Chris Cooper's Blog, page 84

The Secrets of Huge Client Counts in Coaching Gyms

Mike Warkentin (00:02):
I get into real gym owners every week on this show, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any tips. I want you to run a profitable gym as well. Now, Jake Fields runs CrossFit Devotion. That is in Kent City, Washington. It’s near Seattle. He has a lot of clients at his microgym, and we’re here to find out how he did it. Jake, welcome. I can’t thank you enough for being here today. Warning: we are going to talk about a gym’s client count today. Now, this can be a trap because you could have 10,000 clients and no profit whatsoever. So let’s get this outta the way first. Jake, do you run a profitable gym?

Jake Fields:
Yes.

Mike Warkentin:
Now that’s the most important thing. Next, we can go on to question two. Did you earn a spot on Two-Brain’s top 10 leaderboard for total clients in October?

Jake Fields (00:41):
Yes, sure did.

Mike Warkentin (00:42):
All right. Will you share your secrets and tell other gym owners how you got and kept your clients?

Jake Fields (00:47):
Definitely, yes.

Mike Warkentin (00:48):
All right. I appreciate that. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Now Jake Fields has a lot of clients at his gym, and we’re here to find out how he did it. Jake, welcome.

Jake Fields (01:05):
Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here.

Mike Warkentin (01:08):

Right. We’re gonna talk about two things: retention and acquisition, but we’re gonna put the most important thing first because I know you’ve got a really cool thing going on for gym retention. You can’t grow your client base if everyone is leaving. A lot of people think about adding new clients, but you gotta hold onto them. That’s more important. So what are the key features of the retention plant at CrossFit Devotion? Bring us up to speed.

Jake Fields (01:28):
I would say for us it’s been our coaches for one. We have excellent long-term coaches. That doesn’t mean full time, so don’t get that confused. But they are amazing humans. We definitely hire the human first and then train them. So I’ve made that mistake in the past going the other way. So we have an amazing staff, so that really helps to keep members.

Mike Warkentin (01:56):
Personal engagement, right? So you’ve got coaches who actually connect with members, not just tacticians who can spot, you know, early pulling on a clean.

Jake Fields (02:02):
Exactly. Like our members actually come to see the coach, you know, so that’s a big thing. Like they want to come see that person because they’re friends and they have interest in them. And so that’s been huge. That’s been a huge game changer. And then the other side is we just keep refining our 90-day journey, and we keep adding little pieces. The CSM has been probably one of the biggest things that’s kept people the longest, just to get that feedback from the members. Like, “Hey, what’s working? What’s not?” We actually had a team meeting last night, and we’re gonna redo our intro process because of the feedback that our CSM is getting from the new members. And so just always refining that is really important. And if we didn’t have that feedback there, we would never refine it. We would just think it’s working.

Mike Warkentin (02:56):
So, listeners, CSM is a client success manager, customer success manager, whatever you wanna call it. That person’s job is to make sure current clients are super happy. Retention is the job of that person, making sure no one is leaving the business. Tell me a little bit more about that role. Cause I understand you have some interesting wrinkles in the CSM role at your gym, and I want hear about that.

Jake Fields (03:16):
Yeah. We do it in an interesting way, not really by choice, just how our staff is laid out. We have two, and actually we’re bringing on a third one on Monday. All three of them are part time. So they work five, maybe 10 hours a week in this particular job, maybe like that’s top end. And one of them is in charge of kind of the new people coming in, like from the marketing, getting them in for a consultation and then getting them set up and making sure that process is warm and welcoming and flawless. And then, so that’s kinda like the “new-client success manager.” And then we have another one that does our intros. And she also is the “90-day journey CSM. And so she focuses on making sure they have everything they need and want in that first 90 days. And she also follows up on the people that haven’t checked in in like a week. So she’s kind of that “ghosted-members person.” So she has a real tight hold on what the members are feeling, what they’re thinking in and out of the intros.

Mike Warkentin (04:32):
I love it. Split. I’m gonna ask you some specific questions, but I’m gonna ask you first about the third person. What is that one going to do?

Jake Fields (04:41):
I don’t know what to call it, but she’s like the “operational client success manager.” So she’s gonna make sure that from start to finish, and beyond in the years, clients continue to feel like they’re being appreciative and being counted on. So she’s gonna run more of like the “are we communicating by all social platforms, email and texts?” You know, the schedule. Does everyone know the events coming up? Does every client know the workouts that are coming? Do the coaches know everything about new members coming in and out? And so she’s gonna be the sticky glue that connects us all together. Maybe in a perfect world that’d be all the same person, but we’ve just been so blessed with multiple awesome people that could do it part time. So if anyone’s thinking they need to hire, you know, pay someone a salary to do this job, just find some really awesome people with five hours that are really good at this particular thing. And you can run it that way. And we’re doing it really successfully.

Mike Warkentin (06:01):
So this all relates to your client journey, which you mentioned. You’ve got a clear idea in your head of how you want clients to come into your business from their first interaction, whether they see your sign or your ad or whatever, to the very end, which is hopefully five or 10 years down the road. But you know everything about the client journey, and you know that in the first 90 days, everything you do to make that experience better is going to increase your retention. Stats bear that out. We have that data. We know that the first 90 days are critical to success. So you see in this path roles for three different people. Like it’s that important to you to make sure that these clients are happy.

Jake Fields (06:39):
Right. Yeah. I mean, the third person we’re bringing on for the long term. I mean, 300 members, you know, is a lot of members. And so it’s a lot of people to take care of. So having someone on the front end, and then having someone in that beginning 90 days, and then making sure the people that have hit a thousand classes or five years or 10 years are still being appreciated—that’s hard to do for one person. So we’ve kind of broken it up into you know, those three different sections of not knowing us, barely knowing us for the first 90 days, hoping to capture them for life. And then what about those people that have been there for life? How do we still continue to appreciate them?

Mike Warkentin (07:23):
There’s an interesting thing here. Chris Cooper has often talked about 150 members as a real sticking point for a gym. And it goes back to human social groups. 150 is kind of that number where it’s like, “I know about 150 people,” and at 200 you don’t really know anyone. Right?  I found it very difficult when I got to 150 members to know everyone and connect with everyone. So if you kind of break it down, you’ve got just about 300 members, and you’ve got two CSMs. You’re creeping over 300 members, and you’ve now got a third CSM. Kind of an interesting number that maybe you didn’t plan on, but it kind of syncs up with some of the thoughts on social groups. What do you think about that?

Jake Fields (07:57):
A hundred percent. Yeah, exactly. That’s where we were talking like, well, we never said we wanted to get to 300. That was never a number in our head. Really, we were more just like the making sure that we’re profitable so we could keep good people and good coaches. But ever since we started implementing these new CSMs, less people are leaving. You know, more referrals. And so we’re just growing a lot more that way. So yeah, I definitely think now that we add another person, we could easily get to 350 and still not have the wheels fall off.

Mike Warkentin (08:32):
So you mentioned a couple of important things. You’ve added these people, but you are seeing a return on investment through referrals and increased length of engagement. Correct?

Jake Fields (08:41):
Correct. Yeah.

Mike Warkentin (08:42):
Was it pretty obvious when you added this stuff in? Like when you put these roles, responsibilities and people in place, did you see numbers changing quickly?

Jake Fields (08:51):
I would say yes. Like quickly as in six months to a year quickly. So yeah, definitely. And really, it’s the feedback. Our gal that does the intros and the client follow-up, she’s so good at getting feedback and then you, you know, we just have to be humble enough to be like, “Yeah, we need to change that” and then make that change. And so when people see you doing that, I think that that goes a long way. And she’s really good about bringing that feedback to us. And so just trying to adapt, you know. People are in a different spot than they were five years ago. They’re coming in differently. So it’s good to have that feedback. And if one person was doing that, I don’t know if they would have the capacity to do that with bringing in new people, doing the intros, making sure the new people are good, and making sure that eight-year members are getting a cool T-shirt. Like, that’s a lot. That’s just too many roles for one person.

Mike Warkentin (09:45):
And let’s be real, how many of us make this mistake? I am guilty of this, of having your long-term members, who are your most valuable members, who have given you tens of thousands of dollars, and taking them for granted. It sounds horrible to say, but you sometimes do it, right?

Jake Fields (10:00):
All the time.

Mike Warkentin (10:01):
Because they become like the furniture in the sense that they’re always there. They’re always working out. They always supported you and you’re just like, “Oh, Tim will always be here.” But if you don’t show your appreciation … . And why give a new toaster to the person who opens a bank account when the existing customer doesn’t get one?

Jake Fields (10:16):
Exactly. Yeah. And we’ve learned that lesson the hard way. And so that’s why I’m so excited about this new person because I want to just really surprise and delight our old members who, really, they’re not really expecting it. I mean, I’ve been with Two-Brain for a lot of years, and I’ll get random things in the mail. And I’m just like, “Wow, five years later I got this cool shirt, cup, backpack. It’s like they still like really care about us.” So definitely just that surprise and delight to the old members is gonna go a long way.

Mike Warkentin (10:48):
And listeners, I’ll give you one thing to do right now. If you have five minutes, you should send five texts to five clients and tell ’em why you appreciate them. Pick any five and just do that right now, and it will increase your retention. Guaranteed. Do that. Retention is so important you can’t pass on this one. That’s why I wanted to put it first. But the other side of it is acquiring clients. So you hinted at some referrals and some stuff. Where are you getting all these clients from? And then you’ve got your sticky trap where they stay in the gym. But where do they come from?

Jake Fields (11:18):
Yeah, we have an excellent marketing guy. Like he loves Google ads and Facebook ads. So he loves it. Like, he loves the follow-up process. He loves the making the ads and stuff like that. And he shines at it. He loves sales. He loves to make sales friendly and non-slimy. He’s just really good at that connection piece. And so mostly Facebook and Google ads. And then every quarter we do a bring-a-friend week and so they can come for the whole week for free. And we get a lot of referrals that way, especially when it’s scheduled like that. We get a lot of referrals. But yeah, mostly Facebook, Google, and then with our transformation challenges and stuff like that. And then of course four times a year we do that bring-a-friend week that’s really popular.

Mike Warkentin (12:16):
So you’ve obviously got a clear marketing plan that involves some paid advertising, but it doesn’t just involve paid advertising because your best source of clients in most gyms is going to be your current clients because they know, like and trust you. They have kids, friends, family members, coworkers, hobby buddies—all the other stuff. So I wanna get into the bring-a-friend week a little bit. I’m guessing that’s not just “hey, bring a friend. We’ll make them vomit and then hope they join.” I bet there’s some structure around that.

Jake Fields (12:43):
Yes, definitely. The programming is always like super fun, not complicated. We used to do bring-a-friend week where we’d really bring it down a notch and do body-weight stuff all week, but then that wasn’t the actual product people would be getting. So we kept the lifting and kept all the CrossFit in. We just kind of brought it down a notch. And so they still knew that we lifted weights and went heavy and went fast. And so yeah, we basically do a week at the end of the quarter and they can come all seven days for free, and then if they sign up during that week, we give them a little bit of a first-month bonus, like with a welcome box and like T-shirts and things like that. So we don’t wanna discount our price, but we wanna upgrade them through different things and then get them into our intro classes.

Mike Warkentin (13:45):
That’s a big deal. Discounts can kill gyms. Bonuses don’t cost gyms a ton of money, but they have a huge effect on clients. So if you’re thinking about discounting, you might wanna look at “what can I give a client to add value that doesn’t equal a discount that will bite you later on?” Chris Cooper has written about this on the Two-Brain blog, and I’m going to put in the show notes a link to an article that talks about selling with bonuses. So what kind of conversations happen around those bring-a-friend weeks? Like do you make a point of like connecting with these people, you know, making sure you get their email addresses and then make sales pitches? So I’ll use that slimy term, but that’s not what I actually mean. Do you do consultation stuff with them?

Jake Fields (14:22):
Yeah. Jared does—our sales guy. We have everyone check in, and then we have them sign up through a specific bring-a-friend week signup on our CRM. And so we can just kind of go through there and like, welcome them and thank them for coming in and, you know, tell them how appreciative we are of their friend and how awesome it’s been to have their friend here for so many years. And then we try and schedule a consultation with them the week after for intros from there. So if their friends doing it, it’s pretty easy to get them back in. You know that’s probably the warmest lead you can get. Mostly we get the spouse, you know, if the wife’s been coming a year or two and they’ve had great success. Bring a friend—we usually get a lot of spouses that way. So yeah, that’s worked well for us.

Mike Warkentin (15:14):
I asked you that question for a specific reason. Do you know what I added to my free trial package to get people in the gym?

Jake Fields:
What’s that?

Mike Warkentin:
Nothing. Nothing. I just had people come in and try it and then I let them walk out and I didn’t have a conversation. I didn’t engage them. I didn’t follow up. This was back in the early days where it was just like, “You’re gonna love it and you’re gonna sign up.” And it was a huge mistake. And now I know so much better. If I were to do it again, I would do it just like you. If I were going to do a free trial, I would make sure that I have a process to talk to the people, get their information, connect with them, interview them, find out about their goals, and tell them about other stuff that I can provide to solve their problems. But I didn’t do that, you know. How dumb was that?

Jake Fields (15:54):
Yeah. And to your point, we do like try and get ’em signed up by the end of the week and just add those bonuses. So, you know, if they come and do a class and they love it: “Well, if you sign up today or by the end of the week, you get all these bonuses—some supplements, a T-shirt, this and that.” So we kind of incentivize it and keep the whole price thing not even in the picture.

Mike Warkentin (16:14):
That’s beautiful. If a lead is acquired from a Facebook or Google ad or something, do they do a free consultation with you guys first?

Jake Fields (16:23):
Yes. Yeah, they always do a consultation.

