Chris Cooper's Blog, page 54

The True Costs of Changing Your Brand in 2024

On Nov. 30, CrossFit LLC announced it would increase affiliation fees at renewal for gyms around the world.

The amount of the increase varied depending on an affiliate owner’s current rate.

Some letters stated the increase was from US$2,000 to $4,500.Others will move from $3,000 to $4,500, and so on.On Facebook, old-school affiliate owners with legacy rates of $500 reported the increase would be tiered for them: the fee moves to $1,000 in Year 1 and $4,500 in Year 2.Gyms in some areas of the world with weaker economies will receive smaller increases.

Another change: The licensee of record must now earn and maintain a CrossFit Level 2 credential. Those without the L2 designation must earn it within 12 months of signing the new license agreement. CrossFit is offering a $500 credit for credentialing.

My role as mentor to hundreds of gyms around the world isn’t to tell anyone to stay affiliated or to deaffiliate. Most business decisions come down to the numbers. This is a very personal choice.

My job is to help you get the information you need to make the best decision for your business.

If you want to remain affiliated, use HQ’s rate increase to prompt your own. Two-Brain gym owners: click here for the steps. Not in Two-Brain yet? Here’s an overview of the rate-increase process.

If you want to deaffiliate, do it with your eyes open—don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

Here, I’m going to share a list of work you’ll have to do if you change your brand.

Rebranding: What Does It Mean?

First, you won’t have to change your equipment. You won’t have to change your programming. Your insurance won’t change.

But there are still very real costs to changing your brand if you decide that’s the best course.

You’ll have to make physical changes to things such as letterhead, orientation packages, internal/external signage and so on. All of that will take time and cost money. Digital changes (see below) can be made faster, but some won’t realize digital rebranding is a lot of work, too.

Your email address will need to change, and it’s guaranteed that you will forget to change at least one password associated with that email address. Prepare for that frustration.

We’re here to support you regardless of what you choose.

Let’s start with the online changes you’ll need to make.

Digital Changes

This is courtesy of our friends at Kilo:

For those of you who are still deciding, there are some second-order consequences we want you to be aware of.

Traffic Implications of Deaffiliating

1. If your current domain has “CrossFit” in it and you’re an older affiliate, you can expect a large decrease in organic traffic. If you’ve been operating as XYZ Fitness, home of CrossFit XYZ, you’ll experience less of a disruption in traffic if you deaffiliate.

2. If people find you by searching “CrossFit near me” or “CrossFit in (insert city),” you are much less likely to show up in those search results.

3. Competition for “gym near me” or “personal trainer in (insert city)” is five to 20 times more competitive than for CrossFit-related terms.

What to Do After You Deaffiliate

If you’re OK with the traffic consequences, you need to take some additional steps after you email CrossFit.

Next steps:

1. If you currently run your gym from a domain that has the word “CrossFit” in it, you’re going to need to get a new one. You’ll also need to update all your corporate email addresses, social profiles and Google Business Profile. Here are some videos showing you what to do:

Buying a new domain, setting up new emails, setting up email forwarding, granting your webmaster access to your new domain: click here.Updating Google Business Profile: click here.Updating your Facebook Page: click here.Updating your Yelp Page: click here.

2. If you currently use CrossFit in your logo, you’ll need a new logo.

If you don’t have a plan for this, the fastest way to get a new logo is to use Fiverr.Make sure to pay a little extra to get the .ai file. It allows your web designer to edit it easily and optimize it for all the different areas of your website.

3. If you currently offer “CrossFit” as a class option on your website, you’ll need to change that to whatever you want to call your group offering.

4. If your about page or founder story says something like “Jimmy found CrossFit and was hooked ever since,” you might want to change the wording.

5. If there are specific mentions of CrossFit in other areas of the site, you may want to change them.

If you’re not a Kilo client, have your web developer use this plugin to scrub mentions of CrossFit from your site.

6. Once you create a new email for your business, you want to update all your opt-in guides and lead-capture forms to ensure you’re receiving lead notifications at your new email address.

7. Update your logins for every piece of software that is associated with your CrossFit domain. You don’t want to be in a position where your security code or password reset instructions are being sent to a defunct email address. Got important correspondence in that email account? Forward it to another address you own or export your messages so you don’t lose anything. The same goes for any documents in drives associated with that email address. One client who rebranded in 2023 got almost everything backed up but missed an intake form that had to be rebuilt after a dead link was sent to several new clients.

8. Make sure your web developer sets up 301 redirects and updates Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics.

9. After all this is done, check your online presence using Moz’s online presence tool and ensure accuracy across all your directory listings.

Decide—Then Move Fast

If you’re thinking about changing your brand, I’d advise you to speak to your mentor first. Consider your options, calculate ROI on expenses and do what’s best for your family, your staff and your clients, in that order.

For some gyms, even a rate increase of $4,000 a year isn’t a big deal, and they see a return on that investment. In our internal group, many owners broke their rate increase down by month and determined it wasn’t significant.

Others ran the math and calculated how much new revenue they would need to cover the expense, and they made a plan to generate it.

And some gym owners didn’t see the return they wanted and were making plans to adjust their brand.

You’ll have to decide which path is right for you.

But when the decision is made, take action right away. Then start telling a new story.

Your New Story

When you open a business, you step onstage. Your website is your podium, and social media is your amplifier.

What will you say?

Will you share someone else’s message—their brand, their story, their media?

Will you publish your own message—your story, your clients’ stories, your own knowledge?

Will you say nothing—and what will you say through your silence?

Many CrossFit affiliates have relied on CrossFit LLC to produce the content that will educate local audiences. For a time, CrossFit Media was a huge part of the company. It produced videos, the CrossFit Journal, all the Games footage, all the speeches, daily blog posts—and most newcomers to CrossFit saw that material.

Now much of that output is gone. But everyday people looking for fitness didn’t stop paying attention or looking for answers to their fitness problems.

What filled the vacuum?

Well, smart gym owners fill the vacuum themselves. They write blog posts and shoot daily videos about diet and exercise. Some bring in photographers and camera crews. The primary benefit of CrossFit affiliation for most OGs—professionally produced, shareable content—has become DIY for the best gyms. And it works.

But many gym owners didn’t follow that plan. Most, like me, opened their gyms because they wanted to coach—not because they wanted to write blog posts or shoot YouTube videos about macronutrients.

If you deaffiliate, you can no longer rely on CrossFit media, or the CrossFit story. You’ll have to start telling your own.

Once Upon a Time …

Here’s how to get your message out:

1. Tell your story.

What made you want to open a gym in the first place? We’re all dying to hear that story—now more than ever. Write it down or sit in front of your phone and tell us. Post the blog or video on your website and link to it on your social media channels. That’s one rep. Thousands more to go, but you’ve done the first one!

2. Tell three clients’ stories.

Grab them after a session or meet up for a coffee. Ask them:

“Why did you choose my gym in the first place?”

“What’s your best story about this gym?”

“What advice would you give to the person you were a year ago?”

Post their stories. Use your platform to make them famous.

3. Teach something.

Write a blog or record a video that will help one person in your audience. Don’t overthink it (my first posts were all about linear versus conjugate programming—you can do far better).

Write about:

“What is protein?”“Why should grandmothers lift weights?”“How often should you run if you want to lose weight?”“Why abs are made in the kitchen.”

When in doubt, walk to the drugstore, look at the magazines and steal ideas from the titles.

Remember: Your audience doesn’t know what you know. Not even a little bit.

Building Your Brand With Stories

The stories you tell are the cornerstone of your brand. Whether you’re a CrossFit affiliate or an F45 franchise, you need to tell your story or you’ll always be shouting on someone else’s stage—and they’ll decide when to draw the curtain on you.

Your Business Name

The stories you tell paint the picture of your business.

Your gym’s name is the frame for that picture.

When you change your brand, you change your frame.

Here’s where it gets complicated: The frame changes how people see the picture inside.

If your gym name is “CrossFit 90210”, and you drop CrossFit affiliation, your name doesn’t make much sense anymore. The “CrossFit” name provided the frame for what you sell.

Even if you keep doing thrusters and burpees for time, outsiders won’t understand what you’re selling. Even if you’re doing CrossFit without the name, you’ll be invisible to those looking for CrossFit.

Will you be more appealing to those who don’t want CrossFit? Maybe. But “90210 Fitness” doesn’t differentiate you from other gyms.

If you’re a gym, call yourself a gym.If you’re a coaching business, say so.If you sell CrossFit, call yourself CrossFit.If you don’t sell CrossFit, don’t.

Clarity is more important than art. People can’t decipher your meaning and won’t try. You must pass the “Grok test”: Can someone understand what you sell in two seconds or less after hearing your name?

What Are People Looking For?

No one is searching for “functional movement” in your city.

Your name should describe the benefit your best clients were seeking when they found you. I doubt many will do it, but calling yourself “Ed’s Weight Loss” is actually a good idea—if your best clients all showed up looking to lose weight.

Build your name around the benefit of your service, not the features. For example, “Ed’s Barbell” isn’t as good as “Ed’s Strength Training.”

The first sign on my gym said “Catalyst Athletic and CrossFit.” I had a few athletes as clients, but my best clients were doctors, teachers and lawyers. They didn’t want “athletic training” or CrossFit. So my name turned away most of the people who would have been my best clients. Duh.

Remember: Name your business according to what your clients want to achieve.

Make Your Plan and Tell Your Tale

People buy stories. Stories paint a picture in their minds. Your name is how they frame that story.

Will it encourage them to look deeper or look elsewhere?

To learn more about how a mentor can help you make smart decisions based on data, click here to book a call.

The post The True Costs of Changing Your Brand in 2024 appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

What to Do When You Have No Idea Where Clients Come From

The most successful gym owners have one thing in common:

They follow a plan.

When I ask top fitness entrepreneurs how they post amazing metrics, they always have a precise answer.

They never say “I don’t know” or “good things just happened.”

So what’s your plan?

I’ve interviewed dozens of top gym owners over the last four years. Every month, Two-Brain produces leaderboards, and I contact and interview the best of the best to find out how they posted their numbers.

I did that earlier this week: Vel Bates of 3D Fitness earned over 100 leads in September, he booked 45 appointments, he got 26 people to show up, and he closed 16 sales. You can check out our conversation here.

I asked Vel about each stage of the funnel, and he had precise answers.

Here they are:

He used about $600 of paid Facebook advertising and a very specific organic post to get 100+ leads in September. His content was tailored to the specific type of client he wanted to acquire.He used his website and direct messages to get people to book appointments.He used a carefully crafted email and SMS system to remind people to show up, and he followed up if they didn’t.He used the Prescriptive Model to present services with a sales binder and close sales in an office full of testimonials and social proof. He even showed me a graphic depicting a client roadmap that lets his new members know exactly how their first 90 days will go.

Every step of the funnel was obvious. Vel’s funnel is a far cry from my haphazard efforts as a gym owner 10 years ago.

Anyone: “How do you acquire new clients?”

Me: “I have no idea. People just randomly email me and ask to try a workout.”

I asked Vel how long it might take to get a system like his in place. He said about six months if an owner is willing to do the work. He also said that the front-end work of creating such a system is balanced by the ease of running a well-oiled machine after you build it.

I wouldn’t have been able to build and manage a system like this in six months. I would have fumbled around, dawdled, made mistakes and gotten frustrated.

But six months is now a realistic timeline for a gym owner because Two-Brain has done-for-you resources, templates and data-backed best practices to help you get your sales funnel working fast. And a mentor can provide the accountability you need to stay on track or even move faster.

If you want to, I’m sure you can build a fully functional funnel in less than six months—and then you can build three more (Two-Brain teaches clients to build four effective funnels).

But the point is that top modern gym owners all have an exact plan to acquire the clients they need. They’ve all abandoned the wait-hope-pray approach in favor of sound, data-backed tactics.

If you don’t know exactly where your clients come from and how you can get more when you need them, do yourself a solid: Book a call here to talk about mentorship.

The post What to Do When You Have No Idea Where Clients Come From appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

16 Sales in September: Here’s Exactly How Vel Bates Did It

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Marketing funnels: How are the world’s best gym owners getting clients? And how many are they getting? You’re going to get answers today. In fact, I’ll give them to you right now. Real stats from September in a gym: 45 appointments set, 26 shows and 16 closes. Those are real numbers from 3D Fitness in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The owner is here and he’s going to tell you how he posted those numbers. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin. We’re giving out the cheat codes to gym ownership here every single month. Please subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode. Now with me today, Vel Bates, he’s the owner of 3D Fitness, and he posted great numbers. I just told you what they were in September. Set rate: That’s the number of people who book appointments at your gym. Show rate: That’s the number of people who show up for those appointments. Close rate: That’s the number of people who show up and buy. So, Val, welcome here. Let’s dig into your numbers. Are you ready to go?

Vel Bates (00:50):
Yes, I am. I’m ready.

Mike Warkentin (00:51):
Thanks so much. These are incredible numbers, and I love that we have the real numbers from ground level, and you’re going to tell us how you did it. So, I want to start at the very top of your funnel. Like what’s the number one thing that you did to get so many appointments in September? Like 45? How did you get that?

Vel Bates (01:06):
Well it all starts with overall leads that month. We ended the month with 102, so that’s a high month for us. Like usually we’re around about 70 I’d say or so, and most of them usually come from Facebook. That particular month we actually—I did a 5130 that completely blew up on Facebook, so that gave us a really big boost as far as total leads and got a lot more people. I would say more warmer leads into—

Mike Warkentin (01:34):
Okay. So, I’m going to ask you a couple questions, so people know exactly what you’re talking about. When you’re saying leads are coming from Facebook, is this organic stuff, or are you running paid ads right now?

Vel Bates (01:41):
Running paid ads. So, we’re running the paid ads. We’re kind of just letting that go monthly, watching it, and tweaking it here and there. Just making sure we’re staying up to date with like holidays and time.

Mike Warkentin (01:53):
Are you spending a lot of money on Facebook ads?

Vel Bates (01:55):
Yeah, I’d say between five and seven. We try to float around that number per month.

Mike Warkentin (02:00):
Sorry, five and seven what?

Vel Bates (02:02):
500 to 700 per month.

Mike Warkentin (02:03):
Okay, perfect. Because some people do five, seven bucks a day or something like that. So, five or seven hundred a month. Yeah, that makes sense. Cool.

Vel Bates (02:09):
Yeah, and staying in that window has been great for us. Honestly. There’s really no need to go any more than that.

Mike Warkentin (02:14):
Yeah. And you’re tracking that, and you’re getting results on that—or a return on that investment, correct?

Vel Bates (02:19):
Oh yeah, definitely.

Mike Warkentin (02:20):
Okay, so that’s an important one.

Vel Bates (02:21):
You know how it is. Yeah, like two sales. I mean, it’s worth it. You get that money back; you’ve got to think of it as more of an investment.

Mike Warkentin (02:28):
And you won’t know, listeners, if you don’t track. So that’s a big point right off the bat. And Vel is living proof. If you do not track the return on your ad spend, you might be wasting your money. You’ve got to know what’s happening. Now, you also mentioned a 5130. Tell listeners what that is because this is a really cool one.

Vel Bates (02:43):
Yes, yes, yes. So, 5130. So, it took me a minute to get into those, but what I like about them is they’re more organic. So, what I do is I’ll go to my personal page, and I have a pretty good following. So, what I’ll do is I’ll just go to the page, and I’ll say, “Hey, we’re looking for five to 10 people—or women, men, depending on what it is—looking to lose five to 10 pounds within the next 30 days.” What that does is it’s hooking a lot of people right away; most people are wanting to get that done. So, every once in a while—sometimes it’s hit or miss, some months it’s great, and then sometimes nobody really responds to it. But that particular one did really well. It was targeted towards women. And it brought in like 36 to 35 to 40 comments. And I didn’t expect it to do that. And it was within like 24 hours.

Mike Warkentin (03:30):
So, I mean, that’s incredible.

Vel Bates (03:31):
Yeah. That gave us a big boost. I know a lot of people struggle with the 5130s. They feel awkward in the group. I’ve seen that a lot. But it definitely helps a lot when everything is getting slow. You don’t want to just wait on the ads. That’s a way to kind of generate some quick leads and get some conversation.

