Chris Cooper's Blog, page 71

Best Finds Best: Chris Cooper’s Personal Invitation to Connect

“If you care about profit, you should get the f*** out of the industry.”

That’s what a gym owner told me on an online message board in 2008.

That comment got a lot of support.

Of course, I wasn’t greedy—as if any gym owner could be. I just wanted to make enough money to feed my family and keep my gym open.

But I was on an island. I was all alone in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. I ran the only microgym in my town. I was trying to introduce CrossFit and HIIT to a community that was stuck on P90X and bodybuilding. And I was failing.

From the other posts in the group, I assumed everyone else was doing better than I was. Back then, it was hard to discern who the most successful gym owners were. Most talk of money, profit or even pricing was done underground—private chats in the stands at events, late-night phone calls with trusted friends. The conversations were never in public, never under the watchful eye of CrossFit HQ.

I was attracted to CrossFit because it was an empirical approach to fitness: If something worked, we did it. If something didn’t work, we made fun of it and heckled its fans. CrossFit was certifying coaches on the principles of science. But it wasn’t applying the same empirical values to the business of its affiliates, and I was frustrated.

These days, we can talk about money. We can say the word “profit” as gym owners. We understand that fitness entrepreneurs who martyr themselves for the cause won’t be around long enough to save any lives.

We can share knowledge and experience without criticism in our Gym Owners United group (you should join it). We can share data and make decisions based on evidence because Two-Brain publishes hard numbers all the time. We’re more connected than ever before.

But still, we’re far apart geographically. Most of the time, our connection to other gym owners is on Zoom or the phone or Facebook.

So every year I bring people together in the same room.

Energy and Momentum

The energy of a huge group of top entrepreneurs who share the same goals and come together to learn and support each other is massive.

This energy creates speed. If you’re standing still, this connective energy is enough to push you out of your funk. If you’re moving slowly, this energy will give you momentum. And if you’re growing steadily, this energy can even light your rocket.

The key is connecting to the right people—the people who show up with batteries included, who feed you energy instead of taking it from you, who inspire you and motivate you and walk your path with you.

“Best finds best” isn’t a slogan—it’s our business model.

We find the best—the owners who opened their gyms to serve, who want client-centric businesses, who put others ahead of themselves.

Then we teach them the best way to grow without sacrificing their values. We test every idea, track data to measure success and constantly improve our curriculum.

Then we track the best: We identify the top gyms in the world across six categories every month. We interview them, test their innovative practices and upgrade our knowledge with their best ideas.

Then we make the best even better. The 860 gyms in Two-Brain are leading the industry in growth and leadership.

Then, finally, we select the best to mentor the new.

What speeds up this process? Connection. Left alone, people don’t know how they’re doing. There’s no learning on a desert island. Just attempts to survive.

In our mentorship practice, we get entrepreneurs off their islands so they can avoid mistakes and thrive. We connect the best leaders with the best strategies, tactics and skills to make everyone successful. We are always together.

And once every year we are all together in person. If you’re a Two-Brain client, I’d love to see you in Chicago on June 3 and 4.

But you don’t have to be a Two-Brain client to be invited. We welcome anyone who wants to grow as a fitness entrepreneur.

Come and connect with the best in June.

Get Two-Brain Summit tickets here!

The post Best Finds Best: Chris Cooper’s Personal Invitation to Connect appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Supercharge Your Coaches and Build Your Gym’s Bottom Line

A lot of the top gym owners in Two-Brain bring their coaches to our annual summit.

Interestingly, many say they’re in the top echelon of owners because they bring their coaches.

The speakers we’re presenting on the Coaches Stage at our summit are there to empower your staff: to give them the tools and skills they need to build on your platform and thrive.

In one weekend, they’ll learn everything they need to build careers for themselves. And they’ll have options: They can stack different plans together like Lego blocks, depending on their passions and skill sets.

For example, a coach who attends will get the tools needed to create a career that includes habits-based nutrition coaching and semi-private training in addition to more traditional options such as personal training and coaching group classes. Cynthia Fotti and Brian Bott will lay out a path that didn’t exist years ago but can now allow a fitness professional to earn a great living without coaching 13 hours a day.

If a gym is set to encourage intrapreneurialism—and it should be—coaches will earn four-ninths of the revenue they generate with programs like this, which can result in great hourly rates. The gym allocates the rest of the revenue to fixed costs (22 percent) and profit (33 percent). Everyone wins!

Coaches will also learn to grow one-on-one practices, improve adherence rates in classes, work through tough conversations, develop their coaching skills, and get kids and youth moving for life.

They’ll try out some new things, like fitness racing with DEKA, and they’ll have two chances to work out in sessions led by Jason Khalipa of NCFIT, who will demonstrate what he considers to be 10-out-of-10 coaching.

All in all, your coaches will be fired up to act when they get back to the gym. That passion can fuel careers, increase client satisfaction and add revenue to a gym’s bottom line.

I’m bringing my GM and my head coach. I hope to meet your crew there, too. Every year, I love to meet driven, passionate fitness professionals and watch gym owners glow in the thanks they receive from the coaches they brought with them!

Get Two-Brain Summit tickets here!

The post Supercharge Your Coaches and Build Your Gym’s Bottom Line appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

ROI Bonanza: The Two-Brain Summit for Gym Owners and Coaches

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and today I’m gonna talk to you about what we’re gonna be doing together in June. Our annual summit is put together to deliver to gym owners exactly what they need at the time. In the past, I’ve hosted speakers like Jocko Willink, Lisa Nichols, Seth Godin—some big names because that’s who gym owners needed. But what gym owners really need is each other. And so our theme this year at summit is Connect. We’ve got amazing speakers, and we’re focused on action. This isn’t just a big seminar where we get up and talk for two days and give you more information, especially information that we’re giving away for free. What we’re really doing is sitting you down in a room of other people who care about your success and working through problems; getting stuff done; acting on new marketing initiatives, new sales and more.

Chris Cooper (00:52):
You’re gonna hear all about it as I walk through it in this podcast. If you have questions, or if you want to talk about it at any time, just go to Gymownersunited.com. That’s where I’m answering questions to the public every single day. And that’s a caring group of over 7,000 gym owners. No question is off the table. Everybody is friendly, happy and positive. Join us in there anytime you want. So this time at Summit 2023, we’re actually gonna start with a meet-and-greet party. For the first time ever, we’re gonna host a party on Friday night. Get there early, bring your team. We’d love to meet you in person in a more social environment. I think it’s just a great opportunity for gym owners to get together and connect and make new friends, meet new people, meet people that they’ve met in years before at Summit, and just feel the energy of the community of people who want the best for them and want the best for their gym.

Chris Cooper (01:45):
Then starting on Saturday morning, we’re going to split into two stages. Every year we run an Owners Stage and a Coaches Stage. And the reason that we do that is because I would rather you get fast results from the summit, and that means putting speakers in front of your coaches and staff who will tell them exactly what to do, exactly how to grow in their careers and grow your gym without us just telling you that stuff and then you having to translate it, motivate your staff, teach them the SOPs. We’re just gonna take it right to them. So your gym is gonna be growing on the coaches side while you are growing as an entrepreneur. On the owners side this year, we’ve brought in some great guests that I’m super fired up about. So on Saturday morning on the owner’s side, I’ll kick us off.

Chris Cooper (02:30):
We’re gonna do an exercise in connection to help you make friends and make alliances with collaborators, people who want you to do better. I want you to build a community of support around yourself that is all part of the circle of trust within Two-Brain. Then what I’m gonna do is introduce Jason Khalipa. Jason’s topic this year is business virtuosity. It’s very tempting I know to wanna always be doing the next new thing, but the reality is that the best businesses over time are usually the ones who can do the common things uncommonly well over and over and over and over again. For example, some people get really good at Facebook marketing, and that gets them some new clients, and then six months later they’re back to where they started. But gyms that get really good at getting referrals can grow on that practice forever.

Chris Cooper (03:18):
The key to business virtuosity is keeping things simple, maintaining your focus and repeating the things that work over and over. Jason is going to be a very inspirational speaker and he’s gonna be talking on the owners side on Saturday morning about that precise topic. I don’t wanna give any more away because it’s so good, but “business virtuosity” is a phrase that you’re gonna be hearing a lot from us in the future. Then we’re gonna have a snack, and I’m gonna introduce Dan Martell. Now, Dan was my mentor in 2016, and he recently published a book called “Buy Back Your Time.” And around November last year, he sent me a text and said, “Hey, I got this book coming out,” and I said, “I’ll take 500 copies.” And he called me and he said, “What are you talking about? Like you’re buying 500 copies?” I said, “Yep, I just want to have them at summit to give away.”

Chris Cooper (04:06):
And he called me a month later and said, “Can I come to summit and talk about it?” So it’s my great thrill to be able to introduce all of you to Dan Martell, let him talk about his new book “Buy Back Your Time,” and maybe sign a few copies because there’s gonna be copies there. So Dan’s gonna talk about how to effectively invest your time, and it’s so great to have him at the start of summit because you’re going to be doing so many things that I want you to know how to have time to do ’em all. And I want you also to be inspired by Dan and his story. And then at that point we’re gonna break for lunch. Meanwhile, while we’re doing that, on the Coaches Stage they’re gonna be doing their own powerful work, and they’re gonna be starting with Peter Brasovan. And Peter’s gonna be talking about building powerful moments into their coaching practice.

