Chris Cooper's Blog, page 64

How to Get More Kids Into Your Gym and Change Their Lives

Chris Cooper (00:00):
It’s easier to get a new youth client than a new adult client. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today I’m gonna tell you how to get more kids into your gym working out so that you can change their lives by establishing a base of fitness for life. If this topic is interesting to you, go to gymownersunited.com and you can learn more lessons from other people who have really successful kids and youth programs in their gym. I’ve been coaching kids since 1996. I’ll let you do the math on that. And I’ve owned a gym since 2005. Our gym has always been heavily focused on establishing good, healthy patterns and behaviors in kids that they’ll keep for the rest of their lives. And when I talked about growing my kids program with other gym owners in my book “Help First”, a lot of them quickly snapped up these strategies because they’re just so easy to implement that they actually just feel like, “Oh, I should have thought of that.”

Chris Cooper (00:59):
Right? They feel obvious when you start doing it today. I’m gonna share some of those with you. They’re simple, which makes them super-duper effective. And after listening, you might have the epiphany of like, “Oh, duh, I should have thought of that.” If you do, that’s okay. Just go out and start doing them. The the beautiful part about having a mentor: they make something that seems complex–growing your kids program—into really simple, actionable steps. And if you want to talk to our team more about mentorship for all aspects of your gym business, you can just go to twobrainbusiness.com and book a call there. Let’s start by growing your kids program. Here’s why it’s easier to grow a kids program than it is to grow your adult program. First, if you’re a parent you know this already: You’re more likely to buy something for your kid than you are to spend money on yourself.

Chris Cooper (01:48):
Second, most parents, and you know this if you’re a parent, most parents are actively looking for something to keep their kids busy and active. Their kids, you know, they’re stuck at home during the school year unless they’re playing a sport. During the summer, they’re bored, you know, and they’re not getting any activity at school anymore. Parents are realizing the kids don’t just go to outside and play like our generation used to, right? Third, options are more limited than ever before. There’s no real afterschool recreational sports unless they want to compete. And every activity that they do isn’t just about fun anymore. It’s about competition. And so a lot of kids are shying away from that. There’s no more community rec center that the kids would go to and just shoot hoops. That doesn’t exist. So parents are looking for new things to try, and that’s you.

Chris Cooper (02:36):
So here’s how to grow your youth program fast. First appeal to your clients’ kids. The first thing that you do is you appeal to your clients’ kids. So what you do is you open up maybe one class or possibly two classes, and you go to your clients and you say, “Hey, we’re testing out this kids program. We’re gonna run it for six weeks, and we only want the kids of the clients who are at this gym. I wanna make this super easy and convenient for you, and I want you to be able to do something together as a family that will strengthen your bond but also get your kids off the couch, off the iPad and exercising so that maybe you can find a common passion that you can do together and spend some quality time together.” Okay? So you start off with very limited classes, and the first thing that you do is you go to your clients’ kids.

Chris Cooper (03:25):
Okay? Now this is the best time to actually start a kids program—right at the start of the school year—because this is when parents are setting up their calendars and their kids’ calendars going forward. They’ve got some predictability back in their lives. And so they know like, “Okay, at 4 p.m. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can slot the kid in.” But once they’ve made those commitments and set their calendar, it’s very hard to squeak more stuff in. So the first thing is appeal to your clients’ kids. The second thing is to start with a six-week program. Six-Week sessions are the best way to start because it’s a short enough timeframe that parents can more easily commit, but it’s long enough for them to see obvious results and understand the value of a program. Six weeks is also longer than a month, which allows you to price well because parents don’t tend to break the cost down per class, but they can relate the cost to a large group of classes.

Chris Cooper (04:18):
So it makes good pricing easier to swallow, which sets your value from the start. Six weeks is also usually long enough that kids will miss one or two classes, and that’s not the goal, but it gets parents into the habit of seeing missed classes as their responsibility and not yours to refund or make up later. You don’t ever wanna get into the habit of parents expecting a specific number of classes with their payments. So after you’ve appealed to your clients’ kids and then set up short-term six-week challenges or six-week programs for the kids, and after you’ve talked to your clients about them, the next way to grow your program is to get their best friends and their siblings. So if your six-week program doesn’t sell out, for example, you approach the parents of the kids who are in the group and you say, “Hey, Dave, our kids program is filling up and the kids in the group are really amazing. I wanna make sure that we fill it with the best kids. Does your son or daughter have a best buddy who would be a perfect fit?” Now this is really simple, but I can’t tell you how many times a parent has responded with, “Oh yeah, let me reach out to Nancy’s mom.” And then we’ve gained a new client—Nancy’s kid or Nancy. Getting referrals for other kids is easier than getting referrals for adults. In fact, my gym actually just did this to me a couple of days ago. They had a youth hockey program for my teenage son. It wasn’t full. And they reached out and they said, “Hey, Coopis there another player on the team that Orry really likes to hang out with who might wanna also come to this group?” And, you know, within 30 seconds of thinking about it, I thought like, “Oh yeah, the kid that’s his left winger would probably love to come and the gym.”

Chris Cooper (05:54):
And the GM at my gym said, “Great. What’s the parent’s last name?” They sent them a text message and said, “You know, does your kid wanna do this program?” The parent immediately called me: “Hey, what is this message I just got from Catalyst Fitness?” I said, “That’s my gym. Orry’s doing this hockey program. Does your son wanna get in on it, too?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sign us up. Can we work out rides later?” Easily done, right? Like it’s that easy. And the gym is getting a new client. They’re doing me a favor by putting in my kid’s buddy. So he’s gonna love it even more. And they’re doing that parent a favor. The parent was actually like, “Thank you so much. Like, my kid is gonna be so fired up about this.” And of course they’re not getting a discount or anything. They’re just excited that their kid is excited to do workouts with my kid.

Chris Cooper (06:41):
That’s it. And this is why it’s really, really easy to get referrals for kids. So much easier than for adults. All right? So that’s tactic Number 3 to grow your kids program. Number 4 is to go to sports teams. So if you’ve got a kid in your program they’re probably playing other sports than just working out at your gym. Some are just working out at your gym. But I’ve trained hundreds of athletes at my gym, Catalyst, and one of our biggest strategies for getting new clients is the one-to-many strategy of training an athlete’s entire team. Now, if you’re in Two-Brain, of course all these strategies are all laid out for you step by step in the Growth toolkit. You can just click on them and, and follow ’em step by step. But I’m gonna give you an example. If you’ve got a kid in your program who plays basketball, the first thing that you wanna do is make contact with their coach, especially if they’re an older kid or they’re playing on some kind of traveling rep team, right?

Chris Cooper (07:37):
Make contact with their coach and tell the coach your plan for the athlete and ask if they approve. Now, you don’t need their approval, and they probably don’t even understand what you’re talking about, but it’s a great way to start a conversation and build a bridge. After that athlete has been with your gym for a month or your first six-week program, you can offer to run a really fun combine for the whole team at the gym. So you can bring in the team to the gym and run them through a few physical challenges. And then you collect the parents’ email addresses from the waivers that they sign, and you add them to your email list. And then, finally, you can talk to the coach about a preseason conditioning camp or a specialty group for them. Sometimes that works out. I would say three times out of every 10 we’ve had the coach immediately sign the team up, which is worth thousands of dollars, but more than likely, you know, eight times outta 10 we’ll get at least one kid from that team to join the regular group programming or even start a small semi-private group.

Chris Cooper (08:32):
This has worked dozens of times at Catalyst and generated tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. But of course, you know, I screwed that up the first few times, and I tell the story of doing that in the book “Help First.” The fifth way to grow your kids program is to go to your email list or your organic audiences. So these are people who are paying attention, but they’re not paying you money yet. So to build these audiences, we offer free seminars once or twice a year. Might be a free nutrition seminar for parents, or it might be a concussion seminar for parents and coaches. And then we collect all the names and email addresses from those seminars, and we add them to our monthly email list. By far, the single most effective marketing we’ve done is to publish a nutrition guide for kids.

Chris Cooper (09:16):
It’s called “How to Feed a Hockey Animal.” And it’s been downloaded over a thousand times from our website. The follow-up email to parents is opened over 80% of the time. Many kids have come to our varsity program just because of that download. You can have it in our Growth program. It’s right in the toolkit. Download it, change it to whatever sport you want, you know, use it. So here’s some final advice on growing your kids program. You need to understand your relationship with the parents, right? Bus stops are the kid-focused versions of hair salons and water coolers, and you want the program to be what the kids are talking about. So the best way to make that happen is authentic relationships with the parents. And you wanna start that relationship during that first six-week session. Make time before and after class to answer questions, to talk to parents, to ask them questions, to get to know them and their kids for real.

Chris Cooper (10:10):
Set up a communication system that works for them, like email or Facebook or text or Instagram, whatever they prefer. And then make sure to tell them when you’ve addressed their questions or their issues, made special allowances, seen improvement in the behavior, because it’s really important for the parents to be hearing about how their kid is doing. They want their kid to get an A+, right? You don’t have to give ’em a report card, but what if you send them a text and you say, “Hey, I just want you to know in the last four weeks your kid’s behavior has improved so much and now they’re like super enthusiastic when they’re come to class,” right? Or maybe you want to talk to ’em about the session. Like, “Hey, I noticed that Sammy was uncomfortable in the front roll, so I chose to do this and that to work on vestibular development so that as their inner ear gets the challenge that they need, they’ll become more comfortable in the positions. This will be most helpful in creating lifelong motor patterns and improve them in their sport.”

