Chris Cooper's Blog, page 53

How to Earn Clients With a Fitness Gift Guide

Every home gym needs a set of parallettes and a vibrating foam roller.

Right?

Probably not, but it’s the season of holiday gift guides for fitness freaks, and the internet is full of goofy gimmicks, pointless products and bad advice.

If you offer some real insight in your media, you might earn a new client.

Here’s an example of the kind of “fitness advice” people see at the time of year when retailers push hardest to sell stuff:

“10 Highly-Reviewed Fitness Products That You’ll Want to Treat Yourself To”

Let’s be clear: This “article” is an ad. But it’s found in the “Health & Fitness” section of CTV.ca, and most people won’t see the fine print, which reads: “The Shopping Trends team is independent of the journalists at CTV News. We may earn a commission when you use our links to shop.”

You could delete “may” from that sentence. This is product placement made to look like fitness advice. So people are going to look at the list of mostly useless products and consider adding them to their home gym or gifting them to others.

As gym owners, you and I both know most of the products on the list aren’t essential or even particularly effective. And it’s not clear how buying a folding mat or pink resistance band will improve fitness.

That’s where you come in.

Why not create a short list of effective fitness products people can buy or gift? The key: Your list will show off your expertise, and you can use it to start conversations with potential clients.

The Plan

Here are the simple steps you can take today:

1. Make a List

Pick five locally available products that a new or even experienced exerciser might use to get fit. Describe each product and explain why it’s on your list. Set yourself apart by passing on the Shake Weight and explaining how a 35-lb. kettlebell is an incredibly versatile, relatively inexpensive piece of gear that can help people with strength and conditioning.

You can even get creative with your list. For example, you could break it up like this: top products under $50, under $100, over $500, etc.

Bonus points: Include something you sell and link to it.

2. Contact Local Businesses

Connect to other local businesses whose products you’re featuring and tell them when your article is coming out. At the very least, you’ll start a conversation with another local entrepreneur. But you might even get a special discount code, a back link from the other website, a mention on social media or even client referrals.

3. Promote Yourself

Include your gym’s intro package or PT sessions on your list.

4. Create a Guide

Pick one of the items on your list—the most popular one­—and write a short guide for it. For example: “Top 5 At-Home Kettlebell Workouts” or “How Much Protein Powder Do I Need to Take?” Offer that guide to readers for free if they send you a message. When they do, send the guide but continue the conversation naturally: “What are your fitness goals for 2024?”

You can also use a website to automate delivery of your “lead magnets.” Just be sure that your system collects email addresses and feeds them into a nurturing sequence.

5. Publish!

Post your article to your blog and share the link everywhere.

You can also publish a truncated version of the blog right to social media if you’re prepared to monitor messages and prefer that platform to your website.

Help First

The principle here is simple, and Chris Cooper has written about it many times:

People need help getting fit. Don’t let them get led astray and buy dumb products they’ll never use. Help them find good products from reputable retailers. Then offer to tell them how to use the products properly to accomplish their goals.

Some of the people you connect with are going to become clients because they’ll recognize your expertise and appreciate your assistance.

Is that “selling”? Not in the traditional sense. It’s helping. But if you help people and establish yourself as a kind local expert, you’re going to make sales, too.

“Help First” by Chris Cooper’s is available here.

The post How to Earn Clients With a Fitness Gift Guide appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Coaching Credentials Didn’t Save My Gym Business

My functional fitness gym almost sunk in the mid-2010s.

Why?

I had very good coaches and lots of credentials.

But I didn’t know anything about running a business properly.

The short summary: We had too many classes with too few people, and my labor costs outpaced revenue. We had no plan to generate more revenue by increasing client value, adding more clients or retaining members longer.

At our lowest point, we lost $5,000 in a month. I was scared.

And my ability to spot an early arm bend in a snatch didn’t help me at all.

As a young gym owner I fell into the trap that’s all too common: I spent almost all my time coaching and learning more about coaching.

I was convinced that would make my gym successful.

I, like you, heard all the assertions that great coaches attract clients without even trying to do so. And I heard that bad gyms were ruining the fitness industry and hurting clients. More fitness education was obviously better … right?

As I prioritized coach development, the business’s finances got worse.

The local market became more competitive. I definitely retained a few clients because of strong personal relationships built on trust and effective coaching, but I realized that even great coaching wasn’t enough to stop a client from joining a gym 30 minutes closer to home or work. Despite that, I still paid for more coach education with funds from the dwindling savings account.

I wasn’t dumb enough to think everything was fine, but I didn’t know how to solve my problems.

I didn’t have a clue how to raise rates that were obviously too low. I didn’t know how to tie staff costs to revenue generation.I didn’t know how to help trainers make more money when we couldn’t afford to add more classes for them to coach. I didn’t know how to analyze attendance and kill or fill classes that were costing me money. In fact, I was horrified by the idea of cutting a slot: If people had less access to my outstanding coaches, they’d be more likely to leave, right?I didn’t know why people were leaving or how to get them to stay longer.I didn’t know how to find new clients to replace the departed.

I became stressed and angry—and of course the quality of my coaching declined. The very thing I’d prioritized was being eroded because I couldn’t figure out how to tilt the balance on my monthly profit and loss sheet.

It was a disaster. And my situation wasn’t uncommon. Many of my peers had similar experiences. Some survived and suffered, and others closed their gyms. A few got help and started to thrive.

Eventually, I got help running my business, too, and we stepped back from the edge of the cliff.

But we couldn’t have done it without business help.

Experience, Stories and Data

Over the last weeks, I’ve seen a lot of talk about coaching credentials. You have, too.

Here’s what my experience taught me:

More credentials don’t guarantee better coaching. I’ve seen amazing coaches with one basic credential and horrid coaches with half a dozen sought-after credentials. The ability to pass a test or ace an evaluation doesn’t guarantee success in the gym, where the client’s hand actually meets the barbell.More coaching credentials will not help you run your business. How could they? Teaching a squat is nowhere near putting together a quarterly marketing calendar specifically designed to acquire high-value personal-training clients who want to lose weight.

That’s my story, and you should take it as just that: One person’s experience over 13 years running a fitness business.

Now that I’ve learned more about running a business, I know that stories aren’t all that important. Numbers and data are better.

So I’ll point you to a recent article by Chris Cooper. It’s got a simple diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate your business in about five minutes.

Check out the article and use the tool. If you do that and realize that you absolutely require more coaching credentials to improve your fitness business, acquire them.

But if you realize you have greater problems than coach education, address those first, with help from a mentor if needed.

The article and the tool can be found here. Use these resources to push past opinions and stories to get to the truth.

The post Coaching Credentials Didn’t Save My Gym Business appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Broke Gym Owners: Breaking the Cycle and Building Wealth

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Millionaire gym owners—they weren’t a thing a decade ago. Here’s a more likely path: passionate personal trainer, frustrated gym owner, broke gym owner, former gym owner and firefighter. That usually happened, and it happened way too often, but it’s changing. Two-Brain has certified 43 millionaire gym owners so far, and there are more approaching seven-figure net worth as we record this. Chris Cooper’s eighth book is called “Millionaire Gym Owner,” and it lays out the exact paths 15 of our gym owners took to get to their net worth. It’s an incredible story, and we’re going to dig into it today. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I am your host, Mike Warkentin. Hit “subscribe.” You’ll not regret it. Now onto the dollar signs with Two-Brain founder and CEO Chris Cooper. Welcome, Chris. How are you?

