told me that the best prescription for a client is always the next prescription because you’re just going to keep making a tighter and tighter prescription for them over time. And so, if after the three months, you call a client in for a goal review, they get on the InBody, they haven’t made progress, they’re going to look to you to say, “What do I do?” If you don’t call them in and they get on a scale at their mom’s house, and they haven’t made progress, they’re going to be like, “I’m embarrassed. This isn’t working. I’m wasting money and time. I’m gone.”

Mike Warkentin (11:58):
Yeah. And that buys you extra time, right? Each prescription buys you extra time. And like exactly what you said, if they just pull the ripcord in three months, nobody’s talked to them, they’re gone. But if you talk to them at three months, you can then fix something, buy another three months and maybe you get it right at that point, and at least you’re holding them a little bit longer. That’s good for your business, but it’s also going to get them close to that point where exercise becomes a part of their life, and it’s better for them.

Chris Cooper (12:18):
Yeah. I mean, think about going to the doctor, right? And the doctor says, “You’ve got high cholesterol, and we’re going to try Lipitor. Let’s book again. In two months, you’re going to come back, we’re going to measure your bloodborne cholesterol again and see if it’s doing any better.” Well, you go back in two months, and your cholesterol is not better, and the doctor’s like, “OK, Lipitor is not the answer. We’re going to try this next thing.” You’re actually way more likely to stay with that doctor because you’ve been through step one than to go start all over again with somebody else. And that’s how you actually build trust.

Mike Warkentin (12:49):
Makes sense. So, retention—or pardon me, results is going to be your first thing to focus on. What’s next? What else we got?

Chris Cooper (12:55):
Fame. So surprisingly people want to feel like they are important to the community, not just part of the community. And this is a difficult one to measure, but what you want to do is make everybody famous to everybody else in your gym. So yesterday, man, or Wednesday, I walked into my semi-private session. I was the last one to arrive as usual. You know, the three women who were also in my semi-private group, they were already there working out. And first, Kelsey’s like, “Chris, what’s up?” And I’m like, “Kelsey, you haven’t had your baby yet.” And then Lauren is like, “What’s going on, Chris? Glad you’re here. I’ve got so many frigging planks, and you need to tell me jokes while I’m doing it.” And then, Natasha’s over in the corner, and she’s like, “Coop, what’s up? I heard you got deadlifts today.” Right?

Chris Cooper (13:39):
Like, you want to be famous within your tribe because if people know you and know things about you, you fit in; you’re part of it, right? So that’s really important is that you make your clients famous to all of your other clients. The only skill that I really ever had here was that I’m a classic over introducer. I can’t remember if I’ve already introduced you to Crystal or not, so I’m just going to do it again, right? And people make fun of me for it. But that’s how you make people famous. So, you want to do a couple things here, Mike, like number one, you want to get people to have a PR board in their gym. So, “Hey, Mike, you’ve never cleaned 205 pounds before. Amazing bro. Let’s go put that on the PR board and ring the bell and take your picture and put that in the private members’ group,” right? We’re doing that for you because it helps you feel famous among your peers.

Mike Warkentin (14:30):
From a media perspective, I like using social media for stuff like this where you collect the stuff; you collect videos and pictures and all this stuff, and then you just celebrate your members and make them superstars. And what inevitably happens—they like the post that you put up, which is good for you—but they also share that stuff. So, when you put up these videos of them doing incredible things or even just basic things that are incredible for a basic person, right? Like, I’m not talking about a 400-pound deadlift. I’m talking about someone who just deadlifted 100 pounds. They put that up, share with their friends. Their friends are like, “Maybe I could deadlift a hundred pounds,” and all of a sudden—and we’re going to get to referrals, but that’s where that piece comes in. So, these are these pillars that you’re laying out, they’re interlinked, like you can see already sort of how that’s coming. But it definitely works. And I love the idea of making people famous internally inside your gym—newsletters—and even externally on social media or blogs or testimonials. And we know that works in marketing as well. So that’s a great one. What do we got next? What’s pillar three?

Chris Cooper (15:19):
Number three is compatibility. And what we’re really talking about here—this is product-market fit, and this topic is going to make a couple of people nervous, but you have to understand that while your service is for anybody, it’s not for everybody. And so, you want to be attracting the right people. What happens a lot of the times with gyms is they spend so much time and energy and money marketing to everyone that they wind up getting a lot of the wrong people in. And so those people will have a very short LEG; they’ll be out of your gym within three months. And that’s exhausting for the owner. It’s exhausting for the coaches because they have to work with new people all the time. And you start to feel like you’re on this treadmill of hopelessness. You really are churning people out really, really quickly.

Chris Cooper (16:06):
So what you have to ask about your clients is, “Can they afford it?” Right? We sell a coaching service; that is a premium service that not everybody can afford. Now, yeah. I get like, you got in this to help people. You want to help everybody in your community. You live in the lowest income demographic in America. I think everybody’s told me that once, but the reality is we sell a high-value service, and it’s not going to be a good fit for everybody. I’d rather you make lots of money and give it away to people who need it by focusing on the right clients who want to pay for coaching than by undermining and having this constant revolving door of clients who just don’t have good product-market fit. So, “Can they afford it?” is one. But “Do they like you?” is another. Like are you likable? And another is, “Do they fit with your other clients?” You know, sometimes you don’t get that compatibility between clients either.

Mike Warkentin (16:59):
Yeah, and I’ll put this in perspective from an experience that I actually had is that we try to get every single person, because everyone can do this fitness program. We love everyone, we bring them in, and all of a sudden, we’ve got this mixture of people, and some of them really wanted to be competitors. I didn’t really care about that after about 2012. And so, we had this wrong group of people in our gym who wanted to do competitions and open gym and focus on their special little snowflake programs. And our gym struggled. We lost a lot of people. And so, we looked at the client journey: We were losing people at a certain point because they wanted to do competitive programming and extra stuff that we didn’t offer or care about. I had the wrong people in the gym. When we got those people, when they moved on to their other places—and they’re great people—and they moved on and were happy, we started referring when people came in and said, “Hey, I want to focus on competition.”

Mike Warkentin (17:41):
I’m like, “That gym down the street is much better. They’re the place for you. They specialize in that. You’re going to have a much better time. I’m more for professionals between 35 and 55 who want to generally get fit and have fun and then take their kids to the park.” And I got all those people, and they were amazing. We built our business stronger; the competitors went somewhere else and made another business stronger—that was the right people for them. So, I agree with you, compatibility is super important, but you don’t see that as a new gym owner because you want everyone.

Chris Cooper (18:06):
Yeah. I think the key to your story though, Mike, is—well one key is that the competitors went somewhere else where all the other competitors were. Like for some people, that competitive audience, that is good product-market fit. But it’s not for me.

Mike Warkentin (18:21):
It wasn’t for me either.

Chris Cooper (18:21):
Yeah. Like more and more my best audience is people over 50. They’re stable in life. They probably have adult kids. I mean, our Legends’ program, it’s called Prime at Catalyst. But those are amazing clients for me. They’re very high value. They show up every single time. They’re so coachable; they’re lots of fun. They refer their friends; they want every Catalyst T-shirt there is, and I just—I love them. So that’s good product-market fit for me. But that product-market fit can change over time too. You know, it is just a matter of always assessing “Who are my best clients?”

Mike Warkentin (18:54):
Yep. No, the gyms that these people went to, they still exist, and they’re still focused on competition, and they’re still going. So, they have a good product-market fit; they’ve got the right people, so they’re literally solving problems for the other gyms.

Chris Cooper (19:03):
The key is figuring out: What is your best product market fit? And we teach this exercise called the pumpkin plan. And just really quickly, what you’re going to do is you’re going to pull up your client roster; you’re going to write down the people who pay you the most money. Again, “Can they afford it?” That’s an important filter that you have to embrace and accept. You write down the top 10 who pay you the most, and then you also write down the top 10 who make you the happiest. And some of those people are going to be different, but a few are going to be the same. And those are—that is your target audience. And so, to get good product-market fit, there’s your market: How can you reframe your product to better serve them? And what you’ll find is that over time you wind up niching down and specializing, which makes you more valuable and improves your retention.

Mike Warkentin (19:47):
That’s the first exercise you guys can do right now to improve your retention is do that pumpkin plan exercise that Chris just laid out. Pillar four, what do you got? What is the next one?

Chris Cooper (19:56):
Well, this one’s consistency, and I don’t think this is a surprise to anybody, but there is something a little bit surprising about it. So, the common mantra around fitness is that the more people show up, the longer they’re going to stick around. That’s not actually true. Some people shouldn’t be with you five or six times a week. Some people can just burn out. And I mean, you know what it was like; you were probably an early adopter for CrossFit. Like I was where it was like, “I can’t get enough of this. Like I can’t—rest day? Hell no. Let’s go again,” and you’re hitting refresh on the main site at midnight and stuff. But then over time, for a lot of people, that enthusiasm waned, and they moved on to the next thing or whatever. What you actually want is to measure adherence.

Chris Cooper (20:38):
So if somebody signs up to come to your gym three times a week, how often do they get there three times a week? Like how often are they actually fulfilling on that? Because if they sign up for three times a week, and they’re only coming twice, they’re way more likely to drop off, right? People don’t care about spending money as much as they do about wasting money. And if they’re paying for something and not using it, then they will say, “I’m just not using the membership.” So again, in a goal review session, if they’re only coming twice a week, you should absolutely recommend that they downgrade their membership to twice a week. If they’re coming three times a week and you want them to come four times, you better make a strong case for them coming four times and say, “We’re going to reassess this after 90 days to make sure that you’re actually showing up four times a week.” Because it’s not how much they’re paying, it’s how much they’re wasting.

Mike Warkentin (21:27):
OK, that’s interesting because I used to think more is better. Yeah. I wanted everyone to go to my unlimited program, which was the most expensive one—which was underpriced, but it was our most expensive program—and I wanted everyone to ascend to that. So, I’m like, “OK, off, off, off one to three times a week and have these weird memberships in there; everyone will ascend to unlimited.” And that didn’t happen. My one-time-a-week-ers left; they all—every single one of them just left because it was not, there was no consistency there. And they would miss one thing, and that’s a hundred percent of their classes, right? Two and three kind of were OK, but there was not really an ascension plan. So, you are saying measure how often people come in relation to what they’ve booked and try and get them to fulfill as much of that as they can. Is that right?

