What's hurting your gym or fitness business the most? Not doing regular Goal Review Sessions with clients.

First and foremost, goal reviews provide an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with each client just by talking one on one. You can also check in on progress. If you ask the right questions, you'll find out if your training plan is producing results or if it needs to be adjusted to bring success. In some cases, clients will want to upgrade to more valuable services.

While goal reviews provide an opportunity to audit your gym programming and help your clients reach their goals sooner, they also allow you to remind clients of all the progress they've already made. Some won't realize how far they've come, and reminding them will measurably improve your retention.

How often should you do goal reviews at your gym, PT studio or affiliate? At minimum, you should do them every 90 days. If you do, your average revenue per member and length of engagement will improve.

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0:33 - Retention stats in gyms

1:24 - What are "goal reviews"?

4:35 - How goal reviews increase value to the client

6:13 - Saving relationships with goal reviews

9:12 - How often should you do goal reviews with gym clients?

Two-Brain's November 2022 gross revenue leaderboard for gyms ran from $46,000 to $73,000. Ashley Sell put Midwest Strength and Performance in the Top 10, and she's here to explain exactly how she did it.

Working with a large, six-owner team across two locations, Ashley knew that hiring a mentor was the key to pulling everyone together. Her specific management role? Growing the business. To do that, she used a number of tactics, including relocating to be closer to perfect clients, switching to a subscription model for personal training, and establishing solid business systems to support every aspect of the business.

As a result of Ashley's focused efforts, the gym's revenue took off in 2020. She even provided a graph to illustrate how her actions produced astronomical results. The visual: dramatic growth clearly starting in 2020 and continuing over the next years.

If you're struggling to generate revenue at your gym, take heart: A quick turnaround is possible if you do the right things at the right time.

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1:33 - Ashley's business model

7:19 - Systemization and moving to subscriptions

8:40 - The value of mentorship and sales skills

12:04 - What the subscription model looks like

14:19 - Delivering a high-quality product

20:08 - Hiring and staff development

26:00 - Career roadmaps and how they help

Gyms, affiliates and PT studios often don't grow steadily. In the fitness world, business growth is usually a series of steps forward and back. The key is to always grab more total ground than you give.

In wartime, you're fighting fires and dealing with emergencies. You've got to run lean and make tough decisions to make sure you don't slide too far back. To help you hold your ground, Chris Cooper has five audits you can perform in times of trouble.

When things are good, resist the urge to coast. If the road is free of traffic, that's when you step on the gas and build as much momentum as possible. If you follow that plan, you'll be prepared for the next tough period.

By planning for both good times and bad times, you'll ensure that your fitness business becomes a strong, stable enterprise that provides health for your clients, careers for your coaches and wealth for your family.

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1:10 - What is wartime?

1:56 - The five audits for wartime

6:20 - Why sprint in peacetime?

Trista Eason, owner of Flex Appeal in Wichita Falls, Texas, successfully bounced back after the pandemic with the help of her Two-Brain Business mentor: She boosted her average revenue per member (ARM) by over $100.

In this episode, Eason tells all so you can do the same thing at your gym, personal training studio or affiliate.

Trista did a few key things to increase her ARM. First, she swapped out her free intro class for a consultation called a No Sweat Intro, and then she dialed in her client avatar.

By offering specialty courses that addressed her ideal clients' needs, she was able to offer more value than ever before. Finally, she successfully moved up "the value ladder" by getting the right staff in the right seats so she could focus on growing the business and working as a CEO.

If your ARM needs work, listen and then take action to drive the number up.

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0:18 - Trista's short success summary

5:08 - Hiring help

8:30 - Specific action to increase average revenue per member

15:16 - Additional revenue generators

20:00 - Systems that support gym growth

Every year, Two-Brain Business publishes an industry-defining report for owners of gyms, personal-training and boutique studios, strength and conditioning facilities, CrossFit affiliates, martial-arts businesses, and 24-hour access gyms.

You can get the 56-page report for free here.

In this video, Chris Cooper goes through the report and offers his insight into stats you won't see anywhere else. Find out:

• What gym owners make and how many hours they work.
• The ratio of profitable and unprofitable gyms.
• What others are charging for group training and PT.
• How much gyms spend on rent and staffing.
• How much space gyms rent.
• What top-earning staff members make.
• CrossFit LLC affiliation stats and approval ratings.
• What class times are most popular.
• How gyms use nutrition programs, online coaching and supplement sales to make money.

Don't fly blind in 2023. Get the report and use this data to make sound decisions and grow your fitness business or coaching practice.

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4:06 - Clients

15:00 - Client value

33:10 - Retention 

35:15 - Expenses

38:04 - Staff

41:00 - Owner benefit

46:50 - Industry 

Mentorship—how does it work?