Mike Warkentin (03:46):
So, listeners, the code for this—5130—it’s: “I need five people to do one thing in 30 days.” That’s what 5130 means. There are variations of that. You could say 10 people and so forth. But the idea is that’s been tested—5130 has been tested. Vel is living proof it works. Put that post up in your organic social media; you don’t have to pay for that one. And then you said you get comments on that. What do you do when you get those comments?

Vel Bates (04:07):
So, what I do, usually, I’ll say, “Comment ‘Me’” or “Comment an emoji.” That’s the fastest way. You don’t want to say, “Comment, ‘Get myself fit.’” That’s too long. People are—they’re not going to do that. So, I’ll just say, “Comment ‘Me.’” Once they comment, “Me,” I’ll comment back, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’m going to send you a DM now, so we can have a conversation.”

Mike Warkentin (04:24):
And then you’re talking to them in chat, and in that chat, you’re trying to get them to come in for a free consultation.

Vel Bates (04:29):
Yes. Yep. So that’s the first thing I kind of asked them, like, “Okay, what have you tried before? Have you been in fitness? Have you had a personal trainer?” You know, I kind of warm up the conversation first. I’ve tried jumping right to like, “Okay, hey, I was just coming in …” and I think sometimes people get uncomfortable, so right away we get in the chat, and I’m like, “Hey, thanks for commenting on the post. Wanted to see how I could best help you.” You know, I’ll let them answer back, wait a couple of minutes, and then we eventually get to that point where we’re getting them in the gym.

Mike Warkentin (04:56):
This is a sell-by-chat strategy. It works really, really well if you do the right things. And the goal here is—you’ve got a lead—you want to talk to that person, find out a little bit about them, and say, “Hey, I can help you with my services. Why don’t you come in and talk about it?” Then you have a sales meeting. So, this is lead flow, and I’m going to tell you something in secret here, guys, that we don’t always talk about. You can’t just put up the 5130 post, and it’ll just explode. You kind of have to be a presence on social media. That means you need to post regularly and build your audience. Vel, you have done a great job of doing that. Your social media accounts—you have a pretty big following. Do you—tell people where they can take a look at what you are doing. Because I know you’ve got a huge following on social media.

Vel Bates (05:33):
Mm-hmm, yeah, so definitely Instagram: I’m floating around almost 16K on there. So, a lot of my followers are outside of the city, but I do still have a lot of following here. So, usually, we’ll put the 5130 in my stories on there, and I’ll put a link right underneath, so that way they can just click that link and go directly to our landing page. That way there’s not a bunch of stuff in between there. You know, you want to make—

Mike Warkentin (05:56):
Where can people, people look you up? What’s your handle on Instagram?

Vel Bates (05:59):
My handle, my personal handle on Instagram is: hercules_bates. So, if you check that out, you go there, you’ll see all my 5130s here and there every once in a while.

Mike Warkentin (06:08):
Hercules_bates: Check that out, and follow him. He’s got a great account. And again, follower count is not the be all and end all; it’s a glory metric. But if no one is looking at your stuff and you don’t have an audience, you’re not going to have a bigger response. So, if you can get people to engage and regularly grow your account, you’re going to have a better, a bigger—we’ll call it a bigger ocean to throw your hooks into. And then when you put these things up, people are listening and watching. So, going back to your lead flow: You put up—you’re using 500, 700 bucks of Facebook ad spend, you’re using this organic post, and you said you got—what was it? 120 something leads in September, is that right?

Vel Bates (06:44):
102.

Mike Warkentin (06:44):
102. So, that’s a huge number. And from there you used sell-by-chat and other nurturing things to get 45 of them to book appointments. You talked about DMing them. How else are you getting those people to book appointments? What else is happening in the background when someone becomes a lead?

Vel Bates (06:59):
Well, as soon as they become a lead, I think the biggest thing is to help with your show rate and get them to book. We do, like I said, we’ll send them—some people will ask price, things like that. But what we’ll do is we’ll ask them their general idea, what they want to do, and I’ll send them a transformation or before and after of somebody who had a similar build, similar goals. And I’ll say, “Well, here’s somebody that we’ve helped do that before. So, if you would like, we can come in, get you in here, we can do a quick 30-minute consultation, and we can talk about how we can customize this, so it can work as well.”

Mike Warkentin (07:31):
I love that. So, you’re showing them what we call social proof, right? “Someone like you did something that you want to do,” and it’s a great resource, but you have to have created those resources, right? That’s one of the things—Vel and I met two years ago at the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago. We were chatting—Vel hadn’t signed up with Two-Brain—we were just chatting, and I remember looking at his Instagram account, and he had a whole whack of great client stories and transformations. And I was like,
“Wow, like you’ve got this much stuff on here already—your business—you can showcase this and take off.” Now when someone asks you, says, “Hey, I want to lose 20 pounds,” you’d be like, “I helped these 10 people lose 40 pounds” or whatever. Right? You’ve got that on command at the snap of your fingers, right?

Vel Bates (08:08):
Yes. And that makes it way—I mean, 80% increase. And that’s a big number, but I mean, it gives them more of an emotional feel. And I’ve been an online coach as well, so I know firsthand, if I show somebody a transformation, sometimes that’s the close—that’ll be enough. They’re like, “Oh wow, okay, I see it. You can do it. That’s proof.” But it’s a lot harder to close on them when you don’t have any social proof. So, we also just try to make sure we show that and post that to the page—the testimonials definitely …

Mike Warkentin (08:39):
Two-Brain gives its clients a specific script to help you get those testimonials. You can certainly figure it on your own, but Two-Brain has an exact plan that says, “Ask these questions at this point with your clients. Create this stuff. Have it ready.” If you can show people testimonials—even on your website, if they’re just scrolling through and looking, but even by DM like Vel is doing, which is a great idea—you’re going to close more sales because people will see proof that you are actually an expert and can deliver on your promises. Vel, this is a good time to ask: What exactly are you selling at 3D Fitness? Give us the 411 on your gym and business.

Vel Bates (09:11):
Yeah, so our main focus now is personal training. So, one-on-one personal training. We’re growing and working on semi-private—still kind of new—small group classes just came back. And then we’re also offering nutrition coaching and 24-hour access.

Mike Warkentin (09:25):
Okay. So, you got a little bit of everything. What’s your—and you said your biggest focus is PT?

Vel Bates (09:29):
Mm-hmm. Yep. That’s our new focus now. Originally, we opened, it was 24 hours, so we’re still working on that shift to becoming more of, “Okay, we offer personal training,” but yeah, that’s what our main focus is.

Mike Warkentin (09:41):
Okay. So, when you did that shift, which is in progress right now, did you have to change your marketing and your approach? Because your avatar becomes a little different when you’re looking for someone who just wants to come in and do their program versus someone who wants to work with you on a specific goal? How did you change that avatar focus?

Vel Bates (09:54):
Yeah, so that’s been a work in progress. Even still now. It’s been really hard to get people to understand we’re not just the access. A lot of people—what we did was we kind of took it out of our ads; we don’t really promote it as much because it’s one of those things where it takes care of itself. We have enough open 24-hour members, so we don’t really post about it anymore. We try to make sure we headline everything as, “We offer personal training, semi-private, small group.” And then if they want to know about access, they’ll find it on our website, but we just—out of sight out mind is what we’re going for. It’s like, “Okay, let’s kind of dial it back on promoting the 24 hours” because that’s not something, as far as ARM, that’s not helping that number that much.

Mike Warkentin (10:37):
That’s average revenue per member. I’ve got to ask, has your ARM gone up a lot since you shifted this?

Vel Bates (10:43):
Yes, definitely. Yep. Since we were a majority 24-hour access gym, our ARM was pretty low coming in. Now that we’re incorporating personal training, that’s growing, and as we start to get more people in the gym that are already here to sign up for classes, the personal training, I could see that, and we’re growing a lot more.

Mike Warkentin (11:01):
Okay. So that’s great. And then by that metric, if your average revenue per member is higher, you don’t need as many clients, and you don’t need to market as much because you have fewer people paying more and staying longer. Is that what you’re seeing at your gym?

Vel Bates (11:15):
Yes, exactly. Yep. That’s the goal. I mean, we’d rather that—I know some gyms go for 500 members and things like that. If that works and you have the space. But we’re still a smaller, tight-knit community gym, so we’re really trying—instead of going for more quantity, we’d rather have more quality. So

Mike Warkentin (11:32):
Yeah. Okay. So, you’ve got organic and paid advertising at the top of your funnel, then you’ve got people booking appointments, I’m guessing through your website. Do they do that through your website?

Vel Bates (11:43):
Yes. Yep. I have that set up right on our landing page. Mm-hmm.

Mike Warkentin (11:46):

Perfect. Or you’re doing it just by DM or just booking appointments by chat through sell-by-chat. What are you doing in between there? Do you have any systems that make sure that people show up for those appointments? Because we all know as fitness owners that people will book, and they’re like—and then they just ghost you. So, what are you doing to make sure they show up?

Vel Bates (12:02):
Oh, yeah. So, I mean, that’s been something that we’ve been working on now for a couple of months, and I’m seeing that it’s common. It’s just the common thing. A lot of people will book an appointment and just completely disappear off the face of the Earth. So, what we’re doing though, we’re sending the reminders. So, depending on how far out, like if it’s a couple of days, maybe five days or so, we’ll do a three-day reminder. We’ll do a one-day reminder, so about 24 hours, and then we’ll do a four-hour reminder leading up to that. But those are set by email. And then we also do it by text. Well just in case they don’t … And then another thing we’ve added within the last couple of months is we send them a text message, and it’s basically our address, it’s a link to a local newspaper—we were featured in a newspaper earlier this year—and it’s our social media.

Vel Bates (12:50):
So, it’s basically saying, “Hey, here’s some information about us just so you can get to know us, get more comfortable with us before you come into the door. Let me know if you have any questions before your appointment on this date.” And usually we’ll wait, if we get a reply, that’s a good thing, and we’ll kind of gauge it off of that. But in between there, we send that about right after they book, if it’s the next day. But if it’s, like I said, Fridays out, we’ll wait a couple of days and then send that, see if they’re still interested, you know? Because most people will tell you right there, “Oh actually, I’m going to have to reschedule.” And most people won’t. But I think that’s helped a lot—just building that relationship before they even come in the door because walk in that …, and they’re like, “Hey, I read everything. I read the article,” and they have questions. So, that helps feel more comfortable coming in the door because we’ve all been there. I mean, you first start a fitness journey, there’s a lot of anxiety, and some people get nervous. We’ve had people get in the parking lot and almost drive away until I pop outside, and I’m like, “Hey, you can come in.” So, we know it’s coming.

Mike Warkentin (13:51):
So, there’s a couple of things, listeners, that are super important. The first is Vel has a system, and he’s laid out the signposts. They’re getting texts and email messages at these intervals. It’s all laid out according to a plan. The second thing I want to point out in that system is it’s not just email. He’s sending texts as well. Super important, everyone. I mean, if you look at your phone right now, you probably have 10 to 10,000 unread emails, right? And there’s lots of stuff in there. People lose emails. It is not the best way to get ahold of anyone anymore. Text message, in many gyms, works better. If you can get their phone numbers and send them texts because everyone looks at texts, not everyone looks at emails. So, that’s a huge, huge one that Vel just pointed out.

Mike Warkentin (14:29):
Consider getting text message reminders. Could be a video text. “Hey, thanks for booking an appointment. I’m so excited to see you Thursday at 10 a.m. I’m going to be checking in with you between then and now. If you have any questions, talk to me right now.” Video, texts, something that people are going to open it. That’s a huge one. All of those things get people to go in the door. What happens though, if someone doesn’t show up? Do you have a system in place there to try and get them again? Or do you leave them for a bit? Or what do you do?

Vel Bates (14:54):
So, usually if they don’t—if they’re not there, right on the dot, I’ll usually text them and go, “Hey, are you having trouble finding us?” You know, we know what’s going on, but “Hey, you having trouble finding us? Do you need …” and no response. So, then I’ll wait a couple of minutes maybe. I’ll text them again, “Hey, I’m so sorry. I wish we would’ve gotten to meet you today. Still looking forward to helping you. Did you need to reschedule? Alright, we understand things come up, accidents happen. If you’re still interested though, we would love to get you set up for a consultation, get you fit.” Sometimes they answer right away: “I’m so sorry, I forgot” or “Sorry, my kids dropped this, and I had to …” and we get it rescheduled.

Vel Bates (15:36):
But we’ll do that up to two or three times. And I know that’s nicer than some gyms. I know some gyms are like, “Nah, they’re done. They no-showed.” But you know, I’ll reach back out, and we’ve had people appreciate that. We’ve had people that they genuinely were not meaning to no-show. They just had a lot going on. They have anxiety. And I’ve gotten people to come in after four times of them not showing up, and they sign up, and they come in, and they sign up for PT and nutrition, and it’s like, “Oh, see, it was worth it.” And they appreciate it. So, we definitely check in. I just think don’t give up on them so easy. I know, for us, it’s our business. And a lot of people can take it personally when people ghost them, and they no-show. It can be taken personally, especially when you map your entire day out. But I do encourage everybody to give them another chance, reach out. You never know.

Mike Warkentin (16:22):
If you were ready for the appointment, and they don’t show up, you’ve got 15 or 20 minutes to start texting and do some lead nurturing. And there are stories in the Two-Brain group of like owners who have messaged people and put them on reacquisition campaigns and have gotten someone after like seven, eight months, maybe 10 or 12 calls, or something like that. And is this annoying that person? No, the person asked for help, right? That’s the person who contacted you out, went out of their way to book an appointment, and contacted you asking for help. It’s kind of your duty as a fitness professional to help that person, and say, “Hey, I’m here to help. I’m here to help. I’m here to help.” If they contact you, and say, “Hey, I don’t want your help anymore.” Let them go. Get them out of your system, or we’re done here; we’re all good.

Mike Warkentin (17:01):
But that’s perfect because you know you’ve gotten a “no” answer; it’s fine. But if you don’t contact them, they might still need help. Maybe they just need a little push. And this is where Vel’s social media comes in because let’s say that person skips an appointment. They’re nervous; they contacted him. Maybe they were having a bad night or something. They felt bad about themselves. “I want to lose weight.” Next morning, they wake up, they’re really upset that they’ve done this. They’re not ready for it, but they’re just like still in their head. They start thinking; they look at his social media. “This person lost weight. This person accomplished this goal. This seems like a really good guy. He’s a professional, he’s got a great staff, great facility. Oh, I got a message saying, ‘I missed my appointment.’ Okay, I’m going to rebook.” All that stuff is your backup plan.

Mike Warkentin (17:39):
It’s like, think about it—playing baseball, that’s the backstop that catches all the things, the pitches that don’t go over the plate. That stuff is essential. So, you’ve got to build all that. So, those are the systems that you’ve got to get people in the door. And you had a great time doing that. So, you got 45 appointments, 26 shows, and that’s fantastic, so good work on that. Now, you’ve got them in the sales office. Tell me about the structure of that sales meeting: What do you do, and how do you get them to sign up?

Vel Bates (18:02):
So, definitely the prescriptive model. Thank you, Two-Brain. Instead of them just coming in—a lot of gyms, they just walk in, and they’re like, “You want personal training? All right, here’s the price. There you go. Do you want it or not?” You know, that’s not going to close anybody. So, we definitely do the prescriptive model. We’ve changed our questionnaire a lot of times just over the experience and getting more questions. And what we do is we turn it into more, for one, identifying the pain points. Specifically, the thing about us offering all those services is we allow them to have control, and they can hybrid their package. So, with the prescriptive model, we say, “Hey, you may not, you might not—do you need nutrition? How’s your relationship with nutrition? Do you have experience with personal trainer, or are you more experienced with group classes?”

Vel Bates (18:46):
Okay. And they choose that. Okay, boom. So, as they’re giving us these answers, we’re building it out. And then at the end we have their prescription: “Okay, based on the things that you’ve told us and your needs, your goals, your expectations, here’s what we think will work best for you; here’s the price.” And we kind of get that out the way. But before we even do the price, the biggest thing I think is we kind of connect on more of a psychological and an emotional level basking them, if six months from now you were to achieve this goal, what would that look like for you? What would that feel like for you? What would change in your life? And that’s usually where we get the real answer, the intrinsic answer to why they’re wanting—everybody’s like, “Oh, I just want to lose 30 pounds.”

