Chris Cooper's Blog, page 80

Your Gym Needs an On-Ramp Program. Here’s Why.

Chris Cooper: (00:01)
Hey guys, I’m Chris Cooper. I’m the founder of Two-Brain Business, and today I’m gonna tell you why you need an On-Ramp or another onboarding program for your fitness business. Whatever that fitness business is, an onboarding program will help you set up clients for success, avoid early churn or even injury, and keep them around long enough to actually change their lives. This is Run a Profitable Gym, and if this is helpful to you, please hit subscribe. You can also join GymOwnersUnited.com where we can chat about this in person. It’s a free public Facebook group with over 6,000 other gym owners in there where we keep things light and positive and supported by evidence. Now, why do you need an onboarding program? I’m gonna use an example as a CrossFit gym, because that’s where I was back in 2008 when I started learning about this stuff.

Chris Cooper: (00:51)
And it’s really important to CrossFit gyms right now because there are people who are saying, you don’t need an On-Ramp, just jump people right into group. Well, these people mean well, but they just simply don’t have the experience or the data to understand what the actual value is to having an on-ramp program in your gym. So I’m gonna be saying CrossFit a lot, but if this applies to your gym and if it’s kickboxing or jujitsu or whatever, by all means, take the lesson anyway. So when we started doing CrossFit back in my gym, we were a bunch of early adopters. We found it and we thought, Hey, this looks kind of crazy. I wouldn’t say that we were really bought in, but we were very CrossFit curious. And so we tried it. We threw up in our mouths and put pictures of torn hands up on Facebook, and we were bought in, right?

Chris Cooper: (01:40)
And all of our early clients who were trying the program out were all personal training clients. At my personal training studio, this would’ve been late 2007, all these clients already had a good foundation in fitness. They all had a really good relationship with us. They’d been doing one-on-one personal training for up to three years. They had good strength base, they had good movement patterns, they had good mobility. And so when we started introducing higher intensity workouts, they loved it. And we said, okay, great. This is working awesome. 12 out of the 13 people in our trial CrossFit program loved it. They’re gonna keep doing it. So let’s go open up a second location. And at that second location, we followed the advice that was on the CrossFit message boards at the time, and that was just run a free trial. Come and try a class.

Chris Cooper: (02:33)
And what we found was that people didn’t automatically love this, especially if they didn’t have a history of exercise. So people were leaving, they’d come and do the free class or whatever, and they would just get crushed and they’d leave and they’d say, well, I’m bad at this. I’m bad at CrossFit. I’m never going back. And even the early adopters who did love it, they loved that feeling of, oh, I’m gonna be sick, or I’m gonna rip my hands today. I’m so hardcore. What we found was that after seven or or eight months, they weren’t very open to coaching. And so around 2006, Nikki Violetti wrote this blog post, started her blog and Nikki and her husband Rob Wolf were the fourth CrossFit affiliate, and Nikki published this program called the On-Ramp at their gym, CrossFit NorCal.

Chris Cooper: (03:22)
And it was this 21-day introduction to CrossFit at their gym. And what she’d noticed after doing this for a couple years, because she was a few years ahead of us, was that the free trial- joining a class, just trying it out- led to very high churn. It led to very quick burnout. It led to premature injury rates. It led to people feeling uncomfortable in joining their gym. And so they changed it to start with this consultative process and this 21 day On-Ramp. Now, in my first few months of owning a business, I had already read this and thought, this makes sense. The reason that your first CrossFitters at CrossFit Catalyst were so good was because they had a year or two years or five years of personal training with me already. So it made sense the next people to come in and try the free trial did not have that background or that experience or that exposure.

Chris Cooper: (04:15)
And so I got to compare these two groups. I even shared this in a CrossFit Journal article way back around 2010, 2011. It’s called “The Secrets of Sticking With It” if you look it up, and you can just Google it if you want to. So what we started doing after reading Nikki’s article was just On-Ramping our clients. And what we found was that they were still getting a lot of people who were early adopters into the gym. They’d heard of CrossFit, and they were excited to try it. And so these, for us, were mostly military people or firefighters or police. Service industry professionals with kind of a dangerous job. And so they came in and we’d say, okay, we wanna start you with On-Ramp to make sure that you know the movements. And they’d say, yeah, great. And then we would get 10 days into this 21 day process and they would say, well, this doesn’t look as fun as what I see on Crossfit.com, or can I go join the people over there in that class?

Chris Cooper: (05:12)
They’re doing real CrossFit while I’m learning the front squat. I didn’t see On-Ramp anywhere and come in to try On-Ramp, and when can I join the group? And so after 21 days, maybe it wasn’t as appealing or as exciting to them. For that audience, the 21 day On-Ramp might have been a bit long. So later we switched to 14 days and eventually we switched to seven days. Seven days for us, that was really the sweet spot. But a couple of things were happening at once there. So first, the early adopters were open to doing on-ramp, but 21 days was really just prolonging something in front of the thing that they were excited about. So a shorter on-ramp back then might have worked better. Today, now that all of those early adopters, especially in North America, they’ve all joined gyms and left, or they’ve joined gyms and then opened their own, or they’ve joined gyms and become coaches.

Chris Cooper: (06:04)
Now we’re dealing with a different audience, and a longer on-ramp might be better. So here’s what the data says. If a client comes in, they do a free trial and join the group. They’re likely- if they sign up, which is low, but if they sign up, they’re likely to stick around for just under eight months. At the eight month point, they’re almost always gone. Now, this could have something to do with burnout, it could have something to do with injury, sadly. Or it could just be that they don’t understand how this is helping them achieve their goals because their goal is not get better at CrossFit, where the early adopter’s goal was “we wanna try CrossFit, we wanna do really well at it, we wanna win the Games”. That’s not their goal anymore. So if a client is brought in through a consultative process and properly on-ramped, not only are they higher value, but they’re likely to stick around for 14 months.

Chris Cooper: (06:59)
And what’s interesting about the 14 month mark is that if a client makes it to the 14 month mark, they’re twice as likely to stay for two years. And if we can keep a client for two years, then we can change their lives because at the two year mark, they generally don’t quit exercise. Even if they quit your gym, they might go somewhere else. They might take up cycling or swimming instead, but they do not stop exercising. So two years is a great goal to hit for length of engagement with every client in your gym. And to do that, you have to have an on-ramp process. That’s what the data supports. The second thing that an on-ramp process does is it increases the value of every client, not just because they stay longer, but because they’re exposed to real coaching. Most on-ramps are done one-on-one now instead of in a group.

Chris Cooper: (07:50)
And what that does is it allows the coach to form a one-on-one relationship with the client, make a better prescription about what they should do in the future, and also know enough about the client to tell coaches even in a group setting, Hey, you know, watch out for Mary. She just doesn’t have the mobility in her left shoulder to be overhead squatting. That’s just not a good idea for her yet. So make the substitution for her instead of telling her that she needs to scale. So starting with that one-on-one on-ramping process is great. How long should your on-ramp be? It really depends where you are in the world. If you’re in Western Europe right now, the data shows that the rapid growth of affiliates means that you’re getting exposed to an audience of early adopters. So these people should have an on-ramp, but it should probably be shorter, maybe five to 10 sessions. If you’re in North America or one of the larger cities in Australia where CrossFit has been around for a while, you can have a longer on-ramp and you should.

Chris Cooper: (08:51)
And so many cities in North America now report that their best retention comes from an on-ramp of 90 to a hundred days long. That means that the client journey is plotted out in advance for up to three months. Now, that might include some group classes, but it’s not a free trial. It’s a consultative process where the coach is guiding the client to learn the movements one-on-one safely. Effectively, they’re making rapid progress. And when they’re ready, they are asked, do you want to try a group class? That means that the client is doing some group training in on-ramp, but they start with one-on-one and then they slowly shift their delivery or the way that they exercise from one-on-one to group. The last reason that I wanna share to have an on-ramp is that a lot of people perceive group training as a massive barrier to entry for them.

Chris Cooper: (09:40)
They’re new to exercise, they’re not going to openly share their goals with strangers for the first time. They don’t want to throw up in front of a group, they’re scared they’re not gonna do a good job, or they’re gonna collapse or seize up or even have a heart attack. They’re scared they’re gonna hurt themselves, they’re scared they’re going to fail. They’re scared more than anything that they just can’t do it. And so allowing them to have a one-on-one consultation first with somebody who then says, Mary, don’t worry, we’re gonna slowly ramp you up. And then when you feel ready, you can try a group. That is going to appeal to the high value client that a coaching business actually serves. The best part is that about 10% of your clients will stick with personal training, more or less forever. These people would not have joined your gym if there was no one-on-one meeting and no on-ramp, or they just had to jump straight into group training.

Chris Cooper: (10:37)
That means you are exposing people to fitness who would’ve been turned off by group. Training on-ramp is not a barrier to entry, it’s a barrier to exit. On-ramp keeps people around longer and creates a pathway for people who are scared but want coaching. Now, this data that was published way back in 2006 by Nikki Violetti, it was based on her gym alone. We’ve been collecting data for the last 10 years, and the data strongly supports a consultative process and on-ramp program, usually done one-on-one. And the length varies by where you live in the world. And then goal reviews and follow ups long-term extend the client’s lifespan so that you can keep ’em long enough to actually change their lives. Now, there are people out there who will say, you don’t need an on-ramp, just throw people into group. And these people mean well, believe me. They just don’t have the experience or the data that actually shows them that you need to have an on-ramp program to get people ready for your group training. Whatever it is, your on-ramp should be designed any way that you want it, but it should fulfill the goal of making people safe and comfortable before they join your group class. This will keep them around longer, long enough to meaningfully change their health. I hope this helps. This is Run a Profitable Gym podcast. Join GymOwnersUnited.com if you want to chat about this episode or any other, and I will be happy to answer your questions there.

Chris Cooper: (12:08)
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 Your Gym Needs an On-Ramp Program. Here’s Why. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

AI Media: 1,000 Bots at 1,000 Keyboards (and Why That Sucks)

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic right now.

Gym owners in our private Facebook group are talking specifically about AI content producers as a possible solution to media problems, and it’s worth exploring.

AI can produce mountains of content—a blog, three social-media posts per day and 10 variations of ad copy could be cranked out in seconds. Let’s assume these prolific AI content producers can operate perfectly in optimal systems created and maintained by entrepreneurs.