Chris Cooper (22:07):
Yeah. Like what they’re doing should match what they’re buying basically. There’s so many problems with that whole unlimited idea, Mike, but you and I both had problems at the other end of the spectrum, which is people thought unlimited meant unlimited access to our life. Like, “Hey Chris, I’m borrowing the truck.”

Mike Warkentin (22:24):
Yeah, you’re—yeah, that actually happened guys. So that’s a thing.

Chris Cooper (22:29):
Yeah, exactly.

Mike Warkentin (22:31):
OK. So that’s interesting.

Chris Cooper (22:33):
Yeah, “I’m going to call you at 5 a.m.” “Hey Chris, it’s 10:30 at night, man. I’m really craving Cheesies; what should I do?” “Don’t eat the Cheesies.”

Mike Warkentin (22:40):
“What’s the workout tomorrow?” “I saw a typo on the blog.”

Chris Cooper (22:43):
Oh my god. Right?

Mike Warkentin (22:44):
You know that one? “What’s the workout tomorrow?” That one—you missed the post by five minutes, and you’re getting three, four, 10 texts—like that happened.

Chris Cooper (22:51):
Oh, even recently, like, “What do you mean I can’t come in 20 minutes before the class starts? My membership says unlimited. Unlimited, right?” Yeah, yeah, yeah. “OK. I mean, I’ll leave a shovel outside. You can clean off the roof.” Yeah. And so, the fifth one is referrals. And this one was always kind of a surprise to me, but only in retrospect of learning the science behind it does it make sense. So, if you read an anthropology book about how tribes are made up, we’re very, very cautious to recommend things to friends because of something that’s called “social risk.” So, if I’m like, “Mike, the new Ford F-150 Lightning is amazing. You should get one,” and then you get one, and you hate it.

Mike Warkentin (23:30):
“It sucks. Chris, ugh.”

Chris Cooper (23:33):
“It sucks.” You’re going to second guess. Like, “Is Chris really—is he dumb?”

Mike Warkentin (23:37):
The next thing you tell me, I’m not going to listen.

Chris Cooper (23:39):
Exactly. So, there’s massive social risk. And so, when somebody does refer a client to you, you’re actually invested in that person’s success, right? So, I’m like, “Mike, you really got to take Crystal to this amazing restaurant,” and you come back and you’re like, “Actually, I’d give it a B. It was OK.” And I’m going to be like, “What? Oh my God, come back with me next time. We’re going to sit at the back. We’re going to ask for Rico as the waiter, and I’m going to call the chef in advance.” Like, I’m invested in you liking that.

Mike Warkentin (24:11):
“I’ll tell you what to order because you ordered the wrong thing.”

Chris Cooper (24:13):
Yeah, “You screwed this up.” But like, I’m invested in it, so—and also I’m going to defend my position because I don’t want you to distance yourself from me because then I’ll be pushed out of the tribe. So, if I refer somebody, I’m more likely to stick around too and make sure they’re successful, right? Like, you’re not—I’m not going to be like, “Mike, you should come to this restaurant with me. OK, let’s get seated. OK, let’s order. Oh, you’re happy with your order? See you later.” Like, I’m gone, right? Like, I’m invested. I’m going to stick around and make sure you enjoy.

Mike Warkentin (24:45):
Think about that at your gym. You’ve seen the exact same thing. Someone refers a friend; they’re definitely like, “Hey,” walking their friend in, their friend looks nervous. They’re just like, “Oh, this is my other friend here. This is where we put our stuff. This is the whiteboard. This is how this works. Class is going to start here. The snatch is this one.” Like, they’re helping—they’re kind of being your assistant coach at that point. And it’s great because—“Hey, hey, Cindy, where’s Jen?” “Oh, you know, I messaged her, and she’s coming tomorrow for sure.” Like, you get all these different fringe benefits when someone refers someone because they’re sticky to that other person. So, it’s something that you might not think of. But again, it also solves a marketing problem because if you get a ton of referrals and a ton of retention, you don’t need to market all that much. So, it’s a really important one that has double benefits.

Chris Cooper (25:27):
Yeah. And it doubles the effect of your ad spend because now everybody who comes in through your Facebook funnel is bringing a friend, right? Like, if you don’t believe us, try this. Do a bring-a-friend event at your gym, OK? And you tell people it’s invite only, you can bring one friend, and we’re going to like a protein supplement thing. We’re going to do a fun workout; it’s going to be partners, blah, blah, blah. You do the little workout, and then you go up and you say, “OK, Crystal, I know you brought Mike here. Mike, hey, what’d you think of my gym?” And you’re like, “Oh, it was good. You know, it’s alright.”

Mike Warkentin (26:03):
“Kind of scary.”

Chris Cooper (26:04):
The next thing that’s going to happen is Crystal’s going to jump in and try and sell Mike on signing up, right? “Oh, you did amazing. Yeah, you did so great. Oh my God. Like you’ve got to sign up.” Like that person became an advocate because they’ve invested social currency in convincing that person to join. So, it does make sense in hindsight that referrals is the fifth pillar of retention. It really does boost retention among your existing clients.

Mike Warkentin (26:31):
Alright, so those are the five pillars, and we gave you one actionable thing, which is the pumpkin plan to find compatibility and find the right product-market fit. Chris, give me, as we close this out, what are other things people can do right now? Let’s give them some actions to take to measurably improve retention. And we’re not pulling stuff out of the air here. This is stuff we know works. So, what do we got on the plate here?

Chris Cooper (26:51):
Yeah, man. So, I’ll give you one for each one. So, results: Start doing goal reviews, measure results, change people’s prescription, but make sure that they understand that they’re getting results. And often you have to tell them; they won’t just see it on their own.

Mike Warkentin (27:03):
You know what, I’m going to jump in Chris. I’m going to give you listeners an easy button for that. I’ll put a link in the show notes to the prescriptive model that tells you exactly how to do all of it. Easy button. OK, Chris.

Chris Cooper (27:12):
Awesome. Thanks buddy. People think I’m generous, but you just give away our stuff all the time. So, it’s actually you that’s so generous.

Mike Warkentin (27:18):
Yeah, maybe.

Chris Cooper (27:19):
So fame: What I want you to do is brag about five clients this week. You know, go on social media. “Here’s a picture of Mike. Here’s a picture of Crystal. Here’s what I love so much about Mike. Here’s why Crystal is the best deadlifter in the gym,” whatever—like brag about them. You will feel great, number one, but they will feel amazing, and they’ll have their story on the internet, and their friends will see it too.

Mike Warkentin (27:44):
So put five people on a podium.

Chris Cooper (27:45):
Exactly. Yeah. Podium week is a great way to do it, by the way. Next is compatibility. You want to have that good product-market fit. And we talked about doing the pumpkin plan. I mean, to take it a step further, after you identify who your three or five best clients are, take each one out for coffee. “Hey”—you know, I did this with a woman named Anne. “Anne, you got time for coffee?” “OK.” We sit down for 20 minutes. I’m like, “Why did you pick Catalyst in the first place? What is it about Catalyst that keeps you coming back?” She wasn’t traditionally a gym person, and before you know it, she’s bringing her husband Jamie in off the street too. And that’s the perfect client because he’s already got product-market fit, you know? So pumpkin plan.

Mike Warkentin (28:26):
Pumpkin plan, plus we’ll call them seed client interviews. Identify your best people; find out more about them. They’re going to give you marketing gold and a lot of important info. All right, number four.

Chris Cooper (28:34):
Yeah. And I know I’m skipping over this, but we teach people, and we walk them through it step by step in the mentorship practice, like that’s what we do. Number four is consistency. And really what you want to do here is just do some goal settings. So, when somebody’s new especially, the win is the work. Like the win is showing up. They’re not going to lose 20 pounds in their first session. The win is they came back for the second session, they finished on-ramp, they did their first group class. And so, what you’re looking for in consistency here is for you to say to them, “OK, can you commit to three sessions per week?” And then after the first month, you call them and be like, “You did it. You made all 12 sessions last month. We’re so proud of you.”

Chris Cooper (29:16):
“Can you commit to the same next month again?” And you really want to be tracking that. So, this is why we track LEG and why we track adherence. The best thing that you can do is look at your reports every month and say, “Oh crap, you know, Mike is paying for eight, and he only showed up four times last month. Like, let’s get on the phone and make sure.” But if you’re not looking in the data, it might take you a while to catch it, and then it’s too late. Like, “Hey, has anybody seen Mike?” “No, I haven’t seen him in like five weeks.” It’s too late by that point.

Mike Warkentin (29:46):
“I only coach mornings. I don’t know.” You know, that whole thing,

Chris Cooper (29:49):
100%. I mean, if I went into my private coaches’ Facebook group right now, and I’m like, “Have you seen this person?” Four of the coaches are going to be like, “I only coach mornings.” “I only coach evenings.” One is going to be like, “Oh, I bumped into him at the grocery store.” You know, and like, “Where is he?” And that’s why you have to look at your client list and your data every single month.

Mike Warkentin (30:08):
OK, so that’s a good one guys. Check that one out. Number five thing that you could do today to improve retention.

Chris Cooper (30:15):
Yeah, I mean the easiest thing is if you have five clients who you know really, really well, especially if they’re a personal training client, is just say, “Hey, do you want to bring your spouse in for a buddy workout next week?” That’s the easiest. If you’re not tight enough like that with your clients—I mean that’s a red flag—but what you can do is just run and bring-a-friend event. So basically, you say, “We’ve got to bring-a-friend event on Friday for 10 buddies. It’s invite-only. Tell me in advance who they’re going to be.” And you set up a fun workout; you know who these people are going to be, so you’ve got them in your lead nurture process. You book them for a No Sweat Intro when they’re there. Don’t just give them a free trial and let them run away to make up their own mind—like book them a No Sweat Intro and leverage the person who’s already in there. You know, “Do you want to do what Ann is doing?” Frequently what we’ll find with referrals is everybody starts with on-ramp at Catalyst, but their next step is determined by how they came in. So, if they came in through an ad, they’re probably going to want to pick semi-private. If they came in through a referral, they’ll want to pick whatever their buddy is doing. “I want to do this with Mike.” That’s fine.