Vel Bates (19:24):
I’m like, “Yeah, but why do you want to lose 30 pounds? Why do you want to lose 30 pounds? What is that going to do for you?” Once you get that answer, you can use that as far as if you get any roadblocks and things like that. Yeah. But you know, “You said you wanted to be able to be here longer for your kids or be more in shape for your wife,” things like that. And I think that that gives you that extra push to close. I had a guy the other day that we closed on just last Friday, and once we got to that part of it, he was sold on it. I was able to relate to him on more of an emotional level and incorporating fitness and how that could change his life. I think it made a big difference.

Mike Warkentin (20:01):
Wow. So, there, I mean—I’m going to put a link in the list in the show notes for you, listeners. The prescriptive model: It’ll tell you exactly how to use it because Vel’s sticking to the Two-Brain playbook here. The short version is exactly what he laid out: You ask someone what they want to accomplish, you tell them how you can help them, and that’s the deal. And it works. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. Vel’s living proof. Again, it works. And he’s added in an extra step that we recommend; it is: “What do you want to accomplish, and why?” And if people—you’ll get some gut punches in there. When people tell you, “I want to do this,” like you mentioned a guy who wants to be around longer for his kids. There’s other ones where it’s like, “I just want to feel good in my own skin again.” “I want to go to the beach without feeling ashamed of myself.” Like, you’ve probably heard some incredible emotional stuff in there and that helps you understand what this person really needs. Like, have you had a couple of other really great examples of things people have told you? Like their whys that are just like, “Oh, this is incredible.”

Vel Bates (20:52):
As far as wanting to transform themselves, usually I get them by asking, “Okay, so not just are you wanting to be more in shape for your wife,” but I’m like, I still try to make it be for them. I’m like, “Okay, but what about what you want?” Because at the end of the day, that’s going to be the best way to go with it. You know, we learn extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. You want them to—“What is it doing for you though, specifically?” And what I usually get is, “Okay, but yeah, you look good for your  wife, be here for the kids,” but, like you said, “I want to look good in my own skin.” “I want to walk in a room and not feel like I’m the most out of shape person in the room.” Especially, you want to be able to use those, like you said, the beach. But I think: You want to go to the beach and be able to just take your shirt off and not be insecure and not confident in yourself, you know? So, but those are mainly the ones that I hear. I think you pretty much got them perfectly. Those are the most common ones.

Mike Warkentin (21:46):
So, it’s: “What do you want to accomplish? Why do you want to accomplish it? Here’s how you do it.” And the cool part about the prescriptive model is that sometimes people will come, and they’ll say, “Okay, I want to look better. I want to build muscle” or whatever. And you’re like, “Okay, cool.” And they might just think that they’re just going to do personal training, but you’re like, “You know what? The best actual plan if you want to accomplish this goal is: I want to do personal training with you three times a week. But I also have a nutrition plan because if you’re not eating properly, we’re not going to get the results that you want. Right? We need to gain, lose a little body fat, we want to gain some muscle—high protein, low fat, whatever it is. I want to work out with you and give you some nutrition coaching, help you with your healthy habits, all that other stuff.” And they’re like, “Oh, that’s going to get me to my goals faster.” And you’re like, “Yes, of course it’s going to help you get your goals faster. The price is this.” They’re like, “Sign me up.” Right? And your system is the close. When you ask for the money, is it difficult or awkward?

Vel Bates (22:38):
No, not if you make sure you hit all the pain points, specifically to them. And I think, like we talked about social proof, if you say all of this, and you show a price, the value to them—psychologically value is determined by the result in a way. So, if they see these results, and they’re hearing these stories, and you can relate, your pricing is not a number to them. I’ve had people—of course, it depends—people are like, “Oh, that’s a lot.” But if you connect with them on an emotional level, usually the price doesn’t matter. They’re like, “I don’t care what the price is if it’s going to make me feel the way you’re telling me it’s going to make me feel—if I’m going to get the results like those people on that wall over there. I’m willing to—”

Mike Warkentin (23:15):
What is the price of self-esteem? What is the price to feel comfortable at the beach? What is the price? Those are valuable things, right? So, $200 a month or 300 a month, whatever it is, when you have that emotional hook, it’s not just a gym anymore. This is like you’re selling a result. You’re not selling a thing, right? You’re not saying, “Oh, this is just gym access.” You’re saying, “I’m selling you self-esteem through this plan.” And so, the close becomes very easy. And instead of you saying, “I’m trying to take this person’s money by getting them in my gym” and whatever, you’re actually selling a result and you as the gym owner, you’re on the hook for that result because you’re going to get them there, and you’re going to provide everything they need. Obviously, you can’t save everyone, but you do your very best to give everyone what they need. And you’ve got the social proof to back it up. Because like in your sales office, did they look at the wall and just see pictures of transformations and stuff? Is that there?

Vel Bates (23:59):
Yes. So, we added that like two months ago, and we’re still adding more. We just talked about it yesterday. So, not only do we have before and afters on the wall, we also have—there’s spotlights. So, we have it built into the client journey to where there’s a spotlight photo done at 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. And that, it’s highlighting their wins. Usually smaller wins. But since we do have access to an InBody, we usually put their InBody numbers at the top, and then get their emotional response down, down this much body fat percentage, down this much fat mass. But then at the bottom, “Feeling more confident in the gym or in my body.” We have those all on the wall on one side, and we have just the before and after the other side. So yeah, we’ve had people stand up, and they’re like, “Can I actually look at these?” I’m like, “Of course.” You know, but they’re walking through, and they’re looking at these people, and they’re like, “Wow. So, they did that in how long? And we’re telling them. And like I said, I think that that just makes—at that point, I just kind of, we’ll just sit back and let them just look at all these people because they’re like—the best thing is sometimes those people that are on the wall are in the gym, and I’m like, “You want to talk to them? Because they’re here.”

Mike Warkentin (25:05):
Has that happened? Have they gone out and tried it?

Vel Bates (25:07):
Yeah, I’ve had that happen a couple of times. I’ve had some that were out there; they’re one of our seed clients for sure. And I’m like, “Hey, you feel like stepping in?” And I’m like, “See, she’s real. No Photoshop here. I know we have all this AI and stuff going on. I just want you to see these are real people just like you that started off insecure, started off without confidence, started off anxiety. Now, here they are on their own.” Because the good thing about us is after they get done with PT and everything else, since they’re self-sufficient, that’s the good thing about our access. We just go into access, and they stay longer now. They’re here for years.

Mike Warkentin (25:43):
Okay, so listeners, if you’re out there, start collecting social proof. I’ll give you a tip as to when to do it: Have a goal review session with your clients—three-month mark. After three months, have a goal review session. Ask that client: Are you happy with your progress? If they say, “Yes, I am.” “Great. I’d like to make a superstar of you.” Pull out your phone, ask them some questions about what they’ve accomplished and what their next goals are and that kind of thing. And start putting that social proof together. You can also do it like Vel does—put them on an InBody. Ask permission of course, but just get them on there. Put their numbers up, before and after pictures. Almost nothing is more powerful than a before and after transformation picture. Like Vel said, you can do them with AI. People do that.

Mike Warkentin (26:19):
It’s sketchy. Don’t do that. Do it with your real clients because you’re a great coach, and you’re getting results. Put that stuff up. Make superstars of the people. Celebrate them. That’s going to retain that member. And it’s going to connect—give you all sorts of ammunition when you’re talking to someone in your sales office. Vel just points, “Cindy did that,” “Jeff did this.” And it’s like, “Oh, that’s what I want to accomplish. He could obviously make this happen.” Tell me one final thing: Your sales binder—do you have an actual thing that you look through and show the client? Or how are you presenting prices to them?

Vel Bates (26:45):
So yes, we do the binder. I’ve been thinking about doing the tablet. Right now, we do have the binder, and we have it all organized by personal training, semi-private, small group, 24-hour access. But it’s all in order of all the services, but just so we don’t overwhelm them, again, based off the prescriptive model, we usually just flip right to that thing, right? To what they fit in. It feels too salesy if we’re flipping through everything, “Do this, do that, do that.” Then they’re like, “But I need you to …” So, we have the binder, and I do think that makes a great difference instead of either sitting there, “PT is …” Being able to pull that binder out—we actually have a printout of our client journey.

Mike Warkentin (27:26):
Oh, nice. Hold that up for a second. That is beauty.

Vel Bates (27:29):
So, it’s kind of like a roadmap. Just like that. Coop has something pretty cool like that. So, we wanted to incorporate it in what we do though. They see this on day one. And then as they’re going through their journey, Lexi also—she’s doing CSM work too—she’ll send them, when they get to 30 days, at the 30-day mark here, they’ll get like a—there’ll be like a little car or like a person on a bike—like, “Congratulations on making it 30 days! Congratulations on making it to …” So, they’re getting these emails throughout the first 90 days. We’re still trying to work on our retention, so we do a lot more in that first 90 days than other gyms do. But yeah, that’s been great. They actually have an expectation. Okay, this is going to happen at 30, 60, 90. We do a goal review at 90, get back started right back at the beginning of the road, and that’s in the binder. And then also we have our nutrition coaching, macro coaching—not just the prices. It’s also kind of a tease of “Hey, this is what it’s going to look like if you do this. This is the roadmap.” And again, I think that helps just get …

Mike Warkentin (28:35):
You look ultra-professional as gym owner if, instead of saying, “Uh, I think our prices are 70 bucks a month,” if you just pull out the page: “Three times a week, one-on-one personal training: 275,” whatever. You just pull out the page: “This is the best solution to your problem. It’s our hybrid program. It’s nutrition fitness, it’s 305,” whatever. You just pull out the page, show it to them. And there’s a whole different way to break down if someone who’s got objections says, “Ah, I can’t afford that.” “Okay, I get it. Could you afford 275? Maybe we won’t start with nutrition coaching. We’ll start with this.” “Yeah, I can afford that.” There’s a whole system that Two-Brain teaches clients to close those sales. But in a lot of cases, if you just show them the price, you build up the value, you’re going to close those sales.

Mike Warkentin (29:15):
Just like Vel said, just by showing them that stuff as a pro. Two-Brain does have, for clients, downloadable sales guides that you can use, and you can also show them on an iPad. Vel was talking about that. Some gym owners have been really creative. They’ll put them on a screen that’s up behind the client or something like that. Show them on a tablet. Having your prices and packages laid out simply and directly and clearly is going to help you close more sales than having them scroll through a bunch of stuff or having them try and memorize all the stuff that you’re throwing at them. I used to do a horrible job of that. Three times a week? Is this one time a week? Is this two times a week? Is this unlimited? Is this? The client’s like, “I don’t care.”

Mike Warkentin (29:47):
Right? You’ve got to just give them a number, right? When you do it like that, it works. And then I love this: That graphic that you’ve had, you’re showing them the client journey. So, you actually are telling them, “Here’s where we’re at. Here’s where we’re going. Here are the milestones along the way.” Some of those milestones are those check-ins, which are super important for retention. And that 90-day check-in has been proven—Chris Cooper has the data—it’s proven to increase average revenue per member and retention because you ask clients if they’re happy. If they are, you keep them going. If they’re not, you make changes and you might alter their program and even add more stuff. “I’m not losing weight fast enough.” “Well now it’s time to add in nutrition coaching because you’re doing the work in the gym; you’re not doing the work in the kitchen.” Let’s do that. So, that 90-day journey, when you put that in and show people that graphic, did that start to—did you see visible results in your business with greater retention and greater onboarding success?

Vel Bates (30:38):
Yes. Yes. And it’s a psychological thing too because now we have in our bio, and we have on a whiteboard a picture that just says, “We help people take control of their health and fitness within 90 days.” So, they’re already expecting to do at least 90 days. And that’s the last question on the questionnaire. “Do you feel like you can commit yourself to this for at least 90 days?” So, by the time they get to that 90-day mark, we put them through a—we show them like their InBody again. And we’ve actually had that save people from leaving you. Because people don’t—if they’re just going off the scale, they might go, “Aw, I didn’t lose any weight.” Well, we’ve had somebody that came in, didn’t think she lost weight, but when we showed her—we had her do a 90-day InBody before her 90 days.

Vel Bates (31:21):
And the last time she did it was her day one. And what we did was we go, “Look at this. Your weight’s the same, but it’s because you lost six, seven pounds of body fat, but you gained seven pounds of muscle. So, it canceled it out for her. So, then she’s like, “Oh my gosh. So, I have been.” I’m like, “Yeah, you had a body recomp.” She’s like, “Oh, okay, so I was thinking I wasn’t getting results, so I’m going to stay on longer.” But had we not had that 90-day check in there to show her, “Hey look, no, let me show you what’s really going on. You’re thinking you’re not getting progress from this …” But that 90 day can save somebody from canceling because then you’re showing them, “Hey look—”

Mike Warkentin (32:03):
I love it. And that again, Two-Brain data backs this up. And that’s why it’s like great to have people like Vel explain it ground level—how it works. I’m going to give you the summary here, guys: Organic social media, paid media. You’ve got your funnels all putting people into your business. You do not have to use every single funnel in the world. Two-Brain teaches four funnels for clients. There’s content, social media, paid ads and referrals. Those are the four big ones that get people going. Whatever you do, you’ve got to start with one and then make sure it’s working well, and then go to the rest. Vel’s got some organic social media; he’s really great on there. He’s also got paid marketing. Those are two that are working really well. I’m sure you’re doing referrals and stuff. Am I right?

Vel Bates (32:39):
Yeah. Working on that. That one’s harder. We’re working on that. Yep.

Mike Warkentin (32:43):
But that’s going to get you the best clients. So, that’s almost a free space, right? Because you’re getting results with your clients. You’re a great trainer; they’re going to give you their friends. So, once you get that going, the business is even going to take off. But his funnels, the main ones there: We got organic social media—call it content, a little bit of a blurry one there. And then you’ve got your paid ads. He’s coming in, he’s got his nurturing systems, telling people, “You booked an appointment; I’m going to see you here. If you don’t come, I’m going to follow up.” You get people in the door. Using the prescriptive model to close those sales: It is a very simple, hugely effective system. Check the show notes for a link, and then you’ve got this 90-day journey that retains the clients, gives you a chance to ask them, “Are you happy?” And if they are, you make them famous with social proof. If they’re not, you make a small adjustment, and you retain them, set new goals, and keep moving forward. The system works like a charm. Vel, gym owners who are out there—so, we talked two years ago; you didn’t have this stuff in place—tell gym owners who are out there right now who don’t have the stuff in place: How soon could they make this transition? How soon could they do what you’re doing?

Vel Bates (33:36):
If you’re committed to it and you’re willing to do the work—I know a lot of people look at it as the boring work. I’m not a systems guy, but I had to become one. You have to if you want to get somewhere you’ve never been, you’ve got to do things. So, I would say it would take you—if you were committed to it, give yourself a good six months to really nail it. Because obviously once you get it together you have to trial and error to make the adaptations. I’ll say, all of the work is upfront. Once the systems are in place, the systems do …, and you can make small … Definitely worth it. We didn’t have these systems, and we struggled and didn’t know why we weren’t closing on clients. We weren’t getting leads. Now that we have all these things in place, I encourage you to at least give yourself a six-month goal to have it all laid out, secure, and …

Mike Warkentin (34:25):
Six months to change a business is not that long. Vel, how important is a mentor in speeding that process up?

Vel Bates (34:30):
Very important. Peter’s great. I have Peter. Peter’s great. He just actually gave me a new challenge to post more for content than I already post. So, I started a blog. We have a blog on the website now. So, I’m going to be putting some blogs up and things like that. But yeah, great guidance. Always able to see things from a different perspective, an outside perspective where when you’re in the business, if you’re in the grid of everything going on, it’s hard to kind of go, “Hey, did you get this done?” Peter’s good at keeping me from the shiny objects. I’m like, “Oh, let me try this then.” It keeps you focused, keeps you locked in, and emotional support too. It’s not easy being a business owner, let alone a gym owner. So definitely worth having a mentor. And I would do it again if I had the chance.

Mike Warkentin (35:18):
I appreciate all your comments so much. There’s a ton of insight in here for gym owners. Guys, follow Vel on social media. Check out his blog. We’ll put a link to 3D Fitness in there, so you can check it out as well. And then take a look at the prescriptive model. Everything he talked about is laid out in there, and it can help you transition your business, and if you want help doing it: plug and play resources—Two-Brain business has that for you. Vel, thanks so much for checking in with me. I want to talk to you in another year and see where you’re at.