With these great systems in place, you start using AI. So does the gym down the street. So do 10 others over there. And a bunch in Tallahassee. And 100,000 other fitness businesses, plus a million enterprises in other industries. What happens then?

The answer: Complete content overload.

Too Much Weak Content

Content overload is already happening even without AI. It’s behind all this stuff, and more:

Facebook and other social platforms create complex algorithms to sift through the veritable mountains of content and find the good stuff you might actually care about.It’s hard to find anything—even posts from close friends and family members.Organic reach on some platforms is near zero, and you often have to pay to get any eyes on your content.Companies sponsor high-profile influencers in desperate attempts to cut through all the low-level noise.Governments pathetically try to regulate the geysers of content spraying from every mobile phone and building with an internet connection.Platforms themselves are taking an ever-increasing role in curating feeds, which some might call “censorship.”Platforms often prevent people from seeing content that will take them to a website or onto other platforms.Platforms are constantly weeding out bots that tell the world about “can’t-miss investment strategies” below your posts on macro tracking.Attention spans are now measured in seconds.

Here are some stats to support that:

500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.Google processes more than 40,000 queries per second.In a minute, 46,740 photos are posted to Instagram and 456,000 tweets go out.On Facebook, every minute produces 510,000 comments and 293,000 status updates.For more incredible stats, click here.

These numbers will only increase as people let AI crank out mediocre content.

So what’s going to happen to your AI-produced media? It will disappear online like a thimble of water poured into the ocean. Especially if it’s generic, copycat, fluffy content that doesn’t add any value for a consumer—Google hates that stuff and doesn’t rank it on its search engine results pages (SERPs).

No content is a problem. No eyes on your content is essentially the same problem.

Audience Building for Microgym Owners

Content is nothing without an audience.

For content to matter, it must reach people. To make that happen, you must create connections. Real connections. You must then strengthen those real connections with content that actually helps people in your audience. This is especially true for service businesses that involve physical and nutrition coaching.

Relationship building is best accomplished when humans talk to other humans. I’m not stodgy enough to suggest an AI bot can’t chat you up online and get you to click a link. But I would suggest that digital interaction is still weaker than a firm handshake, a smile and a conversation.

Proof: How often have you interacted with a virtual assistant and become enraged? I’d guess 50 percent of the time. To test my theory, call your bank right now and try to get its virtual assistant to do what you want it to do.

Two-Brain places affinity marketing above paid ads in our client-acquisition hierarchy for this reason: Human connections are more effective than computer-generated ad copy served to overloaded, fickle people on social media who really just want to see the newest gym-fails compilation.

Compare these two sentences:

“Click now to find out how easy it is to lose 15 pounds in 2 weeks with our new training system!”

“Hey Kim. I know this time of year is brutal on accountants. Want to bring your partner in with you to blow off some steam in your next session?”

Be Real

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use AI content generators. You can. But don’t expect your audience to grow just because you do. Machines might be able to create content, but they do it so quickly that their collective vanilla output will overwhelm people, not connect with them.

The best plan: Make personal connections and build your audience one person at a time. Create content that actually helps those people. Maybe use AI to save time in generating some ad copy or throwaway social posts, but don’t make a machine the backbone of your content strategy.

Try it right now: Get some coffee and head to a neighboring business. Start a conversation: Ask about that business and chat a little about yours. Get an email address and send an article that helps the person solve a problem.

Those simple interactions will do more for your business than 50 AI-generated blogs and 100 robot-written social media posts.

One more exercise: Imagine the catchiest line of Instagram copy ever posted to your account. Maybe it generates an extra 20 likes. Now pull out your phone and see what happens when you text this to a member of your gym:

“Hey! I was just thinking about you—how are you?”

The post AI Media: 1,000 Bots at 1,000 Keyboards (and Why That Sucks) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Client Reacquisition: Like Acquisition, but Cheaper and Easier

Here’s an important stat for gym owners:

44 percent of the 2,000 respondents in a recent ABC Fitness poll said they were once gym members before COVID but have not gone back to their gyms.

Wow, right?

These people had once broken free from their couches, slapped their credit cards down at gyms and signed up. Then the pandemic came. With lockdowns in place, these consumers broke their habits completely or started training at home, and they still haven’t returned to gyms.

But you might be able to change that.

Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper has often said that the easiest member to get is someone who’s been a member before. These people already know, like and trust you.

In fact, Two-Brain gives clients a simple, one-line email they can send to departed members. It almost always results in reacquisition. (Secret cheat-code email: “Do you still want to improve your fitness this year?”)

The beginning of the year is a prime time to send this message. But the beginning of 2023 might be the best time in history to send it out.

Think about it:

Pandemic-related lockdowns are thankfully a thing of the past in most of the world.People have had enough time to get bored with at-home fitness gear and programs.Pandemic-related weight gain and mood disorders are not rare.Many people are looking to rebuild personal connections severed over the last three years of isolation.The pandemic put health—and, by association, fitness—in the spotlight.

I think one of the best ways to invest your time is to pick up the phone and call every single member who departed your gym between 2020 and 2023.

You don’t have to make this a high-pressure, come-to-Jesus sales pitch. You can just ask them how they’re doing, then have a conversation like real humans used to have before TikTok, AI and VR headsets.

Will every person you call rejoin your gym? No. Some have moved on, some are still scared of COVID and some are trying to make their 2020 investment in a Peloton bike make sense.

But some people will come back to your gym. I’d wager your voice and care will motivate a few of them to do so right on the call. And I’d guess that a few others will return after thinking about it for a few days. Others will just appreciate your check-in, and who knows what that goodwill might bring down the line—a referral, perhaps?

You really have nothing to lose by comparing your current client list to your 2020 list and then picking up the phone. Reacquisition is a lot easier and a lot cheaper than acquisition, and you already have all the contact info you need to reach out and rekindle a relationship.

So resist the urge to open TikTok right now. Instead, take an hour of your time and call a few departed members.

Remember: About 44 percent of one-time gym goers are out there, and they probably need your help desperately.

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What Gym Owners Have to Say About the Intramural Open

If you follow our plan, the Intramural Open can be a flagship annual event at your gym.

And I don’t mean it’s just something fun that your members look forward to each year.

I mean the Intramural Open can be a key part of your retention, revenue-generation and relationship-building plans.

That’s a far cry from competition seasons past, in which frazzled gym owners worked way too much for five weeks straight and crawled out of Open season with a headache and an empty gas tank.

Our 2023 Intramural Open guide will ensure you:

Generate all the feelz, celebrate your members and acquire marketing assets that are usable all year.Add revenue through registrations and retail sales.Add revenue through pre- and post-event programs.Connect with friends and family of competitors to grow your audience.Use goal reviews to capitalize on the emotions competition creates.

I’ve used the Intramural Open with great success at my gym. Thousands of gym owners around the world have used it, too.

Here’s what some Two-Brain gym owners have to say about it:

“The single greatest event in terms of engagement and revenue we do all year! So much so we do it twice.”

“Oh my goodness! It is the most fun thing we do all year! The members look forward to it all year and our retention rate is always near 100%. I get to thank my staff for their extra work at the end of the the open too! It is a win-win!”

“Our keys to success in generating revenue and improving retention through the Intramural Open have been both preemptive planning and follow-through post-event. We earn some revenue on apparel sales for the event itself, but the real opportunities are found in how we use the Open as an anchor. We host movement and nutrition workshops leading up to it. Following the Open, we capitalize on clients’ newly identified gaps in their fitness to offer specialty courses. The clients that participate in the Intramural Open have the time of their lives with their friends. They purchase our additional service offerings—(average revenue per member) increases. They stay for years to keep progressing in their health and fitness journey—(length of engagement) increases. Everybody wins.”

“I found the Intramural Open before joining Two-Brain, and it … generated us a bunch of revenue, and gave us an annual camaraderie/spirit-building event that members and coaches actually look forward to. It’s super rare to have something ‘competitive’ be so much fun for our ‘non-competitive’ people.”

“We did competition wrong for a lot of years, and it became stressful for coaches and competitors. When we started to emphasize fun and camaraderie with the Intramural Open, more people participated and had a better time. The teams also really helped members get to know each other. It was a huge retention win to see friendships forming and people acquiring new ‘workout buddies.'”

“I’ve learned over the years that our members love it for the camaraderie and support it shows over the actual competition. So for those reasons, I love it now too.”

You Deserve to Profit

We put out the Intramural Open guide every year because we want to make gym owners successful. If we do that, they can help their clients live longer and happier lives.

Competition done sparingly can make gyms stronger and encourage clients to keep working on their health. But competition done at the gym owner’s cost—a cost of finance, energy and time—doesn’t help anybody long term. The reality is if you put on a great show for your clients for five weeks and then you’re burned out, it’s going to show, and you’re going lose all your momentum.

Use our plan to ensure competition helps you build a strong, stable business so you can serve your clients for decades.

Click here for our detailed 2023 Intramural Open Guide.

The post What Gym Owners Have to Say About the Intramural Open appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Competitions at Your Gym Should Generate Revenue

Many gyms have run competitions without making much money for all the time they invest.

I’d like that to change.

My Intramural Open guide will help you run a fun, in-house competition you can connect to the CrossFit Games Open if you like. But it will help you grow your business, too.

As an entrepreneur, your time is precious. You only have so much of it. So when you put in a bunch of extra hours running a competition for three to five weeks, you’re spending your most valuable resource.

I recall working 35-42 days straight during the Open one year, and I put in a lot of extra hours organizing, judging, cheering, coaching, validating scores and so on.

This isn’t a rare experience; all gym owners put in a lot of extra time when competition season rolls around. That time could be invested in doing goal reviews with clients, running a bring-a-friend event, setting up a marketing funnel, and so on. All those things will generate revenue or improve retention—so if you’re going to spend hours on a competition instead, that competition must generate ROI.

Revenue and the Intramural Open

My annual Intramural Open guide will tell you exactly how to run a fun, low-drag competition. It will also tell you how to earn revenue before, during and after the event.

I lay out a host of revenue-generating tactics in our 31-page guide, but I’ll highlight one for you here: Charge a registration fee for your in-house competition. If your clients enter any competition outside the gym, they’ll pay a registration fee. So charge them a fee for this one and then make sure they see value in the transaction.

Think about it: Most gym owners add three to five weeks of extra stuff to the menu during the Open. They’ll host Friday Night Lights events or Saturday Slugfests; they’ll organize heats, book judges and handle scoring; they’ll often supply prizes; they’ll accommodate second attempts at workouts; they’ll coach, cheer and support nervous athletes; they’ll work extra hard to create a fun atmosphere. All that is extra, and it’s worth $20-$50.