Chris Cooper (04:52):
So owners, you know, we all know about the client journey and stuff. Peter’s gonna get your staff fired up about the client journey. He’s gonna tell them how to make memories, how to tell stories, how to set up your gym and your coaching practice to create moments in a client’s life that they will never forget and always associate with you. This is an incredibly powerful presentation. They’re going to be doing work, they’re going to be writing down parts of your client journey, they’re going to be looking for ways that they can make the experience better for your clients and actually change their lives using the power of moments. Then they’re gonna take a little break. We’ll all meet up in the lobby, get a coffee and whatever, and then they’re going to be going back into a session with Yancy Culp from Spartan DEKA.

Chris Cooper (05:38):
Now this is crazy exciting. So Yancy is the pitch man, the hype man for DEKA, and he’s gonna tell them all about DEKA challenges. He’s gonna give them some challenges. So they’re gonna be moving. He’s gonna let them experience DEKA. If you haven’t done that before, but you’ve done the workout Fight Gone Bad, you’re kind of familiar with the concept. So imagine Fight Gone Bad, but there’s like 10 stations, and you run 400 meters or a mile in between each station. That’s what DEKA is all about. And Yancy’s gonna be talking about the different DEKA options. Like there’s some where you run a mile, there’s somewhere you run 400 meters, there’s some where you don’t run at all. But he’s gonna be getting your coaches fired up and moving. And so by lunchtime your coaches will have learned about building powerful moments for your clients and about a program that they can bring into your gym that they’re gonna be really fired up about—that can make you money.

Chris Cooper (06:28):
That’s the first morning, okay? Then we’re gonna have lunch. Then on the owners side, Shawn Rider’s gonna take the stage, and he’s gonna talk about why it’s okay to talk about money, why we should be talking about money, why gym owners should be profiting and talking about wealth. I won’t give it all away, but the bottom line is that three years ago this talk would’ve been verboten. Like nobody is allowed to talk about profit or wealth, but we’ve brought the industry forward to the point where we are talking about this now and creating wealth for your family and creating impact in your town and creating legacy for your kids. And Shawn is a high-energy speaker who has done exactly all this stuff, and he’s gonna be presenting that to you—and also how you can create wealth for your team.

Chris Cooper (07:14):
This is an amazing, amazing presentation, and it’s not just a bunch of spreadsheets and financial talk. It’s a motivational talk on why you should become wealthy, and Shawn is exactly the guy to do this. Then we’re gonna take a quick break, and then Karl Solberg is gonna talk to us about connecting the goals with the players. So Karl has cracked the code on taking his mission and vision and getting his staff to align with it and act on it. They have two gyms in Sweden, he and his partner Oskar, and they’re going to actually tell you how you do this. So for years and years and years you could read books about leadership, mission, vision, and that’s all cool, and maybe you could get it out of your head, and maybe you could get it down on paper, but getting your staff to buy in on it and even more to act on it to make decisions based on your mission, that’s the missing link.

Chris Cooper (08:05):
And Carl and Oskar have solved this. They’re living this out every day at CrossFit Medis, and they’re gonna be able to teach it to you. He’s gonna give you an exercise to help you get this going step by step. Look, this is gonna add rocket fuel to your team. If everybody’s moving in the same direction and moving faster, you’re gonna grow way faster with more energy and excitement, and you’ll come to love your gym again, and so will they. Then after a quick break, John Franklin will take the stage, and he’s gonna give you the Broke Gym Owner’s Guide to Marketing. So John is a very sought-after speaker. He’s very entertaining. He’s like your favorite college roommate, but he’s also a genius, and what he’s gonna give you is a tactical plan to get marketing even if you’re broke.

Chris Cooper (08:48):
So this is all marketing that you can do for no money. John is the former owner of four gyms. He’s the chief marketing officer for Two-Brain. He’s a very passionate, energetic speaker. He’s hilarious. And what we wanna do is give you some tactical stuff that you can take away and start working. So at this presentation, you’re actually gonna start doing some marketing that will help grow your gym and keep it growing after the summit’s over. While that’s happening, your coaches will be getting even more fun and great speakers. So first Colm O’Reilly is gonna tell them how to get clients to listen. You and I both know that one of the most frustrating parts of this career is feeling like you’ve got all this knowledge and passion and expertise, and you’re saying it to your clients and they’re not listening. Sometimes they’re literally not listening—like they’re talking to their buddy as you’re telling them about the workout. Colm is gonna help you solve that problem.

Chris Cooper (09:41):
He’s gonna teach your coaches how to solve it. You don’t have to learn it. You don’t have to teach it to them. Colm’s gonna just do that for you. It’s called getting Clients to Listen, and this will also help with adherence and retention. Get your clients to get more value out of your gym, stick around longer and get better results and outcomes in healthspan and lifespan. Very important topic. After that, they’re gonna have a quick break, and then they’re going to do a session on having hard conversations with Brian Strump. So imagine as an owner, the hardest part about owning any business is the people. It’s having conversations with your staff and also with your clients, right? And also your friends and your family. And sometimes these conversations are fun and exciting, but sometimes they’re really hard. Like how do you deal with a bad review?

Chris Cooper (10:28):
How do you deal with a client that you’re gonna fire? How do you talk to a client about raising rates? How do you talk to a staff person who’s underperforming? How do you talk to a staff person about meeting their career goals? Brian is an expert at this. His gym, Steele Creek, is one of the best in the world for staffing. He doesn’t really work there too much. His staff grows the business. They handle all these hard conversations for him. So imagine like the brainpower, the focus, the energy, the attention span you would get back if your staff knew how to handle these hard conversations for you. That’s what Brian is gonna do. They’re gonna role-play, they’re gonna have a lot of fun, but they are gonna take a massive weight off your shoulders by learning these skills. Then Jeff and Mikki Martin are gonna come on stage, and they’re gonna talk about the essentials of coaching kids and building a youth program.

Chris Cooper (11:17):
Now, we should all have this. People will pay three times as much for their kids to exercise as they will for themselves, but, more importantly, this is how we affect the next generation. This is the legacy that we’re leaving behind: one of fitness and health. Jeff and Mikki are very passionate about it. They’ve been doing this for two decades. They know how to get it done. But it’s more important that your coaches know how to build a successful kids program that creates opportunities for themselves and outcomes for your clients than it is for you to know because they’re gonna be the implementers. So instead of lecturing to you on how to do this, Jeff and Mikki are gonna take your coaches through the process step by step. And when they leave, they will know exactly how to kick off and build a kid’s program in your gym.

Chris Cooper (12:00):
That’s all on Saturday. You’re going to be tired, but you’re gonna want to go out for dinner, relax in the Rosemont area. Some of our sponsors are hosting get-togethers off site. You’ll know about those in advance. You can show up for those. You can relax, you can unwind, have a couple of drinks if you want to meet up with other gym owners, meet some old friends. Rosemont’s just an amazing area. It’s less than a block from our venue. You can just walk over and enjoy a beautiful summer evening. That’s what we tend to do every year: just unwind. Let the lessons sink in. You can regroup with your staff, keep them fired up. Now we’re gonna have workouts on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Jason Khalipa is gonna lead the workouts. You and your coaches should sign up. I’m gonna give you the registration links after you register for the summit, but this is your chance to watch Jason doing the stuff that he’s preaching and teaching your coaches. On Sunday, he is going to be kicking things off on the Coaches Stage, but you can register for his workouts—big groups, lots of fun, minimal equipment. You can register for his stuff when you sign up for summit.

Chris Cooper (13:08):
So on Sunday Day 2 of Summit, we’re gonna focus even more on getting you amazing ROI on this. I want you to be able to leave Summit and have so many ideas that you can’t wait to act on them. You’re fired up and excited to own a gym again. So on the Owners Stage, Joleen Bingham is gonna give you a talk on how to unlock your team’s potential. She wants you to create a staff journey to hire, develop and retain your best team. So imagine if 10 years from now your best team, the people that you loved working with, were still with you and the worst ones were gone. That’s what Joleen has mastered here. This is a topic that has never been broken down this way before at my summits or any other summits. Joleen has built this staff journey, and she’s gonna give it to you.

Chris Cooper (13:53):
You’re gonna walk through it. You’re gonna build this for yourself right on the spot. It’s an amazing opportunity for you to secure your gym for the future and to create opportunities for your coaches to make their dream careers, too. Then we’ll take a snack, and then Andrea Savard’s gonna come on stage and talk about legendary service and leadership. You and I have probably read a hundred books on leadership, right? And you usually take away one good idea, a couple of good stories, but it’s very tough to put those lessons into practice. It’s tough to know like “okay, how do I handle this” or “what do I say when they say that?” That’s what Andrea’s speech is. I saw the precursor version of this at Tinker meeting a month ago in Nashville, and it was incredible. People were leaving there with little, tiny notebooks of exactly what to say when this happens, exactly how to behave when this happens, how to stop this from happening in advance.

Chris Cooper (14:46):
This is a watershed presentation on leadership. It’s more tactical than any I’ve ever seen in my life. You are going to love it. And while she is doing that, over on the Coaches Stage, Jason Khalipa is gonna kick them off by talking about taking their coaching from a seven to a 10. You know, when I founded Two-Brain Business, I considered myself to be like, well, I probably thought I was a 10-outta-10 coach, but really I was a seven or an eight, and I thought “that’s gonna be enough to build a great gym, a great career as a gym owner.” But the reality was that while my coaching was good, it wasn’t perfect, and I was really limited by my gym ops. Like I was an eight-outta-10 coach running a two-outta-10 gym, and that’s why I wasn’t making a living.

