Is the Group Fitness Model Still Viable (and Do Other Models Exist)?

Do you have a business model for your gym?

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host Mike Warkentin and Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper lay out five gym business models that have been proven to be successful—and that’s based on data from thousands of gyms around the world.

The models are:

1. Group only.
2. Group plus personal training.
3. Group plus high-ticket offers.
4. Semi-private training.
5. Guided access.

Tune in to learn the pros and cons of each model, and then get Coop's full guide to these models via the link below.

In the full guide, “5 Gym Business Models That Work,” you’ll find everything from bulleted executive summaries to spreadsheets full of data, so you can make an informed decision and create the best long-term plan for your gym.

Links

Full guide: "5 Gym Business Models That Work"

Brian Bott on semi-private training

Joe Venuti and Alessandra Bisalti on guided access

Book a Call

1:21 - Is the group model still viable?

7:51 - Is on-ramp a barrier?

11:53 - Other revenue for group models

18:47 - Semi-private training

27:39 - Guided access and how it works

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Meet Starla, the new business model. Does anyone remember that awkward scene from Arrested Development? It involved a swimsuit model, not a spreadsheet. The gym world is actually a lot like that. At times, our business models are often super weird or just completely absent. So do you have a business model? I've got good news for you. Chris Cooper has five of them and they're all backed by data in our brand new guide. Each of the models has a spreadsheet that shows you how you can make a hundred thousand dollars as a gym owner. We're gonna dig into them today. I'm Mike Warton. This is Run a Profitable Gym . With me today is Chris Cooper Tub Brain Founder. Good morning, Chris. How are ya ?

Speaker 2: 0:35

I'm way better, man. That, that intro made my day. Do you remember the scene ? The Arrested Development, Joe ? Oh yeah. I'm , I'm a huge Arrested Development fan. It so

Speaker 1: 0:43

Great . It was so great Job is just in the boardroom and he's just, I have a business model, Michael, and you know, and she comes on the Rock , sitting on the rock and uh, it went from there and the board didn't appreciate it. <laugh>,

Speaker 2: 0:56

My family has a joke. There's always money in the banana stands . Always

Speaker 1: 0:59

Money in the banana stand

Speaker 2: 1:00

That comes from Arrested Development too.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Yep . That's a great show and it's a great setup for this one because back when you and I started Jims, there was no business model and there was no money in the banana stand. We were just making it up as we went. We were making tons of mistakes and it took us like decades to get to profitability and some of us didn't make it there at all. So I'm really pumped about this 'cause I've gone through this new guide in detail and there's really cool stuff in there, but I'm gonna put you on the spot right off the beginning because I followed this path and I wanna know if it still works. Is the group model still viable at this point in time? What do you think? There

Speaker 2: 1:32

Are a few outliers who are doing really well with the group model. By and large, these people have like first mover advantage. So, you know, they opened up CrossFit Toronto or, or whatev , you know, that's a bad example because I think CrossFit Toronto is gone now, but maybe they open up the first CrossFit in Detroit and they got to name it CrossFit Detroit. And they'll always have that like brand advantage. So anybody that wants to try CrossFit or people who are looking for better CrossFit, like they're gonna go to that brand. But by and large, these are the minority. Like less than 5% of , uh, of gyms are doing really well with that group model unless they introduce like one-on-one or, or something else. We'll talk about that later. And if you look broadly, if you look at like , uh, let's look outside CrossFit, let's look at F 45, let's look at Spin studios. Let's look , uh, you know, outta Australia, there's like 12 different brands every single month coming into the market there. What happens is that the um, group model is so commoditized you can't even tell the difference between F 45 and you know, now it's like the green theory, you know, and, and the only differentiator is price. And so that drives down the pricing model. People can't make a living there, the owners aren't making any money and uh, it's just kind of this downward spiral. And so like, if, if all you're doing is selling group classes, you're really gonna struggle to compete against, you know, a a growing market.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Well, 'cause you're still at that point you almost get pushed into the micro or the , uh, corporate gym model where you need more and more and more, more people at these really low rates. But you've still got these little labor costs and you are quote unquote coaching people. But really what you're doing is hurting people and screaming at them in a giant pile and you're not charging enough to cover any of it. And I've seen a lot of those studios start to go under around me. I don't know how, what it's like where you're at.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, they're gone. I mean, so where that, where that came from in CrossFit, this like almost industrial model of like, let's pack 30 people in and we're all gonna do everything in sync. And it , you know, it's almost choreography in some of these gyms that actually came from martial arts. Like that wasn't Greg's original model. We'll talk more about that later. But CrossFit invited a speaker to the affiliate summit in 2006, and this guy came from karate and he talked about the model they have in karate, which is 30 kids wearing the exact same uniform, occupying a two foot by two foot square space doing everything in complete sync . Everybody kicks at the same time, throws punches at the same time. There's no equipment, there's no sparring going on, but like, that's how you, you make a living in that model. The problem is that when you add complicated movements and you add 10 people who are all at different levels and you add equipment like barbells and boxes that change every single day, it is very, very hard to compete. And now a lot of gyms are seeing that profit margin just shrink and shrink and shrink because they're trying to compete with the bootcamp next door, the hit gym next door . The F 45 clients are moving faster and faster between coaches and you know, unfortunately, if you don't do something to differentiate yourself and really focus on building a coaching business, that's who you're competing with now.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Okay, so in our new guide, we actually have a group model that's just group only with a little bit of extra stuff in there. We'll tell you about that in just a sec. But Chris, gimme the short version for people who are listening and they don't think it's a swimsuit model. What is a business model? Why should a gym owner care? What are we, what are we going at?