Mike Warkentin (16:26):
How important do you think that is to your acquisition or retention process?

Jake Fields (16:31):
Everything. I mean, we’ve just started doing—so when they call, when they book an appointment, Jared gives them a call actually, and he sends them a little template thing that is their “five reasons why.” And he says, “Before you come in, I need this filled out.” And that’s a good precursor. If they don’t fill that out, they’re not coming in. They’re not serious. And when they fill out “gimme your five why’s” and they bring that in, it’s over. It makes that show rate skyrocket. Cause if they’re not gonna fill that out, then they’re not gonna come in. But if they fill that out, they’re definitely coming in. You definitely know where they’re struggling and you can definitely change their life right from that point. So it makes that process good.

Mike Warkentin (17:26):
I guarantee now that you’ve got those reasons why you now have a powerful retention tool for your CSM because you can eventually show these people “you came because of this and look what you’ve done,” right?

Jake Fields (17:43):
Yeah, yeah. And it also gives Jared a direction—like are they looking for a total life transformation or are they transferring from another gym and they just wanna work out? Cause like you don’t wanna sit down in the office, spend an hour and they’re like, “Oh yeah, no, I just am like transferring from the other city. I just want a place to work out.” It’s like, “Oh, okay, well we could have done that over the phone almost.” So it’s really nice to get those five reasons why. Cause you get the “haven’t worked out in 10 years” or “moving from Texas just looking for a new awesome gym.” It’s like, “Oh perfect.” That intro goes a lot better that way.

Mike Warkentin (18:23):
What are some of the things that you might hear or Jared might hear on the five reasons why? What kinda stuff comes up regularly?

Jake Fields (18:32):
Well mostly, you know, if they’re not talking to you directly, they usually get a little more personal for whatever reason. Like when you give them space to think, they can get a little bit more personal. So it has a lot to do with just not putting themselves first. They’re, you know, obviously COVID hit a lot. They’ve been sitting at home for a couple of years and then they need to do something else. Their kids are grown. But usually it’s just, “I haven’t put myself first in a long time and I need something that’s gonna kick me back into gear.”

Mike Warkentin (19:11):
Holy Fran. Right? Like that is some leverage in a sales meeting.

Jake Fields (19:15):
Right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s game changer.

Mike Warkentin (19:17):
Yeah. Cause like all of a sudden, rather than saying “you should sign up for this thing,” you can say, “If you sign up for this thing, you are going to accomplish this powerful emotional thing that you wanna accomplish.” Right? Like, it must give Jared just like all the tools in the toolbox.

Jake Fields (19:34):
Everything, he knows exactly what to talk about, exactly what program might fit best for them. There’s no wasted time on different things. Most people are coming in pretty deconditioned from the last couple years. And so personal training is obviously through the roof right now. Just cause they don’t feel comfortable going into a large class. And so yeah, it just gives him everything he needs to know in that consultation to give them the best ability to pick the right plan so they’ll stay around a long time.

Mike Warkentin (20:05):
I’m gonna hammer this point: Every successful gym owner that I speak to has systems and procedures. You clearly have a retention system. You know your client journey. You have a sales procedure. Did you ever run this gym without that stuff? Like back in the day? Were you kind of doing it by the seat of your pants?

Jake Fields (20:24):

Like for the first 10 years.

Mike Warkentin (20:29):
Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Fields (20:30):
People stayed. I don’t know why people stayed. Maybe we we’re the only CrossFit box in town. I don’t know. But yeah, no processes or procedures really.

Mike Warkentin (20:39):
What year is this for you now?

Jake Fields (20:40):
This is 13.

Mike Warkentin (20:42):
Okay. So three years ago you kind of started formalizing stuff. What happened when you did that?

Jake Fields (20:47):
It was really just because we were growing quite a bit and well—sorry we weren’t growing but we were getting lots of people in.

Mike Warkentin (20:58):
Ah-ha.

Jake Fields (20:58):
So it was like, “This is weird.”

Mike Warkentin (21:01):
One in, one out?

Jake Fields (21:03):
Yeah. Like two years in a row we were basically exactly the same. And I was like, “That’s weird cause we do a lot of onboarding. So like something’s not right.” So yeah, just getting that CSM there, having people reach out, making sure everyone’s good—that has been just a huge, huge game changer. And people that joined did need a full transformation. But maybe they were just being put into class. And we didn’t really know what they wanted because they didn’t know what we offered. So sitting down and just showing them the menu: “Hey, from what your answers are, I think this is your best bet.” That was just huge for them.

Mike Warkentin (21:50):
Huge for the gym, too. Like huge for them: they get exactly what they need. You get increased revenue. It’s a big deal. Yeah. Do you remember what that number was three years ago that you were stuck at when it was one in, one out?

Jake Fields (22:02):

It was around 220 we couldn’t get past. It was like 220, 240, 215, 235 just over and over. And we always had our core group, but we couldn’t get past that core group it seemed like. And then, yeah, slowly implementing what the CSM would do and having them go from that intro 90 days and past has been definitely a big, big, big game changer.

Mike Warkentin (22:30):
So three years ago stuck at a number and obviously leaving revenue on the table. If people are leaving all the time, you’re doing all this onboarding, but they’re not staying or someone else is leaving while you’re doing that. But three years ago you put structures, systems and procedures in place and all of a sudden look what happens. Have I got that right?

Jake Fields (22:51):
Yeah. I mean it’s all about giving the member or client the best experience possible. And we weren’t. So we’ve just been slowly 1 percent trying to be like, “Okay, how can we dial that in a little bit more for the member?” Not even to make our job easy, even though it did. “How can we make their life easy? How can we make it more digestible for them to come in, get through their 90 days, feel comfortable?” And in turn it’s made our life so much easier.

Mike Warkentin (23:17):
Yeah. And the reason I hammer this is that no successful gym owner from our leaderboard who has come on this show has yet said to me, “I did it without systems and procedures and policies.” No one said that.

Jake Fields (23:31):
Yeah, for sure. I wish I would’ve done that a long time

Mike Warkentin (23:34):
Oh, me too, back in 2010. I think I’d be retired by now if I had.

Jake Fields (23:40):
Oh, for sure. Oh, I can only imagine the amount of members we lost for really no good reason. Like literally no good reason. Just like, “Well you never called me.”

Mike Warkentin (23:51):
Add the members times the months times the years and times the monthly rate or whatever and you start looking at some six-figure numbers pretty fast. And it’s horrifying.

Jake Fields (24:01):
I don’t wanna do that.

Mike Warkentin (24:02):
I did it. It was not a pleasant experience. My friend, we got into six figures, and I just put my head in my hands and drove my 2008 Honda Civic to buy a bottle of beer. But anyways, that’s why we’re here. Run a Profitable Gym is the name of the show. And we’re trying to help people avoid the mistakes that we made. And so I’m telling you guys, retention and sales systems, put them in place. Let’s close this out. You’ve got a great member total. Now what’s your focus at this point? Are you looking for even more people? Are you looking for higher average revenue per member, increased length of engagement? Like what is? What are your metrics goals right now?

Jake Fields (24:39):
Our metrics would definitely be ARM.

Mike Warkentin (24:42):
Average revenue per member—drive that up.

Jake Fields (24:45):
Yes. And I guess it’s kind of a tie. We definitely wanna keep these people a long time. We don’t really have any growth goals because we think that taking care of the first two, you know, the ARM and the LEG (length of engagement) will kind of take care of the membership count. So we don’t really have any specific growth goals as of right now, but definitely length of engagement would be high for us right now. And getting our CSMs just so dialed in. So every member, whether you’re Day 1 or Year 10, you feel special and the same and no one’s left out. And that’s pretty easy at a hundred, really hard at 300. So that’s definitely gonna be the next hurdle coming up as we grow. It’s just gonna be tougher and tougher to make sure everyone feels good and special and part of the team at the gym. So that’s definitely where our heads are at.

Mike Warkentin (25:47):
But you’ve got staff people in place who have specific roles and tasks and duties to do that, so you’re gonna be further ahead than someone who’s like, “Wow, I’ve got 300 members and no people who know what to do here.”

Jake Fields (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mike Warkentin (26:02):
Listeners, the secret to a high client total is retention and acquisition, but mostly retention, right? If they leave, it doesn’t matter. You have to keep your clients. You would do really well right now, if you’re listening to the show and looking to add clients, to consider what can you do to keep your current clients. Look at that first. After that, create those marketing sales systems and so forth. Cause those are important, too, but they’re not important if you’re pouring people into a leaky bucket and they’re coming out the bottom. Jake, thank you so much for sharing all this info. I love talking to successful gym owners who are happy and willing to share their knowledge with other people. Thank you.

Jake Fields (26:38):
Yeah, Mike, no problem. Anytime.

Mike Warkentin (26:41):
That was Jake Fields. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and I’ll help you do exactly that, run a profitable gym, every week. Please subscribe for more episodes, and if you’re on YouTube, please hit that like button as well. Now, here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final word.

Chris Cooper (26:57):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. The Gym Owners United Facebook group has more than 6,300 members, and it’s growing daily. If you aren’t benefiting from the free tips and tactics and resources that I post daily in that group, what are you waiting for? Get in there and grow your business. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or www.gymownersunited.com. Join today!

The post The Secrets of Huge Client Counts in Coaching Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Start With 150 Gym Clients to Avoid the “Valley of Death”

If you want to get to 300 clients, you have to start with a plan to get to 150.

Simply wishing for “more” won’t work. “More” isn’t a target.

150 clients is a good target for a coach who wants to own a gym, earn $100,000 per year and make an opportunity for one to two other coaches.

Choosing 150 as a target isn’t arbitrary. We use that number as our first goal in the Two-Brain Business mentorship program for a number of reasons. Let’s start with human relationships: You can maintain a maximum of around 150 personal relationships.

Maybe if you’re a super extrovert with a trained memory, you can squeak that number up to 170.

Think about the things that happened when you opened a business: Your circle of friends shrank, you called your mom less frequently, you rushed through last-minute shopping before the kids’ birthdays. When you have five clients, you remember their kids’ names, their dogs’ names and even where they went to college. But at 50, you won’t remember some of those details. And at 150, you probably won’t remember most of them—but you’ll remember just enough.

The depth of your relationship with your client is more important for retention than almost anything else.

The average length of engagement (LEG) in CrossFit affiliates and microgyms is 7.8 months—it’s not enough time to form the deep bonds that create lasting change, and it’s not good business.

The Big Reason Gyms Fail: Their Targets Aren’t Clear

If you build a business model around 150 clients first, you’ll know exactly how much space you need, how much equipment to buy, whom to hire and what to pay them. You’ll have a clear path to earning $100,000. When you reach that point, you can scale up to 250.

Gyms that start with a goal of 150 clients can scale a little at a time. The owners find a little space, fill it, get profitable and then grow.

Every time they grow, they experience a little “gap”: Their expenses are higher and their profit is lower. That’s normal for businesses that scale: They’re investing in more staff or space or mentorship. They work through the little dip and grow larger on the other side.

But if the “gap” is too big, it turns into the Valley of Death.

This is killing many microgyms: They open a 10,000-square-foot facility with $50,000 in debt, and they’re instantly desperate to cover their monthly bills. So they offer discounts, try to force long-term contracts and generally try to sell anything they possibly can to make money. Over time, as desperation increases, some might even run bait-and-switch ads on Facebook to survive.

If you create a big “gap” for yourself when you open your gym, you’ll probably fall into it before you’re successful.

Big “gaps” are created when the gym owner doesn’t have a clear client goal. Without that goal, they can’t make a plan to meet it. The plan is always “I dunno … more?”

Expecting to jump to 300 members opens up a huge gap. The leaders on our monthly leaderboard didn’t open their first facilities to accommodate 800 members. They started with the systems, space and staff to change 100 lives, and they scaled up only when required.

You need a different plan at each stage of business. This model can be tailored to any gym because we use 1:1 mentorship with every gym owner in Two-Brain. But the key to success is having a model instead of a mystery.

The post Start With 150 Gym Clients to Avoid the “Valley of Death” appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Busting Through the Client Ceiling

If your gym is constantly hovering around the same number of clients and not growing, you’ve hit a “client ceiling.”

Marketing can raise the client ceiling, but only temporarily. Most gyms fall back to the same number over and over—even when marketing is successful—because the businesses are limited by one of these things:

1. Lack of systems—If any part of your operations is inconsistent, you’ll lose clients. One sign you have a systems problem: Clients preferentially choose classes based on one coach over another. Another sign: People are paying different rates for the same service.

2. Lack of proper onboarding—When a client is thrown into a group class—even for a “free trial”—the person is less likely to sign up and more likely to quit early. If you don’t have a consultative process, you’re churning clients out before you can change their lives.

3. Poor retention—When clients leave, they sometimes take other clients with them.

4. Inconvenience—If your clients have to juggle their schedules to match yours, they’ll leave.

5. Staff turnover—Your best coaches leave and take clients with them.

6. The wrong model—You might be playing the game by the wrong rules. For example, at the 150-member mark, your model changes. You need different staff, different systems and maybe even a different name.

You can absolutely run a gym with more than 150 members. But we recommend gym owners start with that target, earn $100,000 per year and build a solid base before they scale up. More on that in the next post in this series.

We address all these limiting factors in our RampUp program. We build systems for operations, retention, staff development, marketing, sales and profitability with you, and then we shift you into our Growth Program to add clients.

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

The post Busting Through the Client Ceiling appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

By the Numbers: Who Has the Most Clients?

What if you kept every member who had ever walked through your door? How many clients would you have then?

Almost all gym owners wish they had more clients, so we all look for new marketing ideas. But getting more clients isn’t usually a marketing problem.

Many gyms hit a “glass ceiling” and their growth just stops. They gain a few clients, but then they drop back again. They’ll have a little surge and then an exodus. They churn out old clients and get just enough new ones to replace them.