Chris Cooper (00:42):
Thanks, man. What an intro.

Mike Warkentin (00:45):
Yeah, it’s cool. 43 gym owners? Millionaires?

Chris Cooper (00:48):
Yeah, I know. That’s amazing. I couldn’t find a single model when I was trying to figure this out 10, 20 years ago. And honestly, just like most gym owners, I didn’t really want to be a millionaire because I wasn’t trying to be rich. I just wanted to see: How am I ever going to pay for my kids’ college, and how am I ever going to retire from this when I get burned out? So, I’m really fired up to talk to you about this because, like you said, my path was following the one that you laid out. And when you see gyms close, you know, on Facebook, it always looks like, “Hey, mission accomplished. We’ve been at this for 10 years. Thank you, everyone. You know, a successful exit.” And then you go on LinkedIn, and you look at the same person’s profile, and it’s like, “Anybody got any real estate listings I can sell? Like, we’ll work for food.” So.

Mike Warkentin (01:34):
And all those clients suffer because they don’t have their great coach.

Chris Cooper (01:37):
That’s right. Yeah. So that’s what we’re really trying to prevent here. But ultimately, if you’re not thinking about the future, you’re just going to run out of time. And that’s going to force you into a career in real estate, selling hamburgers or whatever else.

Mike Warkentin (01:52):
So I’m going to, I’m going to put you on the spot. I’ve had a lot of coffee. I’m going to get right in your face first thing here.

Chris Cooper (1:56):
I love it.

Mike Warkentin (1:57):
When I had my arm down the toilet in 2011 trying to unclog something, I would’ve wanted to just be a ten-thousand-aire. So, why should a struggling gym owner now care about being a millionaire? What is the point of this book? Why should they read it?

Chris Cooper (02:10):
Well, the book is really about time. And what I figured, when I finally hit rock bottom, 2008, early 2009, I realized like, “Okay, maybe if I can keep this thing going for another five years, maybe I’ll figure it out.” But I wasn’t sure I could do it. And I was burned out. You know, my relationships were all suffering. I was missing my daughter growing up. We were barely paying the bills. We were still going down. And I said, like, “Okay, even if I knew the answer today to fix this gym, it’s still not ever going to provide me with the things that it needs to long-term, like my mortgage payment. My kids are going to need more clothes as they grow. Eventually they’re going to want to go to college. I need to really think at a different level than just survival, or I’m going to run out of time.” And so, the book is really about: You got into entrepreneurship to give you wealth, basically, which is the freedom of finances and time. And you have to start thinking about that, or it’s never just going to happen. Like, you’re never just going to wake up one day and say, “Oh, I’m wealthy enough to retire.” You have to have a plan.

Mike Warkentin (03:16):
Okay, so the first step then is obviously you’ve got to make your primary business profitable and stable enough to actually pay you, which mine wasn’t for a very long time. What’s the shortcut there? Like a gym owner—again, think about it’s me again, trying to unclog the toilet, and I’m just like, “Wow, I can’t even pay myself a salary.” What’s the shortcut to even start to get in the right direction before we get even to millionaire-approaching?

Chris Cooper (03:37):
Well, you’ve got to standardize your business. And this is what I went through, and what I’ve tried to summarize best in “Gym Owners Handbook.” This side right here. And that’s basically like you’re getting your gym from wherever it is, losing money, breaking even, to paying you to giving you a good income. And then once you’ve got a good income, the next step is investment. So, the goal is that you can make about 10% more than you actually need to live the life that you want, and you take that 10%, and you put it somewhere else where it’s going to give you a compounding return, and you forget about it. Or some people in our program, they love being active investors, so they’re going to buy an Airbnb or they’re going to buy crypto or whatever—like they love to learn, and that’s what they’re doing. But the point is that you get to an income that’s a little bit more than you need first, and then you start to think about investment for the future.

Mike Warkentin (04:28):
So, you’ve got to standardize your business, right? And that’s the thing that we didn’t do because I was cleaning my toilet, which I should have hired a cleaner. And then I should have gone through the whole value ladder exercise that’s laid out in your books—which, if you’re listening guys, is just hire someone to do a low value job, then do something yourself that makes more money and keep doing that. And all of a sudden, you’ve got that 10% surplus. So, Chris, you said there wasn’t a path for this. What’s the path now?

Chris Cooper (04:51):
Well, the path now is: Get your business stabilized so that it can effectively run without you. And there’s a lot there. I mean, I’m breezing through this, but even with the high speed, low drag of working with a mentor, this generally takes people on average two years, one month, nine days to get to the point where the gym is solid: They could take a vacation, it can run with or without them, and it’s still making them a good income. But after you’ve got that good income, now you have to start thinking about how does my money make me money? And again, not because you want to be a millionaire, so you can buy a top hat and put your Lambo on Instagram. It’s—you want to be a millionaire so that you’ve got enough money to pay for you to not work yourself to death, to pay for the things that are coming up in the future, like rising healthcare costs and your kids’ university tuition. And to spread it around. I mean, gym owners are super generous. Why not give them more money to share?

Mike Warkentin (05:46):
Right. So, in our archives, listeners, we have all kinds of things to help you formalize and systemize your business. We’re not going to hammer that down today. We’re going to talk a little bit more about millionaire stuff. Chris, give me some examples about scaling and investing, and I’m really pumped to look at this book because you’ve got real stories of people who have done this. And again, back when you started as a gym owner and mentor, this stuff didn’t exist. So, tell me a couple of things that some clever people who you’ve worked with have done to actually reach millionaire status.

Chris Cooper (06:09):
Yeah, there’s a few examples there. And just quickly to preface this, when your parents got a job working for somebody, like they were set up on some kind of retirement path, right? With the company or maybe the government. You as an entrepreneur, you’re not going to have that. Like, you have to create your own retirement plan. And so, there’s a few resources that I looked at. My first investment was real estate, and luckily, I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. And what it taught me was buy and hold. So, I bought the building my gym was in, and I said, “Okay, well now I’m paying myself rent. I’m paying off this mortgage, but when the mortgage is paid off, I can just keep paying myself that rent forever. And whenever I want to retire, I can rent out this building for $3,500 or $4,000 a month, and somebody will keep paying me that for the rest of my life and then keep paying my kids out after I’m gone.”

Chris Cooper (07:03):
And this was kind of like the first building block for me, and it was for many people in this book, but I didn’t just want to share my path. So, what I did was I went to our Tinker program, and I asked 15 or 18 of the Tinkers if we could interview them and if they would share their exact path from broke gym owner to income to investment to millionaire status. And every single one of them said yes because they all want to help other gym owners do this. And so, this is what the book is about. So, a few of them invested in real estate. They followed the same path that I did. They really liked the appeal of owning their own building and having that passive income source. Others went out and started different businesses, which is fine. It’s just, you kind of split your attention that way.