By charging a registration fee, you ensure you get a small return on your time investment. And you can go further with group competition-prep courses, personal-training sessions, goal reviews, retail sales and so on. It’s all laid out in our 2023 Intramural Open guide. The complete plan can add thousands to your bottom line.

It’s not a “cash grab” to profit from a competition. Remember: Everything you do in your gym should have a purpose. You invest time and energy in competitions, and the return on that investment should be better retention, more revenue or more clients.

If the Open doesn’t make you money, doesn’t improve adherence or retention in a measurable way and just wears you out, you can just skip it.

Or you can use my plan to ensure the 2023 competition season improves length of engagement and gross revenue. Provide a thrilling, fun event members can enjoy and improve key business metrics at the same time.

Sounds like a great plan, right?

Get the 2023 Intramural Open guide here.

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How to Boost Profit and Retention With the 2023 Intramural Open

Chris Cooper (00:15):
Hey everybody, I’m Chris Cooper, and this is my favorite time of the year. It’s Intramural Open season. This is the time when you get to bring your gym together, celebrate everybody’s progress, throw up a few fun challenges, give people the opportunity to do PRs, let everybody feel like they’re part of a team, and celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. It doesn’t hurt that it generates a ton of media, and, done right, it can actually make you a little bit of money without burning you out. This is the Intramural Open, and the idea came to me because at my high school, you start out by getting drafted into one of four houses. I know it’s a little bit Hogwart’s. I was drafted into the Panthers. My future wife was drafted into the Panthers. Decades later, my daughter was drafted into the Panthers, and now my son actually plays for the Panthers at this same high school. We were all in the same house.

Chris Cooper (01:03):
This can have intergenerational impact even at your gym if you do it right. And today I’m gonna walk you step by step through the Intramural Open: what it is, what the purpose is, how you can use it with the CrossFit Open if you want to or just use it as your own event. Here we go. By the way, if you want this guide, just click below and I will make sure that you get a copy of it for free. We’ve been publishing this thing now for almost a decade for free. Thousands of gyms around the world use this on its own or in conjunction with the CrossFit Games Open in some cases. First off, why we do this: it is our mission to make gym owners successful. Because if you’re successful, then you can change the lifespan and healthspan of the people in your community. And my ultimate mission is to help a million people find fitness, just like I did back in high school, through events and challenges like the intramural program that we had back then.

Chris Cooper (01:55):
That’s why this is such a great passion of mine to give this to you every single year. So the Intramural Open guide is free, again, if you just click the link below. Okay, so first, what is it? The Intramural Open is a four-to-six-week competition that you can do at your gym. You’re gonna put as many of your clients as you possibly can onto four teams. You’re gonna give them some random tests of fitness that you make up or you get from somewhere else, and you’re going to elect team captains. You’re gonna let them go wild. You’re gonna reward spirit. You’re gonna let them make up their team T-shirts. You’re gonna hang a banner on the wall of the gym after it’s all done. The way that you do it is really all about hype.

Chris Cooper (02:39):
This is your chance to celebrate your athlete’s progress, to celebrate your community, and to celebrate your brand. It’s gonna generate a ton of amazing stories for you, memories in the future, social-media blog posts. It’s gonna get clients to wanna do goal reviews, to want to think about their progress and how to speed that progress up, because it’s also a great measuring stick. So here we go. I’ve got the backstory here, but I don’t need to read it all to you. Let’s get into the basics. So first off, what you wanna do is you wanna select captains. I’m gonna be saying “four teams” because that’s how many teams we’ve always had at Catalyst. But if you wanna do three bigger teams or six smaller teams, that’s totally up to you. So the first thing that we always do is select captains. We want other people to be in charge of recruiting your members to do this.

Chris Cooper (03:28):
Every member who participates is a great addition to the program, and it makes the whole Intramural Open season better. Ideally, you’d get all of your clients to do this, even if it’s their first competition ever or their first event since high school. That’s totally fine, but you don’t wanna be the one recruiting it. What you wanna do is select captains. Now, in the past I’ve selected the top athletes to be captains, but what you really want are the mavens, the people who have the most spirit, who are the most connected in your gym, who have the most energy. Think about your best clients, like the people who show up with batteries included and feed everybody else with their energy. Those are your captains because it’s very, very hard to say “no thanks” to Betty Lou from Noon Group. But it’s easy to say “no” to Coach Chris, right?

Chris Cooper (04:16):
So here we go. What you’re gonna do is select your four captains, and then you’re gonna host a draft party. Okay? Now I’ve got all the timelines here and stuff starting early, like starting right now, and I’m gonna come back to this in a moment, but I really want to talk to you about draft night. What we do is try to make this an event in itself. All of us have this irrational fear of being the last one picked—maybe not so irrational in my case. It’s happened so many times that I just kind of got used to it, but most of us don’t ever wanna be the last one picked. And so what you wanna do is make the draft a big event where people are either pulling names out of hats or they’re set up to go out and recruit members from your gym.

Chris Cooper (04:59):
So, for example, what we would typically do is we would get as many people to sign up in advance as we can. We’d bring the captains together. Usually we would go out for wings and we would like have a private draft, okay? And we wouldn’t announce who got picked first or second or anything like that. Then it’s up to the captains to go out and recruit everybody who didn’t sign up. So in our gym, it would look something like 20% of our members would sign up in advance. I would take the captains out for some wings, we would do a private draft. We would take some pictures of us doing the draft but not release who got picked first. And then as soon as the draft was done, the captains would all pick up their phones. I would say “go” and they would just go out and start recruiting as many people as they possibly could for their teams.

Chris Cooper (05:41):
Because part of the points here is for participation, okay? I’m gonna get to the whole points breakdown here in a moment. But this is exciting because everybody knows when draft night is. Everybody’s anticipating. “Hey, There’s going to be somebody DMing me, maybe two and maybe four people who want me to be on their team.” So you wanna make sure that you bring a list of your clients to the draft party so that the captains are doing it. Now, other people have done this live. One year we did it at Mary’s café next to the gym, where we had random picks and drafts and the captains saw the list. The only problem with that is you always wind up having somebody pick last, okay? So you have to be wary of that. And if you don’t want to create that scenario, that’s fine.

Chris Cooper (06:23):
It turned out fine in our case, but you never know, right? So let’s start with before the season even opens. Now to help out the CrossFit affiliates who are watching or listening to this, we’ve made this overlap with the CrossFit Games Open season. We’ve done that every year. In fact, the reason I think that the Intramural Open became so popular with all of the CrossFit gyms so early was because, done just the traditional way where you sign people up and they pay HQ and they do the events, it really didn’t make any money for the gym, but it really burned the coaches out. People were doing a lot of extra volunteer work and, yeah, it was exciting. It was amazing to see people getting PRs. The coaches were participating in stuff. But after five weeks, man, people were tired, you know? And so we wanted to do this in a way that would actually help the gym owner profit, because that’s our mission, right?

Chris Cooper (07:13):
We work for the gym owners. So you’re gonna start now, and what you’re gonna do is run what we would call a “pre-open program” or an “open prep course.” And so people who really wanna fine-tune their fitness, boost themselves up another 5%, maybe acquire a skill that they haven’t done before, can have a chance to do that in the five or six weeks leading up to the Open. So for example, double-unders, if somebody’s not got double-unders or toes-to-bars ,if they have the fitness but lack the skill, this program is for them. You and I have seen it a hundred times. It lights us up every time somebody gets their first muscle-up, bar muscle-up—fill in the blanks. I got my first bar muscle-up because of the Open one year, and it was incredible.

Chris Cooper (07:55):
Like there were 60 people cheering for me, and I couldn’t not get it. But you really increase people’s chances of experiencing that thrill and that joy by having an Open prep course. Now, of course, you’re gonna charge something for it because not everybody is gonna want it. So you’re not just gonna change your regular programming because not everybody wants to focus on competition or get prepped for the Open. You’re gonna make this an option, and that means you’re going to charge for it just for the people who want it so that not everybody else has to do it. Okay? Then you’re gonna start promoting the Intramural Open. You’re gonna start building the hype. Remember, you are giving people this experience that they are never going to get anywhere else. Your gym is full of adults whose athletic career is over or never even started.

Chris Cooper (08:40):
And so we can give them all the bright spots that happen with sport without all the negative stuff. And this is a massive opportunity. It’ll change our life. It’s something that members from 10 years ago at my gym come up to me and say, “I can still remember doing those box jumps at that crazy Open event.” Or “I can still remember counting your burpees on the seven-minute burpee workout.” When you’re doing it, you know, it’s amazing for them. It’s life changing. It’s something they’ll remember the rest of their lives. It is a tremendous gift that you’re giving them, but don’t impoverish yourself to do it. All right? So by the 18th, you’re gonna set up and select your scoring system. I’ve got a couple of options for you right here in the guide. On the 19th, you pick your team captains.

Chris Cooper (09:22):
The 26th is gonna be draft day. Make sure you post all your stuff in social media. You know, tag “Intramural Open,” tag “Two-Brain” if you wanna have a lot of fans looking at it. You know, we love cheering people on. Even if you’re not in Two-Brain yet, that’s okay. Then to the 20th you let people recruit. I’m going to give you some guidelines on this that you can choose to use or not. And then starting February 16th is usually like your workouts. You can pick workouts yourself. You know, be creative. You can use the CrossFit Open workouts if you want to. If you’re using the CrossFit Open workouts, then your clients should register for the CrossFit Games Open and register for your Intramural Open. That way they’ve got the CrossFit scoreboard and they’re participating with the broader CrossFit community, but they’re more focused on your own local community, too, because you are doing more than just the CrossFit stuff, right?

Chris Cooper (10:13):
You’re doing your own big event. So you’ve got all your workouts here. Now, what I like to do is I like to have like a sixth workout that is team based or they only get points for participation. One year we did a biathlon where we had all these Nerf rifles, and they would have to row 500 meters as quickly as they could, jump up, shoot these pie plates that we had suspended across the gym with their Nerf rifles. And then they would have to do burpees for every one they missed or whatever. Another year we just had a big street-hockey game that was incredible, super fun. But you wanna add something like “captain’s gone bad” or whatever. You wanna add a fifth or a sixth event to your event to make it fun, okay? You don’t have to. It does prolong the season, but you can certainly do it if you can.

