Chris Cooper's Blog, page 76

Ask a Lawyer: Managing the Real Risks of Virtual Training

Mike Warkentin: (00:00)
Virtual training can cause very real issues for your gym. Are you protected legally? Today, I’ve got a gym-owning lawyer who can tell you how to reduce risk and avoid problems with online coaching. This is Run a Profitable Gym, and I’m Mike Warkentin. I’d really appreciate if you would hit subscribe wherever you are watching or listening, with my thanks. Now my guest, Matthew Becker, owner of GymLawyers.com, and he’s also the owner of Industrial Athletics in Pittsburgh. He’s the nexus of gym owners and lawyers. He’s gonna help you out today. Now, you might be sending out workout programs created by ChatGPT, maybe, but you can’t blame AI when problems arrive, and that kind of sucks, right? So “the machines gave you rhabdo, not me” isn’t gonna hold up in court. Sorry. Matt, virtual training became a bigger deal in Covid, but it was around before that, and it’s around after that. So what aren’t people thinking about when they’re talking about, or they’re using online coaching?

Matthew Becker: (00:53)
Hey, good morning Mike. Thanks for always having me on. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you.

Mike Warkentin: (00:57)
Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Matthew Becker: (00:58)
So, yeah, I know COVID, all of us gym owners went, oh, how do we do this online? Right? And we started these online businesses. And if you’re like me, you’ve let your online business die now because you’re putting all your time and effort back into your brick-and-mortar facility, but it’s still out there. I still get emails like three times a week from companies advertising “how to build my virtual coaching practice”. So it’s still there. So how does a brick-and-mortar gym owner secure themselves against ultimately liability, whether that comes from contract disputes or more likely injury disputes when we’re dealing with online clients. So we’re gonna walk through three different steps that you need to take in order to really secure yourself. But let’s go, let’s go.

Matthew Becker: (01:49)
There’s two different sort of online training platforms that we’re gonna cover. And really, both of these are going to be covered here under the steps that we’re gonna take. But we could either be sending a six week program to the individual to do, the individual wants to add 10 pounds to their back squat and we write up a six week program and we send it out to them. We say, follow the program, pay me 200 bucks, whatever it is. And then when you’re done, come back and I’ll give you another program. Okay? So that’s one. The other scenario would be, you actually have an online personal training client that you use, let’s say Zoom. And you get online with them 1, 2, 3 times a week and you essentially watch them work out through Zoom while you provide them instruction and the programming and everything else.

Mike Warkentin: (02:40)
So programming and coaching essentially.

Matthew Becker: (02:42)
Yeah. Yep. I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a third, am I missing one? You know, would there be another scenario?

Mike Warkentin: (02:48)
I guess there would be a hybrid version of that where you have, like, you definitely send out the workouts, but then they send you videos for review after the fact or something like that. There could be like a hybrid model I suppose that some people do.

Matthew Becker: (02:58)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if you have a hybrid model, you’re still covered under this episode. All right. Okay. So what are the three steps we have to look at? Step number one is your insurance. Step number two is your liability waiver. Step number three is your membership contract. Okay. Step number one, pull out your insurance policy. Thumb through all of that and look for something that is called a designated facility exception, right? It might be under a couple of different names, but that’s gonna be the most common. Or better yet, if you don’t feel like thumbing through that thing, call your insurance provider. Go over to Aguard or the RRG or whoever you use, and ask them if your policy includes the designated facility exception. So here’s what this is. Years ago when I opened up my gym, I was shopping around for insurance policies to cover me, and I called the local Nationwide guy or whatever, and I got a quote and everything else, and it all sounded really good. And then somebody said, well, you really should check out Affiliate Guard. And I’m not name dropping it, they specialize in this stuff, but somebody said, you know, go check out Affiliate Guard. So I called up the owner, Vaughan Vernon, and talked to him about it and one of the first things he pointed out was, your Nationwide insurance policy coverage, your local coverage is not going to have the designated facilities exception. What that means.

Mike Warkentin: (04:38)
So you can’t, it would limit your business model in some ways, at least limiting your risk when pursuing additional business models.

Matthew Becker: (04:46)
Yes. And so what this means is basically if I go with one of those smaller policies from State Farm or Nationwide or some other local guy, then I will be covered as long as I am exercising on my gym floor within the four walls of my gym. Okay? And I make two distinctions there. One is on the gym floor, the other is within the four walls of my gym. Okay?

Mike Warkentin: (05:14)
Okay. I see where you’re going with this.

Matthew Becker: (05:16)
Because my policy doesn’t have a designated exception. So what we want is that exception to be put in our policy because we’re gonna send people up ropes, we’re gonna send people onto rings, we’re gonna send people onto pullup bars, which means they’re now off the floor. Okay.

Mike Warkentin: (05:37)
Okay. I had a different exception in mind, but I did not realize that. So that’s really interesting.

Matthew Becker: (05:42)
Yeah. What did you have in mind, just curiously?

Mike Warkentin: (05:45)
Well, I was thinking about stuff where someone maybe trains someone, does a PT session overflow in the parking lot or sends clients around the block for a warmup run or something like that.

Matthew Becker: (05:53)
Yeah, you’re getting ahead of me, Mike .

Mike Warkentin: (05:55)
Okay. So sorry about that. But that’s crazy. And you think about that acrobatic type stuff. So gymnastics facilities and even some of the gyms where they’re climbing on ribbons and so forth, some of that stuff is kind of cool. Yeah. The aerial stuff that would have the same thing. Yeah. Aerial stuff ’cause you’re not on the floor anymore,

Matthew Becker: (06:11)
Right? Right. So you have to,

Mike Warkentin: (06:13)
Cirque de Soleil is at risk. 

Matthew Becker: (06:14)
That’s right. Or the ninja, that’s another one right now is

Matthew Becker: (06:18)
The ninja and the cheer industry and the gymnastics industry, they love to subcontract with ninja instructors. So you have to make sure that your policy allows you to go off the floor. And the second thing which you jumped ahead on Michael, is once we go outside, so another thing that we commonly like to do is write, okay guys, warm up time. Run around the block. Right? Or today it’s super sunny out, so we’re all gonna meet out in the park and we’re gonna do an outdoor class because it’s cool and it’s fun. Helps the gym owner get maybe a little bit of extra attention for free. And it’s something fun that we can do. Or we’re gonna take a weekend and Saturday morning we’re all gonna go out to the track, the local high school track and we’re gonna do a running workout. On the high school track because it’s kind of fun and it’s exciting, it’s different. If your insurance policy does not have the designated facilities exception, you are now exposed. Because if you take your members outside of your four walls and somebody gets injured, you’re not going to be covered under your insurance policy. That’s going to be an exception. And your insurance is really quickly gonna bring the hammer down to say you went outside your four walls, we don’t have to cover you. Wow. And outside of your four walls includes going online.

Mike Warkentin: (07:44)
Okay.

Matthew Becker: (07:44)
So that’s step number one. Make sure that you have an insurance policy that’s going to cover you online. All right? Step number two, you need a liability waiver. Okay? Even though we’re online, it doesn’t matter. You’re still telling somebody what to do. And so we did a couple of blog articles on this. If you want to head over to GymLawyers.com and check out the blog of defining liability and whether or not your programming is a liability, right? And the answer to that is yes, liability is essentially your exposure to a lawsuit. That’s a very basic form. That is what liability is. Do you risk getting sued? Anytime you tell somebody what to do, you open up the potential that they’re going to get injured. And so yeah, you increase your ability or your chances of being sued. What’s programming? It’s me telling you, Mike, what to do in order to get a good workout. Okay? That’s the bottom line.

Mike Warkentin: (08:45)
21-15-9 of squats and handstand pushups or whatever.

Matthew Becker: (08:48)
That’s exactly right. Yep. I might do that today. 21-15-9.

Mike Warkentin: (08:52)
It’s not a bad workout.

Matthew Becker: (08:53)
Yeah. Squats, air squats or weighted squats?

Mike Warkentin: (08:56)
I dunno. Depends on what you want. I might say, you’re a pretty fit guy. I’d say throw on 185 there, make your legs burn and flip upside down and work the upper body. Give it a shot. I dunno, listeners, post your time to comments.

Matthew Becker: (09:08)
I have you there, Michael?

Mike Warkentin: (09:09)
No. Have I just put myself at risk by giving you that workout?

Matthew Becker: (09:13)
Not from me.

Mike Warkentin: (09:16)
This is entrapment now, now you’re entrapping me .

Matthew Becker: (09:21)
That’s true. Could I see you for Rhabdo? I’ll get back to you on that one,

Mike Warkentin: (09:25)
But okay, do like 3, 3, 3. That’s now.

Matthew Becker: (09:29)
.

Mike Warkentin: (09:30)
I’m gonna limit my risk. But you see how this spirals really quickly, right? Like yes, I give instructions, they’re done elsewhere and so forth. And you can’t monitor that person, to see how they’re actually performing this workout if you’re doing it with programming. So the risks do add up. We’re joking about it, but it is a thing to consider.

Matthew Becker: (09:45)
It really is. And especially if, if I came to you and I said, Mike, I wanna get better at my handstand pushups. And then you said, okay, cool. Go do 21-15-9 of 185 pound back squats and handstand pushups. Ready, 3, 2, 1, go. And then I drop myself on my head and hurt myself. Okay, there’s a chance I’m gonna turn around and sue you because you told me to do it. Right? Right. So you’re exposed, you have liability, and if that’s gonna happen, which it does, you better have a liability waiver. But this liability waiver needs to be different than the liability waiver you use for your brick-and-mortar gym because that brick-and-mortar gym liability waiver should speak specifically to the services that you’re offering in your gym. And you’re gonna have other various language in there that is going to apply to you being specifically at your gym. Okay? Things like, we like to layer things into our liability waiver forms like physical contact, okay? People are bit itchy about touching these days. So you need to have a physical contact portions of your liability waiver that acknowledges that the member is going to be touched by either in a professional manner by your trainer, or potentially by somebody else in your gym, right? And if they’re uncomfortable with that, they gotta let you know. All right, anyway. Sorry, I went off on an angle there, but

Matthew Becker: (11:12)
That’s not going to be in your online waiver, okay? So it needs to be separate. You also need a digital video portion to your waiver. Okay? So this is similar to your brick-and-mortar. If you have cameras in your gym, you should have a CCTV portion to your waiver that puts people on notice that they’re on camera and they’re waving any privacy rights and everything else. This is different to a likeness waiver, which allows me to use your image for my advertising purposes. The digital video portion to your waiver tells the member that they’re going to to be on video. This is especially true if you’re sending me videos of you working out or if we are doing personal training over Zoom and I’m watching you, okay? Because now there’s a level of privacy here that we’re breaching, not in a malicious way or intentional, but we’re breaching it, okay?