The reason? It’s usually one of these four:

They’re attracting the wrong people.Their delivery is inconsistent.Their retention is poor.They’re selling a method instead of solving their client’s problems.

The gyms with the most members aren’t just better at marketing or sales. They’ve learned to focus on attracting the right clients, systemized their operations, focused on retention over everything else and instituted a prescriptive model to get people better results.

How do we know?

Every month, we track key metrics for hundreds of gyms around the world. We look at the top 10 in each category to determine who has the most clients, who has the most revenue, who has the highest average revenue per member, etc.

Then we interview those gym owners to see what they’re doing, and we teach their lessons back to gyms in the Two-Brain mentorship program. Here’s one of those interviews:

I also share the data and stories from one of these categories publicly. Here’s the leaderboard for Total Clients in October 2022. I’ll share the top lessons with you over the next two posts.

Seeing that a gym has more than 1,000 members might inspire you. It might terrify you. But it will definitely make you curious. 795 members? Wild.

But if you had even 300 members today, could you handle them?

In most cases, the answer is no—and that’s why many gyms can’t get to 300 members. It’s more than marketing.

In the next post in this series, I’ll give you the other parts.

The post By the Numbers: Who Has the Most Clients? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Shocking Truth That Will Make You Get Rid of Gym Discounts

Here’s some simple math:

If you have a 15 percent profit margin and you offer a 15 percent discount on coaching at your gym, you’re giving away your profit.

That might seem obvious to you, but a lot of people don’t calculate profit margins at their gyms, so they really have no idea what discounts actually do to their bottom lines.

What happens if you have a very low profit margin?

Or if you have a good one but think your discount plan will generate lots of sales?

Let’s run some numbers. You might be surprised what they tell you.

We’ll pass on the complex situations created when gym owners charge some people full price but apply varying discount rates to all sorts of members—like a 10 percent military discount, a 20 percent paid-in-full discount, a 30 percent spousal discount, a buy-six-months-get-one-free deal, etc.

If you have some members at full price and others who receive discounts, the effects of discounts will be reduced slightly—but you’ll then have problems of consistency and fairness: “Why do they get 10 percent off but I don’t?”

We’ll just keep it simple and apply discounts to all members to illustrate their broad effects.

Scenario 1: Work for Free

Monthly Gym Revenue at Posted Rates: $10,000
Profit Margin Without Discount: 10%
Profit Without Discount: $1,000

Discount to Posted Rate: 10%
Profit With Discount: $0

Low profit margins can be completely cancelled out by discounts. If your business operates in a way that allows you to keep 90 cents of every dollar, you’re actually running an unregistered nonprofit when you discount posted prices by 10 percent. All fees paid go to covering your expenses.

Here’s a positive spin: If you don’t have any profit but you offer discounts, you could actually create a profit margin equal to your discount rate by getting rid of all the deals.

Would some people leave if you eliminated cut rates? Maybe. But probably not. Two-Brain mentors have a tested, step-by-step plan to help gym owners fix their rates without gutting their businesses. (I’ve used it, and I definitely did not lose all my members when I increased my rates.)

Take a small step in the right direction today: Don’t offer any more discounts to new clients. You can deal with existing discounts later with support from a mentor.

Scenario 2: Sink Your Ship

Monthly Gym Revenue at Posted Rates: $10,000
Profit Margin Without Discount: 5%
Profit Without Discount: $500

Discount to Posted Rate: 10%
Profit With Discount: -$500

Many gyms have low profit margins. Perhaps their rates are too low, or maybe their expenses are too high. Either way, discounted fees and very low profit margins are a death knell for a small business. Every person you sign up at a discount actually costs you money because the revenue generated isn’t enough to cover the costs of serving them.

How do gym owners usually solve this problem? They pay themselves less—and create a greater problem for their families.

People often fall into another trap, too: “I’ll use a discount to sign up more people, and my profit will increase.” But service providers don’t see the same profit jumps car dealerships, clothing shops and electronics stores see when they increase the volume of sales.

Here’s what actually happens: It costs money to connect with new people through ads, and it takes time to make sales. Then it takes time and effort to onboard new clients, and you have to spend time or money to retain them. Once they’re in the business, these new members require more stuff—time, space, classes and coaching, equipment, toilet paper, water, chalk, etc. Costs increase and eat into gross revenue.

Instead of generating “pure profit,” discounted sales often produce more gross revenue as well as increased expenses. They also produce decreased retention rates because sale seekers are always tempted to leave for the next fitness deal. Bad retention produces increased marketing and onboarding costs. And the spiral continues.

The discount/volume game just won’t save you in the coaching business.

Scenario 3: The Tricky Trap

Monthly Gym Revenue at Posted Rates: $10,000
Profit Margin: 30%
Profit Without Discount: $3,000

Discount to Posted Rate: 10%
Profit With Discount: $2,000

In this scenario, the gym has a good starting profit margin—the Two-Brain target is at least 33 percent. The gym owner is discounting from “a position of strength,” so to speak. Yet a 10 percent discount reduces total profit by one-third—$1,000 is lost. Because fixed expenses stay the same, the profit margin drops to 22 percent.

Here’s the kicker: With a 22 percent profit margin, you have to make about $4,500 of additional sales just to get that $1,000 back. Check it out:

Sales: $4,500 x 22% profit margin = $990

Let’s say you’re of the mind that new sales don’t increase costs that much. Ignoring costs of acquisition and all the other factors that make it very expensive to get new members, you’d still have to sell $2,000 more at a 50 percent profit margin to generate $1,000 of new profit.

After grinding your way to increase sales by 20-45 percent, you’re right back where you started: $3,000 in profit. Except now you’re worn out and your retention is bad.

And let’s be real: Do you have the capacity to increase sales by about 20-45 percent? Probably not.

But could you increase revenue by just 10 percent? That’s much easier. What if you acquired just a few new full-price members and sold additional services or even products to existing clients? Here’s what might happen:

Monthly Gym Revenue: $11,000
Profit Margin: 30%
Profit Without Discount: $3,300

One step further: Could a mentor help you slightly improve your profit margin by getting more from your expenses and improving your operations? Yes. Check out what a tiny 3 percent increase to profit margin does:

Monthly Gym Revenue: $11,000
Profit Margin: 33%
Profit Without Discount: $3,630

There’s an extra $330 per month added to our running tally, for a total increase of $630 per month over the starting point in Scenario 3. Multiply by 12 and you’ve got an extra $7,560 per year—in profit. Not revenue. Profit.

Discounts Kill Gyms

This simplified review should tell you a few things:

Discounts eat into profit at gyms—or they create greater losses in the absence of profit.Discounts might improve gross revenue, but they won’t improve profit without significant and possibly impossible increases in sales volume.

I used a handy calculator at Growthforce.com to get these numbers, and I’d encourage you to play with your own numbers before offering discounts.

After you run the numbers, you probably won’t want to slash rates.  

And if you want to learn how a mentor can help you acquire and retain full-price members, set your rates properly, increase your rates or eliminate discounts, generate greater return on expenses, and improve profit margin, book a free call here.

The post The Shocking Truth That Will Make You Get Rid of Gym Discounts appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Rising From the Ashes of Addiction: The Phoenix

Mike Warkentin: (00:01)
Welcome to Two-Brain Radio. Today, Chris Cooper talks with Scott Strode of The Phoenix. The Phoenix uses activity to help sober people rise from the ashes of addiction all over the United States. Here’s Cooper with Scott, who founded the program in 2006.

Chris Cooper: (00:16)
Scott, welcome to Two-Brain Radio.

Scott Strode: (00:18)
Hey, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Chris Cooper: (00:21)
Yeah, we’re really thrilled to have you. And I can’t believe we haven’t had you on before. I think what we should start with is just the backstory of The Phoenix and where it all came from, and what you do.

Scott Strode: (00:31)
Sure. So The Phoenix is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We use the inherent transformative power of meaningful activities to help people who are healing from substance use and coming out of addiction, and people that choose to live sober also. And you know, you come for the activities, but really what you’re doing is building new friendships and creating positive coping mechanisms, and starting to dream of what’s possible in your sober life. So your world gets a lot bigger in recovery versus a lot smaller, which is what happens for a lot of folks who don’t have something like The Phoenix. The program’s free, and you just have to be 48 hours sober to be part of it.

Chris Cooper: (01:16)
We’re gonna get into that. I love that concept of making the life bigger instead of shrinking. So I’m definitely gonna come back to that. But how did The Phoenix start?

Scott Strode: (01:25)
Yeah, really kind of born from my own experience. You know, I got sober in Boston. I started in a boxing gym, and there was something, you know, I had some self-esteem wounds and from childhood trauma, and I was trying to numb that pain with my drinking and drugging. And there’s something about getting into the ring for the first time that that started to transform the way I saw myself and I started believing in myself in a different way. I always say that I got scooped up with as much love as you can find in a boxing gym, , which is not that much. But it was a good crew of folks, a couple sober people there. And it started to be my community. And I would be the kid outside with my gym bag, waiting for the gym to open to go in and train.

Scott Strode: (02:16)
And that was where I went instead of drinking and using. And then after years of that, I had built a network of friends, you know, some sober folks I climbed with. One was a clinical social worker, another had worked in experiential education, and we thought, we need to formalize this and create a pathway for other folks in recovery to cross a finish line in a triathlon or climb a mountain or whatever it is. This is before CrossFit even existed. And we started to build what later would become The Phoenix.

Chris Cooper: (02:54)
So before we get into how this works in delivery, how does it work in each individual person? I mean, obviously nobody stops drinking because, Oh, now I’m a gym-goer. Yeah. How does that transformation actually happen?

Scott Strode: (03:09)
Yeah. Well, I think, see, I’m a big believer in sort of, we don’t talk enough about the “why” that we’re drinking and using. I think a lot of addiction, and, you know, I refer to it more as people seeking emotional wellbeing externally, because it’s hard to find that from within. So we’re always seeking it by, maybe how much money we make, or do we have that job tite?, Or what do we look like, or how many likes and followers do we have? Or, you know, do we have abs or not? So there’s all these things that we sort of believe if we arrive at this place, we will then be happy. And then you start to realize that it’s being happy in here that is really what’s important. That helps you kind of feel fulfilled in life.

Scott Strode: (03:56)
And I think addiction is just one of those coping mechanisms. It’s a more extreme one and it’s loud enough that you have to listen to it. And I think that’s why so many people who struggled with addiction have these big life transformations because they have to listen to their negative coping mechanism, whereas other ones are more sort of insidious and may be with us for longer. So I feel kind of actually fortunate that I was on that path, but what I see of folks coming in is in those early days, it’s not happening at that level in your brain yet. You’re not saying, Wow, I really could use a positive coping mechanism and something to heal my self-esteem wound. So maybe I’ll try CrossFit , right? , you know,

Scott Strode: (04:41)
You’re saying, life has become really miserable and the dreams that I had of who I could be in life have been stripped away from me, and I feel broken. And you come into a place where somebody says, I believe in you, even if you don’t yet believe in yourself. And through their belief in you, you try things that you never thought you could accomplish. And in that accomplishment, you start to own that belief in yourself. And that’s ultimately the path for you being able to share that with others and help others rise from the ashes. Once you’ve been through that, you’re uniquely positioned to be able to reach back and help somebody else on that journey.

Chris Cooper: (05:24)
You and I met through the CrossFit Foundation, but you started in a boxing gym. Did you get that sense of external support on day one boxing?

Scott Strode: (05:35)
No, not really. But it was like, what I did get was this distraction from the narrative in my brain, right? Like how I was viewing myself, my self worth stuff, how I thought of myself. And you just start hitting the heavy bag and you’re so focused on where you’re holding your left hand and throwing your jab and the combination of punches and whatever it is that all that other stuff kind of just drifts away and you’re in that moment and it’s sort of a meditation. I think of like a long workout when that clock starts, you know, halfway into the 15 minute AMRAP, you’re kind of just in the zone, just sort of moving your body through it. And I found that in boxing. I also found this goal setting opportunity where, you know, hitting the pads was great, hitting the heavy bag was great, but getting into the ring was the next level. And so pushing through that fear and achieving that goal is an accomplishment that I then owned and became part of me. And it started to help me believe that I could also accomplish other things in life. You know, being a good friend or a good son or a good coworker, or stay sober. And started to play out in other aspects of my life.

Chris Cooper: (06:55)
Very interesting. Okay, man, so bridge the gap for us here. What led you to CrossFit?

Scott Strode: (07:00)
Yeah, so, The Phoenix launched really in about, I guess 2006. And we were mostly outdoor stuff, ’cause I went from boxing into triathlon and that led me into climbing and then mountain biking and other things. So we mostly did sort of endurance sports and outdoor activities, and we were coming into cities with our program, so we were gonna start operating in sort of a building and we didn’t really know what to do there. And somebody said, you should check out CrossFit. And I thought, you know, like most people early on I was like, I don’t know, man, it sounds a little crazy. It’s kind of a culty thing. But I went and I took the L1 as my first intro to CrossFit. Wow. Cause I had coached endurance athletes and I had been a personal trainer and I’d worked in gyms and all this stuff.

Scott Strode: (07:53)
So I thought, well, I’ll go get the cert. You can learn a lot about an organization by their certification and what they teach and the culture they build there. And I got there and they’re like, Oh, we’re gonna do Fran. And I was like, Okay, what’s Fran ? Oh my goodness. And I had a hard time walking for like three days. Oh yeah. But on the fourth day I was like, there’s something to this, you know, this is gonna be powerful for the Phoenix. And a lot of Phoenix members were already doing CrossFit and I thought this is such a powerful tool to bring into cities as we had physical locations, and in communities where you can’t ride a bike every day like you can in Boulder, Colorado, where Phoenix started . So that’s how CrossFit got sort of folded in. And no surprise, today it’s sort of our third biggest program. I’d say CrossFit, climbing and yoga are three big ones that have the most attendance and are serving the most people nationally.

