Chris Cooper's Blog, page 65

Unique In-Terminal Gym at BWI Solves Problems for Travelers

Gyms must solve problems for clients.

Roam Fitness is solving this problem:

Clients are trapped in a large space full of angry people and unhealthy food. They’re carrying bags and suitcases and have few places to stretch out and relax.

Stress is high: At any moment, their schedules could be completely destroyed, and they might be stranded inside their temporary prison for hours. They definitely don’t want to miss their daily lifting or cardio session.

Yes, Roam Fitness is a gym inside an airport terminal—BWI, or Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Gyms in airports are relatively rare. On July 4, Caroline Tanner of thepointsguy.com stated Roam is the only gym of its kind in a domestic U.S. terminal. The company open its second location, in Philadelphia International, on July 10.

You can find a list of nine airport-associated fitness facilities scattered around the world in this 2019 article.

The most interesting part of Roam is how it’s identified pain points for its avatar:

Obvious Problem: Nowhere to work out in airport.

Solution: 1,200-square-foot gym with cardio and strength-training equipment. People can do any kind of workout they want.

Problem: No workout clothing or shoes.

Solution: Access to lululemon clothing and Brooks shoes is included with access. You can also purchase shoes and clothing—or use your own and have it vacuum sealed so your laptop stays sweat-free.

Problem: Tight schedules for travelers.

Solution: Passes can be purchased in advance. They cost $25 for a day or $35 per month with a 12-month commitment ($420).

Problem: Sweat.

Solution: Showers can be booked ahead of time, with a 15-minute limit. Towel service and various hygiene products are included. Other stuff can be purchased.

Problem: Time pressure.

Solution: An info board shows flight status, including delays.

Problem: Suitcases and bags.

Solution: Lockers.

Business Challenges

Roam Fitness has some interesting obstacles it must overcome.

A few to note:

1. In-terminal businesses have to deal with way more red tape than other enterprises, including a lack of flexibility around hours of operation.

2. Staff will have to go through security to get to work. At best, that affects travel time. At worst, it likely means some people with checkered pasts can’t be hired.

3. Rental clothing and shoes cost money, and few people are going to need the Size 15s. This stuff also requires storage space, as well as laundry and cleaning procedures.

4. Some people just aren’t going to wear used clothing.

5. No one actually wants to go to or spend time in an airport, so the market is limited to people inside the terminal who have a free hour.

6. On-time flights are actually bad for business.

7. Some fitness aficionados just won’t have any interest in working out on a travel day.

But every gym has its challenges, so I’m not suggesting Roam is a bad idea. I’d actually be very curious to get a look at its lease, financials, marketing plan, drop-in rates and recurring client list.

The takeaway for gym owners who don’t run facilities in airports is this: To be great, you have to actively solve problems for your perfect clients.

Roam, unique as it is, provides a great example of how that can be done.

A Common Mistake—and Two Important Questions

I often didn’t try to solve my clients’ problems as a gym owner. Not because I didn’t care but because I wasn’t paying attention.

This error is actually more common than you might think: People who like fitness often think others will want to work out simply because it’s awesome—except some people don’t think it’s awesome at all. They use the gym only as a means to solve certain problems. If the problems didn’t exist, the people wouldn’t be there.

Yet I thought my clients just wanted to squat, deadlift and do Fran—because that’s what I wanted to do. Class times were set according to when I wanted to coach, not when clients wanted to come. We didn’t have showers because I didn’t want to renovate the building. And so on.

Had I actually dug into my clients and asked “what is your greatest daily barrier to working out?” my gym would have looked very different.

And it would have been better.

Had I asked new clients about their problems, I could have offered tailored solutions with more value instead of a one-size-fits-all plan that solved problems for some but not others.

Prospective client: “I’d love to use your gym to lose weight, but I only have an hour for lunch.”

Old me: “Yeah, bummer. Our noon class is an hour, and we don’t have showers.”

Problem-solving gym owner: “Perfect! We’re totally set up to serve busy workers like you, and we have about a dozen people who work in the same building you do. We have 30-minute fat-burning classes that start at 12:15, and we have showers so you can clean up and get back to work. Let’s get you started today!”

So, with Roam in mind, try asking yourself two questions today:

1. What problems are your perfect clients dealing with?

2. How can you provide solutions for them?

Then take action.

The post Unique In-Terminal Gym at BWI Solves Problems for Travelers appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Staff Ascension Model: How to Develop and Retain A+ Team Members

By Joleen Bingham, Certified Two-Brain Business Mentor

Have you ever wondered what sets the most successful gym owners apart from the rest?

The answer is that top gym owners create a precise plan to hire, develop and retain excellent team members.

As a gym owner, have you ever:

Felt frustrated by the lack of good candidates?Found it difficult to retain good staff?Struggled to communicate your vision and get team members to implement it?Trained staff only to have them leave for better opportunities?

To solve your problems and get to the next level, you need a system—a Staff Ascension Model.

The Staff Ascension Model

Your model should contain standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the following periods:

Hiring—Identify individuals who possess the necessary qualifications for the job, have a genuine passion for fitness and wellness, and share values similar to those of your gym. 

Onboarding—Train and get new staff up to speed. Staff are taught SOPs, learn the expectations for the role, and start to learn more about the gym’s culture and values.

Development—This is a crucial period for nurturing, improving skills, and setting the stage for long-term progression in your business. Career Roadmaps will help you identify areas where development is needed and plan for it. As staff members take on more responsibilities, retention can be improved by recognizing their hard work in ways that make them feel truly appreciated. A good resource: “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.”

Growth—Now it’s time to focus on their leadership abilities, careers and contributions to the business. This is a period in which many gym owners struggle to help their staff continue to grow, and it’s often when team members leave for better opportunities.

Exit—Staff leave for any number of reasons, including firing. In the exit stage, you’ll work to ensure a smooth departure from the business, continued momentum for the rest of your team, and maintained or even improved service for clients.

Getting the Model in Place

Here are the steps I used to get a Staff Ascension Model in place at my gym:

1. List each stage and what you want to happen in it.

2. Write the names of SOPs and tools needed in each stage.

3. Pick one stage and start writing SOPs. Finish that one before moving on.

4. Put everything together in one big document.

5. Most important: Start taking action to implement the model.

By investing in your team’s growth and providing clear pathways for advancement, you can create a strong culture that ensures team members buy in, understand and implement the vision of the business, know how to grow the business and generate revenue, and stay in your business for years to come.

The post Staff Ascension Model: How to Develop and Retain A+ Team Members appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Career Roadmap: The Secret to Staff Ascension in a Gym

How do you create better careers for your staff members?

By creating a better career for the owner—you—and by letting team members take more valuable roles in the hierarchy.

When owners ascend, staff members fill the places they vacated on the “value ladder.”

Buying back your time buys opportunities for team members.

In the previous post in this series, I told you how to buy back your time.

Here, I’m going to tell you how to ascend your staff.

The Path to a Career

Before we get into this, I don’t want you to assume that every great coach is a full-time coach. A great coach can work part time. Read more here: “Gym Management: The Case for Part-Time Coaches.”

Now, here are the steps to building the careers your team members want:

Step 1 

At a quarterly Career Roadmap meeting, ask your coach: “What do you want now?” Ask the coach to tell you about their Perfect Day. Ask how your gym can support that Perfect Day. Ask where the coach would like to be in six months.

Step 2

Determine how much the coach needs to earn to reach those goals. Using tools like the Happiness Index (and the coach’s personal budget), calculate a goal number.

Step 3

Do the Value Ladder exercise and determine where you are trying to buy back your time. Offer those roles to your coach (we call that “insourcing”). If they don’t want to be a cleaner, that’s OK‚ but many great coaches have swung a mop while building up their client load. You probably have a few classes you can add to their schedule, too. Every little bit helps while they’re trying to set up a base income.

Step 4

Create opportunities to do personal training, run specialty programs or provide nutrition coaching. It’s all laid out in our free “Intrapreneurialism 101” guide, which you can download here.

Here’s what the plan might look like (this breakdown was created using a Career Roadmap tool from our mentorship program):

Step 5

Determine the starting position. What will the coach need to learn in order to capitalize on this plan? Will they need to earn a credential before starting a kids program, for example?

Step 6

Measure progress. Perform regular evaluations as part of Career Roadmap meetings. Mentor the coaches to grow their income on your platform.

Final Notes

Remember: Your coaches earn more money by earning the gym more money. Every staff person you hire is an investment, not an expense. You make a return on that investment through buying back your time or having the coaches generate revenue for the gym.

