Chris Cooper's Blog, page 73

April 17, 2023

The First 90 Days: What if You Knew Every Client’s Why?

You must connect 1:1 with clients—it’s an absolute necessity.

In the microgym world, you can earn $100,000 a year with 150 clients, but only if you and your staff members connect with them every day.

If you have 150 members but you don’t know who they really are, why they attend, where they work and what they do in their spare time, you’ll struggle to retain clients. Then you’ll get on the hamster wheel of trying to get new clients in the front door while more current clients leave out the back. This is a disaster.

Personal connections are required in a coaching business, and they must be strengthened throughout the client journey. We know the first 90 days of that journey have a huge effect on long-term retention, so early relationship building is an investment that will pay off twice: Your clients will stay longer and get the results they want, and your business will have better retention.

“Motivational interviewing” should be used to build a strong relationship with a new client. It’s not a new tactic: Psychotherapists have been using it for decades.

Motivational interviewing forges a deeper bond with clients. Here’s the key principle: Rather than just asking “why do you want to join a gym?” coaches dig deeper with follow-up questions that get at the heart of the matter and provide opportunities to serve clients better.


Motivational Interviewing in Practice


The No Sweat Intro is a 15-minute free consultation that’s been proven to increase retention in microgyms. As part of the interview, coaches ask some variation of this question:

“Why are you joining our gym?”“I want to lose 20 lb.”


You could stop there. And many coaches do. In our No Sweat Intro process, a coach can easily use the weight-loss goal to provide a valuable service prescription to the client: personal training three times a week plus habits-based nutrition coaching, for example.

But if you use motivational interviewing to go deeper, you’re going to get valuable information you can use to understand the client, motivate the client and strengthen your relationship.

Another example:

“Why are you joining our gym?”“I want to lose 20 lb.”
“Why do you want to accomplish that goal?”“I want to be healthier.”
“Why is that important to you?”“Well, I have a young child, and I want to be a good role model for him.”
“Why will that make a difference?”“I grew up in a family where fitness and nutrition were never discussed, and I think if I had been given any guidance, I would have made different choices. If he sees me working out and eating well, he might do it, too.”
“Why will that matter?”“I struggled with my weight as a teen. It was really hard. If I do this, I’ll give my kid a chance to avoid that pain.”


Wow, right?

Four more “why questions” revealed a lot of important info. In addition to the weight-loss goal, the coach now knows:

The client has a young child.The client has struggled with weight for years.The client had difficulties as a child due to excess weight.Those difficulties were so painful that the client badly wants to spare her child the same pain.The client wants to be a good role model.


If you’re a good coach, you can immediately see how this info creates the basis for a strong one-on-one relationship.

The client has really opened up to a caring, empathetic coach. This is a first step toward establishing trust with a new advisor. The coach now has info that can help her inspire the client when motivation fails, and she can celebrate every lost pound not just as a number on a scale but as another important step toward being a positive role model for a child.

Motivational interviewing takes fitness goals to a new level and gives a coach more tools to help the client achieve success. It also provides amazing opportunities to celebrate the client. Imagine being able to say this:

“Congrats! You’ve lost 20 lb. since we started. I know this is a big deal to you. How does it feel to be a positive role model for your kid?”“It feels great! I didn’t have a clue how to make it happen. Thank you so much!”


That alone is a day-maker for any coach. But let’s take it a little further:

“So what’s your next goal?”“Well, I’d like to learn more about healthy eating so I can make even better food choices for my family.”“Great! Here’s the plan to make that happen … .”


The client has experienced success and wants more of it. The coach is now a trusted advisor who can provide a path to the next goal. This is a high-value relationship that will last for a long time. That’s a huge win for the client (and her family), and a huge win for the coach (and her business).


The 5 Whys Worksheet


Precision Nutrition calls this motivational interviewing process “the five whys.” You can download a worksheet here.

The takeaway: If you dig deeper during the intake process, you’ll get important information that will shape your relationship with clients for years.

The post The First 90 Days: What if You Knew Every Client’s Why? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 17, 2023 00:00

April 14, 2023

Retention Secrets From the World’s Best Gym Owners

About a month ago, I said you could improve gym retention for just $20 a week by hiring a person to do a few simple tasks.

When we presented the idea on social media, people wanted to know more about “client success managers/CSMs”—a lot more. So I’ll give you additional details here.

A few people also asked a great question when they saw the article: “Don’t you need to spend more than $20 a week to improve retention?”

The answer is yes—retention isn’t just a one-hour-a-week job.

But you could literally start working on retention by paying someone $15 or $20 to send “how are you doing?” text messages to absent members for 60 minutes once a week. I guarantee your retention would improve.  

That was the point of this article—start very small, track results and invest more when you see results.

So how do top gym owners go further with CSMs?

Read on.

A head shot of writer Mike Warkentin and the column name

I polled the members of our private group for gym owners to give you some real info from ground level. Below, you’ll see how the best gym owners in the world are using CSMs to drive up their retention.

Use this info to create a CSM role that works for your business.


CSM Hours Per Week

Our survey received 73 responses, with eight owners stating they don’t have a CSM (yet).

Hours Per WeekPercentage of Respondents1-4324-7278-102011-15016-19220+4Full time (serving several locations)2

Key Stats:

59 percent of respondents employ a CSM for 1-7 hours a week.79 percent of respondents employ a CSM for 1-10 hours a week.
CSM Hourly Wage

This survey received 47 responses, and respondents were asked to answer in U.S. funds.

Hourly CSM WagePercentage of RespondentsLess than $102$10-$140$15-$1759$18-$2031$21-$244$25-$290$30+2

Key Stat: 90 percent of respondents pay between $15 and $20 per hour for CSM work.


The Most Essential CSM Tasks

I asked gym owners who employ CSMs to list the two most important tasks associated with the role.

The group’s collected answers can give you with a huge head start on a roles and tasks document. The duties below are loosely ordered by their place in a client’s journey, not by their value. Our clients indicated that all of these tasks measurably improve retention.

For example, one gym owner reported that her CSM prevents 50-60 percent of cancellations by doing goal reviews with clients who intend to leave the gym.

Key CSM Tasks

Contacting all leads, replying to messages and booking free consultations.Sending postcards after free consultations.Managing a documented onboarding process for new members.Establishing themself as a client’s go-to person for all needs and questions.Scheduling Goal Review Sessions.Performing regular Goal Review Sessions.Using Goal Review Sessions to save memberships after receiving cancelation requests.Filling out Affinity Marketing cheat sheets for new members.Collecting client bright spots from coaches for inclusion in “love letters” to clients.Sending personalized recognition of special days and achievements outside the gym (cards, gifts).Sending personalized recognition of fitness milestones (cards, gifts).Acknowledging outside-the-gym struggles and offering support and encouragement.Making members feel special in person outside class sessions.Creating and running member and staff events.Running attendance reports and contacting absent members.Calling departed members who did not fill out an exit survey.Contacting departed members as part of a precise reactivation plan.
Putting It Together


Based on our research, the Two-Brain gym owners who responded to our surveys usually:

Employ a CSM for about 1-7 hours a week.Pay a CSM $15-$20 an hour.


Using middle-of-the road numbers from top gym owners, you could come up with something like this:

Hire a CSM for 4 hours a week at $17.50 an hour.Weekly cost: $70.Monthly cost: $303.10 ($70 x 4.33 weeks per month).


From there, you can allocate hours and money to the role. When you have your numbers, you can then select tasks from the list above.

If I could only assign three tasks to a CSM, I’d pick these ones:

Scheduling Goal Review Sessions. This has a direct positive effect on retention and average revenue per member.Sending personalized recognition of fitness milestones and life events (cards, gifts). Members who have strong relationships to your business are less likely to leave.Running attendance reports and contacting absent members. If they aren’t training, they’re on the verge of leaving—but a CSM can re-engage clients and prevent cancelations.


To get the greatest return on your investment in a CSM, use a mentor who can tell you exactly which tasks will help your business most right now. Two-Brain clients also have access to a host of resources that help them get a CSM up to speed fast.

And if you’re now convinced that a CSM is a great investment but you don’t know where to find the money to hire one, a mentor can tell you exactly how to generate the cash you need. To find out more, book a call here.

The post Retention Secrets From the World’s Best Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 14, 2023 00:00

FTC to Regulate Gym Cancelations? Client Success Manager to the Rescue!

The Federal Trade Commission wants to make it easier for clients to cancel gym memberships.

Here’s what that means to gym owners: A client success manager will be even more important if the FTC has its way.

A head shot of writer Mike Warkentin and the column name

The details: In late March, the FTC proposed a rule that would help consumers get out of subscription services. The “click to cancel” proposal would make it just as easy to quit as it is to sign up.

For example, if you signed up for a service online, you could quit online without an exit interview under the proposed regulations. This would affect cell-phone services, newspapers, gyms and other businesses—any U.S. enterprise with subscriptions or memberships.

The proposal has just moved past the first step in the process: a 3-1 vote in favor of publishing a “notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register.” The next step: getting feedback from the public.

You can read more about the process here.

If the proposal goes through, it’s going to be even more important for gym owners to keep clients happy and solve problems before members decide to cancel.

How do you do that?

Hire a client success manager (CSM) or ensure your CSM is doing the right things at the right time.


CSM for the Win


To keep clients happy, your coaches must do a great job getting results for clients. But when it comes to retention, you need to think outside the class, too.

You would be very wise to ensure someone in your business is focused on solving client problems and retaining members.

Here are more details on client success managers: “Retention Secrets From the World’s Best Gym Owners.”