Matthew Becker: (12:12)
And you need to be acknowledging that. And there may be times that somebody hits record on something. And now we’re watching all of that video, right? And I’m recording all that video and now I may go back and re-watch that video. I may watch it again in order to look at your form. I may show it to one of my other coaches in order to show a demonstration of form. Okay? And you as the client have a right to all of this unless you’ve waived so in your liability waiver.

Mike Warkentin: (12:43)
Something a lot of people wouldn’t have thought of and certainly would never have thought of 25, 20 years ago mm-hmm. maybe even less than that. Yeah.

Matthew Becker: (12:50)
Right. So that’s step number two. Make sure you get that liability waiver. The proper liability waiver for online training needs to be separate from your other general gym’s liability waiver. Okay? Okay. Number three is a membership contract. Okay? So we’ve talked, I think you and I have talked, right? Talked with again about membership contracts and yes, we have, because we’ve talked about state requirements that need to be put in your membership contracts. Remember that conversation? This is a little bit different.

Mike Warkentin: (13:24)
Link the show notes as well.

Matthew Becker: (13:26)
Yeah. Thank you Michael. It’s a little bit different though. Because we’re online, we really no longer need those state requirements to be in there, okay? And we’re getting real into the weeds here on the law and the laws that apply across states and what’s required and things like that when we are servicing clients that are no longer in our state, right? So if Pennsylvania requires me to put certain things in my membership contract for my brick-and-mortar clients, do I or do I not need those if I’m doing online training with somebody in West Virginia, okay? Generally speaking, we don’t need the various cancellation notices and everything else, okay? You might look at the state that you’re working with in that client to see if they have any requirements and just put a few of those in the membership contract just in case, sort of to protect yourself.

Matthew Becker: (14:28)
But there’s two big portions that we must have in our membership contracts now when we’re working online, okay? First is the Electronic Funds Transfer Act disclosure, okay? The EFTs. And this is more commonly known to everybody else as ACH transactions, debit card transactions, and credit card transactions, okay? But it’s a federal law that says, especially when we’re talking ACH transactions, you have to have disclosures about that in your membership contract. And those disclosures need to give you permission if you’re doing things like automatically recurring payments online. Okay? So we gotta have that section. The other section that we better have is the governing law and jurisdiction section to my membership contract. Okay? So go pull out, if you’re a CrossFit gym go pull out your CrossFit affiliate agreement. If you have a cell phone, go pull out your cell phone agreement, okay? Yeah. All of these things, all these contracts that you’re signing on pretty much a daily basis all have a governing law and jurisdiction session. And if you look, they’re all suited to the location of the business you’re entering the contract with. Okay?

Mike Warkentin: (15:47)
So that’s like, this is where we fight and these are the rules we’re fighting by.

Matthew Becker: (15:49)
That’s exactly right. Okay. That’s exactly right. So if I go to sue CrossFit now on my affiliate agreement, my affiliate agreement requires me to go to Colorado now. Used to be California, in order to sue them, okay? Which is gonna be a real big burden to me, coming from Pennsylvania, to have to go over there to sue them. So I’m really gonna think twice about whether or not I have a big enough skin in the game to go to Colorado to sue somebody. Okay? Same thing if we’re doing online training, okay? If I’m training somebody in West Virginia and they get injured and they wanna bring a lawsuit against me, I’m the person offering the service. I’m the one getting sued. I don’t want them to sue me in West Virginia because I don’t wanna go down to West Virginia to have to defend this thing.

Matthew Becker: (16:42)
That means I have to spend more time and money going down there to defend it. The only way to prevent or to force them now to come up to Pennsylvania, and I say force loosely because we can’t ever talk about anything that definitively in the law, but to force them to come to Pennsylvania is for me to have a written agreement under which they’ve now agreed that any lawsuits have to be brought in my state Pennsylvania, and that my state Pennsylvania law is going to apply. Okay? So you’ve gotta have that in the membership contract. Otherwise, if you’ve got a really big online business and you’re servicing clients all across the United States, you’re exposed to every one of those individual jurisdictions. And when crap hits the fan, you don’t want to have to fly across the United States to defend yourself, especially when it’s like a 300 contract.

Mike Warkentin: (17:40)
Yeah. And now, I’ve said this in previous shows, listeners, when you listen to this stuff, it becomes this large list of tedious stuff that you don’t probably wanna deal with. And I understand that you’re a gym owner, you wanna teach squats, you wanna run your business and so forth. A lot of these subclauses for this agreement and all this other stuff, not super fun until you need it. In which case, you wish you had it. If you don’t have it, how can you do it? You can contact a guy like Matt. So Matt, talk to me about, a gym owner who’s listening to this wants to take action. What do they do and how do they deal with you?

Matthew Becker: (18:10)
Yeah, sure. The easiest way is just to go to my website, GymLawyers.com and we’ve got calls to action all over the website. You can submit for a free consultation, we’ll reach out to you and set up a phone call. There’s no cost just to talk about this stuff. Also, you go to the website, there’s the blog, it’s got all kinds of information there. And there’s the contact page and my cell phone number’s on the contact page. If you wanna call me or text me and you don’t wanna go through the online form, that’s perfectly fine too, but I don’t hide. It’s all there. So just the easiest way is go to the website, Gym Lawyers, plural, GymLawyers.com

Mike Warkentin: (18:50)
Guys, take a look at that. If this is something you wanna look into, again, downloading your contract off the internet, Matt and I have joked about this before, that might have worked maybe back in 2008 and it wasn’t a good idea even then. If you’re doing that right now, you may not be completely covered as much as you could be unless you get it tailored to your specific business. It doesn’t take a lawyer very much time to do it. It isn’t the most expensive fee you’re ever going to pay, and it may really save you down the line. Matt, thanks again for offering your advice. I really appreciate it because this does help gyms stay open.

Matthew Becker: (19:19)
Always a pleasure.

Mike Warkentin: (19:22)
That was gym lawyer Matthew Becker. He’s at GymLawyers.com. Make sure you get the S in there and it is plural. I’m Mike Warkentin. This is Run a Profitable Gym. We are here every week helping you do exactly that: run a profitable gym. If you don’t mind, on the way out hit a like, leave a podcast review, do something, interact with our show. I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening or watching. Now, here’s Chris Cooper with a final word.

Chris Cooper: (19:47)
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. we created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to GymOwnersUnited.com to join. Do it today.

The post Ask a Lawyer: Managing the Real Risks of Virtual Training appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The 5 Levels of Influence—and How to Rise to the Top

Mature entrepreneurs understand that leadership really boils down to influence: When people want to follow you, they will work harder to do a good job.

But, like anything else, influence is a skill. That means you must understand it, practice it and strive to improve it always.

The levels I’ve laid out above were derived from John Maxwell’s “The 5 Levels of Leadership” and Robert Cialdini’s “Influence”—both recommended reads.

Level 1—We learn to lead staff who obey because we hired them. We improve as a boss by creating systems to follow, evaluating performance and creating opportunities for them to grow in their careers.

Level 2—We learn to inspire staff by talking about our noble purpose, sharing our vision and constantly showing staff how to grow. This includes focused attention on personal growth, which requires evaluation and feedback.

Level 3—We attract others who want to do what we’ve done. Good trainers leave their jobs to join our gym and follow in our footsteps. We inspire clients to become coaches and deliver our model to our clients.

Level 4—Others want to spread what we’ve done because of the difference it’s made in their lives. They bring their friends into our gyms; they encourage people in their networks to apply for jobs we offer. We have more than enough clients and more than enough applicants for work.

Level 5—People want to sign up for anything we do. When I’m at my best, clients at my gym come to see my seminars on leadership and business because they just want to see me. This is sometimes embarrassing—and scary because I don’t want to bore them or let them down—but I’ve learned to just thank them for being there for me.

Self-Improvement for the Win

Influence is the ultimate business model.

Local businesses ask, “How can I work with your gym?” And on a larger scale, I have dozens of requests every month to “partner” with Two-Brain Business.

You’ll get more opportunities, and better ones, when people want to work with you.

But it all starts with being likable.

Nobody wants to listen to an unlikable boss.

Nobody approaches the angry shift supervisor for advice.

Nobody wants to work for a jerk.

Nobody recruits their friends to spend more time with an asshole.

And nobody wants to partner with an angry person.

Look at yourself as objectively as possible: Are you angry? Tired? Overwhelmed?

It shows.

Do something about it.

The post The 5 Levels of Influence—and How to Rise to the Top appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Be Likable (and Make More Money and Win at Life)

When I was selling treadmills, I didn’t sell many.

Actually, I sold none.

I was a know-it-all technical expert who couldn’t wait to barf my supreme knowledge of cardiovascular systems and heel-strike problems onto everyone who walked into my store.

I didn’t have any bad intent, but I was definitely a barrier to fitness because nobody wanted to buy a treadmill from me.

I made fun of our competitors, I took shots at elliptical trainers, and I rolled my eyes at running on the road.

“You wanna wear out your knees? Go for it. These machines are for people who care about their health.”

Then a coworker gave me the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. He had gotten it from his church. The book changed my life. I began listening to others instead of trying to impress them with my knowledge. I tried seeing things from their perspectives. I became generally interested in their goals. I remembered their names. I put myself in their shoes. I started to really care.

And I started to sell treadmills.

Years later, I used the same lessons to sign up personal-training clients galore. I built the No Sweat Intro on the principles of asking questions and making a caring prescription. Later, I wrote “Help First” to teach others to think about how to help people instead of how to sell them.

Here are my favorite six lessons from “How to Win Friends and Influence People”:

1. Never criticize, condemn or complain. This is so important that it’s a core value at Two-Brain Business. We do not attack our competitors or anyone else—even when they copy us, attack us onstage or try to argue on social media. Why? Because if I’ll speak negatively about someone, I’ll probably speak negatively about anyone.

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. When you thank someone—which should be often—stop and think about why you’re grateful to them. Then go deep: Tell them how their help or advice has made a real difference to you. As you get better at this, you’ll actually go out of your way to thank people. When I’m stressed or distracted, my go-to strategy is to sincerely thank 10 people. By the time I’ve sent out 10 texts or voice messages, I’m no longer angry.

3. Speak in terms of the other person’s interests. Nobody cares what you want; we all care about what we want. This is a common mistake with people trying to sell CrossFit or Muay Thai: To a new client, the method is secondary. It’s just a tool that might (or might not) get them what they want. Always start by asking what someone wants. Then, if your method can help them, tell them how they will reach their goals with you. This is one reason free trials no longer work in CrossFit and martial-arts gyms.

4. Remember names. This seems simple, but it’s critical. I’ve taken courses from memory world champions to help me remember names better.

5. Be interested instead of interesting. Dale Carnegie’s wisdom: “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them than in two years by making them interested in you.”