Chris Cooper (07:46):
And I’ve certainly made that mistake. I’ve started many businesses. Others just put their money in something really, really passive. You know, right now, for example, I’m just putting money straight into the bond market because I can get 5.4%, but the rate of return is less important than the attention that I have to give to that. I just put it in, and that’s it. I forget about it for five years. Other people wanted to learn about crypto, and there are a lot of people in our Tinker program who bought Airbnbs, and they’re making really good passive investments from that. What’s interesting is that a lot of the skills that you get from building a gym do translate into other businesses, so you can be successful at those things. You just have to really protect your attention and focus. So, I think we’re going to get into the Barbell Strategy maybe today. But for the most successful people who are growing past that million-dollar net worth, they’re generally staying focused on their gym. Like they’re not losing their passion for that, and they’re investing in other things that make money for them while they sleep.

Mike Warkentin (08:44):
So, it sounds like it’s not just like a “get rich quick,” crazy crypto investment. I mean, some people are obviously doing crypto, but it’s not that, “Wow, boom. Here I am two weeks later, got the Lambo.” Right? It’s not that kind of thing. It’s more you get a stable business that runs itself, pays you more than you need, and then you make calculated strategic advances that work for your personality and probably your geography, right? Real estate is cheap in some places, expensive in others, and then you slowly move forward, and it’s not just, “Oh, I doubled up and doubled up twice. Now I’m retired on a beach.” It’s slow, cautious, productive movement. Is that what I’m hearing?

Chris Cooper (09:19):
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you’re in Vegas, you’re not going to buy your building. And so, what most people in our program do is they’ll spend maybe the first nine months to a year looking at the options, dipping their toes in the water, and then saying, “Okay, I like this one the best.” And I learned that from Kenny Marquardt, who’s in our program, and he is also a coach in the Tinker program. And he said he spent his first year figuring out what he didn’t want to do. And then finally he’s like, “Well, I just want to—I love my gym more than anything else. I want to work there. I’m going to take my money out and put it in some passive investments.” So, they do—they have one or two Airbnbs, they have a couple of passive investments, and he spends most of his time and passion and focus and attention and energy on his gym.

Chris Cooper (10:00):
And that’s amazing, right? Others of us, we feel like we’ve got this entrepreneurial itch, and so we need to open up other businesses. Most of the time, often, that’s a mistake. Sometimes you find an even greater passion, but you do it with strategy and planning and careful forethought. And that’s what the Tinker program is really all about. Like, so many people have become millionaires in the Tinker program, but they didn’t do it the first day. There was no magic, “Invest in this REIT really quickly, and it’s going to flip for you in six months.” It was: I learned about buying a building. I learned how to buy a building. I started looking for a building. I got guidance on buying it. Maybe I saved 20,000 on it. I learned how to finance it, how to get financing, and then I bought this building, and suddenly I’ve got this asset worth about $4 million. Like, that’s generally the path.

Mike Warkentin (10:53):
Okay. And it’s interesting because time is really on your side with a path like that, right? Where if you start early and get your plan in place—you know, you and I spun our tires for about a decade as gym owners before we had a clue what we were doing—if you get that plan in place early as a new gym owner, get to stability and profitability faster, and then slowly start putting things in these safe 5% compound-return investments or real estate or whatever it is that works for you. But you do that when you’re like 24 instead of 54—it’s not that hard to reach million-dollar net worth if you actually break it down like that. Is it?

Chris Cooper (11:24):
No. I mean, there’s kind of a—investors refer to this Rule of 7, where it’s like your investment should double about every seven years. And you and I—it took me, I don’t know, five years to figure out that I needed this, three years to figure out how to do it, and then two more to actually buy the first building.

Mike Warkentin (11:39):
That’s one double.

Chris Cooper (11:40):
Exactly. I mean, right? So, if you are at millionaire status, and you can add another double, I mean, that takes your money to 2 million just by getting there faster. And you know, our average to get to a 100K net owner benefit income is two years, one month, nine days right now. But then the average to get from there to millionaire is less than two more years. And it’s just because people are making these really smart investments. I just, I want to qualify something real quick, Mike, because I know a lot of people who listen, they’ll see these influencers on Instagram who are like, “I’m a millionaire.” Yeah, and years ago, the Facebook ads agency would say, “That guy’s a millionaire because he had one good month,” and that was all, I mean, it was bullshit. There’s no other way to say it.

Chris Cooper (12:26):
So, what we actually do is we audit our millionaires, and we say, “Okay, let’s take everything that you own, including a very conservative valuation of your gym, all of your assets. Let’s subtract all your debts. And if you’re left with a million dollars in net worth, you are a millionaire. That’s when we send you the plaque.” Right? So basically, if you sold everything that you had for cash, you held the cash in your hands, and then you paid all your debts, you’d still have a million dollars left sitting in your hands. Only if that’s the case, will we actually certify you as a millionaire. And it’s not just one of these fluffy, you know, “I sold a six-week challenge. We made 80 grand one month. That will probably continue forever, so I guess I’m a millionaire.” Like that’s—we all know that’s BS.

Mike Warkentin (13:10):
So, we actually have to see your Lamborghini before we send the plaque.

Chris Cooper (13:13):
I need to ride in it at least three blocks.

Mike Warkentin (13:16):
Right?

Chris Cooper (13:17):
By the way, I mean, if you become a millionaire and you want to buy a Lamborghini, more power to you. Like, I don’t care. I just want gym owners to be successful. And you know, these millionaire gym owners, the one thing that I haven’t talked about is their gyms are not going bankrupt. They have resources, and if they go through a tough time, they can keep their gym going, which means they’re employing their coaches, they’re serving their clients. Like these aren’t the wealthy Scrooge McDuck characters who are like hoarding money somehow. They’ve evolved this mindset of wealth where they’re growing the pie for everybody. And that’s what’s creating the millionaire net worth.

Mike Warkentin (13:53):
I’ve spoken to a bunch of these guys on other episodes of this podcast. The thing that I hear often from them is that they’re proud of creating careers. And they’ll tell me, “I’m paying three staff members $85,000 each. They’ve got 401(k)s, and they’ve got health plans, and it’s amazing.” I’m like, wow, that’s one of their—they list that as like a major accomplishment because they’re not only paying themselves money, but they’re creating careers for these people. And that trickles down into the coaching, right? These happy coaches do great jobs, produce fitter clients, the clients are happier, healthier, and it’s this whole trickle-down effect that you’ve talked about a lot. You mentioned something that I want to get into—the Barbell Strategy. That sounds like a great thing for a gym owner when it comes to investing. What is that?

Chris Cooper (14:30):
So, that comes from Nassim Taleb, who is—he was a very successful stock options trader. He wrote some really important books, for me, like “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile.” And even if you’re not an investor, they’re great books to read. But what he describes as like the optimal investment strategy, it looks like a barbell. So, what he says you want is like one or two very active passion-project investments. So, these are the things that like really get you excited. So, if that’s crypto, then you invest in crypto, and you’re a crypto nerd. But that might also be entrepreneurship, right? Like my gym is my passion project. And then at the other end of the barbell, what you’ve got are like boring, conservative, completely passive investments: stocks, maybe bonds, guaranteed investment certificates, stuff like that, right? And you don’t have a bunch of things in the middle because you want to protect your attention to focus on your passion project. So, the mistake that I made was, “Oh, I’m good at owning a gym. I’m going to own this business, that business, I’m going to own a rehab company, I’m going to own a brain rehab company, I’m going to own Concussion Pro. I’m going to own self-storage businesses.”