Mike Warkentin (31:21):
And I can tell you, another gym on our leaderboard from December 2023 with a huge client count, they have a very formalized bring-a-friend event that happens on a regular schedule. It’s laid out. They know exactly how they’re going to run it, when they’re going to run it, what they do at it. And they have a huge client count as well. So, these events do work. The pacing of them, we’ll have to figure out. Our mentors help our clients figure out exactly how often to do them and in relation to their other strategies, but bring-a-friend event can have good results, but it’s not a whimsical, “Ah, bring a friend,” and toss into the wind—

Chris Cooper (31:50):
Every Saturday.

Mike Warkentin (31:51):
—and people show up, right? It doesn’t work like that. You have to make it formalized, and it’s even better if you can say, “Dude, your best buddy Phil should come to this bring-a-friend event because he’s got that 5K run coming up. Would you invite him?” Phil’s going to be there. Phil will probably sign up. So, it has to be more formalized than just saying, posting it on Facebook. It does not work like that anymore. You have to be a bit more tactical, and we help our clients do that specifically. So those are five things you can do today. Take them from the show. Chris, if people haven’t been taking notes, we have a brand new guide that’s going to lay out some of this stuff. How can people get it?

Chris Cooper (32:19):
Well, it’s called “Never Lose a Client Again.” And all they have to do is go to gymownersunited.com and say, “Hey, can I have it?” You know, send me a DM on Facebook. We’re not into a formal process here where we got to fill in a form, then we automatically email it—like you DM me on Facebook, I’ll send you the guide. I’ll ask you how things are going because I care. I want to know. And if there’s something else that I can do to help you, then I’ll tell you.

Mike Warkentin (32:44):
“Never Lose a Member Again” guide. If you want to get more into this topic, keep more clients, earn more money, get that guide. All you’ve got to do is DM Coop, and you can do that through the Gym Owners United group. Chris, thanks for your time and sharing all this stuff. I hope it helps gym owners keep more people.

Chris Cooper (32:58):
I hope. Yeah, that’s how we change lives. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Warkentin (33:00):
This has been “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin. My request to you is just to hit “Subscribe” on the way out and then head to Gym Owners United to get our new guide. Thanks guys.

The post Never Lose a Client Again: The 5 Pillars of Retention appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Retention in Gyms: What Actually Matters?

I’ve had about 3,000 clients come through my gym over 20 years in business.

But I don’t have 3,000 clients in my gym—so should I focus my efforts on marketing to find more or should I invest in retention?

The truth: Marketing problems are often retention problems in disguise.

You don’t need more clients; you need to hold onto your clients longer.

Key Retention Metric: Length of Engagement

Churn is the percentage of clients who leave every month. If you have 100 clients and three leave every month, you have a churn rate of three percent.

The metric works well for software companies and similar businesses that don’t have personal relationships with clients.

But in a coaching gym, churn doesn’t give us enough info: It doesn’t tell us if we’re accomplishing our goal of making people healthier.

For example, people who leave a gym after three months might be done with fitness forever. They haven’t changed anything or created any habits. They tried a gym and decided “working out isn’t for me.”

On the other hand, clients who leave a gym after training for two years or more generally don’t stop working on their health and fitness. They might quit your gym because they’re moving, or their shift changed, or they want to try another style of training. So they leave—but they keep working out.

That’s actually a win for the gym owner even if it’s a “minus 1” in the client column.

The reality is that you won’t keep every client forever. But if your goal is to help people become fitter and healthier—and I know it is—you have accomplished your mission if a client leaves you after two years of work (or more). You changed that client’s life.

Churn doesn’t tell us if we’re truly helping people.

It also doesn’t tell us who’s leaving and why. It’s just “five people left.” We want to know who they are and why they left so we can upgrade our client journey.

Another example: If seven of 10 departing clients are all leaving after nine months of membership, you might add something to the client journey at the six-month mark to ensure they don’t cancel 90 days later.

Or what if 70 percent of departures occur in the first 40-60 days? That would indicate an onboarding problem—this is common, and you can fix it by adding more touchpoints earlier in the client journey.

The thing that helps you retain a client at the two-year mark won’t be the same as the thing that helps you retain a client at the two-week mark. You must have different strategies at different stages of the client journey. (We map out these journeys for our clients and give them specific strategies they can use with clients at each stage of membership.)

Numbers and Data

You should track LEG at your gym, and you should always try to improve it.

What are some milestones? Well, the industry average length of engagement is 7.8 months. That’s not good. You should aim to beat that by a large margin.

For comparison, Two-Brain clients hold members for 20 or more months, on average, by using tried-and-tested retention tactics.

And here’s a dollar figure that might blow your mind: The average gym owner who filled out the Two-Brain Gym Checkup in 2018 could have earned an extra $45,000 that year just by increasing average retention by two months.

We’re in the business of changing lives, but you can’t do that if your business goes under, so these financial numbers are important, too.

I’d encourage you to start tracking length of engagement today. If you already do, let’s drive the number up this week.

To help, I’ve got a new guide coming out tomorrow. Stay tuned: I’ll tell you exactly where to get “Never Lose a Client Again.”

The post Retention in Gyms: What Actually Matters? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Exact Retention Plan in a 512-Member Gym

I’m always fascinated when top gym owners unveil the simple systems that support their businesses.

These world-class entrepreneurs run very profitable gyms, yet they always have a firm grip on the business basics many others skip over.

Here, I’ll give you a high-speed summary of the retention system that supports a gym with 512 members—and counting.

Rune Laursen of BoxLife in Denmark shared his system with me on a recent episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.”

I’ve chunked it out below into an easily digestible format.

Retention Focus

Booking Goal Review Sessions.

Staff Requirements1 client success manager (CSM) to start, with hours increasing as monthly targets go up.1 additional staff member once volume warrants it (return on staffing investment is always evaluated).
First Targets

5-10 Goal Review Sessions per week.

Growth Goal for CSM

15 additional Goal Review Sessions each month.

Order of Avatars for Booking Goal Review Sessions

1. New clients who will see goal reviews as “just part of the package.”
2. At-risk clients who haven’t been at the gym in two weeks.
3. Long-term clients (who can be hesitant to change longstanding habits and add goal reviews).

KPIsIncreasing length of engagement (LEG).Reduced at-risk client list.Increasing gross revenue.Growing client count (also supported by marketing tactics).Increased average revenue per member per month (ARM).Clear ROI on staff costs.
CSMs and ROI

That’s the simple framework that supports a gym with 512 members. It’s not the only retention plan you can use; it’s just one plan that’s producing clear results.

And I’ve skipped some important details, of course. Rune has a thick staff playbook with roles and responsibilities laid out, and he trains his staff very well. You can’t skip that stuff, though many people do.

To ensure you tick all the required boxes, I’ll give you a starting point for your staff development. Review the Prescriptive Model with your CSM, then role-play Goal Review Sessions with three types of people: new clients, at-risk clients and longstanding clients.

If you’re hesitant to add a CSM to your staff, remember these three things:

1. Goal Review Sessions have been proven to increase length of engagement in gyms. (Rune’s LEG went from 12 to 20 months.)

2. About 30 percent of clients will upgrade their service packages by about 30 percent in Goal Review Sessions. (Rune added about $20,000 in monthly revenue that’s not tied to basic memberships.)

3. You should see ROI on staff costs—2.5X is a good benchmark. (Rune said this about CSMs: “It is the fastest ‘paying-itself-back role’ I could ever imagine in a gym.”)

If you want to improve a host of KPIs at your gym, I’d suggest it’s high time to start working on retention with the help of a CSM.

Start small if you like: Dedicate a few hours a week to retention, and track KPIs. If you get a return on your investment, add more hours and keep tracking metrics.

Want to see the whole interview with Rune? It’s here:

The post The Exact Retention Plan in a 512-Member Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

512 Members: How BoxLife/CrossFit 5512 Did It in Denmark

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
A CrossFit gym with more than 400 members. It’s rare, but it can be done. And you’re going to find out how it’s done on this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Before we go further, please hit “Subscribe” so you don’t miss anything. I want you to get all the info that we produce every show to help you run a better business. Now today, huge member counts in coaching gyms. Our leaderboard in December 2023 ran from 324 members to 1,034 members. I’ve got one of the top 10 gym owners here with me. Rune Larson runs BoxLife near Copenhagen, Denmark. We’re going to find out why he has so many members, and I’ll tell you this—I know this already—these December stats, he had 457; he’s now at the date of recording—which is February 14th—he’s at 512 members in his gym. So, welcome, and thanks for being here today.

Rune Larsen (00:48):
Thanks, man. Glad to be here.

Mike Warkentin (00:50):
I am pumped about this because back when I was running my gym, we never even came close to the numbers that you’ve got. I need to know; I’m just going to put you on the spot: What’s the single biggest reason? Why do you have so many members?

Rune Larsen (01:01):
Well, the second thing is always, I have to say, we do a lot of stuff, but the most important, the single one is probably the No Sweat Intros and the goal reviews, I’d have to say. So, one-to-one conversations with a lot of members.

Mike Warkentin (01:14):
OK. We’re going to dig into that because one of the things that’s interesting is if you have 500 members and you’re doing goal reviews, that’s a huge commitment of time. I’m going to ask you later on how you do it, but I want to just dig into a couple of things first before we get to that. So, talk to me first about retention. So, there’s always two ends when you have lots of clients: You’re either retaining a lot of clients, or you’re adding them. Talk to me about retention and if we start getting into goal reviews, let’s do that.

Rune Larsen (01:42):
Yeah, yeah. Well, to just put some frames around training here in Denmark, training is very cheap, and nearly all memberships are. And we are a CrossFit gym, and we’ll still, compared to the rest of the world, ridiculously cheap. But I’m the most expensive in Denmark. But we are still below 100 euros per month. But I think that just majority of the Danish people know that training is important. And we have a lot of sports in different ages. So, I just think that it’s more normal to exercise here. So that’s also one of the things that drives the numbers if I have to talk about some external stuff. But on the retention side, that’s also not normal to do anything specific there. So, we are quite unique on that point here in Denmark at least. And some of the basic stuff is stopping to text people if they’re not training. I’m not doing that, but that’s the most common thing here. So, you could put them on a “do not disturb” list and stuff like that. But in essence, what we are trying to do is just to get people to just use the membership as much as possible. So, we are just going the opposite way.