Vel Bates (35:41):
Oh yeah, for sure. You know I look forward to it.

Mike Warkentin (35:43):
Drinks in Chicago?

Vel Bates (35:44):
Yeah, sure; I’ll be there again.

Mike Warkentin (35:46):
I’ll see you there, my friend. Thank you so much. That was Vel Bates. He’s the owner of 3D Fitness. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I hope you enjoyed the show. There’s some great information there for you. Please subscribe because this stuff comes out every single week from me, Chris Cooper, and the other hosts of the show. And now, here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.

Chris Cooper (36:04):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.

The post 16 Sales in September: Here’s Exactly How Vel Bates Did It appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Sticking to the Plan (and Why Some Gym Owners Can’t)

Every gym owner needs a goal, a plan and someone to hold them to the plan.

In the first post in this series, I told you how to set a personal goal for your business.

In Part 2, I told you how to turn that goal into specific targets for monthly revenue, client headcount and client value.

Now I’m going to tell you about the hard part: sticking to the plan.

The problem most entrepreneurs face isn’t a lack of intelligence. They can all work really hard. And they rarely lack ideas.

The No. 1 problem most gym owners face is they’re all over the place.

They run from idea to idea, they don’t repeat what’s working, and they try things and then try other things.

I know, because that’s me. I chase novelty. I’m attracted to shiny objects, and I think every new idea is so brilliant that I must work on it right away.

Luckily, I have business coaches and mentors to help me build a plan and then—the critical step—hold me to it!

That’s what coaches do.

But you already know that because you’re a coach.

Coaches Need Coaches

Your gym clients come to you with a goal. Your job is to give them a clear plan and then hold them to the plan.

Could your clients do it without you? Possibly. They might pore over research, buy equipment, set alarms to get up early, figure out their macros, and develop rigid adherence to their training and nutrition and sleep and meditation schedules.

But you and I know this almost never happens. When people do make progress on their own, it takes years and years of trial and error. Most times, people jump from one diet to the next, they try exercise programs but don’t stick with them, and they never really seem to get fitter despite sampling everything.

The same is true in business.

Most entrepreneurs jump from one marketing idea to the next, read a dozen books a year, listen to two podcasts every week, take courses on coaching better—but never grow their business. If your business isn’t growing 10 percent every year—minimum—then this is you.

A business mentor holds you to the plan after you build it. We help you avoid distraction, keep you on the path and actually get you to the destination.

Some entrepreneurs figure it out on their own—or seem to. Off the top of my head, I can’t name a single successful entrepreneur who figured out a plan and held themselves to it. Every successful entrepreneur you read about has a mentor—and will name the mentor when asked.

When you invest in mentorship, you’re buying speed. If your business is already doing OK, then the mentor speeds up your growth. If your business is going downhill, the mentor first helps you stop the bleeding, then helps you reset the foundation, then helps you start your growth and then accelerates that growth.

I have a sample annual plan for you to download in the Gym Owners United group. It’s a basic template, but if you don’t have a plan, it will work better than nothing.

If your gym is different than the average gym, you need something tailored—and we all need someone to hold us to the plan.

Click here to book a call with my team.

The post Sticking to the Plan (and Why Some Gym Owners Can’t) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Income Insight: Monthly Revenue Targets for Your Gym in 2024

Every gym owner needs a goal, a plan and someone to hold them to the plan—just like your clients need the same structure!

In the first post in this series, I showed you how to create clear goals. Here, I’ll show you how to break those goals down and create a plan to accomplish them.

I’m going to talk numbers, but I’ll keep it high level. If you want to build a specific step-by-step plan for your business, book a call with my team and we’ll talk about mentorship.

In the previous post, we defined your Perfect Day and came up with two goals:

1. An income goal for you.

2. A revenue goal for your gym.

Your gym exists to serve, yes. And it exists to pay you.

You could serve people by working for someone else. You opened a gym—at least partially—to earn more than you would as a coach. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your goal, as owner, is to create the revenue that will keep the gym running for 30 years.

In Part 1, I had you take your income goal and divide it by 0.3 to get your gym’s revenue goal.

So let’s say your take-home income goal is $100,000 per year. Your revenue goal for the gym is then $333,333. That’s how much money the gym needs to take in to pay you $100,000 at a profit margin of 30 percent.

Now let’s break that number down into months: $333,333 divided by 12 months is just under $27,778 per month.

Now you need to decide how to make that $27,778 per month. Start with what you already have: How much did you make last month?

Now let’s talk about closing the gap. To make more revenue, you can:

Get more new clients.Increase the value of the clients you have.Keep your clients longer.

Note that improving your team’s skills, cutting expenses and working fewer hours do not increase revenue. The actions might improve other aspects of the business, but right now we’re building a revenue plan, so we’ll address those things later.

After you’ve calculated the gap between your current revenue and your target revenue, calculate how many members you have and how much the average member pays per month (your ARM).

How many more members do you need to get to your goal?

What if every member paid you 10 percent more than they’re currently paying?

Define those numbers. Those are your new monthly targets.

In the next post in this series, I’ll tell you how to put these numbers into a monthly plan—and how mentors hold you to that plan to get you to the goal faster.

The post Income Insight: Monthly Revenue Targets for Your Gym in 2024 appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building Your Gym: Your 2024 Annual Plan for Growth

Chris Cooper (00:02):
If you are going to grow your gym next year, you need a plan. I’m Chris Cooper, this is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today, I’m going to walk you through the steps to building a 12-month plan. I’m going to tell you the things that you need to repeat over and over, and I’m going to give you some things that you can plan to help get more clients, increase your ARM, improve retention, and even pay yourself more. Look, every coach knows that their client needs a goal, a plan, and somebody to hold them to that plan if they’re going to be successful. And the truth is that it’s the exact same for a gym owner. Two-Brain Business is the largest membership practice in the world for gym owners.

Chris Cooper (00:38):
And at this time of the year, every single gym owner in Two-Brain—there’s about 930 of them right now—work one-on-one with a mentor to start with: What’s your goal for next year? Do you want to make more profit? Do you want to put all your coaches through the L3? Do you want to invest in a bigger facility? Do you want to buy a building? And then they set that goal, and they work backward to build a plan to achieve it so that every single client has their own unique step-by-step, month-by-month, week-by-week, day-by-day plan to get there and a mentor to hold them to the plan. Today, what I’m going to show you is how to build a plan for your gym. I’m going to give you a sample, and I’m going to give you a guide that you can use to work alongside with me. To get this guide that I’m going to be showing you, just go to gymownersunited.com, and you’ll see it right there, and you can just ask me for the guide.

Chris Cooper (01:26):
Okay? So, with no further ado, let’s talk about why you need a plan. Now, I just said that if you want to grow your gym, you have to be proactive. I know this has happened to you before. You show up at your gym before 6 a.m., and you stay there until nine o’clock at night, and you’re just busy all day, but then lying in bed later at night, you think, “Man, I worked hard all day, but I can’t name one thing that I did to actually grow my business or make it better for tomorrow.” And then for me anyway, I would always follow that with the thought: “Tomorrow’s probably going to be the same.” Many gym owners are always scrambling, and they feel overwhelmed because they keep remembering the most important stuff at the very last minute. Like, “Oh, Christmas is coming, and I forgot to set up my gift certificates or set up my retail, and now it’s too late.”

Chris Cooper (02:14):
Or, “Oh, I forgot I’m supposed to run the intramural open next month, and I haven’t planned anything yet.” So, their business just kind of happens to them, and they’re along for the ride. They’re not in control; they’re not driving it; they’re in the back seat. Well, I want you to take control of your business this year, and we’re done waiting and hoping for the best to just magically happen to us, right? So. I’m going to give you a 12-month plan full of things that you can do to grow your business. You can get this free guide at gymownersunited.com. You can print it out, you can stick it up on your door, and you can just follow it. You can see “Here’s what I need to have ready for next month, two months, three months. Here’s what I should be doing right now. Oh yeah, staff evaluations. Right, I can’t forget things.”

Chris Cooper (02:54):
So, you can start with the very sample—simple and sample—annual calendar on the first to second page of the guide. Just print it out. And on the first of every month, just look two months ahead and schedule the work that has to be done. Now, I’m going to brief you on each element of the plan as we go through this, but put this calendar on your wall, so you can stick to it. And in this free guide is just a basic sample. We teach hundreds and hundreds of different tactics in the Two-Brain mentorship program, and we build custom annual plans with gym owners. But this template will get you results; it’ll help you focus on the basics and do the things that will grow your business. My mission here is to make gym owners successful so that we have more gyms saving more lives around the world for more years.

Chris Cooper (03:39):
And I want you to grow in 2024 and help more people. So, if you need additional assistance doing that, let’s talk about mentorship. And there’s a link right below this video. So, here’s a broad overview of the annual plan that we’re going to build together. Now, keep in mind this is not customized to you, but I’ve got a lot of the elements in here that are important cornerstones that a lot of gym owners actually forget about. And so, we’re going to have them; you can add things if you want to. My suggestion is that you focus on two—maximum three—things a month and that you do the most important things over and over and over instead of trying to add new things. One area where a lot of gym owners really get overwhelmed is they’re trying to keep up with all the novelty that they see other gyms doing.

Chris Cooper (04:22):
Like, “Oh, if I don’t jump on that Instagram sell-by-chat strategy right now, it’s going to be gone, and I’ll have missed it, and everybody else will have done it.” You know, you’re getting FOMO; you’re getting overwhelmed; you’re getting stressed. It’s more important, I promise, to do the basic things really well over and over than it is to try and do everything or try and do the new things. You know, my gym—the sole marketing strategy of my gym was the blog in the email for the first 15 years it was around. We didn’t run a Facebook ad because we just didn’t need to. And so today, what I’ve got in this annual plan that I’m going to show you here are a lot of the basics that you should be repeating over and over if you want to make your business great. Okay?

Chris Cooper (05:03):
So, if you want to build something that’s specific to your gym, starting with your numbers and the numbers that you want to hit, book a call with my mentoring team, and we can get this going before the New Year even hits us. Okay? Here’s the sample annual plan that I want to give you. If you have no other plan, this plan is the best plan in the world for you. Okay? So first off, in January, we’re going to audit your funnels. We’re going to take a look through your four different marketing funnels, and we’re going to say, “Here’s what’s working, and here’s what needs to be fixed.” Because the reality is, at that point, there’s no sense starting anything new in January, and there’s no sense starting anything new until you’ve audited your funnels. Then I’m going to tell you how to do a Nutrition Kickstart to get things going.

Chris Cooper (05:46):
In February, you’re going to do coach evaluations, and you’re going to set up a Bring-a-Friend event. In March, you’re going to run the intramural open, and I’ve left the rest of the month wide open for that: It’s a lot of work. In April, you’re going to do goal reviews. In May, you’re going to do an offsite seminar and some career roadmaps. In June, you’re going to come to the Two-Brain Summit, I hope, and also link up through a local event with some other gym owners or even some other entrepreneurs. In July, you’re going to be worried about your Google Business profile and setting that up. You’re also going to be setting up your Google ads—might as well do those two at the same time. In August, you’re going to be setting up some specific ads for the “Surge,” and you’re going to be doing coach evaluations again.

Chris Cooper (06:31):
In September, you’re going to be doing goal reviews with your clients again. In October, you’re going to start your end-of-year promos, and you’re going to do another Nutrition Kickstart. In November, you’re going to do career roadmaps with your staff and build your annual plan for 2025. And in December, you’re going to run an in-house competition. Now, I’m going to break those things down. Don’t worry about pulling over to the side of the road if you’re listening or like scribbling them all down. We’re going to go through this step by step, but it’s all in the guide too. All you have to do is go to gymownersunited.com, raise your hand, say, “Hey, I really like that annual planning guide, Coop,” and we’ll give it to you” I’ll DM it right to you. It wouldn’t be Two-Brain if I didn’t give you the step by step on exactly how to do this stuff, instead of just giving you the idea or telling you you should do it.

Chris Cooper (07:13):
So, let’s go through this step by step. January, we want you to do two things. I want you to audit your four marketing funnels and do a Nutrition Kickstart. Your four marketing funnels that you should be running all the time are: referrals. You need a referral pipeline. You have to be active about referrals. You should have a strategy for content marketing. You should have a strategy for organic social media marketing, and you should have a strategy for paid advertising. Now that might be Facebook ads or Instagram ads or whatever, but you should be investing in something that’s going to bring you clients every month that you can measure. So, what you have to do is take a look at each of these four funnels first. And so, you could say, “Let’s talk about our referral funnel.” The top of the funnel is obviously your current clients.

Chris Cooper (08:05):
Are you meeting often with your current clients and asking for referrals? The next step down that funnel is bringing that client and their referral in for a two-on-one workout. Do you have that set up? After they’re there for the two-on-one workout, are you doing a No Sweat Intro with the new client or with the referral? And then are you selling them on your program? That’s how you set up a referral funnel. Now, if you’re not sitting down with your clients, then the first thing you have to do is book some goal review sessions or book appointments to sit down with your clients and ask for referrals. We call this affinity marketing in Two-Brain; there’s a step-by-step guide our program. You need to get good at this funnel before you get good at all the other ones. Look, ad costs—no matter where you live—are going up.

Chris Cooper (08:50):
If you are in Europe, the EU, right now, Facebook is testing an option where people can opt out of ads for 10 bucks a month. You need to get good at getting referrals. Even if you’re in Canada like I am, and Facebook ads are still working extremely well here, having a good referral network doubles your return on every dollar you spend on ads because every new client who comes in through an ad becomes two clients through referrals. So, you need to do that. The next thing you need to do is go through your other three funnels and say, “What is at the top of the funnel? What is getting me attention?” And then: “Am I converting those leads into my website?” And then from there: “Are they booking appointments?” and “Are they showing up and buying?” You need to audit that for all four funnels.

Chris Cooper (09:34):
And again, those four funnels are referrals, organic social media, content marketing, and paid ads. Okay? If you have a mentor in Two-Brain, you can go through this step by step with them. Don’t worry if it feels overwhelming. The next thing that you have to do is you need to make sure that you’ve got some kind of Nutrition Kickstart going for January. Look, in a perfect world, all of our clients would be making nutrition appointments with you every month, and they’d be paying 300 or 400 bucks to do that. The reality after doing this and collecting data on it for the last seven years is that your clients either don’t do it or they don’t do it for long enough to make meaningful changes. You’re better off to start with a Nutrition Kickstart in January. Have like a 28-day challenge of some sort: “Off the Couch, Off the Carbs Challenge.” You can call it whatever you want.

Chris Cooper (10:23):
You can have a habits-based challenge of drinking water, getting protein at every meal. Whatever that challenge is, start them with that challenge, and then you can convert people into ongoing nutrition coaching or habit coaching after that challenge ends. So, whether you’ve got a nutrition program or you’re just starting one from scratch or you have no plans to ever run one, a nutrition challenge in January is great to get your clients focused, back on track, build some hype and excitement, and get them back in the gym. For me in January, it’s cold outside. At 5 a.m., we can’t run a class because cars don’t start when it’s that cold. But everybody needs excitement in the gym in January, and you want to get people in. In fact, you can even tell them to invite their friends to participate in this and use it as part of your referral strategy too.

Chris Cooper (11:10):
Alright? Now, if you’re in Two-Brain and you’ve got this book, you can click straight through the book and go bam, straight to the actual exercise, the tools, the templates, everything that you need; you just click right through here. If you’re not in Two-Brain and you want to start in Two-Brain, by all means, just book a call with my team. In February, I want you to do two things: I want you to evaluate your coaches and run a Bring-a-Friend event. So, why evaluate your coaches? The only way that you really make your staff better is by doing constant evaluations. Now, you’re not here to say, “Are you good, or are you bad?” You’re here to say, “Did you start the class on time? Was there a fair amount of energy and enthusiasm in the class? Did you look happy, or did you look tired and burned out?” et cetera.

