Chris Cooper's Blog, page 70
May 22, 2023
How Mentorship Works: Are You Ready for Rocket Fuel?
Two-Brain Business is a 1:1 mentorship practice for gym owners.
We work 1:1 because I want gym owners to get results fast.
Group coaching programs are built to create a certain lifestyle for the coach. Ours is built to create a lifestyle for the client—you, the gym owner.
Here’s how Two-Brain mentorship works.
Phase 1: Are You Ready for Mentorship?
We don’t invite everyone into our mentorship practice. In fact, we’re about to cap our practice at 1,000 gyms worldwide (we’re sitting at 868 as I write this).
The first step to working with us is booking a call with my intake team here.
On that call, you’re going to be asked some questions about:
Your metrics (bring your key business numbers to the call—or at least bring a close estimate).Your time (do you have 30 minutes every day to grow your business?).Your energy level.Your vision and values.
If we’re a good fit for each other, our team starts your Mentor Match.
You’re making an investment in your business—but also in your family, your team and your clients. Our mentor team is investing time in helping you. They’re busy entrepreneurs, too. So we want to ensure this is a good match on both sides.
Our client-success team goes through an exercise to choose the perfect mentor based on:
Your goals.Your needs.Your history.Your personality.Your preferences.Your time zone.The type of gym you own.
We have over 60 mentors on the team, so we can always find a great match—and you can change mentors if you have to (which is very rare). Read our mentors’ biographies here.
After you’re matched with your mentor, we book your first mentor call—usually about 48 hours later. This gives the mentor time to learn about your unique case, and it gives you a bit of time to do some prep work in our RampUp course.
In the next post in this series, I’ll tell you about RampUp. But if you’re ready to claim your seat now, click here to speak with our intake team!
The post How Mentorship Works: Are You Ready for Rocket Fuel? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 19, 2023
Free Access for Kids? Not a Good Idea at Your Gym.
Planet Fitness is giving away gym access to teens from May 15 to Aug. 31.
The High School Summer Pass program is for U.S. and Canadian kids between 14 and 19—they can sign up, download an app and then work out for free.
So should you give away free memberships if you run a facility that sells coaching instead of just access to equipment?
No—you definitely should not do that.
The Summer Pass program is a marketing effort and an advertising campaign of sorts.
Quick details:
At the time of writing, Planet Fitness memberships are generally $10 for the Classic package and $25 for the Black Card, which allows you to bring a friend, use massage chairs and tanning beds, get 50 percent off some drinks, and so on.The Summer Pass program sends you a digital club pass through an app.A leaderboard tracks signups from schools, and the Top 5 in Canada and the U.S. will each get a $10,000 grant.Kids—10 total—will have a chance to win $10,000 scholarships if they submit videos on TikTok.The Planet Fitness spend for this program is about US$175,000 if you factor in the exchange rate on Canadian grants and scholarships.
Some perspective:
Access and Coaching Are Different
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not criticizing the program. Anything that gets kids moving is great.
I’m just pointing out that this is clearly a marketing campaign that leverages space and equipment that’s already in place and likely underused, especially during summer.
If you run a coaching facility, you are not in the space and equipment game—and you should not attempt to compete with Planet Fitness this summer.
You sell coaching—let’s call that “time.” You only have so much time, and giving it away will cost you a lot of money.
Further, you sell a high-value service. Personal trainers should probably charge in the range of $75 or more for sessions, and Two-Brain gyms regularly charge more than $200 to $300 a month for other service packages that can include group training. Rates for kids programs should not be lower than rates for adult programs.
Coaching is a premium service, and discounting it or giving it away devalues that service.
You can see how the plan works for Planet Fitness: A free summer membership isn’t that far off from a $10 Classic membership in fall. And someone at the Planet Fitness corporate office definitely has a plan to encourage that transition.
At a coaching gym, you won’t have a lot of success converting three months of free training to a membership that costs $150-$300 a month. The jump is too great, especially after you’ve accidentally told someone coaching is worth $0 for three months.
Planet Fitness is offering free access. You just can’t afford to give away time and coaching for free.
Do This Instead
So how should you get kids into your gym this summer? By creating and marketing a paid program for young ones. Here’s everything you need to do that:
1. The linked articles in this series will tell you exactly how to price, schedule, staff and grow a profitable kids program at your gym: “Building Youth Programs.”
2. This video (or podcast) will give you about 10 clever ways to market a kids program without devaluing your service or draining your time:
3. If you want a complete PDF guide to growing a kids program without devaluing your service, you can request it in our Gym Owners United group on Facebook (if you aren’t a member yet, join and then request the guide).
If you’re even a little bit tempted to give kids free access to your gym this summer, reconsider.
There are much better ways to grow a kids program that serves young ones and helps your gym generate profit.
The post Free Access for Kids? Not a Good Idea at Your Gym. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 18, 2023
Semi-Private Training: How Coaches Can Earn $80 or More Per Hour
Mike Warkentin (00:00):
Semi-private training. It’s a game changer for owners and coaches. Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” We’re gonna tell you how to get it in place fast. This is “Run a Profitable gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin, your host. Please don’t forget to subscribe. I don’t want you to miss a single episode. Now, semi-private training. Here’s the deal: You coach two to four clients through individual workouts in a group setting. Now they’re not doing variations of the exact same workout. They’re doing individualized programming with the supervision of a coach, and there’ll be other people doing the exact same thing. The coach’s attention is split several ways, but they’re doing personal training. Now, the benefit here: clients get personalized workouts and more attention than they would in a group setting, and the coaches and owners earn more. This is what we’re gonna tell you how to do. My guest today is gonna give you a streamlined plan to get this program into place at warp speed. Now, Brian Bott, he owns a Aspire Fitness in New Jersey. He has monster average revenue per member at this gym—we’ve done a show on this, and it’s mostly because of semi-private training. Brian is gonna be telling coaches about this at the Two-Brain Summit that’s coming up in June. There’s still time to get tickets. Check it out. Now, Brian, welcome. Can we get gym owners up to speed really fast today?
Brian Bott (01:11):
Let’s them let them going.
Mike Warkentin (01:13):
First I gotta get ask you, because I wanna make people understand how valuable this is, what are the rewards of semi-private training? Like what’s the main benefit for three different groups? The client, the coach and the owner.
Brian Bott (01:24):
Okay. So the benefit for the client is that they’re going to be able to get a more individualized experience. So if they’re coming from a group environment, they’re going to have a more individualized approach. So as you touched on, they’re not gonna be just doing the same thing as everybody else in class. If they have a specific goal, a specific plan is always the best recipe for that. If they’re coming from traditionally only working in a one-on-one setting, the benefit is they’re actually gonna get a little bit of a price discount. So some of them can actually train more frequently. If they can train more frequently, they get better results. If they get better results and they have better accountability, they stay longer and they’re willing to pay more.
Mike Warkentin (01:58):
There’s a huge win for the client.
Brian Bott (02:00):
Yes. And then also one of the more underrated ones is that it’s much easier to schedule. If I’m doing one on ones, I only have one available slot at a very popular time—at 6 a.m. before people have to go home and get ready for work, right? Unless I do semi-private, where I can have anywhere from two to six people at that time slot. Now I’ve doubled, at a minimum—our goal is to double your hourly rate at that time period. But as you progress and you get better at it, you can add more clients to that hour, and you can even pass beyond that. So now you’re getting you know, six hours’ worth of work done if you look long term at this in a one-block period. And everybody’s still getting the same individualized experience.
Mike Warkentin (02:39):
I love it. I love it. And so the coaches, what happens for them?
Brian Bott (02:43):
Well, the money, right? That and avoiding the burnout, right? If I can take those six clients at 6 a.m.—which would have normally taken me until noon and also would have been impossible. Because if they have to do 6 a.m. they have—we live in an area where people commute to city by ferry. The boat leaves at 7:15. So as much as you can say you have a slot open at 9 a.m., that’s great. It’s all well and good, but they physically cannot come at that time. So you’re able to condense your schedule much more efficiently and make more money and not have to feel like you’re taking somebody at 6 o’clock—“Well, then I’m waiting for the moms to do their drop-off, and then I have one person at eight or nine, and then I have another little break where I work out. And then maybe I get someone at 1 o’clock. And you have this monster day, and you look back and you’re like, “I only trained four people, but I worked 10 hours. Right? so this is a much better way to say, “Hey, I have slots available from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., and in them I can take”—we usually start people with three per hour. Cause it is a little bit of adjustment period. So I have, you know, however many, 12 slots in those four hours to work with people. So now instead of having four available slots, we have 12. So much more efficient that way.
Mike Warkentin (03:54):
Gimme an hourly rate range. Like what are coaches earning in an hour like that?
Brian Bott (03:58):
So it all depends. Cause we, we do use the four-ninths model. Mm-Hmm. So if they’re looking at, you know, depending on what the price range is, if we’re doing, you know, $50 for a semi-private, that’s getting them, what, around close to $22 an hour per client. So if they have four of them, they are making upwards of $80 an hour to do their personal training in that setting.