Chris Cooper (15:33):
And so we founded Two-Brain to help gym owners build a 10-outta-10 gym. And what’s happened now is that a lot of gym owners have excellent ops, excellent systems—especially if you’re already in the Two-Brain mentorship practice. You’ve got a great gym, and now it’s time to take the coaches from a seven to a 10, and Jason’s gonna tell ’em how to do that in the way that only Jason Khalipa can. Your coaches are gonna come out of this fired up. They’re gonna come out of it better. They’re gonna come out of it ready to help you take your business to the next level. They’re gonna come out of it as 10s, and you are going to get a system to help train them to get better and better and better. My staff at Catalyst has been doing this now for a couple months, and I’ll tell you the passion is back, baby.

Chris Cooper (16:15):
The energy is back. The groups are full again—groups are excited, they’re fun. It feels like OG kind of CrossFit when everybody was just passionate about being there, happy and friendly. The community feeling is back, and that’s what Jason’s teaching. He’s been working on this for years, but he’s never been able to deliver this in a public way as refined and focused as he is right now. We’re gonna be the first to ever offer this—it’s amazing. After that, we’re gonna have a break, and then Anastasia Bennett’s gonna come on, and she’s really gonna cue up success for a nutrition-coaching program. So her topic is Creating an Avatar of the Perfect Nutrition Client. Here’s the problem. Over 75% of microgyms have a nutrition-coaching program right now, but on average they’re only making 6% of their revenue at best. It’s mostly like 4% of their revenue from nutrition coaching.

Chris Cooper (17:07):
And if you’re only doing that little, you’re probably underwater. You’re probably not getting a good ROI on your nutrition-coaching program. You’re probably not paying a person enough to make it worthwhile to even be a nutrition coach, right? You might even be losing money if you’re paying for ongoing nutrition mentoring or whatever or insurance or certifications. Anastasia’s gonna teach you how to identify the clients who want and need nutrition coaching, how to apply it to them and how to actually sell it. Look, years ago she started doing nutrition coaching. She had two gyms, and she was making more money herself doing nutrition coaching that she actually just moved out of her gyms. And this is all she does now. She’s gonna really unlock this for your gym, and she’s gonna set your coaches up for the next speaker, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

Chris Cooper (17:53):
So then we’re all gonna have lunch. That’s Sunday. Okay? Then on the Owners Stage, I’m gonna bring up my friend and my coach Bonnie Skinner. Bonnie’s a registered psychotherapist. She’s like the therapist in residence here at Two-Brain HQ. She and I get together every second week to talk about confidence and roadblocks. She’s the reason that Two-Brain just keeps growing and I’ve gotten over mindset problems that were limiting our growth. Bonnie is amazing. She’s a frequent speaker at Tinker events, and we’re gonna bring her onstage to help you identify what’s stopping you from growing and work through that stuff. In this one session, she’s gonna give you tools to do it on your own. There’s a reason that over half of the Tinkers work one on one with Bonnie, and it’s because the biggest obstacle to your growth is often you.

Chris Cooper (18:41):
She’s gonna help you get over that at summit this year. Then we’re gonna have a break, and we’re gonna come back with another amazing, tactical presentation. Karen Hazelton is gonna talk about doing a stress-free goal review. So when things started out, I was teaching goal reviews because we were doing it in our personal-training practice, and I taught it to a few gyms back in 2012, 2013, and some of those gyms were doing it consistently, and they did it a little bit better than I did. So that was cool. We adopted what they did, and then the next generation of gym owners to learn goal reviews took it, and a couple of them did it even better. They changed a couple of things or added client tracking or whatever. They added a tool or they took away a barrier or they changed a question, and so we adopted that practice.

Chris Cooper (19:25):
And so now this thing has been refined over and over and over for a decade, and Karen Hazelton has the best version we’ve ever offered. And, even better, she can teach you how to do goal reviews with all of your clients every quarter, just like she does in a big gym, in a stress-free method. This is amazing. I’m adopting this at my gym now. Even the original is getting updated, and Karen is gonna teach it to you, and you’re can actually work through it. Then, while that’s happening, on the Coaches Stage Cynthia Fotti is gonna give your staff the recipe for delivering habits-based nutrition coaching—the step-by-step playbook, how to get clients, how to charge for it, what to actually deliver. This is so valuable that any of your coaches can learn it and start delivering nutrition or habits-based coaching right after Summit.

Chris Cooper (20:15):
This is definitely enough for them to make at least half of a meaningful career income. But the next speaker, Brian Bott, is gonna give them everything else that they need. So he’s gonna come in and talk about building a semi-private training program. This is mind blowing for those of us who were personal trainers in the past and also for those of us who have just run group-training facilities. Semi-private training bridges the gap between the two. So when I was doing personal training, my book was absolutely full. Sometimes I was training 12 people a day and only making about 40 grand a year, and then I jumped to group training, and now I was seeing like 40 people a day and making even less money. Semi-private is when you and two or three other people are training at the same time but following different programs—training with a coach but sharing that coach with three or four other people.

Chris Cooper (21:07):
So imagine you’re doing a session with three of your best friends. They’re training for different things, but you’re all training together. You’ve got a coach who’s giving you a spot, giving you a cue, correction, inspiring and motivating, pushing you, and you’re all doing that together. Well, that to a lot of people is more valuable than group training. It’s less expensive for them than doing personal training. It’s way more fun. The coach can make way more money, the gym can collect way more revenue, and the retention is way higher. Brian’s ARM every month is like over 300 bucks per client. He’s got two gyms. They’re crushing it out in Jersey, and he’s gonna give you the recipe to do it. Look, if you bring your coaches to the summit and they show up at noon on Sunday and they just sit through Cynthia and Brian’s presentations, they’ll have the knowledge and skills and tools to make a career in fitness.

Chris Cooper (21:58):
Like this is an amazing gift and an amazing investment that you can make in them, but their growth will grow the pie for everybody, and that’s the point of really creating these careers for your coaches. They’re not taking from you. They’re not taking a bigger slice of your pie. What they’re doing is taking your platform, building opportunities for themselves and growing the pie for everybody as they do it. That’s what we teach at Two-Brain, and these speakers are set up to deliver exactly that for you. At the end of Sunday, we’re all gonna come back together in one room and Taryn Dubreuil is gonna talk about how to zero in your focus and get stuff done. Taryn took her kind of disorganized, popular but stressful gym and turned it into an amazing culture-focused, client-centric gym that generates a ton more revenue. I think she like three-X’d in revenue in two and a half years now.

Chris Cooper (22:55):
She’s a millionaire, and the reason is that she’s able to just focus in on what works. So all the way back to business virtuosity and all these other things that we’re gonna teach you, Taryn’s superpower is just being able to focus on each thing, get them done so that her gym grows, and she’s gonna teach you how to do it too. Look, I know you’re overwhelmed with ideas. I know you’re busy. You owe it to yourself to take two or three days, come to Chicago, get your passion back for owning a gym. Get a clear path to success, meet other people who love you and support you and want you to do well, and learn from the experts, and do the actual work. Bring your staff. You’ll get closer for it. A lot of the top-earning gyms in Two-Brain, like they bring their staff, and they say that their growth was so rapid because they brought their staff. They aligned their staff, they energized their staff, they told their staff what to do so that they didn’t have to learn everything and then try to delegate it down. More than anything else, I just wanna meet you in person. I hope you can make it to Summit 2023. The ticket links are below and we’ll see you in Chicago.

The post ROI Bonanza: The Two-Brain Summit for Gym Owners and Coaches appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Love Your Gym Again: The Two-Brain Summit

Every year, I ask myself a question:

“What do gym owners need right now?”

Then I invite the best speakers who can address those topics to present at the annual Two-Brain Summit.

Their instructions: Be polished, be professional, create action and connect people.

At the summit, I want gym owners to get a huge return on their investment in time, travel and tickets. And that means delivering more than knowledge, more than inspiration, more than action.

A trip to our summit in Chicago this June gets you:

Three new sources of inspiration.Three new, actionable things to do when you get home.Three new collaborators.A couple of workouts led by Jason Khalipa of NCFIT.A couple of drinks at a mixer for gym owners and coaches.The opportunity to connect with a host of vendors who provide solutions to common problems.100 handshakes, hugs, selfies and in-person connections to other top entrepreneurs.Epiphanies that will help you focus and grow your business over the next 12 months.

To be more specific, gym owners who attend are going to be exposed to upper-level thinking that will drive their businesses forward at top speed.

They’ll learn in a weekend how to solve problems I had to struggle with for a decade as a new gym owner.

They’ll learn what it takes to reach the upper levels of entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on leadership, staff retention and career building.

They’ll learn about cutting-edge, upgraded tactics backed by the largest data set in the world for microgym owners. For example, attendees will learn how to build a staff journey so key team members stick around longer, how to simplify Goal Review Sessions to generate more revenue and increase retention, and how to build an actionable marketing plan that will produce results without a huge price tag.

They’ll learn new skills: how to speak more clearly, how to say the right thing in different leadership situations and how to shift their mindset so they can reach higher levels of entrepreneurship.

Most importantly, they’ll start to love their gyms again. When that happens, the owners and their families will benefit—but so will their staff members and clients. These are huge wins across the board.

I can’t wait to see you in person, share some stories, watch the epiphanies happen and shed a bit of sweat!

Get Two-Brain Summit tickets here!

The post How to Love Your Gym Again: The Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Exact Month-by-Month Plan to Lose 420 Clients in Five Years

As gym owners, we often think about the number of clients we have.

Headcount is definitely important.

But stop for a minute and think about all your departed clients.

What’s the total number for the current life of your business?

And what would happen if you found a way to stop it from growing?