Mike Warkentin (02:43):
How do you—so you’ve got this huge pile of people. I guess I should ask now: How many staff members do you have, and do you have a specific person who’s in charge of retention? Or is that a group of people? Or how do you—who handles those jobs?

Rune Larsen (02:55):
Yeah, we’ve tried some different ways. And also, when I joined Two-Brain in the beginning, we had a lot of trouble on starting all the goal reviews and stuff like that because people are not used to just getting asked, “Why do you even train?” Well, that step was a big step for a lot of people. So, the staffing right now is, including myself, we have three full-time employees, and then I have like 15 part-time coaches. Yeah, I think that’s around the team. And we’ll try some different roles and descriptions, but we have a CSM of course, which I call her our “In-House Happiness Manager.” So, she’s in charge of all the events and the conversation and stuff like that.

Mike Warkentin (03:37):
Is she full-time?

Rune Larsen (03:38):
Yes. OK. She is. But she also does some administration work and stuff like that. So, it’s a hybrid, but as it is of now, it is probably 70% of the time on talking to members because we have so many right now. So, she’ll need a colleague soon.

Mike Warkentin (03:54):
OK. And it’s interesting; I have talked to some gym owners who have said that retention and client management is so important to them that they hired two people or more in that client success manager role. And listeners, if you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a person who’s in charge of retention, and there’s metrics attached to that. You’re trying to get people to stay longer, which there’s a variety of things you can do. Rune mentioned texting people when they don’t show up. There’s also birthday gifts, celebrations, putting them on podiums, interviewing them, sending—all these different things that you can do. I want to talk specifically—you mentioned on the intro: goal reviews. Now this is a really interesting one because Two-Brain recommends that you meet with clients every 90 days to review goals. It’s a noble idea. It’s very difficult for some people to do it because they just don’t commit to it. And then when you get larger client counts, it gets very hard to do unless you’re a great manager, and you get help. So, tell me how you’ve managed to do this because it’s driving your retention. I need to know.

Rune Larsen (04:53):
Yeah. And also, if you had to add to list of problems: If people haven’t been used to it for a long time, it’s also a new thing, so when you suggest it, it’s a better idea in your head than in theirs.

Mike Warkentin (05:06):
OK, so you’ve got to change the client. I mean, you have to change the client journey, right? Because they’re not used to doing this, and now you’re saying you need to meet with me every 90 days. Some of them will like, “Eh,” but others will realize, “Hey, this is added value, and I’m getting better service.” So, talk to me about everything involving goal reviews and retention at your gym.

Rune Larsen (05:22):
Yes. So also, for context, I’ve been with Two-Brain for now nearly two years now, or a little bit over two years. And one year ago, we had 50 goal reviews running, which means in a 90-day period, we will meet with 50 people. So that would, that would be a little over 10% at that point. And then we tried a lot of stuff. So, our client journey right now is up to two. We meet with our new clients one time per month for the first three months, and then afterward every 90 days. So, that is the plan right now. So how we came to that, because in the beginning, as noble as it seemed, I just, “OK. My CSM, can you please just reach out to the people and offer this crazy great idea?”

Rune Larsen (06:05):
So, we did the classic thing, just a Facebook post in our community group and say, “Just book, I’m here to help you.”

Mike Warkentin (16:13):
Did it work?

Rune Larsen (16:13):
We got like three bookings, I think. So, we got hurt. Our feelings got hurt. So, we were like, “OK, how do we—how can we get this thing rolling?” So, we started with the new clients because the new clients don’t have any habits yet, so we can just, “This is just how we do things.” And they’re like, “OK, well great. Let’s do that then.” They don’t have any way we usually do this. So, they were happy to do that. But still, on the No Sweat Intro side, which is a conversation I have with a newly or potentially new client before they start training at the gym, we have around five to 10 at that point per week.

Rune Larsen (06:55):
So it took some time to climb up to 50. It’s also—they have to sign up before getting enrolled, obviously. And at that point, we only talk to people every three months. So, what I did, nearly six months later or something like that, when we hit around the 50 mark is that I thought, “OK, well, what is the next great group to try to invite in? That is probably the members who have a hard time getting results or coming to the gym.” So, we started reaching out systematically to everyone who hasn’t been training for the past two weeks. And that’s also, by the way, retention-wise, very good to do because we had 400ish members at that point, and when we pulled the list, there were like a hundred people on that list. You know, maybe 20 of them were doing PT, so they do not check in, but that will still give us 80 people who haven’t been training for the past two weeks. So that was an eye-opener for me. So, I was like, “OK, let’s go call those people.”

Mike Warkentin (07:49):
That’s what? 8,000 euros in revenue too per month. Yeah.

Rune Larsen (07:52):
Yeah, exactly. So, we started calling them and enrolling in the goal review as well, but it took some time. So, I set a goal for my CSM that she has to add 15 meetings to a calendar every month. That’s the goal to do that. But then I saw it was still hard for her to do because, you know, she had to call people and then schedule a meeting, have the meeting, but also do a lot of other stuff. So, it was hard for her to do all that stuff. So, what I did is I took one of my coaches, and I signed them up to do the contact. So, actively reaching out to all of them. And that resulted in dropping the list from 80 at-risk members to sub 10. I think we have an average on seven people on that list now.

Mike Warkentin (08:35):
OK. Yeah. That’s impressive.

Rune Larsen (08:37):
Yeah. And again, for context, we had 120 list people, members at that point. So we have added 120 members since then, and we still only have seven on that list.

Mike Warkentin (08:47):
OK. So, listeners, I’m going to put this in perspective for you. If you’re not doing goal reviews, a great way to start is just to start doing them with new people coming in. Yes. They don’t know it’s new. They don’t know it’s different. They don’t know it’s weird. They just do that. That’s your client journey. It’s this large mass of people like at Rune’s gym, where they’re just doing this program and they—it’s expected, and you’re selling it. This is part of the value. You’re buying this attention to detail. You’re buying this consultation. It’s great. And Rune’s done an interesting thing too on these intakes: meeting with the clients every month in the first three months, then every 90 days after that. The cool part about that is that first 90-day period, that’s when your clients are most at risk.

Mike Warkentin (09:26):
Data shows that; they’re the most likely to leave. Everyone knows us in the fitness industry. If you can keep them for those first 90 days, you’ve got a really good shot at getting them into the past-a-year mark, and then even further. So, these are huge things. Next, and Rune did this very tactically, what is the next group of people that I’m going to start looking at? He looked at his at-risk people. That’s this huge pile of people who are not showing up regularly, not getting results. They’re almost out the door. Contact them, target them, get them doing something. You’re fixing your retention problem. From there, did you backfill then at that point and start looking at all your general members who are training and start putting goal reviews for them too?

Rune Larsen (10:02):
Yes. And we also saw the, the effects of what we were doing because suddenly newer members were getting greater results faster than all of the old members. So, after working on this in a year, we suddenly got the trust, and they were starting to feel they missed out on the opportunity. So, you know, all the members who in the beginning said, “No, thanks, I’m good,” they were probably like, “If they did not ask me.” But you know, when I asked them, they were like, “OK, maybe I should try this.”

Mike Warkentin (10:28):
Aha. So that’s a cool.

Rune Larsen (10:29):
So, it had an effect.

Mike Warkentin (10:30):
Very cool plan.

Rune Larsen (10:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So, it had some effect—not to at the same degree as reaching out to people. So what I did next is like, “OK, this has some potential. So just let’s get the coach even more time to call people.” So, it’s still in the same order. “So first you have to contact all new members. Second, you have to call at-risk. And third, if you have more time, please call all regular members.” So, this resulted in, three months ago when we started rolling out more on all members, we added 120 goal reviews in one month. So, before we were doing like 60 to 70ish because people also quit sometimes or cancel. I think we just hit 200 now.

Mike Warkentin (11:16):
Wow. So, you went from 50 goal reviews and then now to like 200 a month?

Rune Larsen (11:21):
For three months. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (11:22):
For three months. OK. That’s incredible.

Rune Larsen (11:24):
It is unique booking. So, you know, if a client is a new client, they will have four booking, but we still only count them as one.

Mike Warkentin (11:30):
OK. Now what are you seeing in your metrics? Because like this is a large time commitment, and you have a person or people that are dedicated to doing this. And these meetings take time. Do you see the results in your metrics? Like, is your retention getting better? Is your client current increasing? I think it is, obviously. What others do you see? Like, is your revenue getting better? What do you see?

Rune Larsen (11:50):
Yes, it is. Our front-end revenue, which we define as everything sold other than memberships. To the conversations, that has gone dramatically up. I don’t—what is that in, in dollars? That would be $20,000, I think, per month we added extra. Not including the membership fees. So, yeah, that was good one. And then also our retention, obviously, length of engagement. We were pretty adverse before joining Two-Brain and doing things systematically. So, I think we were like 12 months at that point. And I set a three-year goal, which, “I would like to try to cross 20 months.” And we crossed that two months ago, I think. And that’s only one and a half years later. So, I need to set a new goal.

Mike Warkentin (12:41):
Wow. OK. So, your business is doing incredible things. You’re adding lots of members, you’re keeping them longer, and you’re selling more. Like this is kind of a rocketship.

Rune Larsen (12:48):
Yeah, and to be honest, I did not even try it because when I signed up for Two-Brain in the beginning when we did a lot of changes and raised some of the rates and introduced all this fancy stuff, the member count dropped dramatically. We were around 440 at that point, I think. And then we dropped to around 380ish and then I was just like, “OK, maybe it’s not doable to do all this stuff with so many people, and that’s OK because the memberships’ average price is going up as well, so that’s fine.” And then I didn’t even look at it for a year. I was just looking at revenue and length of engagements pretty much. And then one year later I looked and I’m like, “Wow, OK. I’m at 470 now. What happened?” I didn’t think that was possible.

