Chris Cooper's Blog, page 79

Set, Show and Close Rates: What the World’s Top Gyms Did in December

Chris Cooper (00:01):
What gyms get the most new clients every month, and, even more importantly, how do they do it? I’m Chris Cooper, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” And every month we produce leaderboards from the top 800 gyms in the world. These are the gyms that are in the Two-Brain Business mentorship program, where we track everybody’s metrics every single month. That allows us to do a few things to help you and them. So after we identify who the top are in each category, we produce these leaderboards. Now these leaderboards tell us who’s doing the best. So it’s a great target for the other gym owners to hit. It’s great incentive to show them what’s possible, but it also tells us who’s doing things a little bit better. And then we take those top people at each leaderboard and we say, “Hey, what are you doing that’s a little bit better, a little bit faster, a little bit different than everybody else?”

Chris Cooper (00:54):
And then we share what they’re doing. We put them on our podcast, I’m sure you’ve heard them before. We talk to them in our Office Hours in our private Facebook group. We interview them and we say, “What exactly are you doing?” And sometimes if they’ve got a new process that’s better, we buy that process from them. And so we build courses around what the best in the world are doing for our Two-Brain Business mentorship program. And that’s why the program just keeps getting better and better and better as people build on the basics, add new things, and then we level everybody up. So if you want to find more information and support, and you just want to be in our free group, that’s fine. Until you’re ready for mentorship, just head to gymownersunited.com to join a free group with thousands of the world’s top fitness entrepreneurs.

Chris Cooper (01:41):
This month in our leaderboards, which I’m gonna reveal to you very shortly here, we’re focused on three metrics: set rate, show rate, and close rate. These are the way that we measure how well somebody’s marketing and sales processes are doing. And we call these the “marketing metrics.” Set rate, just as a quick introduction, is how many people come onto your website and book an appointment to come in and talk to you—a No Sweat Intro. Show rate is how many of those people who booked actually show up and have that conversation with you. And close rate is how many people of all the ones who showed up actually bought. Now knowing those three numbers lets us find the weak links in your marketing and sales funnel and give you homework to make you better. But today I want to talk about who the best in the world are.

Chris Cooper (02:28):
And then this week in our blog, we’re gonna talk about what they’re doing differently. But I’ll give you some tips as we go along. Here we go. Let’s start with set rate. Which gyms had the most appointments set around the world? I’m looking at this list, which we publish on our blog. The names are blurred out for the public. But if you’re in the Two-Brain Business mentorship program, you would see who these people are, and you could reach out to them and talk to ’em and ask ’em for advice. “Hey, can you give me some advice on what you did for your Facebook ads?” The reason I bring up Facebook ads is I’m looking at the No. 2 gym here, with 34 No Sweat Intro appointment set. That’s more than one a day all month long in December 2022. And I know that this owner has been going really, really deep on dialing in his Facebook ads because he quickly figured out exactly who his best clients are.

Chris Cooper (03:15):
They all had a few things in common, and so he targeted other people just like them with Facebook ads. And he practiced this. And over the last few months, he’s been getting better and better and better at it. And it’s resulted in 34 No Sweat Intro appointments booked and second place on our December 2022 leaderboard. If I look at the person who got 46, that’s like 1.5 people coming in saying “I’m interested in your gym. Tell me about it.” And they’re ready to pay. That person I know uses a wide variety of marketing to get that. He’s good online. He’s good at really sharing a lot of client stories, but he has a really broad mix of things that he’s good at. So what he does is he’ll get pretty good at, let’s say Instagram himself, and then he’ll pass that over to a staff person who’s really passionate about Instagram, and that’s what they’ll do.

Chris Cooper (04:08):
And then he’ll start getting really good at and focusing on referrals. I know because I spoke with this person a few months ago in person. I just love spending time with this guy. He’s so positive. He’s on the West Coast, and he was really focused at that time on referrals, dialing in his goal reviews and getting referrals from his current clients. Of course, when you get a lot of referrals, those are also very warm leads, and so they translate much more often into clients, and they boost your close rate, too. Looking at these others, it’s really awesome. Just as an aside here: You’ll see the Two-Brain principles working around the world. On this leaderboard, the top six are all in the States. And then we’ve got a gym in Sweden. We’ve got a gym in the U.K.

Chris Cooper (04:53):
No. 9 is from the states, and No. 10 is also from the U.K. What’s interesting though, just to bring up some international pride, is that when we get to show rate and close rate, those are gonna change a little bit. So while gyms in the States are great at getting No Sweat Intros booked—which I’m so happy to see after a couple years of lockdown; this surge is really hitting right now—I also want to see how many of those people show up for their appointment and how many actually sign up. What you’ll find, though, overall is that if you’re booking people in for a No Sweat Intro, you’re more likely to actually get them in the gym and actually sign up for your high-value service than if you’re just offering a free trial. Alright, let’s move to show rate. So out of all these people who booked an appointment to come in and talk to you about your service, and they said, “I’m interested. I’m ready. Let’s go Tuesday at 3 o’clock.” How many of those people actually showed up? Well, on the leaderboard, the gym with the most shows was 33. Now we report numbers instead of percentages. And here’s why. Earlier I told you that when we find out which gyms are the best in each category, we go out and we interview them and we say, “What are you doing?” And we get their tips, and we share ’em with you, and we put them in our curriculum. If we were just sharing percentages on these leaderboards, those numbers would be skewed. Somebody who got like one person to come in, book an appointment, show up and sign up would have a hundred percent across the board, and they would win and we would learn less. What I wanna do is deal with whole numbers here, integers, and I want to talk to the people who got the most.

Chris Cooper (06:31):
Now the people who got the most appointments set might not also be the same people who signed the most people up, but I’ll get to why—knowing those three numbers together is important—in a minute, and I’ll tell you how you can use those numbers to improve your business, too. So in this case, the top show gym was actually the same gym that had the most appointment set. Makes sense. After them, the orders changed a few times, and people had like 32 appointments show up, 31 appointments show up, 27, 21 appointments showing up—like you’re still getting one person every single day of the week that you’re open sitting down with you saying, “I’m interested. Convince me to buy,” or, “Don’t give me a reason to quit, and take my money.” Imagine in your gym if you had one person every single day sitting down with you for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, telling you their goals and listening to why they should work with you.

Chris Cooper (07:27):
I mean, how much better would your gym be? These are amazing. So I’m looking at the Top 10 for December. By the way, we didn’t have super-secret challenge in December. We didn’t do anything special. December, a lot of people will say, is like the slowest month of the year for signups. We’ve got a gym here. I’m reporting 46 NSIs booked. 33 of those actually showed up in the slowest month of the year, and they’re getting one person like every five hours that they’re open coming in and doing a sales appointment. Amazing. When I go down though, I see Sweden starting to rise, U.K. starting to rise. It’s really awesome to see that Two-Brain principles are working around the world to build these gyms up, get them more clients, and get those clients to join and save their lives. Now, if I look at the close rate, these are the people who actually had signed up for the gym and started their fitness journey.

Chris Cooper (08:21):
Man, I am so excited for them. I can remember I was in like the 12th grade when I found fitness and started working out. But I can remember how much my life changed in one month. I’m so excited for these people. And so when I look, what I see on this leaderboard is that at our top gym, 28 people signed up that month. Now these are not 28 people signing up for like a six-week challenge. They’re not 28 people signing up for a free trial. They’re not signing up for like a one-week trial package or like five sessions. They’re signing up to change their lives. Like, they are buying either a membership or something priced even higher. And since Two-Brain gyms believe strongly in an onboarding process, you can be sure that every single one of these people bought something that was worth $300 to $1,200, depending on what the coach recommended for their specific needs.

Chris Cooper (09:16):
Now we call that the Prescriptive Model. And here’s why it’s important. 28 people came in. They found what they were looking for online. They booked an appointment through the website, they showed up for the appointment, and they said, “I’m in. Take my money. Here it is. Change my life, save my fitness, restore my health, bring back my youth, make me feel better about myself and my body, make my body work better, increase my lifespan, give me more time with my grandkids and more time with my own kids, let me bend down and pick stuff up, let me take off my shirt at the beach without embarrassment, let me show up at a party where they’re going on a hike and not feel like I’ve gotta make an excuse about my bum knee and stay behind, let me participate in life, let me be an avid pursuant of this short life that we have.”

Chris Cooper (10:06):
This top gym had 28 of those people last month, you can do this, too. And if I’m going down the list, like the 10th– and ninth-place gyms on the list had 15 new clients in December 2022. I mean, if you had 15 new clients join your gym last month, what kind of difference would that make for your business? What kind of difference would that make for your life? We know what kind of difference that would make for their lives. What would 15 more clients do for you? How would that help you employ your staff and give them more benefits? How would it help you be able to afford a brighter space, better cleaning, more coaching knowledge, and give a better experience to all the clients that you currently have? Like, that’s why this stuff is important. The numbers are indicators of success, but the success is what changes lives, including yours and your family’s.

Chris Cooper (10:59):
So when I’m looking at these, yes, there’s diagnostic value. I can figure out how to improve a gym when I’ve got all three of these metrics, but more than anything else, what I’m looking for are opportunities to bring more people into the gyms and keep them long enough to change their lives. Okay? So congratulations to all our winners. Like having 46 people say “I want a book an appointment to talk to you” is amazing. Having 33 of those people actually show up? Incredible because I know at least half of the ones that didn’t will come later. They just, you know, they couldn’t make it. It was December, you know, they had stuff going on. Maybe they waited for January. Having, you know, this was a different gym, but having 28 people sign up for your service in December is incredible. And it says a lot about you and the trust that people have in you to change their lives.

Chris Cooper (11:48):
Now let’s talk about how I look at these three numbers together and how you can use these leaders as more than just inspiration, as a diagnostic tool to fix your business. When I’m helping at gyms, I start often by looking at the numbers because the numbers point the way. I’ll give you an example here. Let’s say that you had 10 people book appointments this month. Your set rate is 10, but only three of those people showed up. Your show rate is 30%. Out of all three, all three bought. Perfect. Your close rate is a hundred percent. Three out of three people who showed up actually signed up. Well, that tells me you’ve got a massive opportunity to do lead nurture. Lead nurture means from the time they booked that appointment to actually sitting down and showing up in front of you, you can improve that.

Chris Cooper (12:37):
And if you spend next month improving it, we know your close rate is good. So if you improve that by one person, you bring in four out of 10 instead of three out of 10, that is worth at least $300 to you because you sign up everybody who comes in. Conversely, if you’ve got a high set rate, let’s say that you have 10 appointments set this month and a high show rate—you’re in a small town and everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s too scared to not show up and they don’t wanna waste your time—and 10 outta 10 show up. But only three actually sign up. So 10 people book appointments, and 10 people show up for the appointments. If only three sign up, we’ve got a problem that’s in your sales process. Now all these problems are solvable. We can help you with lead nurture, we can help you capture leads, and we can help you book more appointments, get more people to show up for those appointments and close more appointments.

