Chris Cooper's Blog, page 61

Building a Client-Centric Business: The Media

“We’re not a fitness company. We’re a media company.”

Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit, taught me that lesson in 2014. I had been writing for CrossFit Media for a couple of years but didn’t really understand the broader purpose of media until then.

The realization hit me like a lightning bolt at the time, but it’s even more true today: Every company is a media company.

No matter what your mission is, what your model is or even what method you choose, you must to talk about your business or you’ll be invisible.

You can’t rely on HQ to talk about CrossFit or Mark Wahlberg to talk about your F45 franchise. You can’t rely on anyone else: You have to promote yourself. And that means producing media.

At the absolute minimum, you should be able to produce three pieces of good content per week. That might mean a blog post, a podcast and a YouTube video.

You should be able to divide those three pieces of content into 10 pieces of social media: clips, snippets, stories, reels, carousel posts, tweets and pictures.

This media output is no longer the ideal: It’s now the minimum.

Media Ideas and Step-by-Step Instructions

Start by recording your mission.

Here’s the video I did for my gym, Catalyst, last year as we refined our own mission:

Here are 10 other prompts you can use to create content:

Why do you love your method?Why did you want to start a gym?How are the coaches at your gym different from one another?Can anyone do these workouts?What options do people have for training?What’s the best time of the day to train?What should people eat before training?What should people eat after training?What’s the best warm-up?What’s the best exercise for weight loss?

Remember: These are the questions most people ask. The answers might be obvious to you, but they are not obvious to the majority of people. Most people are not fitness professionals—so share your knowledge and build your audience.

Want a jump start on your media? Here are the steps.

Hold up your phone and turn on the video camera. Pretend I’m interviewing you. Hit “record” and provide your answer to the first question. Then hit “stop.” Repeat the process for each question.Upload the full version of the video to YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok or any other platform that will accommodate the length and format. Then upload shorter clips as Instagram Reels/Facebook Stories and YouTube Shorts.Tweet a link to main YouTube video. Write a 20-word intro—such as “what’s the best warm-up before my workout?”—and share the video on Facebook and Instagram.Wait two days.Repeat the process with the next video you created.

Yes, you can use AI to do some of this for you. And if, after doing the above exercise, you still can’t publish consistently at a B+ level, then you should try using ChatGPT or something that can help you. But jumping straight to AI without a media plan is like hiring a robot to make you breakfast and then not giving it a recipe to follow.

We teach gym owners how to produce a full media calendar, give them hundreds of sample blog posts and images to swipe and use, walk them through ChatGPT, and give them prompts to copy in our Growth Course. Click here to talk to my team about it.

Tell Your Story

The bottom line: If you weren’t publishing media three times a week in 2022, you were being buried by your competition. If you aren’t publishing media three times a week in 2023, you’re being buried by an army of competition.

Media is no longer a nice-to-have. Every company is a media company.

It’s time to tell your story.

The post Building a Client-Centric Business: The Media appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building a Client-Centric Business: The Method

You love CrossFit. Or spin class. Or HIIT. Or jiu-jitsu. Or Pilates. I get it.

You want to share that love with everyone.

But if you put the best wine into a broken bottle, you can’t serve it—you’ll just have a mess.

In this series, I’ve been walking you through the setup of a good gym business. We know what works because we’ve mentored over 2,000 gyms worldwide. We’ve done it one on one, and we’ve collected more data than anyone else.

In the previous post in this series, I told you how to build a business model that will allow you to serve up your passion over and over, change the lives of thousands of people and earn a great income.

In fact, some of our gym owners have applied these models so well that they’re now millionaires. That thrills me because, when I started as a fitness entrepreneur, no successful gym owners could be found.

Now that you’ve defined your mission and chosen a model, it’s time to choose a method. This is the easy part. It’s probably the reason you opened a gym in the first place: to bring your passion for a certain style of fitness to the world and to share “the answer,” as you understand it, with everyone.

The key is to fit your method into your working model. Your method is what you deliver; the model is how you deliver it.

This is where a lot of gym owners have gone off track—especially in CrossFit. A good method is flexible enough to fit into a working business model.

For example, at Catalyst, many of our clients do CrossFit.

Some do it in a group setting.Some do it 1:1.Some do it in a semi-private setting.Some do it in their online homework.

The method is effective because it produces results for the client. The model is effective because it keeps clients around long enough to accomplish the mission and supports the owner and coaches.

Where CrossFit affiliates go awry: mistakenly believing that “CrossFit is group training” and then trying to make their model fit with this error.

Remember, good gyms are client-centric. That means the client gets results but also has some choices.

If they have a lower budget, they can do group classes.If they have little time, they can schedule appointments.If they have unique needs, they can train in semi-private sessions.If they want to work out with their coworkers or hockey team, they can do it in a small group.

How flexible is your method? The methods that last a long time are usually flexible enough to fit into different models. For example:

Jiu-jitsu can be taught 1:1.Pilates can be done in a semi-private session.Nutrition can be coached in a group.

In fact, just adding this sort of flexibility to their models makes Two-Brain gyms thousands of dollars more every month. They understand the difference between the method and the model and are willing to change to accomplish the mission.

But there’s one more element: the media. I’ll tell you about that in the next post in this series.

The post Building a Client-Centric Business: The Method appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building a Client-Centric Business: The Model

To build a successful client-centric business, you have to consider your mission, model, method and media.

Here, I’m going to tell you how to build your model to match your mission.

Your model must meet the goals of:

The client.The owner.The staff.

If your model helps the client but starves the owner, it won’t survive long enough for you to accomplish the mission.

If your model helps staff meet their training goals but can’t keep clients engaged, it won’t survive long enough for you to accomplish the mission.

And, of course, if your model pays the owner and staff well but doesn’t get clients results, it won’t survive, either.