I’ll save you the calculations. Below are four simple scenarios.

We’ll ignore net client growth due to addition of new clients. The table below just shows the effect that monthly losses have on gross departures over one, two, three or five years.

Average Monthly Client LossAnnual Client LossLost Clients: 2 YearsLost Clients: 3 YearsLost Clients: 5 Years11224366033672108180560120180300784168252420

Wow, right?

Even in a gym that loses just 3 clients a month, that’s 180 departed clients in five years.

Get this: That’s actually an entire gym’s worth of clients if you recall that Two-Brain data shows you can make $100,000 a year serving just 150 clients.

If your retention is worse and you lose five or seven people every month, the projections are horrifying.

Think of losing 420 clients in five years and what that does to a business:

You lose revenue as soon as each person departs.You miss out on all the future revenue each person would have contributed if your length of engagement were better.You lose access to each person’s network of connections.You have 420 people who are telling others “I quit that gym.”You have to acquire 420 new clients just to maintain revenue levels, and you probably have to spend money to do it.If your close rate is 50 percent, you’ll need 840 sales meetings to replace the 420 clients. And you might have to get 2,000 or 3,000 leads in order to get 840 sales meetings. Maybe 5,000 or more if your set and show rates for sales appointments are very poor.You have to onboard hosts of new clients and try to prevent them from leaving in the first 90 days, which are critical to retention.You have to spend a lot of time with new clients, which means you aren’t spending as much time with long-term clients. This can destroy your retention rate and start a vicious cycle of churn in your gym.Your staff members have to work extra hard to build relationships with new people.

And so on.

What If You Improved Retention?

Back when I ran a larger functional fitness facility, I was truly depressed when I compared our current client count against our alumni list. I had lost more than double the clients I actually had.

I won’t beat myself up over each one. Some moved to other parts of the city. Some moved to other cities. Some got shift-work jobs that forced them to train at 24-hour facilities. Sadly, some even died.

But the vast majority left for other reasons that can all be summarized like this: “I’m not getting what I need here.”

They clearly had fitness goals, but they either chose not to pursue them further or not to pursue them with me. If I thought I was a good coach, this realization forced me to admit I had a lot to learn as a business owner.

But enough with the doom and gloom. I present the table and tale to show you what can happen if you don’t focus on retention.

On the flip side is this scenario: A gym loses about 10 or 20 clients a year but is able to more than replace them just through referrals from a large number of satisfied current clients. The gym grows slowly and steadily, and as the client count increases, the owner improves her systems and her business model to ensure retention levels remain high. The owner makes a good living, her coaches have great careers, and her clients accomplish their goals.

A concise plan exists to ensure that scenario is a reality at your gym. You can avoid all the bleeding just by employing some simple but effective tactics.

I’d encourage you to review your own data. How many clients did you lose last month? Multiply your answer by 12, 24, 36 and 60.

If you want to learn how to reduce those numbers, book a call here.

The post The Exact Month-by-Month Plan to Lose 420 Clients in Five Years appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Retention in 24/7 Access Gyms: Top Gym Owner’s Tactics

Mike Warkentin (00:00):
How do you acquire and retain hundreds of clients at a 24/7 gym? You’ll find out today on this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin. Every month, I review leaderboards for gym metrics. I talk to someone who made the leaderboard, and then I ask them to share their secrets with you. I’m literally giving away the cheat codes for gym ownership every month. Now please subscribe so you don’t miss any of that because I want you to run a successful gym, too. This month, I’ve got Dixie Burns of Complete Physique Anytime in Kalama, Washington. She landed on our leaderboard for total clients. That Top 10 runs from over 300 to over 700 clients. A lot of these are coaching gyms, some are access gyms. We’ve got a nice mix in there. So Dixie’s gonna share her secret today. Congrats, Dixie. Thanks for being here.

Dixie Burns (00:46):
Thank you so much.

Mike Warkentin (00:48):
I wanna ask you this. We often don’t talk to people who run predominantly 24/7 access gyms. I know you’re doing some coaching on the side, but I understand that’s kind of the business model. Give me the one-minute, 60-second summary. What do you do at your gym? What’s your market? What do you sell? Who are you?

Dixie Burns (01:01):
Yeah, so Complete Physique is a small-town health and wellness center. We have a full access gym, and we also offer personal training, nutrition and hypnotherapy. So, yeah, so that’s pretty exciting to be able to offer the hypnotherapy as well. Cause we don’t really see that anywhere else. Almost 80% of our members are senior citizens.

Mike Warkentin (01:28):
Oh, that’s a good one.

Dixie Burns (01:28):
Yeah, we’re a retirement community, so we have a lot of senior citizens.

Mike Warkentin (01:33):
Okay. So that’s really interesting. And do you have a breakdown or percentage? How many of your members just come for access and how many of them go for coaching and nutrition and more of the coaching services?

Dixie Burns (01:44):
I would say most of them come for access. We’re kinda changing that, you know. This year we’re kinda changing that a little bit and, and we’ve included some group training. So we’ve got a group going right now. We’re trying to get a second group going for that. So just to bring in more members for that one-on-one or even, you know, groups of three to five.

Mike Warkentin (02:06):
Okay, I like it. So we have the basics of what you do there. Now we’re gonna find out how you manage to do it so well and earn a spot on the leaderboard. So talk to me about huge client counts. You can’t have a client count of hundreds of members without acquiring members and retaining them. But tell me first, how you acquire these people? Like what brings your members in the door?

Dixie Burns (02:24):
So with us being a small town, we have several Facebook groups in the town. So we use those platforms for advertising. So just being able to advertise the right way to bring people in the door, that has helped. Also word of mouth, you know. With us being a small town, if somebody enjoys something that’s happening, they’re gonna go tell everybody at the grocery store and the vintage store and all the places around town. So word of mouth is awesome. We get a lot of referrals that way.

Mike Warkentin (02:56):
Okay. So it’s a two-pronged strategy where you’re doing some Facebook ads and you’re putting some dollars behind that, and then you’re doing what we often call in Two-Brain “affinity marketing,” where you’re using your current satisfied clients to find more of them. Is that right?

Dixie Burns (03:06):
Yep. Correct.

Mike Warkentin (03:08):
Okay. So I like that approach, and there are gyms that use that approach in varying ratios with more advertising or more referrals. The one thing I’ll remind you of listeners: referrals is not a passive process. You have to make it happen or it won’t happen. Okay. Now, this is an interesting one. I saw this on your website, but I want you to tell me about it. How do you get these people in? Like what is the onboarding process at your gym, and how does that affect retention? ‘Cause you do something that I haven’t seen a lot.

Dixie Burns (03:31):
Yeah, so we start with a No Sweat Intro, which is 10 to 15 minutes that we spend with our clients. We get to know them you know. First of all, we give them a tour of the facility, find out what their goals are, kind of get to know them a little bit. And then what I think is most important is we introduce them to other members that might be there working out at the time, and we introduce them to other staff that might be there during that time. So it’s kind of like a family. We, you know, we’re kind of like a family, and it’s really cool. And so we want to welcome everybody else by making them feel like they fit in here.

Mike Warkentin (04:08):
Now that’s in an access gym, right? Like that’s even for your access members?

Dixie Burns:
Yes.

Mike Warkentin:
See now it’s interesting ‘cause every gym that I signed up to—I didn’t sign up to any 24/7s, but lots of access gyms—and when I signed up, they said, “There’s your membership card, there’s the stuff,” and that was it. I didn’t meet anybody. You put on your headphones for the most part. You do your pec deck in the corner, and you ignore everyone else and try to look cool. That doesn’t seem to happen at your gym. Is that a function of the demographic that you have where the older community wants to be more social or is that a function of how you’ve decided to set up at this gym the community that you want?

Dixie Burns (04:42):
I think that’s kinda what I noticed. I used to teach—we have a senior fitness class that is all 65 and older. I used to teach that class. Now we have others teaching it. And that’s kinda what I noticed from that class was they wanted five or 10 minutes before class started to do their social time. And then after class on Fridays, they all go to coffee together. So after seeing that for a couple of months, I decided, you know, to incorporate that for all of our members. They like to meet people. There’s a lot of them that their only social time is coming to the gym. So we want them to feel welcome and feel like, you know, they have people that they know, and they’re comfortable.

Mike Warkentin (05:23):
See, you’ve hit on a couple things there. You’ve got your target market you know obviously really well, and you wanna provide the things that they want. And then the other thing is that retention is clearly related to your service, your business. But there also is that third prong: other clients and other people. So if they can make connections inside your business and have workout buddies, I imagine that helps retention too.

Dixie Burns (05:46):
Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Warkentin (05:48):
Yeah. Now for group or your access clients, do they go through any sort of on-ramp or intake process after that consultation?

Dixie Burns (05:54):
So a lot of them sign up for either nutrition or one-on-one training. I have a few clients who I do one-on-one training with, and they’re also in the group training. So a lot of them, most of them actually start out with the access membership. So far we haven’t really had success with the on-ramp. So we just have them start out with the access membership. I always offer other things, you know, the hypnotherapy and the personal training and nutrition just to let them know that it’s available. And so a lot of them end up going into that or they’ll get to a certain point and go, “Oh, hey, I think I need something extra.”

Mike Warkentin (06:34):
I have a suspicion that we probably need to do a whole show on hypnotherapy, but can you give me like the 60-second rundown of what that is?