Chris Cooper (13:29):
Tools like Kilo can help you have those appointments booked and also continue the conversation with the people who don’t book the appointments but who come on your websites. There’s no such thing as a lead-generating website. There are good websites that capture leads and move them down the funnel from setting an appointment to showing up for the appointment, and then they set you up to close the appointment. But knowing these metrics means that you know what to do to fix your gym. If you’re not tracking these metrics, you might be saying, “I don’t know. Should I try Facebook marketing?” Or worse, you might be saying Facebook ads don’t work when really your website doesn’t get people to set appointments. Your lead-nurture process doesn’t get those people to sign up, and your sales process isn’t good enough to convince them to join. It’s nothing to do with Facebook. Zuckerberg’s doing his job. You aren’t doing yours at one of those steps. But the beautiful part about reporting these numbers, especially to a mentor, is that you’ve got an objective expert saying, “Here’s how we can fix things for you right now today.” Just as you’re saying those things to your clients. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks so much for paying attention. If you want to learn more about set rate, show rate and close rate, see the leaderboards, ask questions or get inspiration, please join Gym Owners United on Facebook, or just go to gymownersunited.com, and it’ll zip you right to the right group. I’d love to see you there and talk to you more in person.

The post Set, Show and Close Rates: What the World’s Top Gyms Did in December appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

By the Numbers: Getting More Clients—Set Rate

If you want to get people into your program, you need to get them through the door first.

There are three critical stages to transforming prospects into clients:

First, they have to set appointments to meet you.Second, they have to show up for those appointments.Third, they have to sign up for your program.

This sounds like a simple path, but most gyms lose potential clients at every stage. The gym owner spends time and lots of money on Facebook ads or media content or other advertising. They drive clients to their website:

And then the potential client doesn’t book an appointment.Or the lead doesn’t show up for the booked appointment.Or the lead shows up but doesn’t sign up.

Every month, we measure metrics in the world’s best gyms. We produce leaderboards in each category, and we share a couple of those categories publicly. Even better, we share the top tips from the leaders to help you build your gym.

This month, I’m going to tell you how to improve your set rate (how many prospects book appointments from your website), your show rate (how many of those prospects show up) and your close rate (how many of those prospects become clients).

These tactics don’t just represent my opinions: They are the best tactics, as proven by data from thousands of gyms. Stop whatever you’re doing and do this stuff instead.

Here are December’s leaders for set rate:

Top Lessons From the Leaders

Here’s what the owners behind the numbers had to say:

“We focused on quick answering, texting and calling of the leads within minutes—by either myself or someone else. Big majority of the leads sign up for an NSI (No Sweat Intro) right away, but I follow up anyway! I use a slight pre-screening: ‘What have you done in the past? What are you doing currently? Are you looking for help with your nutrition or fitness coaching? Why are you interested in coaching now?'”

“We brought on our best coach at the start of Dec. for doing NSIs—she ran with it! We went from having 2-3 NSI slots available; now we have almost unlimited availability to handle NSIs. A few came in through ads, but mostly word of mouth. We noticed that the clients are sharing testimonials on their own pages. Our next step is to highlight those members.”

“We focused on leads generated through referrals. We offered for the kids to ‘bring a friend’ to their group class, and we reached back out to kids who haven’t come in a while—’We know you have some time off at Christmas, so come on in!’ For adults, we asked them ‘why not start now?’ and told them to ‘bring your kids in with you.’ College athletes—we stayed in touch with them and kept the relationship building up. When they were home for the holidays, we invited them in to work out.”

“Last month, we increased our ad spend and really started being diligent about following up with our leads.”

“Facebook ads are killing it right now. We did a bring-a-friend event in December.”

“We Increased the Facebook marketing spend in the last three months. … Every year, we do a holiday gift-giving campaign. … We give all the members a gift bag with a holiday card … and a gift card for the gym to give to someone else. This results in a lot of ‘free trials.'”

“Aside from the Facebook ads, we also boosted a post, a video testimonial, and that drove some more traffic to the website. We pulled all the leads from last year and did a courtesy call: ‘You were interested at one time. Did you find something that works for you?’ I offer that they can call or text me back. I try to alter the pitch/text to the client … and try to personalize the message to make a connection with them.”

“Our GM is now very heavily focused on lead response time. She’s getting ahold of people quickly and building rapport from there. Marketing efforts: retargeting emails and retargeting campaigns on Facebook. Any way a lead came in—via a Facebook ad form or bring-a-buddy days or an alumni—we have made a greater effort to reach out to them.”

“People have spam blockers, so I call them and leave a message, then text right after. This gets a reply from them on text.”

“I’ve spent the last year trying to learn what’s working in service-industry businesses … in Facebook ads. From what I’ve seen, the overarching theme seems to be increasing exposure to those that are engaging with your ads. For example, when someone watches three seconds of a video, create an audience to include all those that briefly interact. That takes a lead from being cold to gradually warming them because they’ve now seen your message several times. Specifically target those that clicked the ad/video/etc. I’ve gotten really hyper specific with who the ads are shown to.”

Set Rate: This Above All

The key to getting more people to book free consultations with you?

It’s not jumping to new social media platforms. It’s not running short-term challenges. It’s sticking to the basics and doing them consistently well:

Answer the phone.When someone asks for help, respond like it’s your mom or dad (fast and thoughtfully).Hold their hands until they walk through the door.Be a human.

The post By the Numbers: Getting More Clients—Set Rate appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Owners: Don’t Forget About Personal Training. Like, Not Ever.

“We realized the group class model was not going to pay for where we are.”

Gym owner Corey Lapell said that to me on “Run a Profitable Gym,” the Two-Brain podcast. He’s talking about his rent in the pricey West Coast city of Vancouver.

The solution? Corey started focusing on personal training—not to the exclusion of the group classes so many of us love.

In addition to those classes.

In our 2022 State of the Industry report, data showed microgyms that offer PT generate an average of 22 percent of total revenue with one-on-one coaching. That number is up from 2021 by 2 percent. For some gyms, it’s far, far lower.

On the surface, 22 percent might seem like a good number—especially if you consider it “gravy” to the potatoes that represent your group classes.

But I didn’t have to look very hard to find a gym owner who puts the number in perspective. This owner relied heavily on group classes in 2020, then made changes during and after the pandemic to emphasize PT, a high-value service.

The result? PT generated 76 percent of revenue in 2022, and she was making almost $300 an hour as owner.

Over at Corey Lapell’s gym, they’ve hired specific PT coaches and started marketing PT. These changes are solving a lot of problems, including this classic one: popular group time slots are full but the gym is empty in other hours.

PT is “a very scalable thing in our space and with the times we have available. So we can easily scale PT and specialty group classes in a way we can’t do with the group classes,” Corey said.

More data from Corey: His average revenue per member went from about $150 to $250 as he improved his business with a mentor. (You can listen to the whole podcast here.)

So how do you start making more PT sales? Well, in your next free consultation—the best way to onboard new clients—pay attention to what the prospective member is saying. If the person is nervous about working out in a group—and many are—suggest one-on-one coaching.

Or if a person has very specific personal goals and feels the need for speed, offer PT sessions as the swiftest route to the destination.

Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper has had success with a simple sentence like this:  “So would you prefer to train one on one with me or in a group?”

Another simple step in the right direction: start talking about PT in your media—your blog, Instagram, your newsletter, etc. Let people know you offer the service.

None of this is presented to deter you from running the group classes we all love. Group fitness can be fun and very effective.

Just consider this a reminder that any gym that focuses predominantly on group training can probably add significant amounts of PT revenue to the bottom line.

The post Gym Owners: Don’t Forget About Personal Training. Like, Not Ever. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Owner Quadruples Salary, Cuts Weekly Hours by 40 Percent

Mike Warkentin: (00:02)
This is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. I talk to gym owners every week to get their stories for one reason. I wanna help you run a profitable gym too. Corey, did your business double since August of 2020?

Corey Lapell: (00:15)
Yes, it did.

Mike Warkentin: (00:16)
Like members and revenue, the whole deal?

Corey Lapell: (00:18)
Membership almost double, and the revenue, a little bit more than doubled.

Mike Warkentin: (00:22)
Wow. Would you be willing to share that with our listeners so that they can find the same success you’re having?

Corey Lapell: (00:27)
Absolutely. I would love to.

Mike Warkentin: (00:29)
I appreciate it. Great. Today I’m here with Corey Lapell of Empower in Vancouver, Canada. Corey, thanks so much for joining me today.

Corey Lapell: (00:35)
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Mike Warkentin: (00:37)
I can’t wait to dig into this. I always ask the biggest questions first. How the heck did you double everything? Tell me the story, what happened?

Corey Lapell: (00:46)
Yeah, if I can lay some groundwork, some of the history. So my partner and I, pre-Covid were working very, very hard. 60 hour weeks, sometimes 17 hour days. Our business model, we were focused on those CrossFit group classes. That was our thing. We did some PT, but the PT was with the intent to get people in the group classes. Eventually, we had one specialty program that was kind of an afterthought. There was a budget offering and it had a very high churn rate and very low profitability. But we’re CrossFitters so CrossFitters don’t mind working hard. So we just worked harder.

Mike Warkentin: (01:28)
Nose to the grindstone.

Corey Lapell: (01:30)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s what we’re good at. So we were going okay, we were making a little bit of money, working really, really hard for it and probably would’ve stayed on that track. We knew about Two-Brain. We’d been following Two-Brain for about two years, just reading the emails, reading the books, but didn’t make a big impact for us. And then in March 2020, we were shut down for two months suddenly. And we made a quick pivot immediately to Zoom classes. We didn’t miss a beat, didn’t miss a day. And we’re very lucky. Our membership stuck with us. Our group class membership, we lost one person. That’s it. Everybody else stayed with us, continued to pay their membership rates. We did not think about continuing with the PT or our little specialty program. Those were not our priorities. And our coaches took those two months off ’cause my partner and I were running the Zoom classes, so our coaching pay dropped to zero. Our facility costs dropped to next to nothing. Our membership income didn’t change much at all. And we lost money in those two months, which was a wake up call that our business model focusing on group classes was not working for us.

Mike Warkentin: (02:48)
Something smells bad. I get ya.

Corey Lapell: (02:51)
Yeah. So that was a wake up call. And that was the time that we realized that working harder maybe was not getting us where we wanted to go. And we lined up a call with Two-Brain.

Mike Warkentin: (03:03)
I had a similar experience to you except I made a huger mistake. I didn’t even offer PT. We ran group classes and tried to get lots of people in there, didn’t do any PT, and wow. Can you think about how much money I lost on that deal? ?

Corey Lapell: (03:15)
Yeah. No kidding.

Mike Warkentin: (03:17)
So talk to me about- You’re connecting with a mentor. You look at the price, you’re like, we’re losing money. There’s a price tag here. Talk to me about that whole decision.

Corey Lapell: (03:26)
It was a very hard time to justify taking on additional expense when you realize that you have a crippled business. So we had a lot of hesitation around it. I think the sales rep for Two-Brain was fantastic. He asked the most important question. Which was, all our material is free. You’ve been following it for a couple years. You’ve read the books, you got the daily emails. Why do you need us?