Chris Cooper (11:06):
Okay? The parent needs to trust you, and that means they need to know that you know a lot and how much work that you’re putting into this. And they won’t know any of that if you don’t tell them. Encourage the parent to take photos and to share photos. You know, make a Bright Spot Friday tradition where parents can use pictures from the week to brag up their kids. So, you know, make fun car magnets or stickers that say “my kid’s sport is CrossFit” or whatever it is. So parents can be proud of what their kids are doing. Parents really react to signals from other parents. If other parents’ kids are doing Krav Maga, they’re gonna ask about that, and they’re gonna think like, “Should my kid be doing Krav Maga?” If other kids have a tutor, they’re gonna ask like, “Should my kids have a tutor?”

Chris Cooper (11:49):
And they’ll know about you and your program more from the conversations that they have while they’re sitting in the stands at the kid’s swim meet or basketball game and having those conversations with other parents than they will from your marketing. So make sure that you take up lots of time with your parents, that you have parents create the media that brags about their kids, and that you’re giving them a lot of ways to start conversations. There are directive and indirect referral pathways to grow your kids program, but the best way is always to form strong connections between kids, between kids and their teammates, between kids and their friends, and parents. One of the best things the parents ever say to me, by the way, is, “Oh yeah, sure. He listens to you. You know, when I tell them this thing, they don’t listen. But when Chris says it, oh my, it’s the gospel.” And I say, “Yeah, that’s funny. My kids do the same thing. That’s called proximity bias. And that’s just why you have a coach. By the way, if there’s something you want your kid to do, tell me and I’ll tell them. And then they’ll make a joke about like getting to bed on time or cleaning up their room.” But the reality is like that’s actually true. If a coach says to the kid, “Listen, Jimmy, you’re doing amazingly well. You’re playing two sports and you’re coming to the gym. I really need you to get into bed by 8 o’clock. Lights out by 8:30,” the kid will do it no matter how long the parent has been yelling at them to do it. No matter how loudly the parent yells at them, no matter what they threaten, if it comes from the coach, they’ll do it.

Chris Cooper (13:25):
And early on when I was coaching kids at my gym, this parent came up to me and shook my hand and he is like, “You’re calling this program ‘Catalyst kids.’ You should be calling it ‘early bedtime—80 bucks a month.’ And every parent in town would sign up.” And that’s really what it’s all about. It’s not like your power as a coach. It’s about the rapport that you build with the parents. Parents refer to other parents. Kids refer to other kids because they make most of the buying decisions in the household. If a kid in your house put up their hand and said, “I wanna try this sport,” you’d move hell and earth to get the kid into that sport so that they could try it, right? And if, you know, Jimmy hears that Davey is doing your kids program at your gym, they’re gonna wanna try it, too.

Chris Cooper (14:09):
And, of course, the parents are the easy sell. So the way that you grow your kids program is through connection. I hope this helps. If you want more ideas, you can go to gymownersunited.com. It’s our free group for gyms where we talk about this stuff in a private and supporting setting for people who just want you to win. There’s even a free guide on how to grow your kids program right in that group. And all what you gotta do is hit the search bar, search for kids, and you’ll find it, and I’ll just give it to you. Okay? Hope this helps. I’m Chris Cooper. Keep growing your gym.

The post How to Get More Kids Into Your Gym and Change Their Lives appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

4 Keys to Growing Youth Programs

It’s much easier to get a new youth client at a gym than a new adult client.

First, parents are more likely to buy something for their kids than for themselves.

Second, parents are always seeking out new activities their kids might enjoy.

Third, with the rise of screens and the decrease of activity in schools, some parents are desperate to get their kids moving.

You have the solution to parents’ problems. Here are four ways to grow your youth program fast.

1. Appeal to Clients First

Your current clients already know, like and trust you. They see the value in your coaching, and they’re getting great results. You’re already solving many of their problems—so solve one more and get their kids moving.

This is the Help First principle in action: How can you help busy clients who are desperate for activities that keep their kids engaged? With a fun fitness program for children.

Your current clients also know other parents—lots of them—and if you ask them to mention your program to peers who might love to enroll a child, their endorsement will carry a lot of weight.

This is Affinity Marketing: connecting with the people who are closest to your current clients. You can absolutely run ads and try to warm cold leads, but you really can’t compete with a parent who says, “My daughter is doing a six-week session at a great gym full of amazing people. Your kid should sign up, too!”

Remember: You have to generate referrals. They don’t just happen. Try saying something like this: “Hey, Dave! Our kids program is filling up, and the children in the group are really amazing. I want to make sure we fill it with the best kids—does your son or daughter have a ‘best buddy’ who would be a perfect fit?”

This is really simple, but I can’t tell you how many times a parent has responded with, “Oh yeah! Let me reach out to Nancy’s mom,” and we’ve gained a new client. Getting referrals for other kids is easier than getting referrals for adults.

2. Start With a 6-Week Program

Six-week sessions are great because parents can commit easily instead of worrying about all the conflicts that come up over two months or 90 days. But you still have more than enough time to produce some results, make kids smile, build relationships and educate parents on the value of the program.

With a six-week block, parents also don’t generally evaluate cost per class. They attach value to a larger group of classes instead. That can make it easier to price your program properly. Many people price kids programs below adult programs, and that’s a mistake. Kids programs should be at least equal in cost to adult programs—or they should be more expensive.

Six-week blocks also add some scarcity. If you only have 10 spots, people will be more inclined to sign up rather than sit on the fence. And if the program ends while the kids are still having a lot of fun, people will be very eager for another session. If a program drags on and kids start to lose interest, parents won’t be begging you for another block of classes.

Finally, kids will generally miss one or two sessions over six weeks. You don’t want that, of course. But when you expect it to happen, you can take steps to ensure parents know missed classes are normal and accounted for in the plan. If parents are tied to a certain number of classes—such as eight per month—you are opening yourself up to refunds, make-up classes and so on.

With six weeks, you can say something like this: “Everyone has conflicts, so the program is designed to produce great results even if you miss a class or two. Make sure you get to at least 9 or 10 sessions, but you can come up to 12 times if you want!”

3. Go to Sports Teams

I’ve trained hundreds of athletes at my gym, Catalyst. One of our biggest strategies for getting new clients is the “one to many” strategy of training an athlete’s entire team.

For example, when a basketball player joins the gym, immediately make contact with the coach. Tell the coach your plan for the athlete and ask if they approve. You don’t really need their approval (they probably don’t understand what you’re talking about anyway), but it’s a great way to build a bridge.

After the athlete’s first month of training, offer to run a fun “combine” for the team. Bring the team to the gym and run them through a few physical challenges. Collect parents’ email addresses on waivers and add them to your email list. Finally, approach the coach about a preseason conditioning camp.

This has worked dozens of times at Catalyst and generated tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.

4. Go to Your Email list or Organic Audiences

We offer free seminars several times every year: free nutrition seminars for parents or free concussion seminars for parents and coaches. We collect names and email addresses from all attendees and then add them to our email list.

By far the single most effective “marketing” we’ve done is to publish a nutrition guide for kids. “How to Feed a Hockey Animal” has been downloaded hundreds of times, and the followup email to parents is opened over 80 percent of the time. Many kids have come to our Varsity program because of that download.

Make sure you’re always finding ways to collect email addresses, then regularly send out newsletters full of helpful tips, announcements about new programs with limited space and so on.

Final Advice

As Jeff Martin of The Brand X Method said, “The parent is the client. We work with children. We do what’s best for kids, but the parent is the client. We have to set the program up to meet the parents’ goals and needs.”

Solve problems for parents, and build relationships with them to learn more. Set aside time before and after class to get to know them, answer their questions, find out what they’re struggling with, and update them on their child’s progress. Tell them how you’re addressing concerns and helping their kid succeed.

For example: “I know you said Timmy hates running. I had him push a light sled instead, and he loves it. It was so great to see him smiling as he did it!”

Parents must know how much you care and how hard you are working, so connect with them to bring them up to speed.

You can also help connect the parents to you and each other through private Facebook groups, group texts or email lists. That way they can ask questions, discuss things, plan carpools and so on.

Finally, encourage them to take pictures and share them, or provide them with pictures and videos they can share (be sure your waiver has a media release in place—some parents will not want their kids featured online).

Make the kids happy, but don’t forget that the parents are the true clients. Connect with them at every opportunity to ensure they’re smiling. If you do, your kids programs will always be full.

The post 4 Keys to Growing Youth Programs appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The 4 Essentials When Hiring a Kids Program Coach

Kids programs burn coaches out faster than anything else.

In fact, we actually cancelled a kids program at Catalyst simply because it exhausted my coaches.

Here’s how to get the right person in place.

1. Key Characteristics

First, a kids coach has to be very passionate about the job. It would be a mistake to hire someone who “kinda likes coaching kids.”

You want someone who is diligent, patient and energetic, and the person should see the long-term value in working with young people. It’s often not enough for a coach to just see squat instruction as another part of a class. The top kids coaches understand that they’re helping a person develop a movement pattern that will help them for the next 80 or so years.

In the best situation, your kids coach will have a long-term vision for the program and want to lay it out for you before you move forward.

It goes without saying that kids coaches should be good communicators who know and embrace the mission and vision you set for your business. And, as with your other coaches, they should have an appetite for continuing education.

2. Background Checks

Background checks on coaches are not optional. In this case, it pays to go the extra mile even if your area does not require background checks. Run them. And, of course, make sure you understand all local laws related to coaching kids.