Here are some ways you can use a CSM to prevent cancelation requests from appearing:

1. Have your CSM show clients love regularly with in-person high-fives, text-message congrats, cards and gifts. Don’t just assume this will happen. Make a clear plan, put it in your staff playbook and ensure your CSM is showering each of your clients with love.

2. Have the CSM reach out to clients who have been absent for a short period. Encourage them to come back and ask if they need anything. This is a great opportunity to solve problems for clients. For example, it’s possible a client who’s struggling to make group classes doesn’t even know she can switch to personal training. A client who’s off after minor surgery might not know he can work with a nutrition coach to maintain momentum before the stitches come out. And so on.

3. To ensure follow-up, make sure the CSM is in very close contact with the person who performs Goal Review Sessions (if the CSM doesn’t do the reviews personally). For example, if a client is unhappy with progress in a goal review, the coach should adjust the prescription to get back on track. But what if that coach documented the issue for the CSM, who can then follow up with the client and show a little extra love? That will let the client know she was heard and her concerns are being addressed. If she’s still unhappy, the CSM can work harder to retain the client. If the CSM does goal reviews personally, established follow-up procedures will ensure at-risk clients are given the white-glove treatment.


Be Proactive!


The FTC proposal will really only affect gym owners once a client has decided to cancel. When that situation arises, the gym is already trying to change the client’s mind. That’s hard.

If you’re proactive with retention, fewer clients will reach the cancelation stage. Instead of having to fight to keep a client who’s already over the edge, you just have to pamper happy clients and make course corrections for slightly unsatisfied clients.

So don’t sweat the FTC proposal on gym cancelations.

If you work hard to keep clients happy all the time, it won’t affect you at all.

To learn more about how we help gym owners measurably improve retention, book a call here.

The post FTC to Regulate Gym Cancelations? Client Success Manager to the Rescue! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 14, 2023 00:00

April 13, 2023

Unlikable Gym Owners: Don’t Do This Stuff!

Mike Warkentin: (00:00)
All right. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host Mike Warkentin, and with me today is Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper. I’d love it if you would hit subscribe wherever you are watching or listening. It would really help us out and we’ll keep cranking out great content for you. Hey, Cooper, remember when you told that client at your gym that her motivation was “not your problem today?”

Chris Cooper: (00:19)
Yeah, that was brutal. How about that time you told a client “do it your way. I don’t care.”

Mike Warkentin: (00:24)
Oh man, I was a huge jerk and that client should have left. You wanna just take a podcast here? Let’s air it out. Let’s tell a few war stories and help gym owners avoid the mistakes that we’ve made.

Chris Cooper: (00:35)
Absolutely. Let’s do it.

Mike Warkentin: (00:36)
Today we’re gonna talk about how being likable relates to running a profitable gym. It’s more important than you think. In fact, I think it’s actually more important than knowing anything about progressions or any of that other technical stuff that you obsess over all the time. What do you think, Coop? You agree?

Chris Cooper: (00:52)
Yeah. As a guy who used to draw linear periodization charts on the floor in chalk, I will promise you it is more important to be likable than knowledgeable.

Mike Warkentin: (01:02)
Let’s go. So do you think spewing knowledge at clients comes off as likable?

Chris Cooper: (01:07)
No. It comes off as, I know more than you.

Mike Warkentin: (01:11)
Yeah. I think there’s some arrogance there. I certainly was guilty of that. I also think there’s this desire to show off and you’ve talked about being invested in clients and finding out what they want, not showing off what you know. And I made that mistake so many times, and I think you said you’ve done that a hundred times too

Chris Cooper: (01:26)
Easily a thousand times. Yeah. I’m sure we can just pop out a couple of examples here really easily.

Mike Warkentin: (01:31)
Hit me with your first one. Line it up.

Chris Cooper: (01:33)
Yeah. So one thing that I see a lot as a gym owner is going on social media and just complaining about the people who pay them, right. Ranting about their clients. I can’t believe some people come in here and they talk when I’m talking, or I can’t believe people just leave and they leave their mess behind. You know, if I was a member of your gym, I would be gone.

Mike Warkentin: (01:53)
There’s lots of good dog shaming videos on Instagram where it’s like, you put the sign on their chest that says, I ate the phone book or whatever. Stuff like that. That’s funny with a dog, but it’s not funny with a client. Have you ever seen the one where it’s like, this person left this equipment out and it’s 225 pounds and therefore you have 225 burpees.

Chris Cooper: (02:12)
Oh God. Yeah. That’s so cool.

Mike Warkentin: (02:14)
That’s not a great thing to do. And I saw one one time, and this was a seminar at a gym, and this guy, a gym member had hit a PR on his deadlift. And right after the class, there was gonna be a powerlifting seminar with an outside expert. And he came in in his outside wear and he walked over to that deadlift bar and he lifted it 15 times in a row. And like, yeah, why would you shame that client like that? We get you, you’re the power lifting expert, but why would you do that? You know?

Chris Cooper: (02:43)
Yeah. It must be ego and I don’t always understand it. People wanna feel like an expert. I think sometimes they think that they’re only talking to other gym owners, but instead their clients see it and they’re shaming the people who pay the money. Yep. Fortunately, other times, people are trying to do the right thing, but they still come off as jerks. For example, when you post something political online, you immediately tell 50% of your audience that they don’t wanna be anywhere near you. And we saw this over and over, it was so tempting during COVID. And let’s face it, I deal with government bureaucracies all the time and I’m so tempted to rant about it. But going through the COVID stuff, even though I agree that entrepreneurs were right to be disgruntled and they wanted to fight back, a lot of them lost their business. Not because of the lockdown, but because of what they said and did online. So yeah, it’s just the unfortunate truth.

Mike Warkentin: (03:46)
COVID is a tough one. I mean, you could take any side on that and you’re gonna light up half the people. US Republicans, Democrats pick a side there and things go pretty crazy. And in Canada we’ve got three parties, but you could complain about just about anything and offend half your market. And if you are cool with that, ride the lightning and so forth. But wow, if you wanna be a really great gym owner and serve everyone, you might not wanna take a stand on that. And I’m not saying hide your personal beliefs, but there’s a time to pick an ugly Facebook drag ’em out argument, and there’s a time to maybe just let it pass by. When I was working at the CrossFit Journal, I think we did an article on a gym in Washington that had both Republicans and Democrats, big time party employees at their gym.

Mike Warkentin: (04:31)
And the upshot of that was when we come to the gym, we leave the politics at the door, we all train, we all support each other, and we all get fitter. I love that because that’s a good example of not being a jerk. But then there’s other examples of people being huge jerks. And I had overtime, I went to an open house for a different sport. And this was a couple years ago. And I went there and I was trying to engage in this and learn more about it. I felt a little nervous because it was outside my comfort zone. I didn’t know anyone. And I talked to the main instructor there, and she was borderline dismissive, definitely had a bit of arrogance, definitely kinda brushed me off and then kind of just went and did her own training in the corner. And I was like, how are you trying to grow this program? I don’t wanna be here. I feel awkward. And that was unlikeable to the point where I think, man, if I wanted to take this thing up, I don’t wanna deal with that person.

Chris Cooper: (05:20)
Yeah. And this is something that I lean on you a lot for Mike. There’s a lot of times when I’m about to post something and you rein me in and you’re wise to do so, because the reality is that all these gym owners are working so hard and they’re just grinding, grinding, grinding. They’re investing money in Facebook ads or whatever. And then somebody gets interested and they go on their Facebook page and it’s like, oh, here’s this thing where this gym owner is making fun of clients at Planet Fitness. I don’t want this person to make fun of me. No thank you, block. And so, I don’t wanna wanna see anybody blowing their own leg off while they’re trying really hard to grow their gym and serve other people.

Mike Warkentin: (06:03)
You told me you have a rule that you actually employ to prevent you from doing stuff like that. Tell me your rule. How does it work?

Chris Cooper: (06:09)
Yeah. So I think you’re the only person I’ve ever told this rule to. I call it the Triple S when I see something that sets me off enough that I feel like I’ve gotta respond to this right now. This is BS. I do the Triple S. And that is, you do not respond until you’ve had a shit, a shower and a shave. Because once you’ve done those three things, number one, you’ve probably regulated your blood sugar a little bit. You’ve had a shower, so you’ve immersed yourself in warm water and you look better and feel better about yourself. You feel more confident after you do those things. And your response is likely to be more professional and tempered. And sometimes you just choose not to respond at all.

Mike Warkentin: (06:49)
Truth. We’re not saying you shouldn’t. Yeah. And we’re not saying you shouldn’t fight when you need to fight. Yeah, your vision and values are important and it’s important to stand up for those, but there is a consequence to some of that. And fighting over late membership fees on Facebook or debating the merits of a rate increase publicly in a thread that gets vicious, not probably a good investment. One of the values of your business might be, I’m not gonna engage in stuff that’s below a certain level and we’re just gonna rise above that. And Two-Brain, definitely. We have a charter where we look very carefully about what we engage in publicly and people have come after us on social media. See the stuff fly by, we don’t wanna attack it because, did you use the analogy of the pig wrestling a pig or fighting a pig? What happens when you do it?

Chris Cooper: (07:35)
I mean, you get dirty and the pig likes it, you know?

Mike Warkentin: (07:38)
Right.

Chris Cooper: (07:39)
The thing is, for a lot of gym owners, they think that when they’re getting attacked, that it’s not strategic that they’re just gonna have this battle and win. They have to win the argument. But the reality is, when you’re a category leader, when you’re the oldest or the best gym in town, when you’re at Two-Brain and you are the best, people will attack you as a marketing strategy because they wanna gain the attention of your audience at any cost. And so engaging with these people actually gives them what they want, you know? Yep. So you gotta stay away from that. I’ll give you a good example from my gym, and I had to learn this the hard way. I definitely screwed this up for years, but there used to be a time when I’d have these two back-to-back training clients.