Chris Cooper: (08:58)
I’m really interested in that. But a lot of the listeners to this podcast, they didn’t go to a CrossFit level one certification circa 2006. You know, I went in 2007. Can you paint us a picture of what it was like back then?

Scott Strode: (09:14)
Yeah. You know, it was interesting. I mean, my perception of it then was that the brand itself was still trying to establish itself as a way or “the way”. Yeah. So, you know, I think it did it somewhat at the expense of other things. Like they talked about why it’s so much better than training for a marathon or why it’s so much better than just doing one endurance sport. And I think they didn’t realize it probably then, but they were shedding some people by sort of devaluing what people were already doing that was meaningful to them. And I think nowadays it’s much more inclusive in that sense of like, it’s about the training modality, but it’s also about the community that builds around it. And there was sort of an awakening that the community was really the magic around CrossFit and the fitness is great, but the community is what you stay for. So I’ve seen that change over the years. And I was definitely the only person in there who didn’t know what Fran was.

Chris Cooper: (10:23)
Yeah. I’m picturing you being at my level one. And so if you guys weren’t, if the listener wasn’t involved in CrossFit ever, or especially if you weren’t around in ’07, it was almost like the instructors had something to prove with these things. Right? And so like, okay, we’re gonna warm up with a one mile run, everybody to the door, 3, 2, 1, go. And of course I’m the kid that goes out way too fast. And I come back and I’m first in the group and Jon Gilson’s standing at the door and he goes, You’re that guy. Why don’t you do burpees till the last person gets back ? And I think we did probably seven crazy workouts over the next two days, including Fran. You know, that’s just what it was like back then, right?

Scott Strode: (11:09)
Yeah. Yeah. It was. And I think that it’s been cool to see CrossFit evolve and expand as Phoenix has done the same.

Chris Cooper: (11:20)
Ok. I’m just picturing you getting your introduction to CrossFit, amazing.

Scott Strode: (11:26)
Ok. I could tell there were some chuckles when it was me and one other person who stood up and said that we were personal trainers and that we hadn’t done CrossFit in the intros. And I knew when people were chuckling about Fran that I was in trouble.

Chris Cooper: (11:40)
It was kind of an exclusive call back then, for sure. So my next question is about like the intensity and efficacy. So what I was going to ask is like, if you’re trying to achieve this single-minded focus where you don’t have to think about anything else except for the workout, how intense does it have to be to achieve that? Because you’ve talked about yoga, you’ve already mentioned mountain biking, you know, is there a relationship there between intensity and efficacy?

Scott Strode: (12:07)
I think so. I mean, I do think that, and I think you can kind of see this maybe across Phoenix programming that people may come to different activities. ‘Cause since then we’ve expanded into all sorts of things. I mean, we have a music program and art and meditation and mindfulness and social events. Like there’s a coffee social gone on right now on our gym, where people are just kinda hanging out. But I think that when I think of myself in early recovery and the sort of pain that I was carrying and the angst and discomfort inside of my own body, I think I needed boxing, right? I needed to go smash the heavy bag. I needed to just hit the bag until my hands were sore and come home at the end of the day.

Scott Strode: (13:02)
Like I was still sort of seeking in those activities. So, you know, I think that there’s room for all ends of the spectrum of intensity. I think sometimes folks that are deeper into that intensity maybe have deeper things. They’re actually working on purging , you know? So, we sometimes have to be a regulator for folks that come in whose regulator is sort of broken at the time, you know? So it’s like the person who comes to five workouts, and the next thing you see ’em is at GNC buying every product they can get to try to get yoked. You know, and it’s like, dude, slow your roll. Take a rest day. Let’s talk after your rest day and talk about how your body actually adapts to stimulus, you know, that kind of thing.

Chris Cooper: (13:55)
Well, and I guess that’s kinda what I’m getting at is, the culture back then was just show up and we’ll cross you. And at that time if somebody puked in their first workout at my gym, we would give them a free hat, like, congrats . And that’s changed now, but people can still show up as long as they’re 48 hours sober and try a class. How does the instructor of that class kind of moderate intensity to help the person that’s visiting, but also not kill them if their regulator’s broken?

Scott Strode: (14:23)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do think we had to realize that we had to make coaching and training inside of the Phoenix hours a little bit more. Like, we can go to L1, we can start our journey and evolution as a coach. But what I always say to Phoenix instructors that the desired stimulus for today’s workout is inclusion. That is the desired stimulus. If it’s a push, if it’s a pull, if it’s metabolic conditioning, if it’s whatever it is, the real desired stimulus is inclusion. So even if the person isn’t moving the body part or doing the movement that is for the day, but the scaling they’re doing is keeping them in that building and connected to people, then the coach has done a great job. Because for our folks, what they’re showing up from and where they go back to when they leave our space could be a pretty dark place. And if they go home and they don’t feel like they can come back or that they will be welcome back or that they had a place here, then we may actually help keep them in their disease.

Chris Cooper: (15:40)
So when somebody’s attending, they’re brand new, it’s their first visit. Are they attending a Phoenix specific class then?

Scott Strode: (15:47)
Yeah, so when you come in, we basically, we have a mobile app. If folks go to the app store and they’re interested in either volunteering to be a coach or run some Phoenix stuff or if they themselves could use it or you know, somebody who could benefit from it. You pull down the Phoenix app, it just says “a sober community, The Phoenix”, there’s a big red bird, which is right here.

Chris Cooper: (16:10)
Super cool. Yep.

Scott Strode: (16:11)
Yeah. And you geolocate an event near you and you pop in and the only requirement is 48 hours of sobriety. There is a code of conduct. It’s sort of our ethos that you have to adhere to, to be part of it. And that’s really designed to create a nurturing environment. Because so many of us have come from places that weren’t so nurturing in our addiction story. And so we wanna create that safe and supportive space so that maybe you come to Phoenix, you only have 48 hours sober, the next day you go out and drink and use. In reflection, you’ll say, Wow, Friday was amazing. I was surrounded by these incredible folks who believed in me, an,dthe next day was the same old drama and heartbreak and whatever else I’m going through. I wanna do more nights like I did when I went to work out at that place with those folks. So, you know, we find it’s really special if we can engage people, get ’em coming back their third time. It just shows a certain level of, they’re expressing a certain level of agency and desire to be engaged with the community.

Chris Cooper: (17:23)
What is so special about the third time compared to the second or the fourth?

Scott Strode: (17:27)
Yeah, I don’t know. We don’t really know yet. We’re still trying to look at it in our research, but folks that come that third time, we’ve seen recovery outcomes be way higher than others who sort of taper off. And to the point where about 86% of folks that ar engaged active members that hit that three engagement mark and above, stay sober at three and six months. So wow. That blows away a lot of the other data out there for the formal treatment space. And no surprise to you and the folks listening that, believe it or not, there’s other solves and solutions to complex health issues in our society than what happens in hospitals. So, wow.

Chris Cooper: (18:19)
Yeah. Not a shock to anybody listening, I don’t think. But that three visit rule is something that you told me, I would guess 2017. Maybe at the Games. And it’s stuck with me since. And I think that’s incredibly powerful for anybody to know about any new client coming in the door is, three visits really makes it stick. So, you’ve got special classes for people who wanna come in and, you know, they’re 48 hours sober, they’re coming to the Phoenix class. Are these coaches trained differently too, or are they coaches just from the regular gym or what?

Scott Strode: (18:56)
Yeah, so someone at that activity is trained in the Phoenix model. Okay. So oftentimes it is the coach. So a couple ways we scale, we have a few buildings of our own and working with Eric Roza, we stood those up as CrossFit community centers. So they’re essentially spaces where all of the blank time in our calendar, we try to bring in other nonprofits in the CrossFit space to give them a home also. But we also scale through affiliates opening their doors to us and giving us those sort of “off peak hours” to run Phoenix programs. And so we’re in a hundred plus affiliates across the country, and hoping to double or triple that. And what often happens is, a Sunday at 11 when there maybe isn’t any class and a volunteer from their gym who’s been touched by addiction, wants to be the L1, we might help them get their L1 cert.

Scott Strode: (19:59)
But the gym owner’s giving us the space, or maybe the gym owner or coaches there themselves have been impacted by this through a loved one or themselves. And they end up coaching, we train ’em up in our model, which is really more about that psychological safety, creating a space where you can dare to try challenging things and feel supported in that sort of brave move. And then if a coach just wants to coach, and they have the CrossFit thing dialed and they wanna lead the workout, but they want one of our volunteers to be the cultural guide, then we stand up a volunteer who will be at that event every Sunday, helping ’em run that class.

Chris Cooper: (20:46)
Do you offer that to gyms who don’t have the wherewithal to run a Phoenix program? I’m just thinking like, I loved every course I ever took through CrossFit, but the one that really helped me coach best was CrossFit Kids. And what you’re explaining right now is, it’s hitting me as something I should know and most coaches should know.

Scott Strode: (21:06)
Yeah. I think so. I think that sometimes we can get into a rhythm of coaching and running our business or whatever it might be in a certain way. And you know, so often when I do drop ins and it’s not a Phoenix event, and even coaches at Phoenix sometimes, if they’re newer, you go in, here’s the workout, here’s two ways you can scale it. Let’s hit the clock and go. And they’re doing some great instruction, but CrossFit is infinitely scalable only if you scale it. But infinitely implies that there’s a wide spectrum that we can work in. And rarely do I see people go into that spectrum of options in a way that they’re really thinking about inclusion, right? Sometimes we get stuck in these mental models about how to coach. Like, I remember somebody telling me once that the best way to get a strict pullup is to practice strict pullups.

Scott Strode: (22:06)
And that’s great if you can move your body weight off the ground. I’m 280 pounds. I’m a big dude, I’m 6’3″. If it’s me from the earth, I got it. I mean, sorry, if it’s it from the earth, I got it. If it’s me from the Earth, it’s a lot harder. So yeah. That’s not gonna work for me, especially if I was really deconditioned on my first day of sobriety. Really. So I would imagine that would also apply to other gym owners that you could think about your, you wanna make your addressable market bigger. You wanna make your front door to your space bigger to draw in more people. To do that, you’re gonna think have to think in a more inclusive way about what your athletes actually look like. I kind of ask coaches at Phoenix to look around the room and think about who’s not here and how do we get those folks here. The folks that are already there, whatever you’re doing is converting them into a member. But what about the people that aren’t there? And how do we have to change the programming a little bit to make that possible?

Chris Cooper: (23:15)
That’s incredible. What an epiphany. And you’re right about mental models. I agree. We recently went back to having lat pull-down machines in my gym because if somebody’s overweight, the best scale for a pull up is pulling down.

Scott Strode: (23:32)
Yeah.

Chris Cooper: (23:33)
Modified, I think. Well this is really, really great man. So, I know that you’re big in the States. I know that you’re expanding in Canada because a Phoenix affiliate, John Max sent me this email last week and said, Hey Chris, we need to set up a Phoenix program, at Catalyst up in the Sault. And I said, Thanks John. You know, Scott’s coming on the show next week anyway. But how does the Phoenix generally grow and and what does it take to host a Phoenix affiliate?

Scott Strode: (24:02)
Yeah, so essentially, if an affiliate is interested in hosting Phoenix or they have some members in their gym in recovery that might be interested, they can get in touch with us. I’ll share a link to an affiliate landing page. We have a specific page for it, and there’s a track there where they can say, we have the volunteer or we just wanna open up our space to you and you guys run the program. And then we have the staff that run, that actually work on the seminar staff also. Wow. So a couple CrossFit coaches and coach coaches are working for the Phoenix also. So they help get people integrated. It’s great ’cause they understand CrossFit and they understand what affiliates need to do to kind of run their businesses.

Scott Strode: (24:57)
And we just work with them to find a space in the calendar that that works for Phoenix members, but doesn’t impact the revenue side of the gym. And I actually believe that there’s opportunities in the future for even more revenue because of an engagement with the Phoenix. I mean, in part because you’re picking a cause and you’re stating that you care about it and you’re gonna make a supportive space, I think that is telling to potential members to your gym. Yeah. The kind of culture that that operates in that space. I also think that Phoenix can be a thought partner with you on how you might work with people more in the clinical space. So what we used to do back, there’s a window of time where Phoenix tried to operate our own affiliates, you know? Like, where we were creating revenue and all that stuff.

Scott Strode: (25:54)
We realized that to run a good nonprofit and to run a good business in a totally separate space at the same time is really difficult. It’s hard enough just to do one well. So we pivoted away from that and just work with other affiliates now. But we can help affiliates figure out how that local treatment center might bring a van load of people by for workouts consistently. Maybe there’s a revenue opportunity there, that you’re sort of running their fitness programming in your space. But what it’s also gonna do for Phoenix, the benefit for us is it’s gonna bring our core constituents and connect them to a space where Phoenix already exists. So maybe I’m coming in that van, driving over a couple days a week and there’s some relationship between that treatment center and the affiliate owner. But when I leave treatment, I know that Saturday is still the Phoenix class and I can still plug in there and be part of the community that’s building. And folks in recovery are deeply loyal when somebody reaches out a hand to help lift us up. So chances are when they join an affiliate ’cause they wanna do CrossFit more than the couple classes a week that Phoenix has, they’re gonna join that affiliate that’s shown that they care about them.

Chris Cooper: (27:11)
I would guess with 90% certainty that there are programs in Canada that would actually drive some revenue into the gyms if you were doing a Phoenix type program mm-hmm. . So, it might be different in the States, but, okay. So if people- well let’s, first off, I don’t want to just narrow our scope here, Scott. So you said that CrossFit is like the third most popular activity of the Phoenix. What are the other two?