Mike Warkentin (15:40):
Some of these sound familiar, Chris.

Chris Cooper (15:41):
These are all legit. And if you give me five minutes, I’ll name 10 more. But what happens there is you’ve got the money, and you’ve got the time to start these businesses. You don’t realize you don’t have the attention to run all these businesses. And finally, what I realized was I don’t need something else that’s going to wake me up at 4 a.m. every morning, get me out of bed excited. Like I have Two-Brain for that. I have my gym for that. Those two are enough. I’m better off, instead of opening a coffee shop and ruining that hobby, I’m actually better off just to put my money somewhere that I don’t have to think about it. And so that’s basically the Barbell Strategy: passion projects on one end, boring investments on the other, nothing in the middle that’s chopping up your time, energy, or attention.

Mike Warkentin (16:24):
There’s a huge learning curve in the middle, right? Yeah. Like on the one side you’ve got your—like you learned your gym—the risky gym thing. You’ve got that stabilized; you figured it out. And then if you’re investing in, like, Apple and GICs over there, that’s pretty stable. You don’t have to really do a lot other than just put the money in. In the middle, there’s this whole learning curve of like, coffee store: How do I get the cups, and what do I do when the person quits, and where does the stuff come from? And like, that’s a whole different thing. And a good entrepreneur can figure that out. But the question is: Why? You know, you might be better off, as you’ve written, to replicate that gym or just do something on the other side, completely easy, where it’s just like, put the money away at 5% and just sit back and go for a vacation.

Chris Cooper (17:02):
One of the key lessons that all these millionaires shared, and I made it really clear in the book, is: You have to learn to think like an investor. So, for example, a few years ago, maybe 10 years ago even, I was down in SoCal—I don’t want to be too specific here—and I was visiting this gym, and the gym was like a showroom for equipment. It was gorgeous. Again Faster used to bring their camera crew in there and take pictures of their rigs because the backdrop was so beautiful. And the gym owner was running good classes. He was doing okay. And then he decided, “I need to open up a coffee shop.” So, he put like 50 grand into this beautiful counter, and he started hiring staff to work at the counter. And he found the best beans. He’s passionate about coffee, but the part he didn’t realize was he had to go to the grocery store twice every single day, and there was all this crazy food waste. And the margin in a coffee shop, like at best is 10%, and you’ve got to pay these staff, and you’ve got to train these staff. And suddenly, he’s shackled to his business again. And this coffee shop business is just chewing up all the profits from the gym, and it eventually bankrupted the gym.

Mike Warkentin (18:09):
Oh, he killed the golden goose.

Chris Cooper (18:10):
Exactly, right? So, that was a great lesson for me because it’s like, “Well, I would rather make my money from the gym and then just go drink coffee at somebody else’s coffee shop.” Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should. And you have to weigh that as an investor would so that you’re getting a return on your time and money and attention.

Mike Warkentin (18:27):
Listeners, whatever appeals to you, you’re going to find in this book, 15 different paths that have worked for various gym owners. So, if you decide like, “No, I don’t like the Barbell Strategy; I’m going to try something else that works for me, you can try that. But these are 15 verified true stories that have steps people have actually taken from gym ownership to become millionaires. So, take a look in there when it comes out, 2024. We’ll make sure we tell you where to get it, and figure out exactly what works for you. But the thing—if you take away from what Chris has said already—start thinking about it now. Start thinking like an investor. Start thinking long-term because time is not on your side when you’re 55 or 60. Time is on your side when you’re a new entrepreneur. Get to profitability, get to stability, then start doing something productive with that extra money so that you can retire and keep your business going. Chris, give me two things as we close this out. Someone’s reading this book—both, there’s two people who are going to read it. They’re going to be the people who are very far away from millionaire status. And there’s the people who are in that range where they’re like, they see it, and they think they can get there maybe in a year or two. What do you want each person to take away from this book? The one thing.

Chris Cooper (19:31):
I think clarity. So, it’s like, you know, pick something and do it. So, for the person who’s struggling to make 100K a year, what I want you to see is inspiration. Like, okay, as soon as I solve this problem, which is no longer complicated—the reason that fixing my gym took me a decade was because there was no roadmap for it. Now there’s roadmaps for it thanks to Two-Brain and mentorship, right? But what I want you to see is when you fix that, there’s always a next step to this. And I want to inspire people to enter the fitness business knowing that it doesn’t have to be a three-year job while you’re attending college and waiting for your real career to start. Like you can actually create a career as a fitness entrepreneur now for the first time in history.

Chris Cooper (20:17):
For the people who are close, what I want them to do is gain some focus. So, there’s some things to learn because even after I reached that status, I still made a ton of mistakes, right? I started all these companies, I put money in the wrong thing, I wasted a ton of time and energy and stuff. And it’s tough to undo all that. So, if you’re close to that level, what I want you to take away from this book is focus on one thing and help you choose. So instead of dabbling in 10 different things—I’m going to buy a laundromat, a self-storage, start a coffee shop, start surfboard waxing company—just pick the one thing that supports your lifestyle goals, that supports your income goals, that supports your family’s goals, and just do that. And of course, there’s mentorship for that too called the Tinker program.

Mike Warkentin (21:05):
The stats, one more time—you said to get to a hundred grand, what’s the average, how long does it take a gym owner?

Chris Cooper (21:09):
Two years, one month, nine days.

Mike Warkentin (21:11):
And that’s with mentorship obviously, guys. So, if you want to talk about that, click the link below because that is not something—it took me and Chris years, maybe 20 years combined, if not more. You guys can do that in two years with help because it’s all laid out. It’s just step by step. A mentor looks at your business, analyzes it, says, “This is where you can make the greatest returns on your time and money. Do this now, do this, now do this.” Now all of a sudden, you’re making a hundred grand, and you’re paying your staff, and you’ve got extra to invest. So, that’s a huge one. Chris, what is—you said getting to millionaire status, how long does that take on average? What have you seen?

Chris Cooper (21:43):
When people enter the Tinker program—it’s tougher to put a mean average to this because the pads are also different—but the average is just under two years. People are making some kind of big move, and that’s often, like, real estate. So, if they’re doing the more conservative thing, it takes a while for that to compound, but they’re also more secure. The people who are in the Tinker program, and they do more investing in big purchases, acquisitions, real estate, buying multiple locations—we didn’t talk about that—those people generally get there a little bit faster. It’s just they’re going to have to work harder. It’s not as passive. And that’s okay. You know, there is a case study in the book too that I love because it’s completely the opposite of what I did. And that’s Tommy Alfinito, and he opened up Wild Feather Distilling, which is—

Mike Warkentin (22:27):
I’ve got to get there sometime.

Chris Cooper (22:29):
I know. Let’s go man, and guess what? It’s super-duper successful. He used—he’s a skilled guy—and he used the skills that he refined, at least in gym ownership, to open up this distillery, and it’s doing amazing work. So, there’s so many examples there, guys. It’s not just like, “Hammer in what Chris did.” That’s why I wanted to have 15 or 18 other gym owners tell their stories in the book.