Mike Warkentin (13:30):
Wow. OK. So that’s interesting. So, you trimmed people in the beginning. How much do you raise rates by?

Rune Larsen (13:35):
We’ve done between one time per year for the past four years, and we raised them with like 30%, 40%, 20%. And now we did a little one on 13%, I think.

Mike Warkentin (13:49):
OK. So slightly painful to start. You lose a few people, but long-term, now your business is stronger because you’re bringing in new people at those higher rates. Correct?

Rune Larsen (13:57):
Yes. Yes. Yeah. They also stay longer.

Mike Warkentin (13:58):
And this is huge, and they stay longer. So that’s interesting. So, while, I mean, I have so many questions for you here, but what I’m going to—I’m going to ask you this one because I’m sure people are asking about it now: How are you finding these people? So, you’re adding lots of people, and you’re bringing them in at a higher rate than you did before. How are you finding these people and getting them into your business?

Rune Larsen (14:17):
Yeah. Well, normally we have—I try to get as many streams as possible. But our most common is Facebook ads. They are working very great. We have some organic where we reach out to local Facebook communities in our area, especially when we’re starting our instruction courses, which is a six-week course. Referrals obviously, but we could do more of that, but we can see the last—what’s the name of that? You know, just the one training event we did at New Year’s Eve. We had 120 people coming in to one workout. So, I’m like, “OK, if 20%, 25% of all my members want to come, I’m doing something right here.” So, I could work more on retention—or sorry, referrals—but I don’t, at the moment, at least. We have built some lead magnets that we are also using. And then I just spent a lot of time getting better at marketing last year. So, this January we hit jackpot. So, I think at a normal month, we get around 30 leads, but the 100% correct number is last month we got 221 leads, which resulted in 55 members.

Mike Warkentin (15:36):
Wow. OK.

Rune Larsen (15:37):
Yeah, that was a big one.

Mike Warkentin (15:38):
Listeners, I’m just going to point out to you that every time I ask Rune a question, he’s giving me actual numbers and data. And this is incredible, because back when I was running a gym, I wouldn’t have had a clue like, “Oh, I think we got three members last month.” No idea. These are hard numbers that are coming. He’s literally looking over there and telling me the numbers and the progressions of what he is done in his business. If you want to take one step toward being a better gym owner today, start looking at your numbers and just start on one number. If you want, focus on retention, focus on other things, length of engagement, focus on some numbers, and start tracking those numbers. That is like the number one thing I might give you to take out of the show is look at your numbers. Rune, how do you—all these numbers you’re giving me are huge. You must have an incredible bunch of systems that back up everything in your gym. Because if you don’t, I imagine the whole thing just falls apart. Like, I could never have managed 400 members. Like, how have you systemized everything so that things don’t fall apart?

Rune Larsen (16:30):
I’ve tried a lot of stuff. Yeah. One of the key takeaways I had last year was, I tried to educate my staff in doing a bunch of stuff, especially with some of my PTs to get them better at selling more PTs or retain the clients for longer, stuff like that. But the lesson was do not put your best person on your biggest problem. Put them on your best opportunities instead. So, I tried to instead just find out what are my coaches’ or employees’ passions and just give them like 10 times more of that and divide the task between them in that way. So that really—things started to take off when I did that.

Mike Warkentin (17:09):
Yeah. Do you have a big staff playbook, and do you have precise job descriptions? Roles and responsibilities? All of it. Yeah?

Rune Larsen (17:14):
Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And I also have weekly meetings with my staff. I have a team meeting where we discuss some of the KPIs that we’re looking at at the moment and how things are going. Obviously one time a month we are looking at the gym’s numbers: Are we hitting targets? Stuff like that. But also having a one-to-one with my full-time coaches every week—we just ask them how things going. “Can I support you in any way, or do you need more help on anything?” That is also helping them a lot, I think.

Mike Warkentin (17:43):
OK, every successful gym owner that comes on the show, when I ask them if they have systems and playbooks, they say, “Yes.” That happens every single time. No one’s like, “No, I just wing it.” Every single person says, “I have a system.” So, if you’re listening, you don’t have a system, you want to be successful, get some systems in place. Start with roles and responsibilities: Who does what in your gym, and when do they do it? And what is a 10 out of 10? That’s a great start. So, Rune, you talked about you’ve got all these clients. Do you have a rough breakdown of how many are doing just group training? How many are doing PT? Like do you have an idea of what your client list looks like and who does what?

Rune Larsen (18:15):
Yes. Pretty much perfectly. We have 25% of our revenue coming from PT or small group.

Mike Warkentin (18:22):
OK. So, it’s not just—they’re not funneling tons of people just into group training. You actually have a very high percentage, like if you’ve got 500 members, 125 or so are doing PT. OK. So that’s interesting. And PT, talk to me a little bit about PT rates in Europe, in Denmark: Are they lower, as in relation to the group training? Or how does that reflect based on what you see elsewhere? Like in North America, our PT rate might be $75.

Rune Larsen (18:47):
Yeah. Then we’re higher than that. What would that be in dollars? Just a moment.

Mike Warkentin (18:51):
I don’t know the conversion. I can pull it up if you’re not doing it.

Rune Larsen (18:53):
I’ll just do it.

Mike Warkentin (18:54):
See, he Rune’s the numbers guy. He’s just cracking these things out faster than I can do it.

Rune Larsen (18:59):
Yeah. One session is $130.

Mike Warkentin (19:01):
Really. So, that’s interesting. So, your group training rates in Denmark are lower. It’s very cheap. Yeah. But your PT rates are higher.

Rune Larsen (19:09):
It’s higher. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Mike Warkentin (19:10):
OK. That’s fascinating. Why is that? Do you know?

Rune Larsen (19:14):
I think it’s the history in Denmark. We had a lot, a long euro of bigger players, just, driving down prices. And then we also have some non-profits organizations here in Denmark; a lot of them you can sign up for an entire year at a gym for like $30 or something like that because it’s good for wellbeing, and obviously it is. But people just see this membership. So, I think that when private gyms start popping up, they were too afraid to set the rate as they should. So, I’m trying to climb the ladder as fast as I possibly think I can. But the PT is what can build a career for my coaches.

Mike Warkentin (19:56):
Yeah. So, you—I mean, I was really curious about this because often when we see huge client counts in gyms, we all think these are all just group members, right? So, we think, “Oh, there’s 500 group members funneled into classes.” Like these giant 30-person group classes, but you’ve actually got 25% that are just doing PT, and that PT rate is—

Rune Larsen (20:12):
Well, hybrid.

Mike Warkentin (20:13):
—huge. Hybrid even. So, talk to me about the hybrid because your PT rate is huge. So, what’s a hybrid membership? How is that structured, and what does it cost there?

Rune Larsen (20:19):
We don’t have a fixed cost on a hybrid membership. OK. But we just try to bring in as many meaningful products or services as we can for our client avatar. So, we do the prescriptive model, which is just asking everyone who signs up, “What do you need?” And obviously a lot of stuff on why they need it, who they are, where they’re at, stuff like that. So, we can make a plan for them. So sometimes it will include nutrition, sometimes it’ll include PT, flexibility, group classes, coaching, stuff like that. So, hybrid is just because we build a lot of individual programs for people. So, of course we’re going to need different stuff.

Mike Warkentin (20:59):
So what would hybrid membership rates—give me a bracket as to high and low? What would kind of averages be? I love that I can just—you’re like ChatGPT for gym owners here. I can just ask you anything. And you’ve got the numbers. I’m having a good time with this.

Rune Larsen (21:12):
So, that would be $900 dollars a month.

Mike Warkentin (21:18):
Whoa. So, this is incredible. So, your average revenue—I’m guessing over the last two years, your average revenue just went up like a rocket.

Rune Larsen (21:25):
It did. Yeah. Yeah, it did. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (21:26):
Do you have any—

Rune Larsen (21:27):
Like—what? Sorry.

Mike Warkentin (21:28):
No, go ahead. You were just going to tell me what I was going to ask.

Rune Larsen (21:31):
Yeah, yeah. I don’t know the numbers without doing the conversion. So yeah, an easy way to say it. I’d say that our membership or the average revenue per member was like 80% of our standout gym membership because we have some kids’ programming or some other way that has driven it down. So, on average on 80%, but now our average is 125% because of people are buying so much. So, it has been raised by 45 percent points.

Mike Warkentin (21:58):
Wow. That is impressive.

Rune Larsen (21:59):
Over the course of two years. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (22:01):
OK. So, I have to ask you this one: Is there a limit to how many people you can service in your gym? What’s the top end of this? When does it start to break down? Or when are there too many or ever?

Rune Larsen (22:10):
Yeah. Well, I’d say at 300 people because I thought that, but obviously I was wrong. So no, I don’t think there’s a limit.

Mike Warkentin (22:16):
OK because it’s crazy. There are a lot—it’s so rare to see gigantic gyms. And we know from the data—we published this in our state of the industry guide—there aren’t a ton of gyms that are running exactly what you’re doing. Big, big membership counts always require these incredible systems. And I talked to a gym owner in Chile about this. He has, I think, 1,000 members. And he talked—he has to have systems and staff and so forth. So, it’s—I mean, you are obviously a CEO, or you’re putting together a team. You are not just sitting there coaching squats. Like do you coach any classes at all in the gym now?

Rune Larsen (22:47):
I have one class per week. And then I think I have six hours of PT, and that’s a little bit too many, to be honest. But I had to take on some clients because I couldn’t say no. They were very interesting people. I wanted them. So, my ego, you know. But I’d like to coach between one to three hours per week at the maximum. So because—

Mike Warkentin (23:09):
I don’t know, me—oh, sorry, go ahead.

Rune Larsen (23:11):
Yeah, I have to stand it at some point, you know, help them or things will happen, but I need to spend my time on other stuff. I figured out over the time.

Mike Warkentin (23:20):
So like maybe, I don’t know, are you spending maybe 15, 20% of your time coaching and 80% of your time being the CEO?

Rune Larsen (23:25):
Yes. Yeah. And nearly maybe even 90%. Yes.