Speaker 2: 4:46

A business model is just like your actual plan to succeed. So it doesn't have to be fancy. It's some numbers on a page where you're basically tracking, here's how many clients I have, here's what each client pays me, here's how long they stay, and then here's what I spend on expenses and here's what I spend on staff. And here's what's left over at the, at the end. And we all came into this as first time entrepreneurs. I know I was terrified to learn this stuff because I didn't wanna be the witness to my own failure. But the reality is like in the three years that I avoided learning this stuff, my business didn't improve. And so you don't need to become an accountant to, to run your gym, but you have to have a very basic understanding of what metrics you need to track and you need to track them . And then what that does is it , it helps you make decisions. So if you're looking at your, your p and l, your profit and loss, like the most basic accounting document there is, you can say, what if I added five more clients? How would that affect my bottom line? What if I added more space? How would that affect me? What if I increased what I was charging by $5? What if I added on rent ? What if I did more personal training? What if I did whatever? And so what we've done in this guide is we've actually broken down five models that work, including the group only model because I don't want to say like it never works , sometimes it does, but I want you to see the actual math of how this stuff breaks down so that you can decide for yourself.

Speaker 1: 6:08

So let's talk a little bit about those group models and specifically the group only one because a key feature of that in the book is that regardless of whether you're focusing on 150 group clients, we still wanna bring them in with a one-on-one on-ramps personal training by another word. Why is that and why is that such an essential feature of that group model?

Speaker 2: 6:27

Well, you , you got two options to make a group model go, right? You number one, it , well , there's really three. So one is you have a a ton of clients and that model is the one that's most talked about in like CrossFit gyms for example. The next, the next model is that you have 150 to 200 clients, but you charge a high price point. So that's really common in Orange theory, which is, you know, a , a growing brand, they're probably the fastest growing of all the ones that I'm talking about. And then the third model is that you have mostly group training, but you introduce some one-on-one at some point we call this the prescriptive model. And basically what you're doing is you're saying like go to the group classes for exercise, but you are going to be working one-on-one with somebody who oversees your journey. So you're gonna be checking in with them, they're going to be measuring your progress, and if your progress isn't as fast as you would like it, they're gonna change your prescription a little bit. They're gonna tell you to come more often. They might, you know, recommend some personal training or whatever. Sometimes they'll tell you to come left less often, but like there's somebody overseeing your particular case, and this is the big differentiator that a lot of brands can't compete with. So if you're a CrossFit gym and you don't have to follow the F 45 franchise playbook, like this is your big opportunity to be different, have more valuable gym, keep people longer, and really actually change their lives instead of just keeping 'em for six months and then they're churning out to Fit Body bootcamp.

Speaker 1: 7:52

I'll , I'll ask you this and I'll play devil's advocate. What if I told you that I think on-ramp is a barrier to entry to group classes? What would you say?