More info: Listen to Vaughn Vernon talk about a program for running background checks through AGuard.

3. Credentials

Your kids coach is going to need a certification of some kind. We recommend The Brand X Method because it doesn’t require travel, carries a strong physical literacy component and thoroughly prepares your coach to lead kids.

4. Compensation Structure

You’re going to pay the kids coach 44.4 percent—4/9ths—of the revenue you make from the program.

The coach is going to deliver the program. When the program grows beyond what that coach can deliver, you’ll pay other coaches at your basic class rate to help them. But the first coach manages the program, creates the programming and lessons, schedules the other coaches, and still delivers most of the classes.

This Above All

You must hire for personality and train for skill when it comes to coaching kids. It’s almost more important for this role than any other in your business.

Two-Brain Growth clients—We have a full course for you: Youth Programs.

The post The 4 Essentials When Hiring a Kids Program Coach appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building a Kids Program With the Brand X Method

Announcer (00:00):
A kids program can change lives and provide revenue to your gym. At the 2022 Two-Brain Summit in Chicago, Jeff Martin laid out The Brand X Method for coaches and gym owners. Check it out and start or improve a kids program at your gym today. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Please remember to subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening. Now, here’s Jeff Martin of The Brand X Method.

Jeff Martin (00:21):
My name’s Jeff Martin. Along with my wife, Mikki, we owned a gym called Brand X. Yesterday, when we started, I believe it was Mike who asked, “Why’d you get into being a trainer?” And almost everybody answered “to change lives.” Remember that? Yeah, change lives. So when you work with adults, the opportunity to change lives is there. It’s awesome. We love changing lives, but when you work with youth, you have the opportunity to shape lives, and that’s impact, which is what the weekend is about. So I hope today to talk a little bit about Brand X, talk about some of the kids—we trained at least one of them—and inspire you to work with kids. Talk about the pathway we took to train kids, to produce kids who moved really well and were great, outstanding athletes. And then talk about a pathway for business success.

Jeff Martin (01:27):
After talking to hundred gym owners and thousands of people who train kids, what were the pathways? What’s the pathway that they took to be successful? Our gym, Brand X, was about an hour plus outside of San Diego, up in the mountains, little sleepyfarming and ranching community. You blinked, you were through it. Every time we had a seminar, I got a phone call, at least one phone call, and it goes something like this: “Hello, Brand X” “I’m lost. I’m pretty sure I’m lost.” “Uh where are you?” “Well, I’m on a dirt road. I passed the chicken ranch. I see fields and cows.” “Yeah, we’re about a quarter mile up on the left.” That was Brand X.

Jeff Martin (02:20):
In 2004, we became the fifth CrossFit affiliate, which is a really great thing to think about—wanting to take something that’s never been done befor, nobody knows about, bring it to a one-stoplight town and make youth fitness. Because that’s what we became known for: youth fitness. So the goal of our youth program was to have kids leave our program who are confident, confident and motivated to live active lives. We wanted to give them the tools to excel at whatever activity, task or sport life threw at them. We do this by making ’em move well, making ’em strong and increasing their physical literacy, which people see as athleticism.

Jeff Martin (03:12):
We had kids compete at the highest levels in youth athletics. So go all the way into professional sport. And we had great success outside of just athletics. We produced 10 valedictorians out of our gym. We had kids go to Ivy League schools. Just had one of our kids graduate from MIT. Kids who went to all four military academies. Three of our kids went to the Air Force Academy and created the official CrossFit affiliate at the Air Force Academy. We ran our program from 2004 to 2018, when we shut our gym down and chased our grandkids across the country. In that timeframe, we had 75 kids that were with us longer than five years, 30 kids that were with us longer than 10 years. We got to see our clients grow up. I wanna tell you about one of those kids.

Jeff Martin (04:12):
Her name is Sarah. Sarah came into the gym when she was four years old. She didn’t play sports. She didn’t do little-girl gymnastics, like almost every girl does. She just came to the gym. She was homeschooled. So she didn’t have P.E. The gym was her P.E. And from 4 years old to 18, Sarah matriculated through our program. At 18, she graduated from high school, one of our valedictorians, and went away to college. When she got to college, she said to herself, “I want to meet people and get involved.” And she decided she would go out for a sport. Never did sports before. Had the confidence to go out for a sport. She looked around and she said, “What would be fun?” She saw the archery club. She said, “I’ll go out for the archery club.” So she shows up on the day of tryouts.

Jeff Martin (05:13):
She shows up and they divide the people. Here’s people who have done archery before, who are competitive. Here’s people who’ve never picked up a bow before, don’t know how to shoot it. “Sarah, You go in this group and they go in that group. The group Sarah’s in, they learn how to shoot the bow. About halfway through the day, they set up three targets. It’s gonna be their tryouts. One near, one in the middle and one way far away. So coach goes up, grabs an arrows, shoots at the target: bullseye. Kids go up, they take their shots. A lot of ’em did really well. They got bullseyes. The second target, same thing. Coach goes up, draws, aims, fires, bullseye. Kids come up. They didn’t do so well this time. A few of ’em got the bullseye, Sarah included. Dangerously close. Third target, it’s way out there. Coach comes up, grabs, sorry, target’s here, releases arrow, arcs up, comes down—another bullseye. All the kids come up, they’re taking their shots. No one’s getting anywhere near the target. Sarah goes up, grabs her arrow, does what she’s been told. Aims, releases. That arrow works up and at the top, at the apex of that arrow’s flight, I wanna leave it right there. And I wanna go forward. About six months into into the future, I get a phone call. I get a lot of phone calls. “Hey, It’s Jeff.” And I hear the voice of a friend of mine who’s in the U.K. And he says “hey, mate” cuz that’s how they talk in the U.K. And I say “what’s up, dude?” ’cause American. And he said, “I wanna tell you about a little girl that I was training.” I said, “Cool.” He saidShe’s a rower. She had a huge engine, huge engine, but she wasn’t strong enough to compete at the higher levels.”

Jeff Martin (07:42):
And I said, “Awesome. That’s a cool story. What’s that got to do with me?” And he said, “She came to my gym. She trained with me for a couple years, and she got strong, and she made it. She was able to compete at the junior-national levels in the U.K., which is awesome.” So that’s awesome. He said, “She got a scholarship to go to the U.S. and row for a D1 school. That’s awesome, too. She called me the other night. Really, what she had to say, she she talked about a freshman little girl who came on who’d never rowed before. She said, ‘This girl tried out, killed everybody on the ergs, walked in the weight room, crushed everybody in the weight room. She did so well. She learned to row so fast that as an 18-year-old who’d never rowed before, she made the varsity boat of a D1 school.'” I said, “Well, that’s a cool story.” And he said, “Yeah. And she was wearing a shirt that said Brand X.” Sarah tried out for a sport. She tried out for rowing. She made the rowing team. She, impressed a senior who had a scholarship in that sport so much that she called her coach. And her coach said “I think I know her coach” and called me.

Jeff Martin (09:16):
Sarah’s exceptional. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s an exceptional story, but she’s not unique from our gym. We have four or five stories like that of kids walking onto a college campus trying out for a sport they never played before and making the team. So the question is “how do you build a Sarah?” How do you build kids who have this kind of capacity, this kind of ability? So lemme take my first shot here. We use a method we call Base-Build-Boost. In Base, we teach kids how to control their own body in space.

Jeff Martin (10:13):
In Build, we have them apply these lessons to movement and external objects. And in Boost we train. What’s that look like in Base? Well, in Base what we’re trying to do is teach a kid to be kinesthetically aware and proprioceptive—to understand where their body is in relation to their own body and where their body is in relation to other things. Is it fundamental to doing well in sport or anything in life? What does it look like if a child isn’t kinesthetically aware or doesn’t understand proprioception? We had a young girl come into our gym. Name’s Jennifer. Jennifer’s a very smart, smart young lady, did very well in school, but she liked to live in books, and she didn’t like to live outside. So she had very limited experience with movement.

Jeff Martin (11:10):
First class, she didn’t want to be there. First class I had the kids run out the door, out our big doors, and come back in, and they were supposed to show up at the whiteboard, and we were gonna go over the workout. So “3, 2, 1, go.” They all run out the door, they come back in. I’m standing there and I’m counting them, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I violate the one root thing that is the most important thing about being a youth trainer. I’ve lost a child—uh-oh. So I run, or what passes for running for meto the door. And I look out. There is a small tree that’s planted directly outside of our roll-up doors. It’s got about a six-inch-diameter trunk. And I see Jennifer, so I yell, “Hey, Jennifer, come on in!”

Jeff Martin (12:04):
I yell louder ’cause clearly she couldn’t hear me. “Jennifer, Come on in!” So finally I yell, “Jennifer, I can see you!” “No, you can’t!” Jennifer was like my three-year-old granddaughter. My three-year-old granddaughter will play hide and seek. She will literally sit in the middle of our floor, throw a blanket over her, and I play the game. “I Don’t see you.” She thinks if she can’t see me, I can’t see her. She doesn’t have proprioception of where other things are in relation to herself. The second story about Jennifer is not quite as funny as that one. We did a workout with box jumps in it. We demonstrated box jumps, we gave different heights for the box jumps, demonstrated regressions, things like that. “3, 2, 1, go.”