Mike Warkentin (22:53):
Someone listening to this show is probably going to use the next four years to get from wherever they’re at to a hundred thousand dollars in income and then become a millionaire in our Tinker program. I bet that person is listening, and I hope it is you, listener. Chris, where can people hang out with you and chat a little bit more if they want to talk about things, get some advice for free, learn what gym ownership is all about and how to get better at it? Where can they hang out?

Chris Cooper (23:14):
The best place is gymownersunited.com. That’s our free group where gym owners just congregate, help each other, and we share resources in there for people until they’re ready to start accelerating their growth with mentorship.

Mike Warkentin (23:27):
Thanks for listening guys. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” That has been Chris Cooper. “Millionaire Gym Owner” is coming out in 2024. We will tell you where you can get it and how. Thanks for listening. Please hit “subscribe” on your way out, and don’t forget to join Gym Owners United. Thanks.

The post Broke Gym Owners: Breaking the Cycle and Building Wealth appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Why Boring Investments Are Often Best for Gym Owners

This is a preview of my new book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” coming in early 2024.

I have a successful gym. I also run a large worldwide company.

I’m tempted to open a coffee shop, bike store, self-storage space—and about five other companies.

But just because I’m a good entrepreneur with a lot of interests doesn’t mean I should own five different types of businesses.

Instead, I should maximize one type of business, take the profits out and put them in conservative investments that won’t take my attention away from my core business. That’s the “barbell strategy” that I laid out in the previous post in this series.

The last thing I need is something else that will wake me up at 4 a.m., have me obsessing over it and send me running around all day.

For example, I love coffee. But if I opened a coffee shop, I’d lose money for a few months—or even a year—while I figured out how to staff it, bought inventory and lost sleep over food waste. I’d scratch an entrepreneurial itch, but my gym would suffer. Eventually, I’d probably decide that one business is enough and sell the other one.

When I told a friend that I’d love to own a coffee shop, he asked, “Why do you want to ruin another favorite hobby?” He was joking, but he was right: Fitness was my hobby until my gym made it my job.

So I own a gym, make money and spend lots of time in other people’s coffee shops.

Attention: A Finite Resource

Even “boring businesses”—like self-storage and laundromats—still take attention away from your core business. And attention is your most valuable asset to invest.

Think about it: How often have you been on the floor, coaching a class while you’re completely distracted by something outside the gym?

Maybe it was your drive to work or your kid’s poor grades or an argument with your partner. It doesn’t matter. You know that feeling, and you know you’re a worse coach when you’re distracted.

Well, nothing is more distracting than another business.

Imagine coaching a 1:1 client and stressing about a broken dryer in your laundromat. You’re stuck at the gym, so you can’t fix the dryer, and the dryer is stressful, so you can’t concentrate on the client in front of you. Nobody wins when you split your attention.

Now imagine you own a coffee shop, which is 1,000 times more distracting than a laundromat. You’ll have staff issues. You’ll have supply issues. You’ll have quality issues. You’ll have to go to the grocery store twice a day. You’ll run out of cups. And all of this for a lower profit margin than your gym offers—just because you really like coffee.

If you’re making a bit more than you need from your gym, put the money in boring investments that you don’t have to think about. Set it and forget it.

Your most valuable asset is your attention, and you lose when you split your attention too many ways.

The post Why Boring Investments Are Often Best for Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Barbell Investment Strategy (Perfect for Gym Owners)

This is a preview of my new book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” coming in early 2024.

To create a balanced portfolio, some people like to invest a little in many different buckets. But according to Nassim Taleb, a mathematical statistician, former option trader and risk analyst who also likes to deadlift, there’s a better way.

Taleb recommends having a lot of conservative investments, one or two high-risk investments and nothing in between. Like a barbell, your investment portfolio is heavily weighted on both ends instead of spreading your investments across 10 different things.

It’s tempting to put a little money here and a little money there. But it’s best to invest where you have some expertise.

The higher the risk, the more time and attention you’ll have to invest along with the money. You’re better off to get really good at one or two types of investments instead of dabbling in a dozen.

If you’re not really interested in learning about stocks or real estate, just park your extra income in something boring and stay focused on your gym. More on that in the next post in this series.

Conserving Your Attention

I personally love using the “barbell strategy” to guide my investments—and not just because of the name.

As a gym owner, my business is my high-risk investment. It’s my passion project. It pays me a good income because I’ve learned to be a good entrepreneur.

So I balance that higher-risk investment with conservative securities—the other end of the barbell—and save my attention, which is the most valuable asset that I have.

Where do I put the excess money from my gym? Into conservative investments.

The exact investments change over time, but as I’m writing this, I’m looking for bonds or other high-security spots where time is on my side. I can play the long game there because my short game is to be all in on my gym. I get the money out of the gym, put it in places where I don’t have to also invest my attention and just let it grow quietly.

An attractive way to get started is through vehicles you can invest in easily, such as insurance funds, index funds and bonds.

The advantage of these options is that once you’ve made the investment, it usually requires little involvement from you.

Most of these options offer relatively secure returns and are typically a good home for your first external investments while also being an important part of your ongoing investment strategy.

Of course, you might be really attracted to overfunded life insurance, crypto, buying art or flipping houses. Those investments will take a lot more of your time and energy, but if they make you happy, then go after one of them—just know that your business will suffer when you remove your attention.

The simplest investment formula is the barbell because your attention is finite. Don’t split it too many ways or you’ll lose it.

The post The Barbell Investment Strategy (Perfect for Gym Owners) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Top Secrets of Millionaire Gym Owners

Chris Cooper (00:02):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And in early 2024, I’ve got a new book coming. It’s called “Millionaire Gym Owner.” And today I’m going to give you three of the top takeaways from that book as a little preview to get you into the holiday season. First, every gym owner should be able to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Now, that figure is a lot greater than the median gym owner take-home of 47,604, as we reported in our “2023 State of the Industry” report. But at Two-Brain, we’ve seen many gym owners reach the hundred-thousand-dollar level, and we’ve seen it so many times that we know that it’s absolutely possible with a clear goal, a plan to reach that goal, and a mentor to provide accountability. So, what happens after you hit that goal? Well, your opportunity to serve grows.

Chris Cooper (00:50):
You can better serve your family, your team, and your clients. And for the first time, you’ll have enough money to serve your community better when you hit your income goal and then you start investing and begin to build wealth. There are really four areas of investment: First, you can invest in your family. You can begin to invest your money to create long-term wealth for your kids. You can invest in things that will let you retire. You can invest in properties your kids will inherit and in tax expertise to minimize their burden when they do. You can invest in experiences that will change their lives. The second place you can invest is in your team. Earning a hundred thousand dollars in your gym is a signal that your business is stable enough to pay other people a salary too. You have the systems and processes that can create careers, and your income is proof of that.