Dixie Burns (06:40):
Absolutely. So hypnotherapy is putting a client in a relaxed state, and you give suggestions to their subconscious mind. Nothing is going to allow them to do anything subconsciously that they don’t wanna do. So it just gives them suggestions to reframe things, like past trauma for instance. Maybe they have a fear about something because of something that has happened to them. So hypnotherapy can reframe that so that they feel differently about it. It just gives them a different perspective so they see it differently and then in turn makes them feel differently about the outcome, and then they can move on and let it go.

Mike Warkentin (07:24):
That is a unique skill set you’ve got there, and I think, like I said, we might have to dig into that in a different episode, but that’s very cool. And now I’ll, I’ll hire you after the show to help me out with my worries about being a good podcast host. We know that traditional gyms and, you know, access gyms and things like that often have an in a lot of people churning in and out. When I went to those gyms, no was no one checking in on me, and I kinda just did my own thing. And when I was trying to leave, I left and so forth. So do you have any retention metrics that you can share to put things in perspective?

Dixie Burns (07:55):
Absolutely. So one of the things that I think is extremely important is I tell my members upfront that, “Hey, I’m here for you. I’m here to support you. Whatever you need, you know, my number’s on the building. Here’s my card. Give me a call, text me anytime.” So if there’s ever any complaints, we don’t get many, but occasionally, I get right on it, and I resolve it immediately so that we don’t have people who don’t feel welcome coming here. So I think that’s highly important to let them know up front that, hey, we’re here to support you.

Mike Warkentin (08:31):
So you mentioned you have staff. Are you by default the client success manager—when people know that there’s an issue or if they wanna talk, they go right to you? Or do you have other people that help you out with that?

Dixie Burns (08:40):
So I do have a client success manager. She’s still in training. Mm-Hmm. So that’s really, really new. She’s been a member of the gym as well for quite some time. So if she’s here, people will go to her. And then she passes on to me. A lot of times I just get a phone call or a text message. So my members who know me well who’ve been coming for quite a while, they still will come to me.

Mike Warkentin (09:04):
Ok. So it’s a role that you, I guess just to quote Chris Cooper, you’ve done the role and you’re leaving some deep, deep footprints, and you’re gonna pass that off to someone else who can do it to your standards.

Dixie Burns (09:13):
Exactly.

Mike Warkentin (09:14):
Yeah. And then what will you devote that time to once that is off your plate?

Dixie Burns (09:19):
So I raise my grandson who is a special-needs kiddo. He has autism. He’s nonverbal. So I just wanna be there to devote more time to him. That’s my number one.

Mike Warkentin (09:33):
Okay. So that’s the idea, gym owners. If you can get rid of things from your plate and create a business where it runs itself, you can start devoting that time to other things–like family or whatever else you wanna do, which is a really cool thing. Talk to me about some of the essentials again of holding onto people in this facility. So you mentioned the intake process where you set people up and connect them and so forth. How do you stop people from running out? Like, again, I’ll give you the example of January people show up, and by February they’re gone. How do you stop that from happening? Do you have any specific stuff that’s really important for you to retain members in this gym?

Dixie Burns (10:06):

So I try to do some type of event or challenge or create a new program about every three months. And I’m always posting things on our Facebook. We have a private Facebook group, and then we have a Facebook page, and I will share those things to the community Facebook pages as well. So always just letting people know “hey, we have this going on and we have this new program.” And just so that they don’t get bored with things, they can move on to something different, you know, about quarterly.

Mike Warkentin (10:37):
Whenever I was in one of these gyms, I never had a private Facebook group, and I never knew what was really going on. I might see something on a bulletin board, but I never actually had this personalized group. And there certainly weren’t local or regular events. Tell me about some of the events that you run. Like what kind of quarterly things are on your calendar to keep members engaged?

Dixie Burns (10:55):
So in January we did a challenge. It was a circuit challenge with our senior citizens, which is awesome to see, you know, people in their 70s doing circuits. And this weekend we are doing a 5K run-walk-bike for autism awareness. April’s Autism Awareness Month. And so that’s obviously really, really important to me. So we are doing that at our marina area. So it’s on the water and we’ve got quite a few members signed up for that. So that’s gonna be awesome.

Mike Warkentin (11:29):
And you make a point of actually putting this stuff on your calendar ahead of time. How far in advance do you plan these things?

Dixie Burns (11:35):
I try to do at least a couple of months. Sometimes it’s just a month ahead.

Mike Warkentin (11:40):
The reason I ask is because Chris Cooper just wrote a series on special events, and he’s recommending that gyms use about four a year. And not necessarily stuff that they host, but like you said, events in the community as well where you can link up and partner with them. And the benefit there is that you don’t have to do all your organization work, which is can be a lot in a lot of cases. The other thing, though, is it gives your members something to look forward to. It gives them a bonding experience outside the gym where they can tell stories about this great thing that they did. And it also helps them stay committed to training. Because if I know I have an event coming like 5K fun walk or something like that, I’m going to keep training. Have you found that that is the case where your members are like, “What’s the next event? What am I training for?” Does it help them set goals?

Dixie Burns (12:20):
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think the other thing that helps is checking in with them. You know, I always make it a point to say hello to everybody that’s here so that they feel that they can come to me, you know, when they’re ready to move on to something else. And, you know, probably every couple of weeks I’ll say, “Hey, how are things going? You know, do you feel like everything’s going good with your workouts?” You know, just kinda checking in with them. And then as far as the events go, too, we do kind of partner with other people in the community. Like our local police officers put on a national night out every summer. And so we are always invited to that, and we’ll do some sort of a fitness challenge for everyone who comes to that. And that’s not just gym members. That’s everybody in the community. So it helps bring in more business

Mike Warkentin (13:08):
Goal Review Sessions. Now we know in coaching gyms they happen a lot. Do you do that in an access gym or are you planning on doing something like that?

Dixie Burns (13:16):
So I do goal reviews, specific goal reviews with my one-on-one training clients and my group clients. So as far as just the access members, I don’t necessarily schedule the goal reviews, but I do check in with them periodically just to say, “Hey, how are things going? You know, are you getting everything you need? Fitness wise and nutrition?”

Mike Warkentin (13:39):
It’s an interesting question because we know, like, say in a model of 150 coaching clients at a high value, goal reviews are a little bit easier to do, but if you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of clients in an access gym, it’s a little bit of a different story. So I’ve never run into this before, so that’s why I’m kind of asking about this. Could you see a scenario where an official Goal Review Session would work for access clients? Or is that something that you wouldn’t consider?

Dixie Burns (14:01):
I think it would be difficult with as many members as we have right now. We’re at over 360 members right now. So I think it would be difficult. So I just kind of let them come to me. That’s why I check in periodically, and I always tell them, “Hey, if you feel like you need something different, just let me know.” And, you know, I always let them know again, reminding them of what we have available for them.

Mike Warkentin (14:27):
Yeah. And I think, like when I worked in commercial gym, this is years ago now, but when I did, I don’t think it would’ve been feasible for the staffing levels to manage goal reviews with all those people. But at that gym I was at, people bled out very quickly because they’d show up in January, like I said, and they’d be gone by March. And so that was a big problem there. And in those gyms we never really tried to solve that because honestly in those gyms the business model isn’t trying to solve that. It’s just trying to get the membership payments, and if they leave, they leave. But you sounds like you’ve got a very different plan. So the focus there for you is making sure on intake they know people, they know how to reach you, they know how to get their problems solved if they have any, and then also to connect with other people, and then they’ve got these events. Are those like the three main pillars of retention for you?

Dixie Burns (15:14):
Those are, yeah. I think that that’s definitely what has worked. I’m noticing a difference, especially over the last year with you know, come March, February, March, we aren’t having a lot of people dropping off.

Mike Warkentin (15:27):
Oh that’s a big deal.

Dixie Burns (15:28):
Yeah. And even summer, you know, it used to be everybody wants to be outside in the summer, so we would lose people. We haven’t had that happen the last couple of years.

Mike Warkentin (15:38):
So what changed? Why over the last couple years? Can you put your finger on anything?

Dixie Burns (15:41):
I really think people feel comfortable. I think that’s the biggest thing is people feel comfortable when we let them know up front, “Hey, I’m here for you.” They know that when they call me with a complaint, it’s gonna get taken care of. And I think that is huge. And then the other thing that I think is important too is we have placed a no-bullying policy. And we’ve only had this happen once or twice in the last seven years that I’ve owned this gym. But so it does happen occasionally. And so that includes any type of intimidation, whether direct or indirect. If somebody feels intimidated, I go to that person, and I, you know, I’ll tell them, “Hey, this is not tolerable here. This is your warning. This is your last warning, one and only warning. If it happens again, you get canceled.” So we don’t tolerate that. And I think that helps with, you know, making people feel comfortable. Like they don’t have to worry about, you know, somebody else intimidating them when they come to the gym.

Mike Warkentin (16:44):
So if I walk into your gym right now, what is the vibe? And I mean, like again, back in the day when I went in, it was like the bodybuilder over there with the headphones on, and this person over there on the cardio machine ,and kind of just these like very fractured groups, maybe a couple of training partners, but mostly individual stuff. What is the vibe if I walk in? What do I see in your gym?

Dixie Burns (17:02):
So the vibe coming in here is “this is home.” Like, it is like a second home to people, you know. Everybody says hello to each other. You know, even when I come in, it’s “good morning Dixie,” and I’m onto the next person on the treadmill. “Good morning, Dixie.” And it’s just—it’s very family-like. It’s very comfortable. It’s very positive and bright, and I love it. And this is what I want for all of my members to feel as well. And I think they do.

Mike Warkentin (17:31):
Do you see your members actually kind of connecting with each other to train and keep each other accountable? And I don’t mean like in a structured sense where you have groups, but like do these friendships and training partnerships grow up organically because you’ve created this community feel?