Jeff Martin (12:55):
Jennifer jumps onto a box, she clears the box with her feet by this much, and then she folds her knees up and lands on her shins. Every trainer in the place rushes over. “Jennifer. Jennifer, are you okay?” She’s embarrassed, but she goes, “Yeah, I’m fine.” We said, “You should step up.” “No, I can do this.” And she proceeds to jump up in the air, fold her legs up and land on top of the box again. Jennifer didn’t know where her feet were in relation to her own body, in relation to the box.

Jeff Martin (13:35):
She didn’t know how to control her own body. So Jennifer’s an extreme point, but the kids who walk into our gym often are not aware of where their body is in space or how to move their body. And that’s becoming more and more prevalent as our culture changes. 10 years ago, kids came home from school and played outside. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. So how do you work with kids like this? Can you teach them to squat? Well, a squat has a lot of moving parts in it. It’s hard to figure out. So one of the things we found that worked with kids was we wanted to focus on what we call “movement skills.” Movement skills are pieces and parts of movements. They’re irreducible things that you can’t make any smaller.

Jeff Martin (14:34):
You can’t make smaller externally rotating the femur. It is what it is. You can’t make smaller hinging at the hip. We need to teach these pieces and parts to kids, and then we add them together to make movement. So I’d like y’all to stand up. We’re gonna go through our first movement, just kind of go through a movement skill. And this movement skill is what you’re seeing up here. Recall this waiting in the outfield. You’ve all seen it, right? Person sitting out in the middle of the outfield, and they’re just waiting. We also call this “I just ran a 200-meter sprint” for the older crowd. So all I want you to do is feet a little bit wider than your shoulders, hands on your thighs, shoulders down, and you’re gonna hinge back and come down. And I want your thumbs on the inside of your knees. Thumbs should be pointing straight down into your foot. That’s the position we teach.

Jeff Martin (15:39):
Stand up. Kids run out the door, come back to the waiting-in-the outfield position. We cement this position, have kids make it so that they replicate it exactly the same way each time. And then we can add things together, add pieces together to do other things. Go ahead and sit down. Thank you. So in Base we’re teaching movement skills. When you work with kids, break things down as small as possible. Number one, break things down as small as possible. Make them learn that position, those pieces. Make sure that we’re not hurrying them onto the next step. Does that make sense?

Jeff Martin (16:36):
When we’re in the Build phase, we’re gonna apply what we learned to movement and to external objects. We’re gonna use things like tempo training, pausing. We are going to limit range of motion, and we’re gonna limit intensity. Okay? So what do I mean by that—”limiting intensity? If I want a child to learn how to squat well, and that is my goal, I want you to squat well, and I say to that child, “I want you to do as many squats as you can in one minute.” How many good squats do I get? This is a word problem. Zero good squats. I can get intensity, but I get it elsewhere. So we limit volume, limit intensity. I say to the kids, “We’re gonna do five squats. We’re gonna do them tempo style. When you’re done with that, you’re gonna do 10 burpees and a hundred-meter sprint. You come back in, you do five squats, tempo style, and repeat.” I still get the intensity, but I have ’em slow down and accomplish the skill that I’m trying to get them to accomplish. In this phase, what we wanna do is we want to take those movement skills and cement them for the children, and we want them to become global strategies for movement. So I’m gonna have you stand up a second time and we’re gonna work on this. So we’re gonna go back into that waiting-in-the-outfield position. Thumbs are pointed straight down. And what you’re gonna notice if your thumbs are pointed straight down into your knots of your shoes is your shins are fairly perpendicular. Your back is fairly flat. Now I want you to imagine that you have taken a kettlebell and lifted it so the handle is at knee height, and you reach inside, grab that. And all I want you to do is push your hips forward and stand up, then replace that kettlebell. Come back to that position and stand back up. I’ve limited the range of motion so they can have success and learn how to lift something. And we’ll lower that over time. Let’s go back to that waiting-in-the-outfield position here. Lift your hands under and rotate your hands up. Very good. Now I don’t want you to sit down. Very good. And stand back up.

Jeff Martin (19:21):
So I can take a movement skill, and I can apply it to different movement patterns. And those children understand that this movement that they’ve done is now a global strategy for different movements. Does that make sense? Good. Number two, sit down again, thank you. So number two, we’re gonna move the movement skills, make them global strategies. We’re gonna use techniques like tempo, limiting range of motion. Pausing, limiting volume, limiting intensity. Finally, we can move into Boost. In Boost, we can increase load, we can increase intensity, we can increase volume, we can increase complexity. If a child knows how to squat well and we ramp them up, there’s nothing wrong with having them back-squat 500 pounds or deadlift 500 pounds. We can increase the volume because it actually makes sense. We can increase intensity ’cause it actually makes sense. I can now have that kid do squats, as many squats as possible for a minute only. This Boost space is incredibly important.

Jeff Martin (21:32):
If we built these kids up right, we can maximize their training potential and maximize their potential when they go out into the real world. Does that make all make sense? Awesome. So I’m gonna get outta the way because Sarah’s arrow’s coming down now. Coming down, and Sarah hits the bullseye, the farthest target. She didn’t just hit the bullseye, she splits the coach’s arrow. She Robin Hoods the arrow. Something they had never seen before, but Sarah decided she wanted to row. So what does this take? What does it take to get kids to this position? Silence. Okay, silence is fine. I’ll answer the question. It takes time. What do we have to do if we wanna have time to work with kids? We gotta have a successful business. We have to make money for the gym, and the coaches have gotta be making enough money to wanna stick around for that to happen. We’ve talked to, I don’t know how many gyms, hundreds of gyms, thousands of coaches, and we know what those things that gyms need to do to ramp the program up and be successful. Just like when you’re wanna maximize a child’s training potential, there’s certain things you need to do at the beginning to excel at the far end. So we use the same method—Base-Build-Boost to build your business base.

Jeff Martin (23:52):
Base is building a business foundation. Build is applying it within your gym. And Boost is going outside the gym and growing your program. In Base, we want to address the things that cause programs not to excel and then set them up with the things that we know are going to help them excel. So often when we look at people, people’s gyms, and they’re running your youth program, we say, “Why are you hiding your youth program? When people look at your gym, do they see that you’re running a youth program?”

Jeff Martin (24:42):
So what are the things that we need to take away or that we need to make sure that we’re doing so that we can succeed when we’re running a youth program? The first one is education. Knowing how to work with kids. So I get this phone call once a month, and the phone call goes something like this. Ring! “Hey, Jeff, I’m gonna start a youth program.” “Awesome.” I love to hear from people who are gonna start a youth program. “So I need to have some programming.” “Cool. Our programming relies on our education.” And they say, “Well, I just need the programming. I’m gonna start Monday.”

Jeff Martin (25:28):
“Okay, gonna start Monday. What’s your education?” “I don’t need the education yet. I’m gonna run the program. I’m gonna get it up and running, gonna make money, and then I’ll come back and take education later.” So step off that phone call for a second. Think about running a program. This phone call comes up I don’t know how many times—two, three times a month maybe. And I say to them in the nicest way possible, “If you were running any other business and you told somebody ‘I’m gonna go into the business and then I’m going to get the education I need to excel at this business,’ what do you think they’d say?”

Jeff Martin (26:18):
Right? Can it happen? Sure, you can start a mechanic’s business and you can start by looking at YouTube, and you might succeed, but it’s way harder to do it that way. The second thing we we hear is people say they don’t set their business structure up correctly. I ask them “what are your business goals?” Can’t really tell me. “I Want a successful business.” Dude. That’s like saying “I wanna lose weight.” Doesn’t mean anything. We have to have goals that we can hit. Secondly, we’ll say, “What are the goals of your program?” I ask this online to people in Facebook groups all the time. What’s the goal of your youth program? Well, when they call me, “What’s the goal of your youth program?” I’ll either get silence or they’ll say something like “fun. I want my kids to have fun.” We all want our kids to have fun. It’s important.

Jeff Martin (27:20):
The thing is parents aren’t gonna pay $120 a month to have the kids come have fun. We need to have goals set within the program that parents will pay for, that parents want to achieve for their kids. So in your business, when you’re setting up your business, identify what do parents need, what do parents want? That’s where you start with the goals of your program. When people set up their youth program, is it readily available or readily apparent when they walk in the door that a youth program is running in the gym?

Jeff Martin (28:17):
Or is it hiding in the back? At Brand X, we had pictures all around the entryway of kids working out, kids having fun in the classes. We had a case off to the side where they had medals, awards, T-shirts that they’d won. We had youth-specific schedules, we had handouts that discussed what our program was about. In the SOPs we talk about with our training centers and with our plug-and-play people, we set up SOPs for when the parent walks through the door. How do you talk to that parent? What do you hand them? What do they see? How do you talk to them after the class? How do you lead them down the path of signing up? If you want it to be successful, it needs to be something that parents see. When we talk about setting up the program, we have to understand who is our client.

Jeff Martin (29:27):
The parent is the client. We work with children. We do what’s best for kids, but the parent is the client. We have to set the program up to meet the parents’ goals and needs. We also need to understand that oftentimes we get very excited about opening up youth programs and we market internally. We set the program up to meet the goals of the members of our gym. But if we want a really thriving youth program, we have to be able to go outside the program. So if we’re gonna be looking at things like “what time do I run my classes?”