We’re looking to tick all the boxes—there can’t be a tradeoff.

In our “How to Make $100,000 Per Year With 150 Clients” guide, I break down three models that have been proven to help the client, the owner and the staff.

You can get the guide by joining the Gym Owners United Group and leaving the comment “100k” on this post.

Model 1

The first model: 150 clients in a group-coaching setting.

To make this work, you have to charge appropriately. You’ll also have to hustle. This is a classic “owner-operator model” in which a single owner coaches almost all of the classes, charges above the average rate, and works a 14-hour day. It’s doable but not sustainable for most.

Get the guide.

Model 2

The second model: 150 clients, with 10 percent using a higher-value service.

In this model, the owner is still coaching but has some help to cover half of the classes and PT sessions. The owner uses that freed time to do marketing, retention, admin and other tasks. This is a “perfect day” scenario for many gym owners who just love to coach but want to make more than a coach does.

Get the guide.

Model 3

The third model: 150 clients, with 70 percent doing group classes, 20 percent using a secondary service and 10 percent using a tertiary service.

In this model, the owner is still coaching a couple of hours every day but has hired staff to do management, media, admin, cleaning and all the non-coaching jobs. They also have a full-time coach and at least one part-timer helping out. They could stop coaching and do the business stuff instead if they wanted to.

Get the guide.

You Need My Guide

I know I keep saying “get the guide!”—but the guide is amazing. It has screenshots of actual profit-and-loss statements to prove that each model works, plus step-by-step instructions for setting each model up.

Other models exist. You can build your own if you want. Download our “Gym Business Plan” here and start plugging in numbers, or book a call with our team and we’ll walk you through some options.

You might prefer to train clients in groups, you might prefer to train them 1:1, or you might want to train them in a semi-private setting. You might prefer to train athletes or clients seeking to lose weight or even recover from head trauma. You might love CrossFit or Pilates or kickboxing—we’ll choose a ‘”method” in the next post in this series. Here, I want to help you pick a model that actually works.

Let’s face it: The old myth—especially in the CrossFit sphere—that “more clients make for a better business” is false. It’s perpetuated because no one else says “here’s a model that is actually supported by data from successful gyms.” That’s why I’m repeatedly sharing the link to our guide—it’s essential reading for a microgym owner.

Still think you need a huge number of clients to succeed? Look for the CrossFit gyms with the largest enrollment in 2012 or even 2015. Where are they now? They’re either smaller or they’re gone—because they knew their method inside and out but didn’t understand how to put it into a model.

It doesn’t matter if you’re Level 12 certified in your method or the top practitioner in the world. If you put the best wine in a broken bottle, you can’t serve it.

The post Building a Client-Centric Business: The Model appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Client-Centric Business: Being Paid to Solve Problems

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Building a business that revolves around your client is the way to make a great business that benefits the owner. And there are four things that you have to consider when you’re doing that. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Today, I’m gonna tell you how to build a client-centric business following the “four M’s” model. That is the mission, the model of the business, the method that you choose and the media that you produce. What do the really great gyms have in common? I mean, the gyms that really change their clients’ lives, create wealth for the owner’s family and really impact their towns. What’s their common characteristic? They are built around the needs of the client first. So today I’m gonna talk about building a client-centric business, and that means solving the client’s problems and being paid for it. To build a successful client-centric business, you have to make four decisions.

Chris Cooper (00:52):
The mission, the model, the method and the media. And if you work through these steps with me today, you’ll have more clarity in your business than ever before. Let’s start with the mission. What result do you want your clients to achieve? For me, this was longer lifespan and a longer “healthspan.” I want them to stay healthy and active and fit right up to the day they die, which is hopefully a long ways away. Your mission might be to create access to gym equipment or to guide healthy eating or to introduce people to meditation or something else. But your mission is not the same as your method. Your method evolves over time, whether your method is CrossFit or powerlifting or yoga, and I’m gonna talk about that in a few moments. The next step, though, is to ask how many people do you want to achieve this goal, this mission, over the course of your coaching career. I chose 7,000 people because that’s 10% of my local population.

Chris Cooper (01:53):
And if I can get 10% of the local population to create a lifelong exercise habit and understand healthy eating, then that will create a direct spillover effect to at least 7,000 more people—spouses, friends, and coworkers. And that will trickle down to another 7,000 kids, students, mentees. You might choose a different goal. Remember, though, you have 30 years to reach that goal. So don’t try to reach 7,000 people all at once. The next question you have to ask is how long will it take a person to achieve the result that I’m trying to give them? Now, I know that if I can keep a client at my gym for two years, that’s long enough for them to create an exercise and nutrition habit that they will keep forever. They might not stay at Catalyst forever, but that’s not the mission. Many of our alumni keep training for decades following fitness apps.

Chris Cooper (02:47):
Maybe they do Street Parking or they ride bikes or do other stuff, but they’d never have done any of that if they hadn’t gotten started at Catalyst first. In fact, a lot of them choose to do things with other people from Catalyst that they met there. Now, you might wanna keep a client for five years or just 90 days, but remember, if a client finds their fitness with you, falls in love and then quits the gym but continues to exercise, that’s a win. I know it might feel like a breakup, but you’ve truly changed their lives, and you should celebrate that. One other sign that they’ve changed, that they’ve reached the mission and changed their lives, they will tell you. So they’ll say things like “Catalyst changed my life,” and you know that’s mission accomplished. And we’ve had people meet and get married at Catalyst, people get pregnant and people survive catastrophic emergencies like heart attacks because of Catalyst.