Mike Warkentin: (03:53)
So what was the answer? I gotta know that one.

Corey Lapell: (03:56)
Well, that’s why, because we’ve read all the material. It hasn’t made any difference for us. So the problem is we’re willing to work hard. And that’s what attracted all of us to CrossFit, is you do CrossFit, you train really hard, you get results. The problem is, if I program for myself in CrossFit, I’m a power clean, handstand pushup kind of guy. I’ll do those all day every day, but I’ll never do cardio or L-sits.

Mike Warkentin: (04:19)
Well, I’m coming to work out with you.

Corey Lapell: (04:21)
CrossFit works because it makes me do the things that I don’t want to do. And that’s what Two-Brain was going to offer is, going to push us to do things that we were uncomfortable with doing. And then having that, I think it was around $500 per month at that time, with the exchange rate hanging over our head, there was no way we weren’t going to do the work.

Mike Warkentin: (04:45)
So it becomes an accountability thing.

Corey Lapell: (04:47)
Oh, very much. Very much.

Mike Warkentin: (04:48)
Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I’ve heard this from other people as well. And there are a couple different types of gym owners I’ve spoken to. I spoke to one just yesterday from Australia. He is like a “by the numbers”, tell me what to do, all in, let’s go kind of guy. I’ve also talked to other people who kind of wanna go their own route and don’t like that instruction thing, but they recognize they need the accountability. So there’s various types of people out there. We have mentors that work with all different kinds. And for example, the gentleman in Australia, he works with one of our mentors who’s in New Zealand, and she is direct and she’s the perfect guy for him, or perfect girl for him. Pardon me. Because she is super direct and tells him do this. He’s like, okay. And we have other mentors who take a different approach. It’s like coaching, right? Every coach needs a coach, we find the right one. So talk to me then about you. You’ve made this commitment. You’re nervous as heck because you’ve got these expenses. The Covid stuff is still dragging on. Canada, we got hit pretty hard with restrictions and so forth. What happens? How do you start rebuilding this thing? He said as a crippled business, how do you fix it?

Corey Lapell: (05:47)
Well our mentor first kicked our ass really hard. Uh, Jeff Larsh, great guy. And it was a great mentor for us. I think my partner said, after one of our coaching calls with him, he said, I think he used nicer words, but I think he just told us, Corey, that we need to pull our heads out of our asses, . So he really held our feet to the fire and made us take on some things that were uncomfortable for us. And I think that laid the groundwork for everything that was gonna come. So there were several steps that we were required to take. If you wanna want me to go through some of them, I can.

Mike Warkentin: (06:23)
Well, so what happened? Basically in a nice way, he told you, you gotta unscrew this mess and then gave you the tools to do it. So yeah. What were some of those tools? What kind of steps? And I’m particularly interested in the stuff that you didn’t wanna do that you did anyway.

Corey Lapell: (06:36)
Yeah, the thing I was most resistant to at the start, which he made me do, was doing automated online billing and Zen Planner . With a membership of under a hundred at that time, I had always done it through Moneris and tracked it manually, month after month. And it gave me a sense of control, which was a false sense of control. As it turns out, there were missed membership payments and all that, that as a human, I failed to catch. So I’m not tech savvy, Mike. I don’t love technology. I don’t love dealing with that kind of stuff. No. So it’s very hard for me and it was hard for many of our coaches and getting them to buy in on that as well. And it was a fair amount of work for me, learning the Zen Planner system fully in the backend.

Mike Warkentin: (07:27)
It’s not fun.

Corey Lapell: (07:28)
No, no. But the ability to track those metrics at the click of a button and see them day to day, I can tell you exactly how many members we have today. I can tell you how many outstanding payments I have today. I can tell you the forecast for this month. The power of that is, and he tried to sell me on this, and I was very resistant to it, but Jeff was right. So that really helped for scalability because now with 173 members today versus about 95 pre-Covid, being able to track them on that automated billing system, if I had to do that payment every month on Moneris for 173 people, I couldn’t manage it. 

Mike Warkentin: (08:11)
And you realized that, sorry to interrupt, but I had a similar experience. I started with a spreadsheet and that was just an unmitigated disaster. I know some old school gym owners who literally had the envelope on the door of the office for cash payments and cheques, things like that. You realize when you move to these systems, even though none of them are perfect and they are a pain in the ass to use, a lot of times you realize that even finding one missed payment pays for the cost of the software. Right. And all of a sudden it becomes very clear what you need to do.

Corey Lapell: (08:39)
Hundred percent. Hundred percent. And then later on down the road, Mike, later stages, I was able to bring on a membership manager who manages all that Zen Planner for me, manages all client payments, and he just reports to me. And so the part, I had to set it up first and I had to train him. So I had to know the system, but now all of that is off my plate, and that represents a good, back when it was under a hundred members. That’s 10 hours of my week.

Mike Warkentin: (09:11)
Ooh, okay. And that’s kind of the cool part about the system here is that yeah, you gotta do some work to do some stuff. And the example that I use is creating roles and responsibilities for hiring plans. So you’ve got your client success manager, your bookkeeper, however you wanna divide these roles up, all coaching, all this stuff. It is awful to write those roles and responsibilities down. But once you do it, you can then put people in place, they’ll have success. And then you got 10 hours back. And here’s the question. What did you do with those 10 hours?

Corey Lapell: (09:42)
Well, in the initial stages, more work. 

Mike Warkentin: (09:45)
Higher value work, right?

Corey Lapell: (09:47)
Yeah. Well, Jeff had other tasks for us in that initial Ramp-up. So we have two owners, and at that point in time when the business is struggling, that means two mouths to feed. Jeff was very clever in finding out how to make that a strength for us. So he had us split our roles, so we weren’t duplicating roles. So my partner Leon, ended up managing our coaching team. He got the fun part. I get to work on all the finance, all the Zen Planner, all the billing, all the backend stuff, and all the bigger picture external work that nobody wants to do. So that helped because it really leveraged the fact that we have two owners and we can sprint quite a bit quicker if we split up the tasks and don’t duplicate each other’s work. And that has turned out over time to be incredibly key to our success.

Mike Warkentin: (10:45)
That’s roles and responsibilities again, right? Policies, procedures, roles. You do this, I do that. We don’t double up. We get further ahead.

Corey Lapell: (10:51)
Yeah. Yeah. And so, that helped us. Then part of the things that I did, I took time to write our SOPs, so go completely through. I actually booked a hotel room for two nights and locked myself in for two days and just wrote SOPs. Nothing but.

Mike Warkentin: (11:09)
Did you actually do that?

Corey Lapell: (11:10)
Yeah. Again, on Jeff’s advice.

Mike Warkentin: (11:11)
What was the name of the hotel? Do you remember?

Corey Lapell: (11:13)
It was actually accommodations at UBC, the university right up here.

Mike Warkentin: (11:16)
Yeah. That’s amazing. I haven’t heard anyone do that. I’ve heard people say, oh, you know, I did this over a weekend. I haven’t heard anyone actually sequestering themselves at a hotel. Good for you.

Corey Lapell: (11:25)
Yeah. I think I was dragging my feet on it. Jeff said, look, you need to take two days off work. Go lock yourself away and get this done. So I did, we did. On top of that, I wrote our team playbook. I wrote our member handbooks, which are fairly complete, very, very useful for the membership, especially onboarding new members. We wrote all our contracts for our coaches. We created a hiring process that we’re now using as we go, and hired- so our coaching team has gone from about six pre-covid to today. We’re at 13 people on our team, and we have four more at various stages of the hiring process right now, as well as the coach evaluations, implementing Uplaunch CRM, so automated just following up with leads and customers. So there’s been a lot of background work that I now had time to work on.

Mike Warkentin: (12:30)
Wow. And you know, I say this, listeners may get sick of this, but I’m gonna keep saying it till everyone understands. Systems are the basis, they’re the foundation of a successful business. No one that I’ve spoken to, and I talk to lots of gym owners like Corey, who have amazing stats. They’re the double, five times revenue, all this stuff. Not one of them says, I didn’t put any systems in place. They all tell me exactly what you are saying. I did this foundational stuff. And it comes in the Two-Brain Ramp-up, and then they move on to the Growth program where we’re doing targeted tactical stuff to help you grow your business right now with this thing that you need. Exactly. So you literally locked yourself away. Put this stuff in place. Like, I love this story. I’m gonna tell this to people forever now, this is great.

Mike Warkentin: (13:12)
And then after that, you’ve got this template that you can replicate. When you hire your first coach on that template, you can just hire 17 more on that template. Correct? Yeah. So you’re saving tons and tons of time as you’re starting to get some momentum and this thing is starting to come back online. What happens then? Like you said, you’re almost doubled your revenue now. Or sorry, you’ve doubled your revenue, but your members have almost doubled. Where are these people coming from and how are you filling that gym?

Corey Lapell: (13:37)
Well, we also rebranded, and I forgot to mention, we also went through the process of rebranding. We had been CrossFit Empower. We still are CrossFit Empower. We still are a CrossFit affiliate and proudly so. But we realized the group class model was not going to pay for where we are. And so while we keep group classes running, because that’s what I love to do. I love coaching group classes. I’m a CrossFitter through and through, we rebranded so that we can market to personal training and to specialty groups. And instead of discount specialty groups, they’re premium specialty groups. And we have some coaches who are fantastic. They have fans who hate CrossFit, but love their specialty program. We brought on personal training coaches who are not CrossFit coaches. They’re strictly PT. And that’s a very scalable thing in our space and with the times we have available. So we can easily scale PT and specialty group classes in a way we can’t do with the group classes. And so the rebranding was designed around that because it was hard to sell PT to people who searched us by looking for CrossFit.

Mike Warkentin: (14:46)
I didn’t know at my gym, this is embarrassing and humiliating, but I didn’t know that you could actually run PT and group sessions. I was focused, like you, on group classes. And my goal was to fill ’em and put as many in as possible. And my ideal gym was gonna be wall to wall from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM, giant glass, group classes. Crushing it. Yeah. And I couldn’t do it. I could not fill those group classes. I was losing money. I had too many classes, not enough people. I was chasing members. I didn’t need that. When I finally actually said to someone, and it was because of Two-Brain, I said, Hey, you’re really bad at double-unders and I know you’re angry about it. We can fix that in two hours. You wanna book some PT? The answer was an overwhelming yes. And a light bulb went off and I’m like, holy crap, I just sold a hundred dollars to this gentleman. And his ARM is now, average revenue per member, goes 150 to 250. He’s happier. I’m happier. Everybody wins. Did your average revenue per member go up as a result of all this?

Corey Lapell: (15:40)
Yes. Yes. I think it went up from something like 150 when we started to, we now hover around 250, and we have had months that were higher.

Mike Warkentin: (15:50)
And it’s like magic, right? Because you’re not doing anything really differently. You’re still passionate about group classes. You’re still running them, you’re still crushing them with the clients who love that. But you’ve kind of made a realization that I had that group classes are a discount option and there are higher value services that you can offer that people want. Right. So you’re doing these, tell me about the premium. You said you shifted to a premium specialty service program. What was specific about that?