6. Avoid arguments. Look, nobody wins in an argument online. Anger is like a freight train—it goes fast, it builds momentum, and it doesn’t change course easily. The problem with arguments on Facebook is that everyone sees your fight. While some of your superfans might support you, most people are repelled by vicious arguments and political opinions. You really can’t win in an online argument—but you can definitely lose.

Constant Self-Improvement

Now I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” every year. I keep a dozen copies in my office to give away. I hand it to all family members when they graduate high school.

While almost every coach I know is interested in learning more about fitness or rehab or motivation, very few pursue likability.

But being likable is one of the best ways to keep clients around long enough to teach them about all the other stuff you love to talk about.

The post How to Be Likable (and Make More Money and Win at Life) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Be Likeable (and Make More Money and Win at Life)

When I was selling treadmills, I didn’t sell many.

Actually, I sold none.

I was a know-it-all technical expert who couldn’t wait to barf my supreme knowledge of cardiovascular systems and heel-strike problems onto everyone who walked into my store.

I didn’t have any bad intent, but I was definitely a barrier to fitness because nobody wanted to buy a treadmill from me.

I made fun of our competitors, I took shots at elliptical trainers, and I rolled my eyes at running on the road.

“You wanna wear out your knees? Go for it. These machines are for people who care about their health.”

Then a coworker gave me the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. He had gotten it from his church. The book changed my life. I began listening to others instead of trying to impress them with my knowledge. I tried seeing things from their perspectives. I became generally interested in their goals. I remembered their names. I put myself in their shoes. I started to really care.

And I started to sell treadmills.

Years later, I used the same lessons to sign up personal-training clients galore. I built the No Sweat Intro on the principles of asking questions and making a caring prescription. Later, I wrote “Help First” to teach others to think about how to help people instead of how to sell them.

Here are my favorite six lessons from “How to Win Friends and Influence People”:

1. Never criticize, condemn or complain. This is so important that it’s a core value at Two-Brain Business. We do not attack our competitors or anyone else—even when they copy us, attack us onstage or try to argue on social media. Why? Because if I’ll speak negatively about someone, I’ll probably speak negatively about anyone.

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. When you thank someone—which should be often—stop and think about why you’re grateful to them. Then go deep: Tell them how their help or advice has made a real difference to you. As you get better at this, you’ll actually go out of your way to thank people. When I’m stressed or distracted, my go-to strategy is to sincerely thank 10 people. By the time I’ve sent out 10 texts or voice messages, I’m no longer angry.

3. Speak in terms of the other person’s interests. Nobody cares what you want; we all care about what we want. This is a common mistake with people trying to sell CrossFit or Muay Thai: To a new client, the method is secondary. It’s just a tool that might (or might not) get them what they want. Always start by asking what someone wants. Then, if your method can help them, tell them how they will reach their goals with you. This is one reason free trials no longer work in CrossFit and martial-arts gyms.

4. Remember names. This seems simple, but it’s critical. I’ve taken courses from memory world champions to help me remember names better.

5. Be interested instead of interesting. Dale Carnegie’s wisdom: “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them than in two years by making them interested in you.”

6. Avoid arguments. Look, nobody wins in an argument online. Anger is like a freight train—it goes fast, it builds momentum, and it doesn’t change course easily. The problem with arguments on Facebook is that everyone sees your fight. While some of your superfans might support you, most people are repelled by vicious arguments and political opinions. You really can’t win in an online argument—but you can definitely lose.

Constant Self-Improvement

Now I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” every year. I keep a dozen copies in my office to give away. I hand it to all family members when they graduate high school.

While almost every coach I know is interested in learning more about fitness or rehab or motivation, very few pursue likability.

But being likable is one of the best ways to keep clients around long enough to teach them about all the other stuff you love to talk about.

The post How to Be Likeable (and Make More Money and Win at Life) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Don’t Be a Jerk of a Gym Owner! (How to Be More Likable)

Chris Cooper (00:00):
Stop being such a jerk! How to get people to like you. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And I haven’t always been this likable. Today I’m gonna give you three big topics: how to stop being unlikable, how to get people to actively like you, and then we’re gonna talk about the five levels of influence. Look, this is important stuff because you’re a knowledgeable, caring subject-matter expert, but if people don’t like you, they won’t come to your gym or they’ll leave too quickly to change their own lives. It’s hard to always be likable. But today I’m gonna give you some tips on how to do it, how I got over being pretty much unlikable in my gym, and what this all means for you long term. If you want more info and support, go to gymownersunited.com to join a group with thousands of the world’s top fitness entrepreneurs.

Chris Cooper (00:50):
Now let’s start with a story. If you’re a physician, how do you make sure that nobody’s going to sue you for malpractice? Well, of course the insurance companies have done a lot of research on this, and what they’ve found is that people sue almost every physician except for the physician that they like. That’s right. Your technical expertise matters less than your bedside manner when it comes to determining if you’re going to get sued by a client for malpractice. Now, in the fitness world, we don’t get sued for malpractice, but people do vote with their wallets, and if they don’t like us, they will leave. I figured this out the hard way. I once had this client named Patricia. Fantastic client. I liked her. We worked together every Tuesday and Thursday after she got done with her job at about 4:30 in the afternoon. And Patty, Patricia, came in for years to do personal training—even when she had overuse injuries from her job and her physiotherapist told her “stop working out at that gym. Just rest and let things recover.” The problem was that with two half-hour sessions a week, she wasn’t getting a lot of fitness gains. And so she wasn’t really losing weight because she had a stressful job and she was still eating poorly. She wasn’t recovering her shoulder because with two workouts a week, she would come in and we would do either some rehab or she would go super hard, but you couldn’t do both ‘cause you didn’t have time. And so it was a kind of a frustrating lack of progress for both of us. And so I would give her this homework to do at home, and one day she came in and she said, “Coop, you know, I’m just not doing this homework at home. I wish you could just come to my house and motivate me every day.” And of course she was kind of joking, but she was also kind of telling me “I’m not satisfied with my progress.” And instead of being empathetic and saying “hey, Patty, here’s how we can help,” what I said was “your motivation’s not my problem.” Now of course that’s a jerky thing to say, and of course there’s a reason I said it. And if you know me or you’ve met me in person in the last decade, you know I’d never say anything like that now. But at the time, I was a burned-out, exhausted, broke, distracted, unfocused, overwhelmed gym owner. I was having a horrible day. I couldn’t figure out how to pay the rent, let alone ourselves. So we were fighting at home about money again. I just had a trainer call and say that they were going to be late.

Chris Cooper (03:13):
And so I was trying to sort out what to do with their clients and whether I’d have to cover their class for them again. I was totally not thinking about Patty. And so with my guard down, this just slipped out. Well, of course she didn’t respond. She laughed—and she never came back. And she was right to. Why would she? Who wants to be around a jerk like that? If you’re having trouble containing your jerkiness, hiding it or putting a positive face forward, I’m gonna give you some tips right now that have really helped me because I had to work at this. Even when things got better, I had to repress this instinct of being the know-it-all teacher that just knows everything “and that’s why you should listen to me,” of always being right, or just kind of being this jerk that put people off.

Chris Cooper (04:01):
So here’s some tips. Number 1, in your gym somewhere, have a door that closes. And when you’re not in your best mood, at least like a nine out of 10 personality, over the top, feeding other people energy, smiling, happy to be there, if you can’t behave at least at a nine outta 10 level, go into the room with the door that closes and close the door until you can. Now I’m not saying hide out. I’m saying hide your bad mood from other people. Next, maybe you have a time of day when you are low energy. For me, this is around 2 o’clock. I get up at 5, I work hard, I’ve got lots of energy, and then I just kind of crash around 2 o’clock, and I need a nap. If that’s you hire somebody to replace you, it’s more important that the coach that’s in front of your clients brings energy than even knowledge. They can be like a Ph.D., but if they’ve got a bad mood, they show up late, they’ve got their hoodie up, they’re gonna turn clients off. And you can’t change their lives if they’re not right in front of you. Okay? Hire somebody to replace you at your low-energy times. That’s also like 6 a.m. for me. At 6 a.m. I’m buzzing with ideas. I’ve got stuff I wanna do to grow my business. And while I do have lots of energy, I also have lots of distraction. And so while I’m coaching this class, I’ll be rushing through it because I want to get to writing the blog post or whatever it is that I’m passionate about. So the second tip is to hire somebody for your low-energy times. The third tip is to know your limit. I know from 20 years of coaching that if I coach three hours in a row, the third client is not getting the same energy that the first client was.

Chris Cooper (05:39):
So two clients in a row is about my limit, and that’s true if I’m doing personal training or group classes or I’m on the phone with an entrepreneur looking to grow their business. Two is my limit. I cannot deliver at peak “Coop-ness” for more than two hours at a time. I’m just exhausted and I need a break. So that’s number three. Number 4 is to focus on your “seed clients.” So these are the people who show up with batteries included—not every day, but most of the time they should actually feed you energy instead of sucking the energy out. Look, if you’ve got a personal-training session with a client who you’re dreading 48 hours before it even happens, then you need to get rid of that client. Now maybe you can’t get rid of the revenue from that client yet, but you need to actively pursue ways to move that client to somebody else who will work better with them.

Chris Cooper (06:27):
That’s probably one of your staff. I’m not saying fire them because you don’t get along or they don’t feed you energy. That’s not always their job, but if you’re working with them, it will drain you, and that will negatively impact the following clients. Okay? Next I want you to remember that clients should leave your business feeling closer to you than when they got there. That doesn’t mean you have to take steps in your relationships and gradually move them closer to marrying you. It just means that when a client walks out the door, you should ask yourself “am I closer with this client or further away today?” Now you can obsess about this, but if you’re gonna think about anything with the client, you have to ask yourself “do they like my service better or do they like it less than they did when they got here?”

Chris Cooper (07:17):
Okay, that’s really important. Next, don’t be distracted. Distraction is the root of unhappiness. It’s the root of bad moods. You need to not carry your phone into a training session with you. That thing will go off. It is literally built to distract you. That’s how it’s set up. And if you’re distracted, the clients will like you less. You will like the client less because you’re thinking about the person that you’re supposed to be responding to instead of the person who’s right in front of you. So don’t bring your phone into the session, and don’t let your clients bring theirs unless there’s an emergency afoot. Next tip, get a mentor. Look, part of the reason that you’re unhappy and stressed out is because you’re overwhelmed. When you’re buying mentorship, you’re buying speed because you’re buying focus. A mentor can tell you not just what to do but also what you can ignore, what you can save for later, what you don’t have to worry about today.