Chris Cooper: (08:22)
And one was very conservative. He owned four McDonald’s franchises and the one that came in after him was very socialist. She was the head of a local union, and neither one of them had any idea what my political affiliation was because they were my clients, not my friends. If you ask my wife or my closest friends, Chris, who are you voting for? How do you feel about this law? They will know exactly, but my clients won’t have any idea. And so both of these clients thought that my political beliefs totally aligned with theirs. And to this day, I doubt there’s anybody in my gym who could tell you, here’s what Chris votes for.

Mike Warkentin: (09:01)
And I think that’s wise. I had the same situation. I had a striking union member and an administrator at my gym. I loved them both dearly. I wanted them both to be fit. They both had valid concerns, but I didn’t wanna get in the middle of that argument because I’m not gonna win. Right? And I wanted them to keep training at the gym and I love them all. So I have my own views people at my gym don’t know. And I think that’s a great way to do it. So those are some examples. There are literally thousands of them. If you go on Facebook right now, if you’re watching this, click on Facebook, you’ll find a gym argument. There are some forums where you’ll find those things faster than anywhere else, but you’ll see it. Let’s talk about why gym owners are unlikeable. What are some of the reasons? For me, a big one was being stressed about money and not knowing how to run my gym and feeling just this incredible pressure. How about you?

Chris Cooper: (09:47)
Yeah, that’s one. When you’re exhausted and tired and broke and you have just had a fight with your spouse about money and you are distracted because the next coach hasn’t shown up for class, it’s very easy to be an asshole to people. And what I think you’ve gotta do there is take yourself outta the limelight. People forget that when you own a business, you’re constantly on stage and social media amplifies that. And so everything that you post lives there forever. And if you’re a jerk to somebody, everybody gets to hear about it. So yeah, that’s one thing for me also. I was kind of a know-it-all jerk to people and I really had to work on understanding that people just didn’t like me and that’s why they weren’t staying at my gym and then taking the steps to actually fix that.

Mike Warkentin: (10:40)
Being threatened. I think you’ve written about this, being threatened by competition makes it pretty easy to say, bash that gym down the street. Oh, they’re idiots. They don’t know what they’re doing. But you’re really just threatened because you don’t want that client to go there and then all of a sudden you behave badly. And you taught me this. If you start saying bad things about this person, what do your clients think when they leave? You’re probably saying some bad things about them, right? It reveals a piece of character. And going back to what you just said, you’ve talked about the icon problem many times in gyms, right? Great businesses solve the icon problem where it’s not just this one person. So think about, who’s in charge of Coca-Cola or any of the massive companies.

Mike Warkentin: (11:18)
I don’t really know. I know you could figure it out, but you don’t know that person. You probably can’t spout off their political views right now, even though they certainly have them in most cases. But the brand is this thing that appeals to hopefully everyone. And that’s kind of a gym owner thing where if you wanna build this great big brand, you gotta solve that icon problem in most cases. And being very political is probably not a great way to do it. Have you seen examples where the icon problem can actually sink a gym because the person is so unlikable?

Chris Cooper: (11:47)
Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I can tell you specific examples, but I don’t want it to be obvious about who they are. So I have literally 5,000 Facebook friends and probably 4,990 of them are gym owners. And unfortunately, what you’ll see is they’ll get on Facebook. Now it’s 6:00 AM, they’re exhausted. They’ve been coaching 40 hours already this week. They’re broke. They don’t know how they’re gonna make any more money. And the final thing that pisses them off is a client leaves their bag out on the floor, right? Or leaves a mess or leaves their barbell loaded and they’re gonna take that to Facebook. And unfortunately what happens is that everybody who’s viewed that now sees them ranting and says, that’s a person I just don’t wanna be around. And they cost themselves so much business, it can easily tank their gym.

Mike Warkentin: (12:40)
Think about the last three years. How stressful they’ve been for everyone. Parents working from home with kids in lockdown, all this different stuff. And then you go and see your gym owner ranting about how stressed he or she is. And then you don’t wanna be around that ’cause you are stressed, right? You kind of wanna be this island of calm. You’ve talked about the calm model and we’ll put a link to that show in the notes, because when we put that content out during COVID and other times, people really needed it. And we got responses saying, holy cow, this model of leadership is really, really important. It would help me because no one wants to be around the crazy person during crazy times, right? It’s tough. Are some people just unsuited to service businesses? Are there some jerks that are gym owners that just aren’t suited to it?

Chris Cooper: (13:20)
Well, maybe the timing is off for them. Maybe they haven’t learned the lessons that they need to learn before they can have a successful business. That’s all. I don’t like the idea that some people are just assholes and there’s nothing we can do about it. But the reality is, if you really struggle to contain your political ranting or your habit for any polarizing thing, maybe choose a job that’s not in the service industry. Dealing with the public means that you’re there to serve them. They’re not there to listen to your rant, your opinion. You’re not trying to win them over to your point of view. You cannot win a debate with a client or with the public on Facebook, but you can certainly lose. So while I don’t think some people are ready for gym ownership or personal training yet, you can certainly learn these skills. They were not natural to me, you know?

Mike Warkentin: (14:18)
So how do you learn ’em? Let’s get into that. How does a gym owner out there who maybe feels these things like this pressure and tension, maybe isn’t behaving how they want to, how did you learn these skills and how can people do that?

Chris Cooper: (14:29)
Well, the first one is just get yourself outta the situation. And I think this happened for me by accident where I blew a couple of amazing client relationships and I was like, you can’t keep doing this. And so if I had a client that I was distracted while I was serving or just I didn’t like them, I would move them to another trainer. And I accepted that, well, if they didn’t like the other trainer and quit, that’s a risk I was willing to take because I wasn’t helping them and I was destroying my own mentality. And then I also know at 6:00 AM I’m on, but I’m distracted. I do not wanna be coaching a class at 6:00 AM because I’m gonna be thinking about the next blog post.

Chris Cooper: (15:13)
The client who hasn’t paid yet, right? Growing my business. And so, this really all hit home for me when the only person I could find who would take our 6:00 AM class was this really friendly, happy young coach named Charity. And Charity was, I think a sophomore at university at that time. So she didn’t have the decades of training knowledge that I had, but she could smile at 6:00 AM and people wanted to be around her. And that class size went from three or four to six and eight every day because people just wanted to be around Charity. It didn’t matter that I knew more, it didn’t matter that I had all this experience. What mattered was she was likable at 6:00 AM and I was not.

Mike Warkentin: (15:55)
So you’re quoting paragraphs of “Super Training” by Mel Siff and she’s just smiling and being happy and the clients show smiling and happy,

Chris Cooper: (16:01)
Literally. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the obscure Mel Siff call back.

Mike Warkentin: (16:06)
Yeah, yeah. I got the book sitting right over there as I was like, that’s one that I’ve done too. Periodization, sarcomeres and all this stuff, and someone smiley gets the motivation credit. So how can gym owners take some steps, what can they do to work on this? Because these soft skills we talk about often as gym owners saying, well, we need our staff to work on their soft skills and be better. But often as gym owners, we forget that. So what can gym owners do to really improve themselves?

Chris Cooper: (16:30)
Well, so the first step is just self-awareness. And for me, two books that really helped were “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. And then there was a great book by Dan Pink and I can’t think of the name right now, I’ll find a link. And in this book though, what he said was that most people go an entire day without a single positive thought. And when he said that, I said that sounds ridiculous, it can’t be true. And then I just started paying attention to my thoughts and I was like, holy crap. All day long I have been angry, sarcastic, pointing out flaws in other people, completely unhappy. And it was depressing, honestly. And then finally I was like, well, what if I just started being intentional about doing positive things, saying positive things? And that was a hard road for me, two to three years of slowly turning the giant freighter around.

Chris Cooper: (17:26)
But I’m a happier person now because I did that exercise and that’s when my gym really started to grow, was when I learned how to become more positive. I’m not talking about fake it till you make it, and there’s always going to be times when you need to step off the stage. Like at Disney World. You go into the tunnels and you have a cigarette and you calm down. Your gym should have a door that closes. But you do have an amazing opportunity to practice positivity every single class, but you actively have to practice it. It’s not like you can just read a book about the clean and be good about the clean. You have to understand what the clean is and then go get some reps. And I think that’s been key for me.

Mike Warkentin: (18:07)
Earlier this week, Chris went through a whole bunch of simple tactics you can use at the gym level. So we’re not gonna get into all of ’em here. You can check out that podcast again. We’ll get a link in the show notes there. But he’s got a list of, I think it was 10 simple tactics. One of them he quoted, just closing your office door. And I literally had a storage cabinet where I went sometimes before the morning class, when only one person would roll in. And it was maybe a difficult relationship there where, maybe that person was unlikable and I was unlikable at the same time. I sat there and I looked at the mops and I was just like, you can do this, you can do this. There are 10 tactics. Yeah, there are 10 things in that in there that you can do today to just be better. But then there is the broader concept of a long-term, active work on self-improvement. And you know, Chris, you’ve probably had to work on that as your stress has increased. You’ve gone from gym owner with few employees to gym mentorship business owner with dozens of employees. Yeah, right. So the stresses there only increase as you rise through the gym business, right? It’s only gonna get harder if you don’t put in this work. You may find yourself stressed and becoming more unlikeable. Am I right?