Mike Warkentin (04:21):
$80 an hour, which is like—you can start making a career out of this. It’s not $20 an hour. Because if you think about group-class coaching, $20 an hour times eight hours is gonna get you about 160 bucks. You could make that potentially in two hours of semi-private training, which leaves you a ton of extra time to do stuff. And, you know, even just see your kids if you wanted to. So this is a huge deal for coaches. Coaches. You cannot not take a look at this program. Owners obvious benefit, Brian, but just lay it out for me. What happens when to an owner when a coach starts running a program like this?
Brian Bott (04:53):
It makes the sales experience a little bit easier because you have more offerings. It’s not just about, you know, this one time slot. The biggest thing for owners, too, is that you get to keep your best employees. I have six clients that wanna do 6 a.m. and I only offer one-on-one sessions, I need six employees. I need to manage six personalities. I need to manage six schedules instead of having one rock-star coach who is bought into your way of doing things at your gym, and you can reward them by loading them up with four or five people in that hour. You guys can stay on the same page. They feel appreciated because they’re making more money. And you don’t have to worry about managing, you know, six coaches’ schedules in that time period. And then the financial aspects are all the same as the coaches. You’re just on the other side of it. So you get stuck sometimes looking at “well, how am I ever gonna fit more in?” And then just to touch on another benefit for a coach: it frees up time. Because a lot of times people will be like, “Well, that’s great. You know, I went through the nutrition coursework. I just don’t have—when would I ever possibly do that if I’m coaching from 6 in the morning till 1 o’clock?” Well, if you can condense that into three or four hours, you could work out, grab lunch, see your family, and then plug away at that for a few hours in the afternoon or at night—whatever your schedule allows. And now you actually have time to—it’s a multiplier effect. It’s not just what it gives you for semi-private, it’s just that it gives you more time to focus in other areas as well.
Mike Warkentin (06:21):
All right. So owners, if you’re listening, huge benefits, obviously financial. If the coach is taking four-ninths, you’re taking five-ninths, and some of that is profit, and some of that is goes to fixed costs. But you get the idea: if everyone earns more money, everyone earns more money. The other thing: staff retention. And the third thing Is it doesn’t require 17,000 staff members. You just need a few really, really good ones who will make careers at your business. And again, to reiterate to coaches, you can literally make a career by watching this show and the one that Cynthia Fotti put in place. It’s also in our archives, and we’ll link to it in the show notes. If you wanna do semi-private training for half your time and you wanna do habits-based nutrition coaching for the other half, you have a career in the fitness industry, and it’s not a $20-an-hour career. It is a high-value, long-term actual career that you can make a living on. Check these things out. Now, Brian, let’s get right to it. Drill me in. How do we get this program into place as fast as possible? Someone hears you speak at the summit and they’re fired up. They say to their owner, “I wanna do semi-private training.” How do we do this at warp speed?
Brian Bott (07:22):
The first thing to get in place is just understanding that nothing is changing from what you’re doing with your clients. If you were gonna train them on this workout on Monday, and Client B on their workout on Monday at nine, we’re simply gonna put them together, and you’re gonna train them at the same time starting next Monday. So, pricing, the simplest way to do this—and our first initial goal is to double your hourly rate. So if you’re, you know, if you’re charging $90 for a one-on-one session, and again, don’t use a one-on-one price if someone comes in off the street, whatever. If someone was gonna train with you twice a week for an hour each time, what is that price for a one-on-one session? We’re just gonna double that. And then we’re gonna divide it by the three people that you’re gonna be training. And that becomes your semi-private price. So simple as that. That’s how we get it. You can overlay that into however your gym is already doing membership. There’s a lot of other things that we can cover. But if we’re trying to get this done quick, just take that, double it, divide by three. That’s now the new pricing.
Mike Warkentin (08:21):
And that’s per person?
Brian Bott (08:22):
Yep.
Mike Warkentin (08:23):
That’s your exact pricing formula. Guys, if you’re listening to this, that is exactly how you can create a quick and easy pricing formula for this.
Brian Bott (08:30):
If you look at it from a client’s perspective, they’re getting a 33% discount, right? If that person was training with you twice a week privately, technically they could upgrade at the same price and train with you three times a week. And now that’s the easy part. Because people are always like, “Well, how am I gonna get people to change?” That’s the easiest way. “Hey, Mark, what do you think about training an extra day per week.” “Okay, how much?” “Nothing, but we’re just gonna do it semi-privately. You can come in a third day.” And then that’s it, right?
Mike Warkentin (09:00):
Perfect. And it’s still a high-value service, right? Like it’s still a high-value service where the client is still getting a huge amount of a personalized attention, but it’s not one on one. So you can work with a few extra clients and they’re still getting an amazing amount of attention, more so than in a 10-person group class. You’ve got these three people, they get their personalized programs. And in that you’re saying, “Okay, here’s your warmup. It’s specific to your goals. I want you to just hit the bike for a few minutes.” And then you go to the next person. So all you’re doing is you’re just splitting your attention a few different ways, but the client is getting only a very small reduction in attention. But huge value. Take me further, Brian, this is awesome.
Brian Bott (09:36):
Right. Yeah. So that’s where we’re gonna start from a pricing standpoint. When to offer it? Your busiest time. If you do a quick schedule analysis, you’re probably gonna see a general 80-20 split. Like anything else that we see, a majority of your business wants to come in at a limited amount of time that you’re able to offer. So if you do a quick analysis, it doesn’t take a lot of work to figure this out. It’s usually before people have to go to work or after their kids go to school, right? At least in our area, right? So if you’re not sure when to offer semi-private training initially, those are the times. When are you the busiest? And that’s where we’re gonna switch over to. Don’t make the mistake of thinking, “Well, this is something new, so I’m gonna stick it in the middle of the day and hope to build it up there.” The times that people wanna train are the times that people wanna train. New people aren’t gonna know what semi-private is. They’re just gonna know “this is how we do things here.” So get it on the schedule as quickly as you can. Figure out the people that it would be a good fit for and communicate to them right away that this is the way that your business is going and this is how they can help you by jumping into this semi-private. And stress to them “your workout’s not changing. Nothing’s changing. I’m just gonna watch you guys at the same time.” And they’re your client. They like you, they know you, they trust you. For the most part, they’ve probably been training with you for a while, so there’s not gonna be as much pushback on it as you think. They’re just gonna be like, “Okay, cool. Sounds good. Let’s go.” Especially if you’re going to them with a discount, right?
Mike Warkentin (11:00):
If someone wants to keep going one on one, that’s cool, right? You just say, “Hey, try this out. And if you still like the one-on-one attention, we can still do that. The rate is this.” And they’re like, “cool.” And you’re like, “good.”
Brian Bott (11:11):
Absolutely. Yep. We just tell ’em—the best way that we phrase it is: “Hey, Mike, can you do me a favor for this next phase of programming? Try this semi-private for me, right? No cost to you, you know.” And you go straight through it that way. And most people are “perfect. I’ll try it for that amount of time.” And most people don’t notice the difference. You know, it’ll actually force your coaches to be a little bit more on their game because your coaching cues have to be that much more precise. You eliminate the “hey, did you see the Knicks game last night?” Like, you know, not that that stuff’s not important, but in general, it keeps you focused. Like this person is here for an experience, and let’s keep focused on that, and you move forward that way. So scheduling is probably the easiest part that people spend too much time on. What’s the busiest time in the gym? That’s when we’re operating.
Mike Warkentin (11:58):
Okay? So you’ve got pricing laid out, guys, you’ve got scheduling laid out. What else do you need to get this thing going? Tell me more. I’ve got a couple questions to ask you, but take me further on your plan first.
Brian Bott (12:07):
The other tactic that has to be in place is some sort of plan for programming. A lot of times when people are coaching one on one, it’s very easy to, if Mike comes in, to say, “Hey, Mike, how you doing?” “Ah, you know what? I played six hours of tennis yesterday. My knees are a little beat up.” “All right, man, this is what we’re gonna do today.” And I just coach the person through that hour. They have a good workout. We move on. You’re not gonna be able to do that with four people in an hour. You can’t manage that, and it’s not really necessary. Whatever. Start documenting exactly what you’re doing with your people, and put that into a plan. You know, we go over programming extensively when we do a little bit more in-depth coaching on this, but in general, just take what you’re doing right now and start putting it to paper so that people know “what’s my plan for the next three to four weeks?” And that’s laid out. Whether you do that digitally or on paper, it does not matter. Whatever your system is now for showing a client with their workout is gonna be, we just need to make sure that that is planned ahead of time so that when people come in, the coach knows “hey, this is what this person’s doing today.” because you’re not gonna be able to make up workouts on the fly for four different people all in the same hour. So centralized programming, whether it’s one coach that does it at the gym and the other coaches follow it, or each person has their individuals—there just needs to be a structure in place for what this client is gonna do. You know, Week 1, Day 1. So Week 4 Day 30—we do four-to-six week programs, and that gets updated that way. You can do that however you want, but it just has to be some sort of plan in place that the clients know what they’re following and that when they come in the coach knows exactly “this is what Mike’s got today. This is what John’s got today. And this is what Sally has today.” And then we’re just stepping back and coaching them.