Jeff Martin (30:02):
Maybe it’s good to do things like poll Facebook groups to find out when the best class time is versus your members. We wanna be really detailed so that we can set this business up so it runs automatically. Every trainer in my gym, whether they worked with kids or not, knew when somebody walked through the door what they were gonna say. “Here’s The goals of our program, here’s what you need to see, here’s what we need to do”—our SOPs for a new parent coming in the door. Does that make sense to everybody? Next, when you’re starting your program launch, do a soft launch. Now we wanna launch internally. These people love you. Your gym members already love you. If you open up and say “I’m gonna run a kids program,” and they say “what’s the kids program about?” and you’re not done with all of your SOPs yet, you can tell ’em, “we’re gonna have kids stand on their heads for 30 minutes.” They’re gonna go, “That sounds amazing.”

Jeff Martin (31:08):
In a soft launch with your members, those people are very forgiving. You can test all of your recipes, find out what’s missing, what’s not working well, what holes we have to fill. All of those things. And you’re gonna have a forgiving crowd. If you’ve gone out and gotten people to come in, you have one or two opportunities to make an impression on them, sign them up, and if your program’s not running well, those people leave. You don’t have a chance to get them in again. So we want to launch internally. We want to test and challenge our SOPs. And finally we want to begin to educate parents in our certification. We have a whole section with handouts to start discussions with parents on. You should develop those things. We want to educate our parents on why our program is foundational to their child’s success and not an activity. Write that down if you can because we want to define our program as something that is not an activity.

Jeff Martin (32:28):
Activities are things like the bounce house, going ice skating. Those are things that you can take your kid in and out of. Something that’s foundational is like math, science, reading. These are things that are gonna help your kid further down the line. We want to build parents’ awareness of why our program is foundational to them, to their child. Every program that we’ve talked to, the ones that are making half million or $300,000 in their youth programs, every one of ’em says parents are their biggest marketing tools. Understanding that those parents are gonna be out sitting at the soccer game and telling the people next to them “the reason my kid’s not getting pulled out is ’cause she goes to XYZ gym.”

Jeff Martin (33:25):
Finally, we can go out and we can grow our program. We use the parents to market for us, and we build that youth strength and conditioning program. That youth strength and conditioning program is our base. It’s the base of what we’re doing. From there, we can begin to stack programs. I can split off and have a youth barbell class. Our youth barbell class was amazing with 35 to 40 kids in it. Almost every one of those kids, probably 90 to 95% of the kids who were in our youth barbell class, were kids who had been disenfranchised from sport or were not in sport or had never been in sport. We set over a hundred state, national records with our with our teens and our powerlifting. Very strong. They walked outta that program with confidence. They saw themselves differently.

Jeff Martin (34:30):
If you have the base of that youth strength and conditioning program, you can now do things like basketball season. Starting two months before basketball season you’re gonna do a camp for basketball players, a strength and conditioning camp for basketball players. As an example, I just got asked to work with a pee-wee football team: 75 kids three times a week. What do you think that costs? It’s gonna be nice for us. The key, though, is to set it up so it runs efficiently. You have a good marketing plan, marketing group with your parents, and then you grow that base that strength and conditioning program for the kids and teams.

Announcer (35:16):
This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” To talk about this episode and interact with other gym owners, including Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper. Head to gymownersunited.com and join our group today.

The post Building a Kids Program With the Brand X Method appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Kids Programs: Pricing and Scheduling

Kids classes, teen “leagues” and summer camps are all vanishing, but parents still want their children to be healthy and fit.

Step in to fill the gap: You have an amazing opportunity to help kids develop a lifelong love of fitness and strengthen your business at the same time.

Pricing Your Kids and Teen Programs

I once made a huge mistake: I priced kids programs at about 50 percent of adult programs. This was 15 years ago, before anyone was coaching kids programs well. But gym owners are still making the same mistake.

Know this: Kids programs are not worth less than adult programs.

In 2023, it’s very clear that programs for children should be priced at least the same as—or higher than—adult programs.

If you’re not sure where to start, call the local gymnastics studio and the best local martial-arts school. You should be priced at least the same as gymnastics programs and much higher than martial-arts training.

Gymnastics schools require qualified coaches to teach skill progressions in small groups. Martial-arts schools have giant classes of kids moving in unison. You’re more like gymnastics than martial arts.

If you think your prices are too high, look at local sports leagues. The price for a 12-year-old to play hockey in my city ranges from $650 to $7,000 (not a typo!) for a five-month season. Travel and equipment are extra.

How to Split up Age Groups

For many years, we ran three age groups for kids and teens at Catalyst:

A “tots” program for ages 5-8.A Junior Varsity program for ages 9-12.A Varsity program for ages 9-16.

The problem: “My kid is advanced for her age!”

We solved it with a progression system for kids.

Now, when a parent wants a daughter to train with the older kids, we say: “Sure. There’s a pathway to level up ahead of age. Here’s the criteria: Your daughter only has to test at Level 6 in each of these skills to qualify for the senior program. You can book a personal-training session whenever you’d like her to try the test.”

That ends the discussion—and gives the kid some goals.

The best part? As soon as the kids are integrated into the group, they rarely want to train with older kids outside their peer class.

The Report Card

When we take in teams of athletes, we start with an assessment.

Athletes are given a report card after the first test, and it’s updated with a post-test at the end of the session so kids, parents and coaches can see real improvement.

It’s is also very effective for marketing the program: One kid on a basketball team arrives at tryouts and says, “Hey, coach. Here are my numbers for stamina and power.” The coach will then inquire how the kid was scored.

Daily Food, Mood and Exercise Tracking

We use a simple “Varsity Logbook” to keep track of these elements. You can easily create a low-drag version to log the metrics that are important in your program.

The Varsity Sport Program

Teens who want to compete at CrossFit (or other sports) and work on character skills such as public speaking can opt into Varsity Sport after a year in Varsity.

In the Varsity Sport program, teens do workouts requiring greater skills. You won’t see bar muscle-ups in our regular teen classes but you will in Varsity Sport. You’ll also see assignments for public speaking (helping with the Junior Varsity classes or presenting to adult gym members) and opportunities for paid work.

Varsity Sport kids work at the gym as weekend attendants, respite care workers (via the Ignite program) and peer tutors.

Scheduling Kids Classes

The best times for kids classes are around their school hours (late afternoon). Many are engaged in sports in the evenings, and they obviously can’t attend during school hours. Saturday-mornings slots at Catalyst always have the best attendance.

Younger kids need shorter classes. Older kids can handle a full hour as long as there are breaks between warm-up, skill and workout periods.

8 and younger: 30-minute classes.8-12: 45-minute classes.12 and older: 60-minute classes.

Because younger kids require more supervision, the best way to coach 10 5-year-olds is to run 30-minute classes of five kids each. With older kids, you can run larger classes for longer.

One key for gym owners: Set the expectation that the client won’t attend every class.

Parents are used to the “don’t skip practice or you’re benched” culture of most sports. If their kid can’t attend on Wednesdays, they’ll believe they “can’t do this sport.”

So we say: “Plan to attend eight times per month to get good results, but you can attend up to 12 times if you like.”

The post Kids Programs: Pricing and Scheduling appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Can You Create Gym Influencers to Solve Content Problems?

Some of your best clients are “fitfluencers”—but they might not know it.

Once they do, they just might solve content-creation problems at your gym.

Over the last five years I’ve talked with hosts of gym owners about media. The majority of these owners have two problems: creating media and posting it.

The second problem is relatively easy to solve: You schedule time for posting or pay a staff member to post to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and so on.

The first problem is much more challenging: You can’t post if you don’t have content. And some gym owners struggle mightily to produce content.

As social media evolves and becomes an even greater part of the world, you might use your clients to create a solution for content-creation problems.

“Fitfluencers”: By Choice or By Request

About a year ago, the gym chain GoodLife came up with a clever “fitfluencer” ad campaign.

Here’s the text from the Instagram post:

“We’re looking for FITFLUENCERS to star in our new ad campaign. 6-pack or 60 thousand followers? NOT REQUIRED. All that’s required is just being you – REAL BODIES, REAL PEOPLE AND REAL INFLUENCE, because to us EVERYONE is fit to be an influencer.”

The company accomplished its goal, and GoodLife started using people in a campaign that’s still going. They posted “fitfluencer journey” videos and “fit-tip Fridays” content. They compiled clips of their influencers, and they used them in ads with taglines such as “anyone can be a fitfluencer” and “fitfluencer—your own way.”

It should be noted that none of the influencers are huge bodybuilders with 4 percent body fat or ultra-shredded bikini competitors wearing sequins.

All in all, the campaign was a solid example of marketing wizard Seth Godin’s adage “people like us do things like this.”

You can use the exact same principle to solve content problems in your gym.

Los Angeles Times: “Inside the World of L.A.’s Gym-Influencer Ecosystem”

The Influencers in Your Gym

As I said above, many gym owners struggle to produce content or get their staff members to do so.

One solution: Create your own “fitfluencers” or leverage the ones who are already cranking out content in your gym.

In a recent poll in the private Two-Brain Growth group on Facebook, 55 percent of 40 respondents said clients film in their gym while training (I actually thought this number would be higher, and I suspect it will rise over the next year).

A few details from comments left by owners:

Clients sometimes lean phones against walls, water bottles or other objects to film.Some gym owners provide a tripod or magnetic phone holders that stick to pull-up rigs and other metal surfaces to make filming easier.One gym owner has a clear filming code for coaches: The primary trainer is there to coach, not film. But a secondary coach can run a camera if a client requests some assistance.Some gym owners would never consider having tripods for client use, while others think it’s a great idea.Filming has become “excessive” or “intrusive” in at least one case, and the owner had to address the issue (think live narration of her workout to a degree that distracted coaches and other clients).Several gym owners have systems in place for staff to film and file media for use by the gym.Gyms definitely get great—and free—exposure when clients publish the content they create. This is not up for debate. One gym owner: “They tend to post and tag us. Their friends go ‘wow’ and ‘oooo’ and ask where they train. It helps.”