Chris Cooper: (19:10)
Yeah, so there’s a few different things there, Mike, but I work with Bonnie Skinner who owns Level Up Coaching. Bonnie’s a registered psychotherapist, and every second week I go into her office, she closes the door and I just vent. And yeah, this stuff seems small, but it piles up, you know? Really early on in my career, there was this guy named Tuuka who was coming to my gym and he was a steel plant worker, and he and I both lived about 30 minutes out of the city. And one day I was kind of complaining about my drive. I was doing a lot of complaining about everything back then. And he says, Chris, you need that drive. And I said, Tuuka, what are you talking about? And he’s like, you need to have a gap in your day between all of this frustration and anger you’re feeling at work.

Chris Cooper: (19:55)
And the moment when you greet your family, if you don’t have that gap, it just carries right over. And man, through the lockdowns, when I was working from home, that was a challenge because something would happen at work, and you’d be mad and you would have five stairs between your desk and the dinner table, and it wasn’t enough time. And vice versa. Like, the dog would pee on something in the basement and then you gotta get on a call and be happy smiley. There wasn’t enough time. So you have to buy yourself space. You have to know who it’s appropriate to vent to, right? Like your spouse. Okay? But you carry a big burden as an entrepreneur and you can’t always be venting to them. However, that doesn’t mean that Instagram is your release valve , you know, don’t fling your shit all over the walls on social media, but you have to know who you can vent to. You have to have that person. It’s not your clients. It’s certainly not somebody who works for you, right? If there’s nobody else, seek a counselor or a therapist.

Mike Warkentin: (20:59)
They can be super helpful and they can actually point out distortions in your thoughts where it’s like, wow, you’re not thinking correctly here. And that really helps you get clarity. You’ve written a lot about clarity and I think some of those things come from, Bonnie has presented at various things for us. She’s incredible at pointing out, and she’s very direct about it. You are not thinking right about this. So there is that therapy option, but then there’s another option, and this is one that personally worked for me, was using a mentor, a business mentor. The most stressed and the worst I was as a gym owner was when I was worried about the bills and the revenue was down and members aren’t there. And you just feel like you have all these things to do and client problems seem dismissive, you can just dismiss them. The thing that helped was finding a business mentor and I started working with you and I started working with other mentors that you had on your team. I could vent to them, I could get it all out, clear the decks and then I could get clarity on how to fix these problems. So talk to me about that. What could a business mentor do for a gym owner who’s struggling?

Chris Cooper: (21:57)
Yeah. So the analogy I like to use is they pop the balloon for you. So you think about all of the stuff that’s going on in the course of a day, right? All the little distractions and it just kind of builds and builds and builds. And soon you’re traveling around with this big bubble of stress and overwhelm and anxiety and fear about the future. And you’re just like, what do I do? And then you talk to your mentor and your mentor’s like, just do this one thing right now. And I had a session like this this morning where the person literally came in, sat on the couch in my office here and talked for 40 minutes about all these problems they couldn’t solve. And I said, I want you to do this thing by four o’clock. And she said, oh, okay, thanks Coop.

Chris Cooper: (22:41)
And she left whistling and smiling. And really that’s what a mentor does. They maintain just enough objectivity that they can say, do this one thing right now, and you can trust that they’re not gonna let any of the other balls drop. You’re not gonna forget all the other crap that you’ve got. But the ability to have that single point of focus, it’s a huge relief because gym owners can work hard, right? If they’re given a direction and they can put their head down and they will do it all day long and they will be happy doing it. It’s this 5,000 different directions or 5,000 different things that really add up into this big balloon of stress.

Mike Warkentin: (23:18)
The thing that really helped me was when I was struggling with something and like you said, anxiety building up. Yeah. I would talk to a mentor and say, here’s my problem, it’s freaking me out. And they’re like, oh, we’ve solved this like 2,500 times before, just do this. Here are the steps. Yeah. And even now, with Two-Brain resources, it’s like, here’s the downloadable tactical PDF that’s step by step and oh, that’s how you do a rate increase. Why was I so stressed about this? And yeah, rate increases are stressful, but now that you have all the steps, the process has been proven and it works and you have support, everything is so much easier. Right? And that’s really the benefit that I found from mentorship was just getting the answer. This is not that big a problem because we have the answer. Even if you don’t, you know? And have you seen that with gym owners? You’ve worked with many of them and then your mentors have worked with many more. Have you seen them actually become more likable as their stress melts off?

Chris Cooper: (24:12)
Yeah, I think that’s fairly normal. And you don’t think about it consciously, but if you’re in any of our groups, what you’ll notice is that over time people start to share more, they become more open, they become more generous. And their posts on Friday when they give us their updates go from very specific, our metrics increased this much this month, to I feel great. I had a date with my wife, I spent so much time with my kids. Over time you see this transition and entrepreneurship, it’s worthwhile. But entrepreneurs also deserve to be happy doing it. And so, that’s just the coolest side effect that we see in a mentorship practice is that people grow to love their business and love their life.

Mike Warkentin: (24:57)
Again, gym owners, you’re out there and you are stressed and worried and overworked and underpaid. I will wager to say that you’re probably a little bit less likable than you could be

Mike Warkentin: (25:09)
That’s right. It’s an obvious one. ‘Cause I was there, Chris was there, we’ve all been there. If you’re feeling stressed, I would recommend that you book a call. We’ll put a link in the show notes there, book a call and find out how a mentor can help. And again, just give you some stuff to think about. See what you could do to get rid of some of that stress. Chris, close it out. Is there something simple beyond that call that you would give them to do today? Yep. Just, what can I do right now to become more likable?

Chris Cooper: (25:34)
Practice putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. And this was a very hard skill for me to learn. I’m not a naturally empathetic person, but if somebody is gonna come in and they’re gonna do a No Sweat Intro for me, I’m gonna spend five minutes learning everything I can about that person and then mentally putting myself in their shoes. And now I understand why people are intimidated by the free trial and they’re not intimidated by the No Sweat Intro. Why they’re intimidated when they see me ranting about global gyms and their discounts and people who don’t show up or attacking competitors online. I understand why they don’t wanna be around me if I’m being a negative person. And the best thing that I can do to change their life is just be a person that they wanna be around.

Chris Cooper: (26:24)
If you wanna do one thing every single day before anything else happens to you, just practice saying good morning. Good morning is a greeting that everybody likes. It’s friendly. And I actually seek out people who are gonna give me a really good, good morning. I know which coffee shop to go to at 5 AM where I’m gonna get the best, warmest “good morning” because that’s how I start my day. And the other thing is, if you can’t figure out how to be nice, talk to everybody like you’d talk to your dog. .

Mike Warkentin: (26:59)
That’s exactly it. And one of the things, you guys follow along in the blogs this week that Chris has written, he’s written a bunch of great stuff there. One of the things there is use people’s names. So good morning, Chris. Good morning, Mike, whatever. Remember names, there are tactics that can help you be more likable. Learn them and work on them. Chris, thanks for sharing this. We’re gonna go back to being likable people at our jobs here. But we’re gonna push you more out the door with that. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I’d love it if on the way out you would hit subscribe on YouTube. Leave a comment. Interact with us somehow and you’ll see more of this stuff. We would be grateful for that. Chris, where can people get more support from you and Two-Brain mentors right now?

Chris Cooper: (27:37)
Go to GymOwnersUnited.com. Make that your next stop on Facebook instead of making a post that will sabotage yourself.

Mike Warkentin: (27:46)
That group is curated, it’s positive, it’s full of support, no arguments. The unlikeable people. What happens to ’em in there, Chris?

Chris Cooper: (27:53)
We have removed over 1,800 of them by now. If they struggle to maintain a positive attitude and a help first ethos, they are just gone. We just filter ’em out just like your clients are filtering you out.

Mike Warkentin: (28:07)
GymOwnersUnited.com, head there now and join. We’ll see you in there.

Chris Cooper: (28:10)
Thanks, Mike.

The post Unlikable Gym Owners: Don’t Do This Stuff! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 13, 2023 02:01

April 12, 2023

Connections: Grow Your Network at the Two-Brain Summit

“Who luck” is a thing—and I have it.

The right people tend to pop into my life exactly when I need them. It’s happened with mentors, staff members and business partners.

But I’ve come to realize “luck” might be the wrong word.

Connecting with the right people doesn’t just happen. For example, the mentor who helped me turn Two-Brain into a million-dollar mentorship practice didn’t knock on my door. I actually met Dan Martell because I went to a conference and created content while I was there.

The short story: Dan’s fitness coach saw my post about attending the event and texted Dan to meet “the gym business guy.” We met, I joined Dan’s mastermind group, and Two-Brain took off. The business grew by 600 percent over two years.

Was that luck? Maybe. But not totally.

The cover of the book

And is it luck that Dan is speaking at the Two-Brain Summit in 2023? No. Dan will be there to help you grow your business because I connected with him at a live event years ago, and I know you’ll benefit from his knowledge.

I find the right people at the right time by spending a lot of time with the right people. If I want to hire, befriend or partner with driven, positive people, the best way to do it is to go where they are.

So that’s why the theme of this year’s Two-Brain Summit is Connect.

Here are the connections you’re going to make in Chicago.


Peers

The people around you are just like you: They’re driven people who want to help others and create great businesses. Lean on them for ideas, support and context.

At our summit in 2019, Jay Williams had everyone in the audience find a partner. Then we pledged to hold each other accountable to an important task. My partner’s job was to hold me accountable for stretching. Every night for the next month, she texted me at 8 p.m.

“Did you stretch today?”

Guess what? I did—because someone was holding me accountable.

When you attend a live event, you’re going to meet some collaborators. You’re going to talk about your gyms. You’re going to get some ideas, some tips and some support. Much of the knowledge available at these events doesn’t come from the stage.


Leaders

The speakers we’ve selected are industry leaders. Leaders offer new ideas, new ways of thinking and new paths to take.