Scott Strode: (27:36)
Yeah, climbing and yoga. 

Chris Cooper: (27:39)
Climbing and yoga. Wow.

Scott Strode: (27:39)
Yeah, yoga’s huge. And you know, I think climbing is a big draw because initially it’s like, whoa, I get a free punch pass to go to a climbing gym. That’s pretty rare. But the community that builds up around climbing, it’s so powerful when you tie into a rope for the first time and I’m holding the other end of that rope and you get to the top and you come down and then you hold it for me and I go to the top and come down. We are bonded in a different way. And I think that’s what happens at Phoenix in general is, we face a greater adversity together of the whiteboard workout or the climbing wall. And as we push through that together, maybe push through some fear, through some challenges, whatever it might be, we build a bond and it’s in that friendship that our sobriety really happens. And then yoga is really, I think that getting centered and being present and creating a space where we become more vulnerable and we’re still, and we’re quiet together and it helps us sort of get in touch with part of ourselves that that also helps us on our recovery journey.

Chris Cooper: (28:55)
What are some other activities that people might not think of that the Phoenix takes part in?

Scott Strode: (29:00)
Yeah, well, our virtual programming blew up through the pandemic, as you can imagine. But what was really cool is we started recording some of that content and actually distributing it in prisons. So you can do Phoenix while you’re on the inside, while you’re incarcerated. And they’re through educational tablets and there’s Phoenix workouts and then we update that content regularly. So the hope is that if you find Phoenix on the inside, that you can also transition as you come out of the criminal justice system and find Phoenix in your community. So that’s one thing that’s unique that we’re doing. I think also our step into music, music has been a creator and a driver of culture and movements forever. Yeah. So the idea that it can also change the way the country’s approaching addiction by breaking down stigma and having artists be more open about their sobriety and their own struggles, and how they’ve overcome addiction or mental health issues, and also creating sober, supportive spaces at venues.

Scott Strode: (30:09)
So that’s something we’re stepping into where, you may go to a concert and there’ll be a Phoenix tent there and there’ll be mocktails offered and it’ll have air conditioning. It’ll be a place to tuck away from the mayhem of the festival or whatever. But it’s also a sober space. So it’s empowering people who choose to live sober or have struggled with addiction, back to music. Because so often in recovery we feel like we’ve lost that as an option because the space can be so triggering to go out to listen to live music, to be at a music festival, and to be there sober, you can feel pretty alone. So we’re trying to connect people in those spaces.

Chris Cooper: (30:54)
Ah, brilliant man. That’s great. You know, before you mentioned the availability of Phoenix programming inside Prison. I was gonna ask you, is it more impactful for people to go outside of their home and do something than to do it within and is it just a case of good, better or best? But I can see in places like jail, where there’s no other option where this can be tremendously impactful.

Scott Strode: (31:26)
Yeah, absolutely. And what we didn’t, I think you talked, you know, you obviously work with a lot of business leaders and I think every now and then we realize that our way of thinking about something has limited our addressable market or the market share that we can capture or something like that. So for Phoenix, we didn’t even think about this, but to show up to a livestream Phoenix CrossFit class and to be able to have your camera off and to be muted but dip your toe in that way is so much more accessible than two days clean and sober. You know, driving to a gym somewhere, getting out of your car, walking by the cast of 300 as they leave the morning workout with their shirts off. Yeah, exactly. And doing your first CrossFit class where you can show up that way. And then what we find is the next time in the icebreaker, somebody’s coming off mute and answering and then the next time, their camera’s on, next thing you know, they’re joking and laughing and talking with everybody else. And then a couple weeks later they might actually come in person to a Phoenix event somewhere. So it kind of makes it more accessible. People can show up on their own terms a bit more when they come virtually.

Chris Cooper: (32:46)
I think it’s actually helping the inmates for another reason too. Years ago we used to go into a US prison in Michigan twice a year to do power lifting meets. And one time I was there and I had a CrossFit hoodie on, and an inmate, he goes back to his cell at lunchtime, he comes back to compete in the afternoon in the deadlift event. And he brings me this handwritten sheet and he’s like, This is my CrossFit workout. And it’s like three hours long and it’s every possible exercise you could ever think of all at once. Right. And he’s like, I do this every day. And I mean, I don’t know if he actually did or not, but if he did, wow. Yikes. So just bringing that coaching in too is probably going to keep people on a better fitness regime longer term.

Scott Strode: (33:36)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that’s the stuff I’m excited about exploring even more is to actually work with CrossFit more formally or to work with, like, HWPO and I know Matt o Ke and Matt and you know, just sort of try to continue to bring the transformational power of these sort of modalities to folks in a way that, you know, ’cause becoming a student of something helps you build new identity. You know? So when I was active in my addiction, I thought of myself in one way. And when I saw myself as a boxer, it was very different. And when I went from that to actually being a coach, I remember the first time the coach asked me to hold the mitts for somebody else, I was now a coach, right?

Scott Strode: (34:26)
And I started coaching and I felt this sort of evolution of my own journey. And I think the magic of all of these things is really born more from the self-actualization journey. You know, we find something that we have a passion for, that we can do well, and we can do that for a long time and be happy, but when we get to use that skill to help lift another person, there’s something magical that happens. So I think that there’s probably something that affiliates could actually do within their own member base to empower members who’ve been there for years to step into that mentor role for newer members that will help help folks on their own self-actualization journeys too. Cause you always see it, you know? So you come for three years, you fall in love with it, then you go get your L1, then what do you really do with it? You know, like you’re trying to figure out. So anyway, I’m rambling a bit, but I think there’s a lot of power in what you were talking about.

Chris Cooper: (35:32)
Well, it’s interesting to hear you talk about the evolution of someone’s identity. And I think you’ve answered my next question, which was, are they better to just pick one thing and stick with that? Or are people better to try CrossFit one day, rock climbing the next, yoga the third? And it sounds like they’re best to pick one thing and form a new identity around that.

Scott Strode: (35:58)
Yeah, I think that’s where it starts. And then from there, it starts the probe out. So it’s like, and we have that all the time, right? You have the person who looks at the whiteboard and they’re like, Oh, I’m a weightlifter. This looks like cardio, or whatever, but that weightlifter interacting with the guy that never does anything but a metcon, so it’s like they help each other grow. And so I think it’s the same thing at Phoenix. Like, you may come to yoga all the time and then those movements that you’re doing there, or you look at climbers and you’re like, it’s kind of similar in some ways. Like, maybe I can try this on the wall. And at the same time, you’re helping them get onto the mat and get a little more grounded and maybe work on some imbalances or whatever they developed in the climbing. And so I think there’s a lot of mutual benefit in sort of bridging to other things once you really start to shift your identity.

Chris Cooper: (36:58)
That’s brilliant. Well, Scott, how can people become a Phoenix affiliate then?

Scott Strode: (37:05)
Yeah, you can just email The Phoenix. If you go to our website, there’s actually I think a tab for affiliate owners. Or email us at info@thephoenix and let us know that you want to bring Phoenix to your affiliate and we’ll connect you to our CrossFit team and they’ll help you from there. And I will say that we’ve looked at a lot of different ways to scale our organization. You know, we went from three communities in Colorado to over 40 states and 130 communities across the country. And a big part of that is because of the entrepreneurial thinking and the community minded culture within CrossFit affiliates. The fact that gym owners across the country understand this is an important issue. It’s affecting people that they love and that their members love and they need to make space for Phoenix to grow into their gym has brought us to places in the country we never could have imagined being able to expand to. So it’s been really powerful.

Chris Cooper: (38:19)
That’s great, man. Thank you so much. And this has just been a great conversation. I’m gonna put the links in the show notes so that people can get in touch with you when they’re ready.

Scott Strode: (38:30)
That would be great. Thanks so much for having me on and thanks for the work you do. I think that evolving companies and businesses in a way that they can create this really positive impact in the world is how we change the system to something that’s, it makes more sense than what we’re using now to address chronic illness and including substance use and other things.

Chris Cooper: (38:54)
Thanks.

Mike Warkentin: (38:56)
Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Please subscribe for more. Now, Coop’s back with a final message.

Chris Cooper: (39:02)
We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group in 2020 to help entrepreneurs just like you Now, it has more than 5,600 members and it’s growing daily as gym owners join us for tips, tactics, and community support. If you aren’t in that group, what are you waiting for? Get in there today so we can network and grow your business. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or GymOwnersUnited.com. Join today.

The post Rising From the Ashes of Addiction: The Phoenix appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Beat Black Friday: 5 Revenue-Generating Tactics

Chris Cooper: (00:02)
We don’t have sales at my gym, ever. I’m Chris Cooper. I’m the founder of Two-Brain Business, and today I’m gonna tell you how to beat Black Friday. How to avoid the temptation to cut your own throat, give people big discounts to get them in the door and sign them up. I’m gonna tell you why that doesn’t work, why we don’t do it, why we don’t do discounts, but more importantly, I’m gonna give you five tactics to generate year-end revenue that do not hurt you in the long term. So first I want to start with how to beat Black Friday, but before I get there, an invitation. If you’d like to ask questions about this, if you’d like to talk about this episode, go to GymOwnersUnited.com. That’s our free public group with over 6,000 gym owners in it worldwide. There are CrossFit gyms in there, there are Bootcamp gyms, Pilates gyms, 9Round franchises, other franchisees. There are tons of different gym owners in there. Everybody’s invited and we’ve kicked the bad ones out. So you can ask questions without yourself feeling dumb. There are no bad questions and if you want to talk about this podcast episode, you’ll see it linked there. You can ask questions and we’ll be happy to help.

Chris Cooper: (01:10)
So let’s talk about first how to beat Black Friday. This is a great post from Kaleda Connell, a certified mentor at Two-Brain Business, and she says, We never ever do sales at my gym. And the reason is because I don’t want someone to say, I’ll just wait until you’re having your next sale and then sign up. That’s the same reason that Lululemon doesn’t have a sale rack or why Apple doesn’t run sales or discounts, because when you do those things, people wait until the sale or they go straight to the sale rack and then when they don’t find anything there that they like, they leave and come back another time. Kaleda writes, you can compete in three areas in any business. You can compete on value, you can compete on price, or you can compete on convenience. But we in the micro gym industry can’t compete on price because that puts us on the battle ground with the big funded global gyms.

Chris Cooper: (02:05)
It’s a price war that we can’t win. Their business model is built on PIFs, people who pay in full and then never show up. Their business model is built on a massive spend, like a million to 3 million up front and then doing whatever it takes to get bodies in the door, signing them up for long term contracts and eventually earning positive cash flow. We don’t do that. Our gyms can’t compete on convenience either, unless they have way too many class times or we’re open 24 7 and backselling access. But our clients pay for coaching, not access. So we have to compete in the value arena. That means the people we attract see the value in the price that we charge, they can afford it, and they’re not just out there price shopping. You and your method, whether your method is CrossFit or 9Round, kickboxing or yoga, and your gym are all valuable, you are worth your full price and probably more.

Chris Cooper: (03:03)
In fact, most gyms are dramatically undercharging already. So don’t devalue yourself even further or attract the people that will not allow your coaches to do their best work or will not pay the price that will allow you to pay your coaches what they’re worth by running Black Friday sales. Don’t try to compete with those people who are selling commodities like discount TVs and furniture and long-term gym memberships that they will never use. If you’re trying to get new clients over the holidays, I’m gonna give you five tactics to generate year end revenue, but here’s the little bonus from Kaleda. She calls it gratitude day. And you can start by thanking your best clients, by inviting their friends, family, and coworkers to a fun little challenge on Black Friday. Teach them a little bit about nutrition, put them through an obstacle course or another challenge.

Chris Cooper: (03:53)
Give them a high five and a hug and invite them to sign up. That’s the extra value, the little bonus that they need. It’s not a discount that’s going to harm your gym long-term. So before I get into the five tactics to generate year end revenue, I wanna talk more about why we don’t have sales or discounts or paid-in-full deals or problems. First, you’re not selling a product, you’re selling a service. Your goal is not simply to sell more because your most valuable resource time is finite. Product-based companies wanna sell a high volume because the cost of production decreases as they sell more units, they can buy parts in bulk, they can negotiate volume discounts with suppliers, and they can streamline production. The only thing that we can do is sleep less or cut out our own exercise workouts or eat crappy food.

Chris Cooper: (04:47)
This means that it’s really important for us to sell our service at the rate that will make us profitable, maintain a professional image, and avoid problems that make our business unstable. So here are the reasons that we don’t discount our rates or have sales from both sides of the coin. Number one, discounts attract the wrong people because we don’t have unlimited time and attention. Spending that same time and attention on a client who pays 20% less as the one who’s paying full price is robbing us of what we could earn. At the same time, our rent doesn’t go down 20% when we give a client a discount. So all of the savings that they’re getting come from our profit. Second: sales teach the right people bad habits. Who is most likely to purchase a one year paid in full membership? It’s the client who’s planning to stick around for the year anyway.

Chris Cooper: (05:40)
So why would we give a 20% discount for people who want to buy a one year paid in full membership? A 20% discount for paying up front seems like a great idea in January, all the money! But a discount of 8.5% is equivalent to a free month. A 20% paid in full discount means that your best clients, the ones who are most likely to stick around and pay full price anyway, are attending for free starting on October 15th and continuing for the rest of the year. Worse, it teaches these amazing people, your best clients to wait for another sale before they sign up again. So when you seize this bad habit of sales, they don’t think, Oh, well it was good while it lasted. I was getting a bargain. And instead they think, now I gotta pay 20% more for the same service, when really they were underpaying the whole time.