Corey Lapell: (16:14)
So we have one coach who, she’s probably our most popular coach, and she runs a very cardio intensive type of workout. It is in a little bit like CrossFit, but no technical lifting, no technical gymnastics. People love it. So we called it Fit over 40, because that is really our demographic, and that’s how long the workout takes. People who are under 40 come and play too, and people are willing to pay a premium to see her twice a week, and she gets paid far more per hour than I can pay her in a group class to coach a group class. And so we have coaches now bringing in that. They brought in a mother-daughter program, a barbell club, and so we can pay them at a higher rate of pay because we’re charging a premium for these programs. So it’s good for the coaches. People love these programs, and that is good for the business.

Mike Warkentin: (17:11)
So what you’re doing there is you’re creating what we call entrepreneurial opportunities for coaches. And if you’re out there listening, you’re not sure what that is, the quick version is you help coaches figure out what else they can offer to clients, and then there’s different ways to pay them. Two-Brain recommends the Four Ninths model where you pay the coach 44% of the total revenue. So this is all new revenue coming in. You’re not saying here’s $25 to coach a class that you have to fill and you lose money. You’re saying you get 44% of all the revenue that comes in, and let’s say you’ve got a great weightlifting coach, that person starts a program, you help that person market it, people sign up and the coach makes 44%, which in almost every case is greater than the group class wage. So now you’re creating careers as opposed to just coaching jobs and eating into your profit margin. Is that how it went for you, what I just described?

Corey Lapell: (17:58)
Yeah, exactly. Like that. Exactly like that. And there’s a couple other things that I definitely wanna make sure that we mention, because if there’s any other coaches or owners like me who are wondering about this, prior to taking on Two-Brain, I was paying myself a thousand dollars a month. Okay.

Mike Warkentin: (18:19)
And Vancouver’s an expensive city.

Corey Lapell: (18:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But our residential rent for my wife and I is 2,500. Yeah, so that’s not a lot. I was working about 60 hours a week, and now we track our metrics. So these are actual firm numbers. I’m now working about 35 hours per week, and my checks, I’m averaging about $4,000 per month. One of the things Jeff turned us around said, look, you have to pay yourselves for the hours you put in. So we now pay ourselves just for the hours we put in. And yeah, it’s going pretty well.

Mike Warkentin: (18:57)
So that listeners, net owner benefit and effective hourly rate are two critical metrics that we track at Two-Brain. Net owner benefit is everything you get for the business. It could be salary, wages, dividends, it could also be your cell phone bill, a car, things like that. Whatever it pays you. So net owner benefit’s a big one. Think of it as your wage, more or less. Effective hourly rate is that number divided by the amount of hours you put in. And if you have this number divided by 80, things get a little weird. If you have that number divided by 35, 25, 10, you start to get some big effective hourly rates. We have gym owners that making, like, $500 an hour because they only put three or four hours into the business. It’s incredible what you just said, Corey. I mean, that’s the life-changing stuff. Going from 60 hour weeks and not making as much money as you need, to making way more in less time. How did that change your life course?

Corey Lapell: (19:44)
It’s been fantastic for my health, for my family, and for the business because I’ve found I’m actually more valuable outside of the business. Yeah. And it’s something hard to wrap your head around. But when I’m walking up on my day off to the pool to go take a leisurely swim, not a workout, just a leisurely swim, my mind is free to think about things that need to be done in the business. And I come back and I more than pay for that time off.

Mike Warkentin: (20:12)
And I’m gonna guess that Leon, your partner, has a similar story. Am I wrong?

Corey Lapell: (20:17)
Yeah, yeah. He’s doing fantastic. It’s been really great to watch.

Mike Warkentin: (20:25)
Yeah. So I mean, that’s cool. So, you guys are long serving gym owners, passionate about everything. In a situation in Covid where you realize you’re in trouble. You’re not making the money you wanna make, you’re working way too hard. That sounds to me like someone who would be close to leaving the fitness industry at some point, either by force or by choice. Because I was there too when I was working way too much. I was like, I don’t have time to make no money. You know? And now you’re in a spot where you can actually sit back and think, how can I serve my clients better? And you get rewarded for doing it, right? So it’s not all about you. We’re all altruistic and trying to help our clients. So you help your clients, but then you actually get to spend time with, I’m gonna guess your family.

Corey Lapell: (21:02)
Yeah, no, it’s been great. And as coaches, we’re better coaches. We’re not tired out, we’re not burnt out. So we bring a lot more energy to the classes, which I really love. I feel like I can focus on being my best coaching self when I’m there, and I can pick which personal training clients I work with. And so the people I work with are people I love. And it’s very rewarding for me and for them.

Mike Warkentin: (21:28)
You have choice. You can choose to coach, you can choose to CEO stuff. You can choose to do whatever you want. Some people who are kind of at your level have chosen to start second locations if they want, expand current locations. Some have chosen to market sports drinks, invent things, run Airbnbs. We have a program called Tinker that helps people do that too. So there’s all sorts of options for people once you get a stable business underneath you. So people out there, again, Corey, are gonna be listening and saying, ah, I can never do this. What would you tell them if they’re where you were in March 2020? What’s their steps to get where you are?

Corey Lapell: (22:01)
I would say give Two-Brain a call. Check it out. I know as a business owner, over the years, there’s been a hundred different things that were promoted. They were gonna help my business. I was gonna try them out. And you pay a couple thousand dollars and find out it’s a dud, it didn’t work, and you’re flushing money away. I’ve done that many, many, many times. Two-Brain wasn’t one of those. So if you’re willing to do the work and if you’re able to make difficult changes in how you do things, and I was resistant, very resistant when we started with Jeff. He asked, what are the things that you will not do? And I told him one of the things I will not do is I will never drop the CrossFit name from our title. A year later, we dropped the CrossFit name from our title. So I certainly had resistance, but if you are willing to make the change and do the work, the Two-Brain methodology works incredibly well. And I don’t know if Chris told you this, Mike, but Leon and I, last month took the step of joining the Tinker program.

Mike Warkentin: (23:06)
I didn’t know that. Congratulations.

Corey Lapell: (23:07)
Yeah, thank you. So for those who don’t know, that’s just about as frightening because the price tag on the Tinker program is very frightening. And it’s a big commitment. But based on the success we’ve had initially with the Ramp-up and the Growth program, if it returns the way that the original programs did, it’s a no-lose.

Mike Warkentin: (23:30)
So I gotta ask you this then. The Tinker program, there’s a lot of incredible stuff going on in there. Just whenever I’m in that room and I’m usually doing media, I hear just these unbelievable stories of quote-unquote “just gym owners” doing these unbelievable entrepreneurial things. What kind of stuff, you don’t have to give away any secrets. What kind of stuff are you thinking about?

Corey Lapell: (23:50)
Number one on our hit list is we would like to own our own building, be our own landlords. And on the Vancouver West side, that’s kind of critical. There’s not a lot of options for a CrossFit gym out this way. And our memberships are dear to us. They’re like family, and we would like to serve them for the rest of our lives. We work with them, we work with their kids, we work with all their family members and neighbors. So we’d like to remain in this neighborhood indefinitely. We’ve got a coaching team that we’re training up to take our places when we can’t keep doing this. So we need to own a building to do that. And that’s in Vancouver, we’re looking at 3 to 6 million for that. And our Tinker Mentor, on our first meeting, she said, okay, well that’s our six month plan. What’s your three year plan?

Mike Warkentin: (24:41)
So you go from having March 2020 crippled business to, this show is gonna air in just in the early part of 2023. You’re now looking at million dollars of real estate in Vancouver to create a legacy for your business and for your clients. Like, how cool is that to think about?

Corey Lapell: (25:02)
It’s incredible. I don’t wanna tear up here. I’m trying to hold that in. So all those unpaid hours that we put in, I didn’t pay myself in 2017, 2018 when we went to our expansion. So I went two years without a paycheque. Everything that we’ve done, we don’t do this for love, for money. We do this for passion, right? We built a an incredible community. And to think that we can make that a permanent fixture here, it makes all the sacrifice, all the hours worthwhile.

Mike Warkentin: (25:39)
It’s incredible because there are people like you who bleed out of the fitness industry. I’ve seen it happen. I watched them on Facebook doing other careers, and I wish these great people were still in the gym business. If you’re out there and you are struggling, there is hope. Corey is proof. Give us a call. You don’t have to sign up. Just listen, take a look. But guaranteed we can give you some ideas of what you can do better. And the cool part about Two-Brain, to blow our own horn, is that everything’s backed by data. So Corey, you talked about some of the pie-in-the-sky promises. I’ve seen them as a gym owner. I have gotten them, I’ve bitten into some of them. I didn’t like the way they tasted. The reason why Two-Brain works for me is because it’s backed by data. It’s tested. The stuff works. It’s not just a promise, it actually works. So let’s tackle stuff. Am I lying to people with that?

Corey Lapell: (26:19)
No. Do it. Just do it. Really. Your business would be better, your life would be better. It’s been worth it for sure.

Mike Warkentin: (26:25)
Corey, thank you so much for taking the time and telling your story. I don’t wanna stop you from improving your business. I want you to go to the pool, do a leisurely swim, think about how you can run your business. Thanks so much for being here today.

Corey Lapell: (26:33)
Thanks, Mike.

Mike Warkentin: (26:35)
That was Corey Lapell, and this is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. I’m telling the stories of amazing gym owners like Corey every week so that you can run a profitable gym too. Please subscribe for more episodes and if you’re on YouTube, I’d love it if you would hammer a like button on this so that other people can find it as well. Now here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final word.

Chris Cooper: (26:53)
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 Gym Owner Quadruples Salary, Cuts Weekly Hours by 40 Percent appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

What’s the ROI on Two-Brain Mentorship?

The value of mentorship snowballs over time.

The changes you make with your mentor will echo for decades—throughout the life of your business and your career.

Imagine making an extra $10,000 per month for the rest of your career. That’s what one top gym owner is doing right now by generating return on investment (ROI) in mentorship. Here’s a leaderboard from May 2021:

Want more numbers?

As of 2023, the average ROI for our 12-week RampUp program is 2.4x. So for every dollar you put into it, you get $2.40 out.

There’s more, and this stat shows the compounding effect of mentorship: Clients who work with a Two-Brain mentor for a full year see an average ROI of 13.2x. Invest $1 and get $13.20 back—where else can you get a return like that?

The best part: Your business pays for the cost of mentorship, but you—the owner—get the benefit. With greater profit, more money will make it into your family’s bank account, allowing you to live the life you deserve.

And we’re not providing flash-in-the-pan tactics that work once and never again. We’re teaching you to be an entrepreneur, and the concepts you learn will serve you forever—in this business and even in others if you choose to expand your influence.

Knowledge compounds. Leadership compounds. Experience compounds.