Chris Cooper (11:00):
And it’s one of my favorite events every year. All right, April 6th, post-Open programs. So right after the Open is done, a lot of people are fired up, like “wow, next year I’m getting that pull-up” or “next year I’m gonna get five.” You know, “I got my first hundred-pound clean this year. It was amazing. Next year I wanna get 135.” Awesome, right? This is the time when you do goal reviews with people, when you talk about their progress, when you say, “I’m so proud of you” and you share that on social media. And, you know, you want to keep doing all that stuff. This event creates so much media for you that you could be set for months, but you also want to make sure that while people are excited and they have momentum, that you’re giving them the opportunity to really hit the gas pedal on their fitness.

Chris Cooper (11:46):
And that means signing up for extra programs. Maybe they need to focus on strength and you’ve got a six-week strongman program going, or you’ve got a six-week gymnastics program coming. You know, that’s always really popular when people are excited. It’s your job as the coach to help them accelerate their fitness. Take advantage of that excitement because they’re not that excited all the time. This is the best way to help your clients. Okay? So set up your pricing. You know, we usually suggest 50 bucks, and that might include a T-shirt or something, but you should be paying your staff for doing this, not just volunteering. And there’s gonna be some extra cleanup, and there might be some snacks, okay? You might actually wanna roll some other things into this, like a supplement taster night or something like that. Okay?

Chris Cooper (12:30):
Step 2 is select your captains, then set up your scoring. We love Echelon. We’ve been partnered with Echelon for years on the Intramural Open. Wodify Arena is now really well set up to do this, too. Either one of those programs will do really well by you, but you wanna set up your scoring there. If you’re doing the CrossFit Open, one of the benefits of paying CrossFit 20 bucks is that they’ve got your scoreboard for you, and they’ve got a really good scoreboard program so you can compare against other gyms worldwide and stuff, okay? So if your focus is on participating in this giant, worldwide CrossFit community, absolutely tie the CrossFit Open in, and have your athletes register on crossfit.com. If your focus is really on your gym and you want to just do the Intramural Open, that’s also fine, or you can do both.

Chris Cooper (13:16):
Often, my gym does both. Alright? We’re gonna be awarding points for performance, like first, second, and third in different categories, but also for participation and really for spirit—like, Spirit of the Open Awards at our gym are a huge deal and a massive honor. Okay, so set up your divisions. So you’re gonna have like men’s and women’s, and you might have RX or you might have scaled or whatever. You can set it up any way that you want to, right? I’ve given my history and some recommendations here. Again, if you wanna have this guide so that you can peruse it at your own speed, just click the link below. I’ll make sure that you get a copy. So then you’re going to have registration. Here’s draft day. This is where you see some amazing creativity with team names. We’ve seen Draft Dodgers, like a team that was mostly just chickens and people who didn’t wanna do it.

Chris Cooper (14:08):
And of course they were happy they did later. You know, I’m sure you’re gonna come up with a thousand different names. It’s always so awesome to see. Kipping It Real is a returning team at ours. Whatever, okay? And you’re gonna organize them into teams based on that. The winning team is gonna have a banner hung up in your gym. I’ll give you a link to set that up later, but their name is gonna go up on your wall forever. And I’ve got banners back seven or eight years from these different teams when we started putting the banners up. Okay? So here we go. These are all the step-by-step instructions: divide your serious competitors between the teams. So now every team has a chance at actually winning, and it’s really gonna come down to participation and spirit.

Chris Cooper (14:49):
That’s what you want. You don’t really wanna just celebrate the people who win every workout. You really wanna celebrate people who are doing stuff for the first time and bring the spirit. Okay? So here’s a sample blog post that you can use to get people hyped up. There’s also some pre-Open activities here. I mean, come on, look at this stuff. If you belong to a gym, and your gym was posting about team Beasts and Burpees, you know, amazing. You have to tell people how to talk about this stuff, though. So like give them some hashtags to use like “Catalyst Open 2023” or whatever, okay? Like let them feel like they’re part of something by being part of the hype and part of the media, and that’ll slowly snowball and just build this overwhelming excitement. I’ll tell you it, it’s rare to see fans show up for the first or the second workout, but by the fifth or the sixth, people are bringing in spouses, kids and you’ve got kind of this carnival atmosphere at your gym, which is exactly what you want, okay?

Chris Cooper (15:48):
So pre-Open programming, this is up to you. You can build people toward a competitive peak. I just give people the option. I know that what I want is not always what my clients want. And so I just want to give them the choice. If they wanna do an Open prep group, they can. All right, here is how to do Intramural Open competition. So usually we give a point for everybody that completes the workout, three points for every athlete that finishes among the top three women or top three men, and five points if they win the Spirit of the Open Award. Now, in a five-week season, if you’ve got five teams, that’s perfect. You should try and like find a way to divvy them up. If you’ve got four teams, the competition is going to be a little bit intense to get that extra point, okay?

Chris Cooper (16:32):
But like that Spirit of the Open, that’s really what makes this thing—and people showing up in costume and stuff like that, that’s amazing. Theme weeks make it easy for people to get in the spirit. Okay? One thing that people have done over the years when we’re talking about amping it up is doing Friday Night Lights. So what they’ll do when they hear what the workout is, they’ll make their own workout announcement. Maybe the coaches will throw down right away as soon as they hear the announcement or whatever. Like, look to the way that CrossFit has done this and emulate that in your own gym. They’re giving you a model to follow. Alright? Here’s how to coach from Josh Martin, from the Refined Art of Coaching. Make sure that you’re setting people up for success, right?

Chris Cooper (17:14):
Like you’re not crowning the king and queen of your gym every year. What you’re doing is giving people a new opportunity with new motivation to be successful at a new level. That’s really what it’s all about. And this collaborative competition is what’s gonna push them that extra 5% to get that first achievement or go a little bit faster or lift a little bit heavier, whatever that is. That’s what it’s about. But use the excuse to talk about game day. Like “how do you eat for 72 hours leading up to your event? How do you approach it? Do you try it once and then go hard the second time? Or is it like always one and done?” You know, most people in your gym have never competed or haven’t done it in decades, and so you need to teach them how to behave like athletes.

Chris Cooper (17:57):
It’s also an amazing time to teach them how to win. So, so, so important. All right? Coaching, it’s all about the celebration. It’s not really about correcting technique, right? Like they’re performing out on the ragged edge, they’re doing stuff they’ve never done. Their technique is not gonna be perfect during this period, though obviously the athletes with the best technique are going to win. So while you do wanna be correcting a little bit, you wanna be mostly celebrating. It should be about 80-20 celebrating and hype. The next thing that you wanna do is tell everybody exactly what’s going to happen: “So you are going to get here at 6:50 if your heat starts at 7:10. There will be a warmup on the board. You will do the warmup on your own. I know that we always lead the warmup, but here you’re going to actually do it on your own. Then you’re gonna write your name under which heat you’re gonna perform in, and as the heats fill, you’ll just put it in the next one. That way we know that we’ve got enough judges for each heat and the judges will go last.” Et cetera. Okay? Next, prizes. I mean, you can choose any prizes you want. We put the banners up. I also pay for lunch for the winning team for a week at Mary’s restaurant. Okay? There’s a link to Forever Fierce to get your banners done. Here’s the step-by-step “how does this actually make you money?” CrossFit charges for this, and they should charge more. It’s a great event. However, CrossFit collecting money doesn’t pay your cost to run this event. Everything that we do is focused on making gym owners more revenue. So whether you’re a CrossFit gym or not, I think you should be charging for this.

Chris Cooper (19:34):
It’s not greed. I mean, the athletes want to get paid more. The gym owners should get paid more, too. So here’s a few options that you can do. Specialty courses and clinics, accessory programs. You could do skill sessions, you could do seminars. A lot of athletes will want to do some one-on-one training, just kind of like build things up. And so there’s a gymnastics Open prep course from Beyond RXD in here, and some other great tips. Another good one is retail. Now, at this time of year, this is when people are saying like, “Okay, I’m feeling good, but how do I take things to the next level?” Some of that’s training, some of that’s nutrition, but it’s also a time when people are gonna be more curious about supplements. They’re also going to wanna rep their team. You know, people feel like they’re part of something for the first time, maybe in their whole lives.

Chris Cooper (20:19):
And so if you can find a way for them to be on a team by buying some swag or whatever, great. Another great one is like a supplement pack or like a supplement taster night, okay? And then there’s a bunch of other things here. Other gyms have had amazing ideas since we launched this way back in 2012, where they did things like you could earn two points by booking your goal review early, or you could earn a point by leaving a review on Google or Facebook. My suggestion is you pick maybe one of these instead of all of these and plug that in. You don’t always want people just doing stuff to help the gym, like the five-star reviews or whatever. That stuff is amazing. But remember, you run a client-centric business, and now more than ever, this event is about them.

Chris Cooper (21:08):
So the testimonial video is a great one. Do that. Or like the five-star review or the goal-review session, but I’m not sure that all of them really fit here. All right? Now it’s also awesome to do a kids heat. So while you’re running this event, let’s say that you’re running it all on Saturday. In the middle of the heat, you wanna put a kids heat. There’s a couple reasons. Number one, their parents will always come in to watch them compete. Okay? Second, it’s just amazing to watch. I mean, it’s really, really common when I go to watch hockey games at like the junior and pro level for the kids to come out at intermission, and everybody stays in their seats cause they love to watch the kids. Third, it’s just incredible to show off how good these kids actually are.

Chris Cooper (21:53):
And fourth, it gives the judges a little break, too. So it’s a super-smart move to do a kids heat to showcase your youth program. All right? After the event, you want people doing a goal review. And then finally, if you’ve been doing this for several years, like I have, there’s some tweaks in here to keep it fresh. My gym still gets excited. We still do it the same way that we did a decade ago. Other gyms might wanna make these tweaks or make these slight improvements. Like this year I will add the five-star reviews, for example. We haven’t done that before, and we’ll get some points outta that. The last couple years, especially if you’ve been in lockdown, you couldn’t really do the Open, right? So I would suggest just doing it as prescribed here is gonna make you money, save you time and really improve your retention.