Mike Warkentin (23:29):
OK, so that’s good. Let me ask you this. So, gym owners out there—there’s so many of them—will say, “I want to have 400 clients; I want to have 500 clients.” What would you tell them? Would you say that’s a great idea? Or what would you—what advice would you give them to get them moving in the right direction, the right way? Because a lot of people will just say, “I want 500 clients. I’m going to fill my gym, and I’m not going to focus on retention or goal reviews or any of the structures.” How should they approach a large number?

Rune Larsen (23:51):
They should focus on retention. And one of the best ways is to build staff as soon as possible. especially when talking about the CSM role because it is the fastest paying itself back role I could ever imagine in the gym. And when I figured out how easy—of course it’s not easy, but you know—how fast we got 200 goal reviews. It took—like when I figured out how it only took me three months. If I can do other people can too. So, it is so fast to fill up a schedule. The CSM will have stuff to do. Do not worry about “Do I even have enough?” Yes, you have.

Mike Warkentin (24:31):
And remember listeners, Rune mentioned earlier, he gave his CSM targets and said, “I want you to add this many goal reviews each month.” And actually tracking the metrics and saying, “Is this successful? Are we moving in the right direction? What happens?” And I’ll give you another couple of stats, guys. I believe the numbers are 30% of clients who do goal reviews will upgrade their service packages by about 30%. Meaning that you’re going to get retention, but they’re also going to buy more stuff. Have you seen that Rune? Yeah.

Rune Larsen (24:55):
Yeah, definitely. An average of 30% seems fair.

Mike Warkentin (25:00):
Yeah. And that’s just a general one. It’s going to vary a little bit between gyms, but you’re going to get retention, longer length of engagement from these goal review sessions. And then some people are going to say, “Oh, I can book PT sessions to lose weight faster? I’m going to do that.” And they start spending more. In Rune’s case, this is like a huge deal because that PT session is $130. Right. So, your revenue—so anytime you talk to a client or your CSM talks to a client, and they upgrade into a PT thing, your average revenue just goes, “Pew!”

Rune Larsen (25:27):
Exactly. It’s both a short-term play to add the CSM because of the how fast the role makes sense, but it’s also a long-term play when you work on retention and when you have a gym where you actually care about people because the selling part becomes easier and easier. We have seen with at least 20 clients over the course of the last two years, when you talk to them and ask, “What do you want to accomplish?” And then we make a plan, but they end up saying, “But I want to do it myself because it seems pretty expensive,” and that’s totally fine, then do this. And then when you talk to people every quarter, and they have to come back to you all times in a row and say, “I didn’t do it this time. I didn’t do it this time.” Well, one year after you can actually look them in the eye and say, “OK, I care so much that you are not going to leave this room before you sign some PT with me because obviously you’re not going to do it alone.” And that’s just the easiest sell you can ever do.

Mike Warkentin (26:20):
Wow. But you have to have that relationship, and you have to know this stuff. So, those goal reviews and those check-ins are essential.

Rune Larsen (26:26):
Yeah. Yeah. And it is a part of having a little private gym.

Mike Warkentin (26:30):
Wow. I could ask you questions for an hour, but I don’t want to overwhelm listeners. So, what I’m going to do is going to wrap this up, and I’m going to give them a couple things to think about based on what you’ve said. You’ve mentioned, as a gym with a huge client count that’s growing, the most important thing is retention. So, listeners, if you take nothing from this today, refocus on retaining your clients. The best way to do that is going to be to talk to them one-on-one regularly—every month, every 90 days, as much as you can. If you find that overwhelming, what Rune’s done is hired a client success manager and put target metrics in place. “Do this many check-ins this way.” And when you bring new clients in, use this prescriptive model; I’ll put a link to the show notes to the exact definition of how this works. So, you can look at it, meet with clients, ask them about their goals, tell them the best prescription. You may have to adjust that prescription based on price, but you might not. From there, meet with them regularly. Are you accomplishing the goals that you set earlier? If no, buy this, change this, do this. If yes, let’s go further faster. Does that reflect your implementation of the prescriptive model?

Rune Larsen (27:34):
It does. Yes, it does. And again, you need systems because if you have that many clients in a row, you have to remember what we talked about last time to help them better.

Mike Warkentin (27:43):
Especially as it grows. So, I mean, have you—as you’ve grown, have you noticed that your systems maybe break a little bit as you hit certain numbers, and you have to fix things? Or have they been just airtight the whole way?

Rune Larsen (27:54):
No, we have made mistakes a lot of times. So, you know, we build a system that is, “OK, this is airtight.” Yeah. Well, only up to 30. New system: up to 60. OK. New system. So, every time we add more people, we had to find something new. But right now, we are doing quite well. So, the plan now is to build—I didn’t actually think that we’d hit 200, but, again, last month was crazy. So, I have to look for another CSM now because the plan was to hit just below 200 and then add another one. So now I’m a little behind on that one because things went too fast. So, she’s going to need a partner now.

Mike Warkentin (28:31):
OK. And I’ve heard this from other gym owners that the retention and this whole process is that important. It may require a couple of people, but the cool part—and you’ve said it and other people have said it—this is not an expense, it’s actually an investment because you’re seeing the numbers move as a result of this investment in staffing. You’ve seen that and tracked it, right?

Rune Larsen (28:49):
Yes, yes. And not only for the gym, also for the coaches who are making this for a living. Again, if you put the best person on the biggest opportunities, what we’ve seen is some of the coaches who really love coaching, when they have a client for like three months or so, when they ask them if they’d like to continue, some of them will say, “No, thanks, I’m done for now.” But if we are, like, “I don’t believe that; there has to be something wrong,” If my CSM just contacts them and in a very honest way, ask them, “Are you sure you don’t want this?” 50% of the time, they want to keep on going anyway. So, the CSM is also holding a hand on all of my full-time coaches.

Mike Warkentin (29:27):
Oh man, Rune, I think you get the award already in 2024 of having the most metrics on command at the drop of a hat from any gym on an interview. Thank you so much for that.

Rune Larsen (29:39):
Of course.

Mike Warkentin (29:40):
Listeners, focus on your retention systems. There’s a ton of great info in here, but I’m just going to leave you with that. Focus on retention systems. If you do that, your client count will go up. Your average revenue per member will go up. Length of engagement will go up. Everything will change if you keep more members longer and talk to them more often. Rune, thank you so much for being here today. This was a great episode packed with data. I can’t thank you enough for it.

Rune Larsen (30:02):
Happy to be here.

Mike Warkentin (30:03):
This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and if you want to talk about more things and find out more stuff from the gym world, head to gymownersunited.com. That’s the place where you can continue this conversation. Get free guides from Chris Cooper and get advice from Two-Brain mentors. Gymownersunited.com. Thank you so much.

The post 512 Members: How BoxLife/CrossFit 5512 Did It in Denmark appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The “Paying-Itself-Back Role” That Drives Retention

Numbers matter in a gym business—a lot.

Yet it’s not uncommon to see gym owners who track every squat and deadlift rep go blank when asked about the length of engagement in their businesses.

Length of engagement (LEG) is a measure of retention, and it’s a key performance indicator in a microgym.

If you don’t know your current LEG, you’ll never be able to figure out if it’s improving. And you’ll never be able to measure the effects of your retention tactics.

And here’s something many people don’t realize: Retention is the first key to increasing client count in a gym. Marketing is the second. Because if your marketing is an A+ but your retention is an F, your gym won’t grow.

Hard Data and Amazing Results

In a recent episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” we interviewed Rune Laursen of BoxLife in Denmark. Rune had earned a spot on our Top 10 leaderboard for client count in December 2023, and he churned out stat after stat during the February interview. Whenever he was asked a question, he answered with an exact metric.

Here’s an example: Rune wanted to use Goal Review Sessions to improve LEG, so he had his client success manager make a Facebook post about the sessions.

He only got three bookings, so he tried another approach.

First, he added Goal Review Sessions to his client journey for new members. These people just saw the meetings as “part of the deal,” and he soon had lots of sessions on the calendar. In those sessions, Rune’s CSM worked hard to retain clients by solving problems and offering more valuable services.

Then he targeted at-risk members—people who hadn’t worked out in the last two weeks. He had 80 of these people, and his CSM started contacting them. It was a lot of work, so Rune added a second person to the system.

When the system was running well, Rune ran his numbers. Instead of 80 at-risk members, he had less than 10.

It gets better: When Rune’s long-term members saw the success newer members were having with goal reviews, he started focusing on the old-school members who had be hesitant to book sessions.

Rune added even more staff hours to his retention plan—and he added 120 goal reviews in a single month.

Quick stat for you: Our data shows that about 30 percent of clients who book goal reviews upgrade their service packages by about 30 percent. And we know these sessions improve retention.

Rune confirmed it: His length of engagement increased from 12 to 20 months as his CSM completed more goal reviews.

With retention vastly improved, his membership total increased and he earned a spot on our leaderboard, with 457 clients. Between December, when we ran the numbers, and February, when we interviewed Rune, he drove the number up to 512.

His revenue also went up “dramatically.”

Rune defines “front-end revenue” as everything sold beyond general memberships, and he added about US$20,000 a month to this category. Remember, that doesn’t even include all the revenue from new membership fees.

I’ll stop throwing stats at you now.

I’ll just circle back to remind you that retention is the key to more clients—and investing in staff is the key to retention.

I say “investing in staff” because a CSM isn’t an expense at BoxLife. The role generates a measurable return that warrants greater investment.

“It is the fastest ‘paying-itself-back role’ I could ever imagine in a gym,” Rune said.

You can watch the whole interview here:

Start Small and Track ROI

So if you want a lot of clients, you must improve retention. One of the easiest ways to do that is to hire a CSM.

And you don’t have to go big and hire a full-time CSM right off the bat. You can start small.

Here’s an example: Allocate about five hours a week to a CSM. That might cost you $120 a week, or $500 a month. Have the CSM work to book Goal Review Sessions—be sure to provide clear instructions and targets.

Then run your numbers every month to see if revenue and retention are increasing. If they are, the CSM’s cost will be more than covered. At that point, you might consider adding more CSM hours, then running the numbers again in a month or two.

Remember, I said numbers matter in a gym business. They’re critical.