Maximum ROI

Here’s what our top ROI earners said they do to maximize the return on their investment in mentorship:

Rely on mentorship to provide accountability.Use mentors as filters to avoid overwhelm and lack of focus.Use specific Two-Brain resources at the time when they will have the greatest effect on an area of focus.Block off CEO time to ensure focused windows for implementing tactics from the Two-Brain Growth ToolKit. Hire staff to allow more time for high-value action.Use Career Roadmap sessions to connect with staff and create buy-in by ensuring gym goals reflect staff goals.Solve the “icon problem” through staff development.Teach all staff members to sell and create redundancy so growth doesn’t slow if a staff member leaves.
Invest and Grow

Every time you fix a painful mistake, you ensure you won’t repeat it.

Every time you upgrade your team, you ratchet up your value.

Every additional month you keep a client is a month in which they’ll see more progress, refer more friends, and contribute more value to your community and your bottom line.

All these things multiply one another. That’s the value of mentorship.

To talk to use about investing in your business and generating huge ROI through mentorship, book a call.

The post What’s the ROI on Two-Brain Mentorship? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Free Gym Trials Are 2015. Here’s How to Get High-Value Clients Now.

Mike Warkentin: (00:01)
Free consultations or free trials at gyms. Which one is better? Chris Cooper has the definitive, data-backed answer. This is Run a Profitable Gym. Please subscribe for more episodes. Now, here’s Coop.

Chris Cooper: (00:14)
Hey, I’m the founder of Two-Brain Business, Chris Cooper, and today I’m gonna talk about why a free consultation always beats a free trial in any gym business. It’s really, really popular now to talk about just coming in and having people do free trials. And in some franchises or a group setting that’s mostly choreographed, like spin class or Introduction to Karate or Jazzercise, a free trial can work just fine, but it doesn’t work in a coaching environment. And the reason is that you need to set yourself aside as a professional, and that starts with a consultative process. When a client comes in the gym, you need to talk about their goals so that you can frame your program as what’s gonna get them there instead of just letting them come in, try it and try to figure out on their own. Like, is this the thing that’s gonna help me lose weight or give me more energy or get some strength back or help feeling sore all the time?

Chris Cooper: (01:10)
They don’t know that. And so it’s our job as professionals to tell them exactly how that’s going to work. The big problem with the free trial-type stuff in a coaching business is churn. Now, even if you’re in a big metropolitan area like New York City or London, eventually you’re going to run out of the early adopters who just want to try your service once and fall in love forever. Even though that was the case for me, and probably for you if you own a gym. Now, it’s not the case for most people, right? We’re early adopters. They’re not. Generally, the people who come in through a free trial just don’t stick around as long. Here’s the data on that. The average length of engagement, the average time that a client sticks around if they come in through a free trial is just under eight months.

Chris Cooper: (01:59)
Not great. That’s not enough to build a coaching business on, and more importantly, it’s not enough time to change their life. You can’t instill a meaningful, lifelong love of fitness and nutrition in eight months. For us, after we teach people how to install a consultative process like the No-Sweat Intro, that leg immediately jumps by over five months to 13. Now, there are other things that we teach in Two-Brain too, but most professionals, if you think about it, have a consultative process. My chiropractor is not running a free trial back adjustment because they know that not every single thing that they do is appropriate for every possible client, and that’s the way that it is in a coaching business. So the, the consultative process at intake is the first thing that we teach a lot of gym owners who come into Two-Brain, whether they change their pricing, whether they change their offering or not, they need to have a conversation with their client and be able to say, here’s how I’m going to help you.

Chris Cooper: (02:57)
Okay? Every professional does this. They might call it motivational interviewing, they might call it something else, but the reality is a No-Sweat Intro is just a short-form consultative process that helps you make the correct prescription for your client. And for a lot of your clients, that prescription is not the same group training that everybody else is doing. All right, now let’s talk about client value. The average client value for gyms coming into Two-Brain is just under a hundred dollars a month. That’s really, really low for a professional service. After they institute a No-Sweat Intro, the average ARM- average revenue per member- goes up to 185. So imagine if every member at your gym paid you $85 more per month, and were happy to do it because they were getting better results and they stuck around for almost twice as long.

Chris Cooper: (03:45)
Right? The No-Sweat Intro literally doubles and sometimes quadruples the value of every single client that you get, because it doubles what they’re willing to pay, and it doubles their lifespan too. If you really wanna make a difference in people’s lives, you have to start by asking them what they want to achieve and then using your expertise as a coach to tell them how to get there, not just let them wander in, try something, try not to hurt them, and then let them figure it out on their own. Some people will say that a No-Sweat Intro is a barrier to entry. It’s not a barrier to entry, it’s a barrier to exit. The No-Sweat Intro and a consultative process, a free conversation at intake helps keep people around the gym by telling them exactly how you’re going to help them. That’s why it’s so important.

Chris Cooper: (04:36)
So I’ll say it again. The NSI isn’t a barrier to entry, it’s a barrier to premature exit. It stops churn in gyms, and if you’ve been around the gym field long enough, you know that the big problem is not really getting more clients. It’s keeping clients. If you’ve got a good solid retention plan, you’ll keep clients long enough to change their lives, induce meaningful health gains into their lifestyle and also build a better business. You also know that the gyms who say that they’ve got 300 or 500 clients are either replacing 30 to 50 clients every single month, or they’re just not sticking around at those numbers for long. You can start by making an amazing gym with 150 members and then scaling up from there after you’ve got your processes dialed. The key to that, though, is good retention. And good retention starts with a consultative process called the No-Sweat Intro.

Chris Cooper: (05:31)
People who are saying, you just need to do a free trial, who want to drag us backward 10 years, they just don’t have the data that we have, and so they just don’t know any better. And so what I’d love to see is everybody acting on data. And the data says, use a No-Sweat Intro at intake, but don’t take my word for it. Ask any GM in Two-Brain Business. There are well over 800 worldwide. There are 1700 alumni. You can ask them, did a No-Sweat Intro improve their business or not? And they will tell you unequivocally yes. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in the group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to GymOwnersUnited.com to join. Do it today.

The post Free Gym Trials Are 2015. Here’s How to Get High-Value Clients Now. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

4 Essential Tips to Sell More Apparel at Your Gym

Here are the “secrets” to selling apparel—from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.

Matt Albrizio of Forever Fierce made a great Facebook post the other day, and I’ll reproduce some of it here to help gym owners make more cash through retail sales.

I’m also going to hold Matt’s advice up to my own experience as a gym owner of 12 years so you get a ground-level perspective. I have no doubt my experiences will be all-to-familiar to many of you.

Space-Age Fabrics

Matt says: “You don’t need to offer performance fabrics to sell apparel. … (Suppliers) still promoting this are simply trying to offload a bunch of bad inventory they purchased and make it your problem. People have enough of these items already.”

My experience: This is solid advice. Thankfully, we never considered performance fabrics. It just seemed like a bad idea to me. All I really wanted to do was sell a T-shirt with my logo on it, not wick sweat and try to compete with lululemon. Besides, I’ve coached too many stinky people in performance apparel to want that smell burned into something with my logo on it.

Stocking Inventory

Matt says: “Preorder all apparel unless you have a lot of visitors. Leave the preorder open for 1 week and order a LITTLE extra (6-12 pieces). Better to be sold out of apparel than overstocked.”

My experience: Had I read this 12 years ago, I would have made thousands on retail. As it stands, all our apparel profit was always wiped out by unsold inventory. This happened every single time without exception. I still have boxes of way-too-small T-shirts only toddlers could wear comfortably. When you start weighing margins against the cost of unsold inventory at a small business, you quickly realize that 10 shirts collecting dust on the shelf wipe out the profit from the 30 you sold.

Bonus advice from Matt: “The reason your preorder didn’t work is because you are winging it and you lack a ‘culture of apparel.’ … When you don’t have a plan/process, you get humbled petty quickly. Adopt a system: Experiment. Fine tune it. Implement it. Repeat until you find success.”

Sporadic Product Releases

Matt says: “Offer apparel 4-6 times per year. It will keep the designs fresh and unique. This will establish a ‘culture of apparel’ in your gym. This means that apparel plays a role in your gym and is ‘part of the deal here.’ … (If you) offer apparel 1-2 times a year, you’ll make a ton of stuff available for purchase because ‘it is what everyone asked for.’ It is so much stuff that no one can possibly order everything at once, and they get decision paralysis. … You have more products in the store than sales made, and you’ve decided apparel is a waste of time.”

My experience: Randomly deciding to get some T-shirts every so often didn’t work for us at all. And we definitely tried to offer too much variety instead of just “the fall sweatshirt.” Because we ordered stuff so infrequently, we never learned any lessons or built any systems. We just found new ways to make the same mistakes and lose money. Had we offered simple apparel orders four times a year every year with a streamlined process, we would have generated revenue every quarter and had people expecting the next item—perhaps even as a Christmas gift or birthday present to someone else. People would have been wearing our logo everywhere on cool new gear, not painting fences in faded, 5-year-old gym T-shirts.

Your Buddy With the Part-Time T-Shirt Biz

Matt’s advice: “Work with a vendor who has a big-picture strategy and sales experience in this niche. Yes, the local guy is very nice, and he is in the same area as you. Yes, a member’s brother’s cousin’s sister’s niece prints shirts, and I’m sure they can cut you a great deal. But at the end of the day, just work with someone who knows what they’re doing in this niche and serve you best.”

My experience: This is truth. While I like supporting other local small businesses, there is no substitute for competence. I’ve gone with the buddy-who-prints-shirts option. There were so many errors that entire size runs had to be reprinted. And the order was late. When I told the connection who had recommended the vendor that the experience was disastrous, he said, “Yeah, it’s always kinda like that with him.” This story is not uncommon. Find a great vendor and use its resources—advice on styles and designs, free graphic services, marketing materials, sales tips, etc. If you don’t go with a pro, you’re rolling the dice.

Real Retail Stats

Unless you’re in a destination city like Las Vegas and your drop-ins must exit through the gift shop, you’re not going to sell thousands of retail items. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money through retail.

Done right, a retail program can boost your profit. And every dollar of profit counts in a small business.

I asked gym owners in our private Facebook group for any numbers they could share. Here are some stats from ground level:

One reported that retail provided 6.09 percent of gross annual revenue.Another uses a vending machine to sell $4,400 of assorted stuff a year, with a profit margin of 30-40 percent, depending on the exact item breakdown.The owner with the vending machine also generates $1,200-$2,000 in gross apparel sales every three to four months, with a profit margin of about 30 percent. If you use an average of $1,600 per campaign and assume four campaigns, that’s about $2,000 in profit.Another owner said retail contributes 1.4 percent to total profit.One other owner—not in Las Vegas or Hawaii—said he makes $34,000 in retail sales a year, which is 9 percent of total gross revenue. His top tips: Be consistent (four to five campaigns per year), use pre-orders and work with great vendors.

These are not insignificant numbers. Thirty grand is a good month of total revenue in many gyms!

And remember this: A well-run apparel program doesn’t have to eat up much time. You just regularly present stuff to an audience that’s eager for it. You could even pay a staff member an admin rate to handle everything.