Chris Cooper: (06:37)
Discounts and limited time sales are a downward spiral. In my original book “Two-Brain Business”, I wrote that the sales spiral would kill Sears. That happened. And it would kill other department stores, and that happened too. And this is- Sears is a product based company that got stuck in the sales, sales, sales cycle and now they’re gone. You’re a service company. And so that cycle is even more deadly. There’s a limit to how many people your gym can train and keep. And so this is point 3. You do not have the ability to service infinite people. Yes, there are people out there, even business coaches who are telling you to just run big group classes and they want you to run this industrial model of, like, put 30 people in a class and do squat therapy as a triage to fix problems. But that’s not the same as giving people real coaching.

Chris Cooper: (07:28)
In real coaching gyms, you have to give people one-on-one attention in a group, every single day, even if it’s only for a minute or two, so that you can help them get to their goals. In a real coaching gym, you have to be able to afford to spend the time doing goal reviews with people. You have to invest the time and energy into doing a No-Sweat Intro or a consultative process at Startup, instead of just pumping people into a group hoping they love your program and stick around. These are the gyms with the big class sizes that also have high churn that run into this downward spiral because just to stay their same size, they have to get like 30 new members every single month. And so they bring in 30 new members and they always wanna learn more marketing because they’re always losing clients and they need to replace them.

Chris Cooper: (08:20)
There’s a limit to how many people you can train and keep in your gym. We help you build a model around 150 clients first and then 200 and then 250 if you want to go to that far. But the point is that you should not just assume that more bodies equals a better, more profitable gym. That’s a completely different model. That’s the global gym model of low-price paid-in-full clients who we don’t want to show up. We wanna run coaching businesses. Toy manufacturers, book sellers, they can offer discounts, they can scale their service to infinity because their cost of production goes down as volume increases. That is not the case in a service based business. Your time and attention are finite. Stop robbing yourself. Now, for most people listening to this podcast, if you’ve been listening for a while, you’ve probably reached this point where you say, You know what?

Chris Cooper: (09:12)
Discounts aren’t actually helping me. They’re not attracting new people, they’re not even appreciated by people who’ve been getting them for a while. But what do I do about it? And so, you know, there’s two parts to change. If you wanna stop giving discounts and if you want to just get rid of the discounts that you have, these are multi-step challenges. You really need a mentor to guide you through this, number one, because it’s hard and most people will just back out of doing it or avoid it. Number two, because having been down this road before, there’s a right way and a wrong way to stop giving discounts and to remove the discounts that you’re giving unnecessarily. So knowing what to do is half the battle. Taking action is what really matters. I’m gonna supply the easiest ways to say no when somebody asks for a discount in your gym.

Chris Cooper: (10:00)
So first, a new person is coming up to the door and they’re like, Hey, I’m a firefighter. I know that every firefighter that goes to these other gyms gets a 20% discount. What’s your discount for firefighters? Your response is simply, we don’t have discounts. And this is my go-to because I don’t have discounts for anybody. It’s easy for me to say that discounts just don’t exist. And that solved our discount problem. You know, 12 years ago, the problem that we were having was we were gonna give a 10% discount to people in the military because some of our original members were in the military and we wanted them to recruit their friends, and we thought that a discount was the best way to recruit their friends. Of course it’s not, but then what would happen is somebody comes in and they’re like, Well, I’m not in the military, but I’m a police officer.

Chris Cooper: (10:48)
Is that close enough? And I would say, Yeah, they’re same value, same service. Of course that’s close enough, you get a discount too. And then a nurse would come in and say, Hey, you know, I’m offering a service too. Like, why do police get a discount but not nurses or firefighters? And so I’d extend it to them and then soon a teacher would come in and in my own head I would think, Well, these people are doing an amazing service too. And before you know it, everybody’s getting a 10% discount. You’re looking for reasons to give a discount and your prices are too low to begin with, so you’re just choking yourself out even faster than you would have. When we stopped doing it, we just started saying we don’t give discounts. Okay? When somebody else is giving a discount, and this is number two, what you should respond with is, we don’t play those games.

Chris Cooper: (11:37)
Okay? And I learned this when I was actually selling a product. I was selling very high priced, high value treadmills, and we were competing against department stores that were selling bargain basement crap. We were selling $5,000 treadmills. They were selling $800 pieces of junk that were straight outta the box and into the yard sale. Because the nature of discounts is subjective, right? It requires a human decision instead of being part of an automated process, it’s always easy to cast a shadow of doubt on the intent of the person giving the discounts. So I saw this in action when I was selling these treadmills, right? So we were always losing the price battle against Sears and other department stores that ran all these sales. So when somebody asked us to match their price or when they would have like a 40% off sale, we would always just say, We don’t play those games.

Chris Cooper: (12:31)
And it worked. You could see a visible shift in the purchaser as he or she became suspicious of the people offering the discount. And it really helped that one of the department stores got sued for advertising a regular price on tires that they would always discount, right? They were always on sale. And sometimes I would even bring that up. So what do you say if somebody asks for a specific discount? So members of some service groups receive discounts from other businesses, so they’re inclined to ask for them everywhere. Here’s your response. We treat all service professionals equally well because we know that our service is critical for your safety. The service that you provide to military or police officers or firefighters, it’s not five bucks off. It’s the service of keeping their butts safe and alive. It’s helping them get home safely at night. You know, remind them gently and use the peer anchor.

Chris Cooper: (13:28)
Hey, nobody else gets a discount and you don’t wanna be different from everybody else, right? So this next one really brings things home for a lot of people. So when somebody asks, why are your rates so much higher than everybody else’s? Or they follow up with, Well, the other gyms give a discount. What you answer with is, this rate is as inexpensive as I can make it for the level of service that we provide. I can’t sell this level of service any more cheaply, right? But first, I’m gonna go back to the original. This rate is as inexpensive as possible for this level of service because you don’t ever wanna say cheap when you’re talking about your own service. If you wanna say cheap in the context of your competition, that’s okay. Like you might wanna say, yeah, I know they offer a cheaper service.

Chris Cooper: (14:18)
I understand that. This rate is as inexpensive as possible for the level of service that we provide. Okay? So you never use the word cheap when you’re talking about your own prices or service, but second, when you use this phrase, you’re sticking a wedge into the conversation. And that wedge is “for this level of service”. And what that’s going to do is prompt an opportunity for more explanation. Because if they follow up, they’re going to say, Well, how is your level of service different? And that’s when you can really get into things. So the big problem that a lot of gym owners have when they’re not offering a discount or they’re taking away a discount, is they project the conversation in their own minds first. So they think like, Okay, if I say this, they’re gonna say that and they strategize, you know, second order thinking and third order thinking.

Chris Cooper: (15:07)
And what if they say this? And then they build up everything in their heads until it’s so stressful that they just avoid it. Instead, what I want you to know is that most people, when you just say, we don’t offer discounts, 90% of the time, they won’t come back with anything. If they come back with anything, it won’t be like, you jerk, you should offer discounts. It will be, why do those other people offer discounts? It’ll be a question, not a confrontation. I’ve given you the responses to the most common questions that people ask. If there actually is a confrontation, and this has never ever happened to me in over 15 years of owning a gym, but if somebody said, Well, the other guys will offer a discount, then you should send that person to the other gym anyway, because if they’re going to complain about money at your first meeting and they’re gonna compare you to everybody else starting from day one, you do not want that person in your gym three months from now. When they find a cheaper price at another gym, they’re gonna ask you to match it or they’re gonna leave anyway, and they’re always going to be comparing you to the other options.

Chris Cooper: (16:11)
That means they’ll always have one foot in and one foot out of your community. You’re better off just letting them pick the cheaper price. One other little bonus tip here, a lot of people who choose the cheaper price will always choose the cheaper price. And so this leads to this downward spiral of pricing. You know, I once heard from a CrossFit affiliate in Atlanta that it was impossible to charge more than $79 a month for CrossFit in Atlanta. That was only about four years ago. And since then, the successful CrossFit affiliates in Atlanta have really had to work hard to overcome that downward trajectory. But they did. And I can point you to Rick Thompson, Miles Davis, people who are charging dramatically more now, well over $200 a month because they had to reverse engineer, How can I make this work? But they did, and they’re really saving that brand in Atlanta if you ask me.

Chris Cooper: (17:03)
So I got a couple of other points for you. When you’re dealing with clients who are asking about discounts, number one, don’t overexplain, right? So all the responses that I gave you consisted of one sentence. The more words you use, the more handholds you give the person who’s trying to argue with you, okay? They can pick apart your argument, but they have a harder time picking it apart if it’s short, okay? Second, keep it black and white. If you give a discount for one person in your gym, you’re ripping off everybody else, okay? My nightmare would be to have two people standing side by side getting the same excellent coaching, using the same excellent equipment, the same clean bathrooms, getting the same high quality programming and high quality personal attention, and one starts talking to the other and finds out that they’re paying less.

Chris Cooper: (17:53)
That is my nightmare because that’s not fair. The next thing I need you to remember is that your primary duty is to your current clients. Scrambling to recruit new clients with discounts your current clients don’t get. That’s a breach of trust to me. What you’re saying is that new stranger is more important to me than you are, and that’s why I’m willing to give up or cut my price to get them. Fourth, don’t run through all these scenarios in your head before the conversation starts, right? You’ll be trying to remember lines and overcome objections instead of just giving honest answers, which should come naturally, especially if you use response number one. Communication is easy and transparent. We don’t give discounts. If they go and say, I’m gonna go join the cheaper gym. Good. You don’t want everybody, don’t pour your knowledge and your care into fickle clients who are only after the cheapest rate.

Chris Cooper: (18:49)
And finally, don’t presume that anyone wants a discount. This is the number one error that business owners make. We project our budgets onto other people, even if we’re broke, they’re not. Lower prices require more clients. Years ago when my gym opened, I was desperate for cash flow. So I started offering discounts for teachers and military and spouses and everybody else. It was a pretty long list and it got longer all the time. In that discounting mindset, I would actually try to find a reason to give people a discount without a client even asking. My mind would race to find a way to make an exception for them. So soon I had this gym full of members, a 15 hour workday and a bank account that was constantly declining until I couldn’t afford my own groceries. That really happened. Every time you give a 20% discount, you increase the number of clients that you need to reach your perfect day.

Chris Cooper: (19:45)
You weaken your business and you impoverish your family. You know why nobody has asked me for a discount in six years? Because we don’t give any. Now, that’s enough of that rant. I wanna give you five ways that you can actually generate revenue between now and the end of the year that don’t require you cutting your own throat by giving a discount to people. So first, I’ve got a link to another podcast episode called “Top Five Tactics to Generate Year End Revenue”. You can listen to the whole thing, it’s only 12 minutes long, but I’m gonna break ’em down for you right now. So what do you tell your clients about the last few weeks of the year? You don’t tell ’em, ah, forget it. Eat all the crap you want. Skip your workouts, We’ll start fresh in January. No way. You teach them to take advantage of those last few weeks to keep working on their fitness and start the new year on a roll, right?

Chris Cooper: (20:35)
Well, the same concept applies to revenue in your gym. Just because the holidays are upon us and the end of the year looms near doesn’t mean that your 2023 earning potential is capped, right? It’s not over. Try any one of these five tactics to bring in extra revenue before you close the books at the end of December. First, the retail pre-sale, I love this. This comes from Forever Fierce, great partners of Two-Brain for the last six years. What you can do is set up a pre-order form for maybe hoodies for Christmas or hoodies and hats or hoodies, hats and socks, t-shirts, whatever you want. You can have clients fill in their pre-order information. You can set up a pre-order, send it to Forever Fierce. Forever Fierce will print your stuff for you. Meanwhile, you’re holding the money, you’re not paying for inventory, you’re not putting out extra cash that you don’t have.

Chris Cooper: (21:27)
The stuff comes in, you give it to people, they’re thrilled. You can also share the order form because let’s face it, if you’ve got somebody in the family who’s super duper into fitness and you are not, then you don’t know what to buy them. But if you see the order form for t-shirts from their favorite gym, problem solved. And so you can really expand your retail pre-order without any risk, without putting out a dollar, without storing any inventory at all, just by following this strategy. Next, you can write a blog post called Top Gifts for CrossFitters or Top Gifts for Kickboxers or Top Gifts for yoga practitioners and just publish that. And people from your gym will share it with their friends and family who don’t know what to buy them. You wanna have links in that article to things on Amazon that they can buy for the person who loves CrossFit or yoga, whatever.

Chris Cooper: (22:21)
You also wanna have links to your pre-order for supplements, your pre-order for shirts, gift cards for personal training at your gym, gift cards for nutrition coaching, the option to prepay a few months worth of membership at full price. Of course, all of these things you can put in that blog post and that’s gonna generate sales. We do it every year. Next, you can run a “save your spot for January” promotion. So everybody knows that gyms get busier in January. This isn’t as true in the coaching space as it is in the big global gym space, but most non-gym-goers don’t know that. And so what you can say is like, we get really full in January, we only have 12 spots. Click here to sign up for our January On-ramp program. Reserve your spot. That way you can go through the holidays knowing that your fitness journey is due to start in January and you’ve already made that decision.

Chris Cooper: (23:17)
You can write a compelling post or 12 compelling posts about this, I’m sure, but that save your spot preorder here. That works great. And again, you don’t need to discount on this stuff. The next is to host a “bring a friend” holiday party. So this is tactic number four. This is a great one and you can do this around workouts if you want to or you can do it around just a party. And we’ve always done one every year called The Gift where people in our gym adopt local families who need help buying presents for their families, up to 50 bucks for a present. And then we host a potluck and everybody comes in. If you go on YouTube and you look for “Catalyst Fitness The Gift” you’ll see a short video documentary about it that some local media made. It’s incredible.