Chris Cooper (22:42):
You’ll get the benefit of the competition that you want your gym to get. Okay? Draft everybody involved, the kids. And then finally, the biggest thing to come outta this is not just that the client has the PR. It’s that you can make them famous. Look, nobody in their life is saying, “You are so good or amazing.” That’s just not happening. And so part of our opportunity and responsibility is to actually put them on a podium, to make them famous, to shine the spotlight on them, to brag them up on social media, to feature them in your blog, to tell the story of their triumph on your email list. That’s what it’s all about here. And if you can’t handle recording and producing media to stretch out the excitement and the benefit of this for your clients, hire somebody to do it. You know, even if you gotta bring a teenager in with a cell phone to just take pictures and record and just build up your bank of content.

Chris Cooper (23:36):
I mean, if you can extend this five-week feeling into three or four months, your clients will just love you that much more for it. Okay? Like two weeks after the Open is done, the memories are starting to fade. People aren’t talking about it to one another as much anymore. Then their story comes up on your blog and it’s. “remember That time” all over again. I mean, that’s incredible retention. All right? So here’s exactly the kind of media that you want from Mike Warkentin, who was editor at CrossFit while the CrossFit Games was building up. He tells you exactly what to do. Now finally, this is a lot of work. No matter how you do it, if you just do the CrossFit Games Open or if you do the Intramural Open or both, it’s gonna be a lot of work.

Chris Cooper (24:19):
So I’ve got some tips here, too. Okay? Like in the first few years we asked our coaches to volunteer. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t think that’s fair. They were all fine with it. But coming out of the Open season six weeks later with an exhausted team, boy that is tough. And you’re exhausted, too. It’s tough to take the load. So here’s what I do, and I’ve got eight really big tips in there for you. Okay? And then finally I’ve got a little bit of advice. I’ve done this now for a decade. There’s a reason that we put this out, and it’s because we wanna make gym owners successful so that they can make their clients successful so their clients can live longer and happier lives. Competition done sparingly can encourage that, but competition done at the gym owner’s cost, at a cost of finance, energy, time, that doesn’t help anybody long term because the reality is if you put on a great show for your clients for five weeks and then you’re burnt out, it’s gonna show, and you’re gonna lose all of the gains that you’ve made in retention and excitement. So I want you to be profitable at this. I mean, nobody deserves to make money more than a gym owner does. You’re out there to serve. Nobody’s going to make a million dollars on the Intramural Open, but you should make enough. Remember that you and your coaches want to be able to do your best work. And that means having the best clients. It means running a profitable gym. It means getting sleep, getting food, and getting exercise yourself. There’s a way to do this that doesn’t grind you into the ground. That’s why we produce these guides.

Chris Cooper (25:57):
Hope you find it helpful. And I’d love to see your pictures. Tag me. Tag “Two-Brain,” tag “Intramural Open,” and I will be your biggest fan outside of your own clients. 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 How to Boost Profit and Retention With the 2023 Intramural Open appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two-Brain’s Intramural Open: A Key Revenue and Retention Tactic

Who knew the Panthers would help so many gym owners over the years?

I’m referring to my high-school intramural team. That’s where I got the idea to create Two-Brain’s Intramural Open, which has now been used by thousands of gym owners to generate revenue and improve retention with an in-house competition that can run independently or be linked to the annual CrossFit Games Open.

I was a Panther way back in the day at the Central Algoma Secondary School, and this farm kid had a ton of fun earning points while competing with the Knights, Kings and Aces. It was actually possible to letter in intramurals—at least it was in ’94, when I was there. I even met my future wife through intramurals, and my kids were Panthers, too, years later.  

You probably participated in intramurals or some sort of “spirit week” at your school, so you’ll understand the concept:

Any group can be divided into teams whose members earn points through competition or other fun activities. When the CrossFit Open appeared in 2011, I saw a great opportunity to “revive the Panthers” and fire up the members of my gym, Catalyst.

Over the next years, the concept evolved because I realized that fun was just part of the deal: Intramural competitions could actually be leveraged by gym owners to improve key business metrics. The Panthers never made a dime, but Catalyst added thousands of dollars to our revenue and improved length of engagement. When I documented our tactics and shared them widely to help other owners, gyms around the world had the same success.

Now, the Intramural Open is one of Two-Brain’s signature events. We upgrade our plan every year, and our 2023 manual is our best guide yet.

You can get it for free here. Use it with my compliments.

Retention and Revenue

Here’s what the Intramural Open does for your gym:

1. It gives you an opportunity to celebrate your members and put them on podiums. This is great for retention and relationship building.

2. It gives your members a reason to come to the gym and something to train for. That helps with adherence.

3. It helps you create stronger relationships among members. They already interact with your business and your coaches—but what about other members? If they make more friends at your gym, they’ll be much less likely to leave.

4. It helps you generate revenue. Our plan includes a host of tested revenue-generation tactics that will improve your bottom line. Many gyms run the Open and put in a lot of extra work without any financial reward. I think the time gym owners invest should generate a return, and the Intramural Open makes that happen through registration fees, retail sales, pre-competition training plans, post-competition goal reviews, and so on.

Get the 2023 Guide

Our updated Intramural Open guide is our best ever. It’s 31 pages of step-by-step guidance and optimized tactics for gym owners. You’ll find exact timelines and precise procedures, scoring systems, media plans, and an entire section full of ways to generate revenue. I’ve even included “survival tips” to help you manage with workload during the Open.

If you’ve ever felt burned out at the end of a competition season, or if you’d love to start the year with a revenue boost, get our free guide here:

“Two-Brain Business Intramural Open Guide 2023”

The post Two-Brain’s Intramural Open: A Key Revenue and Retention Tactic appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Most Successful Gym Owners in the World Do These 3 Things

The most successful gym owners in the world do three things their peers often do not:

They create business systems.They work on their businesses instead of just in them.They push the “easy button” to make changes at high speed.

How do I know the best gym owners do this stuff?

They tell me every single week on the Two-Brain podcast: “Run a Profitable Gym.”

Two-Brain tracks key business metrics for gyms, then creates leaderboards. Every month, I ask these owners—the top 1 percent of gym owners in the world—exactly what they’re doing. They give me unique answers related to their businesses, but three themes pop up often enough that it’s worth highlighting them so you can “follow the leaders” and grow your gym in 2023.

Subscribe to “Run a Profitable Gym”: Podcast or YouTube.

1. Build Business Systems

Without fail, every single successful gym owner tells me their business is based on systems. Key metrics simply don’t move when you’re making it up as you go and constantly moving from one emergency to the next.

Two-Brain’s top gym owners have taken the time to document all their roles, responsibilities, policies, procedures and standards. Nothing is done on a whim. They’ve formalized everything that happens—from sales and marketing to cleaning and coaching. 

Here’s what these systems do:

They reduce stress—Decisions are made in advance, not during emotional periods.They increase efficiency—Standard operating procedures ensure clarity and eliminate confusion.They ensure high standards—Tasks can be offloaded without declines in service.They make hiring easy—Clearly defined roles and tasks ensure quick training and continuity if the new hire is a replacement. They free the owner to be a CEO—Instead of having to tell each coach how to run a class, for example, the owner can hand out a staff playbook and get back to growing the business (see No. 2 below).

Level up this month: If you don’t have any systems yet, start by writing down every role and task in your gym. Find that overwhelming? Write down one role and all associated tasks per day. Start with cleaner, then go down the list until you’ve got them all. This simple exercise is a huge first step in systemizing your business. (We’ll talk about hitting the “easy button” below, but here’s proof of concept: “Done-for-You Hiring Plan and Detailed Job Descriptions for Gym Owners.”)

2. Work to Grow Your Business

For whatever reason, many gym owners behave like employees instead of CEOs. It’s likely because they love to coach. But when you focus on delivering service personally, you aren’t working as an entrepreneur, and your business will likely stagnate.

When I ask top gym owners why their businesses are growing so quickly, I get one of two answers:

The owner says, “I do exactly this to grow my business.”Or the owner says, “This specific person grows the business by performing these tasks for me.”

The answer is never, ever, “I’m a great coach and my business grows because of it.”

In every case, the owner is taking specific steps to grow the business. Some common ones:

Focusing on sales in No Sweat Intros or training a salesperson.Creating and developing a new revenue stream.Helping a coach launch a specialty program.Creating a client avatar and client journey.Installing quarterly goal reviews for clients.Hiring and training a client success manager to improve retention numbers.Actively working to generate referrals from current clients.

If you do not have time set aside for tasks like this, your business will not grow.

Level up this month: Hire someone to replace you in one of the roles you documented in Section 1 above. The easiest role to offload is often cleaner. Use the time you would have spent in that role to generate more revenue than you need to cover the cost of hiring. If you don’t know how to generate new revenue, review the bullet points just above and pick an option. (Another “easy button” with step-by-step instructions: “Climbing the Value Ladder.”)

3. Hit the Great Big “Easy Button”

It can be tough to figure out how to fix a business. Busy owners don’t have a lot of spare time, and they can’t afford to make a lot of mistakes. It can take years to find the right path—and time is precious to an entrepreneur.

The solution? Buy speed.

The most successful gym owners in the world don’t waste time with trial and error, experiments and theories. Instead, they work with a business mentor who can provide tested, data-backed tactics that come with clear instructions.

For example: You could create your own goal-review process. It would take some time, and you’d have to adjust it several times to get it right. Or you can just bolt in the Two-Brain process with the help of a mentor. No experimentation needed. Just quick implementation of a carefully created system that’s been used with great success in hundreds of other gyms.

Another example: You could experiment to figure out the best way to sell your services. You’ll lose some sales along the way. Or you could just follow Two-Brain’s plan and get a world-class system running in a week.

Level up this month: Talk with us about how we can help you make dramatic changes fast in 2023. Click here to do so. If you aren’t quite ready for that, get the blueprint for a profitable fitness business: “Gym Owner’s Handbook.”

Be Like the Best

We’ll let you know when we discover a gym owner who’s doing something uncommon. We regularly analyze new tactics to see if they hold water. When they do, we tell our clients all about them.

But as we roll into 2023, it’s rarely about differences. It’s about similarities.

This is clear:

The top gym owners in the world have business systems.The top gym owners in the world set aside time to grow their businesses.The top gym owners in the world invest in mentorship to save years and even decades of time.

Take action today. We want you to have the same success as the best fitness entrepreneurs in the industry.

The post The Most Successful Gym Owners in the World Do These 3 Things appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Can a Gym Owner Add $6,000 in Revenue in 8 Weeks?

Mike Warkentin (00:01):
Austin, you just completed RampUp with Two-Brain. How much money did you add your gross revenue?

Austin Ruesink (00:06):
Gross revenue was roughly about $6,000 over the last eight weeks.