Chris Cooper (01:39):
So, only after you’re earning a decent salary should you be able to offer a salary to others and invest in them. Another place you can invest is in your gym itself. You now have a proven working model that you can duplicate in other locations, or you can buy the building in which your gym sits, securing its future—because you know that you’ve got a model that works, and you can prove that to a lender like a bank, or you can reinvest in different modalities to help your clients more. Right? You can bring in saunas, or you can just fix the broken stuff. The fourth place that you can invest is in your community. When you have some extra money and time, you can spend it volunteering. You can buy bikes for kids who need bikes. You can find places where $10,000 makes an immediate and profound difference and then just donate the money—like I do.

Chris Cooper (02:25):
You can hold fundraisers and charity events in your gym because you have the extra bandwidth to do so. A quick note on these investments: Many gym owners try to do these things too early. They try to buy a building before their gym can afford it. They promise salaries to their staff before they make a decent income themselves, or they open second locations before their first location has a proven working model, or they run charity events when their own business is unprofitable. Remember, income first and then investment. Keep the golden goose fed. Now, let’s talk about going from income to investment. My previous books talked about how to make a good income in a gym, and this is the next step. We built our Tinker program to teach gym owners how to invest, and this book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” is all about that journey from income here to investment.

Chris Cooper (03:15):
There are four ways that Tinkers really invest: The first is scale. They put money back into the business that they know and love. They open a second location successfully because they have a proven model that they can duplicate. They expand their offerings to serve more people, or they might open an overlapping business, like a Ninja gym for kids. Second, they make external investments. So, they put money into cash flow assets like real estate or overfunded whole life insurance policies or bonds or crypto or stocks or boring businesses like self-storage and laundromats. Sometimes they might even offer private lending to others or even act as angel investors in startups. Third, they make internal investments. They invest in mentorship to become better leaders, and they remove the bottlenecks in the growth of their businesses. This has been massive for me. When I bought a self-storage business, the first call that I made was to a mentor in the self-storage business so that I could get that thing profitable fast, and we worked out an entire business model in about an hour instead of me taking three years of losing money and beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out.

Chris Cooper (04:20):
The fourth place that Tinkers invest is their lifestyle. So, they invest in work-life integration. They invest in experiences; they invest in buying back their time. Some invest in Two-Brain’s mentor certification to help other gym owners and local entrepreneurs succeed. Or they might also invest their time into service. Now, all this sounds great, right? But you can’t invest until you have a good income. You have to get your gym sorted first. The reason that I want to make gym owners wealthy is because there are no better people on earth. I want to put more money into the hands of generous, service-oriented people who are dedicated to improving the health of others. Basically, I want the good guys to win, and I want them to win big because that’s how they help others win.

Chris Cooper (05:03):
So, to create a balanced portfolio—and I’m going to get it more into the nuts and bolts here—I want to share a strategy with you called the Barbell Strategy. Now, some people like to invest as little as possible into a whole bunch of different buckets, and they think that’s diversification. But according to Nassim Taleb, who’s a mathematical statistician, a former options trader, and a risk analyst who is also good at deadlifting, there’s a better way than just dabbling in 50 pies at once. So, what Taleb recommends is having a couple of really conservative investments. So, if you think of a spectrum of risk, these conservative investments are very far on the right-hand side, right? And then he recommends having two high-risk investments, maybe on the left-hand side of that spectrum—and nothing in between. So, like a barbell, your investment portfolio is heavily weighted on both ends instead of spreading your investments across 10 different things. Look, it’s tempting to put a little bit of money here and a little bit of money there, but it’s best to invest where you have some expertise.

Chris Cooper (06:06):
So, the higher the risk, the more time and attention you’ll have to invest along with the money. Right? Your gym is a good investment. It’s a passion project. It’s on that left end of the spectrum, and you’re better off to get really good at one or two of these passion projects instead of dabbling in a dozen. If you’re not really interested in learning about stocks or real estate, you could just park your extra income in something boring on the other end of the spectrum and then stay focused on your gym. And I’m going to share more on that in a moment. But here’s why that’s important, and that is conserving your attention. I love that Barbell Strategy to guide my investments, and not just because it’s got an awesome name, and he’s a good dead lifter, but as a gym owner, my business is my high-risk investment.

Chris Cooper (06:48):
That’s my passion project. That’s what’s going to get me out of bed at 4 a.m. It pays me a good income because I’ve learned to be a good entrepreneur. So, I balance that higher-risk investment with conservative securities—the other end of the barbell—and I save my attention, which is actually the most valuable asset that I have. Where do I put the excess money from my gym over here? Into conservative investments over here. Now, those exact investments change over time, but as I’m reading this, I’m looking for bonds or other high security spots where time is on my side. Boring, right? But I can play the long game there because my short game is to be all in on the gym and all in on Two-Brain. So, I get the money out of the gym, and I put it in places where I don’t also have to invest my attention or think about it, and then I just let it grow quietly.

Chris Cooper (07:35):
Now, one attractive way to get started is through vehicles that you can invest in easily, like insurance funds or index funds or bonds. And the advantages of these options is that once you’ve made the investment, it requires really little involvement from you. You don’t have to keep paying attention to it. Most of these options offer relatively secure returns, and they’re typically a good home for your first external investments, while also being an important part of your ongoing investment strategy. Now, of course, you might be really attracted to overfunded life insurance or crypto or buying art or flipping houses, and those investments will take a lot more of your time and energy, but if they make you happy, then go after one of them. Just know that your business is going to suffer a little bit when you shift your attention to one of those other things.

Chris Cooper (08:20):
So, the simplest investment formula is the Barbell because your attention is finite. Don’t split it too many ways, or every other investment will suffer. I have a successful gym, right? I also run a large worldwide company, but I’m tempted, like you probably are, to open a coffee shop and a bike store and more self-storage spaces and about five other companies—because I can. I have the time and the energy and the money to do it. But just because I’m a good entrepreneur with a lot of interests doesn’t mean that I should own five different types of businesses. Instead, I should maximize one type of business, take the profits out, and put them in conservative investments that won’t take my attention away from my core business. That’s the Barbell Strategy that I just laid out. The last thing that I need is something else that will wake me up at 4 a.m., have me obsessing over it, and send me running around all day.

Chris Cooper (09:10):
Well, for example, I love coffee, but if I opened a coffee shop, I would lose money for at least a few months—probably a year—while I figured out how to staff it, and I bought inventory, and I lost sleep over food waste. I would definitely scratch an entrepreneurial itch, but my gym would suffer. Eventually, I’d probably decide that one business is enough and sell the other one. And when I told my friend Mike that I’d love to own a coffee shop, he said, “Why do you want to ruin your other favorite hobby?” And of course, he was joking, but he was right: Fitness was my hobby until my gym made it my job. So, now I own a gym, I make money, and I spend lots of time in other people’s coffee shops. Even boring businesses like self-storage and laundromats still take attention away from your core business.

Chris Cooper (09:53):
And attention, remember, is the most valuable asset that you have to invest. So, think about it: How often have you been on the floor coaching a class while you’re completely distracted by something that’s going on outside the gym? Maybe it was your drive to work, or maybe it was your kid’s bad report card, or maybe you had an argument with your partner. It doesn’t matter. You know the feeling, right? Like, you know that you’re a worse coach when you’re distracted. Well, nothing is more distracting than another business. So, imagine you’re coaching a one-on-one client, and you’re stressing about a broken dryer at the laundromat, or you’re stuck at the gym, so you can’t fix the dryer, and the dryer is stressful, so you can’t concentrate on that client that’s right in front of you. Right? Nobody wins when you split your attention. I’ve had this happen with people trying to steal ATMs out of my buildings, broken doors that didn’t close all the way because of ice.