They also create movement. Jet streams are defined as “narrow bands of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere.” That seems like an apt description for the people who will be on the stage in Chicago.

Every speaker has been selected to create high-level movement. They’re there to help you take action to grow your business fast.

Listen to them, learn from them and talk to them!


Teams

Finally, you can connect with your own team members. Use events to strengthen your bonds.

It can be tough to build your team or your culture “at the office.” Taking your staff away for a weekend, showing them your vision, and exposing them to industry leaders and talented peers—all of that is priceless.

Imagine if all staff members were fired up and focused in one direction. Attending an event together is the best way to make that happen.


Let’s Connect!


I look forward to our Summit every year because I know the connections I make push me forward and help me grow my business. I want you to make the connections that will improve your business, too.

Wish you had better “who luck”?

Come to Chicago on June 3 and 4!

Get Two-Brain Summit Tickets Here!

The post Connections: Grow Your Network at the Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 12, 2023 00:00

April 11, 2023

How to Make Money at the Two-Brain Summit

Live events are fantastic for an entrepreneur.

I love meeting new people, networking, learning, and absorbing the energy and ideas in the room.

The best part? In a room packed with entrepreneurs, you realize that you aren’t alone and your problems aren’t unique or unsolvable. When you see solutions and feel supported, you take swift action. I love that.

Every year, we put on the Two-Brain Summit to bring the world’s best fitness entrepreneurs together. And we fill the stage with the people gym owners and coaches need to hear from right now.

Our team puts a lot of pressure on these speakers: They are charged with getting you to take action. And I don’t mean this in a rah-rah, ethereal, climb-the-mountain kind of way. I mean I want our speakers to get you to do important work right in the room.

Here’s why that’s so important: One new action pays for the Summit and starts a chain reaction in your business.

For example, Joleen Bingham is going to help you create a staff journey on the spot so you can retain great people longer. That alone could save you tens of thousands of dollars and a lot of stress.​

Most people show up to events with a blank notebook and scribble down everything they can. It’s a mistake. They usually leave with a full notebook and too many jumbled bullet points. They don’t have a clue where to start when they get home.

Remember this: You don’t need to learn everything from every person who takes the stage. All you have to do is take one action.


Your Plan for the Two-Brain Summit


Here’s what to do at our Summit (or any other event):

Bring a notepad but keep it closed. Just listen. Instead of being a secretary, be a participant. As soon as you’re inspired to do one actionable thing to move your business forward, leave the room with the notepad. Write down the exact thing you need to do and exactly how you’ll do it.Then you have a choice: You can go back to your room and get to work or you can go back into the session. If you choose to head back inside, do this first: Block off time on your calendar to take action on the thing you put in the notebook.


Trust me: It’s more important to act on one thing than to learn a lot but do nothing.

And don’t worry: You’re not being impolite to the speaker when you follow this plan; you’re just getting better ROI. If literally everyone leaves the room in the middle of my talk to take action and grow their businesses, I’ll feel like the greatest speaker in the world.

You can, of course, listen to all the speakers. Any resounding ideas they present will stick with you. But if you plan to do two things, you’re less likely to do either. And if you try to do everything, you’ll probably do nothing.

So use that notebook to log The One Thing, and then make it happen fast.


Action and Your Team

It’s really easy to get positive ROI on a summit event. But most people don’t because they try to learn as much as possible and then fail to take any action.

If you’re worried this might be you, bring your team and assign clear actions to them as the Two-Brain Summit goes on.

That sounds like CEO work, doesn’t it?


One Final Tip


Here’s one more piece of advice you can use at the Summit or any other live event: Show up with a goal.

Just like we ask gym clients to set goals, I want you to set a goal for the Summit before you get there. Doing so will bring focus and help you take action.

Some examples:

“My goal is to learn how to keep clients longer.”“My goal is to build an ascension model for my staff.”“My goal is to learn how to generate referrals.”


If you have a goal, you’ll be on high alert for anything that can help you accomplish it, and when you leave on Sunday with the goal crossed off the list, you’ll have the same feeling your clients get when they hit a squat PR or do their first pull-up. You’ll know that you took clear action to move your business forward over the weekend.

So what’s your goal for the Summit?

Get Two-Brain Summit Tickets Here!

The post How to Make Money at the Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 11, 2023 00:00

April 10, 2023

Fired up About Fitness: The 2023 Two-Brain Summit

Announcer (00:00):
The Two-Brain Summit goes down June 3 and 4 in Chicago. This weekend will define your year and set your gym on the path to success. Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper goes over the summit lineup, which includes a CrossFit Games champion, a bestselling author (or two), kids coaching experts and some of the most successful gym owners in the world. Don’t miss this event. You can find a link to the ticket page in the show notes. Now, here’s Chris Cooper.

Chris Cooper (00:27):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper, the founder of Two-Brain Business. Every year, I love to bring together hundreds of gym owners from inside the Two-Brain community and also outside to motivate them, inspire them and give them actionable tactics that they can use to grow their gyms. It’s a great chance for gym owners to get together and talk to their peers, feel some community and some support, but also just get fired up. And more and more often people are bringing their teams. They’re bringing their coaches, their admins, their CSMs, doing some team-building stuff around the Two-Brain Summit and giving them their own inspiration, their own motivation to succeed. In fact, a lot of people who’ve been coming to summit for the last couple of years say that the best thing that they do is bring their team because when they go back home, their team is absolutely fired up. The owner leaves with great tactics that they can use, but the team is also excited to implement, and they’ve got their own ideas, too.

Chris Cooper (01:19):
It’s awesome. It’s the real catalyst for growth. And I even bring my own coaches to this, too. Our history of speakers has included Jocko Willink, Seth Godin, Todd Herman, Risha Grant, Lisa Nichols—amazing speakers. And this year I think is maybe our best lineup ever. So I’m super fired up to share this with you. I’m gonna tell you the speakers and I’m gonna tell you their topics. I’m gonna tell you what kind of value the summit is gonna give to you and hopefully encourage you to sign up. And we’ll see you there. So we have two stages. The first stage is the Owners Stage, and it’s just for gym owners. The second stage is for coaches and it’s for gym staff. Now sometimes people wanna sneak out of one and join the other, and if you’re the owner, you can definitely do that. But I want your staff to have their own source of inspiration and knowledge so that you don’t have to teach them everything and you don’t have to always be the one who fires them up.

Chris Cooper (02:13):
We’re gonna do that for you. So first we’re gonna start with a presentation by me on our theme, which is connection. This year, I’m gonna keep it short. There are so many great speakers that I couldn’t even carve out an hour speaking spot for myself. So I’ve got about 20 minutes to get you started on our theme, which is connect. From there I’m gonna introduce Jason Khalipa. Now Jason and I have been talking to one another since 2016, at least about business, but you know, we were introduced back in 2008. I’m gonna share that story with you at the summit. Jason was one of the very first successful, really successful, CrossFit affiliates and he went on to do a ton of gyms—like well over a dozen. He has his own NCFIT brand. Now he sells NCFIT programming. And through it all, he’s had a lot of challenges that he’s gonna share with you.

Chris Cooper (03:01):
He’s gonna talk about his evolving model, how it used to be really high volume, high number of clients. Now it’s really high value clients and the right clients, and he’s gonna share all that with you. I don’t wanna spoil it. And then from there, Dan Martell is gonna take the stage. Dan was my mentor when Two-Brain was pretty new. We were about a year in when I met Dan, and he helped me grow Two-Brain first up to a million-dollar mentorship practice and then to $2 million by sharing this concept called “buy back your time.” And he’s just published a book on this finally like seven years later, and I bought 500 copies to give away at Summit. So when you show up, if you’re one of the first 500 registrants, you’ll get a copy of this book. Dan will take the stage, he’ll talk you through it, he’ll get you really inspired, and maybe you can catch him for a signing.

Chris Cooper (03:47):
Then on the Owners Stage, Shawn Rider is gonna take the stage. Sean is gonna talk about the wealthy gym owner and their team, and he’s talking to gym owners about how to create a better platform for themselves so that their team can build on that platform and have more successful careers. Shawn is a true success story. He quit his teaching job to run his gym better, and then he joined Two-Brain as a client. He really thrived as a client, and then he became a Certified Two-Brain Mentor. He’s thrived as a Two-Brain mentor, and then he got into Tinker Phase, and now he’s thrived at making other people wealthy. And he’s gonna take the stage and talk you through all of that with the lens of “how do you create better careers for your staff?” Then Karl Solberg is gonna take the stage and talk about connecting your goals with the players.

Chris Cooper (04:34):
A lot of us are really good at having a very clear mission in our mind and also hiring amazing people to work in our gym, but we’re not great at connecting that mission or our vision with the people who are actually delivering it. I know this is certainly a huge gap for me. Karl’s got this dialed in, and over the last couple years we’ve been having these conversations about it and how to activate your mission in the minds of your staff. Look, your staff are not signing up for this job because of the money, right? Just like you didn’t open a gym because of the money, they’re signing up because they believe in the mission, but they’re not really always sure what that mission is or how it should play out. When they’re aligned with exactly where you are going, that makes a lot of the other problems with staff moot.

Chris Cooper (05:19):
You don’t have a retention problem with staff anymore. You don’t have a motivation problem with staff anymore. People want to do the right thing, they want to work hard, they want to impress the clients. In building a client-centric business, really you have to have this connection between the owner and the coach to do that or else everybody’s coming at it from these different angles and it doesn’t work. So I’m really fired up for this presentation. Our third presenter on Saturday, or our fifth presenter I guess, is John Franklin, and he’s gonna talk about how authentic content and sales work together. Now, this is really critical because in the past, you know, we’ve talked about sales, we’ve talked about marketing. Last year’s presentation on the four marketing funnels by Colm O’Reilly was incredible. John’s gonna talk about that intersection. When John and I met, he was really marketing focused, ads focused.