Chris Cooper (03:39):
And I’m sure you’ve had that, too. So, finally, you wanna ask yourself “how many people can I serve at once?” And that depends on your model. Your model is how you deliver your service to accomplish your mission. And I’m gonna dig into that now. So, to recap, great gyms are built around the goals of their clients. And I’m talking about building a client-centric business. This means solving the client’s problems and being paid for it. To build a successful client-mission business, you have to make four decisions. The mission, which we just talked about, the model, which we’re gonna talk about now, the method, which we’ll talk about next, and the media, which we’ll talk about at the end. So now I’m gonna tell you how to build your model to match the mission that you set up a moment ago. So your model has to meet the goals of the client, of course.

Chris Cooper (04:26):
The owner, it has to meet your goals or else your mission will fail. And the staff, if you have high staff churn, your mission will probably fail, too. If your model helps the client but it starves the owner, then the mission won’t survive long enough to be accomplished. And if your model helps your staff meet their training goals but you can’t keep your clients engaged—like your gym just exists to help your coaches train for the CrossFit Games—then it won’t survive long enough to accomplish the mission either. And, of course, if your model pays the owner lots and lots and pays the staff lots but it doesn’t get the client any results, it won’t last either. So you have to tick all of those boxes. We’re not looking for balance, we’re not looking for trade-offs between client and owner and staff. We’re looking to tick all of the boxes. In our “How to Make $100K with 150 Clients” guide, I break down three models that have been proven to help the client, pay the owner and make careers for staff. And you can get that guide by joining the Gym Owners United Group and responding with “100K” to the post that I’ll link below here. The Gym Owners United Group is free. It’s gymownersunited.com. You’ll be guided right there. So now let’s talk about some different models that work. First, 150 clients in a group coaching setting. To make this model work, you have to charge appropriately. You’ll also have to hustle. This is the classic owner-operator model in which a single owner coaches almost all the classes, charges above the average rate—like $205 per month—and works a 14-hour day. It’s doable, but it’s scary and it’s not sustainable for a lot of people. You can get the guide with the full P&L to show you all these numbers at gymownersunited.com.

Chris Cooper (06:11):
The second model has 150 clients, but 10% of those clients are doing a higher value service. So in this model, the owner’s still coaching, but they have some help to cover half of their classes and half their personal-training sessions. Then the owner uses that time that they’ve freed up to do marketing, retention, admin and other tasks. This is kind of the perfect-day scenario for a lot of gym owners who just love to coach, but they wanna make more than a coach does. And you can get the guide again at gymownersunited.com. The third model has 150 clients, with 70% of them doing group classes, 20% doing a secondary service like personal training or semi-private, and the others doing a tertiary service like remote coaching or nutrition. Now in this model, the owner’s still coaching a couple of hours a day, but they have staff to do management and media and admin and cleaning and all the non-coaching roles.

Chris Cooper (07:05):
They also have one full-time coach and at least one half-timer help out. The owner could stop coaching and just do the business stuff instead if they wanted to in this model. And you can get the guide at gyumownersunited.com. I know I keep saying “get the guide,” but the guide is amazing. There are screenshots of actual profit-and-loss statements to prove how this model works, plus step-by-step instructions to setting them up. And of course there are other models. You can build your own if you want, you can download our gym business plan from the link below and start plugging in numbers, or book a call with our team and we’ll walk you through some options. Each of these models can be tailored to you, but the key is that you have to start with a model. If you just go out and wing it, read instructions or take advice from random other gym owners, you’re not gonna ever get anywhere because you don’t have a model to follow.

Chris Cooper (07:57):
Now, you might prefer to train clients in groups. You might prefer to train them one on one, or you might prefer to train them semi-privately. You might prefer to train athletes, or you might prefer to train clients seeking to lose weight, or even clients who are seeking to recover from head trauma. You might love CrossFit or Pilates or kickboxing. The method, we’re gonna talk about that next. But to right now, I wanna help you pick a model that actually works. So let’s face it, the old myth, especially pervasive in the CrossFit sphere, is that more clients equals a better business. That is false. It’s perpetuated because nobody else is standing up and saying “here is a model that is actually supported by data from successful gyms.” And that’s why I’m sharing this series. Don’t believe me? Look for the CrossFit gyms with the largest client headcount in 2012, or even as recently as 2015.

Chris Cooper (08:49):
Where are they? They’re either smaller now or they’re gone because they knew the CrossFit method inside out, but they didn’t understand how to build a real business model. So it doesn’t matter if you’re like Level 12 certified in kickboxing or you’re the best practitioner in the world or you’ve got a double black belt in jiu-jitsu. You can put the best wine in a broken bottle, but you can’t serve it. Okay, so now I wanna talk about the method. So let’s say that you love CrossFit or you love spin class or high-intensity interval training or jiu-jitsu or boot camp. I get it, you wanna share that love with everyone, but, as I just said, if you put the best wine into a broken bottle, you can’t serve it. You’ll just have a mess on your hands. So in this podcast, I’ve been walking you through the setup of a good gym business.

Chris Cooper (09:38):
We know it works because we’ve mentored over 2,000 gyms around the world. We’ve done that one on one. We’ve collected more data than anybody else, and I just told you how to build a business model that will allow you to serve up your passion over and over, changing the lives of thousands of people and giving you a great income. In fact, some of our gym owners in Two-Brain have applied these models so well that they’re now millionaires. They zipped way ahead of me, and that thrills me because when I started as a gym owner, there were no successful gym owners to be found. There were lots of people pretending, as there are now, but there were no proven models supported by data. So now that you’ve defined your mission and hopefully chosen a model that’s gonna work for you, now you can pick your method. This is the easy part.