Chris Cooper (11:55):
Basically, you pull up the staff contract that you’ve got on that coach, you look at all the bullets in that contract, like all of the instructions, and you rate those things on a scale of one to 10. Or you take out your class SOP, your standard operating procedure—your class checklist, whatever you call it—and you rate the coach on each one of those items. One to 10. “Did this happen?” Then you sit with the coach, and you say, “Okay, here’s where you’re best. Here is where I’m going to help you. I’m going to mentor you and give you some help. And here’s one other thing that you can do to improve.” Okay? And that’s it. That’s how coaches get better. They don’t get better by learning or taking courses or attending seminars very much. They get better through feedback. And I’ll give you a tip from my own experience:

Chris Cooper (12:39):
If you wait to give this feedback until you’re mad or until there’s something wrong that needs to be corrected, it’s too late. You’re going to go into these evaluations emotional. You’re better to schedule these for February and tell the coaches they’re happening in February so that you can enter that conversation with guards down, nobody feeling defensive, or nobody feeling judgmental. If something bad happens, like if I walk next door into my gym right now, and I see it’s filthy, the class is boring, or there’s no music playing or something, and I say, “Hey, after class, let’s sit down and talk about it.” You know what’s going to happen? They’re going to get defensive; I’m going to be mad; et cetera. You’re better to schedule these events in advance. Also in February, I want you to run a Bring-a-Friend event. So, you’ve got people in your gym probably in January, or people are all hyped up because you’ve run that Nutrition Kickstart, or there’s a lot of reasons that February is a great month to start with referrals.

Chris Cooper (13:36):
And so what you do is you run a Bring-a-Friend event. This is a one-time event, like a Bring-a-Friend Friday. You can bring a friend to any class or personal training session on Friday, and this only works if you do it every quarter. I can remember in like 2010, we were trying to do this every week, and it just completely backfired. Number one: There was no sense of specialness or urgency to it. So, people would just say, “I’ll come next week,” or you would get these people returning and coming in every single week just to do the free class and crushing themselves and getting nowhere but never joining. Or you know, something else would happen, right? And, um, it didn’t work. So, what we found in Two-Brain is that a Bring-a-Friend event works best if you do it every three or every four months.

Chris Cooper (14:18):
So, three or four times a year, and that’s it. You want to hype it a month in advance. So, if you’re working on your plan, you want to be talking about this in January. There’s no sense running a Bring-a-Friend Week; there’s no value in running a week instead of just a day. A day is definitely enough. People will like it, or they won’t. The reason that people tend to run a Bring-a-Friend Week is because they think, “Okay, now the client will get a deeper understanding of the product, and the product will sell itself.” Look, when you run a Bring-a-Friend event, you can’t just run a great class and then stand by the desk and say, “Okay, I’ll take your credit cards here.” That doesn’t happen. You have to run a great class definitely, or run a great session, and then say, “Now let’s talk about your goals.”

Chris Cooper (15:00):
Sit down and do an NSI with the client, or they won’t convert. And the whole point here is not to expose people or give a free sample. The whole point is to convert people into going to your gym and saving their life. So, again, if you’re in Two-Brain, you’ve got your staff evaluation instructions, videos on how to do it, templates to follow, and the Bring-a-Friend Event Kit; you can download the entire kit, set it up step by step. “Here’s how to promote it. Here’s how to do fun little add-ons, like protein tasting challenges,” stuff like that. And you can just click the link right in this guide. So, if you’re tuning in late, you can get this guide just by going to gymownersunited.com. And what you’re looking for is our “Build an Annual Plan” guide. Just raise your hand if you’re in that group and you can’t find it, and I’ll make sure you get it.

Chris Cooper (15:43):
Okay, let’s move on to March. Okay? In March, I want you to run a fun in-house competition that lasts three to four weeks. We call that the Intramural Open. And in my gym, we’re a CrossFit gym, so we align with the CrossFit Open; we try to schedule our intramural open the same time that CrossFit has their CrossFit Open. Not as important as it used to be, but what you’ll see is that thousands of gyms worldwide combine the two things: the CrossFit Open with the Intramural Open. The Intramural Open came from basically my high school, which was a lot like Hogwarts in that we were divided into these four houses—Kings, Knights, Aces, and Panthers—and you competed every day at one or two things to get your house points. And at the end of the year, the Panthers would always win because that was my house.

Chris Cooper (16:29):
I’m just kidding, but that’s what happened. And so, around 2011, we started doing the same thing—I guess it was 2012—at Catalyst. As soon as the CrossFit Open was released for the first time, I said, “Oh, I know how to do this.” And broke everybody into four teams. And we give you step-by-step instructions every year in February. So, you can just follow that guide. So, look for that guide when it comes out. That’ll be in Gym Owners United. And again, if you’re in Two-Brain, you’ve already got all this stuff, and you can start setting it up now. You’ve also got a lot more detailed and in-depth instructions and help from other people who have done this far better than I ever have.

Chris Cooper (17:07):
And that’s really the point of Two-Brain is—you know, at first it was: I would have an idea and share it with other people, then other people would build on it, make it better, and we’d bring in their ideas, and we would test everything—but over time, the evolution is such that the material that we give in Two-Brain now is a hundred times better than I ever made or ever used at my own gym. Okay? In April, I want you to do 30 client goal review sessions. Now, these are hard for a couple reasons: They’re hard, number one, because you have to schedule them, and you have to sit down. They’re hard, number two, because there’s no clear path to how this is going to grow your business. And they’re hard—let’s face it; let’s be honest—number three, because you might not know if your clients are actually getting results, and you might not welcome their feedback. But the reality here is that if you want to keep clients long-term, you need to sit down with them every three to four months. You need to have an appointment; you need to measure their progress.

Chris Cooper (18:01):
And then you need to say, “If there’s a way that I can speed up your progress, this is it.” It’s up to you, the coach, to tell them how to speed it up. When somebody buys coaching, just like when they buy business mentorship, what they’re actually buying is speed. They’re not buying information; they’re not buying the programming, the workouts, the community. They’re buying speed. They want to get to their goals faster, and they’re willing to pay a coach to get them there faster. But if you don’t measure their starting point and measure their progress, then you can never really make sure that they’re getting to their goals as fast as possible. Now, what can happen in these goal reviews is you sit down, and you say, “Hey, since our last meeting you’ve lost six pounds. High five! I’m so proud of you. Is that in line with your expectation?”

Chris Cooper (18:45):
Or you know, “Are you happy with those results? Are you perfectly satisfied?” And if they say, “Yeah, I’m fired up. I love this gym so much.” Well great. You pull out your camera and say, “I’d love to share your story.” And you have them record their story, and you share that with everybody else. If they say, “I wish it was going a little bit faster,” then you say, “Okay, well as your coach, if I wanted to speed up your results, here’s what I would recommend: a nutrition plan, a personal training session once a week, or you come more often.” Whatever that is, right? Now, what will happen there is the client will either invest more money into your recommendation, or they say, “I don’t want to pay more. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing.” And either is fine, but we are not diligently doing our job as a coach if we don’t ask them and present the options to speed up.

Chris Cooper (19:32):
And so that’s something that a lot of coaches miss. They think like, “I’m just going to run programming. I’m just going to run classes every single day. Classes are going to be fun; they’re going to be hard; they’re going to be intense, and people will just gradually make progress.” But the reality is real coaching means: “I’m going to get you from here to the goal that you want to achieve as quickly as possible with a goal, a plan, and somebody to hold you to that plan. But the first plan is not going to be perfect. And so, every quarter or every four months, we’re going to review your progress and alter the plan and just keep sighting in that rifle until it gets better and better and better.” At Two-Brain, we call that the prescriptive model, and now you know why goal reviews are such a big part of that.

Chris Cooper (20:12):
Okay, so that’s April. And Two-Brain clients, there’s—of course—there’s a process for this. You can follow it; you can get some roleplay instructions; you can get some videos, templates, things to ask your clients—all of that right in the Two-Brain modules. Now in May, what I want you to do is host one offsite at a client’s workplace and do one career roadmap session with your coaches. So, an offsite seminar is: You look at your best clients and you say, “What do they do for a living? Who works with other people who would do really, really well here?” And I often give the example of an accountant, but you could use the example of a salesperson at a car dealership. Any service professional really who works in an office or who works with other people who would make good clients. Nurses: very popular option. Whatever it is, that has to be an audience that you’re passionate about helping.

Chris Cooper (21:04):
So, let’s use a nurse example because I’ve done this with nurses a few times. So, you might notice like you’ve got a group of three nurses at your 6 a.m. class every single day, and they’re very, very stressed out. They’ve been burned out since COVID lockdowns, and they’re still burned out. And you say, “Man, I just, I love you guys so much, and I want to help you more. What can I do that will help all the other nurses on your shift? Because I know the stress is bananas right now. What if I came in at shift change, and I just showed them how to relieve stress? Or 10 stretches that they can do three times during their shift? Or how to pack and eat a healthy lunch? Something like that: healthy habits. Would that help?” In my case, the nurses have always just said, “Yeah, awesome.”

Chris Cooper (21:49):
Even cops said, “Yeah,” for a while. And so, I would just find a time to go in with them, check with the head nurse or the supervisor of that shift, and I would go in for about 10 minutes, I’d give them some briefing, show them some stretches, whatever they needed. And then I would just plop down a business card. Or these days we would just show a QR code: “Here you go. Take a picture, and I’m going to give you something for free.” All right? One time—I’ll tell you this story really quickly; this was amazing: I was in an office for insurance brokers doing this, and we did a little talk; it’s about nutrition in the workplace, stress reduction, and “Any questions?” And this woman puts up her hand, and she says, “Hey, I saw you coaching hockey. You were on the other team’s bench, and by the third period your kids still had tons of energy, and our kids were dead. What was that?”

Chris Cooper (22:35):
You know, and of course there’s some laughter through the room because there’s so many hockey parents here. And I was like, “Oh, I give our kids a one-page eating guide called ‘How to Feed a Hockey Animal,’ and their parents can take it. And it’s very basic. It’s like: ‘Don’t get your kids donuts and Red Bull on the way to the game,’ you know?” And she’s like, “Well, how do I get that?” So, this is the insurance broker. And I said, “Oh, I’ll send it to you.” And then five more hands go up, right? Like, “How do I, we all get that?” And soon that became like a really powerful lead magnet for us. But you find these things by going and talking, and you expand your influence in your network and your client caseload by meeting the friends, the families, the coworkers of your current best clients.

Chris Cooper (23:15):
So, I want you to set that up in May. Two-Brain clients, I’ve got step-by-step instructions on how to figure out where to go, what to say, presentations that you can just copy and paste and use if you want to, and then how to get people to book an NSI with you later. The other thing I want you to do in May is hold a career roadmap session. So, what you’re going to do is sit down with each one of your coaches and say—it’s like a goal review—you say, “Are you completely happy with your progress here at the gym? Catalyst?” And they might say, “Yes.” They might say, “No.” And you’d say, “Hey, perfect world: If you had nothing else to do, how much would you want to coach? Are you coaching as much as you’d want to?” “Yes, I am.”

Chris Cooper (23:52):
And for the full-timers, I’m like, “Are you completely happy with the living you’re making here?” And if they say, “I want to make more money,” then that’s what we do. We spend the next 30 minutes breaking down, “Here’s how to make more money.” And I’ll tell you, this annual plan is a real help because you can say, “Well, here’s some opportunities. We’re running an Intramural Open in March. We could run an open prep class in February and get people ready, and you would collect a percentage of that,” et cetera. If they say something like, “Oh man, I just love working here, but the evenings are killing me.” “Great, well, let’s talk about different options for you.” If they’re a personal trainer and they’re like, “My book is full; I’m so swamped. I can’t work anymore, but I don’t know how to make more money”: “Let’s start converting some of your PT clients to semi-private.”

Chris Cooper (24:34):
Remember, you as the owner can serve as a mentor to those coaches. You’ve been where they are. And unless you want them to go out and start their own gym like you did and become maybe a competitor, you need to mentor them to make a career in your gym, on your platform, using the knowledge that you know now that you didn’t have before. And you can do that if you set up these career roadmaps at least twice a year. And again, if you’re in Two-Brain, we’ve got samples for you to just follow. Now in June, I kind of tongue-in-cheek wrote, “Come to the Two-Brain Summit,” but I really think it’s important, and that’s why it’s in this guide. I want to see you in Chicago. I want you to feel the power of being connected with a thousand other gym owners in one room.

Chris Cooper (25:18):
It’s really like an epiphany. It’s like, “Okay, yes, we are changing the world here. Yes, it’s a good time to be a gym owner. No, I’m not alone. I’ve got connection; I’ve got support. I’ve got a goal, I’ve got a plan, and all these people are going to hold me to the plan.” It’s so valuable. Come the first time. If you’ve never been, come on your own, bring your spouse; that’s great. The second time, bring your team because if they are fired up, man, so much more is possible. You’ll move so much faster. Alright, the other thing I want you to do in June is partner with a local event. So, let’s say that there’s a local 5K race or something else, like maybe there’s a triathlon or a swimming event or an obstacle course race like Spartan. What you want to do is set up a training group for that event.

Chris Cooper (26:05):
Now you can have an official partnership where you’re the sponsor—maybe it’s a throwdown, right? Maybe it’s a CrossFit event or something like that. Or you can have an unofficial partnership where you’re just getting people ready for the big day. And so, what you’re going to do in a perfect world is partner with that event and say, “Hey, we want to help get more people to your event. We are running a prep course, like Couch to 5K, and it’s going to be eight weeks long. Here’s what we’re charging for it. But the deal is that they all sign up for your event. Will you promote it?” And in some cases, they will. In some cases, they might ask for a cut, but whatever; it’s still a great partnership, and they will push people toward you. If they say no, or if the event is too big, like it’s an official Ironman or something, that’s okay.

Chris Cooper (26:49):
You still run the event, and you just promote it through your own media and your own marketing, and it’s a 12-week prep course to run your first duathlon, triathlon, whatever that is. And you just set that up 12 weeks, eight weeks leading out from the event and train people for it. We do this all the time, and you can set up your own events and then set up the training for those events and charge for both. Or you can partner with local organizations, which is what we prefer to do. So actually, I’ll give you two examples: So, in the spring we have a local cross country 5K that we work with, and we run a Couch to 5K to get people ready for it. We encourage beginners to join. And they promote it for us because they know that we pump runners into their event year after year.

Chris Cooper (27:31):
At the end of the year, there’s nothing happening in December, and so we run our own event, which is like a powerlifting, weightlifting meet, called the Super Meet, and then we run a training group to get ready for that—to optimize people’s potential to perform well in our own event. So, you can do both. Now July: We’re going to get a little bit technical. The reason we want to be focused on optimizing Google and stuff in July is that August is typically the worst month in the fitness business. Now obviously if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere and you’re listening to this—Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa—the inverse is probably going to be true, right? Like January, February might be your worst months. So, take this with a grain of salt, but ahead of that worst month, you want to be getting things in motion to create some revenue to help you ride the wave through that month.

Chris Cooper (28:22):
On the other hand, if all your clients are taking holidays, vacations, that’s probably a good time for you to do it too. And so, what we try to do is make extra money in July—boost revenue up—and then schedule staff vacation time through August, which is one of the most beautiful months of the year here. So, what you can do in July is set up your Google Business profile and start doing Google lead ads. And the goal here is just set up a safety net to catch people who are looking for a gym. You want to be the top of the Google rankings. If you’re pretty rural, this is really, really easy, but you have to stay on top of it, so you want to update Google My Business; you want to put a new post up on there about once a month.

Chris Cooper (29:05):
It can be a blog post if you want to. You want to keep your pictures updated, your opening hours updated, your contact info updated. You want to make your Google My Business the top of a funnel. Then you’re going to set up paid ads just to drive people toward Google My Business. And then they work through the funnel from there. So, if you’re not sure how to do it and you’re in Two-Brain, there’s a step-by-step course on this. You just go into the toolkit, and you can get it. If you do know how—if you’re not in Two-Brain and you’re trying to figure this out, you can literally Google it. You won’t get the clear directions, you won’t get the video demos or the “Click here, copy this, paste it here” or the best practices, but you will be told how to do it.

Chris Cooper (29:44):
You just have to click a lot of different things. But you should do it in July. Now in August—August is, I said, the slowest time of the year—we would usually try to generate revenue in August by having a competition set up for September. So, I’ll get into that in one moment. But while August is happening, you can set up your paid ads for your September “Surge.” So, September is usually the second busiest month of the year, at least if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, because September is when people’s calendars and their schedules get filled out again. The kids are back in school; the kids are back in sport; the parents have done their holidays—they’re back to quote-unquote “normal.” September is the month of normalcy. And so, you want them to include the gym in their normal behavior. And September is really when you want to get that started.