At the very least, if you stop winging it you can avoid losing money while draping your logo on the fit, smiling people who are your very best advertising. A breakeven proposition that comes with tons of free advertising is still a pretty good play.

But aim higher: Take Matt’s advice and create a strong apparel program that contributes to your profit four to six times a year.

The post 4 Essential Tips to Sell More Apparel at Your Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

5x Revenue in One Year? This Gym Owner Did It!

Evan Armstrong: (00:01)
Good day from Australia. I’m Evan Armstrong, and we have 5x our revenue with the help of Two-Brain Business in 2022.

Mike Warkentin: (00:09)
Evan, did I hear you right From Australia? 5x revenue.

Evan Armstrong: (00:13)
We sure have, Mike, since February. That is exactly what happened since engaging the lovely Anastasia as our business mentor.

Mike Warkentin: (00:21)
Will you tell listeners how you did it so they can have the same success?

Evan Armstrong: (00:25)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Mike, and it’s really made me reflect deeply, which I really appreciate. And there’s not one single thing. I was only thinking this morning that there’s such a time lag between the improvements that you’d make, but then also seeing the results. So I guess looking back, starting from the work with Anastasia in March, I’ve come up with about four or five things that really have helped us with that improvement.

Mike Warkentin: (00:51)
And you’re gonna give them right here on the show, you’ll tell people what you did exactly?

Evan Armstrong: (00:56)
One thing I’ve learned is that it’s all about value, right? I’ve received so much value from you guys, so it’s my pleasure to give as much as back as as possible. And if this helps anyone, then all the more better. I mean, we’re all here to improve big health and fitness, right?

Mike Warkentin: (01:12)
Okay, well, I am going to tell the listeners who we are and then we’re gonna dig right into that. Listeners, this is Run a Profitable Gym. We are here every week. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and I track down gym owners who are getting incredible results. I ask them how they’re doing it. They’re kind enough to give the answers because they want you to improve your business as well. So today we’re down under, it’s Evan Armstrong, Destiny Fitness Australia. He recently left an office job. He’s now making huge changes in his business. One of those changes, 5x revenue. So Evan, the big question, let’s get into it. You said you have some reasons prepared. How did you do it?

Evan Armstrong: (01:47)
I love it, mate. First and foremost, I did quit my day job and I opened up our calendar from 18 appointments a week to 31 appointments a week. So, just for the listeners context, we are one-on-one PT, and it is PT by a physio, or they might call it in the States or Canada, a physical therapist. And it’s a blend between physio, PT, some massage. And we’ve recently added the nutrition coaching, which has been really positive. But look, essentially we run appointments on the hour, every hour. So we opened our calendar and that’s obviously got a big part to do with it. Quitting the day job, opening up from 18 appointments a week to 31, and currently running at about two thirds booked. And that’s been really helpful. We were four nights a week with the evenings. And so it was a matter of getting the confidence up, booking out those evening time slots and then saying, Hey, you know what? Let’s, let’s take the plunge and let’s open up the calendar.

Mike Warkentin: (02:46)
Was that scary?

Evan Armstrong: (02:49)
It actually wasn’t. Cause I had the confidence that Anastasia gave me. And it was exciting just to have that creative freedom to step into it and say, now I’ve got the time to really focus a hundred percent on our passion. And so it was more exciting than anything. It was more exciting to leave. Things got really tight there for a while, doing the full-time job and doing the business that was getting quite busy. So it was a relief to now actually slow down a little bit in the mornings and have some thinking time. So it was amazing.

Mike Warkentin: (03:23)
So you got a mentor, you hooked up with Anastasia from Two-Brain Business, and you did that while you had a full-time job working on the side to set up your business and get it ready to roll as a full-time thing that’s gonna provide for you and be your whole thing. Is that right?

Evan Armstrong: (03:35)
Exactly right, Mike. Started in the garage. I had about two clients. I had the neighbor, who needed some work with her knee. We had someone from from work who came in. I’m in the single garage now that we’ve turned into our office. I had the dog sniffing at the door. I had the eight year old knocking on the door wanting daddy. So yeah, a quintessential change, my man. And you know, something else that we’ve worked on a lot is constantly learning. Learning a lot from books, learning a lot from you guys. Started with Chris Cooper’s “Gym Owners Handbook.” I thought, look, what else do I need to learn? What else do I need to find out to get this business really pumping? And so searching through the audio books, boom, came across Chris. Listened to the book and got engaged in the content.

Evan Armstrong: (04:25)
And then there’s the website. So it’s easy to use book a call. So essentially that helped a lot. So a lot from the learning, a lot from others has really helped us develop. One of the things I have picked up is thinking that everything is a system. So we picked that up, thinking that, okay, what systems do we need to set up? Very system-driven, the way we meet clients, we open the door for them, they enter before us. There’s always a smile, there’s always a welcome back. The way we run our session, it’s the same routine. We are making sure we’re on time, we’re making sure that we’ve got their program printed beforehand. The way we email, we’re prompt, even our marketing systems. We’ve really refined with Anastasia’s help, and a bit of guerilla marketing. So I’ve got a couple of little tricks there and our branding consistency, just trying to keep that same goal setting systems. I mean, it’s really trying to break it down. And as Robert Kiosaki would say, it’s building an asset. It’s building something that you’re hoping can survive by itself or particularly without you being there constantly.

Mike Warkentin: (05:44)
You know, what’s funny about that though is that a lot of people that start small, and I was definitely guilty of this. I started literally in a garage similar to you. And I’ve got a big dog sleeping beside me here. But you start small as an entrepreneur and you kind of have this tendency to just do stuff by the seat of your pants, make your wings on the way down as it were, and just maybe not fill in those policies and procedures that maybe come back to bite you in the butt later on. That happened to me. But it sounds like you did the other thing where instead of just going like very casual, I’m my own boss kind of thing, you rigidly laid out your client journey and the policies and procedures that would support that. Have I got that right?

Evan Armstrong: (06:19)
Exactly right. And that really came into effect with Anastasia. She really kept us accountable to doing that. Little bit scary at the start. She’s got a bit of the Russian accent happening, and very disciplined, which I really appreciated. So the accountability factors there. But yeah, she’s a lovely person and she’s certainly got that compassion and understanding.

Mike Warkentin: (06:41)
The thing that I like about her is that she’s very upfront with her mentees that she works hard. She expects a lot and she pushes, she’s very blunt and direct about stuff, and I really like that about her. And we have mentors who work in all sorts of different ways. So if someone needs a different approach, that’s cool. But she works really well with people who just wanna do the work and put their nose down. And she’ll be blunt, like, did you do your homework? Nope. You need to do your homework.

Evan Armstrong: (07:05)
That’s exactly right. And it’s worked for us. It’s the mindset which I’ve picked up from Brian Tracy or even Tony Robbins. It’s that 1% improvement. How do we make these systems 1% better? It’s ironing out the clumps, it’s going through the day and saying, you’re sitting there with a client and you’re thinking, gee, I wish we could do this better. Or this isn’t ideal. And so it’s one step at a time. Can we upgrade the computer screen? So now our clients, we can educate them through the sales binder because we’ve got larger computer screens there. It’s adding drinks. Everyone now gets a free drink per session or a bonus drink included within their session. So that’s a 1% improvement. And all of a sudden it’s a better customer experience.

Mike Warkentin: (07:54)
Yeah. What’s interesting, though, is that lots of people sit there during the day at their gyms and they think that. They’re like, ah, I should change that. I should do this. And then it slips their mind in a slew of other things and they don’t do it. Taking action is the thing that makes a real difference. And this is something that Chris Cooper has talked about when he’s talked about gym owners and said, if you wanna improve your business, the first thing you do every day. Make sure that thing measurably improves your business. And Chris has done this with Two-Brain. He does this with his other businesses. The first thing he does, coffee in hand, staggering up with his bathrobe is one thing to measurably improve your business. It sounds like you’ve really taken that to heart. You’re doing that.

Evan Armstrong: (08:32)
It drove me a little crazy to start because I had so much to do. And loving your social media work by the way, I’m just thinking of you with your crate, saying to Chris, I’ve got so much to do.

Mike Warkentin: (08:44)
Oh, you saw us on TikTok , eh?

Evan Armstrong: (08:47)
Yeah, look, so even our priority setting and our goal setting is now a system. So everything now goes straight into Google Tasks. Not sure if you’ve used Google Tasks, but we love it. Cause you can drop and slide the priorities really easily, the app on the phone and it’s on your PC and whilst it’s a small business, we’ve run it like a company. So we’ve got all of the divisions. So boom, you’ve got a marketing idea. It goes straight into the marketing division on Google Tasks as a priority. And so then when we get around to it, we tick it off and show that it’s done. I try to keep a list of top 10, although that quickly blows out into a list of top 15, 20 tasks. And so then I’m prioritizing the day, sliding those tasks up and down. And I’m thinking, look, I’m sitting with a client, I’m thinking I’ve gotta upgrade their program. So I remember, it’s straight into the priority system, and so I’m less likely to forget it, much more likely to achieve it.

Mike Warkentin: (09:51)
So listeners: we’re digging into details here, but I’m gonna give you two broad words to summarize. And the first one is systems. The second one is action. And these are the things, the drumbeat on this show when you talk to successful gym owners is systems in action. Systems are boring. They’re not sexy, but they’re the basis of a successful business. I’m sorry to say it, they will make you money. And taking action is the second thing. Those two things are the heart and soul of what we’re talking about here. Evan, tell me some more about some of the stuff that you’ve got going on. I love that you’ve got this, you’ve got the client journey, you’ve got everything laid out, but I think there’s something interesting here. Where you said you opened up new sessions from 18 to 31 or whatever the exact numbers were. Doing that, they don’t just fill themselves. How did you fill those?

Evan Armstrong: (10:34)
I think a lot of it had to do with our website. We were really forced to take a deeper look at our website, again, with that 1% mentality. How can we make this 1% easier for our customers to engage? We now have the form that they can fill out as soon as they enter the website. We now have the free assessment that they can book in straight away. So it’s making it customer friendlier, and as attractive as and simple as possible. We had a little bit too much going on. We had to simplify it down and make it really clear as to what we offer and how we worked to make that first book really easy. We have improved our sales system. So with a sales binder that I’ve learned from Two-Brain Business, it’s been amazing just because you can demonstrate the value when people are sitting there.

Evan Armstrong: (11:26)
And you’ve gone through all of their problems and concerns. You know, putting them first is something else I’ve learned and listening really deeply as to what their concerns are and how is it emotional for them? What are the emotions behind driving these goals and digging more deeply into that. And then going into the sales binder, okay, here’s the solution to the problem. Here are our other options. And you’re putting that client in the driver’s seat. I mean, we all have to feel in control. Yeah. We all have to be the one making the decisions and saying, yes, you know, I’m gonna choose that. That’s for me. So we’re outlining value. This is a value here. We’ve got the PT sessions from a physical therapist, can include some massage. If your back’s sore, you don’t have to miss your session. We have the nutrition option, which we know is great for the weight loss. And that does include that accountability factor throughout. So that’s helped, having that sales binder to really show our value and give people choice.