I’m going to push past the problems “excessive filming” can cause in a gym. I’ll just say that your gym should have a media policy in its waiver, you should outline your rules in a code of conduct for members, and your staff should know what’s permitted and what’s not.

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

We’ll just focus on the super-valuable organic output produced by members who film themselves or others.

Your Plan

Here’s your simple plan:

1. You might take small steps to facilitate organic media production. Consider getting a tripod or some magnetic phone holders members can use. You might even create a branded “selfie wall” with good lighting. Direct people there after PRs and say “tag us when you post the pic!”

2. If members are filming, ask where they’re posting. Then be sure to follow them online, engage with the content and share it as widely as you can.

3. If members are filming and not posting, ask them to post their clips. Or ask them if you can post the video to the gym account to show them off. You can get a ton of content just by saying, “Do you mind if I post that video, too? Great! Please text it to me.”

4. If you have perfect clients who might be open to the idea, gently encourage them to film themselves from time to time and post the clips or send the videos to you. Sample prompt: “Congrats on the PR! Would you mind filming yourself for a minute? Just explain what you did and how you feel.”

5. Finally, you could formalize an arrangement with a prolific, engaging member who creates a ton of content. What if that member pumped out five videos a week for your gym? (If you take this path, be sure to list the exact deliverables and terms so there are no issues.)

Organic Content for the Win

While microgym owners might not want full-fledged influencers narrating live streams during whiteboard talks and putting tripods where they interfere with other members, organic marketing is incredibly valuable in 2023.

Real people who produce real videos that show off your brand? Most companies would kill for that.

You’ve already got great people, incredible visuals and compelling stories in your gym.

All you have to do is get someone to hit “record” and then post the content.

If you do that, I guarantee you’ll get some very warm leads who are already connected to your best clients.

The post Can You Create Gym Influencers to Solve Content Problems? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Owners Who Take Home More Than $20,000 a Month? Believe It!

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today I’m gonna tell you which gym owners made the most money in the world in June. Then I’m gonna tell you why your gym needs to pay you and how it can create income, and then how it can create investment opportunities, and then how it can create impact in your community—the reason we’re all here. First, the net owner benefit leaderboard, the top 10 gyms in the world for take-home income in June. Here we go. What I love about this leaderboard is that there are so many different countries represented, and if you go to gymownersunited.com, you can see this leaderboard. I’ve just blurred out the names to protect their anonymity. People in Two-Brain know who they are, and they can talk with them live on Facebook or in Zoom meetings or whatever.

Chris Cooper (00:48):
So we’re gonna start with the bottom. These are all in U.S. Dollars. So even if a gym is in Norway for example, we’ve converted that currency into U.S. Dollars just so we’re comparing apples to apples here. Number 10, and again, this is the dollars that the gym owner took home. It’s not the revenue that the gym made. It’s what the gym owner took from the gym. We use a rolling three-month average to figure this out just in case somebody takes like a big year-end disbursement. We don’t want that to have them lead the leaderboard and then not make very much next month. So these are three-month rolling averages. This is what the leaders took home in June 2023. Number 10, $16,721. So 16,721 bucks this gym owner took home to their family in June, and this is the 10th place.

Chris Cooper (01:36):
Okay, here we go. Number 9, $16,920. They only beat ’em by about 200 bucks, but imagine what taking $16,000 home next month would feel like. And again, these aren’t like flashes in the pan: “I ran this special challenge” or “I mortgaged tomorrow for the sake of today to make this money.” This is a rolling-three average.Number 8, $17,253. Imagine making that in a month. Number seven, $19,948. I bet you that gym owner is giving themselves a $52-a-month raise right now to bump themselves over 20,000. The rest of the leaderboard, the top six, are all over $20,000 U.S. In take home in June. At Number 6, $20,379 take home. At Number 5, $20,852 take home. At Number 4, this one’s from Europe, $21,600 take home. At Number 3, here’s where things start to get really nuts: $22,033 take-home income for the gym owner in June.

Chris Cooper (02:42):
Amazing. Second place was from Great Britain, and they took home in U.S. dollars 23,256 bucks in June. Amazing. And this is what they should expect to do every month. It’s not a flash in the pan, it’s not a big bait-and-switch month or some secret trick that they did that they can only do once and it poisons their gym forever. This is what they’re making as the CEO/owner of their gym. And the Number 1 gym last month in Two-Brain took home $44,922 U.S. That’s the owner’s pay. Again, incredible. Now if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “No, I chose the life of service. I’m just out there because I wanna get people healthy and fit. I don’t care about the money. If I can make five grand a month take home, I’m happy. I’ve got a job. I love it. That’s enough reward,” I want to tell you the top four reasons why your gym needs to make money and be profitable. Obviously your gym exists to serve, but it also exists to pay you. And this is a really uncomfortable topic for many of us because we’ve been raised to associate money with greed or with taking from others or with fraud or trickery. Like. “that guy’s so rich.He must have screwed a thousand people.” And especially in our industry, making money from your gym seems like asking too much, right? Like we already love our jobs and we’re already solving the biggest problems in the lives of our clients. Making money seems extra, like a cherry on top, or maybe even too much to ask, right? I’ve certainly thought that way. But that thinking holds us back. It stops the growth of our gym. It limits the opportunities we’re able to offer to our staff, our team.

Chris Cooper (04:27):
It diminishes the experience of our clients, and of course it reduces the reward that our families earn for taking this risk with us. You need to make money. Here’s why. Number 1, your family. Every job is a tradeoff. You have to exchange time with your family for money. Entrepreneurship carries the promise of trading a lot of time up front for more free time and more money later. You work harder than most people do to start, and then you work less than most people do later. You earn less than most people at startup to earn more than most later on. Money creates opportunities for your family, and that’s what your gym should provide. If your gym has you working more than average and earning less than average, that is not rewarding your family. In fact, I can remember some very dark days when my gym had me working from 5 a.m. Until 9 p.m. Earning half what my friends earned at their day jobs and fighting with my wife over the grocery bills.

Chris Cooper (05:25):
I was very tempted to just go get a job at a phone-answering company. Money doesn’t solve every problem, but it solves the money problems and most of the time problems. So if you think earning more money is somehow greedy, ask your spouse what they would do with an extra thousand bucks a week. I’m betting it’s not buying a private jet. It’s probably getting new shoes for your kids. The second reason your gym needs to make more money is your team. Your team members wanna do their best work, and to do that, they have to earn good incomes. They might absolutely love their careers, love their clients, and love your gym, but they’re facing the same time and financial pressures at home that you are. If your gym isn’t successful, you can’t pay people what they’re worth. For the last hundred years, personal trainers and fitness coaches earned low wages.

Chris Cooper (06:16):
The industry was mostly transient. Though the average salary is still low, some gym owners are now actually changing things by making fitness coach a real, viable career. And it’s up to you to make these opportunities happen. The more successful your gym is, the more successful your staff can be. The third reason your gym needs to make money is your clients. Your clients are best served if you and your staff are well rested, well fed and happy. Your martyrdom, your poverty is not helping your clients. It’s an obstacle. If you’re broke and hungry and tired and desperate, they will see it. They won’t enjoy the experience in your gym because they know you’re stressed and distracted even if they don’t know why. And let’s face it: you’re vulnerable. If any little problem arises, your client’s beloved gym could be taken away from them. Remember the gyms that were forced to close after the first month of COVID lockdowns?

Chris Cooper (07:12):
It’s because those gyms had no buffer. They were fragile. The owners weren’t making enough to carry the gym through a tough time. And when they went under, the clients lost key parts of their support system. Some of those clients never worked out again. Making more money to help your clients isn’t about buying more equipment or taking more risk on a larger space or putting in a soak tub. It’s about being able to afford thank-you cards and being undistracted when you’re serving them and having your staff members dress sharply and being able to provide all the little niceties that make you proud to own your business. If you’re proud of your gym, your clients will be, too. And if you’re financially successful, they will receive exactly what they deserve for years to come: devoted, A+ service that will change their lives. The fourth reason that your gym needs to make money is the gym itself.

Chris Cooper (08:06):
If you’re really gonna make an impact in your community, your gym is gonna need to last a few decades. People don’t try one class and then completely change their lives. Clients need to stick around for a couple of years, build lasting habits, and create the physiological adaptations that will increase their health span and their lifespan. They need to make the changes that will save their lives. And that doesn’t happen overnight. New clients need to be welcomed by long-term clients. Groups need to have happy veterans to model the movements and new kids to bring the energy, too. Gyms that just break even don’t last long enough to create community impact because the owner is still trading off their time to run it, and at some point they’re gonna stop volunteering at their nonprofit gym. So these are the four reasons that your gym needs to make money.

Chris Cooper (09:00):
And I just read you the list of the Top 10 earners for gyms in the world and what they took home. And I gotta ask you: Do you think these people are greedy or do you think that these people are creating opportunities for their team members that you wish you could, creating income for their families that you wish your family had, and creating great outcomes for their clients that you wish you could do? Of course, they’re not greedy. They’re gym owners. They’re exactly like you are. You’re not running a nonprofit. If you can’t make more income from owning a gym than you would as a trainer, then it’s time to upgrade your skills as a CEO. The goal of our Growth Program is to generate income. It’s to make you a hundred thousand dollars per year, which is an appropriate reward for owning a single-location microgym.