If you have them, you can make smart investments that pay off handsomely. If you don’t, you’re flying blind.

Our mentors can help you get a CSM up to speed very fast with tactics and plug-and-play resources. To find out more, book a call here.

The post The “Paying-Itself-Back Role” That Drives Retention appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Retention: The Key to Huge Client Counts in Gyms

Every gym on our December 2023 leaderboard had more than 324 clients.

It’s worth mentioning that big numbers like this are relatively rare.

In our 2023 “State of the Industry” report, we discovered the average gym has about 150-160 members.

That’s a great first target. If you have 150 members who pay about $205 a month on average, you can earn a six-figure income and avoid the stress that comes with huge overhead and large teams.

Those challenges are real, by the way. When we interview the owners of gyms with large client counts, the words “staffing” and “systems” come up right away. You simply can’t manage a ton of members without a thick book of standard operating procedures and a solid team-building plan.

Sometimes our conversations with these gym owners sound like discussions in the C-suite of some large corporation.

We never hear about squat programs and weightlifting progressions. It’s always stuff like this:

“I gave my client success manager clear roles and tasks, and I meet with him monthly to review our hard targets. Then I compare those metrics to key performance indicators for lifetime value and length of engagement. When the CSM hits his targets, all KPIs improve every single time, so we’re hiring a second CSM now.”

That’s the kind of mentality you need to achieve client counts like this:

One of our leaders completely opened his data set for us on the “Run a Profitable Gym” podcast/YouTube channel, and I’ll provide a link to that interview when it’s published tomorrow.

Here’s more of what our leaders had to say when we asked them how they got so many members:

“Previously (we focused on) marketing, but since COVID … we have had to transition more towards offering high-end services, which has led us to utilize Two-Brain resources and guides more and more as time has gone on. Our focus now is retention.”

“Initially we were solely focused on marketing, driving in 70-100 new members a month, but now we are around 50-60 new a month. We hired a CSM who is working well at prescribing and doing goal reviews. … We’re taking on board Two-Brain’s systems for retention, the Prescriptive Model and average revenue per member.”

“Retention!”

“We just actually took action, and our data shows what is possible with Two-Brain Business. … When I started goal reviews, I was able to book just five. After hiring a CSM, she booked over 100 goal reviews inside 14 days. Today, we average 180 goal reviews every 90 days.”

“Colm O’Reilly’s paid marketing Office Hours are massive in our ability to drive in new members. We average 132 leads a month, up from just 20 with organic. These people are hot leads, too: They want to talk to us about their health and fitness. We set 60 appointments and 48 showed.”

“We offered something fun for all our different types of clients and focused on the client journey, gift giving and milestone celebrations.”

“We offer weekly Friday bring-a-friend sessions called Flex Friday—one at noon and one at 8 p.m. These are the only sessions that members can bring a friend to. The sessions are special. The coach can make up the workout and make it something fun. The client cap is twice that of a normal class, sometimes three times. We ask all new members to go to that class to meet other people. In the evening, people hang out for hours after that while having social drinks.”

I think you’ll note the common theme here: retention.

If you want a gym with a lot of clients, you must focus on increasing length of engagement.

If you’re not sure how to do that, a mentor can help.

The post Retention: The Key to Huge Client Counts in Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Marketing & Retention: Tips From Gym Owners With 300+ Clients

Chris Cooper (00:02):
Quick question. If you’ve got 1,000 clients in a micro gym, can we still even call you a micro gym? I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and it’s our leaderboard show, and it’s one of my favorites where we talk about who is serving the most clients in their box. Today, what I’m going to do is give you our Top 10 for client headcount in Two-Brain, worldwide. There are a few reasons I’m extra excited about this show. Number one, as always, we’re going to tell you how they did it. We’re going to go step by step and say like, “Here’s how this gym got to over 1,000 members, and here’s how this gym got to 700.” Number two, I love the international flavor. Now of course these are microgyms. Some are CrossFit gyms; some are strength conditioning. I think Fit Body Boot Camp might be on the leaderboard this time.

Chris Cooper (00:49):
There are some franchises like F45 in the mix here too. So, it’s really awesome to see how these all work together or compete with one another or play out. But what’s really cool is that no matter what the gym method is, the model that we give them in Two Brain is highly effective. And using the four marketing funnels that we teach in our mentorship practice is exactly how every single one of these gyms—no matter what stripe, no matter what country, no matter what method—got to where they are. So, let’s get into it. First, I’m going to do a countdown of the Top 10 gyms by client headcount in Two-Brain Business. Now, first, number 10 on our leaderboard for client headcount last month comes from the USA. They have 324 paying clients, and that’s amazing. But what’s really amazing is that their profit margin is also great.

Chris Cooper (01:36):
Look, while client headcount is amazing and that’s what we’re here today to celebrate, it’s not the only thing. There are many gyms out there, especially in the CrossFit world, but also in like some kickboxing franchises, they’ll say, “We got 500 gyms,” but they’re not even profitable with 500 clients, or you know, “We got 500 clients.” They’re still not even profitable. They can have 300 clients, and they still can’t pay a coach a single great income, or the owner is not making a great income themselves. And so, often if you see people who are like, “I got 300 clients, and I’m going to open a second gym,” it’s because they don’t know how to make good money at their first gym. 300 clients is a lot. The other thing you have to consider is that sometimes with a client headcount that’s really high, you also get a lot of churn.

Chris Cooper (02:22):
You might not even want 300 clients because that means you’ve got to get 10 new clients every single month just to replace the ones you lose. But the amazing thing about the people on this leaderboard is that while they’re really, really strong at this client headcount metric, all of them are also pretty good at retention, and some are amazing at ARM. There’s somebody on this leaderboard from the U.S. whose headcount is under 400, and their net profit for one month last month was $35,000. One month. That’s just profit; that’s not revenue. So, looking at client headcount, to me, is like looking at the biggest deadlifts in the world: amazing, inspiring, incredible. I can learn from you, but if that deadlifter is in the Top 10 in the world for deadlift and can also run 17-minute 5K, wow, I’m going to learn a ton from you.

Chris Cooper (03:10):
And so publicly, we share one of these every single month so that you can learn how to get more clients or how to improve client value or how to improve retention. And then in our mentorship program, we teach you how to do all of it. Alright, so starting with number ten, 324 clients in your microgym. Congratulations. Number nine—also in the USA—346 clients in your microgym. Congratulations. I know both of these gyms; I know who they are, and the owners are making a good living and providing meaningful opportunities to their coaches at 324 clients. And that’s what we care about most. At number eight, we have a gym from the Netherlands with 363 clients in their microgym. Congratulations. We spoke to this gym and got a little bit of information, and what they’ve been doing recently to make it onto the leaderboard is just auditing their marketing funnels.

Chris Cooper (04:02):
So a lot of gyms will find they’re doing good things with their marketing, but they don’t have a cohesive plan. And so, they work with their mentor to audit all four of their marketing funnels. So real quickly, those four marketing funnels are paid ads: You need to have a paid ads funnel, even if you’re spending a dollar a day on paid ads. If you’re not doing paid ads right now, you’re losing ground. We’re going to show you how to do that really effectively, so you don’t have to blow 500 bucks a month on it—unless you want to. Second, you need a referral funnel: You need to be active about referrals. You need to have a process for getting referrals, not just like waiting and hoping that somebody brings their buddy. Third: You need to have an organic social media funnel. This doesn’t just mean posting random junk on social media like memes and gifs and jokes.

Chris Cooper (04:46):
You actually have to have a plan, and you have to have a plan to get people off of Instagram and onto your seat in your sales office. You have to have that plan—like it’s the whole funnel. It’s not just posting every day that counts. It’s: How do you get people from Instagram into your office? Facebook, et cetera. And then the fourth funnel that you use is a content funnel, and this is like the bigger content: This is blog posts, podcasts, YouTube, and producing this stuff is what builds trust. It helps with your retention, and it helps with your marketing. And each one of these four funnels feed the other; the ads funnel gets people to see more of your content, and your social media funnel gets people to engage with your content better or gets them off Instagram and onto your website. And then your website gets people to book the NSI.

Chris Cooper (05:29):
And of course we measure metrics along every step. The people who got on the leaderboard are not there because they’re really, really good at Facebook ads only, or they’re not there because they have an amazing retention plan. Maybe they do, but more than anything else, they’re probably pretty good at all four. They’re probably good at auditing all four. They probably routinely check to make sure that the funnels are active and working. If there’s one meta lesson that I want you to take from this episode, that’s it. Go audit your four funnels; audit the different stages of each funnel. Is this generating me leads? Are those leads going to my website? Are they booking appointments, and are they signing up when they come in? Those are the four levels of the four funnels. You need to audit all of those steps, and if you do that, you’ll get more clients.

Chris Cooper (06:11):
Number seven is from Belgium: 373 clients. So far, we’ve only gone through four gyms. We’ve got two from the U.S., one from the Netherlands and one from Belgium. The number six gym is also from the U.S. They have 391 clients. Again, these are high-value clients. They’re not just paying you 70 bucks a month to come in and attend your group class. Like these are good clients with long-term retention and a very high ARM. Number five on our leaderboard, just shy of 400, but also tied with number four is 395 clients, and that’s to a gym in the U.K. Love it so much. But as I said, they’re tied with number four in the leaderboard, who also has 395 clients, and they’re from the Netherlands. This is the first time that I can remember that we’ve had two completely separate gyms from the Netherlands crack the Top 10 for client headcount, value or retention.

Chris Cooper (07:05):
So congratulations to the owners of both of those gyms. That’s incredible. Good for you. Alright, third on our list for most clients in Two-Brain last month: 457 clients, and this gym is in Denmark. Amazing job. Now I just want to have a quick reminder here. These are not like 457 clients across two gyms, three gyms. This is one location: 457 clients. I know it’s really popular in a lot of different methods or affiliates or franchises to hear about these gyms that have 1,000 clients, 3,000 clients. You need to ask questions about those numbers. You always want to know, like, “Yeah, but what’s your retention? Are you replacing 50 clients a month? You’re not going to be able to do that forever. What’s the value of these clients? Why do you need so many clients? And is that all-time, or do you know for sure?”