Mike Warkentin (13:46):
This advice to systemize your business does not just apply to this exact thing, semi-private training. It applies to your entire business. If you wanna grow as a coach or owner, whatever, you need to systemize things so that it’s replicated and you deliver the same great service at the same high level to every single client no matter what. That is how you grow a business. It applies specifically in this case because now you’ve got four people or three, whatever, to manage in your semi-private groups. You have to know exactly what’s going on. You cannot just make it up because then your service level goes down, and it’s not the same high value. But if you have these programming blocks laid out, you know exactly what’s up. You’re prepared. And I’ll give you a benefit here, too: if a coach is sick, or if you wanna have different coaches come in to coach different clients, they pick up that programming. “Boom. I know exactly what Cindy is doing. I know exactly her goals. I’m gonna lay this out. This is the workout. Away we go.” It’s seamless. So it allows you a huge amount of flexibility. Brian, tell me, for coaches out there, how tough is it to get up to speed on this? Because I’ve coached group classes, and they’re chaotic with 10, 12 people. I can do it, but it’s work. I’ve coached one-on-one people where it’s laser focus. Talk to me about that in between and what kind of skills coaches need to make it happen.
Brian Bott (14:55):
That’s exactly why we’ll recommend people—when we’re bringing your new coach up, we start them with one on one. We progress into working with two people per hour. We progress into three, and so on. We don’t throw a new coach into, you know, “You got six people at 8 o’clock. Good luck, buddy.” They come up that way. So start with—it’s like training, right? Start light, add weight over time. Same thing with semi-private. Start with two, move to three. Don’t jump into four right away if you’re not comfortable with that. The preparation is where you’ll have the most success. So if you have the workouts preplanned, you’re aware of how much equipment that you have, right? If you have one squat rack, you can’t, can’t have six people on Monday that need to all squat at the same time, at least with a barbell, right? So little things like that, you’ll get better over time. But like any other skill, just start and consider it practice, right? As long as the client’s got a great workout and they were working on what they need to, you’ll learn the rest. But the skill set is really just knowing what are the touchpoints that each of these people needs through this workout to make them still feel like this was a one-on-one experience. So for example, if, Mike, if you come in and I look at your program and your main exercise for today was a deadlift and the rest of your stuff is some accessory circuit type stuff, I’m gonna say to you, “Hey, Mike, looks like we got those deadlifts today. Listen, go through your warmup. I know you know that pretty well. When you get to that deadlift, Hey, give me a shout. I’m gonna be right next to you, and we’ll figure out where we’re gonna push that today. And then we’ll go forward from there.” Now you’re doing your warmup. I go over to Susan: “Susan, awesome. Hey, it looks like we got some push presses today. All right, let’s get through the warmup. When you’re doing those push presses, I’m gonna be right by you making sure that we’re going over where we’re at and giving you that push that you need.” And then you’re just making your way around and making sure that you do that. I don’t need to stand next to you while you’re doing your band triceps pushdowns, right? Like, if you’re doing some assistance work at the end, “Hey, I can show that to you,” and in 30 seconds we can move on. You know, so spend time in the most high-value, high-risk, high-reward type exercises, right? If you have one client that’s deadlifting and another one who is doing a hamstring curl with a Swiss ball, you probably should stand next to the person who’s deadlifting and keep your eyes so that you could see the other person. And it’s always just giving feedback to people continuously. “Mike, great job with the deadlifts. All right, perfect. Hey, Susan, awesome. Hips up a little bit while you’re doing that.” And you’re giving one little tip for each exercise. We teach our coaches if you can intervene once on every exercise, one cue, no exercise goes by without at least one cue, then to the client, they’re gonna be like, “Wow, that was, you know, Brian was paying attention to me to the whole hour. That was great.” And they’re not gonna notice the difference. So if you can focus on that, it’s a lot more work for the coach, but it’s better.
Mike Warkentin (17:43):
There’s a pace to this, and, guys, you’re gonna learn it as you do it. And the best analogy I can think of is if you’re serving tables in a busy restaurant, you’ve got seven or eight tables or whatever it is, you move from table to table, you take the order, you bring the drinks, you do the stuff, but you’re checking in on each table, making sure everyone is having an amazing experience and has everything that they need. And then you’re just dividing your attention around. Great servers, if you’ve ever served in a restaurant and you were good at it, you’ll know it’s not that hard to do if you’re on top of everything. If you get frazzled and “oh, I don’t know who ordered what,” blah, you don’t check in on people, that’s when people get angry. You don’t get tipped. Same principle applies here. You’re just moving around. And in some cases, like Brian said, you’re doubling up your attention where you’re looking over top of someone who’s doing something and saying, “Hey, tuck your elbows over there, hips up over there,” and then you’re high fiving. “Great job!” Build your relationship. “You accomplished this goal”—and all the things that go along with that. I’m not gonna ask Brian to dig into more details on this because we were gonna keep this high speed. So the question that I wanna ask you, Brian, is you talked about getting current clients into a semi-private program. Talk to me about acquiring new clients who aren’t in your gym right now for a semi-private program. How does that go?
Brian Bott (18:46):
That’s the easy part, because they’re not gonna know the difference, right? So think about what people ask for when they come into your gym and you’re going through your No Sweat Intro. Very rarely does anybody walk in and say, “Hey, I saw that you guys do one-on-one training here, and I would like to sign up for that,” right? That’s never happens. If it does, great, then, you know, sign ’em up and let’s go. Right? But for the most part, if you’re saying “how can we help you?” it’s “ah, you know what? I had a couple kids. Work got busy. I’m 25, 30 pounds heavier than I want to be. I don’t have the energy.” Right? At no point is the answer to that “well, you need to do one-on-one training.” Right? The answer is training and nutrition. And then you can explain to ’em “here’s how we do training here. All of our members do semi-private training.” You’re letting them know “this is how we do business here.” Especially if they were referred to you from another member, that trust is already there, right? They’re not a brand new cold lead. No one ever comes into us asking for one-on-one training, right? They just come in, they’re looking for a solution to their problem, and you’re gonna explain to them “hey, here’s your prescription. I need you to strength training twice a week, and then I need you to do two cardio workouts per week, whether that’s in a class or on your own.” Whatever, however you do it in your gym is fine. But then you say “and the way that we do our training here is semi privately. That means it’s one to four people per coach, all with individualized programs. It saves you time, money, makes the schedule a lot easier.” Every single person after that goes “cool.” No one requires further explanation of that. They just know “this is how we’re doing business here.” So for coaches, if you can work with your owners and decide “this is how we’re doing business going forward,” then it makes it that much easier. Those consultations are the easiest because there’s no change in perception of what’s happening. They’re coming in as a fresh start. You’re just saying, “This is how we do business.”
Mike Warkentin (20:36):
Brian has laid out in very clear detail the Prescriptive Model. And what that is is you talk to a client, you find out what their problems are, you prescribe the solutions. And those solutions could be anywhere from personal training and nutrition services, very high value, to group coaching, which is lower value, but still high value. You just lay out the solutions. And one of those solutions in this system is semi-private training. Get this: it’s an incredible sales option. If someone says, “I just can’t afford one-on-one personal training,” you’re like, “Well, I have semi-private training, which will allow you to work with two to three other people in a group. Your rates will go down by this.” Which Brian laid out earlier. “’And you’re going to get this many sessions, but you’re still getting tons of attention in a personalized program.” You’ll call it the gold, silver, platinum packages. That’s a nice “gold package” that fits in between one-on-one training, which is platinum, and your group training, which would be called, you know, we’ll call it the silver or whatever. It’s not, again, it’s not a bad program. It’s just not personalized training. Brian, have you seen that? Like, just this very easy dropdown? someone’s like, “I can’t afford personal training.” You’re like, “I have semi-private.”
Brian Bott (21:39):
Yeah. I’ll continue with your restaurant analogy, right? So imagine you were the server and I said, “Hey, Mike, I’m starving. What do you recommend?” and you just point to the $300 thing. “Yeah. Oh, of course you recommended the expensive thing.” “Hey, what glass of wine do you recommend?” And you just scroll to the bottom and go “that one would be great for you.” Like, then I don’t trust you, right? I don’t think that you truly had my concern, my needs at the top of your mind, right? So for us, it gives us a little bit more of a genuine prescription because—listen, they teach people how to operate and be some surgeons in a semi-private setting. They teach people you know, self-defense. And firearms instruction. It’s all done semi-private. “So I will make sure that your shoulder is just fine when you’re doing those lat pull-downs.” I promise you nothing’s gonna happen. If someone comes in, even if they’re outta shape and they’ve never worked out before, if they don’t have any glaring major injuries or anything like that, we can set them up semi-private. And I think a lot of people appreciate it. Like they’re saying, “Hey, this guy didn’t try to set me up with the $3,000, one-on-one, four-times-a-week membership if it’s not necessary.” Right? As a touchpoint, if someone came in and said, “I was just discharged from physical therapy from an ACL repair, and I’ve never worked out before in my life,” I would say, “Hey, let’s get your first month done privately.” Because then that’s also genuine sales, right? It’s not an upsell. It’s not anything. It’s genuinely “I think you should probably do this first.” And then our goal, our end point for every member for us is “and then we’ll get you going in the semi-private training.” Right? Because for us, that is our standard operating procedure. Like that twice-a-week, semi-private package is our main membership. Most people are gonna filter to that over time.
Mike Warkentin (23:28):
Brian, I think on our previous show, you said your ARM was well over $300—that’s average revenue per member. Are you still well above that?