Chris Cooper (30:33):
So you want to—August: Set up paid ads for the September “Surge.” You could use your Google My Business profile like you just set up the month before. You could use Facebook ads if you want to. They’re still working really well, just maybe not as well as they used to, but they’re still working better than a lot of other things. And then you want to do another coach evaluation. So, in August you’re going to do your second coach evaluation of the year, and you’re going to set up your paid ads. Now look, if you’ve tried Facebook ads and said, “Oh, they didn’t work,” you probably didn’t set them up properly. If you don’t want to do paid ads, that’s fine. Find another way to do it or stick with Google Ads or whatever. But the point is that you need to be dropping more and more leads into that advertising funnel during August because once September hits, you’re not going to have a lot of time to focus on your ads.

Chris Cooper (31:20):
And so this—August—is the perfect time to set all this stuff up and get it rolling, and then you can just maintain it for the rest of the year when you’re busier. So, use that downtime to reinvest in getting clients for the rest of the year. Then in August, I want you to do 30 more goal review sessions. It might seem like you just did it, but the last time you did it was several months ago. And look, I told you, I think every group coaching client should get a goal review three or four times a year. If it’s a personal training client or a semi-private client, they probably don’t need those goal reviews. But the group training clients definitely do if you want to keep them. And so, I’m putting down “perform 30,” but I’m just trying to get you in the habit.

Chris Cooper (32:00):
Really, you need to be doing these all the time, and it is a very high value use of your time, but it takes some practice to get it going, and it takes some reps to see like, “Oh, this is enormously valuable. I get referrals out of this, I get upgrades, I get better client retention out of this. This is really, really important and core to my business.” People usually have to try it a few times to get in the flow of it. So, I’m asking you to do it again in September. Then in October, it’s time to start setting up your year-end promotions. So, what you’re looking at here are packages, like pre-sales; you’re looking for retail, and you’re looking for gift giving. So, this is the time in October when you set up gift certificates on your website that people can prepay and give to a friend.

Chris Cooper (32:45):
This is the time when you put your packages together. So, “Hey, you can buy your package of 10 personal training sessions and give that as a gift.” This might even be the time when you audit your sales binder and say, “Here’s what we want to offer next year.” You know, this is what we do at Two-Brain: What are we going to update in our curriculum? What are we going to change in our On-Ramp program? Et cetera. This is a good time for you to do that, and it’s a great time for you to offer these things to your clients. Another one that you might want to do is a retail presale. So, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing long-sleeve tee, and it’s on pre-order.” So, you’re not putting out money in advance. People can click through the link, they can pay you, you hold the money, you order through Forever Fierce or whoever your retail provider is, they bring the stuff in, and then you pay, and people have it in time for Christmas.

Chris Cooper (33:30):
You need to do that in October. In November, you’re going to hold career roadmap sessions with your coaches again, okay? So, twice a year, you’re going to sit down with them. “How are things going?” If you want to roll this into an evaluation period, you can. “You said this was your goal. Here’s where we’re starting from; here’s what you can do to get closer to that goal.” And that could be revenue-based; it could be time-based; it could even just be performance-based. Maybe the coach’s goal is like, “I want to get my black belt, or I want to get my CrossFit level three,” or whatever that is. You can help them map out how they’re going to get there, how they’re going to pay for it, how they’re going to make more money, how they’re going to get more time off, how they’re going to ascend in their career without becoming your competitor.

Chris Cooper (34:12):
Maybe one day they become your partner, and you can plan that out too. Alright? And then you’re going to make your plan for the following year. Hopefully, by this point in the year you have started working with a mentor that’s going to look at your actual metrics and break this plan down even more to say, “Specifically, our goal is five new clients next month with a loss of only two driving this much revenue. We’re also going to be doing x, y, z to get you to your exact goal, get you a better living, keep your clients around longer, make a bigger difference in their lives, and create a more meaningful career for your coaches.” Okay? That’s what a mentor does. And a mentor, their job is to help you get there faster. Just like your job is to help your clients get there faster. And then finally, next December, I want you to host a really fun in-house competition party.

Chris Cooper (35:00):
We do Super Meet. So, Super Meet is a combination powerlifting meet with a weightlifting meet and weighted pull up. So, six max lifts; they have a two-hour window, they can do them in any order, and their best lift wins. So, if they want to just keep attempting deadlift, deadlift, deadlift, deadlift for six maxes or something, fine. They can eat up their time that way. If they want to do the pull up first, that’s fine. If they want to do the press first, that’s fine. I don’t care. If they want to do the weightlifting stuff first, cool, no problem. But their goal is just beat their record from the previous year. Then we have a potluck, and we adopt foster families. That’s really kind of near and dear to me. And so, every year we adopt about 70 foster families with two or three kids each.

Chris Cooper (35:44):
We buy them all presents. And the night of our Super Meet, the caseworkers come with vans, and they pick up hundreds of presents, and you can actually see a video if you click the link in the guide here. So, again, if you want to get this guide to get the step by step, you just go to gymownersunited.com; you’re going to see it right in there. But if you don’t just put your hand up: “Hey Coop, can you send me that guide?” I’m happy to send you the “Annual Planning Guide.” So, that’s your 2024 year. If you do nothing else but these basics, you’re going to have a better year than probably you’ve had this year. You know, any plan is better than no plan. And if you really want to grow your gym, you need three things:

Chris Cooper (36:21):
You need a goal, you need a plan, and you need somebody to hold you to that plan so that you’re not swerving all over the place. Because what gets you speed is focus. It’s simplicity. It’s knowing exactly what you need to do and doing that and not getting distracted by all the other million options that are bombarding you every day. I know because they’re bombarding me too. That’s why I have a business coach. That’s why we’re a business mentorship practice because I know that as a gym owner, you also need a goal, a plan, and somebody to hold you to that plan. I’m Chris Cooper; this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for walking through this book with me, and I want you to have an amazing 2024.

The post Building Your Gym: Your 2024 Annual Plan for Growth appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Your 2024 Annual Plan: Income and Your Perfect Day

Every coaching client needs three things:

1. A goal.
2. A plan.
3. Someone to hold them to the plan.

Having all three is the key to success.

Your business is no different. Just as you coach your clients to their fitness goals, my team and I coach you to your business goals. And if you want to be successful in business, you need those same three things.

Let’s start with setting a goal. Money isn’t your real goal, but money will pay for your goal, so we’re going to set money goals.

The first step to creating your goal is determining your Perfect Day. Here it is:

A year from now, when your business is perfect:

What time will you wake up in the morning? Will you start work early or sleep late?Will you put your kids on the school bus, have a leisurely coffee and then cruise to the office, knowing that your early clients were handled just as if you’d been there?Will you go to an office or do you work from home—or will you go to the beach?What work will you do within your business? Will you deliver your service or lead others to deliver it?Will you spend your afternoon further developing the business? Will you take your partner out for lunch? Will you leave early? Will you come back again later?

Some gym owners love to work in their gym and prefer to stay hands on. Others would like to learn more about the business side and cut back on coaching classes. Both are great options. The point: You have the choice.

Let’s keep going. When your business is perfect:

How many vacations will you take each year? Where will you go?What will you learn next year?What must you fix or replace around the home next year?

Write everything down. Then answer these questions:

1. How much will you have to earn in a year to support that lifestyle?

2. How much more will you have to earn to pay for the vacation, the education and the lifestyle upgrades?

Now add it all up—that’s your income goal. We call this your net owner benefit (NOB): the total of all the money you take out of your business, plus the stuff your business pays for (like your cell phone and your education).

Next, divide your desired income by 0.3—that will give you a revenue goal. The number is how much revenue your business will need to generate next year to provide your desired net owner benefit. Once you have that number, we can build a plan. I’ll tell you how to do that in the next post in this series.

Set a Goal Today

If you don’t have a goal, you’ll never get anywhere. I’m sure you tell your clients the same thing.

But it’s not enough to pick a random number: You need to have a very clear picture of the goal, as well as an emotional reason to reach it.

Don’t think about earning $100,000 next year; think about taking your kids to Disneyland and replacing the dishwasher.

The post Your 2024 Annual Plan: Income and Your Perfect Day appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Influencer Alert: Cameras Banned in Some U.K. Gyms

Bad news for the “fit-fluencer” community in the U.K.: Earlier this month, a number of gyms banned the filming of workouts and announced policies to regulate media creation.

Yes, selfies are now forbidden at Puregym’s 340-plus U.K. locations because cameras are banned.

Virgin Active has put in a policy that allows people to request that influencers delete photos and videos.

And the Fitness First chain requires that people in videos give their consent before they are filmed.

These developments are, once again, a reminder that you’ll need a media policy at your microgym someday.

Maybe tomorrow.

First, a few references.

You can read more about the gym-media developments in the U.K. here:

“U.K. Gyms Ban Selfies in Blow to Influencers”

“Gyms Crack Down on People Filming Themselves”

And here’s my previous take on influencer media and gyms:

“TikTok Shaming and Your Gym: Got a Code of Conduct?”

The latest news shows this problem isn’t going away, and you will have to deal with cameras in your gym at some point.

As I see it, you have four main areas of concern:

Safety issues created by cameras, tripods and distracted influencers who will do anything to get the perfect shot—including ignoring a coach.Shaming—when influencers publicly call out or mock people in the background of their media.Members who do not want to appear in influencer media.Members who do not want to appear in any media.

The safety issue remains a no-brainer. If someone is creating a hazard, it needs to be dealt with. That one is easy.

Shaming is easy, too. Making fun of someone in the background of your video is just bad behavior. Mean people should be removed from your gym.

You’re going to run into problems with people who don’t want to appear in videos or photos without consent.

It’s relatively easy to solve the problem when you’re producing the media to promote your business. A gym should have a media policy in its waiver or intake package so clients know that owners and staff will create media to promote the gym.

Some members will opt out, and you’ll have to respect their wishes. These people are rare, and it’s usually easy to keep them out of the spotlight: Frame your shot without them or blur a face if you need to. AI makes light work of editing tasks that used to take time, skill and professional software.

When members start filming themselves with others as collateral damage, all bets are off. They can’t know who has or hasn’t signed a media release, and even some who did sign the gym release might not want to be in another member’s video.

The solution? Get a plan in place before you have a problem.

How do you decide what path to take? Review your client avatar.

What’s Best for Your Clients?

Would your top PT client be fine appearing as an “accidental extra” when an influencer starts loudly hammering out an open-gym TikTok that monopolizes space and equipment?

How about if someone just sets up a camera in a functional fitness gym to get some footage of a few Olympic lifts for a small personal account?

What about live broadcasts of high-intensity workouts streamed to Facebook and Instagram?

The perfect plan will be different in every business.

A functional fitness gym that caters to a younger YOLO crowd in a college town might have rules that differ from the standards in a posh access gym that caters to urban professionals. And if your gym serves kids, you’ll need to be even more cautious about what content they appear in.

You can create any plan that works for your business and your ideal clients.

Just remember that every person is now a full-service, on-demand media outlet, and you’d be wise to create your plan before the shy, ultra-private lawyer who does PT appears in the background of an OnlyFans workout video created by a member whose content might be labeled “suggestive.”

The post Influencer Alert: Cameras Banned in Some U.K. Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Guided Access: Solving Labor Shortages at CrossFit MASS

Chris Cooper (00:02):
Joe and Alessandra, welcome to “Run a Profitable Gym.”

Joe Venuti (00:05):
Hey, thank you for having us, Chris.

Alessandra Bisalti (00:06):
Hello.

Chris Cooper (00:07):
Yeah, it’s so awesome to have you guys. I mean, I get to hang out with you guys in person at Tinker meetups and Summit and stuff, but our audience doesn’t know you yet. And you know, just as a funny story, the first time I ever met Joe, I was down at CrossFit MASS, and we were doing this “Fight Gone Bad” workout. And part of the workout was you had like a CPR dummy.

Joe Venuti (00:29):
Yep. Yeah. Rescue Randy.

Chris Cooper (00:31):
Yeah, Rescue Randy—that’s it. And so, one of the stations was you had to backward carry Rescue Randy through this kind of shuttle run. And I have never wanted to throw up after a CrossFit workout more in my life than frigging Rescue Randy.

Joe Venuti (00:46):
Yeah, yeah. You did it right. If you felt like that.

Chris Cooper (00:50):
Alright, well guys, I’d love to get into—and thank you so much for generously offering to share this story—what brought you to the point of doing guided access in your gym? What were you doing right before, and what kind of triggered the transition? And then we’ll get into the specifics of what it is later.

Joe Venuti (01:08):
Yeah, so real quick, we were doing sort of the typical CrossFit thing, pre-pandemic. You know, we had group classes. That was our main offering. We did privates; we did specialty classes—you know, the Two-Brain kind of model. But one of the specialty offerings we had was individual design. So, if someone didn’t really fit into a group class model, they had a condition that didn’t allow them to participate, or they had a goal that was really specialized, we’d spin them off into this individual design model.

Chris Cooper (01:40):
Yep.

Joe Venuti (01:40):
When the pandemic hit, the government said, “Hey, everybody, go home.” Right? And that wasn’t cool. So, we took our entire client base—privates and group clients—and we put them all into the piece of software called TrueCoach. And we started programming for them remotely based on what they had at home individually. And then when we were allowed to reopen, we continued that, and we never really let up on that.

Chris Cooper (02:06):
That’s really interesting. And we did the same, but when we came back, we tried to bring everybody back to the original kind of group class model. And there were a number of reasons why that just didn’t happen. But for you guys, the problem actually got compounded a little bit more. So you brought people back?

Joe Venuti (02:24):
Yep.

Chris Cooper (02:24):
And then staffing?

Joe Venuti (02:26):
Right. So, it was just the two of us. When we initially brought people back, you could only have so many people in the building. So, we divided the gym up into separate zones, and everybody came in and would work out in their own zone, and there’d be a coach on the floor. So, she would take the mornings some days, and I would take the evenings. And so, you’d still get coached even though you’re all doing the individual programming. But there was more flexibility there in that. And yeah, so that’s how we managed that for a while. And then recently we came across the staffing issue again because we had built some staff back up, and then things have changed. And so, we’ve introduced something called “enhanced access” where the clients can come in during off-hours—non-coached hours—and utilize the gym then.

Chris Cooper (03:16):
That’s awesome. And Alessandra shared her schedule with me yesterday. We’re actually going to walk through it, but what I’d like you to do is just kind of describe this. So, I’m a new client walking in: What is your program? What are you selling me?

Alessandra Bisalti (03:29):
Well, we do a formal consult, sit down with Chris, and ask you your past experience—any goals that you have near or far. We also ask you if you have any previous injuries. Right? So, we get a full scope of who you are coming in. We go over different types of programs that might fit your goals and your budget. So, the predominant buckets are individual design or private training to some extent. Then what happens is, if you choose the individual design route, we go through that whole process. Right? We set up your three one-on-one sessions that we’ll go through. Um, we’ll also walk you around the gym and make sure you kind of get an idea of where you’re going to be, where you’re going to park, different things like that. And then once you’re ready to get going, we just set you up on the backend and give you some little trinkets—or not trinkets but drips in your email—of what to expect. And we each show up for your first day, and we have at it on those three one-on-one sessions to see how you move and what areas we can improve first to help you towards your goals.

Chris Cooper (04:32):
Okay. And then the next step is you write me a program, and I come in and do the program. How’s that done?

Joe Venuti (04:38):
Yep. So that’s delivered to you on your phone. We have software. You get video previews; you see your whole workout for the week on Sundays with video previews and instructions from your coach. You are able to talk to your coach through the software. So, if your schedule doesn’t line up with your coaches—you’re in there with another coach; you’re in there during the extended access time—you can still communicate verbally and visually with that coach. Right. You record your data, so they can track your progress through the software to make sure you are making progress, and we don’t need to pivot. So yeah, the software has really been great for us to act as a lever, right? It lets us be there more without actually being physically present. Right. We can, we can project our coaching across broader times.

Chris Cooper (05:23):
Okay. So, when I show up to do my program and I’m a client, is there any coaching going on while I’m there?