Chris Cooper (08:13):
One of the big things that people tell me when they get into our mentorship program is that their stress level just goes way down. As soon as they make that first investment in mentorship, it feels like a weight’s just been lifted off their shoulders ‘cause they’ve lifted it and put it squarely on the mentor’s desk and said, “Here, help me sort this out. Tell me what to do next.” My next tip might sound counterintuitive, and that is to stop doing high-intensity interval training exercise when you’re stressed out. Look, your body does not know the difference between physical stress and mental stress. There’s a lot of overlap there. And when you have mental stress, if you’re just pounding your body into the ground over and over, you’re just gonna keep burying yourself deeper. What I suggest as a fitness professional is that you take the advice that you would give to your clients: when they’re in a period of high stress, high anxiety, high overwhelm, they should do something that’s not going to stress them out even more.

Chris Cooper (09:07):
Yeah, short term maybe a hard workout is what you need to clear your head and get a mental break. But stress compounds. You know this. I don’t have to explain the physiology of this. And for me, what happened years ago was I was completely stressed out. I was completely overwhelmed. One day I walked into my gym and I saw the coach’s lunch spread all over the front desk where clients were coming in. I was mad and distracted. A coach started leading a warmup in the group. It was super boring. It was the same old thing we’d been doing. And I walked out and didn’t come back to my gym for about three months. I was at the absolute breaking point. What did I do? I went out and rode my bike. I let my fitness slip for two or three months knowing that I had another 50 years ahead of me because I needed that break.

Chris Cooper (09:56):
And so it might be time to take a break from hit. If you’re an overwhelmed and stressed-out gym owner, don’t give up on your fitness. Don’t stop moving. But don’t crush yourself in the gym anymore. Next, you should maybe think about talking to a therapist or somebody who has some kind of objectivity on what’s going on. I talked to a psychotherapist named Bonnie Skinner at Level Up Coaching every second week. I don’t go in with big problems. I don’t need to talk about my mom or my relationship. What I do is I just talk about what’s bugging me that week. And just airing it out, exposing it to the light of day, usually resolves the problem. And that has led to a much less stressful, happier life—even with the huge company that I now own. Finally, the last tip is know when it’s appropriate to rant, vent, or complain and when it’s not. Remember, when you own a business, you step on stage, and if what people see of you is ranting and complaining, they will not want to be around you. Think about it. Nobody wants to go out to dinner or drinks with a friend who’s always negative, who’s always complaining. And when you put that foot forward on Facebook or Instagram and you’re just ranting or complaining or being passive aggressive, nobody will wanna be around you. We constantly mistake our clients for our friends, and we vent to them. Well, they don’t want to hear that. They’ve got enough drama in their own life. Or we think that everybody paying attention on Facebook is already in love with us. That’s not true. People are judging everything that you say or do. So if you have negative things to say or you want to complain about a member, a coach, a staff person, the government, your taxes, whatever, talk to somebody in your personal life that you trust not to share that opinion with everybody else.

Chris Cooper (11:39):
Yeah, you gotta get it out. Talk to a therapist, talk to your spouse, talk to your best friend. Do not share that stuff on Facebook, okay? Don’t spread that stuff around. So that’s how to get over being disliked. Have a door that closes. Hire somebody to replace you at low-energy times. Know your limits. Focus on your seed clients. Focus on leaving clients happier or clients leaving your gym happier. Get rid of your phone. Get a mentor. Stop doing high-intensity interval training when you have to. Talk to a therapist. And know when it’s appropriate to rant and when it’s not. All right, I’ve told you how to stop being unlikable. Stop being a jerk. Today, I wanna tell you how to actually be likable so that you attract people to you instead of pushing people away.

Chris Cooper (12:28):
My first job in fitness was actually selling treadmills. So in 1998, this local treadmill store opened, and I was its first manager. I already had a degree in exercise science, which is what they called it back then. And I had been working as a trainer for about two years. So obviously I knew everything about fitness. And so when people would come in I would just barf information all over them. I would ask them technical questions that there’s no way they knew the answer to. Like, are you training to improve aerobic capacity or are you working on your stamina? And 30 minutes later, they would leave more overwhelmed, more confused and further from buying a treadmill than when they came in. And so several months into this process, I really hadn’t sold any treadmills. I was horrible because people just didn’t like me. And so then the store hired an assistant manager named Sean.

Chris Cooper (13:15):
Sean was a part-time magician. I think he called it an “illusionist” at the time. And Sean started selling treadmills like crazy. But Sean knew nothing about fitness, nothing about exercise, and really nothing about the treadmills, but he was good at it, and people loved him. And Sean gave me a tool that I’ll be forever grateful for. He handed me this book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I read it, and I started reading it with this mindset of skepticism. But when I started trying the tactical advice in Dale Carnegie’s book, it worked. And I started selling more treadmills, and people started to like me, and I started to like myself better, and I started getting people more fit and moving them toward their goals. There are six big lessons from this book—”How to Win Friends and Influence People”—that I wanna share with you right now because these are things that I’ve printed out and put on my wall as constant reminders.

Chris Cooper (14:08):
20 years later, I still need to be reminded of these things, but I think they can help you, too. So first, never criticize, condemn or complain. When you spend time criticizing other people, condemning other people’s actions or complaining about what other people do, your brain starts looking for negatives. You start looking for other things that people are doing wrong, and that makes you unhappy because that’s all you’re seeing all day. Daniel Pink in one of his books wrote that most people don’t have a single happy thought all day. And it’s because they’ve trained their brain to look for negative things. And so when you criticize others, condemn and complain, you start looking for negative things, and that trains your brain to be unhappy. Fault Finding, nitpicking, being a jerk. And Dale Carnegie’s book helped me get over that. Look, it is really hard to stop complaining.

Chris Cooper (15:01):
It is really hard to stop criticizing other people or looking on them in judgment, but when you do, you’ll be a better person and be more likable. The second rule from Carnegie’s book is to give honest and sincere appreciation. This is an amazing skill that I work on all the time. When you’re thanking somebody, tell them exactly how their advice or their help has changed your life. I’ll tell you who’s amazing at this is some of the people in our Tinker Program. It’s no coincidence that the most successful entrepreneurs in Two-Brain are also the best at sharing their thanks and gratitude. I have a card from a gym owner named Amanda Chace, and if you open it up, you’ll find a very specific thank you in here that I appreciate so much that I keep it behind my desk because on days when I feel stressed out and overwhelmed and wonder if I’m actually helping people, I’ve got this whole wall full of people saying “thank you” in very specific ways. And I can look at that and remind myself that I am doing good out there, and that makes me more likable.

Chris Cooper (16:04):
Give honest and sincere appreciation. This is actually a gift you can give yourself, too. On a day when you feel stressed out or pissed off at somebody, just send 10 sincere and thoughtful thank-you messages, and you won’t be stressed out anymore. Okay, third, speak in terms of the other person’s interest. Really this means “put yourself in their shoes.” What do they want and can you help them get it? This is really where the No Sweat Intro came from. It wasn’t a sales pitch or “hey, wanna try my free thing? And, you know, maybe you’ll figure out how it helps you. Maybe you’ll like it as much as I do.” Instead, the No Sweat Intro is you being empathetic enough to say “how can I get this person to the goals that they want?” and understanding exactly what they want. They don’t come in your door because they wanna buy CrossFit or they want to try Pilates.

Chris Cooper (16:54):
They come in your door because they’ve got a problem that they hope you can solve. They know that you’ve got a toolkit that they don’t have, and maybe that toolkit is CrossFit, or maybe that toolkit is boot camp or kettlebells or whatever, but they’re trusting you to have the tools. And you to tell them what to do based on what they need to do to get to their goals. So speak in terms of the other person’s interest and constantly frame it as “we are doing this today because it will help you get to this goal.” You know, “teaching the why” is such a foundational part of coaching that it should be the first thing that every single coach learns—how to frame what you’re doing in terms of the other person’s “why.” Okay? Then the fourth thing that I learned from the Dale Carnegie book is to remember people’s names.

Chris Cooper (17:39):
This is so simple but so powerful. If you remember people’s names, they will be impressed because their name is like the sweetest word that they will ever hear. They feel important when you remember their name. When I started getting this down, I started actually taking courses on how to remember names better because I realized how important it actually was. When a client that I hadn’t seen for nine years came in and I remembered their name and their wife’s name, they were blown away. You know who is great at this? Greg Glassman. The first time I ever met Greg, he came into the Canada East Regional. This was 2012, and he’s just swarmed by people, and outta the crowd he spots Anthony Bainbridge, and he says, “Hey, Anthony, how’s it going? How’s your mother doing? Did she get over that illness?” And Anthony was just stunned, like shocked.

Chris Cooper (18:31):
And he told me later, “Like, I haven’t seen that guy in three years. And he remembered my name, my wife’s name, and that my mother had been ill.” That is how you build long-term attraction and eventually influence. But I’ll talk about that later. Fifth, be interested in people instead of trying to be interesting. Look, everybody tries to impress everybody now using social media. We try to be influencers. Here’s the funny thing: if you want to influence other people, you need to be interested in them instead of trying to be interesting to them. That sounds counterintuitive in the world of social-media influencers and talking heads and gurus. We all try to be interesting, but the reality is if you really want people to like you and trust you and stay with you, you have to be interested in them. That’s the paradox. Finally, number six is to avoid arguments.

Chris Cooper (19:26):
Now, I don’t like arguments anyway, but I’m not above a good debate. But here’s what I’ve learned: When you wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig kind of likes it. That didn’t come from Carnegie’s book. That’s a lesson that I learned from my grandpa. And the thing is that now every argument that you get in, every wrestling match you have with a pig, is broadcast to everybody everywhere, and it stays recorded forever. So when people see you getting into arguments online, they don’t think “wow, Chris is so right. He is so smart. He is way smarter than that dude.” What they see is “here’s a person who likes to argue.” Nobody wants to be around a person who likes to argue. If you have to have a debate with somebody, do it in private. This also, you know, leads into another tenet of Carnegie, which is correct in private praise in public.

Chris Cooper (20:16):
When you’re engaging with somebody and there’s a chance that the engagement can go south or turn heated or escalate, you wanna do that in private. Take it offline. Nobody wants to see you do that. Okay? So that’s how to be likable. This is just such a fantastic book. Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I make myself read it again every single year, I always get something new out of it. I keep a dozen copies on my shelf in my office, and I give a copy to everybody in my family as they graduate high school. It’s that important to me. It’s one of maybe like three books that I want everybody to read. Next, I wanna talk about the Five Levels of Influence. I’ve been talking about how to not be a jerk and how to be likable. How does that translate into influence?