Mike Warkentin (00:10):
Whoa. That is a huge number in a short period of time. Would you be willing to tell other gym owners how you did it?

Austin Ruesink (00:16):
Yeah! We’re a personal training facility. We only focus—well, I won’t say “only”—but we mainly focus on personal training compared to other gyms that are kind of doing more of the group classes, the boot camps, etc. And we’ve really kind of dove in on that a hundred percent. You know, we still have the boot camps. We still have all that, but that’s not where our effort has been, as that is our bread and butter. So that’s something I’ve been working on with my mentor, Storm, is really kind of dialing in on everybody that’s coming through. We want to really be working on the “hey, here’s the personal training.” We get that out in front of ’em, we show ’em how great it is, we show ’em all the benefits that come with it, the value of it, and then if it comes to where they don’t wanna do the personal training, then we can move ’em to a boot camp or something of the sort.

Austin Ruesink (01:06):
But that has been our main focus—and also getting systems installed as well has been really huge. A big thing that I came into was, I was approaching a one-year status of owning the place and was like, “Okay, I can’t keep this up. There’s just no way. Like it’s affecting my life with my wife. I’m not seeing friends and family. I’m up here 80 hours a week.” And, you know, after I kind of got the systems put out in front of me, I kind of started to see, “Oh, well this helps here, this helps here, this helps here.” And so it’s really just been all together everything that’s really brought us here.

Mike Warkentin (01:45):
Okay. So those are the broad strokes. And this is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. And Austin, my friend here, he runs Big Time Results in Springfield, Missouri. He’s a recent graduate of the Two-Brain RampUp program. It’s a high-speed sprint, one on one, with a mentor, a real person. It produces impressive results—like Austin’s. 93% of RampUp clients add enough revenue in just 12 weeks to pay for the program. That’s a huge stat and a great investment. We’re gonna dig into Austin’s numbers today. He’s given you some tips already how we did it. But Austin, I’m gonna ask you this. Do you have any other numbers? Average revenue per member? Anything else that you can tell me as a before and after from RampUp?

Austin Ruesink (02:25):
Yeah, so our average revenue per member before we started the RampUp program was still pretty good. It was around the mid-two-hundreds. We’re pretty fortunate where we’re at, but we have had some expenses along the way. But since getting through this eight weeks or eight to 12 weeks of the RampUp program, we’re about low threes to mid $300 per member.

Mike Warkentin (02:54):
It’s funny ’cause again we have people on social media all the time saying “no one will pay 300 hundred dollars for a gym membership,” and yet it’s happening at your gym. And, listeners, interesting fact, Austin cannot record in his gym right now. He’s not in his gym because his gym is full of people and he has to record somewhere else, which is a good problem to have. We were laughing about that before the show started. I thought I’d let you guys know. So average revenue per member went up, which is huge. Gross revenue went up. Any of the other numbers? Those are two big ones, so I won’t press you for more if those are the ones you’ve got.

Austin Ruesink (03:25):
No, it’s been kind of flaky off and on with client retention. So I just bought the gym a year ago. So that’s been a little up and down, keeping those. But something that has been started in the Growth program, which, you know, we’re talking about RampUp right now, but we have brought in people with some affinity marketing and also with online marketing as well. So that might be our second call that we go over that. But that would be my third big number.

Mike Warkentin (03:52):
So, listeners, again, the Growth program comes after RampUp. Austin completed RampUp. He’s now moving into Growth. RampUp provides a foundation. Growth is a bit more tactical, where we’re picking specific things with a mentor to fix and work on to grow your gym. We’ve got a huge toolkit that will help you do it. So tell people where you’re coming from. What’s the short history of your business? You mentioned that you bought it a year ago. Give me the short history of what your gym does, what it sells, who you are. What’s the basis of your success here?

Austin Ruesink (04:24):
Sure. Yeah. So I was in school. I was going to school to become a registered dietitian was working in the hospital, and it’s just like, “You know what? I can’t really help people as much as I want to here.” I got a reference to go work at Big Time Results and worked there for about five, six years through my undergrad, my internship. And then the opportunity came. I was actually training—this would be a pretty good story for a lot of people listening to this. I was training two clients, and they were like, “You know what? Let’s buy this place. We think you could run this. You could bring the nutrition. You’re already like the main trainer. You’re a student. Let’s do this.” I told ’em “no” for multiple months. And finally about two weeks after my graduation of becoming a dietitian, we decided to purchase the gym. So we got into that. And so before I even owned it, it was mainly kind of like a 75-25 of personal training and then boot camp. What we mainly offer now is the personalization of personal training. We offer group training, we offer couples training, we offer partner training. We still have the boot camps, and we’re getting ready to start nutrition probably come first of the year with obviously me being a dietitian. We’re a little behind on that.

Mike Warkentin (05:37):
But you’re hyper qualified to add it.

Austin Ruesink (05:39):
Yeah. But this is something we learned from Two-Brain as well. We’re trying to get more profit first before we move on to just another program like nutrition. We wanna make sure we have our ducks in a row. But that’s our main offering: personal training. And what we really dial in on is having people understand the value of having that one-on-one experience with a personal trainer. You know, we always tell everybody “there’s just nothing like it.” It’s like if you go to the mechanic, you listen to your mechanic. And you go to the doctor, you listen to your doctor. And health and wellness? Go see a person that’s good at health and wellness. And so that’s our main goal is to have them see that value.

Mike Warkentin (06:17):
Okay, so you’ve been at this gym for five or six years. You’ve been there in charge running the show for a year now. You’ve got a ton of skills. Obviously you’re highly educated, which is super cool, and you’ve got a personal-training basis for this thing. So you run some small groups, and you’re going to add in some nutrition stuff. Gym owners who are listening, know this: You don’t have to add everything all at once and all the things. It’s better to have a small number of highly profitable, very strong revenue streams rather than all these random things that are difficult to manage that fall apart and maybe putter along. A couple of good ones: Personal training, high-value group training is another one. Nutrition is a huge one. A kids program is another one. Those are four. If you have those four, you can run a very profitable gym, make a hundred thousand dollars a year or more. You don’t need all the stuff, but you can certainly tack things on. There is a plan for doing that. That’s beyond the scope of this show. What we’re gonna do here is talk about the early stages of gym ownership. So in your first year, I gotta know, why did you sign up for mentorship? Like what made you pull the trigger on that, And what were you hoping to accomplish with it?

Austin Ruesink (07:23):
It was just kind of one of those things where I just was getting so burnt out. I have two investors. They do nothing with the gym. It’s just me. But they were kind of noticing me kind of get the burnout, you know, it kind of was—

Mike Warkentin (07:36):
Getting cranky at meetings?

Austin Ruesink (07:37):
Exactly, yeah. My wife was noticing it. She was like, “Ah, you’re getting a little, you know, you’re coming home late.”

Mike Warkentin (07:43):
“Austin’s got an edge!”

Austin Ruesink (07:44):
Yep. So it was finally, you know, there was a certain point where what I did, I really learned from my clients. They took the step to go, “You know what? I’m gonna reach out to an expert and have them help me achieve something I want to achieve.” And that was something I really was dialing in and watching them do. And I’m like, “Well, why am I not doing that?” So I went out and looked at different companies that offer mentorship, but by far, you know, Two-Brain immediately got me on a Zoom. It was supposed to be like a 45-minute call. The guy talked to me for like an hour and a half. It was just one of those where I immediately knew, “Okay, they’re not really here just to take the money. And it’s also not just a bunch of gimmicky sales stuff like ‘you need to be DMing this person.'” I could tell what you guys were doing was—like you kind of just said earlier. It’s like, “Hey, start with the small stuff that leads to the big stuff.” And I knew that’s what I was missing ’cause I didn’t go to school on how to learn to run a business and do all these things. This is kind of my way of getting that education to understand “okay, there needs to be systems installed.” That’s why I reached out.

Mike Warkentin (08:56):
And what did you wanna accomplish? Like when you sat there on that call, if you were looking at your gym before you signed up, what did you wanna change? Like what, what for you would’ve equaled success? Did you have that in your mind then? Or was it just “fix everything”?

Austin Ruesink (09:10):
Yeah, that’s a good question. I wasn’t prepared for that question. I would say it really just kind of came down to—I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to keep that up, like doing the 80 hours. Like I knew it wasn’t fair to my friends and family. I knew I wasn’t fully energetic with the clients that I’m still training, I’m still working with. That’s not fair to them. And there were all these things I was starting to really see build up—kind of that snowball effect. And so that’s what really made me reach out: I was at a breaking point. It was do or die. And that’s where I started looking into the mentorship, and that’s what brought me to you guys.

Mike Warkentin (09:45):
Yeah. So unsustainable work hours. That’s a huge one I hear from a lot of gym owners. Like 60, 80 hours are not uncommon. I’ve done it, too. It’s not sustainable. And if you’re a gym owner out there who’s doing this and you have this time to listen to this podcast, know that you will burn out no matter how powerful and strong you are and driven. You will burn out. It happens to all of us, but there are ways to fix this. So let’s talk about how you fixed it. You get into the RampUp program, and you’re matched up with a mentor. What happens? Walk me through what happened right away when you started because you ripped through this program in short order

Austin Ruesink (10:19):
I mean, it’s pretty scary up front because I mean there’s a lot to do, and there’s a lot of stuff. Like, gosh, I mean I ran the place for a year, and I’m reading terms that I don’t even know. And it’s sometimes embarrassing when you’re reading certain financial terms. But I’d say the thing that really started off best for me was getting systems installed. One of the first things I learned with my mentor was he asked the question of, I think he called it “the bus experiment.” Like if you get hit by a bus, what happens tomorrow? And I’m like, “Oh God.” You know, this place…

Mike Warkentin (10:55):
If you go down that place falls apart.

Austin Ruesink (10:56):
Within 10 days. I mean, some people don’t even know passwords to like software and stuff. So I mean that was probably the thing I think I got started with. The best was getting systems installed, and then it was really going through, I think it was the middle part of RampUp, where we start kind of hitting the financials. Like you’re checking on the expenses. Like, “What’s the return of investment on this expense? What is this and that?” And so I think that was the two areas by far in RampUp that helped me the most because now I’m able to help my staff more. You know, I can sit down with them and help them keep retention on clients and everything. Cause I don’t have to be doing the janitor work. I don’t have to be doing all the stuff we were just talking about. If you’re doing the 60, 80 hours a week…

Mike Warkentin (11:44):
There’s no gym owner that I’ve spoken to who has reduced hours without systems and procedures. It’s just the way you do it. And, like you said, there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do, but the reward is well worth it because you’re not working 80 hours again, your wife isn’t seeing a cranky person across from the table. Your business partners aren’t seeing a burned-out guy who’s going to fall apart in the business. It’s worth it. You said initially you get into this and you’re seeing like, “Wow, there’s this huge pile of stuff. I don’t know all of it,” and you feel a bit overwhelmed. How does a mentor help you get through that and find the confidence to just chip away in the right order?