Joe Venuti (05:30):
Uh, yeah. So, what we did was we used the old “Chris Cooper Model.” We’ve done it twice now since the pandemic. We opened for two weeks at a time, seven or 7:30 in the morning to about seven at night. And we just see when people come in, and we heat map it. And so, we’ve determined when the times are that are most popular for people to come in, and we put coaches on the floor during those hours—they’re coached floor hours. So, you know, we might have a half dozen people on the floor at a time doing each doing their own thing. And the coach is just working the floor like a party going around making suggestions, tweaking things a little bit. So, there’s probably about 20 to 25 coached floor hours spread across the week. And then there’s other times that the staff is in, but they’re teaching privates, and you’re welcome to come in at those times. But the latest addition to the program—was it March? End of March we added it?

Alessandra Bisalti (06:25):
Yes.

Joe Venuti (06:26):
There’s electronic access to the door to the gym. So, you can use your phone, you can access the gym, and then you can come in and get your work done from six in the morning to about nine at night too. And those are not necessarily coached hours. Right. But there’s the flexibility. So, you have kind of three phases of coming in: coached hours—about 20, 25 of those. Study hall hours where there’s a coach in the building, but they’re not necessarily dedicated to being on the floor. Right. They can still help out a little bit, but they’re not really dedicated to being on the floor. And then there’s this enhanced access where it’s kind of wide open for you to come in and get your work done.

Chris Cooper (07:03):
Okay. Now when we were talking about this yesterday, we were talking about the mistakes that some gyms are making and just offering 24/7 access because, you know, the tech makes it really, really easy. And the problem is that that kind of devalues your coaching product. You guys have a very interesting bridge here. So, let’s talk about access and how that actually works. Like you’re not open 24 hours a day with my phone app, right?

Joe Venuti (07:27):
Correct. Yeah, that’s correct. We decided on six to nine based around the fact that most people should be asleep from 10 at night until about six in the morning. Right. If you’re getting up at five o’clock or you’re getting into the gym at five o’clock, there’s a good chance you’re not getting a good night’s sleep on the regular. Right? And since the main thrust of our clients and our programming is health and longevity right now, yeah, we want you to be asleep. When we switched to that model after the pandemic, we actually saw injury rates go down. We dropped the 5:30 class because we knew it wasn’t sustainable, and we forced rest days on people too. We were running initially—we only ran three days a week for the first few weeks, and yeah, injury went down. Injury rates went down, and PRs went up.

Chris Cooper (08:12):
Wow. Okay. That—we’re coming back to that. That’s news. Yeah. Alessandra, maybe you can walk me through like a daily schedule at the gym. So, at 6 a.m.—I’m a client—I can go in, but is there a coach in the building?

Alessandra Bisalti (08:25):
No. So from 6 a.m. to about 7:15, you’re by yourself. And then I show up around—like today’s Wednesday—I showed up around 7:15 to do my opening tasks. You know, some might have waited to ask me questions, but I’m getting myself set up for more people to then come in. So for example, this morning we had six or seven people already in there, which was great. Yeah. Being led through their app. But this morning we were open 7:30 to one, and again, people float in. There are coached hours; there’s study hall hours. Some have questions, but people mostly know what to do.

Chris Cooper (09:01):
So, during the coached hours—when are those, and how many?

Alessandra Bisalti (09:05):
So today, the coached hours were 7:30 to 8:30. I did a couple privates in between because we found that 8:30 to about 11:30 is sparse. Some people come in—people with different schedules. So, I completed three privates during that time and then coached hours again from 11:30 to one.

Chris Cooper (09:23):
Really Cool. And then Joe, you go in in the afternoon?

Joe Venuti (09:26):
Yep. Yeah, I’ll open up around—well today’s Wednesday—I’ll roll in there around 4, 4:30 for study hall, and then I’ll be on the floor about 5:30 to seven coaching people actively.

Chris Cooper (09:41):
So, study hall: You are in the building, but you’re not on the floor coaching, right?

Joe Venuti (09:47):
Correct.

Chris Cooper (09:47):
So what are you doing during study hall time?

Joe Venuti (09:49):
Uh, it could be anything. It could be privates like she did earlier today. I could be taking consults—either Zoom, or via the phone, or just be on a Zoom meeting. Like there’s a regular Tinker Zoom meeting, right, from four to five. There it is. So that’s what I’ll be doing today if can manage it. Right?

Alessandra Bisalti (10:07):
Or sales.

Joe Venuti (10:08):
Yeah. Sales. Yeah. Basically anything, but I’m in the building, so if there’s an emergency or someone doesn’t have access yet because we don’t just give people access to the gym when they sign up. Usually we have a 12-week initiation process; we call it the jumpstart. And somewhere in there, usually by the end, we’re like, “Hey, Chris is okay to work out by himself, so we can give him the electronic access; he can execute these workouts safely on his own.” We still encourage you to come to the coached hours because it is a coach facility, right. We want to have you in front of us; we want to help you. But we understand that not everybody’s schedule is perfectly regimented, and you’re going to need more flexibility. And that’s what the enhanced access really is. It’s more flexibility. It means we don’t have to worry about shutting down on a holiday because you can still come in if you need to get your workout done. We can take a long weekend once in a while with just two of us running the gym, and we can take vacations every now and again—maybe someday.

Chris Cooper (11:05):
That’s amazing. Yeah. Congrats guys. I mean, I really think you’ve got a working model here. So, in my mind, the client passes through a few stages. First, they’re doing three privates with you minimum, right?

Joe Venuti (11:18):
Correct.

Chris Cooper (11:19):
Then it’s kind of up until the three-month mark. They’re still in Jumpstart, so they can only come to coached hours in the gym.

Joe Venuti (11:26):
Correct. Yep.

Chris Cooper (11:27):
And then after that, as long as they’re moving well, they have access, so they can start their work at any time between six and 9 p.m. and also some weekend times.

Joe Venuti (11:38):
Yep. Correct.

Chris Cooper (11:39):
Wonderful.

Joe Venuti (11:41):
Yeah. Nailed it.

Chris Cooper (11:42):
Okay, well, hey. Yeah, that’s all I’ve been thinking about since we talked about it 24 hours ago. So, I’m glad that I’ve got a really good concept of it. So, there’s a couple of things that I think gym owners would probably be asking about this model. Number one: It seems like you guys went to this model in phases. You had regular group classes, then you were shut down, you pivoted to one-on-one or ID, and when you came out, everybody was already on ID, so they knew what they were doing. Do you think it would be a lot harder to pivot from “I’m just running a group class model with some personal training right now” to this model—enhanced access?

Joe Venuti (12:16):
Yeah, a hundred percent. Because there’s a mind shift when someone comes in, and they’re like, “I’m working out in a group and I’m doing what everybody else is doing.” So, we got—lucky is not a way I would ever describe the pandemic, but it was a good time to do it because everyone understood that we were changing these things to benefit them and to keep their fitness uninterrupted. And then once that was established and we saw the benefit to giving someone—instead of having someone come in five or six days a week because they have workouts on the schedule, and they wanted to get the most out of their membership, they appreciated the fact that: Hey, if I can work out hard on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and take the rest of the days off or be active outside the gym—walk, do a little yoga or something like that, get some sleep in, get some food prep in, and actually get better results. Right? I don’t have to come to the 5:30 a.m. class five days a week to get the results I want and smash the heck out of myself.

Chris Cooper (13:18):
Right? Yeah. That is a really common problem. And I think a lot of gym owners are actually at odds because they hear like, “Wow, the more times your clients show up, the longer they stick around.” But deep down they know that high intensity five days a week is not going to be a long-time sustainable solution for the client. I think you guys are maybe more attuned to that than any—than a lot of people. But you’re also better at analyzing human movement than most people and also better at programming than most people. Where does that background come from?

Joe Venuti (13:50):
So, I have done a lot of classes with Poliquin, which is actually a local—Poliquin group is local; they’re down in Rhode Island. And OPEX had a lot of great classes on individual design and programming that I could take from, and they drew a lot from Poliquin as well. So, a lot of that comes from there. And we pair that up a lot with some of the CrossFit-type methodology as well—you know, the big compound lifts and that sort of thing. So, it’s really a big mishmash over the last 14 years or so of those techniques. But what we really do a lot of—and what Alessandra alluded to a little bit in the three privates—is we test 35 points of performance when you first get on the floor, and yeah, over those three privates, we pump it into a tool we’ve created.

Joe Venuti (14:35):
It’s a spreadsheet; it color codes everything. I was doing it in my head for years, and I realized I needed to make it accessible to the staff. But basically, if you only can hold a hollow hold for 27 seconds, that’s well under the threshold we want to see, and that’s going to light up red, and we’ve got to do more ab work for you. Right? Do your ankles flex enough? Do you know how to use your glutes? Shoulder health, aerobic capacity, some VO2 max stuff. It all gets kind of put together, and then the coach bases your workouts, your programming, around that data. And we retest that constantly because you’re putting your workout data right into the software as you’re going along during your workout. And we can look back at it and go, “Oh, Chris is making some good progress,” or “Chris has stalled up for the last couple of weeks. What’s going on?” “Oh, he’s got all kinds of meetings with the accountants and acquiring businesses” or something like that. “His stress level’s super high. We’ve got to take him off of his two high intensity workouts and give him extra recovery workouts.” Right? So that’s the game we’ve been playing for the last three years. It’s three years now; it’s crazy.

Chris Cooper (15:36):
Wow. Last week, the only weird HRV score that I had was when a cube van backed into a liquor store in a building that I own.

Joe Venuti (15:47):
Oh my God.

Chris Cooper (15:48):
That actually hurt my sleep. Yeah. Anyway, so you know, it’s amazing that you guys track this because I know even a lot of gyms are interested in this type of data, and their clients will go out and they’ll buy a WHOOP, or a Garmin fēnix or whatever, right?

Chris Cooper (16:01):
And then the coach is like, “How do I get that data from them, and what do I even do with it?” So, it’s amazing that you guys are doing it, and I’m sure that’s part of the reason this program works.

Joe Venuti (16:09):
Yep, absolutely.

Chris Cooper (16:10):
But, you know, this is really a business podcast, and so Alessandra, maybe you can just walk me through like when you are doing an hour on the floor and you’ve got a dozen people in there—like that picture you sent me of 9:30 a.m. yesterday—like what are you actually doing as the coach?

Alessandra Bisalti (16:27):
So, one of the first things I do is I check who has actually RSVPed and open up their TrueCoach programming. So I can just look it over real quick and get understanding of what they’re doing. And then also because I have relationships with these people, I know sort of where they’re at, and as they come in the door, I greet them, ask them how things are going, if there’s any weird things that have happened in the past 24 hours. They get moving.

Chris Cooper (16:50):
Like the van hitting the liquor store.

Alessandra Bisalti (16:51):
Right? Yeah. You know, so it’s sort of—again, you’re greeting everybody. You’re making sure everybody’s in good spirits, or you know, analyzing if maybe already I need to make some adjustments to their program. And Joe and I work closely enough that I can make adjustments based on maybe his thought process as well. So, after everybody’s moving, you’re moving around to each person making sure that whether they’ve been with us for 11 years or they’re within their first 90 days with us, they’re still getting the same amount of attention. There’s always something to work on. So just making sure you don’t spend too much time with maybe somebody who has a million questions. We always try to encourage them to look at their programming in advance, ask questions to their coach, or if they don’t understand something to clarify. But I’m there also to give a quick answer to that question as well. So, making sure that everybody gets the time and attention that they need.

Chris Cooper (17:44):
Yeah. Really cool. I mean, honestly that’s what I just experienced in our noon group during the lifting portion only. You know, the coaches are told, “You go around and give everybody about 60 to 90 seconds of one-on-one attention; give them one cue to improve.” We were doing Split Jerk today, and that’s what happened. And it sounds like you’re doing that, but through the entire hour; it honestly sounds like a lot of fun.

Alessandra Bisalti (18:05):
It’s fun; it is fun because you get to really connect with people. It’s very relaxed as opposed to, you know, the group that you used to run where it was like, “Okay, do this” because stuff is moving so fast. This is more like, “Is this feeling funny because of that thing you told me about in the beginning of your session? So, we kind of get to open up a little bit more about their movement and what’s going on.”

Joe Venuti (18:29):
It’s more social too because you’re not herding 15 cats at once, right?

Chris Cooper (18:35):
Yeah.

Joe Venuti (18:35):
It’s almost like you’re working the room like a party, right? Where you’re just moving around person to person and just checking in on them. It doesn’t drain you like a group class does.

Chris Cooper (18:45):
Yeah. And I imagine a lot of the distractions aren’t there either. I mean, it used to drive me absolutely bananas when somebody walked in seven minutes late. I mean, it shouldn’t throw me off, but it would, you know. And I’m sure you’ve got people coming and going and starting and ending at all different times.

Alessandra Bisalti (19:01):
Right.

Chris Cooper (19:02):
So next question: What do you guys charge? Like what is your kind of base membership for this guided access or enhanced access program?

Joe Venuti (19:10):
Yeah, so we’re starting, right now, people at 275 a month to come in six days a week, depending on if they want to work with a specific coach. We have tiered coaches’ prices out before, but right now it’s just the two of us, and so we’re sticking with that for right now.

Chris Cooper (19:25):
Yeah, and it wouldn’t go lower than that, right? Like it would only go higher.

Joe Venuti (19:28):
If it was a brand, brand new coach and you were trying to build their base up, I might take them to 265 a month, but I wouldn’t go any lower than that in the past.

Chris Cooper (19:38):
How long do you think you can run this model? I mean, you know, years ago I was talking with Greg Glassman and Dale Saran, and we were talking about why the affiliate model was set up the way it is, and the affiliate fees are so low. And he said it’s because it’s an owner-operator model, and it was always supposed to be one passionate coach, a couple of part-timers, and that’s all they’re doing. And of course, the realities of business dictate that usually we need more staff than that, but it actually seems like you guys are actually leveraging technology instead of leveraging human bodies.

Joe Venuti (20:13):
Right? That’s actually exactly what we’re doing.

Alessandra Bisalti (20:17):
He has it written on his paper.

Joe Venuti (20:19):
I wrote notes, and we’re using technology a lever or a force multiplier, right? So, media: We shoot videos, or we find videos to deliver like, “Hey, this is the movement pattern I want you to be familiar with for the day.” Right? And communicating with that, using the electronic access. “How long can we do this?” is a really interesting question. And that was one I asked myself when we were allowed to reopen from the pandemic, and that’s part of the reason we dialed the hours back a little bit. Because it’s not sustainable to ask somebody to open a gym up 5:30 in the morning for three years in a row, five days a week.

Chris Cooper (20:54):
It sure isn’t.

Joe Venuti (20:54):
Right. It’s not healthy for the coach; it’s not really healthy for the clients either. You know, once in a while you’ve got to pop in there early. I get it. But you really should be sleeping until 6 a.m. for health and longevity, right? We know that dementia numbers go way, way up when you’re not getting seven hours of sleep a night or more. So, it’s kind of built to be run for the long term, right? That’s the way—yeah, hopefully, you know, the hiring thing will change sometime soon, and we can get some help in, but we could be—I think we could do it for a long time because we’re able—with the electronic access to the door—we can go away, like I said for a long weekend, the 4th of July, Tinker trips, Tinker meetups, and we can let the gym sort of run itself for a few days and still have a life. And we did a wedding too.

Alessandra Bisalti (21:40):
Yeah.

Joe Venuti (21:41):
And we shut down for an extra day and a half. So, we’ve done it a few times since March, and we’ve had zero problems, which is good.

Chris Cooper (21:48):
You know what’s amazing is: Anybody who’s listening to this other than a gym owner, they’d be like, “Big deal. You can take a day off.” Gym owners are like, “This is revolutionary. What? A wedding? You guys went to a wedding? Tell me more.” And, and so that’s, that’s really remarkable. Joe, yesterday, you were talking about like a quote from Naval, and he was talking about leveraging humans or leveraging—what was it?

Joe Venuti (22:12):
So, he has got four ways you can—was it create wealth? It’s in “The Almanack …” Right? You can either—you can either leverage people, which is have employees and lead them, which is the most complicated. You can leverage capital—real estate or he says programming or media. And I just think of that as any technology that you can sort of set up, and go on your own, right? Not talking about AI, but AI probably works in there too.

Chris Cooper (22:41):
Yeah.

Joe Venuti (22:41):
Because you could say, “Hey, do these things,” but you still have to coach behind it, right? Just because there’s a lever doesn’t mean there’s not somebody on the other end literally working the lever and directing—putting the direction in. So that’s what I was looking at when things kind of weren’t really working out for us, hiring people the last year or so. And I said, “Let’s run in that direction.”