Brian Bott (23:35):
We’re around like $385 right now. Correct, yep. The number that we were at when we came on for that one month was $400. That was a little bit above the absolute norm, but $380 is where we’re at right now. So for us that average, you know, twice-a-week semi-private can be, depending on where you’re at and what your numbers are, it can be anywhere between $400 and $500 a month. And if that becomes your most popular membership, the math averages out from there.
Mike Warkentin (24:05):
So, listeners, you’ve got everything you need here. You’ve got the benefits—financial, huge financial benefits for everybody. Benefits for the client. You’ve got pricing. You’ve got scheduling. You’ve got client acquisition, whether it’s internal or external. You’ve got systems and programming. Brian, is there anything else? And if there isn’t, that’s cool, but is there anything else people need to know to get this thing going at high speed?
Brian Bott (24:24):
Just you have to build it for them. You just have to build it, right? You can’t wait. You can’t try to get 13 people signed up for it before you start, right? You know, it’s still if you build it, they will come. Right? The people, they already know, like and trust you. Just let them know that it’s new and that you’re, you’re working on it, and just get started.
Mike Warkentin (24:41):
Listeners, try this. If you are not running it at your gym currently, you can use this to build a career. I honestly believe that. And in the spare time that you have when you’re running this program, you can use habits-based nutrition coaching. Click the link below and you will get that high-speed implementation guide as well. I literally believe that you can use this to make a career in the fitness industry that’s more than $20 an hour and doesn’t take 80 hours a week. That was Brian Bott. Thank you so much for being here, Brian. I really appreciate it.
Brian Bott (25:08):
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Warkentin (25:08):
That’s how you start offering semi-private training at your gym. Do it today. I’m Mike Warkentin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for watching and listening. Please subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes just like this. And now, Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (25:24):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day, I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to Gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today!
The post Semi-Private Training: How Coaches Can Earn $80 or More Per Hour appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 17, 2023
The Five Pillars of Retention: Consistency and Referrals
Retention has five critically important pillars.
If one is weak or absent, your building will be rickety. If you’re missing two, the roof will come down.
Here are all five pillars:
In the first post in this series, I focused on results, and I covered fame and compatibility in the second.
Here, we’ll dig into the last two pillars: consistency and referrals.
Consistency
Do clients get the same great experience every time?
I asked our mentors a question: “What is the most common characteristic of the gyms you mentor with the best retention?”
They all said “systems.”
What does that mean? It means the client’s experience doesn’t depend on who’s coaching the class that day. Systems are in place to ensure clients can show up to any session at any time—even unexpected—and receive the same care and quality they’d get from the owner.
Retention doesn’t rise with the quality of your best coach; it falls to the level of your worst.
Free resource: “Gym Business Systems: How to ‘Survive a Bus Crash’”
Two-Brain clients: For all the tools you need to evaluate and improve your systems, click here.
Referrals
Do your clients refer others?
Investment in your gym doesn’t just happen when clients spend money on your services. When people give their recommendation to friends, they’ll invest time to make sure their predictions of success come true. Science backs this up.
Another bonus: When members recommend your business to others, the people who show up in your sales office already have a friend inside your gym, and they’ve already heard an endorsement of your services. These people have every reason to stick around for years.
Free resource: “Building a Referral Culture”
Two-Brain clients: For all the tools you need to generate more referrals, click here.
Retention Matters—Big Time
Retention matters more than marketing. It matters more than sales. It even matters more than your programming—because if people stick around long enough, they’ll see progress. This is why we focus so hard on retention in our mentorship practice.
Any one of these pillars, if missing or weak, can cause your business to collapse.
Great coaches who can’t smile can’t keep clients. Great owners who are passionate about a method but don’t track clients’ results won’t produce passionate clients. And great entrepreneurs who underprice their services can’t pay their rent.
It’s easy to say “retention is just about caring more.” It’s easy to pass off responsibility to “the community” or attribute retention to something vague like “the quality of coaching.”
But retention doesn’t just happen. And it is measurable.
You have to be very deliberate about keeping people around, and you must track improvements so you can stop wasting time on bad tactics and double-down on good ones.
If you do that, your length of engagement will increase, your business will grow and you’ll change more lives.
The post The Five Pillars of Retention: Consistency and Referrals appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 16, 2023
The Five Pillars of Retention: Do You Make the Right People Famous?
Retention has five pillars. All are important.
If you’re missing one, your building will be unstable. If you’re missing two, you won’t keep a roof over your head.
Here are all the pillars that support length of engagement:
In the first post in this series, I shared the importance of results and told you how to help your clients accomplish their goals.
Here, I’ll talk about the second and third pillars: fame and compatibility.
Fame
Building celebrations into your client journey adds more retention firepower. Asking your clients to celebrate their wins weekly will make them conscious of their progress. Asking them to share in your private Facebook group will motivate them to take five minutes to reflect every week—and to provide social proof to others that your program works.
Finally, sharing your clients’ stories on your blog, YouTube channel or podcast has tremendous retention value because no one quits the thing that makes them famous. This is a huge opportunity most gym owners miss.
Free resource: “How Sharing Joy Makes You Happy”
Two-Brain clients: For step-by-step instructions, worksheets, tools and more, click here.
Compatibility
Can they afford it? Do they like you? Do they fit with your other clients?
Keeping clients around longer starts with making sure they’re a good fit from the start. Clients can be good people and still not a great fit for your program.
Your first criteria: They must be able to afford your service. Some clients won’t be able to, and that’s OK. You aren’t running a charity—though you can certainly support worthy causes with the profits from a well-run gym business.
Next, do they like you? This is more important than many people think. If a tired, overworked, stressed-out gym owner fails to connect with clients, those clients are more likely to leave. And yes, you can improve your likability (see below).
Finally, are they a good fit with your other clients? If you try to get every single person you meet to sign up, you’re going to have some problems. Here’s an extreme example: Imagine a group of six powerlifters who scream and swear in open gym while four retirees go through a small-group training session designed to help them maintain function as they age.
To retain lots of clients for many years, they must all fit together in a business that’s clearly set up to solve their problems.
Free resource: “Unlikable Gym Owners: Don’t Do This Stuff”
Two-Brain clients: For step-by-step instructions, worksheets and tools, click here.
Pillars 4 and 5
In the final post in this series, I’ll give you the last two pillars of retention: consistency and referrals.
Remember the first one: results—your clients must get them.
If you’re missing any of these pillars, your gym business will be unstable.
Other Media in This Series
“The Five Pillars of Retention: Are Your Clients Getting Results?”
“The Five Pillars of Retention: Consistency and Referrals”
The post The Five Pillars of Retention: Do You Make the Right People Famous? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
Five Pillars of Retention: Do You Make the Right People Famous?
Retention has five pillars. All are important.
If you’re missing one, your building will be unstable. If you’re missing two, you won’t keep a roof over your head.
Here are all the pillars that support length of engagement:
In the first post in this series, I shared the importance of results and told you how to help your clients accomplish their goals.
Here, I’ll talk about the second and third pillars: fame and compatibility.
Fame
Building celebrations into your client journey adds more retention firepower. Asking your clients to celebrate their wins weekly will make them conscious of their progress. Asking them to share in your private Facebook group will motivate them to take five minutes to reflect every week—and to provide social proof to others that your program works.
Finally, sharing your clients’ stories on your blog, YouTube channel or podcast has tremendous retention value because no one quits the thing that makes them famous. This is a huge opportunity most gym owners miss.
Free resource: “How Sharing Joy Makes You Happy”
Two-Brain clients: For step-by-step instructions, worksheets, tools and more, click here.
Compatibility
Can they afford it? Do they like you? Do they fit with your other clients?
Keeping clients around longer starts with making sure they’re a good fit from the start. Clients can be good people and still not a great fit for your program.
Your first criteria: They must be able to afford your service. Some clients won’t be able to, and that’s OK. You aren’t running a charity—though you can certainly support worthy causes with the profits from a well-run gym business.
Next, do they like you? This is more important than many people think. If a tired, overworked, stressed-out gym owner fails to connect with clients, those clients are more likely to leave. And yes, you can improve your likability (see below).
Finally, are they a good fit with your other clients? If you try to get every single person you meet to sign up, you’re going to have some problems. Here’s an extreme example: Imagine a group of six powerlifters who scream and swear in open gym while four retirees go through a small-group training session designed to help them maintain function as they age.
To retain lots of clients for many years, they must all fit together in a business that’s clearly set up to solve their problems.
Free resource: “Unlikable Gym Owners: Don’t Do This Stuff”
Two-Brain clients: For step-by-step instructions, worksheets and tools, click here.
Pillars 4 and 5
In the final post in this series, I’ll give you the last two pillars of retention: consistency and referrals.
Remember the first one: results—your clients must get them.
If you’re missing any of these pillars, your gym business will be unstable.
The post Five Pillars of Retention: Do You Make the Right People Famous? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 15, 2023
The Five Pillars of Retention: How to Keep More Clients Longer
Chris Cooper (00:00):
The key to long-term business success isn’t cramming huge numbers of people into your building or even signing them up fast. The real key is keeping them for years. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today I’m going to tell you the five pillars of retention. If you’re missing any of these, your business could collapse. And if you want more info and support, head to Gymownersunited.com to join a group with thousands of the world’s top fitness entrepreneurs.