Chris Cooper (06:10):
I was really content focused, and I can remember having this conversation with him where each of us really, you know, didn’t see how our ideas merged, but over time that friendship became a partnership, and now we understand how meaningful content is going to work with sales, and that’s really helped grow Two-Brain into the largest mentorship practice in the world. But we’re not here to tell you about how to grow Two -Brain. We’re here to tell you how to grow your gym, and that is exactly what John’s gonna talk about. Now on Saturday on the Coaches Stage. So all those speakers are just on the owners side. That is a tremendous amount of value. Any one of these presentations is worth the cost of the summit, right? It’s just such an amazing return on your investment in a ticket. But on the coaches side, while you’re doing that, your coaches are going to be listening to Peter Brasovan, and he’s gonna talk about connecting powerful moments.

Chris Cooper (07:01):
One of the key ways that your coaches can help you with retention is to identify and highlight the special moments that your clients have. Peter’s gonna tell them exactly how to do that. Now if you’re in Two-Brain, you know what the client journey is all about. And if you’re not in Two-Brain but you’ve read some books on the customer journey or the 90-day year or anything like that, you’ll have an inkling about what he’s gonna tell them. The key though is that Peter’s gonna get them fired up to do this work for you, and it’s gonna make them love their jobs even more. So I’m fired up to send my stuff to that presentation. I’ll tell you, they’ve been hearing me talk about the client journey and the first 90 days, and they get it and they do the work. But Peter’s gonna get them really excited about it, and that’s gonna supercharge the special moments that your clients have in your gym.

Chris Cooper (07:47):
Then Yancy Culp from Spartan/DEKA is gonna get on stage and talk about lighting a fire. Now in past years, coaches have come to the summit and left really fired up, really motivated. And that, you know, just does so much for your gym when your coaches are excited. But Yancy is a spark plug. He is a catalyst. He’s in charge of the Spartan/DEKA program, and I’ll tell you the founder of Spartan told me, “When you get on the phone with Yancy, you’re gonna feel like you can run up a mountainside.” And he was right. Yancy is such a catalyst for energy that you just can’t help being excited after listening to him. I mean he’ll resuscitate somebody’s passion if it’s completely gone in the fitness industry, and if they’re already excited, he’ll take that from an eight to an 11.

Chris Cooper (08:38):
This is the guy that you want getting your staff fired up. He’s so motivational. After Yancy, Colm O’Reilly’s gonna take the stage, and he’s gonna talk about why our clients don’t listen and how to get them to start. One of the most frustrating things in the fitness industry that burns out a lot of coaches and owners is when the clients don’t follow your lead, don’t take your advice, don’t listen. I get that. I’ve been a coach for 25 years, and this to me was a massive source of burnout and frustration. “You’re not doing what I tell you. How do you expect to get results?” Well, Colm is gonna tell your coaches how to approach that problem, get your clients to listen and actually get them better results because of it. Then Brian Strump, one of my favorite humans, is gonna be onstage and he’s gonna talk about having hard conversations with clients.

Chris Cooper (09:27):
Now Brian is a very successful gym owner from North Carolina, and he has had over the years many of these tough conversations. He’s built an amazing staff around him. You’re gonna get to meet some of them at summit this year, but Brian’s gonna talk about how to make sure that you’ve got a positive environment in your gym by having hard conversations with your clients. Getting them aligned again or getting them out. He’s really good at both. He’s tactful, he’s a great communicator. You’re gonna love listening to this guy in his Long Island accent. He has become so good at this. It’s one of his key skills that’s helped him grow his gym into what it is now. And you know, Brian is a very successful mentor at Two-Brain. He’s a very successful Tinker, he’s very successful with his family. He’s got a great life balance, and a lot of this is because he nips problems in the bud in his gym, and I want your staff to be able to do that for you so that not every problem escalates to you.

Chris Cooper (10:24):
Then Jeff and Mikki Martin, another couple of my favorite humans, are gonna be onstage talking about coaching youth. This is a common theme that I wanna bring onstage every year at summit because our youth are our legacy. Not only are these the future clients for your gym and the best athletes in your gym three years from now, but they’re also a massive opportunity. And as most gym owners know, we don’t prioritize our youth nearly enough. I’ll give you an example. People who cater only to youth generally charge about three times for a monthly membership what we charge for youth programs in our gyms. That reframe is really important because it’ll help you decide what is the best thing to do for our gym and also for our youth. And if you leave summit with one coach fired up about coaching youth or even building a teens program, the summit will pay for itself 10 times over.

Chris Cooper (11:18):
Okay? Just one. And Jeff and Mikki have been doing this forever. Great motivations, great incentives. They know how to build a successful kids program, and they’re gonna tell your coaches exactly how to do it. Now that’s just Saturday. And at night you can go out for dinner with your staff, you can do some team building, you can just relax if you want to. The summit is in Rosemont this year. It’s a beautiful area for kicking around relaxing, getting a fantastic meal at a wide variety of restaurants, you know, playing Frisbee or doing yoga on the green. Whatever you wanna do Saturday night. On Sunday on the Owners Stage, Jolene Bingham is gonna start us off by giving us a staff journey for growth and retention. So earlier I mentioned that, you know, we like to map out the client journey and plan that out in advance to make sure they get great results and stick around, but we need to do the same thing for staff.

Chris Cooper (12:08):
The economic climate is such right now that it’s becoming harder and harder to find good staff. And so what you need to do is plot out the staff journey, show them the path to making this a really good career for themselves, and keep them around in the industry. You know, when I started in this industry, the average lifespan of a personal trainer was about two years and two months. That was it. They did personal training, they burned off all their passion, and then they went out and got a real job. Successful gym owners are in a position to keep people in the industry for longer, and this is how we grow the industry: by making the gym owners successful, then making their staff successful and then having that compound and compound and compound. And Jolene is gonna give you a way to do that, a very clear tactical plan.

Chris Cooper (12:53):
Andrea Savard is gonna talk about creating legendary leadership. I saw her speak on this topic at our Tinker Meetup in Nashville. She’s gonna go deeper and give you actionable tools for leadership that you can actually use with your staff. The thing about leadership is it’s an inspiring, broad topic, but it’s very hard to have actionable takeaways. I promise you I saw Andrea deliver the shorter version of this talk, and it is extremely actionable. You will leave knowing exactly what to say, exactly what to do and how to improve your leadership. It’s a very, very rare speaker who can actually do that. Andrea is that speaker, Bonnie Skinner is gonna talk about growing your entrepreneurial maturity. Now Bonnie owns Level Up Coaching, and she works with successful CEOs on growing their entrepreneurial confidence, removing things like that are barriers to their growth that are all inside your head.

Chris Cooper (13:49):
I work with Bonnie, and she’s been so important at growing all of my businesses because the biggest barrier in a lot of those cases was me. I would avoid hard confrontations. I would keep clients or staff around longer than I should. I didn’t have the confidence to post the things that would actually grow. I wasn’t inspiring people because I didn’t wanna put my foot out there. Bonnie helped me get through all of that. And removing those barriers is what’s grown all of my business and my personal life. She is one of the most popular people in the Tinker Group. She is a very sought-after speaker, and you are going to love her. Then Karen Hazelton’s gonna talk about building a simple goal review SOP. You know, I started doing goal reviews in Catalyst years ago. That has been taken and refined over and over and over, and Karen is really a master at delivering goal reviews at scale.

Chris Cooper (14:39):
Goal reviews are one of the most important things that a gym owner can do with their clients, but it’s also one of the things that people are most likely to skip when they get busy. That means they’re not doing this crazy-important thing that will improve retention, improve ARM and grow their business over time. And Karen is gonna give you a simple, more actionable way to do that. She’s the master. Next, Taryn is gonna talk about how to zero in on your focus every day. Over the last several years, the summit is now seven years old, I’ve always had the closing keynote. And my job has always been to inspire action. This year, I asked Taryn to take my spot because she is better at this than I am. While I work on this all the time and I think I’m pretty good at it, Taryn is incredible. Taryn has grown from having kind of a struggling gym to a very successful gym. She’s grown from being a brand new mentor to one of the most popular mentors in Two-Brain, and then she actually grew a private mentorship practice on the side, which is massive, all of this while qualifying to the highest level basketball referee status in the world and competing in her first triathlon and buying Airbnbs. How does she do that? She gets all these different things done by being able to focus on one thing at a time, doing one specific thing. And this is what she teaches her clients. She’s gonna teach to you from the stage on Sunday. You’re right, there’s more. I know this is incredible already, the stuff that you’re gonna take away. Again, any one of these speakers on the owners side will give you a positive ROI on your ticket investment.

Chris Cooper (16:16):
On the coaches side on Sunday, Jason Khalipa’s gonna lead us off, and he’s gonna talk about the pursuit of virtuosity in coaching. Get your coaches fired up to be better, to give clients a better one-on-one experience and improve your retention. This guy has been around and seen it all. And if you’re not familiar with Jason Khalipa, look him up. He was on the CrossFit Level 1 staff for years. He was probably the first CrossFit affiliate to have more than 10 gyms. You know, and he used to go around and do these seminars for people. Now he’s focused on developing coaches, and he’s gonna talk to your coaches and develop them for you. If you’re not doing any coach development, this is the simplest investment you can make: bringing your coaches to summit. If you are doing coach investment, this will be one of the best things that you do for them all year.