One more note: Hire for the role; don’t just to pay your buddy. Put people in a new role only if they’re a good fit. If you promote someone who’s really not qualified or competent, you’ll lose a staff person (and usually a friend).

The best way to ascend your staff is to ascend yourself as owner and place the right people in the roles you vacate. As your time becomes more valuable, so does theirs.

The post The Career Roadmap: The Secret to Staff Ascension in a Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

CEO Secrets: How to Ascend Staff and Reclaim Your Time

Chris Cooper (00:00):
In the Growth Phase of gym ownership, you need two funnels. One for marketing, getting new clients, and one for hiring, getting new staff. You also need two retention plans. You need a client journey for your clients and a Career Roadmap for your staff. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today I’m talking about how to ascend your staff.

Chris Cooper (00:25):
I’m gonna talk about this in three parts today. Number 1, who should you hire first? Who are the first roles that you need to get out of your brain and off your plate? Second, how to create a Career Roadmap for your staff—specifically the coaches and trainers at your gym. How to make a career plan with them so that you can keep them around long term and keep them moving up. And Number 3, I’m gonna share a full staff ascension plan from Certified Two-Brain Business mentor Joleen Bingham. Now this is going to be a slightly longer episode, and you might want to take some notes, but I also have the whole podcast broken down into three blog posts for easier digestion on twobrainbusiness.com. Just click on “blog.” By the way, if you click on “blog” on twobrainbusiness.com, you can hit that search bar. And there are thousands of articles to give you step-by-step guidance in any topic in gym ownership. So let’s start with who should you hire first? Now I wanna talk about the “buyback principle.” So this is a book recently written and published by my friend and former mentor Dan Martell. And in the book, Dan goes through this step by step, but the basic premise is that you hire people to buy yourself time. And as your time becomes more expensive, your hires become more valuable. Dan taught us this lesson in the book “Buy Back Your Time,” and he also taught it at our recent first summit for gym owners. Now, a lot of gym owners come into Two-Brain and they talk to our mentors on the call and they say, “I just don’t have time to grow my gym.” I actually learned how to buy back my time at the hands of my first mentor back in 2008.

Chris Cooper (02:04):
I was sitting in this stuffy room in this university library where we were meeting, and my mentor, Denis, had been telling me to start meeting with every single client that I had one on one. And I said, “Well, I just don’t have time to do that.” And he said, “Hire some help.” And I almost laughed because I definitely didn’t have any money to hire help. So he said, “Where would you replace yourself for the least amount of money?” And he told me to hire a cleaner. And this was a big epiphany to me because I thought that replacing myself in my business meant hiring a coach, and that would’ve been time consuming and expensive. And I admit that my ego thought, “Well, there’s no other coach in town that can replace me.” So I hired a cleaner on his guidance, and I hired them for three nights every week.

Chris Cooper (02:49):
His name was Sean, the first cleaner. And while Sean was mopping, I would work on growing my business. So first I sent an email to my mailing list, and on the first night I made $300 in new personal-training sales, which was enough to cover Sean’s wages for the whole month. And on the second night, I set up a youth hockey training program. Now that didn’t see an immediate return, but I was still ahead. And on the third night I emailed some former clients, and I got one back. So that was more ROI. But more importantly, it finally made me understand the concept of buying back my time. So that realization led me to ask “where else can I buy back some time and reinvest it into things that grow my business?” That was the start of things for me. And over the years, while working with thousands of other gym owners around the world, I found a dozen ways to buy back time to grow a fitness business.

Chris Cooper (03:40):
But here are a select few hires that really make a difference if you don’t have a lot of money. So first, hire a cleaner, and they follow your cleaning checklist. Second, you can hire an administrator, who follows your booking and billing schedule. Third, you can hire a social media poster, who follows your editorial calendar. Fourth, you can hire a programmer for really cheap. Now those are usually outsourced. Fifth, you can hire a client success manager, who follows your client journey plan, does your goal reviews, and they might do some of your lead nurture for you. Fifth, you can hire a personal trainer or nutrition coach, who follows your Career Roadmap, which I will talk about more in a moment. Then you can hire a head coach, who follows your staff-development plan. And then eventually you can hire a general manager, who follows your sales and retention plan.

Chris Cooper (04:27):
Now I’ve listed those in ascending order of value. The first ones that I mentioned are the least-expensive investments that you can make when you’re buying back your time. And below this video or this podcast, I’m gonna share a link to a done-for-you hiring plan with detailed job descriptions if you want to download that for free. All the roles on the list above that I just mentioned can be outsourced or insourced. That means that you can hire an external company for some of them and pay team members to do others. Or you can hire internally for all of them. The people who fill the roles do some tasks that might be boring and repetitive to you but are still important when running a great gym—like cleaning or admin or booking or billing or social media. And you don’t have to hire all of those roles at once.

Chris Cooper (05:14):
We teach gym owners a really simple but very effective process that helps them identify the exact order of offloading, which we call “climbing the value ladder.” And so in a moment I’ll tell you how to insource those tasks at Career Roadmap meetings. And then I’m gonna share from Two-Brain mentor Joleen Bingham how to ascend your staff on that value ladder. So here to sum up the “Buy Back Your Time” principle are four simple steps to help you use that plan for the first time. Number 1: Clean your gym yourself, record every tiny step, and that becomes your hiring SOP—standard operating procedure. Second, hire a cleaner and hand them that SOP to follow. Third, use the cleaner’s first shift to generate the revenue that pays the cleaner. So maybe send an email about some open personal-training slots or contact former clients about starting up, or set up a bring-a buddy-night as part of your marketing plan, or make a simple blog post about something that you sell.

Chris Cooper (06:15):
Fourth, use the cleaner’s second shift to write the SOP for the next role that you’re going to offload. Now, over time, you’ll develop a list of SOPs for everything in your gym. Eventually you’ll put those together to create a staff playbook. And that act alone will professionalize your gym, making it possible for you to replace yourself and still deliver service with excellence. How do you create better careers for your staff? By creating a better career for yourself, the owner, and by letting them take more valuable roles in your hierarchy as you move up. When the owner ascends the value ladder, staff members fill the vacated places on that same value ladder. Buying back your time buys them opportunities. Now I’m gonna tell you how to turn those opportunities into careers by grouping them together. So if you really wanna create careers for your staff members, you start off by creating a better career for yourself, the owner, and then you let team members take more valuable roles in your hierarchy as you ascend.

Chris Cooper (07:14):
Because when owners ascend, staff members fill the places they vacate, and you buy back your time, but you also buy opportunities for your team members. So here is the path to a career. Before we get into this, just hit pause here. I don’t want you to assume that every great coach is a full-time coach. A great coach can work part time, and I’ve got a good link below here called “The Case for Part-Time Coaches.” The reality is that there are some people who have other careers, but they’re so passionate that they just want to coach for you one or two hours a day, and that’s fine. But here are the steps to building the careers that your team members want. So Step 1 is at a quarterly Career Roadmap meeting ask your coach, “What do you want now? What do you want in life?” And then ask them to tell you about their Perfect Day.

Chris Cooper (08:03):

Then ask how much income they need to make to support that Perfect Day or how your gym can otherwise support that Perfect Day. If they have a job somewhere else, then set up a shorter-term goal. Ask where they’d like to be in six months. Step 2: Determine how much the coach needs to earn to reach those goals. So you can use tools like the Happiness Index or the coach’s personal budget and just calculate a goal number. Okay, they might throw out a random number, that’s fine. You can use that as your goal. Step 3: Do the value-ladder exercise and determine where you’re trying to buy back your time. So if you’re trying to hire a cleaner to buy back your time—you’re just starting at this—offer that cleaning role to a coach. And we call that “insourcing.” If they don’t wanna be the cleaner, that’s OK.

Chris Cooper (08:49):
But many great coaches have swung mop while they’re building up their client load. I certainly did. You probably have a few classes that you can add to their schedule, too. As you climb that value ladder, every little bit helps while they’re trying to set up their basic income. Step 4: Create opportunities for that coach to do personal training or run specialty programs or provide nutrition coaching. It’s all laid out in our “Intrapreneurialism 101” guide, which you can download from the link below this. Now here’s what the plan might look like, and I’m gonna share a picture here if you’re watching on YouTube. This breakdown was created using a Career Roadmap tool from our mentorship program. Step 5 is determine the starting position. What will the coach need to learn in order to capitalize on this plan? Will they need to earn a credential before they start a kids program, for example?