Chris Cooper (10:24):
It’s probably the reason that you opened your gym in the first place, right? To bring your passion for yoga to the world or your passion for CrossFit or your passion for kickboxing to the world, right? And you wanted to share that huge epiphany with everybody and change their lives, too. The key is to fit that method into your working business model. Your method is what you deliver, and the model is how you deliver that. So this is where a lot of gym owners have gone off track, especially in CrossFit, because a good method is flexible enough to fit into a working business model. So, for example, at Catalyst, many of our clients do CrossFit. Some do it in a group setting, some do it one on one, some do it semi-private or maybe with their spouse. Some do it in their online homework. The method is effective because it produces results for the client, and the model is effective because it keeps clients around long enough to achieve the mission, and it supports the owner and it supports the coaches.

Chris Cooper (11:26):
Where CrossFit affiliates and yoga instructors especially go awry is the mistaken belief that CrossFit equals group training, or yoga is only done in groups, and then they try to make the model fit that mistake. Remember, good gyms are client centric, and that means the client gets results, but they also have some options. If they have a lower budget, they can do group classes. If they have a little bit of time or less time, then they can schedule appointments that fit their schedule better. If they have unique needs, they can do that in a semi-private session. If they wanna work out with their coworkers or their hockey team, they can do that in a small group. So the question you need to ask yourself about your method is how flexible is your method? The methods that last a long time are usually flexible enough to fit into different models. For example, jiu-jitsu can be taught one on one. Pilates can be done in a semi-private session where everybody’s doing different types of Pilates at the same time. Nutrition can be coached in a group. In fact, merely adding this flexibility to their model makes Two-Brain gyms thousands of dollars more every month. They understand the difference between the method and the model, and they’re willing to change to accomplish their mission. But there’s one more element here before we sign off, and that’s the media.

Chris Cooper (12:47):
Back around 2013 or 2014, I was hired by CrossFit Media and flown out to San Diego with a bunch of other people, and Greg Glassman got up in front of us and he said, “We’re not a fitness company. We’re a media company.” He was the founder of the CrossFit movement, the largest fitness movement in the last 30 years. Now, I had been writing for CrossFit Media already for a couple years by that point, but I didn’t really understand that broader context until that moment, and it hit me like a lightning bolt at the time. But it’s even more true today. Every company is a media company. No matter what your mission, no matter what your model, no matter even what method you choose, you have to talk about it or you will be invisible. If you’re a CrossFit affiliate, you can’t rely on HQ to talk about CrossFit for you.

Chris Cooper (13:37):
If you’re an F45 franchise, you can’t rely on Mark Wahlberg to talk about F45 every day for the rest of his life. You can’t rely on anybody else to create the media that will grow your business. You have to promote yourself. And that means you have to publish. At the absolute minimum, you should be able to produce three pieces of good content per week. That means a blog post, a podcast or a YouTube video. Then you should be able to divide those three pieces of content into 10 pieces of social media—clips, stories, reels, posts, tweets, pictures. That is no longer the ideal. That’s now the minimum. So start by recording your mission. I’m gonna share a video below this of what I did for Catalyst last year as we refined our own mission, right? The catalyst mission is to help 7,000 people in Sault Ste. Marie. But now I’m gonna give you 10 other prompts that you can use to create content.

Chris Cooper (14:34):
So here’s what you do. You grab your phone, you hold it up in front of you, you listen to the first prompt, pretend I’m interviewing you, you hit record, okay? Say the answer, hit stop and then upload that to YouTube. Okay? So question Number 1, why do you love your particular method? Number 2, why did you wanna start a gym? Number 3, how are the coaches at your gym different from one another? Number 4, can anybody do these workouts? Number 5, what options do people have for training at your gym? Number 6, what’s the best time of the day to train? Number 7, what should people eat before their training session? Number 8, what should people eat after their training session? Number 9, what’s the best warmup? And number 10, what’s the best exercise for weight loss? Now, you probably heard those questions from me and you said, “Duh, Coop. Everybody knows that.” But you are a fitness professional. Most people are not fitness professionals. And these are the questions that they ask. So if you want a jumpstart on your media, just hold up your phone, turn on the video camera, pretend I’m interviewing you. Record the answer to each question individually and upload them. Then you can split them up and put them into reels or stories. You can tweet a link to the YouTube videos that you just uploaded. You can write a 20-word intro like “what’s the best warmup before my workout?” and you can share the video on Facebook and regular old Instagram, too, right? Do that for one video, wait two days, do the next one. And you’re covered now for over a month. Done. And yeah, you can use AI to do some of this for you. And if after you do the first 10 things you still can’t publish consistently, at least like at a B+ level, then you should try using ChatGPT or something else.

Chris Cooper (16:24):
But jumping straight to AI without a media plan is like hiring a robot to make you breakfast and then not giving it a recipe to follow. We teach gym owners how to produce a full media calendar, give them hundreds of sample blog posts and images to just swipe and use. And then we walk them through ChatGPT, and we give them prompts to copy in our Growth course. So if you’re not in Two-Brain, you can click the link below to talk to my team about it. If you’re in Two-Brain, just go to the Content Vault. All that stuff is there for you. Here’s the bottom line: If you weren’t publishing media three times a week in 2022, then you were being buried by your competition. But if you aren’t publishing media three times a week in 2023, then you’re being buried by an army of competition. It’s no longer a “nice to have.” Every company is now a media company. It’s time to tell your story. I’m Chris Cooper. Thanks for listening to “Run a Profitable Gym.” If you want to talk about this topic or more, go to gymownersunited.com, join that free Facebook group, and we give you tools and tips to help you with this stuff for free.

The post The Client-Centric Business: Being Paid to Solve Problems appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building a Client-Centric Business: The Mission

What do the truly great gyms have in common?

I mean the gyms that really change their clients’ lives, create wealth for the owners’ families and really impact their towns. What’s the common characteristic?

They’re built around the needs of the client first.

In this series, I’m going to talk about building a client-centric business. This means solving clients’ problems and being paid for it.