Mike Warkentin: (12:34)
Yes. So you’re using that prescriptive model, right? That’s the prescriptive model? Listeners. If you don’t know what that is, the simple step version is exactly what Evan said. You ask clients in a free consultation, what do you wanna accomplish? Then you tell them how you can help them solve that problem. By presenting high value services in a professional way. We use a sales binder. If you do that, you will sell more, your clients will stay longer and they will get better results and your average revenue per member will go up. These are data driven numbers. I’m not just making this whole thing up. We have data that proves this. Evan, have you seen that in your business? Have you seen like retention, sale prices and everything that you you’re doing there? Have you seen that stuff move as a result of this prescriptive process with new clients?

Evan Armstrong: (13:19)
So our price from March, November has gone up from $90 a session to 125 a session or 125 a week. And yeah, we did have some price resistance, but people are really seeing a value now and they’re loving it. So yeah, most definitely not.

Mike Warkentin: (13:36)
And you’re using, did I hear you say you’re using screens to present your sales binder in your office? Is that right?

Evan Armstrong: (13:42)
Yeah, we’re using the big PC screens, which is a lot easier for them. So yeah, much easier just on the PowerPoint presentation, one thing drops down at a time. Really clear, really easy and, really effective. So I used to just stand at the front and try to wing it. I continue to do a deep dive in the whole sales learning. I mean, it’s the questions, it’s solving people’s problems. It’s showing how you add value, it’s the objections. So a lot of the time the objections aren’t necessarily an objection to you or an objection completely, but it’s a concern. We all have concerns when we’re looking for solutions. So hearing those objections for the first time feels like a bit of an attack or a bit of a complete rejection, but it’s saying, Hey Mike, you might have an objection, it’s really just a concern.

Evan Armstrong: (14:33)
And I’m saying to you, okay, let’s unpack that a little bit further. Tell me what you’re concerned about. Oh, you know, I’m concerned about the price. We say, okay, well is there a way that you can afford this better? Are you smoking and are you drinking? Is there there something else you can make room for in your budget? Or can we help you? How can we help you see the value a little bit differently? This is what we include. Our memberships have now become more flexible. And particularly my style of membership has been, Hey, we’ve got a one month cancellation notice. You know, there’s nothing to lose here. If you get involved, if it’s not perfect for you, you can give us a month’s notice and you can cancel. And by the time the people get their first four to six weeks in, they’re seeing the results, the blood pressure’s come down, they’re moving better.

Evan Armstrong: (15:24)
We’ve built that connection and they say, I’m loving it. Let’s continue. We’re showing them that, hey, you can pause your session. You can pause your membership, sorry, for a couple of weeks. If you give us some months notice, you can, if you’re genuinely sick and you can’t do the phone call or the video conference, we’re giving you the credit voucher. And so straight up, some of those concerns that tick away with higher value or high price memberships, we’re starting to address those a lot earlier. And so that’s something that has really helped our sales as well.

Mike Warkentin: (15:58)
So I’m hearing three Ps right there that you’re talking about. That’s policies, procedures, and sales practice, right? You’ve got everything. You know exactly how you’re operating, you’ve got your whole presentation laid out, you’ve practiced this thing, you’re prepared for objections, and you’re collecting emotional information from clients about what this really means to them, that you can then say, yeah, there’s a price, but is the price of sickness, what is it worth to you? You can kind of start figuring out how to confront those objections because you’ve practiced and you know what you’re doing. So this is all important stuff. Listeners, sales binder, put one together. It doesn’t have to be a work of art. It just has to clearly present high-value stuff in a way that a client can understand. Less is more.

Mike Warkentin: (16:42)
Make it clear, make it professional. That’s a huge tip that Evan is putting into practice right now and it’s working. So talk to me a little bit about some of the coaching that you receive from Anastasia on a day-to-day basis. ‘Cause you don’t talk every day, but what is she getting you to work on and how is she getting you to prioritize? Because you said you have a huge list of stuff that you wanna do. How does she help you figure out the thing that’s gonna make that 1% improvement right now?

Evan Armstrong: (17:09)
She just tells me, she says at the end of the call, I want you to do these three things. I get a little bit frightened and then I’ll do it . So look, initially I did have some, maybe objections of myself, but I had some questions or hesitations perhaps. Like, oh, do I have the time for that? Is that really necessary? The community Facebook page. She says, go out, wear a plain t-shirt and start a community Facebook page so that people can see you, and they’re not even thinking about sales, or something for sale at all. And you’re building those relationships. It took me a few weeks to do that, and then all of a sudden I’m doing it, and guess what? It’s working. It was the inner group member Facebook group.

Evan Armstrong: (17:56)
I thought, oh, do people really need that? Do I really have time for that? Your mind starts to come up with excuses. And so, look, Anastasia knows what she’s doing. She’s done this for a long time. Just trust her from this and just do it. So as soon as that’s done, the members love it. They now have that privatized view of your business, a view, tailor-made information that they’re not gonna get anywhere else. They love it. So you’re definitely trusting what your coach has to say. Definitely just going for it. And you’ve really got nothing to lose. Worst case scenario, you come back with your coach, you refine it, and you talk about why it didn’t work, and they’ll steer you in the better direction again. To answer your question more thoroughly, at the moment it’s about doing the annual business audit. So

Evan Armstrong: (18:46)
Going through everything and saying, where do we need to improve for 2023 and how is that going to impact our goals? So my session with Anastasia is actually in two days time. So it’s Friday. So I’m kind of cracking the whip now to make sure I’ll get that done for her.

Mike Warkentin: (19:05)
You know, how often I did an annual audit at my business before Two-Brain?

Evan Armstrong: (19:09)
Yeah.

Mike Warkentin: (19:10)
Never. I never did it. Yeah, it’s a mistake, right? You just kind of get caught up in the day-to-day and you grind and grind and grind. And I was literally picking gum off rowing machines and vacuuming hair out of cracks in floors and stuff. But I wasn’t sitting down and actually doing an audit of saying, what will measurably make my business better? And then putting the plans in place to do it. I was so focused on the minutiae, I couldn’t look up and out at all the big stuff I needed to do to improve the client experience, retain staff and do all those other things. So it’s really cool that you’re doing that right from the beginning of this thing as a full-time gym owner. And you’re seeing measurable results, I’m guessing.

Evan Armstrong: (19:48)
Certainly are, mate, I owe a lot to the coaching process. I’ve only heard, I think Chris say it recently, that the coach has the vantage point where they’ve been there, they’ve done that. They’re not caught up in the minutia, like you said, and they can see the bigger picture. And that accountability factor, I can’t emphasize it enough because we all know we all have the shoulds. Yeah, I should do this, I should do that, I’ve gotta do this, I’ve gotta do that. And then when, you are paying the money and you’ve got someone that you’re gonna have to report back to. We all wanna feel good about ourself when we’ve done what we are supposed to do, or at least had a go at what we’re supposed to do. So yeah, that whole accountability factor has been amazing. I mean, I could listen to Chris and you guys all day and say, oh, that’s a great idea. I should really do that. You know? And then as soon as you’ve got someone that says you are gonna do it, you’ve got a month, or in the ramp-up phase, you’ve got a week. It really, really helps.

Mike Warkentin: (20:48)
So listeners, the ramp-up phase is getting your foundation in place. It’s a sprint. We’re talking weeks here. Some people do it a little faster, some people do it a little slower, but we’re not talking like six months. We’re talking a sprint, 12 weeks kind of thing. Blasting through the foundational stuff that you need to create this really firm pad to build your business on. After that, we get into the growth phase. And in that phase, things are a little bit more targeted because you have your foundation and then your unique business is analyzed by a professional mentor who says, you need to do this thing right now. Here’s the resource, here’s the proof. Take these steps, report back. And I’m saying it very directively, like Anastasia would of course, but the idea is do the work. We’ve tested all this stuff, put it in place, it is gonna work. Evan, he’s tried it. He was ehhh, he got the results. It makes sense. So talk to me in growth now. You’re at this stage where you’re now full-time, you’re in this business, you’re committed to it. What are you working on right now? What’s Anna got you doing to take your business to the next step? I mean, you’ve revenue is 5x. What’s next?

Evan Armstrong: (21:50)
It’s increasing the value and perceived value and real value for the members. So we’re looking at implementing the welcome pack. So practical gifts delivered to the member as soon as they’ve signed up. So it’s just a one percenter. It’s one more way that we can add value to the members.

Mike Warkentin: (22:11)
So that’s a clear focus on the client journey, right? That’s, you’re looking at it. Integrating this client and getting the client in there. They’re probably going to buy more stuff, let’s be blunt. But also, they’re going to stay longer because the better you can make their first 90 days, the longer they’re gonna stay. What else have you got?

Evan Armstrong: (22:31)
We’ve got our goal reviews on their client journey. We actually do, cause we’re seeing a client once a week, we’ve trimmed it right down to just be three questions once a week. So of course we’re taking their measurements once a week. We’re actually ordering a body morph scanner, so where we get body fat percentage, the muscle mass percentage, the bone density, we’re looking at thje weights lifted or the heart rate or the blood pressure. And then we’re looking at those three questions. Can you rate yourself out of 10 this week on your effort and application with your health and fitness? What could you have done better this week? What are you going to do following week to improve? And guess what, I’m gonna be asking you the same questions in your next session.

Evan Armstrong: (23:23)
And so they’ve got their home program, they might have the gym program, they’ve got the one-on one session with us. And that’s another one percenter, is we’re trying to add value by getting them to think more deeply about their own commitment and what they can do. So lots of focus on the client journey. We’ve implemented the Cronometer app, which is awesome. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it or heard of it, but it’s the app on the phone. And we would like Big Brother, as I tell our clients. We can see their nutrition, we can see their training, are they logging their daily walk? And we’re tracking their results through that. So that’s something that the clients are loving at the moment, that it’s just that extra value. Again, this is something that others at your 24/7 gym, they’re not getting. So it’s that, as we call it, the VIP. You’re a very important person. Call it corny, but it just happens to align with our core values of value, integrity, and passion.

Mike Warkentin: (24:25)
So that’s a clear focus on your client journey. Right there, you’re dialing it in, making it better.

Evan Armstrong: (24:31)
You’re at VIP, we’ll move mountains for you, and that’s the value. How much more value can we add? We are collaborating with other professionals so can we bring our members discounts for other services. Personally, we don’t offer the discounts, but some services do. Yeah. So we work with some counselors who might offer the discounts on their sessions, or we work with supplement providers and they offer discounts with their supplements. So all of a sudden within our membership you’re now getting discounts on some products with collaboration businesses.

Mike Warkentin: (25:10)
So that’s value added, that just brings more to the table for a member. And it doesn’t cost your business margin because you’re not giving them the discount yourself. You are just linking them, connecting them to other services and making it that much more valuable. So that’s client-facing stuff. How about stuff that you’re working on, on your end? I know that you shared with me some sales metrics. What are you doing on your end to get better at selling stuff?