Chris Cooper (21:02):
Well, leadership really boils down to influence. Before people can follow your lead, they have to first like you. Then they have to really know you, and then they have to trust you, and then they’ll follow you. You’ve probably heard this before: to sell people, they have to know, like and trust you. But that’s out of order. First, they have to like you. Then they have to gain deep knowledge of you and still like you. And then they will trust you, and then they will follow you. Now, I’ve created a graphic of the Five Levels of Influence, and this is a mishmash of John Maxwell’s “Five Levels of Leadership” and Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence.” But this is what I’ve found in my career. So at this first level, the bottom level, people follow you because they have to. You hire them, and you will fire them if they don’t follow you, right? Like “under pain of being fired, you will do what I say.” That’s not very good influence, and it never lasts long. Level 2 is they follow you because they know and align with your noble purpose and your mission. So now you’ve hired them to work at your gym, and they know what your purpose is. They know what your mission is. They’ll forgive you some of your little mistakes because they really wanna help people get fit. Okay? That’s Level 2 influence. And you know, maybe they don’t like everything that you do. Maybe they don’t like the way that you do it. Maybe you’re kind of a jerk, but they give you some leeway and some grace because they understand what you’re trying to do. Okay? Level 3 is when you attract other people who wanna do what you’ve done and believe that you can help them get there.

Chris Cooper (22:36):
So in the CrossFit world, these would be people who have like won the Games, and they attract other people who want to win the Games. In the normal gym world or, you know, the real CrossFit world, this is coaches and trainers who see that you have built a successful gym, and they wanna work for you because they think “hey, Chris has a good career. He can help me get one, too.” Level 4, they want to recruit other people because of what you’ve done for them. So now you’ve helped them build a good career, you’ve helped them change their lives, and they want to bring their friends in to change their lives. They want to tell other trainers to come in and join your movement because it’s been so great for them. And level 5, they wanna do things just because of who you are.

Chris Cooper (23:19):
Now, this has been kind of amazing to me to witness over my career with Two-Brain Business, too, because, you know, originally we hired people who are already our favorite clients. They already believed in the mission, they already wanted to help, and they wanted to be business coaches. And then finally, you know, then they wanted to be as successful as I had been. They wanted to have like a lot of gym owners to help. But now what we’re seeing years into this, seven years in, is that people are calling and just saying like “I don’t have a product. I don’t have a project. I just want to be around Two-Brain more. Like, I want to do something with you. What can we do together?” And a lot of the times these are just great collaborations with really major brands. And I won’t say them publicly because they haven’t been released yet, but there are some massive partnerships out there that really started with just a conversation at our summit.

Chris Cooper (24:13):
Like, “Hey, Coop, love what you’re doing. How can we be part of that?” And then collaborating and building together. And this is amazing to me because knowing where I started out 20 years ago, 25 years ago, selling treadmills, I was not a likable person, let alone somebody who big brands would just come to and say, “Hey, we wanna do something with you. We don’t know what that is, what it’s gonna cost. How can we work together?” It’s really taken a lot of practice. It’s meant overcoming being unlikable, training myself to be more likable and liking myself better in the process. And then finally understanding how to have good influence without undermining your brand, your entire business and yourself. I’m Chris Cooper, this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And if you want to chat more about this, go to gymownersunited.com where I’m always around just to answer questions and provide as much free advice as I possibly can for those who are not yet ready for our mentorship practice. Thanks! Take care and grow your gym.

The post Don’t Be a Jerk of a Gym Owner! (How to Be More Likable) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Retention Fundamentals: Likable Gym Owners Keep More Clients

If you want to change a person’s life, the person has to like you.

I know this because I’ve lost clients by acting like an asshole.

I once had a client named Patty.

She’d been my personal-training client for four years. Even when her physiotherapist told her to stop coming to my gym and “rest” her shoulder, she kept coming. Because she trusted me.

But Patty had a really stressful job. When she got home at night, she didn’t feel like working out, so she rarely did her homework. She struggled to make progress in the gym—but she kept showing up for our appointments, every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m.

Feeling guilty about her lack of progress, she said, “I wish you’d just come to my house and motivate me every day!”

I said, “Pfft. That’s not my job. If you can’t find the motivation to exercise, it’s your fault.”

Harsh, right? I’m embarrassed to even share this story.

Of course, I was having a horrible day when I said it. The rent was due, I’d been up since 4:30 a.m., and I was broke and fighting at home. I had a trainer who hadn’t shown up on time, and I was distracted trying to cover his clients. I was mad at my life and regretted owning a gym.

But Patty didn’t know any of that. She left and never came back. She didn’t even use the rest of her sessions. She just didn’t like me anymore—and who could blame her?

10 Tips to Be More Likable

The coaches with the best retention aren’t the Ph.D. holders or the Level 12-certified “experts.” They’re the likable coaches—the ones who are always smiling, always excited to see their clients, always the most energetic people in any room.

The most successful professionals are almost always the most likable.

You know who’s done a lot of research on this? Insurance companies. What they’ve found is that a physician’s likelihood of getting sued depends less on competence and more on bedside manner. In short: Nobody sues a doctor they really like.

But when you’re tired, broke, distracted and burned out, it can be pretty hard to be likable. Here are my top tips:

1. Have a door that closes. When you’re in a bad mood, go into your office and close the door. Keep your mood to yourself. Maintain a “backstage” area for coaches and managers that clients never, ever see. It works for Disney!

2. Hire someone else to take your early groups or your late groups—whenever you have the lowest energy levels.

3. Know your limit. I can stay energetic and focused for two groups, and that’s it. The clients in the third group aren’t receiving the same experience as those in my first two sessions. So it’s time to bring in a relief hitter.

4. Focus most on your “seed clients”—the ones who are most coachable and show up with batteries included. Let them shoulder some of the weight.

5. Never let clients leave less happy than when they arrived. You’re not their therapist, but you can certainly cheer them up with a smile, a pat on the back and a “good job.” They probably don’t get those things anywhere else in their lives.

6. Leave your phone in the back office. Don’t let your clients carry theirs into the gym, either. Distraction is the root of unhappiness for most of us.

7. Get a mentor. Overwhelm is what causes stress. Focus creates momentum. When you see momentum, you get excited.

8. Take a break from HIIT. Your body doesn’t know the difference between physical stress and mental stress. If you’re exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed, more high-intensity exercise isn’t going to help. It’s a little distraction from the bigger stress. But stress compounds.

9. Talk to someone. I meet with a psychotherapist every second week just to unload my burden. She doesn’t give me new knowledge. Mostly she just listens.

10. Know when it’s appropriate to rant, vent or complain—and when it’s not. Tip: Your spouse will always listen. Ranting on Facebook is always a bad idea.

Be a Pro

It’s impossible to be a happy gym owner all the time. But your clients should only ever see a happy face—they have enough drama in their lives without being burdened with yours.

Make sure you have real relationships outside the gym instead of mistaking your clients for your confidantes.

And most of all, when you have a rough day, take it outside.

The post Retention Fundamentals: Likable Gym Owners Keep More Clients appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

TikTok and Gym Owners: A High-Speed Entry-Level Guide

How should a gym owner use TikTok?

My No. 1 piece of advice: Showcase your expertise.

If you do, you’ll stand out from the army of influencers who aren’t concerned with accuracy when they fill the #fittok and #fitnessadvice hashtags with videos.

You can find this stat in various articles: 25 percent of workout videos have questionable advice.

According to this instyle.com article, the stat comes from an informal research project in which an experienced trainer watched hours of content and flagged inaccuracies and sketchy tips.

You can do your own research by auditing about 20 posts yourself. You’ll find some good stuff, some kinda bad stuff, some horrific stuff, and lots of “see how good I look” stuff. That’s always been the case in the fitness world.

With that in mind, you should have no end of content ideas:

You can tell people how to do specific movements.You can tell people how to combine movements in workouts.You can tell people how to warm up and cool down.You can tell people how to stretch or improve mobility.You can tell people how to eat to accomplish their goals.You can tell people what supplements will help them and which are useless.You can answer any commonly asked fitness question (here are 13 to start).

I’m sure you can think of more ideas.

Here’s the big tip for microgyms: I wouldn’t try to compete in the major hashtags like #fittok (47.6 billon views), #gymtok (167.2 billion views) and #fitnessadvice (321.5 million views). Focusing there is like trying to get your gym’s website to rank on Google Page 1 for the search term “fitness.”

Instead, I’d focus on your local market. Try to make an impact in a smaller area—just as gym owners are advised to prioritize “local SEO” when working on their websites. (Resource: “The Guide to Local SEO for Gym Owners.”) Remember: Many people now use social media as a search engine. 

So consider local variations of tags like this #clevelandfitness (172,800 views), #fitnessboise (3,400 views), #bostonworkouts (17,400 views), #stlouispersonaltrainer (916 views).

No, this strategy will not earn you 100,000 followers and 2 million likes. But that isn’t your game. As a microgym owner with a bricks-and-mortar location, not an “influencer,” you don’t need to attract attention from thousands of people all over the world. You just need about 150 people who live in your area.

Another piece of advice: I would survey your current clients to find out which social media platforms they use, and I’d target my efforts on those platforms first. I wouldn’t prioritize TikTok just because it’s cool. If your ideal clients aren’t using that platform, feel free to skip it.

That said, there is an argument that can be made for carving out a presence on a platform that boasts revenue and user growth rates that beat every other social platform.

If you want to plant your flag on TikTok, I’d recommend you do it with minimal time investment. Vertical videos perform well on every major social platform, so if you if you can create and post a simple “how to deadlift” video to multiple platforms in about 10 minutes, why not include TikTok in your publishing list? Just be sure to tailor the content to your local market and your perfect clients.

Finally, here’s the most important advice for gym owners who are considering TikTok: Make sure you don’t spend 20 hours a month on social-media gimmicks, trends and dances when you could be doing goal reviews with current clients, building solid business systems and responding to leads. Do all that first, and do it well.

The post TikTok and Gym Owners: A High-Speed Entry-Level Guide appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Behind the Curtain: Biz Secrets of High-Earning Gym Owner

Mike Warkentin (00:00):
Some gym owners make more than $16,000 a month at their businesses. That’s not profit. That’s what they actually take home to their families. Get this: all 15 gyms on Two-Brain’s January leaderboard hit $16,000 or more. Some of them, five of them, were over $20,000, if you can believe that. Here’s the kicker: these numbers are three-month averages, not one-hit wonders. So these owners are sustaining this level of income. Enough with the what. We’re going to get to the how. This is “Run a Profitable Gym,” and my name is Mike Warkentin. I firmly believe you can listen to this show and earn more from your fitness business. So please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you’re watching or listening. Here today is Jodi Butler of Pittsburgh FIT. What a great name that is. I bet she could sell the domain name for many thousands of dollars. She made our leaderboard, and she’s going to tell you how she did it. So, Jodi, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Jodi Butler (00:50):
Thanks for having me.