Chris Cooper (00:33):
Why should you care about retention? Well, first, you can’t save lives if clients are quitting after a few months. Long-term adoption of exercise and nutrition strategies requires at least two years of consistent attendance. Sadly, the industry average for retention is under eight months, even in coaching businesses like CrossFit gyms. Second, you can’t build a sustainable business with high churn if you’re constantly losing members. You’ll spend all of your time marketing, and eventually you’ll just run out of audience unless you’re in a wild market with really high overhead. Third, your staff members wanna work with the best possible clients, not always beginners who are just learning the basics. So what actually keeps clients around long term? I’ve been reviewing data on this for over a decade, and I can tell you this: myths and vague concepts about culture and community don’t give us any information that we can use to keep clients longer.
Chris Cooper (01:30):
So today I’m gonna share the secret of huge length of engagement in gyms, and I’m gonna tell you precisely what to do. If you want help implementing my plan or if you want the specific clients-only worksheets, templates and tools that I referenced, then let’s talk about mentorship. Click the link below this video. We’ll get you on a call with our intake team and talk about whether mentorship is right for you. So here we go. The five pillars of retention. Retention has five pillars to it, and every single one is equally important. If you’re missing one of them, your roof will be unstable. If you’re missing two, you won’t be able to keep a roof over your head. So here they are. Number 1: results. Are your clients actually getting the results they came in to get? Now, when I was a powerlifter, all of my clients became powerlifters regardless of their goals of firming up or loosening up or just feeling better.
Chris Cooper (02:25):
My clients all did deadlifts and presses in the programs that I assigned. They all got stronger and they were all proud of those gains, but some of them didn’t lose weight or improve flexibility or accomplish the actual goals that they were paying me to help them accomplish. And then when I found CrossFit, I thought I’d found a solution to every fitness problem. So everyone at my gym did constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity, but some people still didn’t lose weight even after a few years. They loved the workouts, and they loved the community, but they still quit to try something else that might give them the results that they actually wanted. A client’s goal is never to exercise more or work harder or move better. Your method is the tool that will help the client achieve a specific goal, but it’s not the goal itself.
Chris Cooper (03:16):
So here’s the solution: Use the prescriptive model, find out what the client wants to achieve, measure the starting point, then make a prescription that takes the client from the starting point to their goal, measure their progress, refine the prescription, and repeat. This will keep you and the client focused on getting the right results. Look, if clients aren’t getting the results they came in to get, they’ll quit, and they’re right to quit. So there’s a free resource below called “The Prescriptive model: The key to Revenue and Retention in Microgyms.” And if you’re a Two-Brain client, you can click the link below for step-by-step instructions, tools, guides and more. The second pillar of retention is fame. Do clients see their progress, and do others see it, too? Now, you and I as coaches know that progress happens very slowly with lots of tiny gains and a few backwards steps even from time to time.
Chris Cooper (04:09):
But when you’re inside a problem, overall progress is hard to see. Many clients actually don’t notice their gains because they happen so slowly and that’s not good for retention. So you must establish two routines. First, you must measure the client’s progress, which is the Prescriptive Model that I just described. And second, you must have the client think about their progress and acknowledge it so they’re actually looking at it, seeing it and thinking about it. Building celebrations into your client journey adds a lot more retention firepower. Asking your clients to celebrate their wins weekly will make them conscious of their progress. Asking them to share their wins in your private Facebook group will motivate them to take five minutes every week to reflect and to provide social proof to the others that your program works. Finally, sharing your client’s stories on your blog, YouTube channel or podcast has tremendous retention value because nobody quits the thing that makes them famous, and this is a huge opportunity that most gym owners miss.
Chris Cooper (05:12):
Below this video, there’s a link for a free resource called “How Sharing Joy Makes You Happy,” and if you click that, you’ll get step-by-step instructions. If you’re in Two-Brain, I’ve got a lot for you. I’ve got step-by-step instructions, worksheets, tools and more to tell you exactly how to make your clients famous. The third pillar of retention is compatibility. Can they actually afford it? Do they like you, and do they fit with your other clients? Keeping clients around longer starts with making sure they’re a good fit from the start. So clients can be good people, but they’re still not a great fit for your program. First, let’s face it, you’re not running a charity. If you’re selling a coaching program, you are, by definition, selling a high-value service that some people can’t afford. Now, if that makes you squeamish, then you have one of two choices.
Chris Cooper (06:03):
First, open a low-ticket gym that sells access but doesn’t require your time and fits into everybody’s budget. Or second, make lots of money from your high-value gym and then donate your extra time and money to people who are less fortunate. This is the path I choose: Make lots of money and give it away. So your first criteria in this retention pillar is “can they afford your service?” The second is “do they like you?” There have been times when my in my career as a personal trainer and gym owner when I was pretty hard to like. I did client sessions in which I was literally like dozing on my feet or distracted by a personal injury or clearly sick or obviously depressed. I’ve posted rants on Facebook, and I’ve sent angry messages to “punish” the clients who are paying for my service. I’m literally shuddering to think about these mistakes, and, unfortunately, I’m thinking of more as I talk about them. But it’s hard to keep a client around if you’re unlikeable. If you’re tired and angry, admit it to yourself and put somebody else in front of your clients.
Chris Cooper (07:05):
You don’t need an expert to run a group class. You need somebody who can smile at 5 a.m. Finally, are they a good fit with your other clients? Sometimes a client is a really obvious bad fit. The person is rude or they break your rules or they’re distracting. But other times great people just don’t fit with your program. When we started to realize that the competitors in our gym were the ones causing 99% of the problems, making 80% of the mess and paying less than anyone else, we ended our competitive program, and then we ended open gym, which was their favorite hangout. Doing that was hard. They were my friends, and I loved their drive, but they were negatively affecting the experience of everybody else. They were creating mess and noise and cliques. To retain a lot of clients for many years, all those clients have to fit together in a business that’s clearly set up to solve their problems.
Chris Cooper (08:00):
Now, I’ve got a free resource for you below. Just click “Unlikable Gym Owners: Don’t Do This Stuff.” And if you’re a Two-Brain client, you can click the link below for step-by-step instructions, worksheets and tools to help you solve this pillar. The fourth pillar of retention is consistency. Do clients get the same great experience every single time? I asked our mentor team a question: “What is the most common characteristic of the gyms you mentor with the best retention?” And every single mentor—over 60 on the Two-Brain team working with nearly 900 gyms around the world—said “systems.” What does that mean? It means the client’s experience at your gym doesn’t depend on who’s coaching class that day. Instead, systems are in place to ensure that clients can show up to any session at any time, even unexpectedly, and receive the same care and the same quality coaching or service they would get from the owner.
Chris Cooper (08:56):
Retention doesn’t rise with the quality of your best coach. It falls to the level of your worst. And the same is true of all of your systems. Clients will leave if your payment system screws up, if your bathrooms are dirty or if your bars are rusty. They’ll leave if your systems suck or they feel like a number instead of feeling like Frank or Sam. I hate it when somebody quits a gym with passionate, knowledgeable coaches because they couldn’t get a parking spot. Systems mean that nobody leaves for the wrong reasons. So I’ve got a free resource below for you called “Gym Business Systems: How to ‘Survive a Bus Crash.’” And I’ve got something extra for Two-Brain clients. You just click below to get all the systems that you need to evaluate and improve your systems. Now, the fifth pillar of retention is referrals. This might sound backward, but do your clients refer others?
Chris Cooper (09:46):
This might sound like the fruit of good retention, but it’s actually the cause of good retention. Investment in your gym doesn’t just happen when clients spend money on your services. When people give their recommendation to their friends, they will invest time to make sure their prediction of success comes true. Science backs this up. We form tighter bonds by introducing good things into the lives of our friends to maintain and improve connections. We never wanna recommend something they might not like. Think about your favorite restaurant. When you take a friend for dinner, you really want them to love it, right? So you do everything you can to make sure they appreciate the place. “Hey, did you check out the bathrooms? They’re amazing. Wow. Look at this wine list. Hey, I know you love steak. Look at the menu. The chef’s cut is unbelievable.” Because you’re invested in your friend’s experience.
Chris Cooper (10:34):
When people bring their friends or their spouses to your gym, they have a lot on the line. And if you can deliver with excellence, everybody stays longer because the whole is more than the sum of its parts. When it comes to referrals, for example, if I take my wife to yoga and she loves it, we’re both likely to stick around longer. Retention matters big time. Retention matters more than marketing. It matters more than sales and it even matters more than your programming because if people stick around long enough, they’ll see progress no matter what your programming is. So this is why we focus so hard on retention in our mentorship practice. If any one of these five pillars is missing or weak, it can cause your business to collapse. Great coaches who can’t smile at 6 a.m. can’t keep clients. Great owners who are passionate about a method but don’t track clients’ results, won’t produce passionate clients. And great entrepreneurs who underprice their services can’t pay the rent.
Chris Cooper (11:33):
It’s easy to say retention is just about caring more. It’s easy to pass off responsibility to the community or attribute retention to something vague like the quality of your coaching. But retention doesn’t just happen, and it’s measurable. You have to be very deliberate about keeping people around, and you must track improvements so you can stop wasting time on bad tactics and double down on the good ones. If you do that, your length of engagement will increase, your business will grow, and you’ll change more lives. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for listening. Click below to find out more about working with a Two-Brain mentor.