To build a successful client-centric business, you have to make decisions in four areas:

1. Your mission.
2. Your model.
3. Your method.
4. Your media.

If you work through the steps with me in this series, you’ll have more clarity in your business than ever before.

Your Mission

Let’s start with the mission: What result do you want your clients to achieve?

For me, the answer is a longer lifespan and longer healthspan.

Yours might be to create access to gym equipment or to guide healthy eating or to introduce people to meditation or something else.

But your mission is not your method: Your method evolves over time, whether that’s CrossFit or powerlifting or yoga.

Next, how many people do you want to achieve this goal over the course of your coaching career?

I chose 7,000 people because that’s 10 percent of my city’s population. If I can get 10 percent of the local population to create a lifelong exercise habit and understand healthy eating, that will create a direct spillover to at least 7,000 more people (spouses, friends and coworkers) and trickle down to another 7,000 souls (kids and students).

You might choose a different goal. Remember, though: You have 30 years to get there. Don’t try to reach 7,000 people all at once.

Next, how long will it take a person to achieve the result you want?

I know that if I can keep a client at my gym for two years, that’s long enough for them to create an exercise and nutrition habit they’ll keep forever. They might not stay at Catalyst forever, but that’s not the mission. Many of our alumni keep training for decades, following fitness apps, riding bikes or doing other stuff. But they’d never have done any of this without getting started at Catalyst first.

You might want to keep a client for five years or just 90 days. But remember: If a client finds fitness, falls in love and then quits the gym but continues to exercise, that’s a win. I know it might feel like a breakup, but you’ve truly changed a life. Celebrate that!

One other sign they’ve reached the goal: They tell you so.

“Catalyst changed my life!” is really “mission accomplished.”

We’ve had people meet and get married, get pregnant and survive emergencies because of Catalyst. I’m sure your gym has incredible success stories, too.

Finally, how many people can you serve at once? That depends on your model. Your model is how you deliver your service to accomplish your mission.

I’ll dig into that in the next post in this series.

The post Building a Client-Centric Business: The Mission appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

3 Essential Revelations for Microgym Owners

Earth-shattering gym-owner revelation Number 1:

You do not need every client.

Revelation Number 2:

You need a simple plan to find the right clients.

Revelation 3:

If you ignore Number 2, you’re going to forget Number 1, and you’ll constantly pitch the wrong things at the wrong people.

These three revelations are a huge part of Two-Brain mentorship, and I love talking to gym owners who have used this key info to dramatically improve their businesses.

I talked to Tina Selix this week, and you can watch our whole conversation on YouTube:

Tina Selix

The short summary: Tina runs Elite Personal Training, and her average revenue per member per month is $469. Before she worked with a Two-Brain mentor, this number was closer to $300. The increase generates almost $3,000 in additional revenue every month, and Tina will likely close the year with more than $35,000 in new revenue.

Even better: She’s not burned out and looking to sell her gym anymore. She’s revitalized, and she’s planning to expand her growing business.

Here’s what Revelation Number 1 looks like at ground level for a gym owner:

“I really have wrapped my head around the fact that I don’t have to be the best fit for every client. And not every client is the best fit for me. And I’m absolutely OK with that. I’ve been very empowered to realize that I just need to go after the clients who need to pay me for what I do,” Tina said.

She continued: “I have prospects come in from time to time, and I realized they don’t need a boutique-style setting. They don’t need high levels of accountability. They don’t need a lot of emotional support. They don’t need a whole structured system … . And I will tell them, ‘Don’t pay me $500 a month. Go to the boot camp down the road. Get your workout on and go on about your life. But if you need those services, then you need to pay me for it.’”

When a gym owner says something like that on the podcast, you must ask the obvious question: So where do you find “the right people”?

Tina’s answer: Referrals generated during goal review sessions and quarterly campaigns.

Tina has a simple but very effective system in place for ensuring a steady stream of the right people end up in her sales office.

Without that, she’d be trying to push $800 PT packages on people who just want access to some gear for $29 a month so they can drop in twice a week and do a program they saw online.

You Must Have a Marketing Plan

It’s very liberating to say “we don’t need every client.” I said it at one point, when our gym was packed with people.

But when we hit a rough patch and needed more members, I didn’t know where to get them. So I started creating silly programs that didn’t match up with our mission, I avoided the rate increases the business badly needed, and I desperately hoped people would sign up for our intro program even though I knew they’d never become long-term clients.

Don’t follow that path.

When you try to please everyone, you don’t please anyone. You’re better off giving 150 high-value clients A+ service than trying to cram 400 people into your business and delivering unfocused, low-value, C- service to all of them.

I hope you realize you just don’t need the wrong people in your microgym. And when you do, I hope you’re able to point to a documented, tested strategy for acquiring the right people.

If you can’t, Two-Brain can help you make a clear plan and back it up with retention tactics that will help your business thrive.

Book a call to talk about mentorship here.

The post 3 Essential Revelations for Microgym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Some People Want More: The Case for High-Value Gym Packages

Not all of your clients have the same budget you do.

Not all of your clients love group training like you do.

Not all of your clients want to train at 10 a.m. like you do.

I know it’s hard to believe when you’re in the depths of gym ownership, but many people prioritize their schedule over your price, will gladly take your recommendation for 1:1 time and want to talk to your nutrition coach.

The key to a high average revenue per member—ARM—is really giving your clients options.

Our job, as coaches, is to put ourselves in their shoes and solve their problems. If you can solve problems fast, add personalization and increase convenience, you’re delivering tremendous value.

Here are a few problems your clients face and how you can overcome them:

“I can’t make your group class times.”

“No problem, that’s why we have personal-training appointments. You can book anything around your schedule.”

“I don’t like your programming.”

“No problem, that’s why we have semi-private sessions: so you can have a custom program.”

“I’ve tried every workout and I’m just not losing weight!”

“No problem, let’s get you set up with our nutrition coach.”