Mike Warkentin (00:51):
It is my pleasure. I’m excited to dig into this because this is such a cool concept. For many years, my net owner benefit from my gym was zero. I took nothing out of it. I didn’t pay myself. It was a huge mistake. So I’m inspired when I see gym owners who are making, you know, 10, 15, $20,000. I wanna talk about how you did it. So if you don’t mind, tell me first, how has this number changed for you over time? Because mine started at zero. Where did you go? Like how did this work for you?

Jodi Butler (01:14):
Well, we started Pittsburgh FIT in 2012 as a boot camp in a park, charging people $10 per session. Now we are, you know, 11 and 12 years past that. And so where I was not paying myself in the first couple of years, I am now 15, 16, 18 times what, when I began paying myself, what I paid myself.

Mike Warkentin (01:38):
Okay, so you were like me. I did the same thing. It wasn’t a park because it’s too cold where I’m at. But we started with a boot camp, and I paid myself $0. I invested all my money in kettlebells and equipment and things like that. So you did the same kind of thing, started paying yourself not at all. And now you’re in two-figure multiples of that. That is very impressive. So gimme the 60 second rundown now of your current business. What are you doing? Like, is it personal training, group classes, big facility, small facility? What have you got going on?

Jodi Butler (02:06):
We are located in Pittsburgh. We have 9,000 square feet. We are personal training, group fitness, nutrition coaching, and what we call “lifestyle design,” often called remote coaching. We do a little bit of kids programs. And we also do events.

Mike Warkentin (02:23):
Okay. So tell me a little bit about that lifestyle coaching. What goes into that one? Cause that sounds like super interesting revenue stream.

Jodi Butler (02:28):
So what we do in lifestyle coaching, it really is program design, but it’s also “nutrition coaching light.” And it’s really looking at lifestyle habits. How are you sleeping? How are you eating? How are you socializing? And then how are you working out?

Mike Warkentin (02:46):
Okay. Now you said that’s remote?

Jodi Butler (02:49):
Actually most of the people come into the gym to do this. We call it lifestyle design, but in our industry it can often be called remote.

Mike Warkentin (02:57):
Okay. And it, that sounds to, to me like a high value service. Am I guessing right on that?

Jodi Butler (03:01):
Yes.

Mike Warkentin (03:02):
Okay. So that’s great. So it’s a cliché in the fitness world, but lifestyle transformation, you know, you could say like, you’re coming in, I’m giving you everything. I’m giving you programs, I’m giving you coaching, I’m giving you nutrition habits based—whatever it is that you guys do. You’re giving them a —I’m sniffing that this might be a big part of your revenue stream. That’s a big one. Am I right?

Jodi Butler (03:22):
Well, it’s a good piece of the revenue stream, but the idea for us behind our lifestyle-design model was “how do we make more money for our coaches?” So the way it works is that where we have a lifestyle-design client, we have particular hours during the day where they can come in and be coached with the programming that they’re working on. And in this way our coaches can make, you know, two to three times what they generally make with these clients based on the number of hours that they have to work to support them.

Mike Warkentin (03:54):
Okay. We’re probably going to dig into that a little bit more because net owner benefit is one thing, but building careers for staff members is another thing entirely. And it sounds like you’ve got both going on. So tell me a little bit about your net owner benefit strategy. And the reason I ask about that is for listeners who don’t know, net owner benefit can be a salary that you take from the gym, but it can also be dividends if you’ve got that corporate structure set up. It can also be, like, you know, Chris Cooper, for example, his gym or his business pays for his truck, cell-phone bills, other things like that. So we add up all these different things and that is the benefit that your family gets from the gym. So tell me what is your strategy?

Jodi Butler (04:26):
So my strategy is a couple things. One, it is a salary. The other is it the gym pays for my phone. The gym pays for my vehicle. I use an office in my house as a tax write-off. And I also participate in the 401(k) plan that my coaches participate in.

Mike Warkentin (04:45):
Okay, excellent. So gym owners, if you are just doing one of those things, that’s totally cool. As you start to figure things out and grow your business, maybe you incorporate different things like that. There are other avenues available to you. Talk to someone who knows. Your accountant can help with that and figure it out. Incite Tax and Accounting, that’s something that we always recommend. John Briggs will tell you all about different ways to do this if that’s something that you’re interested in. So when you look at this, you’ve got salary, dividends, you’re definitely some benefits. Was this something that you put in place all at once, one big strategy, or did you kind of tack things on over the years as you figured it out? How did you do it?

Jodi Butler (05:23):
That’s a really good question. So we have figured this out as we’ve gone along. That’s really the short answer of this. And as we have become more successful, we’ve had more opportunity to figure out, so we offered a 401(k) match in 2022. This year, we’re offering paid time off next. I mean, I hope if we can keep this growth going and stabilize, then we would be offering health insurance to our coaches as well.

Mike Warkentin (05:51):
Okay. So you’ve gone I’ll say above and beyond generally what happens in the fitness industry, and you’ve put some—I’ll call it “career-level benefits”—in place for staff members. That sounds incredible.

Jodi Butler (06:03):
Right. And for us, Mike, I am willing to give up net over owner benefit in order to have staff stability. So I pay my coaches a bit more than the four-ninths that’s recommended by Two-Brain. But I will tell you that it relieves my stress because the single biggest thing that creates stress for me is staffing issues and staffing turnover. And we have had very little over the last two years or 10 years.

Mike Warkentin (06:33):
Okay. And that’s, that’s a really important thing. Staffing is difficult. It’s something that was always, always a problem for me. Many gym owners have the exact same problem, and some will go further to retain excellent, excellent coaches. But you did mention the 4/9ths Model. And is your staff pay tied to revenue at least in some ways?

Jodi Butler (06:52):
No. Okay. Well, yes and no. Both.

Mike Warkentin (06:55):
Tell me about it.

Jodi Butler (06:57):
So when they are coaching personal training or classes, they are paid an hourly amount. They are also incentivized every single month a percentage of their revenue that they bring in. So yes, they are incentivized on revenue. And so, for example, if they run a clinic, you know, they are paid a percentage of that clinic, like the 4/9ths Model, for example, although it’s a bit more than that. And then of course we do a 401(k) match. We’re offering paid time off. So it’s not as clean as four-ninths. And when we, when I aggregate all of it, it looks more like 55 to 60 percent.

Mike Warkentin (07:39):
Okay. But you obviously track that very carefully and you make sure that your business is showing a profit because what we’ve seen sometimes is with business owners, and I did this, they don’t check that their wages are balanced against their profit and revenue. They can get into some nasty situations, which I did. I’m guessing you keep a very close eye on this work with your mentor to make sure everything’s balanced and you’re able to derive a good income yourself.

Jodi Butler (08:00):
Exactly. I mean, and we learned something in COIVD because, luckily for us, our members were very loyal, and almost none of them stopped paying their membership even though we were closed for four months. And we had at the time coaches on salary. And so what I learned was that if we don’t have a corresponding revenue, it’s very difficult to pay coaches a salary. So we shifted our model up a bit, and, honestly, the coaches do better under the current model than they did under the previous model.

Mike Warkentin (08:37):
Okay. That’s interesting. And I don’t wanna get too off topic, but I did wanna kind of cover the things that you do for your coaches because it’s great to say, as a gym owner, “I generate a lot of income for myself.” But to do that and care for your coaches and create long-term employees, that’s a really interesting thing. So it’s not just you. You’ve got a team of people who are benefiting from this great business. So digging into your number a little bit more, what are the things that go into this? Like what are the things that you’ve tacked on as a gym owner to make this business so successful that you can pay yourself more?

Jodi Butler (09:08):
So the big thing that happened for me, when it really transitioned and Pittsburgh FIT started to become a very vital business, was I hired a general manager. And hiring that person allowed me to work on the business and not in the business. And then we spent a fair—what felt to me at the time to be a fair—amount of money learning how to help people. We had people coming to us for help, and we didn’t necessarily know how to talk about ourselves and how to talk about helping them or selling, for example, what can often be called marketing and sales. So we spent some money learning how to do that. And then as a necessity through COVID, we started to really focus most of our efforts on building our PT business, where that really accelerated our revenue. And then working to maintain still the group fitness piece of what we do.

Mike Warkentin (10:07):
Okay. I actually, and then, pardon me. Go ahead. Finish that off.

Jodi Butler (10:11):
I’m sorry. Also, during COVID we added a nutrition business.

Mike Warkentin (10:16):
Okay. Now, do you happen to know offhand—and you don’t have to if you don’t have this number, that’s fine—the percentage of re gross revenue that your nutrition business kicks in? Do you happen to know that by any chance?

Jodi Butler (10:26):
Yeah, it’s about 7%. Nutrition is about seven.

Mike Warkentin (10:30):
So that’s not bad. In our “State of the Industry” guide, we look at that number every year, and it’s one of those things that’s such a natural complement to fitness training. Nutrition—it’s obvious, right? So many gyms don’t have that number or don’t even have a program, and then their number is small. And I’m guessing that yours, is it increasing now that you’ve added it? Are you working to grow that?

Jodi Butler (10:49):
You know, it’s actually ebbed and flowed. And so this is a piece of what we really wanna focus on in 2023 is “how do we grow this business and have it sustain itself?” Of course, when people do nutrition coaching, the expectation is they’ll do it three to six months, transition off, then come back in.

Mike Warkentin (11:11):
Okay. And it’s interesting, I did interview a gym owner here, Clark Hibbs of Yellow Rose Fitness down in Texas, I believe, if I’m not mistaken, and his percentage is up around 20% of his gross revenue. That comes from a simple, habits-based but very effective nutrition-coaching business. So there is the opportunity in many gym businesses to add a new nutrition program, start with a small percentage of revenue, and then grow that to a large percentage. I’m guessing PT is a very strong revenue stream for you now that you put that in and focused on it.

Jodi Butler (11:38):
Yeah, it’s about 52%.

Mike Warkentin (11:41):
Okay. So that is a big deal. And you didn’t do that originally. It was just boot camp, right?

Jodi Butler (11:44):
No, no. Right. So we were at about 20% originally on PT. And again, when COVID happened, we really needed to pivot and figure out ways to bring revenue in the door.

Mike Warkentin (11:59):
52%—so that’s a big one because when I was running my bricks-and-mortar business back in the day, our PT revenue was 0%. And you can imagine the struggles of trying to keep things open on a group-class model only. Luckily, we did. But then when we started adding PT, things changed significantly. I wanna go back a little bit. You said that you hired a general manager and focused on working on the business, not in it. Do you remember the first things you did when you had that freedom to work on the business? What did you do?

Jodi Butler (12:29):
Right. I wanted us to focus exclusively on business development. How were we going to get more people in the door? And at that time, we weren’t thinking about personal training. What we were thinking about is “how do we create”—and actually we did it, we created another brand. So we had Pittsburgh FIT, and then we added another brand that was going to be strength-based conditioning that we could compete with, say the Orangetheories or F45s, and we could draw that type of avatar client. And it was actually really working for us. And then of course, COVID happened, and the group model really collapsed.