Chris Cooper (17:05):
Let him train your coaches for you. Then Anastasia Bennett’s gonna take the stage, and she’s gonna talk about the perfect nutrition client avatar. There are very few people in the world who are doing a good recurring nutrition business. While we all know we should be selling nutrition coaching in our gym, last year it accounted for only 4 percent of gross revenue on average in the gyms that were doing it. Anastasia’s gonna tell you how to build that up by identifying your best client avatar and then delivering to them. She has done this. She’s extremely good at it. She’s not trying to sell you anything. She’s just helping your coaches build your nutrition business, and if they sell two more clients, I mean that pays for you and three staff to come to summit, right? Then Cynthia Fotti is gonna come up and teach your coaches habits-based nutrition stuff. They don’t need like a certification to do that. They can just deliver without exposing you to risk and get your clients results.

Chris Cooper (18:01):
So you’re gonna have this one-two punch of Anastasia identifying who should get nutrition coaching and how to sell it to them, and then Cynthia on how to deliver nutrition coaching. We need more of this in gyms. The current options that are out there are just not working at improving sales and retention and nutrition in gyms. These two have done it. They’re gonna teach your staff how to do it. Then we’re gonna bring Brian Bott on the stage, and he’s gonna talk about semi-private training. Semi-private training bridges the gap between one-on-one personal training and group training—like a class. It’s an interesting concept that just never occurred to me. I had this personal-training studio, and then I opened a CrossFit gym, and had I known there was a an option in the middle, I would’ve gone straight to that and been profitable way faster.

Chris Cooper (18:47):
Semi-private training is growing rapidly in popularity among personal trainers, but I think it’s probably a more efficient way to scale, and a lot of gyms in our program who started out with just a class base have now gone to semi-private. I’ll paint you a quick picture. Let’s say that you and me and two of our friends are training together at noon, but we’re all doing slightly different programs, and there’s a coach in the room with us that’s going from person to person. So, “Hey, Chris, let me give you a spot on that bench press. Hey, Mike. Elbows up on that front squat.” Okay? So you’re getting coaching cues, but you’re not all doing the same thing at every time. Like your program is tailored to you. You’re not just kind of following along and doing this thing. That creates a higher-value experience for the client.

Chris Cooper (19:34):
It creates higher ARM for the gym and a higher paid hour for that coach. This is kind of like the Holy Grail for a lot of people, and Brian Bott’s gonna tell you how to do that. He’s gonna tell you what it is, how to build it and how to implement it, whether your gym is mostly class based or it’s a personal-training studio or it’s somewhere in between. Then we’re gonna bring all the coaches back, and we’re gonna let them experience the magic of Taryn Dubreuil on how to zero in your focus every day. I wish there were two of me so that I could go back and forth and watch every single speaker, but I’m gonna do the next best thing, and that is bring my staff to summit. I am so fired up to experience these speakers, but more than that I’m so fired up for you to experience them.

Chris Cooper (20:18):
When we do a summit, it’s not lectures from a stage where by 2 o’clock you’re tired, you’re bored, you’re not taking notes anymore. These are all workshops. So not only are you learning, but you’re applying it. Every single speaker gets on the stage and gives you a worksheet and an activity that you’re going to do with them to actually make your gym better. Yeah, you know, after two days this is a lot of work and a lot of focus, but these speakers are entertaining, they’re engaging, they’ve been there, they’ve got great stories, and you’re going to leave with work already done. You’re gonna know what exactly you need to do on Monday. Your staff’s gonna know what to do. And, most important, you and them will be excited to own this gym business. Again, to keep the energy high, we’ve got a couple of extra things coming at Summit this year.

Chris Cooper (21:04):
Friday night. we’re gonna have a mixer where we bring all of the gym owners and their staff together just to meet everybody—a meet and greet, more social time. We’re also going to have more vendors than ever before, with a couple of really key exciting ones that you are going to find super awesome. So the first, Rep Fitness is gonna come. They’re gonna set up some equipment, and on Saturday and Sunday morning, Jason Khalipa is going to lead a big group workout following some of his NCFIT programming. You can sign up early. Make sure that you book a spot for that. He’s gonna take 70 people each morning, and that’s it. That is gonna be an amazing experience, and I really want you to participate. Also DEKA is gonna be there, and DEKA is gonna run us through some of their in-gym fitness challenges.

Chris Cooper (21:50):
I wasn’t even aware of DEKA last year, and now they have exploded on the scene to compete with Hyrox and others in gym obstacle-course races. These guys have an amazing setup. You can do most of this stuff with equipment that you already have. And this is crazy. It actually draws people in to do these challenges, so it can actually attract new clients. I know a lot of people make that claim, but with DEKA it’s actually true. They give you this worldwide leaderboard. They send you awards that your clients can win. They do some of the marketing for you to bring in outsiders. But at Summit this year, Yancy and the team from DEKA are gonna run a couple of challenges that you can try out on your lunch break, too. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. The only thing missing from our summits in years past has been workouts, and I can remember, you know, no matter where we were, the hotel gym was always just like crammed at 6 a.m. This year, we’re gonna make that a lot more fun.

Chris Cooper (22:41):
We’re gonna bring you together to do workouts with other people and try out some stuff, too. There’s no reason to not come to summit. If your gym can’t spare you for three or four days, then you’ve gotta fix that problem. If your gym can’t afford to send you and coaches, then come by yourself this year and bring your staff next year. But make sure you’re there. You need to get the information, the tactical knowledge, the activities, the inspiration, but also the energy to go out there and fight for people’s fitness for the next year. That’s what the summit is all about to me. I’m fired up just talking about it. I really hope to see you in person there.

Announcer (23:17):
Fired up about fitness? Get your tickets to the Two-Brain Summit right now. Click the link in the show notes and we’ll see you in Chicago!

The post Fired up About Fitness: The 2023 Two-Brain Summit appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 10, 2023 02:01

Two-Brain Summit Preview: Connect and Grow Your Gym

I want to connect with you—in person.

I also want you to hang out with the best gym owners in the world for two days.

And I want you to learn from experts and take action to grow your gym on the spot.

This is my invitation to join me at the 2023 Two-Brain Summit in Chicago, Illinois. The event runs from June 3 to June 4, and it’s going to be spectacular.

Get Summit Tickets Here

Every year after the Summit, our private Facebook group is full of posts about action and growth—all spurred by two days in the company of experts and peers. Gym owners are fired up, and they’re pushing their businesses forward. It’s thrilling to watch.

I don’t want you to miss out on this boost in 2023. Our Summit is once again set up to help you take swift action. You won’t just sit and listen. You’re going to think, interact and set plans in motion to produce measurable results fast.

I can’t stand live events where you sit idle, get overwhelmed and leave having accomplished nothing. We built the Summit so you get a return on your investment, and we selected each speaker to make that happen.

I want you to leave Chicago and say, “I didn’t spend money this weekend. I invested it, and I’m already seeing a return.”

Below, you’ll find all the Summit details—including info on our amazing speakers and some new activities for 2023.


Two-Brain Summit Details

When: June 3-4 in Chicago, Illinois

Where: Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare

Investment: US$399 for an owner ticket, $99 for each additional owner ticket, $99 for each coach ticket

Tickets: Available here

Summit website: Click here


Workouts and Socials—New for 2023!

Workouts With Jason Khalipa and NCFIT—On Saturday and Sunday, wake up and move! Join Jason Khalipa of NCFIT for a fun, accessible, 45-minute workout anyone can do. Get sweaty, smile, network and meet other gym owners before the speakers hit the stage to help you grow your business.

Fitness Pro Mix and Mingle—June 2, 5-7 p.m., at the Crowne Plaza hotel. Meet all kinds of ambitious fitness entrepreneurs at this hangout. Appetizers and cocktails provided.

Vendors

A host of world-class fitness businesses want to connect with you! We have an ever-growing list of vendors who will be on hand to help you solve problems and serve your clients better. Check them out here.


Speakers
For Gym Owners

A lineup of experts who will help you focus, lead and build a thriving fitness business.

TimeDay 1—June 36 a.mWorkout with Jason Khalipa7:30Sign in8:30Welcome and intro8:45Connect—Chris Cooper9:20Virtuosity in Business—Jason Khalipa10:05Break10:15Buy Back Your Time—Dan Martell11:15Lunch12:45 p.m.The Wealthy Gym Owner and Team—Shawn Rider1:45Break2Connect Your Goals With the Players—Karl Solberg3Break3:15The Link Between Content and Sales—John Franklin 4:15CloseTime Day 2—June 46 a.m.Workout with Jason Khalipa8:45Welcome9Growing and Retaining Staff—Joleen Bingham10Break10:15Legendary Leadership—Andrea Savard11:15Awards11:45Lunch Break1 p.m.Entrepreneurial Maturity—Bonnie Skinner2Break2:15Goal Reviews: Simple Structure and Process—Karen Hazelton3:15Break3:30How to Zero in Your Focus Every Day—Taryn Dubreuil For Coaches

Industry experts who will help you create a coaching career that provides for your family.  

TimeDay 1—June 36 a.mWorkout with Jason Khalipa7:30Sign in8:30Welcome and intro9Connecting Powerful Moments—Peter Brasovan10Break10:15Spartan/DEKA—Yancy Culp11:15Lunch12:45 p.m.How to Get Clients to Follow Our Advice—Colm O’Reilly1:45Break2Having Hard Conversations—Brian Strump3Break3:15Coaching Kids—The Brand X Method4:15CloseTime Day 2—June 46 a.mWorkout with Jason Khalipa8:45Welcome9Coach Development: Moving From 7 to 10—Jason Khalipa10Break10:15Perfect Nutrition Client Avatars—Anastasia Bennett 11:15Awards11:45Lunch1 p.m.Habits-Based Nutrition—Cynthia Fotti2Break2:15Semi-Private Training—Brian Bott3:15Break3:30How to Zero in Your Focus Every Day—Taryn Dubreuil
Join Us in Chicago!