The post The Five Pillars of Retention: How to Keep More Clients Longer appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
The Five Pillars of Retention: Are Your Clients Getting Results?
The key to long-term business success isn’t cramming huge numbers of people into your building or signing them up fast.
The real key is keeping clients for years.
First, you can’t save lives if clients quit after a few months. Long-term adoption of exercise and nutrition strategies requires at least two years of consistent attendance. Sadly, the industry average for retention is under eight months, even in coaching businesses.
Second, you can’t build a sustainable business with high churn. If you’re constantly losing members, you’ll spend all your time marketing—and eventually you’ll just run out of audience, unless you’re in a wild market with high overhead.
Third, your staff members want to work with the best possible clients—not always beginners who are learning the basics.
So what actually keeps clients around long term? I’ve been reviewing data on this for a decade.
Here are the Five Pillars of Retention:
Pillar 1: Results
Let’s start with results.
Are your clients getting results they care about?
A client’s goal is never to “exercise more” or “work harder.” Your method is the tool that will help the client achieve a specific goal—it is not the goal itself.
Solution: Use the Prescriptive Model. Find out what the client wants to achieve. Measure the starting point. Make a prescription that takes the client from the starting point to the goal. Measure progress. Refine the prescription. Repeat. This will keep you and the client focused on getting the right results.
If clients aren’t getting the results they came in to get, they’ll quit. And they’re right to quit.
Free resource: “The Prescriptive Model: The Key to Revenue and Retention in Microgyms”
Two-Brain clients: For step-by-step instructions, tools, guides and more, click here.
In the next post in this series, I’ll walk you through the other four pillars of retention: fame, compatibility, consistency and referrals.
The post The Five Pillars of Retention: Are Your Clients Getting Results? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 12, 2023
The One-Question FOMO Fix for Gym Owners
Do you need to offer a “social wellness experience” at your gym?
What about high-end services and swanky studios?
Altea Active, a new luxury facility in Vancouver, Canada, will open soon, complete with anti-gravity training, a mediation lounge, turf, a cycle studio, strength and cardio machines galore, Olympic-lifting platforms, a hot-yoga studio, a sauna and steam cabin, a kids area, a small-group training studio and more.
So do you need all that stuff—or even some of it—at your gym?
As well-funded, high-end facilities open and change the definition of “gym” for some, it can be tempting to think you need to offer more at your fitness business.
Take a virtual tour of Altea Active here and tell me it doesn’t make you at least consider buying a few new machines, laying a strip of turf and creating a lounge with coffee service.
I get it: Those things look irresistibly cool to gym owners. Allow a wave of FOMO to wash over yourself as you imagine the smell of new turf and the hiss of pneumatic resistance machines.
But before you start tossing bean-bag chairs and arcade games into your “Destress Chamber,” remember two things:
1. Every square foot of space must generate as much revenue as possible.
2. The services you offer must solve problems for your ideal clients.
Revenue Per Square Foot and Problem Solving
When I ran a functional fitness gym a few years ago, we had 6,000 square feet of space. A vacant office and front lobby ate up about 750 square feet of that total. I left the office vacant for years for no good reason, and I filled the lobby with couches and a giant truck tire that became a cool coffee table.
This was unwise. That space—about 13 percent of my total area—generated no revenue at all for years.
Eventually, with the guidance of a mentor, we decided to rent out the vacant office to a physiotherapist, and we experimented with yoga classes in the lobby for a time. Just as COVID hit in 2020, I was making plans to get rid of the couches and use a big chunk of the lobby as a PT studio or on-ramp area. I had done the math, and I knew this plan would add money to our bottom line.
The lesson is that space is expensive, so you must use it to generate revenue. Unused, underused or misused space is costing you money. With that in mind, you must answer a key question whenever you’re making plans for your facility:
“Will [insert idea here] generate more revenue for my business by solving problems for my clients?”
If you run the numbers and determine an athletic training area with turf will help your large group of aspiring college athletes improve their results in preseason physical testing, you might make an investment that will add value to your business and generate a clear return.
If a large number of your very best clients all tell you they and many of their friends would jump at the opportunity for personal-training sessions in a small, private studio away from your group area, you might throw up a wall and carve out some space.
But if you think about putting in a wine bar because it “feels high end,” pass.
Or if you want to experiment with saunas and ice baths because they’re “trending right now,” hit pause and determine if your clients would actually pay for access to that stuff.
Here’s an inner dialogue a gym owner might have when considering changes:
Question: “Will adding six Olympic-lifting platforms generate more revenue for my business by solving problems for my clients?”
Answer: “No. None of my best clients have asked for platforms, and most aren’t interested in weightlifting at all. I’m applying the “if you build it, they will come” mentality to this project, and that’s a bad way to run a gym.”
Another example:
Question: “Will adding a cycling studio generate more revenue for my business by solving problems for my clients?”
Answer: “Probably not. This is an area of interest for me, but my clients don’t care about spin classes. I can help them accomplish their fitness goals with the equipment I already have.”
One more:
Question: “Will a kids studio generate more revenue for my business by solving problems for my clients?”
Answer: “Yes. I know the majority of my members have kids, and some of my very best clients have told me they struggle to get to the gym because of child care. A kids studio would allow these parents to work out at the same time as their kids, and they’d be thrilled if their kids put down their screens and learned to love fitness. In off hours, I can use this room for on-ramps and PT, which will generate more revenue.”
Make Solid Plans Based on Data
I’m not throwing shade on high-end services, special studios and cool equipment. I’m intrigued by that stuff, too, and it can work in certain facilities.
I’m just here to remind you to review your business model carefully whenever you consider making big changes to your facility.
Review your model twice if you got your ideas after suffering FOMO when another gym announced its plans.
Better yet, run any idea past an experienced, objective mentor who can help you maximize ROI.
The post The One-Question FOMO Fix for Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
May 11, 2023
Revenue Boost: How to Launch a Nutrition Program in 6 Weeks
Mike Warkentin (00:00):
Nutrition coaching can add a ton of revenue to your gym. So if a coach comes to you and says, “I wanna start a nutrition program,” you need to get that coach started fast. And we’re gonna tell you exactly how to do that today. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please don’t forget to subscribe. Before we go any further, click that subscribe button, and I appreciate it. Now, some stats. Our 2022 State of the Industry report revealed that 65% of gyms offer nutrition coaching. That’s not enough, but get this: Of the gyms that offer coaching, only 5% of gross revenue is generated with these services. That’s too low. Compare that with Clark Hibbs of Yellow Rose Fitness. I’ve had him on the show before. He’ll make 20 to 25% of his gross revenue with a simple but effective nutrition-coaching program his wife runs from a spare bedroom in their home. No face-to-face contact with clients. And Clark doesn’t just make $10,000 of gross revenue at his gym. He’s making a bunch. So 20 to 25% is a big, big number. So the point is you can make money with nutrition coaching. Now, my guest is gonna tell you how. Cynthia Fotti owns CrossFit Rush. She’s also Two-Brain’s nutrition-coaching specialist. She’s gonna talk to coaches at the upcoming Two-Brain Summit. It’s June 3 and 4 in Chicago. She’s gonna tell them about nutrition coaching today. She’s gonna explain how owners can help that coach get started fast. In fact, she’s gonna give you the exact steps to get a coach started with a nutrition program in just six weeks. Okay, listen, this is gonna be a big deal, and you can make money by listening to this show. Cynthia, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Cynthia Fotti (01:33):
Thanks for having me.
Mike Warkentin (01:33):
I’m excited about this because this is an area of passion for me, and I know it can help gym owners make more money. I offered a few stats in the intro. Can you confirm? Just give them some perspective: What’s possible with a nutrition-coaching service? Like how much revenue can good gyms bring in with this thing?
Cynthia Fotti (01:48):
Easily 10% as a standard piece for your revenue generating—as long as you have a team that can sort of support that the volume that’s gonna come in. But certainly the demand is there. There is no shortage of demand of clients who need help to achieve body-composition change. So yeah, definitely 10%. You mentioned an amazing gym doing some really, really cool stuff with that leg of the business.
Mike Warkentin (02:18):
So 10% is more than double what the average gym is doing. And you’re telling me that it’s not even that hard to do, like it’s very doable?
Cynthia Fotti (02:25):
Yep.
Mike Warkentin (02:26):
And that’s not even the upper limit. Like I said, there are gyms doing 20 to 25%. And again, these aren’t gyms with low revenue. These are big chunks of revenue. It’s very possible to do more. So let’s get into it. Let’s help some gym owners out. So walk me through this. Let’s get to the max-speed plan to get nutrition coaching going at a gym as fast as possible.
Cynthia Fotti (02:45):
Awesome. Okay, so I’ve got a timeline here set for let’s say six weeks to get you started. So the first week and a half to two weeks—in other words, take that time to sign up for nutrition certification if you don’t have any of those already on hand. So in that timeframe of two weeks, just do some research ad sign up for one.
Mike Warkentin (03:09):
Can I ask you a question about this? Like, do you need to be an RD or do you need this, you know, high-level, extensive, be-all, end-all certification? Or what do you need here to get going?