Chris Cooper (09:47):
But now I wanna tell you what happens after you’re making a hundred thousand dollars in income a year. The next goal is to move from income to investment. And I just said that every gym owner should be able to make a hundred thousand dollars per year from a single microgym location. Now at Two-Brain we’ve seen gym owners reach this level so many times now that there’s really no reason to suggest that an entrepreneur can’t earn a hundred thousand a year from a fitness business in our mentorship program. It’s no longer a matter of if an owner will reach that level if expert guidance and support are present. It’s simply a matter of when a deserving, focused owner will earn that reward—as long as they take action. Some gyms get to a hundred thousand dollars in net owner benefit slowly because they have lots of problems to fix and mistakes to undo.

Chris Cooper (10:35):
It took me like six years to fix the problems that I made at startup. Some gyms get to a hundred thousand dollars in net owner benefit really quickly, and these are often the gyms that invest in our StartUp program before they’re even open. For existing gyms whose owners start working with a mentor, it’s possible to reach a hundred thousand dollars in net owner benefit quickly, usually if the owner follows the mentor’s explicit directions and takes really quick, decisive action. And other gym owners earn far more than a hundred thousand dollars net owner benefit per year. I just read you some stats where the owners were making over $20,000 take home per month, right? And these are rolling three-month averages, so they’re doing it all the time. But what comes after that, after you’re making a hundred thousand dollars in income, which is by the way, far better than the national average earnings in North America, Europe or Australia? And you can set your own target depending on your country and your needs.

Chris Cooper (11:30):
I’m saying a hundred K net owner benefit because that’s what we hear the most often. After you hit that number, your opportunity to serve grows, it means you can better serve your family, better serve your team, and better serve your clients. And for the first time, you’ll have enough money to serve your community better. When you hit that income goal, you can start investing. First, you can invest in your family. You can begin to invest your money to create long-term wealth for your kids. You can invest in things that will let you retire someday. You can invest in properties for your kids to inherit and in tax expertise to minimize their burden. You can invest in experiences that will change their lives. You can invest in coaching for yourself to make you a better leader and entrepreneur and maybe a better dad. Second, you can invest in your team.

Chris Cooper (12:18):
Earning a hundred thousand dollars from your gym is a signal that your business is stable enough to pay others a salary, too. In fact, you shouldn’t pay any anybody else’s salary until you are making a salary of a hundred K a year because that proves that you have the systems and processes that can create careers, right? And your career is the proof. Only after you’re earning a decent salary should you offer a salary to somebody else. Third, you can invest in your gym. You have a working model that you can now duplicate in other locations, or you can buy the building in which your gym sits, which secures its future. You can reinvest in different modalities to help your clients more. You could buy therapy modalities, right? Or you can simply fix the broken stuff. Buy the new PM3 monitor or whatever it is—PM5 now, I guess.

Chris Cooper (13:04):
Fourth, you can invest in your community. Hey, when you’ve got some extra money and time, you can spend it volunteering. You can buy bikes for kids. You can find places where $10,000 will make an immediate and profound difference, and then just donate the money. You can hold fundraisers and charity events in your gym because you have the time and energy to do that. Here’s a quick note. A lot of gym owners are so generous that they try to do these things too early. They try to buy a building before their gym can afford it, or they promise salaries to their staff before the owner is making a decent income themselves. Or they open second locations before their first has proven itself to be viable as a business model. Or they run charity events when their own business is unprofitable. Remember: income first, then investment. Feed the Golden goose.

Chris Cooper (13:52):
Now our Tinker Program is built to teach gym owners how to invest. And my upcoming book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” is all about the journey from income to investment. There are really four ways that we found that the Tinkers invest. First, they invest in scale. They put money back into the business they know and love. They open second locations successfully because they have a proven model that they can just duplicate over and over again. They expand their offerings to serve more people, or they might open an overlapping business like a ninja gym for kids. Second, they make external investments. They put money into cash-flow assets like real estate, overfunded whole life insurance policies, bonds, crypto, stocks, or boring businesses like self-storage units and laundromats like I have. Sometimes they might offer private lending to other people who need it or even act as angel investors in startups. I do both and it’s awesome.

Chris Cooper (14:45):
Third, they make internal investments. They invest in mentorship to become better leaders and remove the bottlenecks in the growth of their businesses. This has been absolutely massive for me. And fourth, they invest in lifestyle. They invest in work-life integration. They invest in experiences and time. Some invest in mentor certifications so they can help other gym owners and other local entrepreneurs succeed, or they might invest their time into service. All of this sounds great, right? But you can’t invest until you have a good income first. The reason that I wanna make gym owners wealthy is because there are no better people on Earth. I wanna put more money into the hands of generous, service-oriented people who are dedicated to improving the health of others. I want the good guys to win, and I want them to win big because that’s how others win too. Now I wanna talk about the next stage, which is going from investment to impact.

Chris Cooper (15:43):
I’m gonna share how your success helps everyone around you. I wanna start with my own personal slogan now, which is “make lots of money, give it away.” This has been my guiding principle for the last three years. Some people serve others by donating their time. For example, they might mentor local youth or they might serve soup to hungry people every day. Or, you know, they might walk around at night giving blankets to homeless people. But some people can serve better by making money and sharing it with those who don’t know how to make money. As an entrepreneur, you’ve taken a huge step toward creating real and lasting impact in your community already. You create jobs, you create wealth, you create tax revenue, you build your economy, you donate the extra, and of course you’re creating health. So let’s take a moment to reflect on just how big that is.

Chris Cooper (16:33):
Colleges don’t create jobs. Banks don’t create wealth. Governments don’t create tax revenues. The Federal Reserve doesn’t build the economy, and doctors don’t create health. Nobody does all five of those things except for you. That is impact, and that means you deserve success. The real reason I wanna make gym owners successful is that their success doesn’t end with them. No gym owner is hoarding their money in a Swiss bank account or buying private islands to live out their days in seclusion. They’re dedicated to service, and they will serve others with or without money. By the way, it’s much better to serve others with money. And here’s why. If you’ve made it to this point where you’ve got some investments, you’re taken care of, you’ve got good consistent income, then you are good at making money, and very few people are. The best way that you can help others is to keep making money and giving it to the people who don’t know how to do that.

Chris Cooper (17:35):
Second, most people won’t be entrepreneurs. Most people will not trade potential upside for their current comfort level. They want jobs, not ownership. And the way we make more jobs is to open more businesses. Third, our free-market system makes democracy possible. Capitalism is the foundation, not the fruit of democratic processes. You cannot have democracy without capitalism. Success in business elevates our democracy by paying for social benefits like health care, like road infrastructure. Success in business elevates our culture by creating surplus time and money for things like art, and success in business elevates our species by funding science and exploration. Fourth, you are an inspiration for the next generation. Our parents spent their careers in one company, one job, one career. Our kids will mostly have to build their own careers, and their teachers and schools don’t know how to teach them that. You and I must be the examples of entrepreneurship for future entrepreneurs, but also for the future gig workers, for the future, independent contractors and everyone else who has to forge their own path.

Chris Cooper (18:51):
Now, here’s the cherry on top. If you make lots of money, you can give it away whenever and however you want. I wanna talk quickly about paying your dues and skipping bureaucracy. Making lots of revenue and paying lots of taxes supports the social systems and the infrastructure that I just mentioned, and that’s good. You really are paying for the police and the hospitals and the highways. That’s a win for everyone. Thank you for doing that. But if you make even more money, then you don’t have to filter your impact through the bureaucracy all the time. You can find places where money will have an immediate and profound impact, and then you just give the money. For example, I pay over $500,000 per year in national, like federal, taxes from one company alone. That’s not including my real-estate taxes, my income taxes, my sales taxes, or all the other taxes from all the other companies.

Chris Cooper (19:45):
That money supports our system of government, our health-care system, our education system, our roads, our police, our fire departments and more. And I’m proud to make such a large contribution. Even when I’m frustrated by the process, I’m proud of the outcome, but sometimes a local kid just needs a bike, and they can’t wait for the subcommittee on youth fitness in northern communities to decide to fund a single bicycle in a community of 2,000 kids. So I just go to the bike store and buy the bike, and we’ve been donating 50 bikes every year to local kids in foster care. This year we donated another 60 to kids in foster care. And then foster-care kids said, “That’s it, everybody’s got a bike.” And so we went to Big Brothers Big Sisters and we said, “Do you guys need bikes?” And they said, “Yeah, we could use eight bikes right now.”

Chris Cooper (20:32):
And so I drove to the store and I bought eight bikes. We just bought them. We didn’t have to apply for a grant. We didn’t have to write an application to a government. We just had the money. And so we spent it. Other people volunteer as big brothers and big sisters to these kids. Other people work as foster-care workers. My contribution is not greater than theirs, but it is different and it is necessary. Other people work for companies and apply for government grants. I’m not good at those things, but I am good at making money. And so I give money, and that’s how I make an impact. Now I’m sharing this stuff to inspire you. It’s okay to make lots of money. It’s okay to pay lots of taxes. It’s okay to invest money or build wealth or give cash away, but you have to make money first.