Chris Cooper (09:37):
And then Step 6 is to measure their progress. So you need to perform regular evaluations as part of your Career Roadmap meetings. Mentor the coaches to grow their income on your platform by helping them get better and better at what it is they’re selling through entrepreneurship. So remember, your coaches earn more money by earning the gym more money. Every staff person you hire is an investment, not an expense. You make a return on that investment through buying back your time or having the coaches generate revenue for the gym. So every coach that you hire has to do one of two things: generate the revenue that pays them times 2.5 X or creates time for you to generate at least 2.5 times the revenue required to pay them. Last note here: Hire for the role. Don’t just hire to give your buddy a job or pay them.

Chris Cooper (10:24):
Put people in a new role only if they’re a good fit. If you promote somebody who’s really not qualified or not competent, you’re gonna lose a staff person and usually a friend, too. The best way to ascend your staff is to ascend yourself as owner and place the right people in the roles as you vacate them, and as your time becomes more valuable, then so does theirs. Now I’d like to share a full staff ascension plan overview from Joleen Bingham. Joleen is a Certified Two-Brain Business Mentor, and she presented this topic in great depth at our 2023 Two-Brain Summit. It’s also the skeleton of our new staff ascension course in the Growth program. Joleen starts by asking “have you ever wondered what sets the most successful gym owners apart from the rest?” The answer is that top gym owners create a precise plan to hire, develop and retain excellent team members.

Chris Cooper (11:15):
So as a gym owner, have you ever felt frustrated by the lack of good candidates or found it difficult to retain good staff or struggled to communicate your vision and get team members to implement it or train staff only to have them leave for better opportunities like starting their own gym? Now, to solve your problems and to get to the next level, you need a system. And Joleen calls this a “staff ascension model.” So according to Joleen, your model should contain standard operating procedures for the following periods. The first period is hiring. You need to identify individuals who possess the necessary qualifications for the job, have a genuine passion for fitness and wellness, and share values similar to those of your gym. They might come from within, they might not. The second stage is onboarding. You must train and get new staff up to speed.

Chris Cooper (12:05):
Staff should be taught your SOPs, learn the expectations that you have for the role, and start to learn more about the gym’s culture and values. The next phase is development. And this is a crucial period for nurturing, improving skills and setting the stage for long-term progression in your business. Career Roadmaps right here will help you identify areas where development is needed and plan for it. And as staff members take on more responsibilities, retention can be improved by recognizing their hard work in ways that make them feel truly appreciated. Joleen recommends “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace” as a great read. The next stage in your staff ascension plan is growth. And this is when it’s time to focus on their leadership abilities, their careers and contributions to the business. This is a period in which many gym owners struggle to help their staff continue to grow.

Chris Cooper (12:57):
And it’s often when team members leave for better opportunities. So they become good at their craft, and they think, “I can’t make any more money unless I go open my gym,” even though they know nothing about the business. This was certainly me. And then the fifth stage is exit. This is when staff leave for any number of reasons, including firing. And in the exit stage, you’ll work to ensure a smooth departure from the business, continued momentum for the rest of your team, and maintained or even improved service for clients. So now let’s talk about how do you get that model in place—and you’re gonna need SOPs on all those. That’s what Joleen is here to help you with in the mentorship program. That’s what the new course being built is gonna help clients in Two-Brain with. But here’s how Joleen put the staff ascension model in place at her gyms.

Chris Cooper (13:44):
First, she listed each stage and what you want to happen in it. I just kinda shared that with you. Second, she wrote the names of the SOPs and tools needed in each stage. Third, she picked one stage and started writing the SOPs that she didn’t have—like how to hire. And then you finish that stage before you move on to the next. Fourth, you put everything from all those stages together into one big document. And fifth, most important, you start taking action and implementing the model. By investing in your team’s growth and providing clear pathways for advancement, you can create a strong culture that ensures team members buy in, understand and implement the vision of your business, know how to grow the business, how to generate revenue, and stay in your business for years to come. Painting the end goal for them, showing them the ascension model, is critical for keeping them around so they can see the future.

Chris Cooper (14:35):
When staff run out of future with your business, they try to invent a new future somewhere else. Now this was a huge topic today, and if you wanna read it all broken down step by step, you can do that on the Two-Brain Business blog. If you want help implementing this in your business, you can book a call with my team. That’s what we’re here for as mentors. And if you just wanna discuss this, stop in our free Facebook group. Go to gymownersunited.com. That’s it. We’ll let you into the group. You’re gonna love it in there. Thanks for making a difference out there.

The post CEO Secrets: How to Ascend Staff and Reclaim Your Time appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Cheat Code for Gym Growth: Buy Back Your Time

You hire people to buy time.

As your time becomes more expensive, your hires become more valuable.

Dan Martell taught us this lesson from his new book, “Buy Back Your Time,” at our recent summit for gym owners:

“I Don’t Have Time to Grow My Gym”

I learned how to buy back my time at the hands of my mentor in 2008.

I was sitting in a stuffy room in a university library. My mentor had been telling me to start meeting with each client one on one.

“I don’t have time to do that,” I said.

“Hire some help,” he replied.

I almost laughed—I definitely didn’t have any money to do that.

“Where could you replace yourself for the least amount of money?” he asked.

Then he told me to hire a cleaner.

This was an epiphany because I thought “replacing myself” meant hiring a coach. That would be time consuming and expensive, and I admit that my ego thought “no other coach in town can replace me!”

So I hired a cleaner for three nights every week. While Sean mopped, I worked on growing my business. First, I sent an email to my mailing list. On the first night, I made $300 in new personal-training sales—enough to cover Sean’s wages for the whole month.

On the second night, I set up a youth hockey-training program. That didn’t see an immediate return, but I was still ahead.

On the third night, I emailed former clients. I got one back. That was more ROI. But, more importantly, it finally made me understand the concept of buying back my time.

That realization led me to ask “where else can I buy back some time and reinvest it into things that grow my business?”

How to Buy Time as a Gym Owner

Over the years, while working with thousands of other gym owners around the world, I’ve found a dozen ways to buy back time to grow a fitness, but here are a select few hires that really make a difference:

Cleaner (follows your cleaning checklist).Administrator (follows your booking/billing schedule).Social-media poster (follows your editorial calendar).Programmer (usually outsourced).Client success manager (follows your client-journey plan, does goal reviews, might do lead nurturing).Personal trainer or nutrition coach (follows your Career Roadmap, which I’ll share in the next post in this series).Head coach (follows your staff-development plan).General Manager (follows your sales and retention plan).

I’ve listed the roles in ascending order of value. The first ones on the list are the least-expensive investments you can make when you’re buying back your time.

Resource: “Done-for-You Hiring Plan and Detailed Job Descriptions”

All the roles on the list above can be outsourced or insourced. You can hire an external company for some and pay team members to do others. The people who fill the roles do tasks that might be boring or repetitive to you but are still important when running a great gym.

And you don’t have to hire to fill all the roles at once. We teach gym owners a simple but very effective process that helps them identify the exact order of offloading—we call it “climbing the value ladder.”

In the next post, I’ll tell you how to insource these tasks at Career Roadmap meetings. And in the one after that, Two-Brain mentor and gym owner Joleen Bingham will tell you how to ascend your staff on the value ladder.

Here, I’ll give you four simple steps to help you employ the buy-back-your-time plan for the first time:

1. Clean your gym. Record every tiny step. This is now your cleaning SOP.

2. Hire a cleaner. Give them the SOP to follow.

3. Use the cleaner’s first shift to generate the revenue to pay the cleaner: Send an email about open PT slots, contact former clients about starting up again, set up a “bring-a-buddy” night as part of a marketing plan, or make a simple blog post about something you sell.

4. Use the cleaner’s second shift to write the SOP for the next role you will offload.

Over time, you’ll develop a list of SOPs for everything in your gym. You’ll put them together to create a staff playbook. That act alone will professionalize your gym, making it possible for you to replace yourself and still deliver service with excellence.

Step up and Elevate Staff

How do you create better careers for staff? By creating a better career for yourself—the owner–and by letting them take more valuable roles in your hierarchy.

When the owner ascends, staff members fill the vacated places on the value ladder. Buying back your time buys them opportunities.

In the next post, I’ll tell you how to group those opportunities into careers.

The post Cheat Code for Gym Growth: Buy Back Your Time appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Key Gen Z Stats for Microgym Owners

In late June, Les Mills released the 50-page report “Gen Z Fitness: Cracking the Code.”