Dixie Burns (17:45):
Absolutely, yes.

Mike Warkentin (17:46):
That’s cool.

Dixie Burns (17:47):
Yes, I will see members when I’m training somebody one on one, I’ll see other members helping each other. It’s, it’s really cool.

Mike Warkentin (17:56):
I could see this happening say in the seniors community because it’s a little bit different, but do you have younger members, and does it happen there, too? Like is there a younger demographic in your gym as well?

Dixie Burns (18:06):
There is. So we, we allow kiddos supervised from age 11 to 16. Once they’re 16 they can be unsupervised. We do have probably a handful of high-school students that come in, you know, and they’re fully aware, too, of being respectful, especially with their music, you know, around the older population. So that’s something that I really make that important for them to know is “hey, we’ve got older members here who don’t like your type of music.” And so they’re really respectful of that. And so, I’m sorry, I lost track of what your question was.

Mike Warkentin (18:44):
No, I’m just curious. The reason I ask is because when I had a seniors group at my gym—and it was small-group training with like, you know, 10 to 12 people—hey were very tightly knit. So I could see that vibe transferring over into an access facility where people are coming and they really kind of look at it as social time plus workout time. But I was curious if some of the younger demographics bought into that as well, or if it was like when I was 20, I was bench pressing in the corner. Like do the younger people buy into that community vibe as well?

Dixie Burns (19:13):
I think it’s a little bit different. You know, we do have people in their 20s to 40s as well. I would say that group is a little bit different. A lot of times they’re the ones with their headphones and just kind of doing their workout, but they will get involved in conversations. They are friendly you know to the rest of the population in here as well. So I would say not as many, but there are a few that still do.

Mike Warkentin (19:41):
Yeah. And that’s not a fault for them because in a 24/7 access gym, some people just wanna do that, and that’s what they’re there for. “I’m gonna work out at 2 a.m. at the end of my shift, and I’m just gonna get my stuff done and go home.” That’s totally cool. I’m just curious about this because you have such an interesting kind of unique situation, and I’m curious what other gym owners can learn with your younger demographic. Do you find that there’s more churn with them? I’m curious about that one.

Dixie Burns (20:04):
Yeah, a little bit. And I think a lot of that has to do with that social aspect. You know, our older generation, they do this mostly—number one, they wanna keep moving, and number two, it is their social time. So I think that the younger population, they get social time in other places, you know. Most of them work. They still work, so it’s a little bit different for them versus our 80% of the senior citizens.

Mike Warkentin (20:31):
So what would you say for the younger group, what would you say is your main retention tactic there? Do you have something that you do to keep those guys that are more likely to walk out?

Dixie Burns (20:41):
The events, and again, just letting them know, reminding them periodically, “Hey, we’ve got this new program going on. So anytime we have new programs, and I’m constantly creating programs this year, so anytime that happens, I let them know, whether it’s through Facebook or I’m walking in and I see somebody, you know, who’s just on the treadmill and they’re chit-chatting, I’ll say, “Hey, hey, did you hear about our new program?” And usually they’re excited about it. Yeah. So just keeping people up to date about what’s going on.

Mike Warkentin (21:14):
So gym owners, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to Chris Cooper’s series on how to make money at other people’s events. It’s really cool, and it’s four quarterly events that you can either host yourself or link up with someone else. This is a really cool way to get people fired up to train and stay at your gym, especially during down times. Chris has ’em spaced out about four times a year, and it looks like this is working well for Dixie. So I’m gonna put a link in the show notes. You guys can click that and take a look at that stuff. Dixie, the last thing I’ll ask you is a question that Chris and I have discussed offline a few times. How many clients can you acquire and retain? Like is there a limit? Meaning if I just dumped 150 people into your gym tomorrow, would you be able to keep them all? Or would you feel like,
“Wow, I just can’t hold onto these people” and they kind of bleed out? And you would be back to your current 360. Like is there a limit to how fast you can grow?

Dixie Burns (21:59):
So with our building space, I believe there is a limit. It does help that we are a 24-hour gym. That definitely helps because they can spread out a little bit more. Like we, we have our current local fire department as members, and a lot of them are coming throughout the night. So that definitely helps. I would say still in the current building that I’m in, we’re about 3,200 square feet, so I probably wouldn’t want more than about 450. I am, you know, currently I’ve got my eyes open for a larger facility, which is difficult to find in the area that I’m in. But I do have some goals set up for that so that we can grow larger as well.

Mike Warkentin (22:43):
If you hit that 450, would you do anything differently with retention? Was there anything that you’d add on or change?

Dixie Burns (22:48):
I think I would keep everything the same. I may be here a little bit more often just to make sure that people see a face and know that they’re supported.

Mike Warkentin (22:59):
Last thing I’ll ask you, your client success manager, you said she’s in training or he’s in training, I forget what you said.

Dixie Burns (23:04):

She is in training. So she is learning to, you know, do the signups, the NSIs and all of that.

Mike Warkentin (23:10):
So that was my question: What’s she gonna be doing? And so you said she’s gonna be doing the No Sweat Intros, free consultations. She’ll be signing people up. What else will she do?

Dixie Burns (23:19):
She does a lot of the restocking. She’s kind of that middle person for like phone calls. She’ll be doing scheduling eventually. We’ve only got one other trainer on board right now—looking for another—so she’ll be scheduling for them eventually.

Mike Warkentin (23:35):
Would you ever have her, and this is just me kind of throwing things at the wall here, I’m curious, would you ever have her just randomly reach out to clients like say, you know, 30 a month and just say, “Hey, how’s it going?” Is that something you’d ever consider?

Dixie Burns (23:48):
Absolutely. whether we send a card or just reaching out to clients, absolutely. I do run reports every month. So we get lists of those clients who haven’t been in in a while.

Mike Warkentin (23:58):
There’s a big one.

Dixie Burns (23:59):
Yeah. We do have like an automated email that will go out to them. Like, “Hey, how are things going? We haven’t seen you in a while.” But eventually the goal is to have her kinda reach out to those people, too, in addition to that email just so it’s more personal.

Mike Warkentin (24:14):
Yeah. And that’s something I was really curious about ‘cause again, that never happened at any gym that I worked at or trained at until I got into the coaching gyms. And if you do that in access facility, I’m wondering if even just a small contact like that, like a quarterly “hi, how are you? How are you enjoying the gym?” I wonder if that would measurably improve retention. You’re tracking retention, right?

Dixie Burns (24:34):
Yes.

Mike Warkentin (24:35):
Okay. So this is good ‘cause we can revisit this conversation eventually and figure it out. Because I would love to know what a client success manager does to the retention in an access gym, especially when it’s 24 hours. So keep close numbers.

Dixie Burns (24:46):
Yeah, definitely.

Mike Warkentin (24:49):

All right, Dixie, thanks so much. I love milking you for information here on a thing that we don’t often talk about, which is these 24/7 access gyms with coaching and hypnotherapy. Did I get it right?

Dixie Burns (24:59):
Yep.

Mike Warkentin (24:59):
Yeah. So there we go. That’s a really cool service. Thanks so much for sharing your numbers. I really appreciate it. Congratulations on making the leaderboard.

Dixie Burns (25:05):
Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me here.

Mike Warkentin (25:08):
Well, it is my pleasure. That was Dixie Burns and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for watching and listening. Please subscribe wherever you’re at. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.

Chris Cooper (25:19):
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 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 Retention in 24/7 Access Gyms: Top Gym Owner’s Tactics appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

9 Things You Must Do to Get More Than 150 Members

You can reach 150 members at your gym with the owner-operator model.

To go beyond that number you need to change your business model.

You’ll need a different structure and much better systems. You’ll need an air-tight retention plan. You’ll need great staff members who do things at a 10-out-of-10 level—just like you would do them. You’ll need to understand your metrics and be able to use them to make detailed plans for everything.

Without those things, you’ll bleed clients and slip back to 150 members or less.

It happens all the time. A gym reaches 150 members and the owner assumes growth will just continue. But more clients amplify any problems in the gym, and soon the owner is struggling to plug leaks in every aspect of the business. In some cases, the gym goes under.

Two-Brain has the largest data set in the world for gyms. We identify the top gyms and then pick them apart to find commonalities so other gyms can have the same success. If you want more than 150 members, here are the things you’ll need to do.

9 Essential Tasks for Gym Growth

1. Hire a management layer—Coaches coach. But you’re going to need to fill other roles: an administrator or general manager, a bookkeeper and, usually, a client success manager (CSM).

2. Upgrade your retention plan—Every client in the gym must be in contact with someone who is specifically tasked with retention duties. It’s time to go beyond “email the info@ account if you have issues.” At this stage, your staff members are actively working to improve retention and solve problems for clients.

3. Improve your branding—Why your gym and not the gym down the street with the same equipment? You must know that answer, and your clients must know it, too.

4. Implement the Prescriptive Model—Everyone has barbells and machines. CrossFit gyms are common now. And corporate chains have commoditized intensity. It’s time to go beyond a certain fitness method to start selling solutions to health and fitness problems.

5. Diversify your revenue streams—You don’t need to do “all the things.” That’s a mistake. But gyms with lots of members always offer two or three programs, not just one. Here’s one common plan that works well when supported by great staff members and solid systems: group fitness, personal training and nutrition coaching.

6. Hire at least one full-time coach—Businesses with more than 150 members need a professional on staff.

7. Create a marketing plan—Clients won’t just appear. You’ll have to work hard to acquire them (and retain them). But that doesn’t mean you need to seek out all the “can’t miss, sure-thing marketing strategies.” Master the basics: referrals, Affinity Marketing and some advertising.