Austin Ruesink (12:19):
Yeah, that’s the beautiful part is you can send an email. They’re absurdly fast. Storm always gets back to me it seems like always a little less than three or four hours. It was very rare that he never gets back to me within a day. And if it is, I usually start the email with “no rush, this is a dumb question.” I hear not only just from myself, but I see from others in the Facebook group that we have, like, other mentors do this. And also Storm does this as well. My mentor as well, if you have a question, you know, you maybe have a phone call set up maybe a week from now. They’ll usually squeeze you in if you have a real big question at hand. Or I never had anything too crazy that I had to reach out by call. But I’ve seen numerous people constantly reach out, and that has made me feel super comforted. I haven’t ran into anything yet that I’ve been like panicky that I need to get on a Zoom call or a phone call with my mentor yet. But it’ll happen. I know it will. So I’m glad the option is there. And I think that’s probably the better part of that as well: it’s like going to class but with a professor that cares. I think that’s the way to kind of put this—you know, everybody has gone to class, and you ask questions, and the teacher kind of fluffs you off or whatever. They don’t really respond with the answer you’re wanting or they’re like, “Oh, just look more into the data.” Where here I’ve had the mentor go, “Oh yeah, it’s this, this, do this, and then I’ll send you some ideas.” You know, so like that has been by far the biggest thing: it’s someone actually reaching out to help you. It’s actual helping.

Mike Warkentin (13:48):
So rather than dump a giant curriculum of stuff on you, a mentor leads you through it, shows you the path and helps you find the success, get some wins, get some momentum. And then at the end of this thing, I look and you’ve got this gigantic increase in gross revenue. People are gonna wanna know a few details about that. Obviously you improved every aspect of your business, but what are some specifics that are tied to that $6,000 increase in gross revenue in like eight weeks?

Austin Ruesink (14:15):
Again, I hate to keep coming back to it. It had to be the systems.

Mike Warkentin (14:20):
No, hammer that. That’s important.

Austin Ruesink (14:23):
30, 35 hours of personal training as I’m starting, and then that’s including administration, that’s including orientation, that’s including janitorial work, that’s opening the gym, that’s closing the gym, that’s getting new staff members ready. So I mean there’s all the million things other owners listening to this are gonna know. A million things that are piled up on an owner. What has helped is now when I go into a client orientation, I have the information like the pricing presentation that we worked on in RampUp. Now I have a script to go right off of. I don’t have to go into a client orientation blind, not knowing how to do necessarily the sales, not knowing how to represent what we do at Big Time Results. When I’m going in there, it’s not Hour 14 on the client orientation. You know, I’ve worked systems out to where we’ve hired two staff members now that have taken over some of my hours, taken over some of the janitorial work—you know, the “value ladder.”

Mike Warkentin (15:27):
Yep. Climbing that.

Austin Ruesink (15:28):
The value ladder, you know, that’s probably my favorite thing that I’ve done in RampUp. The value ladder, figuring out, “Oh my gosh, I’m making almost $13 an hour doing all this.” And I found out, whoa, that’s not sustainable, you know, at the end of the day. And so that has been by far the thing with RampUp that’s helped me the most—it’s distributing the work where, you know, it’s not that that work is lesser than me. It’s just that work is not sustainable, and vice versa. It’s not profitable … Like, you don’t make money cleaning. Does it help sell? Of course. But if you pay somebody $13, $14, $15 an hour to clean, you can go make a sale with two people. But before it was very hard to … I’m very Type A. I want my thumbs on. It’s gotta be clean. It’s gotta be perfect. But that’s something that working with the mentor has really helped me with: they’ll get it done. They’ll get it right. Just teach ’em how to do it. Give them a playbook or give them a script on how to clean it. Get those things in line. It’ll work out. And I’ve seen the benefit of it. So it definitely works.

Mike Warkentin (16:42):
Well, you’re a coach and a dietitian. You have high, high-value skills that are wasted if you’ve got your arm up a toilet fishing something out. It’s obvious—but it’s not obvious at the time because I did the same thing.

Austin Ruesink (16:54):
That’s the reality. Like it was something I’m still struggling with and, Mike, I’m into the different program now of Growth, and I still am looking back going, “Oh well there’s a little bit of chalk over there in that corner.” But it’s one of those things: you had to take that step back and like you just said, “Well, okay, I don’t have to worry about that. I need to be worrying about bringing more people in because then the people that are trained, I can help them provide for their families more as well, too.” So I mean it’s a win-win

Mike Warkentin (17:22):
Listeners, the value ladder: I’ll give you the short summary of that. Austin provided the perfect real-world example. We have a system called “climbing the value ladder.” You are going to take a look at what you’re making per hour. Austin said it was about 13 bucks. Okay? You make a list of every role and task in your business, and you start looking at them and say, what can I offload? Cleaning is an obvious one. You can probably hire a cleaner for $13 to $20 depending on your market, whatever it is. You offload that task, you take the hours that you spent cleaning, then you reinvest those in a higher-value role. Sales is a very high-value role. If you make one sale, you will probably pay for your cleaner.

Austin Ruesink (17:59):
Yep.

Mike Warkentin (17:59):
And we have a whole ladder effect that goes all the way up, including general managers, CEOs and all sorts of stuff. But there is a process for this. It involves simple math, and then it’s just changing, changing, changing, making some swaps, a few hires here and there. And then having a mentor tell you exactly which activities you can pursue to add revenue to pay for what you just did. So it’s not like “I hired and everything is fixed.” It’s “I hired, then I put in a No Sweat Intro free consultation process. I put together a sales binder. I’m making better, more valuable sales. My business is growing.” Is that what happened to you when you started selling like that?

Austin Ruesink (18:36):
Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean that’s the reality. Like at first, like I said, I was not comfortable with it. I was nervous. I was like, “Oh man …” You know, I’ve got good staff, too. That’s the thing. Like I really can’t complain about most of ’em. But I was still nervous because this is my baby, because I wanted everything to be perfect. But the reality of the matter is there’s no perfection. So that was something that was very hard. That was where I’d say that was some of the best value from having a mentor was: “Hey, dude, we get it.” Like you just said, you did it. You know, my mentor did it. Everybody here, everybody in this, has done it. But that was the hardest part: to kind of have to lay down the sword and understand “okay, I need to take a step back here ’cause otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels to spin your wheels.”

Mike Warkentin (19:25):
I’m very similar to you where I’m like, “That thing is outta place. That dumbbell is twisted a little bit sideways.” You know, it bugged me. Putting together roles and tasks specifically in a staff playbook allowed me to say, “I have outlined exactly how I want this done.” I now have an evaluation process for staff to correct things if there are issues and I can offer support. That allowed me to kind of step back and just, you know, you’re not washing your hands of things. You’re saying exactly how you want it done and then making sure it’s done that way. Did that help you sleep at night?

Austin Ruesink (19:53):
Yeah, definitely. That’s by far something that’s easier to do. And also it’s something I’ve taught them that they have seen. So like since we’ve entered Growth, we’ve added four clients just right away. And now the trainers are starting to see, “Oh, it’s clean in here, and it doesn’t smell like a locker room, and there’s music playing, and all these things are running correctly. Oh wow. We make more money, too.” It’s kind of walking them to the big picture. It’s like, “Oh ,this is why we do it.” And it’s like, “Yes, I understand you gotta take five seconds outta your day to move the dumbbell back up to the rack. I get that. I get it. But the big overall thing here is we’re all in this together.” So if that person comes in and they buy a membership or buy sessions with us, they likely might have a friend that wants to come here, and now you are getting another client. So it’s always this never-ending snowball of “if you got everything functioning right, everything will function right.”

Mike Warkentin (21:00):
And if you’ve got staff members who are acquiring clients, that’s gonna be more profit for your gym, right? Because there’s more revenue. You’ve got your profit margin set up, which we teach people do in RampUp, and all of a sudden, you know, you’re offloading training to other trainers, you’re taking a percentage, and your gym is growing. Tell me about this. You went from 80 hours—what are you working now, and gimme the broad strokes of what you spend those hours on.

Austin Ruesink (21:24):
It depends on the week, you know, that’s always kind of iffy. I’d say maximum I’m really putting in maybe 60 most. So I mean, again, I think that’s just gonna kind of always be a standard. It’s kind of hard to turn it off. I’m kind of one of those guys that lives to work, so that’s kind of one of those annoying habits that I have. But you know, what I’m mainly focusing on more now is getting the No Sweat Intros set up with everybody working on strategy sessions or goal reviews with new clients that we’re bringing in, like the ones we just talked about. And we had had I think three or four, don’t quote me there, but three or four signed up through, no, we have five, we had five sign up through RampUp. Cause I remember I told my mentor before “five would be ideal,” and he was super ecstatic when he was like, “Oh, well by the way you got five.” I was like, “he nailed it.” But you know, like working on that, keeping those retained, keeping retention high, that’s been something I’m working on a lot more. And then just kind of getting the other systems ready to get going. So trying to have the other programs get going. But again, now my time is more focused on, “Okay, well how do we make more profit here? How do we make more profit here?” So before it was more, “Oh God, make sure everything’s not on fire.”

Mike Warkentin (22:43):
Yeah. So you were talking to me at the beginning of the show like a janitor. You’re talking to me like a CEO now, right? You’re talking about profit margins, staffing solutions, program development, all the things that a CEO would do to grow revenue in a gym. And the beauty thing is you’re still in the first year of gym ownership. So yeah, you’re gonna work some extra hours, and you like to work. You can do that, but we’ve taken 25% off your hours, which is a huge deal. And as profit grows and the business stabilizes, you’re gonna be able to decide if you wanna work 60 hours. You can absolutely do it. But if you want to cut that back, you can. We have people, gym owners, that are in the end of our Growth program and moving on to the Tinker stage, which is Stage 3, the upper-level stage, and they work maybe one to five hours a month on their gym. And that one to five hours is often spent meeting with staff members and telling them how this should go and then checking in later on. And at that point, these tinkers then start to look at, “Okay, can I open a second location? Should I start a distillery? Should I bring a sports beverage to market?” And these are things that actually happened. Airbnbs, all sorts of investments. You have options as your business stabilizes. You have profit, and you have options for stuff. So Austin is living exactly that, where he is working 60 hours, but it’s less and he’s probably a better husband, I’m guessing. And you’re spending your time on those high-value roles like sales, No Sweat Intros, retention. If you have a gym with $350 average revenue per member, retention is one of the most important things you could possibly do. The second most important thing would be acquiring more people. Tell me more about that retention. Like that’s gotta be huge focus for you if you’ve got high-value clients.