Today, I’ll give you my Top 5 takeaways for microgym owners.

First, you can download the report here if you want to trade your email address and a few details about your gym.

Survey info:

Gen Z is defined as people born between 1997 and 2012—they are currently between about 11 and 26. The survey mined data from people in the 16-26 range.The survey was conducted in March and April 2023 and includes data from 4,028 people in the U.S., U.K., China and Germany.

Over 50 pages, Les Mills fires out a ton of data. As a microgym owner, this is the stuff that stood out to me:

1. The Same Goals?

According to the survey, members of Gen Z have five main goals when it comes to working out: Become fitter, become healthier, look better, feel better, reduce stress.

If you roll a few of those similar goals together, it’s no stretch to say people in Gen Z want to use gyms to feel better and look better.

So are members of the younger generation that different from your older clients?

No, they are not, so your marketing messages don’t need a complete overhaul. If anything, you need to review the channels you’re using to send them (see No. 5, below).

2. Surprisingly Deep Pockets?

Get this: The median monthly Gen Z spend on exercise is US$95.

This is great news—especially given that the survey included responses from people in their teens.

If half of survey respondents are willing to spend more than $100 a month on fitness, microgym owners can rest assured that at least some members of Gen Z will consider higher-value services.

For perspective, this graph shows microgym users by age group (it’s taken from Two-Brain’s “State of the Industry 2022”—get it here):

You’ll note that the 31-40 group is largest in all regions, but the 21-30 group is always second largest, and in most regions the under 21s outnumber 51-plus clients. So members of Gen Z are training at microgyms in sizable numbers.

An interesting note with regard to Gen Z spending: 51 percent of current exercisers are putting some of their cash into a paid fitness app. That’s not to say your gym must have a paid app, but this demographic clearly likes devices and apps.

So if your website looks dated and won’t load on a mobile device, and if you’re still handing out branded physical logbooks, you might consider investing in your digital resources to connect with Gen Z.

3. The Hybrid Generation?

Almost three-quarters of survey respondents who exercise (72 percent) train at the gym on some days and outside the gym on other days.

That’s very interesting, and, combined with Gen Z’s love for tech and apps, might suggest members of Gen Z would be interested in a hybrid fitness program that includes in-person training and outside-the-gym workouts delivered through an app.

You’ll have to test that plan yourself, but I would suggest that tech-savvy younger clients who spent about two years dealing with COVID lockdowns might strongly consider a training plan that includes on-your-own “homework” and in-person interaction (the survey says 38 percent love-love-love the group-class vibe).

4. Committed to Variety

Retention stat: 61 percent of Gen Z gym goers have spent between 6 and 24 months at their gym. That’s significant given that the industry average length of engagement is just 7.8 months (source: “State of the Industry 2022”).

So where do these young gym-goers train? Over 90 percent work out at multi-purpose facilities that offer all kinds of activities people can do whenever the spirit moves them (pin-loaded and cable machine training, group workouts, free weights, cardio machines, body-weight training, functional training, and personal training are the Top 7 activities they do).

Is that stat bad for microgyms? I don’t think so. Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper has long said that a gym’s method is largely irrelevant.

A good coach can design a program with enough variety to satisfy a member of Gen Z, especially if the program is altered regularly with the help of Goal Review Sessions every 90 days: “Great job at the fitness throwdown last week! For your next training block, we’ll focus on getting you ready for your first Spartan Race.”

If you’re strictly a coaching gym, you might not be able to snag the Gen Z people who want the running-wild freedom an access-only facility provides, but that’s fine. Access and coaching are not the same thing at all. And some younger fitness aficionados will want coaching—you just have to find them, build a personal relationship, and make sure you keep the program fresh and exciting at all times.

In fact, 19 percent of those who are not working out said they want coaching in groups or one-on-one settings. That’s your target market.

5. They’re Ready for You to Find Them Online

Here are a few weighty numbers:

68 percent of survey respondents who aren’t working out say they will start at home first.51 percent are planning to join a gym.22 percent think gyms are intimidating.The Top 4 “gateway workouts” for those trying fitness are walking, running, swimming and cardio machines. Free weights are fifth.50+ percent of Gen Z members use a business’s website to do research before making a purchase, and 47 percent use YouTube to dig into a brand before buying.40 percent of Gen Z members choose TikTok first when searching for something.

Members of Gen Z know they should probably work out, and they’re thinking about it—but they might only be ready to try something on their own (probably walking or running). They also spend a ton of time on their devices.

Here’s what that says to me: You might connect with Gen Z via top-of-funnel video content pumped out on TikTok and YouTube. That content should tell them how they can use fitness—and especially simple cardio workouts—to feel better and look better. Other things you can feature: convenience, variety, an exciting atmosphere, and friendly fitness experts.

I’d DM new followers and anyone who engages with your content immediately, and I would definitely point social content at a solid website with a free downloadable guide: “at-home running” or “on-your-own cardio” are a few ideas off the top of my head. Downloading of that guide should trigger lead-nurturing text messages, perhaps including videos.

That plan is solid with any demographic, but if the Les Mills survey data is accurate, it’s going to hit hardest with Gen Z, whose members who are on their devices a lot.  

A Target Market?

So do you need to focus just on Gen Z as a microgym owner?

That depends on your niche. If you know you specialize in serving 30-55-year-old professionals and parents who only have 30 minutes to work out, you’ve got your target market clearly defined already.  

But Gen Z is now the largest generation group on the planet, and in just four years its oldest members will be 30.

So even if you don’t focus on younger consumers yet, there’s no harm in knowing who they are, what they like, where they can be found and how to talk to them.

The post Key Gen Z Stats for Microgym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Ask Coop Anything: Chris Answers Top Questions About Mentorship

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and this is our ask-me-anything AMA episode. Every week in Two-Brain, we host office hours where we bring in experts to help people work through specific problems. This is on top of one-on-one mentorship that we give to every single gym owner in our program, where they have specific scheduled calls, one-on-one, with a gym owner who’s already achieved what they want to achieve. These office hours are weekly bonuses where we bring in subject-matter experts to talk about their specialty. And that could be high ticket, it could be sales, or it could be Facebook marketing. We rotate experts through the group, and usually about 50 people attend.

Chris Cooper (00:43):
One of these episodes was an ask-me-anything as we prepared to get ready for our 2023 summit and the team was packing up and traveling to Chicago. And I got some really amazing questions, and I thought maybe I should share them with you. If you want to be in our free public group, you can go to gymownersunited.com. We sometimes bring in experts into that group, but our regular expert rotation happens in our private Two-Brain Business group in our membership practice. And you can click the link below this video if you wanna book a call and talk about having an actual gym mentor. All right, so I’ve got five great questions that came up in our AMA episode, and first I’m gonna answer the question “when should you switch mentors?”” Second, I’m gonna answer the question “how can you be more coachable?” I know that sounds like a planted question, like I asked somebody to ask that question, but it wasn’t.

Chris Cooper (01:35):
It’s awesome. Third: “Why we do one-on-one and not group coaching in Two-Brain?” Fourth: “How do you get the money to buy a building?” And fifth: “What does ‘certified millionaire’ mean?” These are all questions that were asked by people just like you, gym owners who are really curious. And I thought, “OK, I’ll try and give you the best possible answer that I can.” So here we go. Let’s start with when to switch mentors. What’s really amazing about this question is not that people are asking “should I have a mentor anymore?” And five years ago when I was mentoring gym owners, nobody else was even using the term mentor, like Two-Brain Business introduced the gym community to mentorship, and we started doing that when I was writing about having a mentor way back in 2009. In 2016, we started offering one-on-one mentorship to gym owners.

Chris Cooper (02:28):
And a lot of business-coaching companies don’t do that because it is hard to grow a business and maintain quality and scale when you’re doing one-on-one mentorship. We still do it because I think that’s what gets gym owners the best results. So the question though is that when you have a one-on-one relationship with somebody, how often should you switch that? What are some signs you know, that you should switch mentors? This actually happens in Two-Brain about 5 percent of the time every single month. There are currently about 870 gyms in Two-Brain. Every single one has a one-on-one mentor. I’ll get to why I like one-on-one more in a moment, but eventually your conversation with the mentor becomes less objective. So you’re no longer like strangers to one another; you become friends and you start having these conversations about family or the weather or whatever, right?