8. Train your salespeople—To get more than 150 clients, you can’t have a brutal close rate. If your marketing systems bring clients to your sales office, you must put a person in the room who can close sales at a high rate.

9. Be patient—Don’t try to jump straight from 150 to 300 members. Grow slowly but steadily. Emphasize profit and retention. Growth will require investment in staff, systems and maybe even space—all of that will affect profit. To grow and thrive, you must minimize the profitability “dips” that kill microgyms.

A Mentor and a Plan

If you have about 150 members, you don’t need dedicated salespeople. You don’t need to invent a new model. You probably don’t need a GM. And you can make $100,000 a year serving these clients. We teach gym owners how to do that in our RampUp Program.

Eventually you’re going to reach the ceiling of the owner-operator model. When you do, you’ll need to change how you do things—for the good of your business, for your sanity and, most importantly, for your clients.

We work with gym owners who are optimizing their operations while serving more than 150 members in our Tinker Program.

Whatever your goals are, know this: You don’t have to figure it out on your own. We have all the data, and we know exactly how to help you get to the next level. Click here to book a free call and find out more about mentorship.

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By the Numbers: Many Members, Great Retention

You can only maintain a certain number of solid personal relationships.

For example, when you have five clients at your gym, you remember their kids’ names, their dogs’ names and even where they went to college. But at 50, you forget some of those details. At 150, you forget even more. With 300 clients or more, you might not even know every member’s name.

We know you can make $100,000 per year as a gym owner by building strong relationships with just 150 high-value clients.

But we also know some gyms have more than 150 clients—way more.

Check out our Top 10 leaderboard for March 2023:

So how do these gyms reach these numbers even though their owners can’t possibly forge strong personal relationships with every single member?

Here are six characteristics of gyms with lots of members:

1. Strong Systems

Every client receives the same great experience every time. This experience does not depend on the owner personally. The business is set up so every staff member knows exactly how to treat every client.

2. Great Onboarding

A client’s first 90 days are carefully planned out, and all responsibilities are clearly assigned to staff members who know what 10-out-of-10 delivery is.

3. Amazing Retention

Clear operating procedures help all staff members improve retention, but someone in the business is 100 percent responsible for actively working to retain members.

4. Convenience and Value

Clients get what they need when they need it, and they have no problem paying for it because value is obvious.

5. Great Staff

Long-serving staff members know the owner’s vision for the business and are committed to it. They build relationships with clients and also bond the members to the brand.

6. The Right Model

The owner understands that the plan needed to reach 150 members is not the same as the plan required to get from 150 to 300 or more. The owner and all staff members must level up fast to reach higher numbers, and a mentor provides the exact plan to make it happen.

This realization is incredibly important.

You need a different plan at each stage of business. Getting to 150? That’s our RampUp program. We want you to earn $100,000 per year with 150 clients.

Over 150? You need a different plan. That’s our Tinker program, where you’ll level up as a leader, learn to build a management layer, optimize for profit and duplicate your gym without burning out.

Tips From Top Gym Owners

Our mentors helped the gym owners on our leaderboard do the right things at the right time to grow their businesses. They analyzed metrics, prescribed action and provided accountability.

Here are some of the things the owners in the Top 10 focused on to earn their spots:

“I focused mostly on my specialties—hypnotherapy, nutrition and personal training, especially small-group training. Also, doing away with discounts really helped! I’ve also been advertising more personal things and events that have gotten a ton of my members engaging with each other and spreading the word in our small town about new things happening in the gym.”

“Hiring Two-Brain Business has allowed us to take action on our ideas. What our mentors have helped us do is put actions behind our dreams and stay committed to the decisions that we were making. (Our mentor) asks probing questions and challenges us when we stray. RampUp gave us a framework to build on—Two-Brain quantified our moves and put vocabulary to our structure.”

“90% continue on after they use the services. We charge double the market average for PT. Our mentor helped walk us through it all without being too daunted. And we have a waiting list! We started measured and slow, being intentional instead of worrying.”

“We don’t lose a lot of members. We keep people because we care and use their first name. It’s a community here for sure. We have now focused on increasing rates and getting new PT and group-class clients. We’ve started working with Kilo and haven’t yet started paid ads.”

“I see how the fundamentals of Two-Brain Business can still apply to this type of gym (access). We have focused on retention and reaching out to former clients. When we started the Two-Brain program, we had a GM who ran operations but wasn’t doing much to retain or grow, and now he’s picking five customers to call or text and check in, five who fell off, and five that did attend in the previous week. 15 former clients came back from the first week of check-ins.”

“The area is underserved, with no service for people under 18. So we opened up for kids that can drive to the gym (16)—they can come without a parent. And we opened up membership to younger kids so long as they attend with a parent or guardian. PT service is coming—the program is ready.”

“Our referrals plan will be systematized. We are beta-testing something. Word of mouth is the ticket for us. Our clients want to work out with their friends.”

“We’ve created a place where people want to be: Our atmosphere is encouraging but challenging. They feel connected to the gym, like church.”

“We rely on word of mouth—affinity marketing. We never really run ad campaigns; a lot of clients have come from a friend. We celebrate new group members. We call them up by their name, a coach asks for a bunch of fun facts, and each member will ask them a funny question. We get people to feel comfortable and laugh. We call this our ‘icebreaker event’—this is protocol for the coaches.”

“If someone is bringing a friend, we let them take a free class and then we get them into the No Sweat Intro (NSI), and this has made our NSI easier. And it makes our on-ramp process easier.”

“The reason people stay is the results. When they feel like they belong, they feel encouraged. We do goal reviews—regular check-ins were done prior to joining Two-Brain, and now we’ve refined that process.”

“We did Seed Client interviews. We were very pleased and validated: They appreciate the clean, well-run facility.”

“We have over 50% sales conversion since using the NSI and Prescriptive Model.”

“The biggest focus is client experience.”

“In each quarter there will be a competition or test (e.g., Open, in-house comp) the members will perform, then reflect. Then the goal reviews will come, and members may be motivated because they’ve just been ‘formally tested.'”

To find out how a mentor can help you add and keep clients, book a call here.

The post By the Numbers: Many Members, Great Retention appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Top Tips From Gym Owners With 300-700+ Clients

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Which gyms have the most clients, and how did they get them? I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym’s” monthly leaderboard show, where every month I look at one of the leaderboards that we track in Two-Brain Business and interview the people who are at the top of that leaderboard and tell you how they did it. Every month, we produce these leaderboards for different categories, including this one for most clients, and then we interview the best and see what they’re doing differently. And then we build courses for Two-Brain Business mentorship clients, and we report back to you for free on our podcast, on our YouTube channel and in our different blog posts, too, so that you get the top tips from the biggest, best gyms in the world. 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 (00:51):
Now, let’s look at the leaderboard. Which microgyms have the most clients, and then how did they get them? Now, if you’ve been following along with the leaderboard show, you’ll know that last month almost our entire leaderboard came from the States. There were a couple of outliers from Europe, and we were talking about ARM, the highest value per client—or average revenue per member. This month, I’m just talking about pure headcount, but some of the gyms are the same. So not only do they have the most clients, but their clients are also super high value. And this is what makes the most profitable gyms in the world. This month, though, just looking at the Top 10 gyms worldwide based on client headcount alone, we’re gonna start with Number 10, who has 332 clients in the States. Number 9 has 338 clients, also in the U.S.

Chris Cooper (01:44):
Number 8 has 342 clients. Number 7 has 350 clients. So obviously we’re going up here, and Number 6 has 364. Now, all of these in the lower five of the Top 10 are all in the U.S. But don’t fret: I’ve got some amazing news about gyms outside the U.S. coming up in the Top 5. So the six through 10 on the leaderboard for most clients: 332, 338, 342, 350, 364 clients. Now, I just wanna take a quick moment here before I share the Top 5. It is worth noting that a lot of gyms open up, and they build all of their models, they buy their equipment, they rent their space thinking that they’re gonna get 300 clients, but the reality is out of over 847 gyms worldwide in Two-Brain right now, the top 10 have over 300 clients, okay? Not everybody. And the reality is that it’s more important to start building your business and your systems and your staffing and your policies and your processes and your space and your equipment with the target of getting 150 really high-value clients first and then scaling up after that, okay?

Chris Cooper (02:57):
Don’t build your business on the assumption that you’re gonna get 300 clients. These Top 10 out of 850 around the world are outliers who have great businesses. You can get there, but it’s not your first target. Let’s talk about Top 5. I’m so fired up about this. Number 5 is in Denmark, and they had 419 clients in March. Number 4 has 427 clients, and they’re in the States. Number 3 has 677 members. And they are also in the States. Number 2 has 684 members, and they’re also in the States. But the Number 1 gym is not in the States. They have 748 members. Do you wanna guess who they are? You’ll never guess what country they come from. They are in Chile—748 members at their gym. They are a CrossFit gym, even though not every gym on this leaderboard is a CrossFit gym.

Chris Cooper (03:55):
They’re all microgyms. They’re all coaching businesses. And the leader this month in March 2023 has 748 members at their CrossFit gym in Chile. Congratulations to them. Congratulations to everybody on the leaderboard, and congratulations to everybody out there who is working hard to change the lives of more and more members. Now, if you’re like me, you don’t just wanna know who the best are. You wanna know how they’re doing it. And so we took the time to interview everybody on these leaderboards, and we publish some of those interviews on our podcast. We publish some of them only internally, and today I’m gonna share their top tips with you. Okay, here we go. These are all very, very important tips. Some of them might come as a surprise to you. Some might not. What I’ve found overall talking to these gym owners is that they’re all practitioners of business virtuosity.