Chris Cooper (10:43):
It’s not helpful to anybody if your attention is split. So, now imagine that you own a coffee shop, which is a thousand times more distracting than a laundromat. You’re going to have staff issues; you’re going to have supply issues; you’re going to have quality issues. You’ll have to go to the grocery store twice a day. You’re going to run out of cups, and all this for a lower profit margin than your gym offers just because you really like coffee, or you open the coffee shop because you can’t figure out how to make your gym more successful. So, you avoid the hard problem by creating a different hard problem. If you’re making a bit more money than you need from your gym, put the money in boring investments that you don’t have to think about, right? Just set it and forget it. Remember, the most valuable asset is your attention, and you lose when you split your attention too many ways.

Chris Cooper (11:27):
This is just one of the many lessons in my new book. I love this book more than the others because it’s not just my story anymore. Two-Brain has now produced 43 millionaires. These are real millionaires, and I’ve asked them to help me write this book. I went out to 18 of them, and I said, “Can you tell your story? Can you share the steps? Can you tell us exactly what you did and when?” And that’s what we put in the book. My job was to tie the stories together, frame the common lessons as things that you can take away and action, and then put them all together into a book that’s really, really wonderful to read. It’s a lot of fun. My favorite thing about this book, though, is that before Two-Brain existed, there was no roadmap to wealth. Nobody was even talking about income back then.

Chris Cooper (12:11):
And so, when I finally realized at my lowest point that not only could I not figure out how to make my gym profitable, but that I didn’t see a future. I didn’t know how I was ever going to pay for my kids to go to school or buy them the clothes they wanted or have a decent Christmas—let alone retire. That’s what almost drove me out of the industry. I want you to make a good income, but I also want you to have a future in fitness so that you can stay in the industry for 30 years, change 10,000 lives in your community, and leave a legacy for the coaches who work for you, for the clients who train with you, and for your family who are giving up time with you while you build this business. That’s what wealth is about. It’s not just being Scrooge McDuck and hoarding gold coins in a vault. Wealth is really about the freedom of time, attention, and money. And if we can improve the fitness industry, we can encourage more people to become trainers and gym owners and make a good living and thereby help save more lives. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” The new book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” is coming out in early 2024. I can’t wait to share it with you. In the meantime, if you’d like to chat, go to gymownersunited.com, and we’ll talk there. Thank you for your service.

The post Top Secrets of Millionaire Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Millionaire Gym Owner: From Income to Investments

This is a preview of my new book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” coming in early 2024.

Every gym owner should be able to make $100,000 per year.

That figure is much greater than the median gym-owner take-home of $47,604, as reported in our 2023 “State of the Industry” report. But at Two-Brain, we’ve seen gym owners reach the $100,000 level so many times now that we know it’s absolutely possible with a clear goal, a plan to reach it and a mentor to provide accountability.

So what happens after you hit that goal?

Your opportunity to serve grows.

You can better serve your family, your team and your clients. And, for the first time, you’ll have enough money to serve your community better.

When you hit your income goal, you can start investing.

Four Areas for Investment

1. Invest in your family—You can begin to invest your money to create long-term wealth for your kids. You can invest in things that will let you retire. You can invest in properties your kids will inherit and in tax expertise to minimize their burden. You can invest in experiences that will change their lives.

2. Invest in your team—Earning $100,000 from your gym is a signal that your business is stable enough to pay others a salary, too. You have the systems and processes that can create careers—your income is proof. Only after you’re earning a decent salary should you offer a salary to others.

3. Invest in your gym—You have a working model you can now duplicate in other locations or you can buy the building in which your gym sits, securing its future. You can reinvest in different modalities to help your clients more. Or you can simply fix the broken stuff.

4. Invest in your community—When you have some extra money and time, you can spend it volunteering. You can buy bikes for kids. You can find places where $10,000 makes an immediate and profound difference and just donate the money. You can hold fundraisers and charity events in your gym because you have the extra bandwidth to do so.

A quick note: Many gym owners try to do these things too early. They try to buy a building before their gym can afford it, they promise salaries to their staff before making a decent income themselves, they open second locations before their first has a proven model, and they run charity events when their own business is unprofitable.

Remember: Income first, then investment. Feed the golden goose.

From Income to Investment

We built our Tinker Program to teach gym owners how to invest. And my upcoming book “Millionaire Gym Owner” is all about the journey from income to investment.

Here are the four ways that Tinkers invest:

1. Scale—They put money back into the business they know and love. They open second locations successfully because they have a proven model to duplicate. They expand their offerings to serve more people. Or they might open an overlapping business, like a ninja gym for kids.

2. External Investment—They put money into cash-flow assets, like real estate; overfunded whole life insurance policies; bonds, crypto, stocks; or “boring businesses.” Sometimes they might offer private lending to others or even act as angel investors in startups.

3. Internal Investment—They invest in mentorship to become better leaders and remove the bottlenecks in the growth of their businesses. (This has been massive for me.)

4. Lifestyle—They invest in work-life integration, experiences and time. Some invest in Two-Brain’s Mentor Certification to help other gym owners and local entrepreneurs succeed. Or they might invest their time into service.

All this sounds great, right? But you can’t invest until you have a good income.

The reason I want to make gym owners wealthy is because there are no better people on Earth.

I want to put more money into the hands of generous, service-oriented people who are dedicated to improving the health of others. I want the good guys to win, and I want them to win big because that’s how others win.

In the next post in this series, I’ll share how your success helps everyone around you.

The post Millionaire Gym Owner: From Income to Investments appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

January 2024: Your Roadmap to Revenue and Retention

New clients are going to appear in your gym in January.

But will you hold onto them?

Maybe—and you’ll stand a much better chance of retaining January joiners if you use the next 20 days to create a 90-day journey for new clients.

My gym’s onboarding process was a free trial, an eight-session one-on-one on-ramp and then a group membership of some sort.

That was the entire plan, and it was far from ideal.

It was the fitness equivalent of a Viking funeral from a movie: We pushed a burning ship out to sea and then watched it disappear at some point.

And people did disappear. They started fired up and ready to get after their goals—whatever those might have been. We rarely asked. We just assumed they wanted to hit deadlift PRs and feel the burn of Fran and Cindy.

That’s not to say we didn’t care about their goals. We were very invested in our clients’ success. We just made assumptions about their exact goals, and we only offered one path toward them: group classes.

A lot of clients disappeared over the years. Again, we made assumptions as to why.

We weren’t the only gym that operated like this—in the early days of functional fitness, it was common to do everything you could to get people into group classes fast. It was also common to assume everyone would love the classes and stay forever.

Early microgym owners might be forgiven for their errors of ignorance. But in 2024, best practices are now much clearer.

And one of them is creating a client journey so you know exactly how people move into and through your business. If you create that journey, you’ll figure out how to make it better. People will stay longer and get fitter, and your gym will earn more.