“I’m just losing steam. I don’t feel motivated anymore.”

“No problem, let me check in with you daily for a while.”

Our first job as coaches isn’t to fix the air squat: Our first job is to get people to show up. That means customizing your offering, combining your services and offering up the solution—not just three different class times.

Do This

1. Start with a Prescriptive Model: Set up a free consultation with every client before they do anything else.

2. List each of your services on its own page. Put the pages in a binder.

3. When you meet your next client, ask about their goals.

4. Before you recommend anything, take a moment to think: What will get them to their goals fastest?

5. Flip to that page in your sales binder and say, “This is the fastest way to get there.”

6. If they say “I can’t afford that!” it’s not a personal insult. Tell them the next-fastest way to get there. Remember, your group training program is probably going to be your least-expensive option. It’s effective but not personalized, so it’s likely slower.

7. If they can’t afford your group program, recommend the best access-only facility in your town. Tell them not to sign a contract and set up a time to check in after a month. Yes, someone else will get their $29 monthly fee. But the client will gain perspective on the value of coaching.

Coaching is our value. Some people don’t want coaching right now. They’re not our clients.

But some people need—and want—more coaching. They want accountability, high-touch service, personalization, convenience and high speed. But we’ll never know that if we don’t offer them premium packages that solve their problems.

I get it: You don’t need a coach to tell you how to eat. You don’t need an appointment to work out. You don’t need a reminder to drink water. You never forget to stretch or mobilize or take your ice bath.

But you are not most people.

Most of your clients earn more than you do (we’re working on that). And all of your clients need more help than you do.

Offering premium services isn’t being a slimy salesperson—it’s being a responsible coach.

The post Some People Want More: The Case for High-Value Gym Packages appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Beat Inflation by Increasing Average Revenue Per Member

Inflation is driving prices up, and you need to make more money.

The easiest way to do that is to increase the revenue you earn per client.

In the first post in this series, I shared our leaderboard for average revenue per member—ARM—for July 2023.

Here it is again:

The average Two-Brain gym has an ARM of $205 per client per month—and that’s trending upward every year.

Today, I’m going to give you four battle-tested ways to increase your rates.

1. Annual Rate Increase

Simply add an annual 3 percent rate increase for all new members. Let them know at signup that their rates will increase 3 percent at the beginning of next year. You can also do this with existing members, but most gyms are already priced far too low and need to make a larger jump right away. So 3 percent a year won’t cut it. If your average ARM is below $180, get it there first, then move to annual increases. (I strongly recommend you navigate a rate increase with the help of a mentor.)

2. Switch to Biweekly Payments

Instead of charging $200 per month, you can charge $100 biweekly. This will add $500 per member per year, and your clients won’t really feel a difference.

3. Move Away From Credit Cards

If you process credit-card transactions, you’re giving a percentage away. Switch to ACH (automated clearing house) transfers. Or pass credit-card fees on to clients. Our buddies at Wodify have a great sample email you can use to do this. If you don’t eat the cost of processing cards, that will boost your revenue by a few thousand dollars every year. Sample math: If you process just $40,000 in credit-card transactions every year and give away 2.5 percent, that’s $1,000.

4. Get Our Free Guide

Go to our free group, Gym Owners United, and find our Aug. 22 guide to increasing ARM (or just click here). I’ve got 20 surefire ways to raise your ARM in one tactical PDF I’ll send you for free.

ARM Before Headcount

Most gym owners have now overcome the myth of “more clients = more money.”

To really improve their gyms, owners need to first build a great foundation of 150 clients and $205 ARM. Then they can build from there (if they want to) or simply enjoy a great-paying, sustainable gym.

The post How to Beat Inflation by Increasing Average Revenue Per Member appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Secrets: $430-$679 Average Revenue Per Member

Chris Cooper (00:00):
$430 per client—it’s not only possible, that’s what our 10th-place gym made per client last month. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Every month, we produce leaderboards to show you what the top gyms in the world are doing on six different metrics that we track. And then we interview the best and we find out what they’re doing that’s slightly differently than everybody else. And after we know what they’re doing, we test it on other gyms, and then we build our courses for our tutoring business and mentorship practice. If you wanna talk about these numbers, meet some of these owners or just want more support, just go to gymownersunited.com. You can join a free group with 8,000 of the world’s best gym owners. So this month I’m gonna talk you through our leaderboard for ARM—that’s average revenue per member.

Chris Cooper (00:54):
It’s one of the six key metrics that we track and I write about in my books and on our blog. Here we go. We’re gonna start with Number 10. We’re gonna work our way up and then I’m gonna tell you the top tips from each of these 10 gyms. Okay, here we go. Now, not every gym in our leaderboard for ARM comes from the U.S. But we translated all of their ARM scores, their revenue per client, into U.S. Dollars just to make sure that we’re comparing apples to apples. Okay, so Number 10 is a performance training gym in Canada and their average revenue per member is $430 per month. Really outstanding. And again, like this is almost triple what a lot of gyms worldwide are charging for their program. And the way that these guys did it was they really niched down on sports performance.

Chris Cooper (01:44):
Okay? If you wanna learn how to really do this, you know, you go to gymownersunited.com, and you can talk about it, but the best way to do it is really to work with a mentor at Two-Brain. So Number 10, $430 U.S. Per client per month. Number 9, a health and performance center, $445 per month. Really awesome. Number 8 is a personal training center, $469 per client per month. And we’re going up here. Number 7 is $484 per client per month. Number 6 is $493 per month. Okay? So we’ve gone through like 10 through six. I’m gonna get into the top five now, but I want you to see like not only is this possible, but it’s possible for you. Your gym can pivot to a high ARM. I share these with you not so that you feel bad that you’re only charging a hundred bucks or $150 a month.