Chris Cooper (04:47):
They do the common things uncommonly well. They start with goal reviews and they don’t ever stop doing those things. They don’t do a lot of one-and-done tactics. They take the formulas and the strategies that they learn from Two-Brain, and they just keep doing them over and over and over again. And that’s how they grew this high and built great businesses. So here are their tips. Tip Number 1: Make things really simple to join and pay. Now this sounds pretty obvious, right? But I think a lot of gym owners kind of lose sight of this. So, you know, in 2006 it was awesome that members could pay online at all. But in 2023, what really stops people from getting more members is too much complexity. They’ve got this complicated website with no clear call to action, or they’re doing Facebook ads but they’re setting up the wrong kind.

Chris Cooper (05:39):
Like they’re not doing lead ads, or they’re doing something really complicated, or their targeting is way off and they get lost in the weeds. They’re not doing any good social posts. Or, worse, they’re doing really negative social posts themselves and they’re wondering why people don’t join. Look, keep things simple. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t try and be an artist, be a scientist. Reduce your marketing and your sales to the most effective process ever. Amazon is the biggest retailer in the history of the Earth, and they got that way because they made things simple for the buyer, not artistic or complicated. Second tip from our Top 10 gyms for client headcount: Teach that staff “the why” behind the tasks. This box really emphasized how important culture is in their box, but when we asked them to get more specific, they said that whenever they make a change, they have to tell their staff why they’re making that change. Because if the staff isn’t on board with the change, they won’t be able to hide their feelings. Some of them might kind of gossip a little bit or like spill the tea with their clients and say, “Ah, you know, I wasn’t behind that,” or whatever. Your staff can represent your energy and your passion, or they can represent their own personal feelings, but whatever that is, you have to get them on board with the changes that you’re making. Even if you’re not making changes and you’re just gonna continue going forward with your current plan, you need to let them know what that plan is so that they can get on board and excited about it. For example, when my gym decided that we were going to cap membership at 125 members, I had a couple of coaches who were super-duper excited about that, and a couple of coaches who were like, “Why? Why don’t we want 500?”

Chris Cooper (07:17):
Mostly it was the coaches who understood that we want to give clients enormous value and receive value in return from those clients instead of the coaches who are always thinking like, “Ah, you should drop your rates so that you can sell more memberships,” right? So we had to teach them why, and that meant a little bit of business coaching. It meant a little bit of education on our mission and our vision, but also how we can impact our community by working really, really well with 125 members instead of having a really high churn rate and trying to maintain 300 members, which just doesn’t work in my gym. The next thing that these leaders said: You have to be clean, okay? I think this is a really easy one for a lot of us to overlook.

Chris Cooper (08:04):
We walk into our gym every day, you know, we know why there’s a stack of shoes in the corner because that’s the tiniest we can make it, right? Like we just become acclimated to everything that’s going on, and we don’t see it with new eyes. When a new person walks in your gym, they have to notice how clean it is—not just get by, not be “clean enough” or “tidy,” right? It has to be clean, and it has to be clean enough that they notice it. This is actually a big favor that the lockdowns in Canada did for me was it forced us to clean everything every time. And last week when I was back in a group, I left without wiping down a barbell, and the coach called me back like, “Where are you going?” And I said, “Oh, it’s been great. Thanks everybody. I’m out.” “No, no, get back here and clean.” And when you walk into my gym now for the first time in the 20 years that I’ve owned it, the first thing that you smell is how clean it is. It’s amazing. You also have to have clean systems. That means that your gym operates the same way every day for every single client. That no matter what group I show up to, no matter what trainer is working with me today, I know that I’m gonna receive the same excellent service. That no matter who I ask in the gym, I know they’re gonna be paying the same price as me. That no matter who you are, how close you are with the owner, you’re not getting a special deal. You’re not getting leeway on when you show up or when you pay or when you get a discount or any of that stuff, right?

Chris Cooper (09:29):
The systems are “clean,” they’re black and white, they’re easy to understand, and that builds trust. Another tip from one of these top gyms was that they improved their conversion process when they started working with Two-Brain. So that means that leads weren’t their problem. People were coming to their website, they wanted to find out more about the gym and its service, but they were leaving, and they weren’t coming in to do a free trial because they didn’t wanna do free trials. And so now after working with Two-Brain, this gym has a great funnel and an amazing conversion process where they’re signing up more of the people who are interested instead of either blocking them or pushing them away or turning them off or talking them out of it. So that means they can help more people, and that has grown their headcount.

Chris Cooper (10:12):
Another one said that when they added goal reviews after starting working with Two-Brain, they immediately increase their client count by 30 people. So if you’re maybe the last gym on this list in the Top 10, 30 new clients still means that you’re increasing your total client head pound by like 10%. And the best part is that when you get new clients through goal reviews and referrals, they’re already warmed up. They already know you, like you and trust you. You have to do very little to convert them into paying clients, and they’ve already got a social web when they get into your gyms. So this leads me to my last point. There are a lot of marketing programs and systems out there that can promise 30 new leads, but we all know that doesn’t mean 30 new clients. Some of them can actually get you new clients, but the reality is if your systems are not set up to onboard people efficiently and properly, they will wash out quickly.

Chris Cooper (11:08):
And when you bring in 30 new clients at one time, not only do they leave quickly, but they pull a lot of your really good members with them because your attention is just spread too thin trying to keep the new kids. And the OGs think, “Well, boy, he’s not really paying attention to us anymore.” Or, “he’s distracted.” Or, “I don’t get coaching as much.” Or, “There’s all these new kids, I’m outta here.” So when you dump a lot of new clients into your gym at one time, it can actually have a net negative effect on your membership. That’s why I’m so fired up about this leaderboard because not only are these gym owners working with over 300 clients and building some of the biggest, most effective gyms in the world, they’re doing it without losing people. They’re not gonna have to get 30 new clients next month to replace the 30 who left this month, right?

Chris Cooper (11:58):
They’re not gonna always be marketing because I know that they can consistently keep these members. Remember, it’s not who you can bring in. It’s who you can keep. And that’s what got these gyms on the leaderboard. Congratulations to our Top 10. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for watching or listening. Join our Gym Owners United group today. That’s where I answer questions, run free webinars and give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your dream. It’s free. I’d love to help you in the group, and just have to go to Gym Owners United on Facebook, or, even easier, go to Gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today, and I will see you in there. Let’s get your business and your impact!

The post Top Tips From Gym Owners With 300-700+ Clients appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How Many Gym Clients Can You Get—And Keep?

How many clients can you add to your gym each month—and how many can you retain?

In the last 10 years, I’ve watched gym and CrossFit affiliate owners use various marketing programs that appeared to be very successful. The New You Challenge was one, and Gym Launch was another. In both cases, I was excited for gyms to get more clients, and I even did the New You Challenge three times at my own gym.

Unfortunately, even with great retention systems in place, we always struggled to keep the new people past the initial period of the challenge. Other gyms had the same issue.

In general, many gyms struggle with a lack of systemization and clear retention strategies. But much greater problems can appear in any gym when you bring in a lot of new people at one time.

Huge groups of new clients put a lot of stress on your staff and systems, and if they weren’t A-1 to start, the new pressure is likely to break them. Even great systems have their limits, and if you run them too hard, they’ll fall apart, too.

When dealing with large numbers of new clients, it simply becomes very tough to retain anyone.

But you also have another problem: As those new people flush out, they often take longstanding clients with them because those members haven’t been getting as much of your attention during the period of wild growth.

Whenever you struggle and fail to keep a horde of new people engaged, members of the old crew become irritated and dissatisfied. Then they leave.

Remember this: Large client counts depend on addition and retention. The gyms we work with that have 300 to 700-plus members know how to acquire new clients, but they also know how to keep them.

Systems for the Win

So how many new clients can you actually onboard per month?

It really depends on your systems.

Before I had any sales or onboarding processes, I couldn’t keep a single new client for long. They would all show up, sign up and then quit really quickly. I’m not the only one who had this experience.

I also hear of client bleeds in gyms that have an influx of people because another local gym closes.

Here’s the problem: It can be very tempting to try and onboard 20 or 30 new people at a time. The owner just wants to accommodate everyone quickly—that way clients get to keep training and the gym gets a big revenue boost. So corners are cut and processes are brushed aside—or they just break—as a mass of clients are pushed into the business.

In this scenario, the owner has forgotten what made the gym successful in the first place: a carefully planned client journey, complete with one-on-one onboarding, intake interviews, goal review sessions and regular communication perhaps involving a client success manager.

Instead of sticking to that tried-and-tested plan, the owner is making the same mistakes that killed the failed gym: They try to onboard the clients without any kind of assessment or any kind of intake process. They just throw them straight into classes because they believe all these people have experience. Then they struggle to manage everything, and people start leaving—both new, unsettled members and older, increasingly dissatisfied members.

The reality is that the new additions are leaving because they’re having the same bad experience they had at the failed gym.

Getting them to stay for years would require proper onboarding and a new experience: world-class service delivered by a true professional.

In this series, I’m going to tell you how top gyms get—and keep—hundreds of clients. We work with the best gyms in the world, and we’ll share their secrets with you.

To start, check out this podcast: “Top Tips From Gym Owners With 300-700+ Clients.” Or, if you prefer video, watch the show on YouTube:

The post How Many Gym Clients Can You Get—And Keep? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.