Chris Cooper: (24:00)
I think I cry every year. But people sometimes invite their friends to this and incredibly, it’s in the gym and their friends show up and they’re like, what is this? Like we’re not exercising. Everybody’s here. We’re giving out these massive gifts. There are social workers here picking up the gifts and delivering them, and I don’t really get it, but if I’m gonna join any gym in January, this is the one that I wanna be part of. It’s super duper hard to sell the concept of community, but immersing people in something like this can work. Better is to have a bring a buddy holiday workout or, like, a wine and WOD where you’re telling people to bring a friend with them. You do a very uncomplicated, simple workout, a challenge that lets everybody win, and then you sign people up for the new year.

Chris Cooper: (24:49)
The fifth is to run a January kickstart. So a lot of us just take for granted that we’re gonna overeat during the holidays. And I’m not even sure that that’s bad. A lot of us will say, I’m gonna miss workouts because I’m visiting family or traveling or whatever. But if they know that there’s a kickstart program coming up in January, even if it’s like six weeks long or whatever, we’ll sign up for that in advance. And so this appeals to your current clients who just wanna buckle down and dial in their nutrition again in January. It works for former clients who are looking for an easy way to get back into the gym. And it works for people who are not your clients yet, who are looking for some kind of short term commitment, knowing that this is not gonna transform their lives, but it’s gonna really reboot their fitness and get them started as quickly as possible.

Chris Cooper: (25:40)
So top five tactics to generate year end revenue. A retail presale, a top gifts for… blog post that you promote at least a dozen times, a save your spot for January promotion, a bring a friend holiday party, or a January kickstart. I’ve got the step by step instructions linked in the show notes here to all those things. You can listen to them, you can do them yourself right now. Get yourself set up and avoid the trap of discounting. To sum up: discounting is not gonna attract you new members. It will not build retention. It will not build loyalty in your existing members. It will attract the wrong people and deny you and your coaches the opportunity to serve the people who can actually pay what they need to earn. And you need to earn. Don’t do discounts ever. I’m Chris Cooper. If you wanna talk about this, join GymOwnersUnited.com. The discussion is always ongoing. I’m sure this will be a great conversation and I hope to see you in.

The post How to Beat Black Friday: 5 Revenue-Generating Tactics appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Two Different Fitness Clients: Info for Access and Coaching Gyms

How different are the clients at big-box access gyms and coaching gyms?

Answer: about as different as an NFL lineman and a marathon runner.

Two-Brain’s 2022 “State of the Industry Report” is now at the printer, and we’ll tell you exactly how you can get it in mid-December.

I’ll offer just one important stat as a sneak peak: The average monthly price of group classes is $196 for all gyms in our survey. (While some owners of access-only gyms submitted data via our survey, the vast majority of respondents own coaching gyms.)

The monthly average is very close to the $205 average revenue per member Chris Cooper has presented as a starting point for gym owners who want to earn $100,000 per year.

Now compare those numbers to data on big-box gyms pulled out of “Actionable Industry Insights for 2023,” published by ABC Fitness Solutions:

53 percent of people in the data set spend less than $25 a month on fitness, and about 5 percent spend $150-$199.The most common factor that would encourage interested people to join a gym: Make membership more affordable.On a list of campaigns and offers that would encourage people to join a gym, eight of the top 10 involved finance. Examples: “join for $1” and “try us free for 10 days.”When it comes to membership cancelations, “financial/budgetary reasons” earned top spot—by a margin of 17 percent.The most important factor that would encourage people to rejoin a gym: “make membership more affordable.”

If you own a gym, you can’t read that list without realizing the fitness world has at least two dramatically different types of consumers.

On one hand, you have a group of people who want to work out on their own in a facility that provides equipment and little else. According to the ABC report, the majority of these people budget about $25 a month for fitness, and they are highly likely to cancel their memberships due to financial concerns despite the extremely low rates they pay. For example, a price increase of $2 a month might send them running for the door even though $27 isn’t going to make or break any budget. When looking to join a gym, these consumers want crazy deals, huge discounts and free stuff.

On the other hand, our “State of the Industry” report is packed with gyms who serve another group: People who will pay $200 or more for coaching in group classes. Two-Brain data also identifies a subgroup of clients who will pay way, way more than that for packages involving personal training, nutrition coaching, sleep coaching and mindset coaching. Our September 2022 leaderboard for average revenue per member ran from $365 to $827: See it here.

You can make a living serving either group if you build the right business. But it should be clear that big-box access gyms and coaching gyms are very different.

Some people forget that. We hear about it regularly on social media when people protest that “no one will pay $250 for a gym membership.” While it’s true that some gym members will never pay $250 for access to the pec deck and recumbent bike, it’s also true that some people will pay way more than $250 for high-touch, tailored coaching that gets impressive results fast.

The key is in knowing whom you serve. Once you figure that out, you can figure out how to acquire and retain clients, and how you can add value to your service.

At a big-box gym, that might mean you focus on selling post-workout protein bars to drive up average revenue per member with people who won’t pay more than $25 for fitness but might not bat an eye when spending $5 for a snack. At a coaching gym, you might add a platinum service tier for clients who want high-touch coaching in several areas of their lives.

The principles are the same, but the exact approach will be different for each gym owner. A Two-Brain mentor can help you in either case. If you’re selling coaching or access—or even a combination, as in some gyms—a mentor can analyze your gym, help you dial in your market and tell you exactly what you need to do right now to improve your business.

To find out more about how mentors use data to help entrepreneurs build profitable gym businesses, book a call.

The post Two Different Fitness Clients: Info for Access and Coaching Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Creating Collaborators Instead of Competitors

Chris Cooper (00:01):
Hey, I’m Chris Cooper, and you gotta hear this story. One day a few years ago, I was sitting in my office at my gym and I hear this woman moaning. Now this sounded pretty sexual to me, and so I opened up my door, like, “What the hell’s going on?” I ran outside. Here’s what I saw.

This is an episode of Two-Brain Radio. I’m the founder of Two-Brain Business, and I’ve been a gym owner now for almost 20 years. If this episode is helpful to you, go to Gymownersunited.com. You can join our free public group. We have conversations just with gym owners every single day. There are about 6,000 of us in there. We’ve rooted out about 1,500 people who are just too critical or too condemning or just not polite. And now we can talk about these situations in a very real way. So gymownersunited.com. Join that group. We can talk about this conversation there.

So I’m sitting in my office, I hear this woman moaning, and I knew that one of my coaches had this personal-training client, but otherwise the gym should have been empty. And I thought, “They don’t know I’m here. Something’s going on.” And the sounds that were coming from out on the gym floor were pretty sensual. So I kind of like froze up for a second to make sure that I wasn’t hearing things. And then she moaned again, like this long, low, sensual moan. So, boom, I blast outta my office and I expect the worst, but I’m hardly believing it, right? And across the gym—yeah, she was that loud—a trainer was rubbing the neck and shoulders of his female client. She had a tank top on and, you know, everything was above board.

Chris Cooper (01:43):
But he’s like massaging her now. He wasn’t a registered massage therapist, and she was wearing a tank top, but there was still a lot of finger and shoulder skin-on-skin contact, right? And that, to me, even with the sound was way across a line. I hope you haven’t been through this scenario where you’ve got a trainer massaging a client or doing things that cross the line of what’s appropriate. But I bet you’ve seen other instances, or participated in them, where your service crossed the line between coaching and therapy. It might not have been in a physical sense, but maybe emotional therapy or like psychological therapy. Here’s why we do it, why we should stop, and what we should be doing instead. Here’s the scenario. You’re a fitness or a movement coach, and a client has a physical limitation that prevents him from doing your method or your prescribed movement, but you’re a problem solver.

Chris Cooper (02:44):
So you do a little triaging, right? So maybe the client has shortened hip flexors because they sit down at their job all day, and you just read an article about sitting being the new smoking. So you think, “Let’s mobilize their hip flexors.” But the real problem might not be tight hip flexors. The real problem here is that you are not a therapist. You don’t have the tools to decide “here is what the problem actually is.” Personal trainers and fitness coaches don’t have a professional college, at least not in North America. We don’t have a clearly defined scope of practice, and that’s good, except that without this clear scope of practice, we go way beyond what we’re actually qualified, trained, educated, certified, licensed and insured to do. And that leads to mistrust from other health-care pros, and rightly so. And hey, sometimes we do know more than a client’s doctor or even their dietitian, right?

Chris Cooper (03:42):
And sometimes we don’t wanna send a client to a chiropractor because the chiropractor will tell that person to stop coming to our gym. So it’s just client preservation to try and do the therapy ourselves. And I think this is the primary fear: that not all of our clients will get bad advice but that they will stop coming to our gym. So here’s the solution. The solution is not to go get some kind of advanced fitness training about tightened hip flexors ourselves. The solution is not to pretend to be a therapist. The solution is to work with the other health-care professionals in town. I know this problem inside and out, right? In my case, the problem is twofold. Number 1, I have a big ego and I love to solve problems. So I just think I can solve every problem. Second, when this was happening in my gym, I was really scared that I would just lose every client that I referred to somebody else.

Chris Cooper (04:39):
Like the chiropractor is gonna get them fit? Yeah, right. In fact, when I started referring people out, the opposite happened. Number one, in fact, me trying to fix problems that were beyond my scope actually created the opposite problem. First, I lost the trust of health professionals because I tried to do their job, and I was unqualified and didn’t have their tools. And second, when a client finally had to leave and get chiropractic care or see their doctor, it was because they had a real injury. So they never came back. Me trying to fix it myself either didn’t fix it or made the problem worse. And so they just gradually declined. And then it was too late when they finally did see a real health pro. So the health pros saw these clients leaving my care with legit injuries instead of just these short-term little tweaks.

Chris Cooper (05:34):
And of course, that didn’t create trust, either. So I’m gonna tell you where we fit in this whole spectrum of sickness, wellness and fitness. And this will help you understand our scope of practice because nobody out there is saying “you can do up to this point and then you should refer out.” And really nobody is telling you why you should refer out, why you shouldn’t be afraid and why you should make these connections. I’m gonna do that today. So let’s start with “what is our scope of practice?” If you own a CrossFit gym or you’re a CrossFitter, you’re probably familiar with the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum. It was created by Greg Glassman, or at least mapped by Glassman. But it applies to all fitness methods, right? So you’re going to get people coming through your door who are sick, who have biomarkers that would point them toward chronic disease, shortened lifespan, worse health span, et cetera.

Chris Cooper (06:33):
Something is causing these people to die quicker than they normally would or causing pain. In the middle of the spectrum is wellness. So, you know, based on these metrics like blood pressure, body fat, bone density, triglycerides, good and bad cholesterol, flexibility, muscle mass, they’re doing okay. They’re treading water. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you have people who are fit. Where do we fall as practitioners? Obviously we don’t deal with the sick—that’s therapy. What happens when people move back and forth on the spectrum? Our role as coaches is to move people along that fitness continuum from sickness through wellness to fitness. But clients don’t know that continuum, right? They think that everybody’s just normal and average and sickness happens to them by accident. And you know, obesity is just inherited, right?

Chris Cooper (07:27):
They don’t get it. So their goals come first. If they say they wanna lose weight, then they probably don’t care about those other health metrics yet because those health metrics are not in a chronic or urgent state. So good coaches know to focus on the client’s goals: they wanna lose weight. But they also keep the long-term progression in mind, even if they don’t talk about it. They wanna know the client’s triglycerides. They wanna know the client’s muscle mass, even if the client doesn’t care yet. So great coaches talk about weight loss to their clients at first and then slowly introduce the big picture over time. And that’s how Greg Glassman did it, by the way. So here’s where we fit on that continuum, though. Our scope of practice is limited on the left side; there’s very little that we can do for people who are already sick. But we’re wide open on the right side for people who are at least, well, not in therapy and looking to get more fit.

Chris Cooper (08:20):
We can do a ton there. So, for example, we can’t cure COVID with exercise. Those are diseases, and we are not pathologists. If someone is already pathologically sick, the person needs a health-care professional. Glassman referred to doctors as lifeguards and trainers as swim coaches, and I think that’s an apt description. Now let’s talk about musculoskeletal respiratory and metabolic illness, like injury, right? We can’t cure a broken bone, right? We can’t knit a torn muscle or heal a contusion or set a cast. We can’t cure Type 1 diabetes. Now we can provide comfort and care. We can sometimes even help people with other things in their lives or help them train around acute injuries. But we can’t cure the stuff that’s at the extreme left side of that spectrum, right? The real sickness stuff we can’t do anything for. That’s for doctors, and that’s for time.

Chris Cooper (09:15):
And if you’re a faithful person, that’s for your god to help with. But take a small step to the right. It’s people with soft-tissue injuries, concussions, chronic metabolic problems created by disease. These are short-term problems, right? We can’t heal a sprain. We can’t reverse a chronic-overuse knee injury or repair an acute injury like a labral tear. We can’t rehabilitate because, by definition, rehabilitation begins with illness. A therapist’s job is to guide a client from illness to wellness to get them from sick to average. But few therapists can take a client further. They can’t take them from average to normal. They can’t take them from average to wellness or average to fitness or even average to above average. That’s our job. That’s where we take over. So your role on a client’s health-care team is to take a client from average or okay, or you know, barely okay—wellness—to fitness. Can we take a client from sickness to wellness? Yeah, sometimes. Unfortunately, some of the systems that exist for this purpose are failures. Comorbidities, which compound illness and make people more susceptible, are becoming more common despite all the government spending and the nutrition pyramids and the health advice. Most people of the public, in the public, get too little exercise. They just don’t do the stuff that will make them well. And, of course, our national food guides are not solving that problem. So sometimes coaches are tempted to reach beyond the wellness crowd and try and help the sick crowd. And we try to pull people up from sickness. And we do it because we feel like we have to, and sometimes for the reasons that I said earlier, right? Ego, overconfidence and fear. But as a general rule, our job is to take people from wellness to fitness.