Chris Cooper (03:23):
And sometimes you get on a call, and you’re not really sure what you should talk about. And the mentor who knows your metrics inside and out is waiting for you to say that you’ve got this problem—and you don’t. However, when you’re talking to a new mentor, you never have that problem because they are looking at things with fresh eyes. They’ve got a new layer of objectivity. So for me, working one on one with business coaches and mentors, I tend to switch about every two years. Now, I’ll qualify that a little bit. I always have a one-on-one mentor. This person sees the long tail for me. They see the giant overall picture. I talk with my current mentor, Carrie Wilkerson, once every two weeks. We talk for about 40 minutes max. I also have business coaches. Business coaches are specialists. And so you usually have a short-term engagement with a business coach and a long-term engagement with a business mentor.

Chris Cooper (04:21):
So a business coach might be really, really good at improving your podcast. So I have a business coach for podcasting. I have a business coach for public speaking, so I had a six-week engagement with her. I have a business coach for YouTube. So with him I might work for like 12 weeks. It’s a short-term engagement. They’re a specialist. They’re gonna help me get better at one thing. A mentor is somebody that you’re gonna have a longer-standing relationship with. For me, that relationship is usually best when it lasts about two years, and then I switch to somebody else because at the two-year mark there’s a lot of friendship happening, right? And that means that I don’t get the objectivity that I need. So I’ll give you an example. I worked with Dan Martell from 2016 to 2018. At the 2018 mark, I was no longer the smallest business in his group anymore, but Dan and I had found a lot of things in common. We both loved to do CrossFit, and we both loved to ride bikes, and we both had two kids and et cetera. We were both in Canada. And so we would get on the calls and it would be hard not to talk about what the government was doing, hard not to talk about what your kids are doing. And at that point you don’t have that objectivity, right? So when I switched mentors and I started working with Todd Herman in 2018, Todd had us down to Manhattan. I sat on his couch, and he immediately pointed out that my ascension model was bad. It’s actually kind of a funny story that I’ve talked about on other episodes because he was objective. It doesn’t mean he is smarter than Dan; it means that he brings a different perspective into the conversation.

Chris Cooper (05:59):
So for me, about two years is it. The beautiful part, though, is that with 60 mentors in Two-Brain, you don’t have to start over from scratch. This is the downside of switching mentors. Like when I went from working with Dan to working to Todd, I had to start from a blank slate. Todd knew nothing about my business, and I had to fill him in from scratch. And so it took, you know, a couple of months to really ramp up to the point where we got into that mentorship sweet spot. Within Two-Brain, though, you can switch from one mentor to an another, and you don’t lose all that momentum because the new mentor has your backstory. They have a record of every conversation that you’ve ever had. They have all your metrics, they know what you’ve done, they’ve seen your task list, and they know what you’ve completed.

Chris Cooper (06:43):
They’re really running at your pace. And it is really easy to just move from one mentor to the other in Two-Brain. So you gain that objectivity, you gain that fresh perspective, you gain the new excitement of having a new mentor, which is awesome, but you don’t lose that track record of success, and you don’t have to explain your business from scratch all over again. So for me, two years is great. If you’re within Two-Brain and you’re listening to this, all you have to do is send a message, help@twobrandbusiness.com, and say, “I need a mentor refresh.” That’s it. Second question that was brought up is “how can I be more coachable?” Now this is a really interesting question, and to be honest, I didn’t seed this question in the audience or anything, but I have been talking about coachability a lot in our groups, first, to help the gym owners help their clients be more coachable, but also to help them improve their ROI on mentorship. I get an amazing ROI on mentorship. That’s why I’m always so eager to spend money, like a quarter million a year, on mentorship because I know that I’m coachable, and I know that I’m gonna get a lot out of it. In fact, I finished a call this morning with Carrie Wilkerson, and I told her at the end of the call that that call was worth $15,000 to me. It doesn’t mean I paid $15,000 for the call, not even close, but I could measurably see that three things that she gave me in 35 minutes were going to be worth at least $15,000 to me in the next year. That’s not because she’s telling me something different than she’s telling somebody else. It’s because I’m coachable and I know how to get value out of a call.

Chris Cooper (08:20):
So here is how you be coachable. Number 1, get over your skepticism and then sign up. So, for example, let’s say that you’re skeptical about a business coach or a process, right? Like, “Oh man, I don’t wanna use TikTok,” or, “Oh, I don’t wanna learn from this dude.” That’s fine. Don’t sign up until you’re over that skepticism. So do whatever it takes to get over it. Look for proof, talk to their current clients, read their content, and if that takes you a year or two, then so be it. Like, do whatever it takes so that the skepticism is behind you because then when you sign up, you can go all in right from the start and you don’t have to second-guess everything. What many people do is they are skeptical, they sign up anyway, and they carry that skepticism with them into the program, and it hurts them because ultimately mentorship is an investment in yourself.

Chris Cooper (09:17):
And if you’re, you know, entering the race with concrete blocks tied around your ankles, you’re not gonna win. And then what happens is you get three, four, five weeks into the program, you’re learning, learning, learning, you’re investing, and you’re not seeing like a massive compounding return on that investment yet. And so you quit, and you quit at the bottom of the ROI curve before you actually start to get results, which is like the worst time to quit. But that’s what you do because you’re skeptical. And so what I would say is do whatever it takes to get over your skepticism before you sign up. That’s the first thing. I’m skeptical of a lot of business coaches. I’ll be honest with you, there’s a lot of stuff out there on social media that’s just not true. But the way that I get over my skepticism is I have a conversation with them.

Chris Cooper (10:09):
I consume their content. I look for where they’re admitting their mistakes. That is so key for me. If a business coach does not admit their mistakes, they’re hiding something from you. And if they’re hiding that, then what else are they hiding? Or they actually have no experience in the thing that they’re teaching, so they haven’t made any mistakes. We all make mistakes. You get that? That’s my biggest skepticism filter. But get over that before you sign up. ‘Cause once you’re signed up, the best way to get an ROI is just to be all in. The second thing that I try to do is adapt the specific instructions of the mentor. So, for example, I could buy Dan Martell’s book “Buy Back Your Time”—amazing book. I could read the book, and I could like implement some of it. And then I get on a call with him and he starts telling me how to buy back my time.

Chris Cooper (10:59):
And I’m like, “Dan, I have this knowledge.” I can skip this part. But what you actually wanna do is pay attention to the little, tiny specific details on implementation. You’re not hiring a mentor to gain knowledge; you’re hiring a mentor to gain speed. The mentor will filter out the stuff you don’t have to do. But when they tell you to specifically do one thing, do that thing and know how to measure the ROI. If you’re not sure how to measure the ROI, ask them. Look, one more how-to-be-coachable tip. And I could do an entire episode on this. If you aren’t sure if you’re getting an ROI on mentorship or if you’re not sure you’re getting results, the best thing that you can do is say that to the mentor, “Hey, I’m not sure I’m getting results here.” Or, “How can I improve the ROI that I’m getting on your service?”

Chris Cooper (11:49):
These are great ways to be coachable. I’ll give you one more tip—after you have your call with the mentor. So first off, you’re doing a call. We schedule usually like one-hour blocks. As soon as you learn one thing that you can take action on or you get clarity on one thing or you know exactly what to do—you make a decision on one thing—you should end the call and just go do that thing. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got an hour blocked off for the call and the call is at like the 22-minute mark. You know exactly what you gotta do. The best thing you can do is get off that call and use the next 38 minutes to action it. If you don’t, what typically happens is you go the full 60 minutes, you get off the call, you eat your lunch, and you’re starting to forget what you’re supposed to do already.

Chris Cooper (12:36):
The reason that all of this exists, that Two-Brain happened, was because in 2009 I already knew this trick. I knew that if I left the call and didn’t start taking action, I would forget what I was supposed to do or I would lose the sense of urgency that would make me do it. And so I would finish my meeting with my mentor, I would sit down, and I would write every single thing that he told me as if I was teaching it to somebody else. That was the blog don’tbuyads.com. That’s what that was. It was me teaching it to myself by pretending to teach it to others so that I made sure that I would do it. It was a love letter to myself. It was accountability more than anything else. It was just like a log book of everything that I was learning and doing.

Chris Cooper (13:19):
So when you finish your call, you should sit down and log what you’ve done. Just like in a gym. You finish your workout, you sit down, you log what you’ve done, right? That compounds over time. So you should be recording this stuff, and these are some great ways to be more coachable. You know, definitely like reach out to your mentor for help if you’re not sure. Another great one—this one might seem obvious—is show up to the call with your full attention. There is no point in getting on a call with your mentor while you’re driving. There is no point scrambling to finish your workout, showing up on the call with your mentor, still sweating, still distracted, five minutes late. That is not you being coachable. That is you trying to be judged on attendance. You will not fix your gym simply by showing up and having your name checked off on the attendance list.