Austin Ruesink (24:19):
Yeah, I mean that’s the reality. That’s the beauty of the personal-training realm. If you bring in, gosh, you know, four people that month, you’re like, “Whoa.” If you’re just even at $300 average revenue, there’s an extra $1,200 in revenue. So I mean that’s quick. You know, that’s just another level of “wow, I can move real quick.” And yeah, by far that’s the hardest part of retention is, you know, they’re spending that money, so they have to see the value of it. And so the more you can put in front of them “wow, look at where your goals were when you started. Now look where they are,” you know, cause we do our packages and packages of 10 sessions. So we try to always have a goal review about that seven to nine range of their sessions. And so right in between there I kind of sit them down, look at their goals. Again, back to having the systems. The trainers know, “Okay, now at that 8-session mark, we need to go back and look at their goals and make sure that we’re dialing in on that.” You obviously know the value of personal training. You know, you have someone that goes from a half a push-up to eight, and eight, eight sessions, and then boom! It’s life changing. You’re like, “Before you couldn’t even do a push-up if you fell. Like that’s a problem.” Like it’s not just about, you know, aesthetics, it’s, “You couldn’t do a push-up. So that means if you fell on the ground, and this is me having that medical background, you likely can’t get back up. So unless you have a smartwatch that can make a call, you’re in big trouble. So you know, now you can do a pushup, you’re fine. You fall down to the ground, get back up.” Or we had another one that told us, you know, “I can get down on and off the ground now with my grandchildren, and I have no pain, no issues getting up and down.” And that was after, you know, seven or eight sessions as well too. And I was like, “Man, if I could get that on 20 billboards” because that’s the reality of keeping that retention and keeping them moving forwards. Because now they see the value of what they’re doing. It’s not just going to the gym to go to the gym. They see more value in it than just how they look. They see, “Whoa, there’s more to this.”

Mike Warkentin (26:29):
So if I had told you back, you know, six months ago that you could add $6,000 to your gym in eight weeks, would you have believed me?

Austin Ruesink (26:39):
Probably not. No.

Mike Warkentin (26:43):
So the follow-up question is now that you’ve done it, and you know I’m gonna hint at the nutrition angle, do you see a path to adding another $6,000 and maybe another $10,000 or more?

Austin Ruesink (26:53):
Yeah, a hundred percent. That’s the beauty of this. Like I said, even though some people might get a little weary of the 60 hours I’m putting in, I love doing the personal training. I love my people. Now that I can start doing nutrition, I love being behind the desk talking nutrition. And yeah, that’s the reality. I look at this and I go, “Oh, this is cool. This could really start to get to moving.” And like you said, the more you know, it’s the reality of just doing business. If we’re more profitable, the more comfortable I am, and then the better practitioner I’m gonna be at health and wellness. And so the more comfortable you are, the more people you can help. And I think that is the biggest thing I love about being a part of Two-Brain, like you just said, is, man, we’re already here. Man, we just keep going and going up. Like how many people can we really help? This is awesome.

Mike Warkentin (27:42):
So gym owners, if your gym goes outta business, you can’t help anyone. That’s it, right?

Austin Ruesink (27:49):
Yeah. I mean, and I think that’s something hard to realize. When I first got in, I was like, I hated the—”Oh man, I gotta do the sales, I feel slimy.” It’s this and that. And then working with the mentor, he finally looked at me one day and was really kind of stern about it and was just like, “Hey dude, if you don’t have four walls and lights up in a ceiling, who are you helping?” And you know, I’d already discussed that: “I don’t wanna go back to the hospital.” And he is like, “You’re gonna have to go back to the hospital if that place isn’t running.” And I’m like, “That’s a good point.” You know, and it was not something I really liked to hear, but once it was said it was, “Oh man, you’re right.” Like you just said, if you don’t have a business, you’re not helping anybody. And that is what we’re in this for.

Mike Warkentin (28:29):
And because you have that business and solidified it, that person who can do those eight push-ups can now get up off the floor and isn’t gonna die down there. Right?

Austin Ruesink (28:37):
It’s life changing. It still gives me goosebumps to this day. That’s one of the—as funny as this is gonna sound—that’s one of my favorite things of doing those strategy sessions or goal reviews is hearing the people see the results. I still get goosebumps. I still love the face they have when they’re—you know, sometimes they’ll come in and they’re a little down and they’re like, “Well, I mean it’s only eight.” And I’m like, “And you were doing zero!” And then once you can kind of walk ’em to it, then like we just said, that light bulb clicks with them with:” Oh my gosh, you’re right.” And then you get—I’m getting goosebumps right now thinking about it. You see the life-changing effects you have, and it’s so cool. Like how many jobs allow you to smile every hour and help someone every hour? It’s not that common

Mike Warkentin (29:26):
Gym owners, if you’re not doing goal review sessions, I’m not gonna go off on a tangent here, but you should start, because what they do is they increase your retention, and they increase your average revenue per member. You will show your clients their successes and they will be blown away by what they’ve accomplished. They’re going to want to stay in your business. Do goal review sessions, and if you want a book that’s a resource, Chris Cooper has talked about this several times in the Gym Owners United group, “The Gap and the Gain.” The gap is thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve only done eight. I gotta get to 20.” The gain is like, “Dude, you had none and now you’ve got eight.” And that totally changes the mindset, and clients stay with your business. Start goal review sessions. Do you agree, Austin?

Austin Ruesink (30:03):
Yeah. Oh, agreed. We’ve had people move from doing one time a week to two or three times a week. Like I said, we don’t even offer nutrition, but I still have now three people coming in just doing nutrition consults with me even though we don’t have a program. I have three of my own that are coming in now just because they were sitting down with me in one of those goal reviews going, “I just don’t know what to do.” And, you know, I’d ask ’em just even basic nutrition questions and you know, I’d be like, “Well what protein foods do you like?” And they’d go, “Well, you know, like bread, corn. I’m like, “Whoa, okay, hold on. You know, not a, not a protein food. Okay, we need to start from the basics.” And so they kind of saw the value of that. And so it’s kind of a cheat code because you really get to know them better. It’s really cross sales more than up sales. It’s definitely a cross sale because you can move them over to nutrition. You can move ’em over to anything that you’re doing and you can help them or vice versa. During that RampUp program, we got two “seed clients” from doing those goal reviews. So that’s another one, too, where, it’s funny, I didn’t even sit down with them with that intention, and sure enough, I got two re referrals from it. So again, if you can take 15, 20 minutes outta your day to sit down with somebody about their goals, it’s huge. It just, there’s no negative.

Mike Warkentin (31:26):
I’m not gonna add a 62nd hour to your week here. I wanna thank you for everything you’ve shared. You’ve given people a ton of stuff to think about. Thank you so much, Austin. And I can’t wait to see what you accomplished with that nutrition program firing in a couple of months. Perfect,

Austin Ruesink (31:37):
Thank you.

Mike Warkentin (31:37):
That was Austin Ruesink, and this is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. I’m telling the stories of amazing gym owners every week. Please subscribe for more episodes, and if you’re on YouTube, hammer that like button, too, on your way out. Now here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final note.

Chris Cooper (31:53):
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 Can a Gym Owner Add $6,000 in Revenue in 8 Weeks? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Annual Planning: “I Don’t Have Time” Meets the Value Ladder

I’ve created a simple 12-month plan for gym owners.

Each month in 2023 has one or two simple things you can do to measurably improve your business: bring-a-friend events, staff evaluations, in-house competitions and so on.

The plan is available in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook.

I know what some people will think: “I just don’t have time to do more work.”

I get it, so I’m going to help you find the time.

The Value Ladder

If you’re so buried in work that you can’t find time to grow your business, you clearly have a problem. The solution is to offload some tasks to free up your time. Here are the five steps to doing that.

Step 1. Write down every single role that’s on your plate: cleaner, programmer, personal trainer, group coach, etc. Rank them by “replacement cost.” For example, if you would have to pay a cleaner $15 an hour and a coach $20 an hour, list coach above cleaner.

Step 2. List all the tasks associated with each role. If you want to streamline this process, pick the role that’s at the very bottom of your list and just write out the tasks for that one. It’s usually “cleaner.”

Step 3. Write down how much time you spend in each role. Streamlined plan: Estimate the amount of time you spend in the role at the bottom of the list.

Step 4. Hire someone to fill the role at the bottom of your list. With replacement cost and time commitment documented, you already know your “price to offload.” For example: If you clean four hours per week and could hire a cleaner for $15 an hour, you’ll pay about $240 per month to offload the task. Stated a better way: You can buy back 16 hours of your time for $240.

Step 5. Use the time you reclaimed—16 hours, in this example—to generate more revenue than you need to pay for the person you hired. That’s how you grow your business.

So how do you generate new revenue in the time you freed up? Use the tactics listed on my monthly calendar for gym owners.

Example: If you had 16 open hours in a month, could you plan and host a simple bring-a-friend event involving a short, fun workout and a few snacks afterward? Of course you could. At that event, you’d grow your mailing list at the very least, but it’s highly likely that you’d actually book some free consultations or sell memberships on the spot. If your average revenue per member is $200, two sales from the event would tack on $400 of new revenue. That would more than cover the $240 cost of the cleaner, and you’d have a growing business on your hands.

As you might guess, you can use the value ladder on all the other roles in your business, too. But if you’re drowning in work now, start small. Get rid of one task, then circle back later to buy back more time.

The key: Use free time to grow the business. You must have a plan to do that or you might fritter the hours away.

If you don’t have a plan in mind, use mine: Head to the Gym Owners United group on Facebook and comment on my Dec. 28, 2022, post. I’ll send you our annual plan. Use it with my compliments to generate more revenue throughout 2023.

The post Annual Planning: “I Don’t Have Time” Meets the Value Ladder appeared first on Two-Brain Business.