Evan Armstrong: (25:34)
Personal development, Mike? For me, currently working on the inner zen. Getting calm, feeling happier as much as possible and enjoying every day. So the stress of running a business, I’m preaching to the converted with any business owner, or the shoulds, you know, should do that. This should be better. It’s focusing on the inner experience. Some meditating, making sure I’ve got plenty of time with my family. And just growing. I think from that regard personally has been really powerful. The way you are at home and in your personal life, it shows up professionally. So it’s working on that I think. Been really powerful. As I said, it’s learning more about the sales has been really, really powerful.

Evan Armstrong: (26:30)
And so that’s going to show up in the business. We’re looking at hiring. So we’re putting the word out for a clinical nutritionist and or a dietician to take charge of that nutrition coaching membership. We’re looking for a personal trainer who is a physical therapist. So that’s our differentiator. Yeah. Our PT is the physical therapist. And so we are advertising for that, reaching out to a recruitment specialist to see if they can help us with it. And I mean, once we can have a quality person in like that, that is just going to be the best thing ever for me to now get onto all of those priority lists. As much as I like working with the clients, that’s something that will inevitably bring them even more value where I can keep building the business.

Mike Warkentin: (27:21)
So that’s a hiring plan that’s going to get you into CEO role. And everything in the business will change at that point. That’s going to allow so much more things to happen to the clients. And it’s also gonna allow you to grow your business. So you’ve gone from in your garage by yourself to becoming the CEO of an ever-growing company, which I love. Here’s the thing. Lots of people listen to this show and they’re out there. They’re just like you were, you said you found Chris Cooper’s book, “Gym Owner’s Handbook”. Guys, you can get that on Amazon. You get a chance now to tell someone out there who was just like you a year ago, what should they do to 5x their revenue? What would you do if you were gonna talk to that person? Someone says, Evan, you 5x’d your revenue. How the hell do I do it? What would you say?

Evan Armstrong: (28:01)
First thing, Mike, I would say is slow down a little bit. I launched very quickly. I was starting in the shed and I was feeling a bit disgruntled. I looked immediately for rental properties and I didn’t spend enough time, I don’t think, on the finances. I thought, great, you know, I need four or five clients a week to cover the rent, and I’m sure we’ll make the rest and it will be fine. And then the insurance and whatever else, the electricity bill, and you go, goodness me, these bills just keep coming. So I would have had more appointments with the accountant and I would’ve put that financial side of the business plan in more thoroughly. I would definitely invest first and foremost in a coach and put that plan together more thoroughly before opening.

Evan Armstrong: (28:53)
People have gone down the path before. Hey, you know, as I say, the success leaves clues. So I would work closely with others to start. And then once you’ve got that plan in place, just go for it. Just launch. I mean, obviously if you need that safety net of another source of income, another source of revenue, by all means. Extremely good choice to do that. But just launch, put yourself out there and you never know. You never know who’s watching. Talking to you now, how cool is that? You never know who’s watching and what opportunities are gonna open up. So you can play it safe to a point, but then you’ve just gotta go for it.

Mike Warkentin: (29:39)
I love it. And listeners, here’s what I’m gonna do. The first thing that Evan said was business planning. I’m gonna take care of that for you. I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to a done-for-you business plan that you guys can play with and mess around with. It’ll take a ton of work out of it ’cause no one likes doing a business plan, but if you do it, your life will be better. The second step after that is mentorship. If you want to hit this fast and easy button, work with us. We have all the assets that will get you where you wanna go faster. Don’t be like me, beat your head into the wall for a decade. Be like Evan and 5x your revenue in less than a year. Evan, thanks so much for sharing your story with us. I appreciate it.

Evan Armstrong: (30:13)
Thank you so much, Mike. Absolute pleasure.

Chris Cooper: (30:18)
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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AI and Gyms: Robo-Coach Breaks Client’s Hand With High-Five

Machines might be able to do many of the jobs humans do, but they aren’t human.

They don’t live inside your head and feel what you feel.

They can create superficial connections, but they can’t replace people and personal relationships.

It’s important for gym owners to remember that as artificial intelligence shows up more often.

Stories and Care

Stories are the key to building an audience.

And care is the key to building relationships.

Yes, you can tell AI to write a blog post about “how I discovered fitness and why I wanted to start a gym.” It could create something that might even be in the neighborhood of “not inaccurate.” But you can’t program AI to tell real, genuine stories—the kinds of tales that a service business actually needs.

Example: “Write a blog about how happy Bob was with his deadlift PR the other day.”

A machine could riff on that subject, sure. So could I, the same way a fortune teller can lead a person on with vague statements.

But I don’t know Bob and his history, and AI doesn’t either. The bot wasn’t there when the PR happened. It doesn’t feel emotion. Its story would be based on 200 keystrokes of cold data, not 200 personally coached workouts over the course of a year.

One step further: You could get a machine to send Bob a text message congratulating him on his PR. You might even program in a level of detail that would prevent Bob from knowing the machines have taken over.

But AI isn’t going to look Bob in the eyes; grab his chalk-covered, callused hand; and tell him, “You earned this, my friend.”

You have to do that. And your coaches have to do that. And then you need to tell that story to other clients and prospective clients.

Some tech tools can assist along the way, but you are the essential part of the system—you, your experiences, and your relationships.

Real Relationships

Busy, forward-thinking entrepreneurs are right to try and find ways to buy more time, offload tasks, reduce costs and solve problems. And AI can be a small part of that—just not at the expense of real stories and real relationships.

In a microgym that provides coaching, stories and relationships are the keys to client acquisition and retention. They’re the soul of the business. The stickier your stories and the stronger your relationships, the more profitable your business will be.

If you’re truly focused on serving about 150 people—a great target for a gym owner who wants to make $100,000—you’d be wise to emphasize the human touch. You can’t compete with the super-hot AI trainer who doesn’t need sleep and comes to a person’s living room on demand to crank the fully licensed Top 10 tunes and deliver a workout. But the person who wants that experience isn’t your ideal client.

At a microgym, your ideal client is looking for coaching, care and connection—a real video message from a real person when three workouts in a row are missed, a high-five after a hard session, a hug when a beloved pet passes away.

Use technology, computers and AI to improve the client experience, but don’t make those things the core of your client experience. Make relationships and trust the foundation of your business.

When to Use AI for Gym Media

In this series, we’ve been looking at the role of AI in a business, with emphasis on media.

Here’s what AI is good for:

Saving time and adding volume when you need generic copy—like ads or perhaps social-media posts.Reducing the costs associated with producing that volume.Fulfilling roles in a carefully optimized, stress-tested, human-monitored system.

What AI can’t do:

Create the system, optimize it and ensure it works properly.Break through all the other AI content to build your audience.Make and maintain real connections for you.Tell your unique story.

If you’re considering adding AI to your business, remember this: In a coaching business, there is no substitute for a personal connection.

Offload simple media tasks just the way you would offload cleaning, bookkeeping and even coaching classes.

But don’t ever offload client care in a coaching gym. If you do, you won’t have anyone to coach.

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AI Media and Gyms: Can You Offload Content Creation to a Bot?

Artificial intelligence didn’t write this blog—and you might want to think twice before you get AI to write one for your gym, personal-training business or affiliate.

In a recent discussion in our private group for gym owners, several said they had success using one of the many AI systems now out there. Enter a few details and AI can crank out blogs, ad copy, scripts for videos, job descriptions and more.

So does AI-produced content have any place in a gym business?

Maybe—but definitely not as Step 1. And definitely not as a substitute for real relationships with your clients.

Two-Brain’s “AI Content“

A lot of people don’t know Two-Brain actually has a version of an “AI system for gyms.” It’s our Content Vault. (Two-Brain Growth clients, click here.)

Because Chris Cooper knows gym owners need to produce content but often struggle to do it, we created a huge pile of done-for-you, customizable assets—customization is a key part of the plan.

The giant collection includes social-media posts, email campaigns, blogs, video scripts, lead magnets and more. The vault has enough content to help a gym build an audience for an entire year, and the content is tailored exactly to microgyms and coaching businesses.

A lot of gym owners know the Content Vault exists but still can’t find the time or will to use it.

I’d suggest the same issue will come up with AI-generated media.

It’s one thing to know you have a problem—a lack of content—and see a potential solution—the Content Vault or perhaps an AI content producer. It’s another thing to actually take action and build the systems that will ensure everything goes according to plan.

Here’s the thing: AI content producers are no different than virtual assistants and done-for-you marketing agents. They are automation. Automations work best as Step 3 in this critical series: systemize, optimize, automate.

Most people skip the first two and jump straight to automation.

Gym AI on Autopilot

Here’s what can happen when a gym automates content production without creating a system to govern output:

A gigantic pile of content is created but never posted because the gym owner doesn’t have a “publishing habit” or system to get content out.Tone-deaf content reaches clients and confuses them. Example: An email about eating like a carnivore goes out to an audience that would be better served by info on habits such as “eat some vegetables at every meal.” Example 2: Posts about barbell deadlifts reach people who have no interest in barbell training.Email and text lead-warming campaigns run on autopilot and annoy people with irrelevant messages and non sequiturs. Generic, AI-written blogs are posted to a website with a broken appointment-booking button.Direct-message questions from real people go unanswered on social media or just receive an enthusiastic thumbs-up emoji from a bot or virtual assistant.People who see an AI-created social-media post call a business to find out more, but their calls go unanswered and their messages aren’t returned.

I’m not making this stuff up. It’s all too common.

I’ve done content audits and found hosts of broken links on gym websites. I’ve seen posts that clearly don’t sync with the gym’s “perfect client.” I’ve read emails with messed-up merge tags that make the interaction taste bad: “Hey [FIRSTNAME]! Thanks for the message. You can drop in for a chat at [ADDRESS].”

I’ve written hundreds of emails for gym owners to deploy, and I’ve actually seen them generate stuff like this when they aren’t supported by the right business systems:

“I signed up two weeks ago. Why do you keep asking me to book an appointment to find out about your gym?”“I already requested your pricing. You didn’t reply.”“Why are you asking me if I want nutrition help? I’m asking about personal training.”
No Systems, No Success

You and I both know phones sometimes don’t get answered. Busy entrepreneurs might consider “I didn’t see that message in my in-box” to be the song of our people. And “I forgot to post to social” is as common as a missed double-under in a gym.

Some will suggest you can bolt in more bots to solve these and other problems. And yes, you can definitely use virtual assistants and even real people to address the issues. But without an air-tight system, they’ll fail, too. If you’re reading this, you know that’s gospel truth because you’ve seen staff—human or virtual—flounder in your business without support, guidance and standard operating procedures.

A lack of business systems will derail even the best AI content—and you should consider a few other speed bumps. Like this one: AI-produced content is going to be generic and inauthentic. Prospective clients shrug off that stuff, and search engines like Google hate it.

But for now, remember this: If you automate a process without creating a system and optimizing it, the system will break down and you’ll be right back where you started.

On the other hand, if you create a media machine, make it perfect and then fill it with gas, the engine will purr.

Here’s an example of what it looks like when real people take action that will get real results:

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