Chris Cooper (14:10):
You will not fix your gym simply by reading the book three times. You will fix your gym by doing the action. And doing the action means you need to show up and actually do the stuff. You need to be present. You need to be focused, you need to be not distracted, and you’re being held accountable for it. The best way to maximize the outcome from mentorship is to be coachable. So hopefully those tips help. The third question that I got in our AMA was “why do we do one-on-one and not group coaching?” Recently, I’ve been talking more about the value of ascension. So in our episode where I talked about why we’re capping Two-Brain mentorship at a thousand people, I talked about how people are now starting with other programs and then ascending to us, and how that happens in your gym, too, right?

Chris Cooper (14:58):
If you are the best, the best from all of the other gyms will find you. “Best finds best”—it’s not just our hashtag. It’s our business model. And this is happening more and more. Every time another business-coaching company enters the scene in the gym space, I don’t stress about it because I know they’re going to expose a lot of gym owners to coaching or mentorship. They might give them a couple of tips that are going to help them, and then the best clients will realize like they want to ascend up to Two-Brain because when you’re at the top of the mountain, the mountain climbers will reach you. The best ones will anyway. So this is happening quite a bit now, and one of the things that they say is they’re coming outta these group-coaching programs and they’re attracted to one on one in Two-Brain.

Chris Cooper (15:46):
And so I sometimes get the question “why do you do one-on-one?” The short answer is that’s what always worked for me. The long answer is like, there’s a lot of reasons why we do one-on-one. The first one is that your mentor needs to be familiar with you. And if your mentor is only used to meeting you in a group, they’re not gonna know the specific details of your business. They’re not gonna know your metrics, they’re not gonna know what you’ve tried before or why something doesn’t work for you, or they’re not gonna know your market very well. What’s gonna actually happen in a group-coaching program is that you’re going to hear from the squeaky wheels the most. You’ll gain knowledge at the level of the lowest common denominator at your group, and you’ll move at the speed of the slowest person in that group.

Chris Cooper (16:34):
Group coaching businesses are amazing businesses for the owner of that business, right? The reason that people set up group-coaching business is to create a lifestyle for themselves. So group-coaching businesses, it’s very high margin ‘cause you don’t need a lot of staff. You don’t have to train your staff on your systems or your delivery. You don’t have to train your staff on how to read data or how to get clients results. None of that. The clients coach each other. Yeah, your retention kind of sucks, but like the margins are incredible, and you only have to do it for three years and you can retire. So when people are building group-coaching programs, they are building a lifestyle business for themselves. I’ve been in a lot of programs where they’ve really preached this, by the way—high-level business masterminds where they tell you build a group-coaching program. “You’re wasting your time with one on one.”

Chris Cooper (17:28):
The problem is that one on one actually gets better results. So if you want to build a mentorship program around your client’s lifestyle, the gym owners that are in Two-Brain, you do that one-on-one. If you wanna build a company that supports your lifestyle as the owner, you do group coaching. Me, I’m really about getting gym owners results. That’s our mission, and that’s why we do one on one. I’ll give you a couple of examples here. So a lot of accounting companies now, they have like a “pool approach” to bookkeeping. So you sign up with this accounting company, let’s call it 1-2-3 Numbers, and they assign you a bookkeeper in the first month, and the bookkeeper does your data entry. Great. The second month you get this automated email from 1-2-3 Numbers and it says “put in your metrics.” So you put in your metrics, and they have a question, and you hear from a different bookkeeper. “Oh, I guess that’s okay.”

Chris Cooper (18:26):
The third month, you know, you have a question and you say “can I get on a call with somebody?” And you get on a call with somebody if that’s even available to you. And now it’s like, Billy Bob from 1-2-3 Numbers is on this call, and they’re like, “Well, you know, let me open up your books and go back through.” And now they’re trying to understand why your two previous bookkeepers made certain decisions at tax time. When stuff really hits the fan, whoever the overriding accountant is is trying to figure out “why did we make these decisions?’ This exact scenario created like a $80,000 mistake in Two-Brain’s books this year because they had this rotating pool of bookkeepers coaches instead of having like a one-on-one assignment with an actual accountant, right? A mentor. So this kind of stuff can happen all the time.

Chris Cooper (19:18):
I’ll give you another example. I was in a business-coaching mastermind. So this is like a business-coaching program for business coaches, and there were some really high-level people in there. You know, Two-Brain was close to the top. Two-Brain is huge, a very successful mentorship practice, but we were the only ones doing things one on one with our clients. And so our client results were better than anybody else. Our client retention was better than anybody else. You could point to, you know, any one of our 860-odd clients, and I would probably know something about them, but it didn’t matter if I knew because their mentor knew everything about them, you know? And meanwhile I’m in this program, and they’re telling me “you gotta do group coaching.” They’re doing group coaching. I’m getting very little value from the calls. They’re sending me automated texts and I’m asking why are you asking me for my metrics?

Chris Cooper (20:09):
Nobody ever asked me for the metrics or what I’m doing with them. Nobody looks at these metrics. Why are you sending me automated texts asking about my metrics if we’re not gonna use ’em to make decisions? So in a group-coaching environment, many people like me feel like a number, where having a one-on-one mentor means you’ve got somebody who’s familiar with you. They’re objective enough—‘cause they don’t work in your business—that they can help you make logical decisions. They know your arc, they know what you’ve done in the past, and they know why you’re doing things a certain way. They’re not just coming at it fresh every single time without context. That one-on-one relationship, yeah, it is harder to scale when you’ve got 60 mentors on a team, getting everybody trained really, really, really well, getting everybody to understand data and how to get clients results and action and tracking and doing QA.

Chris Cooper (21:00):
All that is way harder, but it’s worth it because we wanna maximize the results of our clients. All right, fourth question, unrelated to mentorship and coaching: “How do I get the money to buy a building?” So I had to learn this. I’ve done it a few times. Now I own the building that I’m standing in. I own another building that my gym is in a third building that’s like retail. And then I have some residential stuff too. I have a fourth one also. I forgot that I have a fourth building—it’s like a self-storage business, and it has some tenants. There’s a nursing clinic, hairdresser, et cetera, in there, too. So how do you get the money to buy a building? When I was starting with this journey myself, I said, “I don’t know where I’m gonna get the money, but also there’s no buildings to buy.”

Chris Cooper (21:43):
So I said, “I’m gonna start putting money aside. I’m gonna pay double my rent every month. So my rent was 3,200 bucks or something. I’m gonna pay $3,200 to my landlord and $3,200 to a savings account. Take it outta my checking account, put it somewhere else. And then when I find a building, I’ll have that money for the down payment.” Now, if you’re gonna buy a building that’s half a million dollars or whatever, it doesn’t mean you have to have half a million dollars. You can borrow most of that money from the bank. The key, though, is that the bank is only going to lend you 70 to 80 percent of the purchase price of the building. Even though they’ve got an asset, they could turn around and just sell the building if you can’t pay your loan. They’re not gonna lend you the full amount.

Chris Cooper (22:26):
You’ve gotta find a way to have that first 20 to 30 percent. You can save it up, you know. Luckily, I managed to save up that money because it took me two and a half years to actually find my first commercial building anyway. Or you can get that from a private lender. So here it is: You’ve gotta come up with the first 20 to 30 percent usually on your own. And then you take that to the bank with valuation on the building. The bank might look at your P&L. They’re gonna look at the cash that you have and say, “Yeah, somebody else is taking the biggest risk here. You know, I’ll fund the last 80 percent.” Where does that first 20 percent come from? I already said it could come from you. That’s not what happens the majority of the time. You might find a third-party lender, like in the States, Wells Fargo does this and Canada BDC does this. There are other organizations in your town or in your state that that might actually jump in and be that lender. Or you can look at private lending. So for a lot of people right now, you could talk to the most successful person in your gym and ask them if they will lend you the money. You’re not asking ’em to partner in the business or asking ’em to partner in the building. You’re just asking for a loan to buy the building. It’s attractive to them. They’re not doing you a favor. They’re going to charge you interest. But let’s say that, you know, right now as I record this, I can’t make more than about four and a half percent on my money. If I took $500,000 and I put that into a bond, I could get about four and a half percent annual interest, right?