Cynthia Fotti (03:18):
Not, not at all. Of course, state to state, you have to always check your laws and know exactly what you can and can’t do. For my area, there are no regulations for that kind of thing. So to start a nutrition business for your gym and help the clients that you probably serve as a majority, which are your general public, you do not need to have extensive scientific research capacities and all of this knowledge to help a client instill some really good habits in their life that have a huge impact. So I am one of those. I’m not an RD. I’m not a nutritionist. I’m plain old nutrition coach who just really wants to speak on the level of my general population. And so that’s been really successful.
Mike Warkentin (04:07):
But yet even with that—you’re saying you’re “just a nutrition coach”—you’re still getting great results for clients and you’re making 10% of your revenue. So the point is it doesn’t have to be complicated. Am I getting that right?
Cynthia Fotti (04:17):
Absolutely. Complicating makes things not so successful. It’s gotta be simple.
Mike Warkentin (04:22):
Yeah. So Step 1 then is find any credential that’s going to give you some skills, get you recognized. Of course, check your local laws to see what you actually need. In some places that’s different. Check that out, but then get your credential. Okay? Take us on the journey here.
Cynthia Fotti (04:36):
So once you signed up for your course, I then want you to set your launch date for a nutrition kickstart. And let’s set that for six weeks from now. Okay? So that gives you six weeks’ time to get your ducks in order, start your nutrition course, maybe even finish it by then. And it really gives you that target. So when you have that target time where you know you’re launching, like you better get on that. Okay?
Mike Warkentin (05:04):
You need accountability.
Cynthia Fotti (05:05):
Yeah, let’s go, let’s do this. So you’ve signed up, you’ve set your date. Now it’s time to sort of build a framework of your program. So I say “launch a nutrition kickstart.” A “challenge” is another word that back in the day used to be popular. This is a really good way to just generate some buzz around your program. And I think at least in my context, we’re a big group setting in our gym. We’re a CrossFit gym. So people like to do things together. And generally people just do like to do things as a community. And so it’s a great platform to launch your program. We do habits based. And so the framework really is simple. Pick six habits—if your nutrition kickstart’s gonna be six weeks—that are going to help your clients. So what are they struggling with in my area? I can share some examples if you think that’s helpful.
Mike Warkentin (05:57):
Yeah, please do. Because some people won’t understand what “habits based” means. And when I was back at my gym, this is like eight or 10 years ago, I didn’t wanna run a nutrition program because I’m not an RD, I’m not a nutrition expert. I don’t wanna get into meal plans. I felt intimidated by all that. But now with this habits-based program, could I help someone eat more vegetables and get results? Yeah. So that’s what we’re talking about. Give us some examples so people understand how simple this actually is and how it actually gets results for clients.
Cynthia Fotti (06:23):
So meal prep, you could have that as your first week as a foundation. So Week 1 we’re gonna focus on getting really good at meal prepping. So for a week just have your clients practice choosing a day, making a list, and instilling meal prep. And just the fact of them working on that, having the accountability of the group, they’re naturally going to choose better quality foods because that’s the purpose of the kickstart challenge, right? Next week you can have a vegetable focus. So we all can use more fruits and vegetables in our diet. And so I would say let’s pick that for your second week focus. Lean protein is a big one. For my clientele: lacking hydration. So choosing more water-based stuff as opposed to sodas and that sort of thing. Energy drinks. Move more. I don’t know about you, but in my area, people sit at desks all day. Very, very sedentary. And so I would throw that in there: on top of your gym, let’s move more. Let’s get those steps in. So I would add that in. And then a whole-foods focus. So getting away from processed foods and challenging your clients to find more whole-food choices that are available to them. So those are like six habits that you could just stack on for your challenge that are super simple and I think touch the population from a global perspective of what people struggle with.
Mike Warkentin (07:49):
Listeners, I’m gonna lay it out for you. Again, this is a cheat code: meal prep, more veggies, lean protein, hydration, move more, whole foods. That’s it. Those things delivered in a challenge with some accountability, maybe a private Facebook group, some resources, a couple of blogs, things like that—if you can present that your, clients are going to change their habits—habits-based coaching—and they’re going to get results. Cynthia, this seems too simple to be true. What kind of a price tag would you throw on something like this? Like a six-week program?
Cynthia Fotti (08:20):
You could throw in something like $150 to $200, something like that, depending on how many how much value you’re adding to this program. So you could do lessons every day. You could do meal swapping, meal sharing every day. That adds a little bit of value. So you could kind of bump up your program probably closer to the $200, $250 range. Or you could just keep it a little bit more simple and have lessons, you know, weekly that support the habits that they’re doing. Maybe you’ll charge just slightly less, but somewhere in that range, I think between $150 to $250 is a great start.
Mike Warkentin (08:57):
So I’m gonna throw out that you’ll probably sign up 10 or more people. So that’s like $1,500 to $2,500 in revenue right away. And this doesn’t intimidate me. Like if I was running a competition, all the work and hours that would go into that would really intimidate me. When you lay this out for me, I don’t feel intimidated. I feel like this is not that much work, and yet it’s going to get results. So, listeners, this is very doable. It adds revenue very fast. And then one of the things that Cynthia said “not a challenge with an end date; a kickstart.” And the positioning there is key because if someone thinks it’s a challenge, “When I’m done the challenge, I’m done.” If it’s a kickstart, that implies additional coaching and an ongoing service and an ongoing journey, and Cynthia’s gonna talk about that. So I won’t give away the secrets, but know that there is a difference in wording. So take me onto the next step now.
Cynthia Fotti (09:48):
All right, so once you’ve outlined the habits that you wanna have in over your six weeks, now you wanna build in a little bit of accountability. Cause we all need some accountability. So something general, because this is a group-style event. So I really like old school, like paper kind of stuff. So I’m mapping out a calendar with all the weeks and what the focuses are, and people can leave that on their fridge and just put check marks. And that’s really encouraging on itself to say like, “Yeah, I hit my vegetables for the day, or my lean protein.” That kind of thing. And then a private Facebook group is also pretty helpful to generate that sense of community and support within the challenges. And then a place for your coaches to add value and troubleshoot some people. If people have questions, you’re keeping it general. You’re not crossing the line of delivering a one-on-one service when it’s a group kind of service, but it still provides a lot of value and accountability.
Mike Warkentin (10:46):
I’ll give you guys a tip, listeners. My wife runs a private Facebook group for nutrition clients. If you wanna generate some engagement, generate some engagement, and do it by leading from the front. That means you’re gonna post and say, “Hey, here’s a cool thing. I read a cool article. What do you think of that? Here is an amazing recipe for breakfast. Check this out. This is my go-to high protein breakfast. Check this out.” Put some engagement in there, and then add in some bright spots on Friday. That’s a Two-Brain concept where we share at the end of the week what went right, and it would be great for your clients that you’re coaching to go to their fridge and say, “I see seven check marks. I had vegetables at every meal for seven days.” Big win! You celebrate it, you put ’em on a podium, everybody high fives, and all of a sudden this group has a huge value. But you as the owner are not doing a ton of work. All right, take us further.
Cynthia Fotti (11:32):
Super low, low touch points. Yeah. All right, so you’ve done all of this in a week and a half to two weeks. You have established the framework. While you’ve done that, remember if you’re not yet certified or you haven’t done a course, you are progressing in your course, right? You’re chasing down that deadline for your launch date. So four weeks out from your launch date, you’re gonna promote it and market your program. So if you’re working inside of a gym, you’re gonna talk to those clients. So anyone who you’ve heard who wants to lose weight or make a body-composition change—I like to label things that way a bit more. You’re gonna market it. So through goal reviews, through posts, amp up your education within your internal spots for nutrition, right? How is it beneficial? Tips, tricks, all of that stuff just really raises awareness and gets engagement from the clients. Like it brings nutrition to the forefront. We all know exercise is always the fun thing to do, right? It’s what people would prefer—to exercise, to try to out-train a bad diet. So if we never talk about nutrition, if we never bring it up regularly, then we’re kind of feeding that school of thought. So we wanna change that. So like, just talk about it a lot.
Mike Warkentin (12:48):
Pro tip there, guys, along the lines of that, when someone signs up, “Do you have any friends or family members who might benefit from something like this?” Oftentimes, working out can be hard. It’s not for everybody. However, there are lots of friends and family members who might not want to deadlift and squat and run but might know they need some help and might jump at the chance to do a nutrition program, which, A, gets you a signup, and B, gives you a contact that might wanna go with ongoing coaching, and C, gives you a lead that might eventually want to join your gym, too, after they find out it’s not intimidating and scary. So there are tons of ways to get people going on this. You could even take this to, I’m gonna say a “corporate-fitness environment.” Say you have a great seed client and she works at X Industries. “Do you wanna tell your wellness coordinator at that business about this?” And maybe get a group sign up. Like there are tons of ways to market this. The point being you need to market it. It won’t just happen, but if you follow the tips Cynthia gave you, you can get a ton of signups for this thing.
Cynthia Fotti (13:50):
Yeah, exactly. And again, with the kickstart, it’s so low touchpoint. You can serve a lot of people on this program, and it’s easy to talk about for sure. It’s not intimidating.
Mike Warkentin (14:01):
Macros are hard, right? Macro tracking, it can be hard. It works for some people, but some get intimidated. Just telling someone about a simple, habits-based program that works for six weeks to get you started changing nutrition, that doesn’t sound intimidating. It’s a great way to access people in your community who might not be ready for the whole thing but might try some habits based stuff.