Chris Cooper (11:14):
If somebody is more sick than well, if they show the markers of illness including disease and injury, then you’re best to treat them in partnership with a health-care professional. You don’t have to share responsibility, but you should definitely tell the health-care provider what you’re doing. So clients who fall on a far left of the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum require care provided by themselves, their coach and their lifeguard. So now I’m gonna tell you how you can use this knowledge to grow your business. Let’s say that a client says, “I hurt my back. I can’t get outta bed.” If you’re their coach, then your worst nightmare has come true. It’s probably worse than bankruptcy or your own declining fitness or your own declining finances. You’ve injured a client. And when this happened to me, I remember clearly that I had the phone pressed to my ear, and my brain started spinning up excuses or reasons this wasn’t my fault. Like, “Oh, did you just sleep wrong?” Right? And I was like scrambling to think of reasons that I wasn’t accountable here, and they would say, “No. It was definitely the deadlifts.” So then knowing that I couldn’t avoid blame, I shifted my mindset to “let’s fix this as fast as possible so that I can keep you as a client.” So I told the client, “Let me call my own chiropractor. I know he’s packed, but I’ll see if I can get you in today.” And Mike did. I had a trusted ally to call, right? The chiropractor got my client in ahead of the line. He helped my client, and he told the client that it wasn’t the deadlifting after all, that my training had probably helped them push the imminent injury backward by months. The chiro had my back, if you’ll pardon the pun. This wasn’t just luck.

Chris Cooper (13:03):
At that point, I’d already spent years nurturing that relationship with the chiropractor, strengthening it like I was strengthening my own back. And within two weeks my client had returned, and they trusted me more than ever. This is the power of relationships. Think of your local connections as a web. If you’ve taken care to strengthen every link in that web, it will feed you. When local physiotherapists know, like and trust you, they won’t criticize you or your intense fitness regime. When local doctors know that you respect their scope of practice, they will trust you with their clients. When they know that you’re not gonna criticize doctors in general on social media as know-nothing quacks, they’ll be more likely to refer clients to you. When the mayor knows that you’re trying to help the city become more healthy, city hall will help you with your occupancy permit—at least mine did.

Chris Cooper (13:57):
When members of the media know that you have stories worth sharing, they will share the stories on their platforms. You are dealing with humans here, all of us, and we’re all trying to do the right thing. We want each other to be successful. But building your system, your ecosystem of connections, takes time. So here’s how to start. First, when you have a new client, ask them, “Hey, who’s your doctor? Or who’s your physiotherapist?” Right? You’re the coach of Team Bill if Bill is the client. So you need to know who else is on the team. Contact those professionals and let them know that Bill has joined your gym. Highlight Bill’s goals and provide a loose overview of your plan. Then, really importantly, update the people on Bill’s team after his first Goal Review Session three months later. This seems like “okay, I’m gonna invest this extra 10 minutes for Bill with his doctor. I’m gonna send information to his physio.” But what you’re actually doing here is building trusting local connections. And when somebody asks their doctor, “Okay, how do I lose weight? Who’s gonna help me?” The doctor is gonna say, “Well, you know, the personal trainer that I know who keeps me informed about their clients and acts responsibly and acts professionally is Chris.” Of course they’re gonna send their clients to you. Okay? So Step 1 is ask. Step 2 is invite. You can invite local area health-care experts into your gym to teach your clients in their areas of expertise. I have done this with physiotherapists and chiropractors and dietitians, but I’ve also done it with financial experts and even one time with a guitar instructor. Third highlight. You can highlight other local experts on your media. This is really, really easy if you have a podcast. YouTube’s also amazing. Social media’s powerful.

Chris Cooper (15:52):
My secret to building a huge community is to find the experts within the community and put them on the platform. They probably don’t know how to do this for themselves. So you doing it for them is huge. Fourth, tell the media about your clients, not about yourself. So email the TV station and say, “Hey, I think you’re gonna love this story. Mary is a foster parent and she works full time and she just lost a hundred pounds.” Right? Like, it’s hard to not find remarkable stories in your gym. Share those stories. Don’t look for the promotional angle. That will come in the margins. But for now, all you wanna do is help your client get recognized for her achievement. Fifth, share your trust. Part of my job as a business mentor is to be a filter for information. But as my mentor Marcy Swenson once told me, part of your job is also to give people the answer instead of just giving them knowledge or giving them choices.

Chris Cooper (16:48):
So if you like a brand of supplements, tell your people. If you ride a certain bike and buy it from a certain bike shop, tell your people what that is. Don’t expect a referral fee or a commission. Just strengthen your net. Step 6 is help. If your clients are struggling at work, you can bet their coworkers are struggling, too. How can you help them relieve their stress? How can you help them have more energy later in the day? How can you help them with their tight back caused by sitting all day? Just make the offer. Seventh, inquire. Ask your clients, “How can I help your husband? How can I help your wife?” Or, even better, know the client’s partner well enough to explain exactly how you can help. “Hey, every year Bill goes out to the golf course, he strains his back, and then he can’t golf for the next two weeks. He does this every year. Why don’t we get him in here in March, do some flexibility and some strengthening so he can enjoy golf season the second the snow melts?” And Step 8 is to invest. Invest in buying people lunch, invest in coffee, invest in your neighbors, and invest in conversations with your friends. Food strengthens connections. One of the first ways that we got amazing referrals for the Ignite Program was we put together this two-page brochure, and we went around to physiotherapists, and we were handing this brochure out, and nobody wanted to read it. It was just like a flyer. So it probably went in the trash. And then one physio that we knew, I called him and I said, “Andre, have you have you read that flyer?” And he is like, “No, we don’t have time. I’m not handing it around. Like, you know, how am I gonna get my people to read it? We just, we don’t care.”

Chris Cooper (18:26):
And I said, “Well, what if I brought you lunch?” And we talked about it and he’s like, “We’ll do anything for a sandwich.” So we got this big tray of sandwiches, and we took it to Andre’s physiotherapist business. And he had a chiropractor there. He had an athletic therapist, too. And we brought them all sandwiches, right? So this tray of sandwiches might have cost me about 70 bucks, and we got hundreds of thousands of dollars in referrals from them after that because we’d had real conversations and explained what we were doing. It wasn’t a sales pitch, it was just strengthening our web. So here are some specific examples of how this has worked for me. So Number 1, I had a local chiropractic connection because I sent client updates to ’em. So whenever a new client came in and said, “Yeah, I go work with Mike for my back,” I would just send Mike a fax.

Chris Cooper (19:17):
If you don’t know what a fax is, you can Google “fax machine.” This was 2006. And then sometimes he would call me up and say, “Hey, I got your fax.” But really I was just trying to make sure that he knew we weren’t trying to take business away from him. Over the years, that connection saved me clients and it got me other clients. Those early faxes were worth tens of thousands of dollars in referrals over the years and a fantastic friendship forever. Like multiply that by every other chiropractor that my clients use because we did it with all of them. And you’ll see where my net of referrals comes from these days. You don’t need a fax machine; you can just use email. Second, I invited a local physiotherapist into my gym to talk about staying mobile in 2018. And then when I launched the Ignite Gym Program, I took sandwiches into his staff and I said “how would you improve this?”

Chris Cooper (20:08):
And that relationship created a referral link worth well over a hundred thousand dollars over the next four years. And yeah, those were like a hundred-thousand-dollars sandwiches. Third, when I sent a client’s story to a local TV station, they interviewed her and four others from the gym for this local series that they made up called Sault Ste. Marie Gets Fit. And two years later, they sent two reporters in to do a miniseries on just the gym. And then when COVID hit, they asked for an in-depth interview about in-home exercises. And then they referred a national radio host to me the next day. Now we have this open invitation: “If you have a great story, call us right away.” Like they are waiting for me to feed them stories. I don’t abuse it, but it’s there when I have a client and I wanna make them famous.

Chris Cooper (20:54):
So fourth, I tell gym owners all the time to use things like Aguard for their insurance, Incite Tax for their taxes, Forever Fierce for their apparel., Gym Lead Machine/Kilo for their website and CRM, InBody for their scales and other services. I tell you to use them because I use them. I don’t get a referral fee or an advertising fee. I just like their business, and they help gym owners, which makes my ecosystem stronger. Fifth, we have several local businesses who actually pay for their staff to come to Catalyst, and we teach Two-Brain gyms how to do it, too. And we do this through nutrition coaching. We do this through outreach for fitness programs. We’ve got all this in the Growth Toolkit. Six: We have a lot of families at Catalyst. And when one family member starts to lose motivation, the other people in her family usually bring her back. Ten-year clients usually have at least one other family member at my gym. And so we actively work hard to strengthen that web, too—the family web. Seventh, our local mayor just sent me this letter pledging to help me whenever I needed it because I bought bikes for 50 local kids, and I can talk more about that another time. I didn’t buy the bikes to get the mayor’s attention or his help. I bought the bikes so the kids would have bikes. But the reality is that when we put this stuff out there, it strengthens our net because people are paying attention. So I’m gonna be keeping that letter in my pocket for later. And, of course, some gyms who did well during COVID have shared what they’re doing with members of their gym who own businesses. So I get dozens of messages from entrepreneurs who aren’t in the fitness industry asking for help every year.

Chris Cooper (22:37):
The point is that your local connections form a web that can be your trampoline or your safety net when you really need it. All of these people are on their own little islands, and they’ll stay there unless you become the connector. The Number 1 reason that you need to connect people to you and to your brand and your gym is because nobody else will do it. What you need to get referrals from local physiotherapists is a phone call and a handshake, not a discount, not a private deal that you won’t refer people anywhere else. What you need to get promises and the support of your mayor is not the biggest gym in town with the biggest tax base or the biggest donation. It’s just these public offers to help other people. That’s what’s building your connection. And with other people, it’s really about conversations and treating other humans like humans, but making it an active process instead of just waiting for it to happen to you. You know, I don’t believe in karma, but I do believe in Bob Burg’s “law of left field.” And the law of left field says that you just keep helping people, helping people, helping people. And then one day, something really great happens to you and you say, “Where’d that come from? That just came right outta left field.” And the reality is that if you hit enough balls into left field, eventually somebody’s gonna start throwing them back.

Chris Cooper (23:58):
I’m Chris Cooper. I hope this helps you. If you join Gymownersunited.com, we provide lots of other examples of where you can strengthen your local community web, and you can do it without creating competition but collaborators.

The post Creating Collaborators Instead of Competitors appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Half-Baked Gymnastics Rings and Bad Business Practices in Gyms

If you’re a new gym owner, you’ll probably never have to skim through a community message board to find out how to use an oven to bake a set of homemade PVC gymnastics rings.

Yes, microgym ownership has changed dramatically in the last decade.

In 2022, the DIY days are over when it comes to equipment in the functional fitness world.

Everything you need to run a gym can be purchased on one or maybe two websites with a few clicks, and the gear will arrive right at your door in a shrink-wrapped pile.

That wasn’t always the case. Years ago, medicine balls, multi-station pull-up rigs, weightlifting shoes, gymnastics rings, bumper plates and kettlebells were much rarer. In fact, they were often so rare that prospective gym owners set aside time to locate or build this stuff.

Chris Cooper has his stories, and I have mine: We still use the plywood boxes we built more than a decade ago with plans downloaded from the web. Any gym owner who got into functional fitness before 2010 will have more tales.

Acquiring gear just wasn’t that easy back then.

Knowledge was pretty scarce, too. While small, independent gyms certainly existed in 2010, they were rarer, social-media connections were still in the nascent stage, and the community was less cohesive. And you certainly couldn’t find huge amounts of sound business advice on how to run a gym that wasn’t an access-only sea of machines.

So, just as we used duct tape and rocks to make medicine balls, we bumbled our way through business.

Here are the top 5 fundamental business mistakes I made around 2010:

1. I planned to do everything myself—coaching, accounting, cleaning, etc.

2. I set my rates by picking a number that “seemed right.”

3. I focused on coaching skill as the sole pillar of my “marketing plan.”

4. I rented too much space and severely underused about 30 percent of that space for a decade.

5. I never created a plan to replace myself in coaching roles so I could work on growing the business (I didn’t have a clue how to do that anyway).

Each of these mistakes can be a business killer on its own. Even together, they didn’t kill me—but that’s only because I started the gym as a hobby and didn’t need to make any money from it. Had I relied on it for income, it would have gone under.

Modern Solutions for Gym Owners

But just as mega-vendors such as Rogue have solved the problem of acquiring equipment for your gym, Two-Brain has solved the problem of acquiring the knowledge you need to run a gym.

Many people don’t realize that—even as they click away and fill online shopping carts with sleds, specialty barbells, colored bumper plates and kettlebells of every denomination.

While taking a huge shortcut with equipment acquisition, they’re still planning to figure out the business end on the fly.

Don’t do that.

Hit the “easy button” on the business side, too.

Two-Brain has years of experience and mountains of data. That’s been used to create a huge pile of resources—the equivalent of a warehouse of barbells and GHD machines. All of these resources are delivered one-on-one by a mentor who will tell you which one you need right now to make your business grow.

I’ll point you to three resources right now:

1. If you’re thinking about opening a gym, head to Startagym.com for the free resources. And get Chris Cooper’s book, too.

2. If you’re already a gym owner, check out any of our platforms to see what we’re all about. We publish a huge amount of content daily:

– Two-Brain blog
– YouTube: Run a Profitable Gym
– Instagram
– Facebook
– Twitter
– TikTok

3. Book a call to find out how a mentor can help you grow your gym: book a call.

Can you figure out how to run a gym on your own? Probably? Eventually? Just like you might be able to make a sketchy set of gymnastics rings in your oven.

Or you can just order real rings online and get a mentor who can guide you to profitability. Do those two things and you’ll save yourself about a decade of struggling.

The post Half-Baked Gymnastics Rings and Bad Business Practices in Gyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.