Chris Cooper (07:56):
“How do you have a relationship with all these clients?” So, we want to report single-location clients so that we’re comparing apples to apples. You know, if somebody shows up, for example, like maybe you’re in Spain. You’ve only been open for a year; you’ve got 400 clients, but that’s spread across three boxes. There’s less we can learn from you than from these guys who have been open for years, and they have clients who stick around for years, and those clients are high value and you know, et cetera. And they’re still providing an amazing opportunity. They’re good at marketing, but they’re really, really, really good at retention. You know, most gyms that we meet don’t have a marketing problem. They have a retention problem. And the way that you get to a good client headcount is not to be the best at marketing; it’s to be incredible at retention.

Chris Cooper (08:43):
It’s not just getting more people in. It’s keeping the people you get. So that’s a top tip from some of these people on the leaderboard. Our second-place last month has 698 clients at one location in the USA. Congratulations to them. And finally, I guess we could do the big drum roll here. Our gym with the most active clients last month is 1,034 clients. This is a CrossFit gym—single location—in Chile. This guy has been on the leaderboard before. He has an enormous heart. Actually. He just texted us two nights ago. He was on the beach somewhere in Mexico on a family vacation. His gym is still going without him. He’s got over 1,000 clients. Like this guy is a rockstar in the fitness community, let alone the CrossFit community. He is legit when he says he’s got 1,034 clients, that means like active as of, you know, today.

Chris Cooper (09:36):
He knows exactly how many clients he’s got. He’s got systems in place to help him get and keep those clients. Now, I’ve got a couple of other tips for you from the leaders. So, I said earlier that the reason that a lot of these gyms get these clients is retention more than marketing. You know, you used to hear from all these marketing agencies, “We put 80 clients into gym last month.” They never say, “And 60 are still there today.” They never say, “We put 100 people into that gym last year, and 98 of them are still there,” right? You never hear that. And that’s because while these agencies sometimes are effective at getting people in your gym, the people that they bring in are the wrong people, or those people are really not interested long-term, and it creates this big churn problem.

Chris Cooper (10:22):
These gyms that I’m highlighting to you are impressive not just because they have big numbers, but because they keep them. And so, when we were talking to one of these gym owners—he was always on the leaderboard, by the way; sometimes he’s top, but he is always like Top 4—he said, “My numbers are due to retention. I use a CSM”—that’s a client success manager, somebody who’s just in charge of retention—”and we do goal review sessions. I gave the CSM targets, and they dramatically increased the number of people who show up for their goal reviews. We started doing them first with new clients. Then we started targeting at-risk members to save them by booking goal reviews and talking to them before they quit. Then we started backfilling with goal reviews on all of our existing clients. And at first, they were hesitant, but we’re now seeing new people get better service and results.”

Chris Cooper (11:10):
“I tracked all my metrics, and I saw them improve as a result of this. My business is 75% group and 25% personal training. And while group rates in Denmark”—this guy is in Denmark—”are not good, like a hundred bucks a month or something, personal training rates in Denmark are very high, like 130 bucks a month.” So, almost double the average of the U.S. So, there’s a massive premium there. And the beautiful part about all that PT is that the people who sign up for PT at this guy’s gym in Denmark, there are people who would’ve said no to his group program. Like he’s opening the door to them and letting them come in and keeping them longer in PT, and they’re paying more per session than most people pay per month for a group. So, while this is kind of a HIIT-model-type gym, just having that option for one-on-one will allow people to come into your gym who wouldn’t be signing up for your group program.

Chris Cooper (12:05):
I think that’s really important to learn here. And he’s keeping them. The same guy says he’s also having great success with Facebook ads, and he hit a jackpot in January after the leaderboard came out. He got about 200 leads, and he added about 50 more clients. So, his board total of 457 back then is now 512. That’s not his only funnel, but it’s the big one for him right now. So, look: Which of the four funnels are going to be most important to you? It depends where you are in the world. It depends where you are in the lifespan of your gym. Right now, if you’re in Western Europe, Facebook ads seem to be working really well. Right now, if you’re in the States—depending where you are in the States—Facebook and Instagram ads might be working, or they might not be.

Chris Cooper (12:48):
It could be where you are in the states that Google is far more important, and you need to be working on reviews. The key though is that you’ve mapped out your four marketing funnels. You check them every quarter or so; you audit them to make sure that they’re working. The big mistake a lot of gym owners make when they’re trying to get more clients is they’ll just try one thing in isolation. “I’m going to post every day to Instagram for 30 days.” Great. Like, that’s one part of one funnel. It’s like changing one tire on your car and letting the other three stay flat and not checking them. You have to do this. It doesn’t take a PhD in marketing to figure out how to do a social media audit. We do it with our clients all the time. It’s a standard operating procedure between the mentor and their client.

Chris Cooper (13:34):
They just do this. And once they fix those funnels, they find that, “Oh, I don’t actually need to do this new thing, or I don’t have to go learn about this crazy thing that I don’t have time for. I just need to fix and shore up the marketing that I have if I want to get more clients.” And most importantly, for the millionth time, keep the clients that you sign up longer: That is the key to big numbers. It’s retention, not marketing, but you have to have the marketing too. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Hey, if this is helpful to you, you can talk to the people on this leaderboard at gymownersunited.com. That’s our free group. There are almost 9,000 gym owners in there sharing advice, sharing tips, sharing resources, and we share free stuff from Two-Brain every single day. If you’re ready to stop trying to figure this stuff out all on your own, you want to just get the results fast instead of, “Oh, I’ll read this book. I’ll try and figure out what he’s talking about with funnels and leads and set rates, show rate, close rate. I’ll just like forget about this podcast.” Look, book a call with my team; get a mentor. When you buy mentorship, you’re buying speed. You don’t have to guess. You don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to study on it. You just have to do it. And the mentor is there to do it with you. Thank you for your service.

The post Marketing & Retention: Tips From Gym Owners With 300+ Clients appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Focus on This One Thing to Add More Members

“Retention!”

That’s what one of our top gym owners said when we asked him how he earned a spot on our leaderboard for client count.

I love the answer because it’s clear that gyms with a lot of clients are great at retention and acquisition—in that order.

If you focus on acquisition before you’ve got retention systems in place, you’re on a hamster wheel. You’re going to work hard but never get anywhere. You just can’t build your client count if members are leaving in droves.

And it’s worth mentioning that most gyms don’t need 400 or 500 members. An owner can make $100,000 or more with just 150 members.

I know that number gets some people fired up on social media. Business owners with very low rates don’t understand how the math works, and others really want 300 or more members.

I’ll just mention that you can make a great living with 150, and if you want more, consider the number a great first target.

If you can run an airtight operation with 150 members, you’ll be ready to add more if you want to. But if you run a sloppy business with 150 members, the wheels will fall off when you push for 200 or more.

Here’s what our masters of retention and acquisition did in December 2023:

Amazing, right?

I can tell you that one of these gyms has added another 55 members since we ran the numbers in December.

And another has capped membership. They have all the clients they need and want, so they’ve decided to hold fast at 400 and focus on improving the client experience.​

We work with gyms that have fewer than 100 members and gyms that have more than 1,000. We can help you acquire the number you need to live the life you want, and we’ll help you figure out what that number is with a spreadsheet.

With that goal in mind, we’ll make a plan, and we’ll hold you to it so you make swift progress.

The exact plan for every gym is different, but I can tell you this: No matter how many members you want, we’ll always start working toward that number by figuring out how you can hold onto current clients longer.

Acquisition tactics are important, too. But if you have a leaky bucket, you’ll want to patch the hole before you try to fill it.

The post Focus on This One Thing to Add More Members appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

What if You Already Know Enough About Fitness?

What if you only need one coaching credential?

I know, I know. More is better, the one you have is the best, “that other credential” sucks, and people who only have 1st Level are so much worse than those who have 3rd Level.

I’ve said all that, too. Many times.

But what if we’re all missing the point?

What if a basic coaching credential is fine and we actually need to spend time learning about other aspects of entrepreneurship?

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying continued fitness education isn’t needed. Learning and evolving are important.

But when I was busy adding letters behind my name as a young gym owner, I only learned technical fitness stuff—program design, exercise technique, coaching progressions and so on.

I never took a course that taught me a thing about:

Behavior modification.Motivational techniques.Communication, including public speaking.Interpersonal relations.Business and sales.

I picked some of that stuff up along the way, but for many years I never actively worked to improve those skills. Instead, I learned new muscle-up progressions and cues.

You can see where I’m going here: I invested all my time learning technical stuff. Technical education is fine, and even necessary to a degree. But I never worked on the other skills. At all.

You might suggest that the other skills aren’t as important as teaching someone how to squat safely. You might be right.

But what if you can’t connect with a prospective client and convince them to sign up? Or what if you can’t get that person to show up to squat workouts? What if you can’t get the client to understand your cues?

What if the client just doesn’t like you?

What if your fitness business goes under because you can’t pay the bills?

Complete Self-Improvement

As the owner of a fitness business, you should be technically competent so you can get results for clients and keep them safe.

But consider what might happen if your next course doesn’t involve an in-depth analysis of mesocycles and training adaptations.

Perhaps you learn why some people struggle to make positive changes and can then provide effective behavior-modification strategies to clients.

Maybe you realize why some people wince a little when you bark cues at them, and you learn to soften your approach to help seniors feel more comfortable in your care.

Or maybe you learn how to confront objections in the sales office so a person who badly needs your help signs up to receive your help.

Would you be a less irritable, less stressed coach if someone taught you how to make sure your business exists for 30 years and allows you to retire someday?

There’s nothing wrong with collecting fitness credentials. But technical knowledge is just a small part of being a great coach and gym owner.

Try this today: Instead of asking “what fitness course should I take next?” ask “what should I learn to make me a better overall coach and business owner?”

You might settle on a fitness course. And it’s OK if you do.

But if you really consider the question and want to become a more complete gym owner, you might decide on another course of self-improvement. Perhaps it will involve Toastmasters, a psychology seminar at the local college or even business training.

If it’s the latter, head here.

The point: As a gym owner, you’re more than a fitness coach. You’re a CEO and entrepreneur.

So what do you really need to learn next?

The post What if You Already Know Enough About Fitness? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.