Cynthia Fotti (14:19):
Exactly
Mike Warkentin (14:22):
What’s next?
Cynthia Fotti (14:22):
So you can spend like four weeks just talking this up, campaigning for it, getting all those signups. Now you’re at your launch date. Ok. So 3, 2, 1, it’s time to launch. You can kick this off with like a Zoom meeting and just demo what they’re gonna see and that sort of thing. You can choose that. But anyways, so you launch your program. Now here’s the key. So let’s assume that you’re maybe done your certification, you’ve launched your program, maybe you’re almost done your cert. The point is you now have six weeks to figure out your one-on-one coaching. Okay? So we’re doing this in layers so that there’s no delay. It’s very, very mapped out in a plan. So kickstart is there, you’re collecting information and feedback from your clients. So you can put that in your bank of “this tool or this thing is gonna be really helpful for one-on-one coaching.” And while they’re going through that, you’re planting that seed. Your bright spots, for instance, and challenges, right? Like, what are people struggling with? This is great stuff. Here are some quick tips. “When we work one on one together after the kickstart, we’re really gonna dig into that for you.” You’re just planting the seed that this is a launch. You’re getting your toes wet, but the real work is gonna happen when you and I work one on one together, and behind the scenes you’re mapping out “what does that look like for my clients so that I can provide them with even better coaching?”
Mike Warkentin (15:46):
That is huge because it doesn’t sound to me like sales, which I hate. It sounds like helping someone continue doing a thing that is clearly getting them results—they’re stating every Friday in that Facebook group “wow, I feel better. I can’t believe how easy this is.” And at the end of that, you have a Goal Review Session or whatever you do, and you talk to them: “Look at all these amazing things you said. Let’s keep the train going. Ongoing nutrition coaching is this, and it includes this.” You’re gonna close a ton of those sales. When you’ve run these kickstarts or seen clients run them, what kind of conversion rates do you get to ongoing coaching?
Cynthia Fotti (16:16):
So I hope to have at least 80% conversion rates.
Mike Warkentin (16:19):
Wow. That is huge. That’s huge. Recurring revenue at that point, right? That’s amazing.
Cynthia Fotti (16:25):
That’s how I launched my program. I started with a kickstart. I had 15 signups and I rolled 13 of them into one-on-one coaching. I had no idea what I was doing. So I just mapped it out and I just rolled with the punches. But hey, it worked out. I’ve never looked back, and the program’s just grown since then. So.
Mike Warkentin (16:46):
Wow. Now without getting into the weeds, because it’s gonna be different for everyone a little bit, just gimme like a couple of basic ideas. What would an ongoing one-on-one program, what might it look like?
Cynthia Fotti (16:56):
Yeah, so the first thing that’s the biggest is make sure that your clients are bought in or are committed, I should say, for a longer period of time. I think that’s really important because if you’re following this habits-based approach, you’re talking about some degree of behavior change. And that takes time. And so if you’re talking to your clients like it’s a month thing—“so this month we’re gonna do this”—every month, you’re asking for that buy-in again, and you’re having to go through that sales process when you know that a month is not a lot of time. Like if your client has no vegetables on their plate during the kickstart, you saw the struggles. They’re making efforts, but life is hard. Well, in a month in one on one coaching, like you have great potential, but it’s certainly not enough. Especially if your client’s goal is to lose, you know, 50, 60, 70 pounds. You’re not gonna achieve that in a month. So let’s get that buy-in. So three months is kind of like where I’ve always started. And so the client knows that like, “Okay, now we can map out the next three months. What that’s gonna look like?” So get some buy-in—that commitment for the client so that you have a better long-term approach for that. Then you need to establish your meetings. So what does that look like for you? So are you gonna meet face to face? Are you gonna do it virtual? Is it gonna be once a week, twice a week, once every two weeks, or in a month from now? Personally, for beginners, I start with meetings every two weeks, virtual or in person for 30 minutes. And these are basically like consultations that we do to overview the two weeks that they’ve just had, discuss bright spots, their challenges. We do some education together. And so if they’re struggling with meal prep, then we’re gonna unpack that a little bit and see if together we can find a solution to make their environment a little bit better for them so that they can actually succeed at this. So what happens in those consultations is really the true value in the coaching piece. And then from there it’s establishing your check-ins. So how do you keep your clients accountable? Because again, like that’s really, in my world, clients always say they lack accountability. And so if that’s the case with your clients, you have to build that in somewhere. So we do text check-ins throughout the week to make sure that they’re still on track, and if they’ve fallen off track, we help them get back on and that sort of thing.
Mike Warkentin (19:30):
Again, that doesn’t sound intimidating to me. It sounds like something, me, I’m not an nutrition expert, something I could take a simple credential and do. And it sounds like something I could do right away and actually help my clients even though I’m not a registered dietitian or a complete nutrition expert. It could be as simple as saying, “Okay, you bought chips and you put ’em in the pantry, and you thought you’d be able to not eat them, but you ate them all. Let’s try a different approach where we just don’t buy them. And if you wanna have a treat, you’re gonna go out and you’re gonna eat it outside the home. You’re not gonna bring it into the house and store it. Can we do that for the next two weeks and then let’s check back in?” Simple stuff like that is something I could do as a coach. I’m more of a fitness coach than a nutrition coach, but I could do that. Right? Tell me, like for a simple service like this, what kind of value are we delivering here?
Cynthia Fotti (20:14):
You’re talking about again, probably $200 depending on how many touchpoints you have—$200 to $250 per month for this program. So if you’re doing a three-month program as a commitment piece, then you’re looking at, you know, roughly six, what is that? $600, 650 over the three month?.
Mike Warkentin (20:35):
So let’s just put that in perspective. You sign someone up for $200 for your kickstart, then you sign them up for three months at about $200 a month, whatever it is. At that point, we’re looking at about 800 to a thousand dollars of recurring revenue here, and they might keep going after three months if you’re a great coach, right? So like all of a sudden you can see how this goes from a 0% of gross revenue program and grows into 10, 15, 20 and can create careers for coaches and things like that. So this is an incredible thing. I’ll just reiterate this again. Someone out there is saying, “I don’t know a thing about nutrition.” If you might don’t mind, reassure these people that you do not need to be a Level 10 nutrition coach.
Cynthia Fotti (21:14):
Yeah. So when I decided that it was time to develop this leg of the business, I had a lot of fears as well. So I grew up in a household where education was key, and you need those credentials. And so for me, I had those but in a different field. I felt really like the delay for myself was “no, I have to go to university first. I have to do college thing and whatever.” And I just lined myself up with the Two-Brain nutrition specialists at the time, and yeah, she just reassured me that, no, you don’t need to have these credentials. We just need to level up slightly some of the education that you have in coaching because your clients don’t wanna know the science behind food. The majority, they don’t. Life is complicated. So what they need is simple solutions, and simple solutions don’t come from manuscripts and, you know, diplomas and degrees. There’s amazing coaching courses out there to teach you how to leverage behavior change and to be a caring coach with just enough of the science that you can answer those questions. And of course you can continue to take some continuing-education courses and level up your skills, but to start, your clients don’t need complicated. They really just need the support, the accountability, and just the right amount of education and knowledge to help them make better choices.
Mike Warkentin (22:47):
In fact, I would suggest for a lot of people, because nutrition is so difficult, it’s very intimidating. I think for a lot of clients, if you make it too complicated for them right off the bat, you’re going to lose them. And that’s been the experience that I’ve seen in our business, with my wife’s business. You could start talking about macronutrient percentages and all this other complicated tracking and all these different things. And don’t get me wrong, some of those things can work for the right people. There’s nothing wrong with those programs, but for a lot of people, just eating vegetables is gonna be a huge start. And if you can provide the accountability that makes that happen, all of a sudden you’re making dramatic life changes for a person, and there is huge value in that. Cynthia, the last thing I’m gonna ask you is this: We’ve laid out a six-week timeline here, and we’ve run through the exact steps that would’ve take a gym owner to get this going, to add one-time revenue with a signup and perhaps ongoing revenue with recurring or ongoing coaching. Have you seen this work in practice? Have you actually seen people, other gym owners, implement this within six weeks and make it work?
Cynthia Fotti (23:45):
Yeah, definitely. So some of my mentees I’ve been working with, the timeline might be slightly different, depending on workload—but following these steps, absolutely. There’s always rollover from a kickstart into one-on-one coaching. And from there it’s just keeping the ball rolling.
Mike Warkentin (24:05):
So, gym owners, if you’re out there and you need some revenue, here is an ideal way to add another division to your business without a ton of extra work. You can do it in six weeks. You can probably add five to 10% to your gross revenue, and the sky is the limit here. Cynthia, you agree?
Cynthia Fotti (24:21):
Definitely.
Mike Warkentin (24:22):
Thank you so much for being here and sharing your expertise. I’m not gonna say anything further because gym owners need to go out there and start their six-week countdown. Now that was Cynthia Fotti, and you need to start offering nutrition coaching at your gym. We just told you how to do it. I’m Mike Warkentin, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thank you so much for watching and listening. Please subscribe on your way out. And now here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (24:44):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day, I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to Gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today!
The post Revenue Boost: How to Launch a Nutrition Program in 6 Weeks appeared first on Two-Brain Business.