Mike Warkentin (13:09):
Okay. So when did you hire the general manager? Do you remember the year?

Jodi Butler (13:13):
Yep. 2018. Okay. December of 2018.

Mike Warkentin (13:16):
Okay. Were you working with Two-Brain at that time, or when did you start with us?

Jodi Butler (13:19):
We started with Two-Brain a couple of years ago. And I’ll tell you that that has without question really streamlined our focus in our business.

Mike Warkentin (13:34):
Yeah, dig into that. Tell me what you were going to say there. What happened when you started working with a mentor? Because you had, you did this great step where you bought yourself some free time, quote unquote, to focus on the business. You’re not coaching classes as much and so forth. Then you start working with a mentor on targeted stuff to grow the business. What were you doing with that?

Jodi Butler (13:52):
So what I was most interested in is how do we, how do I think about my business in a deeper, more rich way? So how was I thinking about average revenue per member? Actually, at the time, I hadn’t been thinking about that. How was I thinking about my distribution of revenue among those four buckets that I had talked about, and how was I thinking about how we were charging people? We had people that were—some people were discounted, some people weren’t discounted. I mean, so Two-Brain, I mean, and our mentor really helped us to focus and have some discipline around what it is we do. We created standard operating procedures for virtually everything. And another big thing that we learned in our mentorship—and we still work with our mentor monthly—was around a client success manager.

Jodi Butler (14:48):
And so last year we hired actually two of them. And what we learned there was in our business that Pittsburgh FIT, we actually, they’re not part-time positions for us. This needs to be a full-time position. You know, we have 175 group members, 75 personal-training members, you know, X number of lifestyle design. So we need somebody committed to this. And so we are right now in the process of really dialing down what this’ll look like. And we reached out to Jake Fields, who you had talked to about client success. You know, I heard the podcast, I called him, and he gave us great ideas, which is what really changed our thinking about “how do we hold this client’s success in a way that we can really be successful.” So that’s a big piece that we’re working on now.

Mike Warkentin (15:38):
That is cool. I’m going to circle back to that because that was a very interesting show, and he was the first gym owner that I had spoken to that had two client success managers, whereas most gyms don’t have any. So I’m going to circle back to that, but listeners, I’m just going to give you a quick rundown here. So you had a very successful gym owner. Jodi hired herself a general manager, which not a lot of people have thought to do, and she ends up working with a mentor, and the things that she started to do—these are things that we hear relentlessly from great gym owners, successful gym owners. Average revenue per member is a huge one. Meaning a lot of people are charging too little. Driving up average revenue per member is not about gouging clients; it’s about offering more value that they want to pay for. “I want to get to my goals faster, and I will pay more for that.” And it’s helping clients get success faster, not just jacking up the rates and bleeding ’em out of every penny. It’s about helping them faster. Speed is valuable. So you’ve got average revenue per member. Then, sound business systems. We’re not going to deep-dive into that, but every gym owner I speak to who has a successful business has business systems. They’re not just making it up as they go. They have systems in place. It’s a huge one. Next, revenue streams, if you just have group training, let me tell you, the world out there is going to get better for you. If you look at different revenue streams, not “all the revenue streams,” just a few really strong ones. Jodi’s laid out four. You could do it on two to start: group training and PT, group training and nutrition. As you scale up, there’s a lot more things that you can do to drive up that average revenue per member. And again, we know if you offer fitness coaching and nutrition coaching, your clients are going to get better results. It’s a win for everyone. And it’s worth not $150 a month; it’s worth closer to $300 or more. Many Two-Brain gyms are charging on average $300 or more per member per month. Okay. Final thing I’ll say before we circle back to the client success manager is discounts and variable rates. If you are struggling right now to pay yourself more and you have a ton of discounts, know that standardizing your rates, making it consistently fair for everyone and charging the rates that you need to live the life that you want is going to help. And we have a plan for that. You can’t just do it and hope it works out. There’s actually a specific plan Two-Brain has developed. We’ve done it hundreds of times with gym owners. The plan limits risk, maximizes reward, increases fairness for everyone and helps the gym owner live a great life. So if you’re not paying yourself enough and you have a lot of discounts in place, you wanna talk to us and we can help you do this on a specific plan. So Jodi, let’s get back to client success managers. Because this is huge. Retention is the key. More members are great, but retention is better because you have these great people, and if you hold onto them, they’ll keep paying you, and they’ll keep having success. How do you divide up the client manager client success manager role? You’ve got a bunch of ’em now—what do they do?

Jodi Butler (18:22):
Right. So right now, so actually like I said, we hired two part time, and what I’ve come to realize is we actually need full time. So I personally am in the process of working on this myself for a couple of months to dial it down and then pass it off. But the way that we think about it at Pittsburgh FIT is we have 75 personal-training clients. I expect that those coaches are keeping those people happy. And it’s true. I mean, I can look at that by the numbers. So those are people I don’t have to spend a whole lot of time thinking about. Also, in our lifestyle-design business, those coaches have real one-on-one relationships, and they are keeping those folks. They’re helping them, and they’re getting better. So it’s not a piece that I need to worry about. What I wanna really focus on is our group members. We have 175 of them. So when I, when we look at the numbers on where we’re losing people, it’s really in the first one to six months. And so I have focused on, in the first 30 days, I do a goal-setting session with everyone. And interestingly, they’re all showing up for it. And then at that goal-setting session, we set up another goal-setting session for the three-month mark. Some people asked for it a little bit earlier. And what I have found just in the past six weeks is I’ll do a goal-setting session with people, and the first thing I do is look at when they joined, and then also look at how many classes have they attended. And when their attendance says “low,” that is a piece I know I need to dive right into because “how can I help you be more accountable?” And then I stay in touch with those people. It is a lot of work, which is why I say this role actually is a full-time role, and it needs to be somebody that really cares about the outcome for our clients. Because the truth of the matter is, Mike, is that people come to us because they want something for themselves. They want something for their life. And I think it is our job to help them get there.

Mike Warkentin (20:30):
I agree with you 100% on that. So, listeners, a client success manager does not have to be full time to start. If you don’t have the revenue for that, that’s okay. You can start with four hours per week, right? And if you pay someone four hours per week just to send out a text that says “I haven’t seen you in a bit. Where you at?” to absent members or “congrats on the PR” or “happy birthday” or any of this stuff, four hours a week might cost you 60, $80—whatever. If you save one member, you’ve paid for the position. Okay? Now that’s just the basics. So if you’re intimidated by “holy cow, full-time staff member who’s not coaching,” I get it. But there is a way to dip a toe in and get this thing working. Retention is such a huge deal. Upper-level gym owners like Jodi are investing in it as a full-time position. And I love that what you’re doing is that you are digging into this yourself. You’re taking this role, digging into it, breaking it down, making it perfect, analyzing stuff, with the intention of passing it off eventually to someone that you’re hiring, right? So that you’re leaving, as Chris Cooper said, deep tracks for someone to follow. So you’re not stuck in this role forever, you pass it off. Is that right?

Jodi Butler (21:35):
That’s right. And so two more things. I mean actually we’re doing quite a bit of things, but another thing we do is we have a leader of our group training, and he reaches out to every person that’s on our at-risk list, right? So they haven’t been here for two weeks—we are in contact with you trying to figure out what’s happening and how can we help you. And then another thing we do: I’m glad you talked about the PRS because we have people write their name on the PR board every month, and these can be 30, 40, 50 names. And so in the past three months we sent a postcard to every person that’s on that PR board. But we write a personal note the last couple of months I’ve done it. Now what we’re going to do is every coach is going to take a different month. But we wanna really recognize people, you know, high-five ’em—”you’re doing great” and “thank you for trusting us with your health and fitness.”

Mike Warkentin (22:27):
So what I’m hearing here is like systems, right? So like my system, quote-unquote, back in the day was you’d put your PR on the corner of the whiteboard, and you know, at the end of the month we’d wipe them off and start again. Not a great system, right? That’s just cleaning, essentially. If you have a system, you are recording PRs, you are documenting them, and then you are doing something to celebrate them and put your clients on podiums. The difference is night and day. And it’s the difference between paying yourself $0 a month and paying yourself $20,000 a month, right? So it’s a huge, huge difference. I also love that you’ve mentioned stuff like digging into the client journey, noticing when people are leaving your business. Because I knew people left my business, but I didn’t know when and why. You’ve actually targeted exactly when they’re leaving, when they’re most likely to leave—and how can we fix that? And that’s that Goal Review Session or goal-setting session. And then the coolest thing that you’ve said is that you actually set that next Goal Review Session, and some of them wanted earlier. I had trouble putting Goal Review Sessions in place. You’ve actually got people asking for them earlier. What does that do for your business when people actually set a goal and then come back and review it? How does that help the business?

Jodi Butler (23:35):
Well it helps because they are a invested in their goal, but they’re also invested in the relationship, right? I mean, we are really in a relationship business here. I mean, anybody can de deliver training, but can we be in relationship with folks? You know, another thing we do, too, this will be the final big thing we do around client success, is every month I print out who has an anniversary this month and who has a birthday. And so I reach out to every one of those people either on their birthday or on their anniversary, and, you know, say, “thank you for trusting us with your health and fitness and this is a great time to do a goal-setting session. Let’s talk about your goals. Like how do you want your health and fitness to be after you do this spin around the sun?”

Mike Warkentin (24:19):
Would it be a mistake to say that retention is one of the greatest things that goes into your wages or salary or net owner benefit? Is that a mistake?

Jodi Butler (24:30):
It’s, yes. I mean, and I think it’s only going to get better for us and the coaches because I really believe that retention is an acquisition strategy.

Mike Warkentin (24:38):
Tell me about that. What does that mean?

Jodi Butler (24:40):
So I think if we can retain, I mean, let’s say last year, let me just throw a number out: if we lost 50 clients last year, if we can keep half of those clients, then we don’t have to spend money—so much money on lead generation and set-show-close rates. And we can really focus on “how do we deepen our coaching skill? How do we deepen our relationships, deepen our community, and help people get better?”

Mike Warkentin (25:12):

So you said, I think back in the early part of the show, that you originally focused on getting more members, but now your focus seems to be a huge, huge investment on retaining members. Was that a big mindset shift for you?

Jodi Butler (25:23):
Exactly. It was a big mindset shift. So when I think about, you know, the leadership that is Pittsburgh FIT, so this is my focus right now: “How do we retain the people?” We have the GM. His focus is on set, show, close. So we are coming at it from every angle that we can to really stabilize, and we have 9,000 square feet. So how do we fill this space? How do we enrich the coaches? How do we enrich the community, and how do we continue to help people get better and healthier?