Chris Cooper (23:02):
So, if you guys were pivoting to this today—four or five months after you did, you know—is there anything that you would do differently from the way that you started doing this in March?

Joe Venuti (23:11):
Oh, what would we do?

Alessandra Bisalti (23:12):
Marketing sooner.

Joe Venuti (23:13):
Yeah, yeah, good point. We’ve got to talk to more people about the fact that we have this enhanced access, and everything’s customized and—because we’re still a CrossFit, but we’re doing more than that now. So that’s probably the toughest thing, right? Because I can individualize for you; you could be doing strongman; you could be doing just bodybuilding stuff depending on your goals. You know, because we’re programming individually for everyone. So yeah, that would probably be the same. Marketing. Yeah.

Chris Cooper (23:41):
I think there are a lot of CrossFit boxes jumping into the access game. The challenge though is that they’re not making more money on it, and in fact, it’s probably costing them money because as clients just get access, they come to get less coaching, and then it’s like, “Wow, I could get cheaper access somewhere else.” Right? It’s not actually their service. What I like about this is it compliments your coaching service. You know, it serves your coaching instead of just kind of selling access and competing with Gold’s Gym.

Joe Venuti (24:13):
One hundred percent. Because if you just start selling access, you can go find someone that’s going to push you a template for $20 for a program that’s perfectly good. It’s not built for Chris; it’s not built for Alessandra. But you can get away with that for a while, right? But you’re not getting feedback, you’re not getting course corrections on the programming as you’re going along, right? To keep you progressing and keep plateaus from happening.

Chris Cooper (24:37):
Yeah, high intensity training is really commoditized. You can buy it anywhere for, like you said, 20 bucks a month. And some of it’s really, really good for that price. Like, you’re not going to compete on programming anymore unless it’s absolutely tailored and done this way. So, guys, really love this model. Thanks a lot. I know that your ARM is actually much higher than that 275 because some people buy privates on top of ID or instead of ID. Congrats, and I hope that you guys can find like one staff person, so that you can take a month off, but I’m really happy to know that if you don’t, you’re okay. You’re good.

Joe Venuti (25:13):
Thank you.

Alessandra Bisalti (25:14):
Thank you.

Joe Venuti (25:14):
Thank you very much Chris.

Chris Cooper (25:16):
Alright guys, thanks so much for generously sharing all these details with people. I think it’s going to open up a lot of eyes. So guys, Joe and Alessandra were very generous in sharing with you how their guided access model works. Like a lot of us, they’re struggling to get staff right now, and when their last staff person took their full-time job and left the gym, Joe and Alessandra said, “How can we do this by ourselves?” And so now I want to actually show you with mostly hypothetical numbers, how this could actually work for you. I want to give you an actual P&L. I don’t just want you to think, “Oh that’s an interesting idea.” I want you to see the actual math behind how this model could work in your gym. So, I’m going to bring up our model P&L that we share with owners in Two-Brain to walk them through tests and how a model could work for them.

Chris Cooper (26:04):
Now, this is not a lesson on how to read a P&L. I just want to highlight a couple of things here because I want you to see where I’ve used Joe and Alessandra’s numbers and where I’ve used data from industry-wide averages. So first off, you heard them say that their average price is 297 bucks per person per month. And expenses: I took an industry average because I don’t know their actual expenses. Retention rate: I took an industry average, but I’m betting their retention rate is actually higher. On-Ramp average price: I took an industry average, but I’m betting theirs is actually higher than this. They have a three session On-Ramp that they spoke about in the interview, and then I started them with a salary of $5,500 a month. It’s probably higher, but what I want you to see here is how the profit line changes.

Chris Cooper (26:52):
So, they’re guaranteed the salary every month, but they also take home the extra too. So, this net income here, that’s profit, and net owner benefit is this total of that salary plus profit. Okay? So here we go. First of all, we want to know: How many clients does it take for them to break even? And so, because we’re not changing the salary—like, I don’t want them to work for nothing, so if they’re not getting paid a salary from their gym, it’s not a successful gym; they’re not actually breaking even. So, let’s start with this. I put in 59 clients here because I know that’s pretty ballpark to what they would actually need to make this gym viable and pay themselves at least the salary of 5,500 a month even if there’s no profit. So, if I drop this down to 55 clients, okay, and I keep their average membership price the same, I don’t sell any personal training and nothing else, what I’ll find is that they’re losing about 461 bucks a month.

Chris Cooper (27:44):
So that tells me that to make this viable with no other personal training, it’s just selling guided access for 297 a month, they need two more clients than that. So, they need about 57. So with 57 clients paying 297 a month, they can pay themselves a salary of $5,500 and really have nothing left over. Okay? So, this is a viable business. This is a business that is treading water. Quick sidebar here: If your business is breaking even but not paying you anything, it is not a viable business because you’re volunteering, and you can’t do that forever. You will personally run out of money. So, 5,500 bucks is not enough for them to make a living here, but it’s like the barely acceptable minimum. What happens, though, to our bottom line when new clients come in? This is what’s interesting about the guided access model to me.

Chris Cooper (28:36):
So, let’s say they get three new clients. They just walk in off the street; they don’t normally get new clients, but here they are, and they all sign up, right? So now they’ve all gone through On-Ramp or whatever, but that’s not going to be reflected in our bottom line for that month. We just want recurring. So now I look at this, and it’s like: Okay, not only are they making their 5,500 a month in salary, they’re also making $987 a month in profit. Aha! So that actually boosts us up quite a bit to $77,000 take home, which is about double the industry average with 60 clients, right? Pretty good because none of that money is going out to staff. They’re covering their expenses, and once those expenses are covered, they’re good, right? So next: What happens if we bring that number up to 75 clients? Okay?

Chris Cooper (29:24):
Clients are the same. They’re not selling any additional services; it’s just the guided access membership. We’re not counting on new clients coming in and paying for On-Ramp or selling personal training or anything like that, but our expenses also don’t go up and our coaching needs don’t go up because we’re still showing up the same number of times in the day. We don’t need help right now. Suddenly, our profitability goes through the roof. Like just adding 15 clients takes our profitability from around 77,000 a year to 129,000 a year. Okay? So that’s interesting—just adding 15 clients. So hypothetically, and again, like the only numbers that actually came from Joe and Alessandra here are what they charge per month. And I know their ARM is 297. With 75 clients, retention rate of 95%—and this should be higher—these guys could make $129,962 take home per year, right?

Chris Cooper (30:16):
And again, there’s two of them, but they’re partners in life and in business. They live together, so they share some costs there, and they’re not paying any coaches, right? The other interesting thing too is that while they are working most days, they’re not working weekends. They can take a long weekend if they want to come to our Tinker meetups. They can take a vacation if they want to, and you know, it’s not costing them anything to do that. Let’s take this a different way. Okay? So now, let’s say that we’re back to 60 clients, but we know they’re going to get maybe three new clients a month, okay? And I’m being super conservative here. What that does is it means that’s another $900 in On-Ramp time because people are paying for those three sessions when they start. So that brings the average client revenue per month, ARM, up to 312 now.

Chris Cooper (31:06):
Very interesting. And if our retention rate is still 95%, that means that our total client headcount is growing by at least two people per month. Well just doing that—bringing in three new people a month—that brings their average income, their net owner benefit up to $83,000 per year. Okay? That alone, just three clients a month on this model, alright? So good. But what happens when they start selling personal training opportunities on top? So, you know, you can come in at 9 a.m. Your buddies are going to be there; you’ve got your program. You’re working out; it’s kind of a “group-class” feel. It’s awesome. There’s a coach circulating to correct your form, to tell you when to go up, when to go down, when to scale, when to change exercises—all of that is great. What happens if you want more one-on-one attention? Then that program buys you.

Chris Cooper (31:54):
What if you want to come in once a week and work one-on-one with Alessandra? Some people do that. So, if what I’m doing is selling—you know, 10% of my clients want that. That’s six people, and they just want to buy one more session per month at, I don’t know, 70 bucks a session. Okay? Then that’s, 420 extra dollars right there. So that’s secondary revenue. Six people buying one session for 70 bucks a month—very conservative. What happens now? Well, you know, our income is up to 86,312. So that’s super interesting. The other thing that happened here is that we put down a coach taking those one-on-one classes or those one-on-one sessions, but actually Alessandra is doing that. So, all that money is now going to go to them, and that’s why we’re now at $93,282 per year. Okay? So, she’s doing about, you know, seven PT sessions a month, and it’s bumping them up that much because again, they don’t have to pay another coach.

Chris Cooper (32:56):
What happens if they want to take a two-week vacation? They can’t really take that much time off. They’re going to have to pay somebody to be there. Well, we know that they’re working about six hours a day, and if they want to pay a coach even 25 bucks an hour times 30 hours a week, we can add that in here. So, let’s say that the average class rate is we’re going to pay 25 bucks an hour, okay? And per week, we know that we just said we’re going to pay somebody 30 hours a week. So, what would happen if Joe and Alessandra said, “You know what? I’m tired of working six hours a day, five days a week. I want to bring in a backup.” Or, you know, “We don’t like feeling fragile. What if one of us gets sick or what if we want to take a month off?”

Chris Cooper (33:36):
“What do we do?” Well, they could bring in a part-time coach—kind of a floater, right? So, this is somebody who can spot movement flaws. They’re not going to write the programming for any clients. They don’t need advanced knowledge, but somebody who’s like a CrossFit L1 or even an L2 is great. They don’t have to do any class management. You’re basically circling during study hall hours and saying, “Okay, let’s correct your form a little bit. Let’s add five pounds. Let’s take five pounds off. Let’s switch that sandbag carry to a farmer’s carry.” You know, or whatever, right? “Let’s scale you up, let’s scale you down.” That’s basically what they’re doing. They’re sharking during those study hall hours. You could pay that person 30 hours a week times 30 bucks an hour, 900 bucks a week, right? That’s a pretty good income for a coach.

Chris Cooper (34:23):
That does, of course, affect their bottom line; however, they can wait until they’re at a comfortable income level and then add that expense in. So maybe it’s like 3,600 bucks a month, okay? And you say like, “Well, how many clients do I need to actually get there?” Well, if you wanted to keep this person full-time, it would just be 3,600 times 12 months, which is $43,200 per year. And of course, that would bring our net owner benefit down because now you’ve got staff expenses—but how many clients do I need to get to actually carry that person? Well, let’s try it. Let’s go to 75 clients with a 95% retention, three new clients coming in a month, doing a little bit of personal training. There we go, right? We’re still at $102,206 per year in net owner benefit; we got one employee making about $43,000 per year.

Chris Cooper (35:14):
Maybe they’re making more if they’re also selling personal training too, but that’s also driving revenue for the business. So, you know, I get to 75 clients, I can have a staff person working 30 hours a week. What if I want to make that person full-time? What if I want to pay them more than $50,000 per year? Well, okay, let’s do that math really quickly. So now still, you know, an average of like 30 bucks an hour—which by the way, is way above the industry standard according to our data set. Also, according to hiring job sites like Glassdoor, 30 bucks an hour in the fitness industry, especially for 40 hours a week is really, really good. Okay? So now, what are we actually paying here? Well, 40 hours a week, 30 bucks an hour, 1,200 bucks a week, right? Times four—we make this 4,800, and we’re going to do that times 12 months, right?

Chris Cooper (36:03):
It’s going to be like a salary or whatever—$57,600 per year. Wonderful. Okay. But that cuts their—Joe and Alessandra’s—net owner benefit back to 87. So how many clients do I actually have to get here? Well, I’m just going to go up another 15 and say 90 clients. Okay? So here we are at 90 clients. They’ve got a full-time staff person for $57,600. Their salary stays the same, but their profit is over 6,000 a month. So, their net owner benefit is actually 139,929. So, okay, big picture here: Using some of the metrics that we know from Joe and Alessandra’s guided access program and metrics that we’ve drawn from “The State of the Industry” for industry average to calculate our expenses and staff pay and stuff, with 90 clients in a guided access program, gaining three new clients a month who pay 300 bucks for On-Ramp before they get going, doing like two personal training sessions a week on top, and having one full-time staff member making $57,600 per year, Joe and Alessandra could net owner benefit around $140,000.

Chris Cooper (37:12):
Now of course there are reasons—there are pros and cons to this model, right? 90 clients means that every client who leaves is kind of a big deal. However, their retention is a little bit higher. Also, maybe you want to hire staff; maybe you want to have a lot more coaches, or perhaps you want to run semi-private, or you don’t want to do access to your gym, or more than anything else, you’re probably scared about charging that $297 per month for guided access. Right? These are things that you talk about with your mentor when you’re making decisions, but these decisions should always come down to the math. What is going to be most viable to you? And if you’re an owner-operator or you’re struggling to get staff—and I get that—this might be a model that is worth considering. Talk to your mentor, open up your own P&L, do the numbers for yourself before you make any decisions, but it’s a viable model. I’m Chris Cooper, this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks to Joe and Alessandra so much for walking us through this. And I hope that you can make your gym more profitable, help more people, and impact your community even more.

The post Guided Access: Solving Labor Shortages at CrossFit MASS appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How Top Gyms Build Careers for Staff Members

Reading our 2023 “State of the Industry” report will tell you how gyms make careers for their staff.

For example, turn to pages 44 and 45: You’ll see that most gyms have one or two full-time staff members, and the top team member earns around $30,000-$35,000 per year. You’ll also see that gyms have, on average, six part-time staff members. Combined, staff members account for about 30 percent of a gym’s total expenses.

These are average numbers you can compare to your metrics. But what are the best gyms doing—the top performers in both revenue and profit?

Well, many of the top gyms open with the owner doing all the work (this was me, and it might be you, too).

Eventually, the owner hires someone part time. This part-time hire buys the owner time to build systems, fix mistakes and work on client acquisition.

The gym owner might make a few more part-time hires to buy more time and speed up the process of growth: improving average revenue per member (ARM), extending length of engagement (LEG), maximizing return on expenses (ROI) and improving net owner benefit (NOB).

When the owner reaches around $100,000 in NOB, they know they have a business that can support full-time staff. They are living proof that their gym can sustain someone.

When a gym owner hires someone full time, they must continually mentor the staff person to build a career and increase skill.

In some rare cases, the full-time staff person becomes a partner in another location. These are unicorns; the average full-time person won’t follow that path.

Here’s a real example of sound business growth: One top Two-Brain gym owner who is now on our team of mentors has two full-time staff members who earn $60,000-$80,000 a year and have benefits, too. The owner’s net owner benefit is over $10,000 a month (hear Eric Conner’s story here).

How Most Gym Owners Screw This Up

We see a lot of errors when it comes to hiring. Here are some of the big ones:

1. Gym owners hire in the wrong order. They obsesses about finding and training the perfect coach instead of hiring to fill lower-value roles—like cleaner—to buy back some time.

2. They hire too many people. They have a dozen very part-time coaches trading their time for a free membership and a complicated schedule. The result? A rollercoaster of coaching quality.

3. They hire without written instructions. They assume their staff can read their mind, know what to do and always guess correctly.

4. They hire a full-time person too early. They commit to a salary before their business has proven it can sustain one. They gamble with other people’s careers.

5. They sacrifice their own income to pay staff. They give away large pieces of the pie because they don’t know how to grow the overall pie. For example, they let trainers keep 60 percent of the training revenue because they don’t know how to get more training clients and thereby dodge the responsibility for learning to market and sell.

6. They never hire a full-time person. Instead of committing to one person, they keep a half-dozen part timers who have no incentive to get better.

7. They fail to remove bad clients (or bad staff members). Staff can’t do their best work because they’re constantly taken off track by those around them.

If these errors hit too close to home for you, don’t worry: I’ve done everything listed above. Hiring mistakes are fixable—it just takes time and mentorship.

Look to the Best

How do we know what the best gyms do? Because we mentor their owners.

We identify the best with metrics—we don’t just talk about what our buddies are doing. We look for proof. Then we ask them what they’re doing and teach their lessons to everyone else.

We teach mentors to help clients do things faster. That’s why Two-Brain gyms have higher-paid staff members who are making long-term careers—but most gyms don’t.

The post How Top Gyms Build Careers for Staff Members appeared first on Two-Brain Business.