Chris Cooper (23:57):
Meanwhile, you, the buyer, can’t get a better rate than about eight percent. So you can borrow at eight and I can lend my money to the bank in the form of a bond at about four and a half, maximum five percent. That delta between five and eight percent is where it’s beneficial for everybody. So if you can borrow money from a private lender, like me, at six percent—you are saving two percent interest. They’re making a point and a half more than they could have made by putting their money in bonds or whatever. It’s a pretty secure investment. Honestly, there’s gonna be some lawyering to make sure—you’re probably gonna have to put up some kind of security, and it might be your house, but if you wanna do this, the private-lending option is not a bad one. And it’s a win for everybody. It’s a win for you because you can leverage the other 80 percent.

Chris Cooper (24:43):
It’s a win for the lender because they’re gonna make more interest on their loan to you than they could just buying a bond or investing somewhere else. And it’s a win for the bank, honestly, because they’re not the one taking the big risk. So that’s really like where you can get the money to buy a building. You know, in the past in the States especially, people were figuring out ways to use like borrowed SBA money or whatever. There’s more creative ways to do this, and we talk about this in our Tinker group all the time, but if I was doing it today and didn’t own assets, didn’t have the money, I would just start saving a little bit, 500 bucks a month or whatever while I was looking at buildings, knowing that it’s gonna take you a while to buy a building anyway. One thing I would not do is buy land and build a building because those cost overruns are always like 50 percent.

Chris Cooper (25:31):
And that can really mess with your calculation of whether it’s worth it or not. That’s a different topic. Last question today is “What does a certified millionaire mean?” So if you were at our summit this year, you saw 13 people I think come up on the stage and get recognized for reaching millionaire status for the first time. That means they have a million dollars in net worth. What that means is if they sold everything that they own, collected cash on all of it, paid off all their debts, they would still have a million dollars in cash left over sitting in their hands. That’s what a million dollars in net worth means. We use that metric because we can prove it. Other gurus use different metrics and I honestly hate this. So first of all, one metric might be that your gym does a million dollars a month in revenue.

Chris Cooper (26:23):
That sounds amazing. But the reality is there are a lot of gyms out there that are doing a million dollars a month in revenue and the owner is taking home less than $50,000 of that. They are not millionaires. They just have like an OK income, and it’s because, you know, maybe they’ve got a big globo gym and they’ve got a ton of debt to service. Maybe it’s because their expenses are super-duper high because of their location, or they’re overstaffed, or they’re undercharging—whatever. But doing a million dollars a year in revenue does not make you a millionaire. Even worse than that, some programs that I’ve seen in the past will use MRR as a predictor of revenue. So let’s say that you are selling like this short-term six-week challenge, and you sell a bunch of them, and you do $80,000 in revenue for the month.

Chris Cooper (27:11):
You’ve never done $80,000 in revenue before. You might never do that again, but you did it this month. Some gym marketing programs will say that you’re a million-dollar gym because they’ll take that, you know, $83,000 a month, multiply it by 12 months, refer to your MRR—your monthly recurring revenue—and say, “Well, you know, that extrapolates out to a million. All you gotta do is do this every month.” You and I both know that never happens. And this is like what causes the downfall of a lot of these gym marketing companies. You know, you see 30 new gym marketing companies in your Facebook feed every month, but you never hear from the same ones two years from now because they’re always this like flash in the pan, “I’ll get you 30 leads.” They’re not gonna do that forever. It’s not a sustainable strategy. It’s not worth the investment.

Chris Cooper (28:01):
But what really drives me bananas is when people say that they’re producing like million-dollar gyms or, you know, million-dollar years or even millionaire gym owners and they’re actually not. The gym might produce a million dollars, but the gym owner doesn’t make a million. Or the gym might just have like one really good month and the program counts that as like, “Well, they’re gonna do that forever.” The reason that we do it this way and we actually audit is because I wanna know “are we actually producing millionaires?” The title of my next book is actually “Millionaire Gym Owner.” Now we’ve figured out how to do this, how to build people. So first we build their systems, then we build their income, then we build their wealth. Now that we’ve gotten over 30 people to the millionaire status, I’m asking myself how do we do it faster?

Chris Cooper (28:47):
And my writer Robert and I are interviewing every single one of these people and saying like, “How did you do it? What can people not do that will get them there faster? And what would you do if you could do it all over again?” Et cetera. And we’ll be publishing that toward the end of the year. But the reality is like when we say somebody is a certified millionaire, it means we’ve actually audited their assets. We know for sure that they are a real millionaire. That’s what makes me so proud of them, proud of the achievement and proud of what we’re doing in Two-Brain for gym owners—it’s that everything is for real, you know? So this is our AMA episode. If you have questions, you can email me—Chris@twobrainbusiness.com—anytime. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day, I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in the group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today!

The post Ask Coop Anything: Chris Answers Top Questions About Mentorship appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Be a CEO: Leading the Four Personalities on Your Team

According to gym owner and mentor Brian Bott, four personalities can be found in your gym.

To recap, the characteristics on the left combine with those on the right to create four groups:

You can divide clients among these four personality groups, as well as staff members. To get the most out of your team, here’s how to manage each type of person.

The Fact-Based Introvert

Use spreadsheets and data. Career Roadmap sessions work exceptionally well if you give these people very specific targets. Your mission and vision matter less than “we need to do 15 goal reviews per month.”

Fact-based introverts want to be told exactly what to do and why. They’re not going to do well making choices on their own because they tend to over-analyze and become paralyzed. You will need to give them deadlines and explain what “done” looks like.

These people might be amazing at program design but not the greatest coaches.

In a management role, they’re good at reporting problems but not good at solving problems on their own. The issue: They’re still perfectionists. Establish bare minimums and teach them when a B+ is acceptable. You’ll have to coach them on the difference between being “right” and being “effective.” Luckily, these people will respond very well to specific feedback and coaching.

One warning: Their constant attention to rules and details might show up as condescension or sarcasm. Let them know how they appear to others on the team. Ask for their opinion to make them feel smart.

The Fact-Based Extrovert

The strong personalities—they want to be in control and take the lead.

Give them projects that they can “own” and let them run with them. The intrapreneurial model works especially well here: Give them a specialty group, break down the exact steps for them to take, and they will get the work done and run a great program.

However, fact-based extroverts might be loud in meetings, talk over others or step on toes to get their jobs done.

These members of your team might prefer more direct feedback, but you still have to focus on what they’ve done right first. Being argumentative will escalate. Ask “how do you think you did?” and “if we did this again, what could we do better?”

As Brian says, “It’s all sales. You’re still selling them on correcting their course.”

Fact-based extroverts respond well to big-picture thinking, like seeing your vision board or mission statement.

Their eagerness means they are good at starting projects but might need help with the steps. They’ll stay motivated as long as they see progress.

The Relationship Introvert

These people are calm, laid back and not easy to excite.

You want to give all praise and criticism to relationship introverts in private. Don’t correct them in front of others. They want to fit in. You can even write them a letter or send them a voice message to praise them or ask them questions. They wouldn’t want to be interviewed for an Instagram reel.

Their fear is disappointing you. You need to explain the need for expediency and why delivering quickly at a B+ level is better than not getting anything done.

End-of-shift notes are really effective with these staff members. They’ll be nervous about having a meeting or formal evaluation.

The Relationship Extrovert

People in this group are very enthusiastic but most likely to overextend themselves. They’ll never want to say “no” because they want to help, but they might not know their own limitations. They need to be told it’s better to say “no” than to overpromise and underdeliver.

Make sure you’re taking advantage of their energy and enthusiasm, but give them guidelines. Tell them why it’s important to stick to the rules. For example, these coaches might think they’re “overdelivering” by letting their sessions run over time. But really, they’re negatively impacting the business because being behind has a snowball effect on the next classes and clients.

A coach who’s a relationship extrovert might also want to know why they can’t just stick around after class and give people one-on-one coaching for free. Explain with reference to fairness. Lay out the consequences of “free personal training” for the business and explain how the rules apply to everyone else.

Learn to Lead

Your staff members want to do their best work. To help them, you need to lead each person slightly differently.

This isn’t easy—especially if a team member’s personality is very different from yours. But true leadership of diverse groups requires a CEO to develop and constantly improve skills. If you want to be a great CEO and grow your gym business, analyze your staff and tailor your approach to each person.

The post How to Be a CEO: Leading the Four Personalities on Your Team appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Four Personalities: Tailored Coaching and Programming

According to gym owner and mentor Brian Bott, four personality types can be found in a gym.