Chris Cooper (02:37):
I wanna show you what’s actually possible there and broaden the scope of our understanding. Okay? So here we go. Here’s the top five. Now here is where we get into like over $500 per client per month. This one, first one, Number 5 is a strength and conditioning gym. Their ARM is $527 per member per month. Next above that is health and fitness center. Okay? It’s a gym and theirs is a dollar higher. It’s $528 per member per month. High five. These are friends of mine. Number 3 overall, $627 per member per month. Number 2 tops even that at $652 per member per month. Amazing. And the Number 1 ARM in Two-Brain in July 2023 was $679 per member per month. Look, imagine if every member of your gym was paying you half of that, okay? $340 bucks per month. What a difference that would make.

Chris Cooper (03:39):
The biggest challenge that most gyms face is not that they can’t get enough clients. They absolutely can get enough clients. We know how to do this. We’ve done this thousands of times. Literally the biggest challenge they face is that they’re not making enough per client. And so they have this myth in their head that “well, I’ll just make it up in volume. Like I’ll get 300 clients at 99 bucks a month.” The problem is that as your member count goes up, so do your costs. You need more space, you need more equipment, you need more staff, right? You need more software, you need more apps to track everybody. You need more toilet paper. The real path to success lies in having higher value clients. Now obviously there’s a balance, and that balance point is usually around 150 clients. 150 clients paying you a higher ARM, at least $205, will grow your business and give you a better life than 300 clients paying half that much.

Chris Cooper (04:34):
So after we identify these gyms, we go interview them. I’m gonna give you their direct quotes in their own words of how they have such a high ARM. So the first gym said, “We stick to our pricing when we have a slow month. We don’t start throwing out discounts to get more heads in. We know that there’s going to be an ebb and flow.” So the second gym on our leaderboard said, “We’re a small group and personal training studio. We have about 20 or 25 clients on group memberships paying about $225 per month. And the PT clients are paying $960 to $1,440 per month. When they come in, they have in mind like what result they wanna get, and then I ask them what help they need.” So sidebar here, this is Coop. They’re following a Prescriptive Model. The client comes in, says, “Here’s where I wanna get.” The trainer says, “Wonderful, we can get you there. Do you want to exercise in a small group setting or do you want to get there faster and work one-on-one with me?” That’s it. It’s up to the client to decide how they want to be trained. And then the method is up to the trainer. The third gym on our leaderboard said, “We’ve really only begun to scratch the surface on where we can go. These small incremental gains that we’ve made have increased our ARM by about $120 over the last six months.” Sidebar: Imagine making another $120 per month per client in your gym. Amazing. Okay, back to their quote. They said, “We increased our price point, we added new services including nutrition services. We started those in October of last year. When anyone comes in with a body composition goal, we package them together into a six-month commitment, fitness and nutrition together.”

Chris Cooper (06:14):
Then this next insight I think is gonna be really important for a lot of you. This gym said, “I was able to give our staff a raise because of price corrections.” That is so important. The Number 1 reason that gym owners can’t pay their staff more is not because they don’t have enough clients; it’s because their clients are not paying enough. When you just add more clients to get more revenue, you have to add more staff. And so the, the pie does get bigger, but it also gets sliced into more pieces. You don’t increase the pay that you’re paying your staff until you increase the value that you’re providing to your clients. And I mean measurably. So like the clients are paying more now. The next gym said, “We value our time such that we charge appropriately for our service. And thanks to Two-Brain mentorship, we have good systems to set proper expectations throughout our client’s journey.”

Chris Cooper (07:03):
Hey, I love that. Thank you. The next gym on our leaderboard for highest ARM said, “Since we’ve made some changes to processing and gone to a subscription-based model, this is the ARM that we’ve come to have, And we’re almost exclusively personal training. So our rates for personal training are three times per week for a thousand dollars monthly or twice per week for $700 monthly. We also added on a lower tier with individualized programming in a semi-private program. And the plan is to fill these sessions to four clients per hour.” That’s amazing. And you know, Coop talking again now, we’ve recently gone all in on semi-private training in my gym, and it is really popular with both personal training clients and group class clients who want something kind of in the middle. I mean, I love it. I’m a client of semi-private at my gym, too.

Chris Cooper (07:53):
The next gym said, “We sell personal training in semi-private only. I’ve become pretty strict about nutrition. If you have a fat-loss goal, I’m direct that I’m not promising any sort of results if you are not willing to add nutrition into the mix.” The next gym said, “ARM has almost doubled since starting in September. Kilo has helped with this, getting the right person in the door in front of you. The website and the No Sweat Intro process helps us to stand out. Working through the conversation with the NSIs I has also helped. I share with the prospect the features and then the value of those features. And one hurdle that I faced was that I was projecting my budget onto the clients.” And with reps, they’re not doing that anymore. The next gym in our top 10 said, “We’re 80% personal training. And we get our personal training clients in twice a week. We give them a prescription at our NSI. We say, ‘We have many options. Based on what you’ve shared with me, here’s what I recommend for you.’ If they object, then we look at the next best option for the price that they can afford.” So again, like the Prescriptive Model is what’s really guiding this gym to having a higher value per client. If they just brought these clients in and said, “Come in, do a free trial,” they would never even have the opportunity to have those conversations. The client would never tell ’em exactly what they want. They couldn’t guide the client to the best service for them, and their ARM would also suck. The next gym kept it simple. They said, “We increased our prices about 9%.” Amazing, right? So important because when you increase your revenue, you increase like client value without increasing expenses.