I’d love to connect with you in June.

Get Summit tickets here today!

The post Two-Brain Summit Preview: Connect and Grow Your Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 10, 2023 01:00

April 7, 2023

New York Times Down on High-End Gyms and Premium Services?

High-end gyms that require letters of reference and lengthy interviews before accepting a member?

I’m all for it—even if The New York Times is throwing a little shade on the concept.

A head shot of writer Mike Warkentin and the column name

Here’s the March 25 article (paywalled for some readers): “Think Getting Into College Is Hard? Try Applying for These Gyms.”

In the article, Danielle Braff profiles a number of gyms that carefully screen prospective members, accept limited numbers of clients and charge premium rates for top-end services that often go beyond just training or access.

The tone of the article is generally neutral, but readers will sense a slight undercurrent of criticism: “In the last four years, about a dozen fitness centers (though some owners may prefer to call them ‘wellness destinations’ or ‘social wellness clubs’) have opened nationally that require letters of referral, long-winded applications, interviews and a deep dive through your social media to decide if you are fit to be fit.”

That last phase—”decide if you are fit to be fit”—is a clear statement of bias, and it’s not needed. A business of any sort must find ideal clients who want what the business provides and are willing to pay for it. This is not a new or exclusionary concept.

What these high-end gyms are charging might surprise you. But it might not if you recall that US$377 was the minimum to earn a spot on Two-Brain’s February Top 10 leaderboard for average revenue per member per month. (You can see it here.)


What Are Ultra-Posh Gyms Offering?


Here’s a quick look at some of the businesses profiled in the New York Times article:

Heimat—This one is billed as a “private fitness community that’s more than limitless fitness classes and uplifting spa treatments.” Heimat features classes and equipment plus a roof-top pool, co-working areas, spa services, dining and more. All-access membership is listed as $350 a month, which actually seems low.

Remedy Place—Tagline: “The world’s first social wellness club.” Amenities include group classes (meditation, breathwork, stretching, etc.), red-light beds, cryotherapy, contrast suites, infrared saunas, lymphatic compression gear, vitamin drips, oxygen chambers and more. The all-access rate is $2,500 a month at the West Hollywood, California, location and $2,750 at the Flatiron, New York, location.

Ghost—One-liner: “Your new home for wellness.” This sleek place is right out of a “John Wick” movie set. It’s exclusively for “the creative, entrepreneurial and professional leaders of New York City.” The 12-month rate paid up front is $3,300 ($275 per month) and includes access, two private sessions per month, unlimited Pilates and yoga, access to therapy devices and more. Again, this rate is is surprisingly low. Ghost provides 24 private training sessions per year with membership. The listed rate for a private session: $125—so 24 sessions equal $3,000, just 300 bucks less than the annual package that includes everything else. More perspective: One gym on our February leaderboard charges $120 for a PT session.

Forma Pilates— From its website: “An exclusive, boutique-style studio that specializes in private and semi-private sessions.” Rates are not listed on the site. Forma has studios in L.A. and New York, and membership is by referral only. That’s not a bad thing: One of the gym owners on our leaderboard actually couldn’t recall if he’s currently running Facebook ads because his referral network is so strong that he doesn’t need to spend much on paid advertising.

Monarch Athletic Club—Pitch: “health and wellness reimagined.” The facility looks like a high-end microgym or functional fitness studio. Membership benefits include personal training, mobility training, strength testing and nutrition counseling, as well as preventative medicine, physical therapy, metabolic panels, medical evaluations, and more. The all-access pass (waitlist currently in place) is $2,000 a month, but it includes unlimited PT and therapy, as well as 24/7 physician access. Some people would no doubt pay $2,000 a month just for the doctor on call.


Create Value


None of the rates and service packages listed above shock me, and I’m not put off by the concept of screening processes on intake, either.

While The New York Times is presenting these businesses as rare birds, they’re not rare or weird at all if you own a microgym. The owners of Ghost, Heimat and the others have just carefully selected niche audiences and are working hard to provide tailored service packages that create value.

Two-Brain Business teaches microgym owners to follow the same plan: Determine what you need to make, set your prices, create value that justifies the rates by solving problems for clients, and implement a precise plan to acquire and retain high-value members. We even supply all the resources that will help you in that process, as well as an experienced, expert mentor who can help you tailor the plan to your unique business.

The result of mentorship? Our February leaderboard for average revenue per member runs from $377 to $812. These are gyms that specialize in fitness and nutrition coaching first and foremost, not medical care and recovery devices. Some might offer speciality services, but they aren’t the kind of facilities that offer post-workout shakes served in an infrared sauna next to a plunge pool.

The lesson here is that you can charge a premium rate for super-high-end fitness and wellness services. And you can also charge a premium rate for fitness and nutrition coaching if you create value.

The key is pricing your services—whatever they are—to ensure profitability, creating value, acquiring clients and retaining them for years.

Two-Brain can help you do that whether you want to open an exclusive wellness and recovery facility in Manhattan or a personal training studio in Minneapolis—or Melbourne.

To find out more about how a mentor can help you build a business with incredible average revenue per member, click here to book a call.

The post New York Times Down on High-End Gyms and Premium Services? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 07, 2023 00:00

April 4, 2023

4 More Surefire Ways to Kill Gym Growth Dead

In the previous post, I shared four of my top ways to stop your gym from growing. Today, I have four more.


1. Run Your Business With Your Personal Checking Account

I once worked for a studio owner who had only one bank account.

He lived out of that bank account, and he also used it to pay the studio’s bills.

So every time he had to pay his staff, he acted like he was taking it right out of his wallet—because he was. And every time he had to pay a personal bill, it put something in his business at risk.

Every decision about money became an emotional one. He couldn’t think objectively.

Of course, he also had a major problem at tax time, but that’s a different story.

To avoid this problem, set up a payment strategy for yourself. Live off that money. Don’t put more of your own money back into your business, and don’t use your business debit card for your personal purchases. Seriously—you and your business need some space.


2. Don’t Return Calls or Emails

When people are interested in your service, make them wait—this a great way to crater gym growth.

Better yet, play hard to get! People love that.

I remember a boss once telling me, “Chris, every phone call is worth $10,000.” We were selling commercial treadmills. Of course, not every phone call was worth $10k, but some were, and you never knew in advance. So we treated the ringing phone like it was a ringing slot machine.

But you don’t have to do that. Go ahead and never answer your phone.

I mean, if they’re serious, they’ll call back … right?

(They won’t. That was a joke.)


3. Make People Feel Unwelcome When They Walk In

Last week, I started working with a new attorney.

It’s a newer firm, but the founding members have been practicing law for decades and recently went out on their own. I met one when we were volunteering to help local businesses during the government lockdowns of 2020. I was excited to move my business to him.

The firm bought a local historic landmark and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing it up. It’s gorgeous inside. Great parking, hardwood floors, original brick walls, antique couches.

And an impersonal receptionist.

When I arrived, she told me I didn’t have an appointment. And that it wasn’t her fault. And that I could “wait and see if he can talk to you.”

Now, granted, I’m usually wearing a T-shirt and running shoes when I go to meetings. But my book of business is large for a city this size, and I did have an appointment.

After 20 minutes of waiting around while she avoided eye contact, I texted my wife to come and pick me up.

Luckily, the attorney I was set to meet happened to catch me as I was putting on my coat. We had a great conversation, and I signed a contract worth nearly $100,000 to his firm.

No matter how great your facility, location, community, equipment—all of it—you won’t sign people up if you can’t greet them warmly.

My advice, if you want to stop growing, is this: Set up for your own workout. Take off your shirt and crank the old-school tunes. Leave the lights on and the door unlocked. If someone wanders in, just ignore them.


4. Wait to Get a Mentor

More and more, I hear this in chats: “Thanks for this free guide! We’re doing OK. No need for a mentor yet!”

Some gym owners mistakenly believe that a mentor is a lifeguard: You call when you’re drowning.

Smart gym owners know to call a mentor before growth stops.

I learned this the hard way: After a mentor saved my gym in 2009, I said “I’ve got it from here!” and went solo for about two years.

In that time, the gym kinda coasted along and I got distracted. By late 2011, I was burned out again. I wasn’t broke any longer, but life wasn’t much better—know what I mean?

I said, “Well, mentorship worked for me last time!” Then I found a new mentor—and the gym took off.

I currently spend around $250,000 a year on mentorship. I learned my lesson as a fitness entrepreneur. I now have the largest mentorship practice for gym owners in the world because I pay business mentors to help me grow. If I had waited until my mentorship practice was in trouble, I never would have gotten it off the ground.


Analyze and Act


Entrepreneurs often sabotage themselves without realizing it.

Do this exercise for yourself right now: If you actually wanted to stop your gym from growing, how would you make it happen?

Your answers become your list of “never-do’s.” In some cases, you’ll have a flash of insight and realize you are doing some things that are preventing business growth. Make changes immediately.

And sometimes you might be too deep in the forest to see the trees. That’s when an outside perspective becomes essential. A mentor can analyze your business and point out all the things you should and should not do. Even better, a mentor will prioritize everything so you make the most important changes first.

That’s how you actually grow a business: Do one thing each day that will measurably move your gym forward.

As always, my team is here to help. If you’re ready to stop making mistakes and grow your gym fast, book a call with us here.

The post 4 More Surefire Ways to Kill Gym Growth Dead appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 04, 2023 00:00