To recap, the characteristics on the left combine with those on the right to create four groups:

Here’s how to approach coaching and programming for each.

The Fact-Based Introvert

These people are analytical. They’re going to want to review their InBody scan and all the data from their wearables each month.

Coaching these people means explaining exactly what’s going on in definitive terms. For example, “We’re going to increase your load by 5 percent. Your last deadlift day, we used 135 lb. for 10 reps. That means you should be able to do 155 for 8 today. That’s our goal.”

These people will want to get into the weeds. They’ll want to talk about tempo and heart-rate zones. Their confidence comes from knowing and feeling smart. They’ll probably always be looking at other programming online. Be ready to answer their questions about why your program is best for them, and don’t take offense when they ask why you’re not following CompTrain or Mayhem.

Over-explain their programming. In fact, over-explain everything. The more you come back to “why and how,” the better.

The Fact-Based Extrovert

These folks want to be the boss. They’re loud and in charge.

Let them choose their own adventure a bit. If you want them to do a pressing movement, you might let them choose between a barbell or dumbbells, for instance. This creates a bit more work for the coach, but this client will love having a choice.

During goal reviews, this client should be asked “what do you want to work on next?” And they’ll have an answer.

Let them feel as if they have some input on their training. If they want bigger arms, add a few curls once per week even if you don’t think they’re important. They need to feel important.

The hard part is when they assume they know what they’re doing and they don’t. Resist the urge to “win” the debate or prove that you’re smarter. Instead, keep them moving and steer them a little bit: “Hey, if you’re already this good, I have one little tweak that will make it even better.” Then just keep them around for a long time and keep tweaking their form.

If you get argumentative, they’re gone.

The Relationship-Based Introvert

Coach them directly and not in front of others. Private training is perfect for these people to start.

Grab the weights for them. Reduce opportunities for them to make mistakes, especially when they’re new.

These people can eventually work out in a group, but their biggest fear is appearing “different” or being singled out. They might want to “hide,” and that can lead to bad choices (choosing the same weight as everyone else).

Give them one-to-one feedback—even in a group—and encourage your other leaders to give them one-to-one feedback, too. Don’t single them out.

For programming, keep it simple. They won’t get bored. But don’t take risks: They’d be mortified if they fell on a box jump or tried and tried a pull-up and couldn’t get it. Early wins are more important for this group than for anyone else. They need to feel like “I can do this.”

These people will often stick with the same workout for a decade, even when it stops working, because they’re uncomfortable with change.

(If you highlight hand rips and a big group of people cheering on the last person to finish the workout, you will chase these people away. That’s the last thing they want.)

The Relationship-Based Extrovert

These people couldn’t care less about your programming. They want to be energized.

Ask how they’re feeling and tell them when you’re going to push it. They don’t need to know precise reps or weights. “We’re going to do 15 to 20!” They might want to know how many reps the others did, and they’re going to say things like, “Oh, that burns!”

They don’t want a lot of explanation. They don’t care about the numbers—but you need to keep track of their weights for them. They might lose track of their reps in a workout or talk while the coach is talking. They feed off your energy.

In goal reviews, make sure you ask “was this fun for you?” They care about their results, but they care more about the experience. They might need more conditioning workouts and intensity than the average person to stay engaged.

If you’re not this type of person yourself, this personality type might be tough to manage. But you need to provide them with energy and fun or they’ll leave to find it elsewhere.

Running a big group can take a lot of the “energy” burden off the coach, but relationship-based extroverts often need to be propped up until the party gets started.

Years ago, many of the people in my 6-a.m. class fell into this category. They exhausted me. But when I put a fresh, young coach in front of them, they absolutely loved her. She didn’t have my education or experience, but she could run a fun warmup and didn’t get frustrated by answering the same question over and over. The group grew better with her in charge of it.

The Easiest Type to Coach Is …

Which personality type is easiest to coach? Probably the person who’s most like you.

But be careful: If you only attract relationship-based extroverts, your churn rate will probably be high. And if you only attract fact-based introverts, your lead gen will be very slow.

A good mix is preferable. But keeping everyone engaged and working optimally requires you to develop your skill set as a coach so you can help every kind of person find success.

The post The Four Personalities: Tailored Coaching and Programming appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Sales Secrets: The Four Personalities in Your Gym

According to semi-private training expert Brian Bott, you’ll find four primary personality types in your gym.

In this series, I’ll share how Bott approaches each when he’s selling them a training plan, programming and coaching their workouts, and managing them as staff.

First, a diagram—the characteristics on the left combine with those on the right to create four groups:

Below, I’ll list some characteristics of each

The Fact-Based IntrovertVery analytical.Has done all the research.Obsessed with data.”Perfectionist.” Can struggle with decision making if given too much data.Most likely to read your 20-page blog post on Zone 2 training.
The Fact-Based ExtrovertVery strong personality.Loud, wants to be in control.Can come across as stubborn or arrogant.Likes to take the lead.Straight to the point.Makes decisions quickly and assertively.
The Relationship-Based IntrovertVery calm, laid back, not easy to excite.Biggest fear would be upsetting anyone.Doesn’t care who wins as long as no one gets hurt.Doesn’t like independent activities. Wants to ”be just like everyone else.”
The Relationship-Based ExtrovertThe life of the party.Great motivator of groups.Great storyteller. People pleaser.Tends to run late with 100 things always going on.Can get bored, won’t always pay attention to explanations.Sometimes struggles to get things done due to excitement and stimulation.
Selling to the Four Personalities

Let’s start with how to get each type signed up. In the next post, I’ll share Brian’s advice on programming and coaching each type. And after that, I’ll explain how to manage these folks.

Fact-Based Introvert

These people are analytical. They’ve done the research. They want to know exactly what they’re going to do. They might know more about your product than you do.

When you ask, “How did you hear about us?” they’ll tell you they’ve been following your stuff for a while.

Sometimes they might sound negative because they question everything, but they’re actually trying to identify and solve problems. This makes it hard for them to make decisions.

Laying out the data will help convince them. Instead of talking about “the burn” or how they’ll feel, you must explain to them why strength training and protein consumption will help them lose weight.

Fact-based introverts fear being taken advantage of and will want to know about policies.

Don’t overwhelm these people. Be clear: “Based on my research, here’s what’s best for you.” Use phrases like “as you know … .”

Paralysis by analysis will prevent progress. Ask “which piece specifically do you need more information on?” and then respond right away.

Fact-Based Extrovert

These people have super-strong personalities. They know what option they want when they walk in. They probably serve in a management role at work, and they enjoy feeling like they’re in charge.

Over-explaining your options will turn these people off. They want to know what it costs, when they can come to classes, who their coach will be and how they can get started as soon as possible.

Use phrases like “you know what works best for you!” to shoehorn them into starting. Let them pick their path to start. Review their goals after 90 days and guide them to make one small change. Basically, you must get out of their way.

I’ve screwed this up by trying to prove how smart I am and taking an hour to explain our process when fact-based extroverts really just want to pay and get started.

Relationship-Based Introvert

Very quiet, laid back. It’s hard to get them excited about anything. Their lack of visible energy might make it appear as if they don’t care.

“Hey, you’re going to fit right in. This is where most of our members started when you came in.”

Tone matters: Keep a confidential tone instead of being overly exuberant. They care a lot but they’re not excitable. They also don’t like independent activities.

You want to show them they’re going to feel right at home, that they’ll be ready. Say things like this: “All of our members started this way and got some extra help. You’re going to meet people and fit right in. We will start with on-ramp and take great care of you before we introduce you to something else.”

Their greatest fear is looking stupid by trying something for the first time in front of others. These are not people with whom you want to do a functional movement screen because they’ll feel like “I can’t do this.” When dealing with relationship-based introverts, provide quick wins right away instead of finding problems to fix.

Relationship-Based Extrovert

These are loud, high-energy people—the social butterflies.

These people want to be in class with their friends, and they don’t want to be left out: “You want to do exactly what your friends are doing, right? They’re here three times a week.”

If they really want to be with their friends, get them started right away and then change their prescription over time to make it perfect. If they’re already headed in one direction, keep them going in that direction even if it’s not optimal. You can make adjustments over time as you strengthen the relationship and build trust.

Relationship-based extroverts have the highest churn because they’re regularly going to be attracted to new things.

Why Tailor Sales Pitches?

Remember: If you can’t sign them up, you can’t coach them.

Knowing a prospective client’s personality type will help you get them started, and that’s the first step to helping them become fitter and healthier.

The post Sales Secrets: The Four Personalities in Your Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.