Chris Cooper (09:26):
So all that falls straight to the bottom line. And if you wanna pay yourself more, that’s great. If you wanna pay your staff more fine. The next gym said, “Kilo is a must have. It increased the efficiency of our lead-nurture and sales processes. We replaced MailChimp for marketing emails, using the long-term client nurture to help schedule goal reviews with our current clients. And we use the notes for confirming their appointments. That definitely aids in saving time and making us more efficient at getting the right people in front of us.” The next client said goal reviews are critical because they started out as a mostly a group training facility and the most people weren’t brought in through a No Sweat Intro process. So the way they introduced their current clients to a Prescriptive Model is goal reviews. Okay? The next gym said, “Something unique to us is we have a large number of pricing options. Everything from monthly membership for access only to quarterly training packages for three months at like twice a week. There’s no nutrition options.” And so, you know, sidebar, what that means is that you can drive up your ARM by adding things onto the client based on what they need. Or also like the client’s progression. So if they’re at a spot where they don’t need as much coaching, you can cautiously add on like access, right? So you have to take that in mind, too. Like the way that I added access, just as a cautionary tale, was wrong in the beginning. The way that some gyms are doing it now—putting it as an add-on to their personal training or group class or whatever for very experienced clients only who are following your plan, not following the secret squirrel programming that they bought online—that’s where it can work.

Chris Cooper (11:07):
Okay? This next insight is really interesting. They said, “I’m fortunate that I sublease” so other people are paying them rent. “And I’m a one-man show. I’ve increased our rates several times since September. Joining Two-Brain is the best thing I’ve done professionally.” Thank you so much for great shout-out. And the last gym on our top 10 for ARM in July said, “We really key in on the avatar.” That means they’re niching down, which means they can provide more value because their value scope is narrower, right? They’re specialists and they can charge more for that value because it’s so specialized. Alright, so those are our top 10 for ARM and their best advice to you, the gym owner out there who’s listening to this show, “Run a Profitable Gym.” I want you to have a better gym. I want you to make a better living. I want you to have a bigger income so that you can create more impact for your staff, for your family and for your community. If you want to get free help, you can go to gymownersunited.com. That’s our free public group. There’s 8,000 gym owners in there. We’re constantly giving free stuff away to help you grow your gym and to thank you for your service.

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Off-the-Charts ARM: Our July Leaderboard for Revenue Per Member

When we presented our leaderboard for average revenue per member in February, only the Top 5 were over $400.

In July, the entire Top 10 leaderboard scored $430 or better.

This is great news: It shows that gym owners are learning how to earn more.

Our leaders are also showing us that dramatic changes are possible in relatively short amounts of time if they have support and guidance.

One top gym owner said they can push this number much higher in the future. Another said their number has almost doubled in less than 12 months.

So wherever you’re at, know that your ARM can be increased.

But maybe you don’t know how to do that. No problem. I can help. I wrote a simple guide with 20 tactics you can use today to increase ARM. It’s available in the Gym Owners United group. Ask for it, and I’ll send it to you.

We also interviewed the gym owners on our leaderboard and asked them how they achieved their results. Their answers are below.

First, the Top 10 leaderboard for July (we reveal the names of the gyms in our private group for clients):

And here’s what the owners had to say about their numbers:

“We stick to our pricing … . When we have a slow month, we don’t throw out discounts. We anticipate that ebb and flow.”

“We are a small-group and PT studio. We have about 20-25 group memberships at about $225 per month, and $960-$1,440 per month for the PT clients. When they come in, they have in mind what they want, and I ask them what help they need.”

“We’ve really only begun to scratch the service on where we can go. These small, incremental gains have increased ARM by about $120 over the last six months. … We increased our price point and added new services, including nutrition services. We started it in October of last year. When anyone comes in with a body-comp goal, we package that as a six-month commitment—fitness and nutrition together. Before Two-Brain, the price was $540 per month, and now it’s $790. I’m the only one that offers these services in our area.”

“I was able to give staff a raise because of price corrections.”

“We value our time such that we charge appropriately for our service, and thanks to Two-Brain mentorship we have good systems to set proper expectations throughout our clients’ journeys.”

“Since we’ve made some changes to processing and gone to a subscription-based model, this is the ARM we’ve come to have. And we’re PT almost exclusively. Our rates for PT are three times per week for $1,000 monthly and twice per week for $700 monthly. We also added on a lower tier with individualized programming in a semi-private program. … The plan is to fill these sessions to four clients per hour.”

“We sell PT and semi-private only. … I’ve become pretty strict about nutrition. If you have a fat-loss goal, I’m direct that I am not promising any sort of results without adding nutrition.”

“ARM has almost doubled since starting in Sept. … Kilo has helped with this, getting the right person in front of you. The website and the No Sweat Intro process help to stand out. Working through the conversation with the NSI has helped. … I share with the prospect the features, then the value of them. A hurdle that I faced: I was projecting my budget onto the clients.”

“We’re 80 percent PT, and we get the PT clients in about twice a week. … We give a prescription at the NSI: ‘We have many options. Based on what you’ve shared with me, here is what I recommend for you.’ If they object, then we look at the next best option.”

“We increased prices about 9 percent.”

“Kilo is a must have—increased efficiency of lead nurturing and sales processes. We replaced Mailchimp for marketing emails, using the long-term client nurture to help schedule goal reviews. We use the notes for confirming appointments. That definitely aids in time saving and efficiency.”

“Goal reviews, they are critical.”

“Something unique to us: We have a large number of pricing options—everything from monthly membership for access only to quarterly training packages (three months of twice a week). No nutrition options.”

“I’m fortunate that I sublease and I’m a one-man show. I’ve increased the rates several times since September. … Joining Two-Brain is the best thing I’ve done professionally!”

“We really key in on the avatar.”

Drive Up Your Number

Inspired to start working on your ARM score? Get my new guide. That will give you a great start.

And if you want to work toward these amazing numbers at high speed, let’s talk about working together.

The post Off-the-Charts ARM: Our July Leaderboard for Revenue Per Member appeared first on Two-Brain Business.