Everyone wins.

Revenue and Retention

I won’t give you the exact instructions for creating your own client journey. Chris Cooper already did that in this three-part series.

I’ll just highlight two key parts of the journey that will transform your business.

1. Goals and Value

If you ask clients what their goals are during an initial free consultation, you’ll be able to present the very best solution. The best solution gets the client to the goal in the shortest amount of time, and it holds the most value.

So if you know a client wants to lose 15 lb. in three months, you can prescribe PT sessions, group classes and nutrition coaching for $500 a month—or something like that.

In 2013, I just assumed everyone wanted group classes, and I charged $157.50 for that. Some people would have happily paid more for a customized plan that brought results faster.

Do not miss this chance to increase your average revenue per member by serving clients better.

2. Check-Ins and Retention

When you make a sale during your initial consultation, you should book a Goal Review Session 90 days down the line. Literally put it on the calendar before the new client leaves the room.

If you do this, you will have a chance to find out if clients are happy at the three-month mark, which is a critical point in the journey because the initial thrill is gone and long-term goals are still far away. Some clients might be tempted to leave and try the next big fitness thing or just head back to the couch.

If clients are happy at the 90-day mark, ask them for a referral and add a new client. Celebrate their progress and set some new goals they can work toward. Get them fired up to train.

If they aren’t happy, adjust the plan so they make progress faster. Offer perspective and support. Highlight big wins that went unnoticed. Address concerns. Solve any and all problems.

If you do this, your length of engagement­—LEG or retention—will improve. Clients will get fitter and you will earn more.

Start the Journey Today

A client journey does not have to be complicated. In fact, the best ones I’ve seen can be diagrammed on a single sheet of paper.

But that sheet of paper is incredibly valuable—to the client and your business.

You’ve got about three weeks to get your client journey in place for 2024. Take action today!

And if you want to move even faster to ensure your business is firing on all cylinders in 2024, book a call here to talk about mentorship.

The post January 2024: Your Roadmap to Revenue and Retention appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

What Should You Fix First? (It’s Probably Not Your Staff)

It’s my job to help you improve your gym.

In fact, I know that if I don’t help you do that, you’ll fire me.

With that incentive on the line, what do I fix first in most gyms? Usually, it’s not the coaching.

I’ll give you a business-evaluation tool in a moment. But first ask yourself this:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how good am I as a coach?”

1—You’re a beginner and have no idea how to help people get more fit.5—You’re not an expert, but you can get people to do what you tell them and come back for more.10—People do exactly what you say and get amazing results, and you can prove it!

Notice that I don’t mention certifications or credentials or degrees here.

Most of us believe that being a better coach will make our business more successful—but that’s a fairy tale. The story even has a name: “the technician’s curse.”

If you have coaches working for you, rate them on the same scale. My bet is that you and most of your coaches are around a 7 out of 10, possibly a 9. Many part-time employees at Globo Gyms or franchises are around a 5 out of 10. And for most clients, that’s more than enough.

Now, rate your gym using this scale, and compare your coaching against the other parts of your business.

My bet is that you have some areas of your business that are a 3 or 5 out of 10.

That means your top priority is to fix your business first, and then take your coaches from a 7 or an 8 to a 9 later. They’re already more than good enough.

Patch Big Holes First

This is how our mentorship program works: We take big strides quickly by identifying your weaknesses and then giving you the exact systems and tools you need to improve. Because we’ve tested all our tools and tactics, you don’t have to waste time with trial and error on your own, and your business improves very quickly.

This scientific approach gives us a precise order of changes to make, and we rarely tell a gym owner to invest in coach education when they start with Two-Brain because the coaches aren’t the problem. In fact, the coaches are often excellent, and if the business doesn’t catch up, the coaches will leave because the business can’t support them.

Tell me I’m wrong: If you left a gym to start your own gym, you were probably the best trainer at your previous gym. (I see you nodding.)

I’ll double down: You left the other gym to make a better income or to remove some other limiting factor. Right?

Well, your coaches are thinking the same thing!

They might be interested in getting their black belt or their CrossFit L3 or another high-level certification. They might love to take a weekend course with a high-level gymnast or weightlifter. But they’d rather just make more money, have more free time, work with clients they love and not feel like a martyr—they feel just like you did!

Every gym owner I know tells me “I want to make a better career for my staff.” You love your staff. So do I. But “better career” starts with “sustainable career.” The certifications and courses come after the money because you can’t eat a black belt.

Am I lying?

Now, there’s certainly a time to invest in staff improvement. If your length of engagement is low, for example, you can probably blame something in your experience. It could be a facilities issue or a staff-personality issue. But it’s rarely a staff-education issue.

I originally called my first book “Two-Brain Business” to describe the yin and yang of quality service and good business. You need both. You’re probably already really good at one and need help with the other.

If so, click here to book a call with my team.

The post What Should You Fix First? (It’s Probably Not Your Staff) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Measuring Excellence: Staff Evaluations

If you want to improve your team, you need to measure how your staff members are doing.

But how do you measure excellence in coaching?

Start with your standard operating procedures (SOPs). Somewhere in your gym, you’ve written down exactly how you want a class to be coached, how a personal-training session should be run, etc.

Right?

(If you haven’t done that yet, do that first, then teach the procedures for perfect performance to your staff. If you haven’t given them these instructions, they’re flying blind.)

If you have SOPs, take each item in the document and give it a scale from 1 to 10.

Another great alternative, as you heard on my podcast with Oskar Johed, is to use a red/yellow/green scale for usually/sometimes/rarely.

Here’s an example using the first step in the “How to Coach a Class” SOP from my gym:

“Starts class precisely on time—1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.”

Or, using the same step with Oskar’s method at CrossFit Medis:

“Starts class precisely on time—Usually/Sometimes/Rarely.”

Here’s an example you can download from our archives: Coach Evaluation.

The scale you choose matters less than how consistently you apply it. We’re using these evaluations as a tool to help people improve, not to give them a report card to show their parents.

Use a Calendar!

Now that you have a scorecard, schedule your coach-evaluation periods in advance. I suggest doing evaluations quarterly, but even twice per year is OK. Just make sure they’re on the calendar and everyone knows when they’re coming.

In my early years as a gym owner, I screwed this up. First, I screwed up by not having evaluations and just giving trainers “tips” whenever I saw an opportunity. I saw a lot of opportunities, so I gave a lot of random tips. They thought I was constantly criticizing them. Whoops.

Second, I scheduled real evaluations randomly—usually when I was angry about something. So the trainers always knew an evaluation was bad news. This created a hostile environment, where no one was taking feedback or giving it well and everyone was ready to argue.

Here’s how to do avoid my mistakes:

Set up your quarterly evaluation process.Schedule a Career Roadmap meeting with each coach. The evaluation conversation is part of their Career Roadmap meeting.Sit down with each coach, one at a time. Talk about where they’d like to go in their career. Get specific: Write down exact earnings and time targets.Then pull out their evaluation. Tell them where they’re doing well and where to improve. Now you’re mentoring them to get to their goals instead of measuring how well they live up to your expectations—or fail to.

Measure, then mentor. That’s how you make your team better.

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