Chris Cooper (21:17):
So start with an income. Feed the golden goose. Get your gym to pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year. Then make investments. Expand your flock. Then think about impact where you’re going to leave the golden eggs. Look, I’m lucky, but I’m not special. You can do this, too. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I kind of went off on a rant on you there, and I hope that this inspired you to make your gym profitable and to kind of give you a view of the future and where you can go. If you wanna talk to me about this stuff more, just go to gymownersunited.com. That’s our free group. I’m pretty active in there. I try to hop in once a day. But there are 7,600 positive, happy gym owners in there who are just eager to help you solve these problems. Thank you for your service. I really hope you get to the point where you can just give away the golden eggs for the rest of your life.

The post Gym Owners Who Take Home More Than $20,000 a Month? Believe It! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

From Investment to Impact: Spreading Success to the Community

“Make lots of money, give it away.”

This has been my guiding principle for the last three years.

Some people serve by donating their time. For example, they mentor youth or they serve soup to hungry people every day.

But some people can serve better by making money and sharing it with those who don’t know how to generate income.

As an entrepreneur, you’ve taken a huge step toward creating real and lasting impact in your community.

You create jobs.You create wealth.You create tax revenue.You build our economy.And, of course, you create health!

Let’s take a moment to reflect on that:

Colleges don’t create jobs.Banks don’t create wealth.Governments don’t create taxes.The federal reserve doesn’t build the economy.Doctors don’t create health.

Nobody does all four—except you.

That is impact!

You Deserve Success

The real reason I want to make gym owners successful is that success doesn’t stop with them.

No gym owner is hoarding their money in Swiss bank accounts or buying private islands to live out their days in seclusion. They’re dedicated to service—and they’ll serve others with or without money.

It’s much better to do it with money. Here’s why:

1. If you’ve made it to this point, you’re good at making money. Very few people are. The best way you can help others is to keep making money and giving it to the people who don’t know how to do it.

2. Most people won’t be entrepreneurs. Most people will not trade potential upside for their current comfort level. They want jobs, not ownership. The way we make more jobs is to open more businesses.

3. Our free-market system makes democracy possible. Capitalism is the foundation—not the fruit—of democratic processes. Success in business elevates our democracy by paying for social benefits like health care and infrastructure. Success in business elevates our culture by creating surplus time and money for things like art. And success in business elevates our species by funding science and exploration.

4. You are an inspiration for the next generation. Our parents spent their careers in one company. Our kids will largely have to build their own careers. Their teachers and schools don’t know how to do that. You and I must be the examples of entrepreneurship for future entrepreneurs–but also for future gig workers, independent contractors and everyone who is trying to forge their own path.

Here’s the cherry on top:

If you make lots of money, you can give it away whenever—and however—you want.

Paying Your Dues—and Skipping Bureaucracy

Making lots of revenue and paying lots of taxes supports the social systems and infrastructure that I mentioned earlier. And that’s good—you really are paying for the police and the hospitals and the highways. That’s a win for everyone. Thank you for doing that.

But if you make even more money, then you don’t have to filter your impact through the bureaucracy. You can find places where money will have an immediate and profound impact. Then just give … the … money.

For example, I pay over $500,000 per year in taxes from one company alone. That’s not including my real-estate taxes, income taxes or sales taxes. That money supports our system of government, our health care, our education, our roads and more. I’m proud to make such a large contribution. Even when I’m frustrated by the process, I’m proud of the outcome.

But sometimes, a kid just needs a bike. And they can’t wait for a subcommittee on Youth Fitness in Northern Communities to decide to fund a single bicycle for a community with 2,000 kids.

So I just buy the bike.

We’ve been donating 50 bikes every year to local kids in foster care.

Last week, Big Brothers/Big Sisters asked for help finding eight bikes for teens who needed a bit of freedom in their lives. So we just bought them.

Other people volunteer as Big Brothers and Big Sisters to these kids. Still others work for the company and apply for government grants. I’m not great at either of those things, but I am good at making money. So I give money—that’s how I have an impact.

I share this stuff to inspire you: It’s OK to make lots of money. It’s OK to pay lots of taxes. It’s OK to invest money, build wealth or give cash away.

But you have to make money first.

Start with income: Feed the golden goose. Then make investments: Expand your flock. Then think about impact: where you leave the golden eggs.

I’m lucky, but I’m not special. You can do it, too.

The post From Investment to Impact: Spreading Success to the Community appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

From Income to Investment: Why You Must Feed the Golden Goose

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

At Two-Brain, we’ve seen gym owners reach this level so many times now that there’s really no reason to suggest an entrepreneur can’t earn this amount from a fitness business.

In our mentorship program, it’s no longer a matter of “if” an owner will reach this level. If expert guidance and support are present, it’s simply a matter of “when” a deserving, focused owner will earn this reward.

Some gyms get to $100,000 in net owner benefit (NOB) slowly because they have problems to fix and mistakes to undo.

Some gyms get to $100,000 in net owner benefit fairly quickly. These are often the gyms that invest in our Startup Program before they even open. For existing gyms whose owners start working with a mentor, it’s possible to reach $100,000 in NOB quickly—usually if the owner follows the mentor’s explicit directions and takes quick, decisive action.

And other gym owners earn far more than $100,000 NOB per year. Here’s what the top gym owners in Two-Brain earned in June 2023 (these are rolling three-month averages):

What’s Beyond $100,000 a Year?

US$100,000 per year as a gym owner is far better than the national-average earnings in North America and Europe—but you and your mentor will set your own target, depending on your country and your needs.

So what happens after you hit that goal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Income to Investment

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

Here are the four ways that Tinkers invest:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post From Income to Investment: Why You Must Feed the Golden Goose appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Top 4 Reasons You Need to Make Money as a Gym Owner

Your gym exists to serve.

It also exists to pay you.

This is an uncomfortable topic for many of us because we’ve been raised to associate money with greed, with taking from others, with fraud and trickery.

Especially in our industry, making money from your gym seems like asking too much: We already love our jobs, and we’re already solving the biggest problems in the lives of our clients. Making money seems “extra”—or even too much to ask. Right?

I’ve certainly thought that way.

But that thinking holds us back. It stops the growth of our gym, limits the opportunities we’re able to offer our team, diminishes the experience of our clients, and, of course, reduces our family’s reward.

You need to make money. Here’s why:

1. Your Family

Every job is a trade-off: You have to exchange time with your family for money.

Entrepreneurship carries the promise of trading a lot of time up front for more free time (and money) later. Work harder than most to start, work less than most later. Earn less than most at startup, earn more than most later.

Money creates opportunities for your family. That’s what your gym should provide.

If your gym has you working more than average and earning less than average, then it’s not rewarding your family.

In fact, I remember some very dark days when my gym had me working from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m., earning half what my friends earned at their jobs, and fighting with my wife over the grocery bills.

Money doesn’t solve every problem, but it solves the money problems and most of the time problems.

If you think earning more money is somehow “greedy,” ask your spouse what they’d do with an extra $1,000 per week.

2. Your Team

Your team members want to do their best work. To do that, they have to earn good incomes.

They might absolutely love their careers, love their clients and love your gym—but they’re facing the same time and financial pressures at home.

If your gym isn’t successful, you can’t pay people what they’re worth.

For the last 100 years, personal trainers and fitness coaches earned low wages. The industry was mostly transient. Though the average salary is still low, some gym owners are now actually changing things by making “fitness coach” a real career.

It’s up to you to make these opportunities happen. The more successful your gym is, the more successful your staff can be.

3. Your clients.

Your clients are best served if you (and your staff) are well rested, well fed and happy.

Your martyrdom isn’t helping them—it’s an obstacle.

If you’re broke, hungry and tired, they’ll see it. They won’t enjoy the experience in your gym because they’ll know you’re stressed and distracted.

And you’re vulnerable. If any little problem arises, their beloved gym could be taken away from them.

Remember the gyms that were forced to close after the first month of COVID lockdowns? Those gyms had no buffer. They were fragile. Their owners weren’t making enough to carry the gym through a tough time. When they went under, their clients lost key parts of their support systems.

Making more money to help your clients isn’t about buying more equipment or taking more risk on a larger space. It’s about being able to afford “thank you” cards, being undistracted when you’re serving clients, having your staff members dressed sharply, and being able to provide all the little niceties that make you proud of your business.

If you’re proud of your gym, your clients will be, too.

And if you’re financially successful, they’ll receive exactly what they deserve for years: devoted, A+ service that will change their lives.

4. The Gym Itself

If you’re really going to make an impact in your community, your gym has to last for a few decades.

People don’t try one class and change their lives. Clients need to stick around for a couple of years, build lasting habits and create the physiological adaptations that will increase their healthspan.

New clients need to be welcomed by long-term clients. Groups need to have happy veterans to model the movements and new kids to bring the energy.

Gyms that just break even don’t last long enough to create community impact because the owner is still trading time to run it. At some point, they’re going to stop volunteering.

Real Data From Real Gyms

Here are what the top gym owners in Two-Brain made in June (we use a rolling three-month average to come up with these numbers):

Do you think these people are greedy or do you think that these people are creating opportunities for their team members, income for their families and great outcomes for their clients?

Of course they’re not greedy—they’re exactly like you are.

You’re not running a nonprofit. If you can’t make more income from owning a gym than you would as a trainer, it’s time to upgrade your skills as a CEO.

The goal of our Growth Program is to generate income: to make you $100,000 per year, an appropriate reward for owning a single-location microgym.

Click here to talk with our team about getting there.

The post The Top 4 Reasons You Need to Make Money as a Gym Owner appeared first on Two-Brain Business.