Mike Warkentin (25:57):
Okay, so if you are out there and you have successful gym, lots of members, great rates and so forth, that is the Tinker-level gym owner. What that means is that you are a gym owner now who is not working to get to breakeven. You are not a gym owner who is trying to grow your business so that you can make about a hundred grand a year. You are now a gym owner who can tinker with things and make them amazing. Okay? We have a program for that. It’s called the Tinker Program. And if you are interested in something like that, take a look. We’ll put a link in the show notes for you so that you can look at it. If you are a gym owner who’s just starting out, and you’re trying to get to breakeven, that’s a great first goal. And the second goal is to pay yourself a hundred thousand dollars a year so that you can live well and continue. There are some simple things that you can do. Jodi’s laid out a bunch of ’em, but Jodi, I wanna put you on the spot here and ask you if you were talking to gym owners out there who are maybe struggling with the idea of paying themselves more, what’s the one thing that you would recommend? Like what would you tell ’em to take action on today so that they can pay themselves a little bit more?

Jodi Butler (26:54):
Well, my advice would be, and this is what I wish known in Year 1, I would’ve gotten a mentor right away. And I know they seem like they’re a little bit expensive, but every time I have invested in some type of learning around running this business, it has paid off. So the first thing I would do is get a mentor, and then I would listen to the mentor. You know, not just have one. ‘Cause you can’t really purchase success. You have to really follow through. So I would say, for example, if you’re a Two-Brain client and you’re new, follow the formula to the T. It works. I would say that. And then I would say even though we get into this business because we’re really passionate about health and fitness, you will need to sell, to market and to figure out how you’re going to help people. And again, people come to us, nobody walks into a gym door without wanting something for themselves. No one. And so we just need to orient to their goals and how we might be able to help them.

Mike Warkentin (28:00):
I love it. And I’m going to give gym owners two emergency strategies here, and you tell me what you think of these after I lay them out. This is your hack to do two things today. First one, just give yourself a $50-a-month raise. Doesn’t seem like much, but it is a raise. Give yourself a $50-a-month raise, and then figure out how to generate that $50. Now mad money doesn’t magically appear from anywhere, from nowhere, I get that. But you’re a Type A person if you’re running a gym, right? You probably have some fitness goals, you probably have some business goals. If you need to make an extra $50 or if you wanted to bench press an extra five pounds, I bet you’d find a way to do that. So Jodi, do you think that’s a bad strategy to give yourself $50 raises?

Jodi Butler (28:41):
I do actually think we have to start thinking about how to pay ourselves, and then we’ll find our way into the solution around that. And I think trying to PR a deadlift or a snatch, that’s a great example because there’s a formula for that.

Mike Warkentin (28:59):
So the second step that I’m going to give you, this is your hack as well. So you’re like, “How do I pay for this? How do I find that $50?” I would tell you to spend a little bit more money. What I would tell you to spend that money on would be hire a client success manager for even one hour a week. So let’s say you pay $20 an hour. You hire this person for one hour a week—that’s $80 a month. So you spent another $80. That person’s job is to retain clients. And just by sending out texts saying “how are you? Where have you been? How are you having success? Can you book a goal review session?” I guarantee that you’re going to retain more members, which is going to make your bottom line better, right? ‘Cause they’re going to stay longer, and you are going to have four extra hours. In those four extra hours. You are going to find a way to make the extra $80 you’ve spent. My advice would be to start with something simple. You could sell, for example, a personal-training session that you coach to make that money back. Or you could work on sales and marketing or any of the other things. But that’s the simplest plan that I could lay out for you. Jodi, what do you think of that option?

Jodi Butler (30:01):
I love it. I love it. I think that works.

Mike Warkentin (30:03):
So money doesn’t appear from anywhere, right? It just doesn’t show up in your bank account. But if you follow these plans, and I’ve given you just these two basic ones, this plan goes all the way to the horizon and beyond. Chris Cooper’s laid out at a complete plan that takes you from breakeven, starving gym owner to a hundred thousand dollars a year to the Tinker Program where you’re making, you know, maybe hundreds of thousand dollars a year and you wanna start a second business. You want to, you know, expand your current business—any of these other things where you can then become wealthy and help more clients. The goal obviously for gym owners is not to become a wealthy, you know, moneybags. The goal is to help more people. And you can only do that with a strong, stable business. And let’s be real, you deserve to be compensated for the work you put in. Jodi, thank you so much for sharing your story and some really great practical detail. I really, really appreciate it. That was Jodi Butler. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” This is where the world’s best gym owners tell you exactly what they’re doing so that you can have the same success. They come on here. They don’t hide their secrets. They share them so that you can be just like them. Now please subscribe for more episodes on your way out. I would love it if you’re on YouTube, please hit the like button and leave us a comment. Now, here’s Chris Cooper, Two-Brain founder, with a final message.

Chris Cooper (31:14):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.

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How to Retire as a Gym Owner (Yes, It Can Be Done)

My lowest point as a gym owner didn’t come in my worst month.

Instead, I hit rock bottom during an above-average month. Our gym was pretty full; I had over 40 personal-training clients per week alone. We were paying the rent, and I wasn’t missing paychecks. In fact, I couldn’t figure out how we could even take more clients.

But it wasn’t enough. I was barely paying the rent, even with a full schedule. My staff members weren’t making enough. My clients would only train with me. And I was working from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. (and seven hours on Saturday, too).

In that low point, I asked myself, “Is this all there is?”

I couldn’t see a way to pay myself an extra $100 per week, let alone save for my kids’ education—or retire.

Even worse, when I looked around the fitness industry, I couldn’t find a single example of someone who’d worked as a trainer for 30 years and then retired to a life of ease.

That was 2008. Ten years later, I’d built a retirement plan for myself—but I was still the only one I could find. So I started teaching the plan to our higher-level gym owners in Two-Brain.

Last year, Two-Brain Business certified 26 millionaires—these are people with a net worth of over $1 million—or just barely enough to retire right now. That means if they sold everything and paid off all their debts, they’d have at least a million dollars left in their hands.

Here’s how they did it.

Option 1: Scale Up Your Business

Some of these successful gym owners expanded their fitness empire by adding more locations, growing their client base over 250 or adding different services. Some diversified into other markets (like opening a ninja gym or a nutrition consulting practice), some duplicated their operation in a nearby town, and some simply added a higher-ticket offer to their practices.

All of them invested in mentorship to grow their businesses. Some leveled up to become mentors for Two-Brain, scaling their knowledge to help other gym owners!

Of note, though: Just leaving money in your business isn’t “reinvesting” in it. You must think like an investor and leverage money to do things that actually grow your revenue.

The key to this strategy is to reinvest in your own business, which will grow faster than anything else (usually) but require a lot of active involvement.

Option 2: Reinvest Your Profit

After reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, I decided to buy a building. The building would house my gym as long as I owned it, but then I could rent it to someone else and live off that income when I was ready to retire.

By 2014, I had a building, and by 2017 I’d paid it off. Now my gym pays me rent, which I reinvest elsewhere.

Others reinvest their profit in short-term rentals (like Airbnbs), long-term rentals, index funds, overfunded whole-life insurance, bonds—the list goes on and on.

The key to this strategy is to put your money somewhere where it will grow without your oversight.

The Only Thing You Must Do

You have many paths available, but one thing is non-negotiable if you want to take even one step:

You must level up as a leader.

Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap between these options. Some will buy a building for their gym and then buy another gym out of town. Many, like me, have money in our gym, a building, some stocks and even other businesses.

But no matter which direction you take, you must level up your knowledge and your leadership.

Being the local expert on metabolism still makes you the local beginner on real-estate purchases.

None of your deadlift prowess translates into the bond market, unfortunately.

And as you tackle these new opportunities and build a larger platform for your family, your leadership skills will have to grow to match. You will no longer be on the gym floor all the time. You might hire a manager. You might have to spread your attention across two gyms—or resist the urge to open a taco truck.

Our Tinker Program was built to help successful gym owners make long-term plans, including expansion, reinvestment and retirement. Of course, we focus a ton of attention on leadership development, too!

Click here to talk with our team about Tinker.

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Entrepreneurial Distraction: Why Gym Owners Don’t Make $100,000

It’s easier to start something new than to grow what you have.

Why don’t most gym owners make $100,000 per year?

Why do almost none make $1 million in their careers?

Why are they burned out, overwhelmed and ready to quit way too early?

Distraction.

The inability to focus on what’s most important right now, do the work required, and put off all of their other ideas and opportunities until the time is right.

This is my Achilles’ heel. Every month, someone approaches me with a new business idea or opportunity for investment. Even in my earliest days, I had lots of great ideas—and I acted on every one of them.

For example: “My gym needs more members. But I also have a great idea for this new concussion protocol!”

So I’d go and build a concussion testing program. It would take two months. Then I’d have no idea what to do with it, and my gym would still need more members.

My career is a long road of companies that I’ve started, then killed (and occasionally sold). But every single one of these diversions, even the successful ones, slowed the growth of my gym.

Focus and Growth

You can only grow one company at a time.

You can own more than one, but you can only be CEO to one at a time. CEO is your job; if you’re not doing CEO work, your company won’t grow. And distraction kills CEOs.

Why can’t most software companies grow beyond a million dollars in gross revenue? Because they don’t know how. So instead they think “I need to build a new product” when the same time investment in their core product would triple their business.

Why do gym owners start or buy a second gym before their first gym is paying them $100,000 per year? Because they don’t know how to reach $100,000 per year, so they go start another company that might make $35,000 per year instead.

We choose novelty over routine, even when routine is effective. We chase the “easy-hard work” of starting over instead of the “hard-hard work” of staying focused and growing our core thing.

In “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief,” I tried to break the entrepreneurial journey down into four phases so readers would know what to focus on depending on where they were when they read it. Here’s a summary:

Founder Phase—Focus on getting to breakeven, paying all your bills with 50 clients or so and then earning $1,000 per month.

Farmer Phase—Hire for low-cost roles first, follow Profit First, increase average revenue per member and focus on earning $100,000 for yourself with 150 clients.

Tinker Phase—Reinvest or scale your business up, make your staff permanent full time and expand your empire.

Thief Phase—Make lots of money and give it away.

The Simple Six

A lot of people told me they love “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.” Thank you.

I just published “The Simple Six” to be even more granular. Daily distraction is a huge problem. Most gym owners can’t grow their gym because they’re responding, reacting and putting out fires from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. every single day. They’re grinding but not growing.

“The Simple Six” starts with the premise: Every day, do one thing to grow your business before you do anything else.

So what, exactly, should you do?

That’s what the Simple Six helps you decide.

Look, you’re smart enough. I know you can work hard enough. The problem isn’t which book to read next—it’s focus.

I use mentors to get me focused. You can, too. Book a call with my team here.

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