In this episode of Run a Profitable Gym, you'll find out.

Host Mike Warkentin talks to gym owner Nate Boley, who explains exactly how he uses a mentor to grow his business, Strength Warehouse in Bend, Oregon.

The key: Nate's mentor tailors her coaching to him. She helps him focus, prioritize and take action that gets measurable results. Sometimes they solve problems and address emergencies, and sometimes they review metrics and make forward-thinking, step-by-step action plans to improve the business. Every project comes with resources and support that ensure success.

If you've ever though about hiring a mentor for your gym, personal training studio, CrossFit affiliate, or strength and conditioning gym, this episode will give you a gym owner's perspective on working with a mentor.

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1:10 - Finding focus and dealing with overwhelm

5:36 - Fighting fires vs. planned growth activities

7:05 - Action plans between one-on-one calls

9:51 - Examples from Nate's last mentor call

15:30 - The value of mentorship

18:00 - Nate's future plans

You're in the service business—but that doesn't mean you always have to listen to your clients.

As a gym owner, you need to carefully consider when to give the squeaky wheels the grease and when to keep your own counsel.

In this episode of Run a Profitable Gym, Chris Cooper gives you an exercise that will help you identify your best clients, and he'll help you use them to improve your gym or fitness business.

A word to the wise: Avoid member surveys at your gym or affiliate. Your clients deserve your respect and care, but their feedback won't help you grow your business. Your best clients won’t give you anything actionable in a survey. Your worst clients will complain and expect action. Worst of all, surveys make it easy to confuse the squeaky wheels with the people who are really driving the train.

Instead of surveys, identify your best clients. Take them for coffee. Listen carefully. They won’t give you good advice on how to run your business (that’s a mentor’s job), but they’ll tell you how to serve them more—and how to find others like them, too.

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1:40 - Identifying your best clients

3:50 - Questions to ask your best clients

5:35 - When to ignore clients and members of the "loud minority"

10:30 - Why surveys are a bad idea

Gym owner Ashley Kates made significant gains in just six months after hiring a Two-Brain Business mentor:

- Her take-home pay increased.
- Her gross revenue at her training studio increased.
- Her husband was able to quit his job to be a stay-at-home dad.
- She worked fewer hours and had less stress at her gym.

With the help of a business coach, Ashley solidified her fitness business with procedures and policies, and she mapped out her client journey to include data-backed best practices. From there, she implemented a lead-nurturing process that fed perfect clients into a business that was carefully created to help people accomplish their goals through high-value coaching. 

By adding touch points throughout the client journey, Ashley increased length of engagement (retention) and drove her average revenue per member way above $300. 

The result: She's now running a sound, profitable business, and she's living the life she wants.

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0:57 - Pre- and post-mentorship statistics

2:41 - The exact changes Ashley made with a mentor

7:58 - Is mentorship worth the investment?

9:34 - The business model at Mom+me Strong

14:41  - Ashley's future plans for her gym

18:16 - Ashley's advice to other gym owners

The key to exponential growth in your gym: have your clients bring you more clients.

Your existing members are one of the most valuable assets to a gym owner— but your clients aren't salespeople, even if they see the immense value of your service. You just can't wait around for them to bring more members into your gym, studio or affiliate.

So how do you create a "referral culture" in your business and your community? In this show, Chris Cooper shares advice he earned by creating a referral system that continuously supplies clients to his gym—even during COVID shutdowns and tough economic times.

Anyone can use this marketing technique, and the time you spend on it will prove to be a great investment that compounds over time. With a strong network in place, you'll reduce your marketing costs for years and enjoy a steady stream of very warm leads who are eager to train with you.

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1:49 - Five steps to building a referral network in your gym

16:43 - What can a referral network do for you in the Tinker Phase?

17:20 - Setting up a referral web for your entire town

Jake Fields runs a profitable gym with a lot of clients. That's an important distinction because piles of clients don't guarantee profitability.

Fields has close to 300 members at his CrossFit affiliate and earned a spot on Two-Brain's leaderboard for most clients in October 2022. In this episode, he shares the secrets of how he retains and acquires members.

For Jake, it's all about systems: He has specific processes to generate leads, prequalify them, sell to them with free consultations, onboard them and retain them for years. The staff at CrossFit Devotion have their roles clearly laid out, and they know how success is measured.

It wasn't always this way. At one point, Fields was losing clients as fast as he was acquiring them. Then he solved his retention problems with systems and now has his business running like a well-oiled machine.

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1:08 - Retention at CrossFit Devotion: systems and client success managers

10:48 - Client-acquisition strategies

20:42 - Systems, procedures and getting the client count unstuck