Speaker 2: 7:58

Well, I mean the , the data says that's just not true. Like, it doesn't, my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is data from 15,000 gyms that we've collected is the experience of a , a mentor team of 70 successful gym owners. And you know, we've had the experience now of working with well over 2000 gyms and on-ramp, like a one-on-one introduction to your course or your group program or whatever is not a barrier to entry, it's actually a barrier to exit. So what happens is people pay a little bit more, they learn the fundamentals, but more than anything else, they get comfortable. And so after five or six sessions or whatever you pick, you say, do you feel comfortable joining the group class now? And eight outta 10 will say, yep , ready to go. And then you put a great client into that class who knows all the movements. They're not like, what's a power clean again? But more than anything else, they don't feel stupid in that class because you know, you know what happens, right? Like they get in that class and some people will say, what's a power clean again ? But most people will just be like , uh, what am I doing here? I forget. And then they quickly feel like I don't belong here. And so they, they bail. So, you know, the whole free trials thing that went through CrossFit gyms, like the reason that it doesn't work isn't because you're not gonna sign people up. You will, especially if you're brand new, but you're not gonna keep those people. And so that's, that's the real key to on-ramp. The other, the other like argument for on-ramp, especially when people say like, it's a barrier to entry. If you don't offer a one-on-one introduction to your program, 20% of the people coming in your door will just not wanna do it. And it's because they're already feeling awkward, they're already feeling insecure. Like, I don't know if I can do this, man, these workouts look hard. Now they gotta do that in front of a group of strangers. Like, think about that, okay , not only have you never played the piano before, but your first lesson is gonna be on stage in front of 15 other people who are just gonna stand there and like watch you. That's how they feel. So offering that one-on-one option, most of the time it, it invites people who would not normally join a group class in our gym. There are also people who , uh, prioritize like their schedule over their budget, for example, like, I need to come at 10:00 AM we don't have a class at 10:00 AM Okay , uh, I'll do personal training or you know, maybe they've got a unique characteristic, one leg shorter than the other, they got this old shoulder injury. They should not be in a group class self moderating like, or scaling. They, they should be working one-on-one with a trainer, getting them ready so they can be successful maybe in your group program later. So having that one-on-one option, it's great for the business. We didn't even talk about that. But the most important thing is like, it's better for the client and it's not a barrier to entry at all. It's an appropriate entry that also serves as a barrier to exit. Yeah,

Speaker 1: 10:42

You know, I'll give you the feedback from ground level is when now I was terrified to put an OnRamp in place because I, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna charge $400 in advance of $150 unlimited group membership. That seemed horrifying to me because I'm just gonna screen out all these people. But what actually happened is when I sold OnRamps, I realized every month that I sold a bunch of OnRamps was a profitable month. And the month that I didn't were not profitable. And because I had these on-ramps, people stayed longer. And then again, two brain retention data says , uh, I think 14 months, it takes average retention from eight months with a free trial if they join to 14 months with an on-ramp. That was floating my business because people were staying around longer. So as I started to look at that, I realized this is actually a huge financial boon and it's better for the client. Talk to me now about, so I mean that model, the group model works, but it's gonna work way, way , way better if you have that introductory one-on-one thing where you build these relationships and move people through. And so when we have this model in the group in the , um, book 150 people, you can make a hundred grand, but that intake of five people a month with an on ramp of, I think it's five sessions or six sessions at $300, something like that, adds in a chunk of revenue and supports the gym and increases retention. So that's why listeners, you'll see that, that one in there, Chris, talk to me about the group model, but with a lot more PT and a lot more even like high value services, like that's another evolution of things where we still have group classes, but now we're adding in other revenue streams. What's going on in those two models.

Speaker 2: 12:07

Yeah, I think the next model, which some would call like high ticket for example, is taking a step up and and saying like, okay, what does the client actually need? It's a more holistic view of their fitness. So they need to exercise. Absolutely. Do they need the support of a community? Maybe? Yeah , probably. Do they need a coach? For sure. They've, they have not succeeded before they need a coach. They need a guidance. Okay, so one element of, of what we need to change their lives is like fitness. That's fun. That keeps them coming around with good retention and coaching. Another element might be nutrition, another element might be sleep. Who's looking over that whole thing? Or are we just servicing like the one hour of their day and maybe it's the best hour of their day, but it's only one hour of their day and maybe three or four hours of their week, is that enough to change their lives? And so if we take the perspective of like, what does the client actually need to change their lives, that becomes a much more valuable service. And I said it's a more holistic service because usually when people buy a high ticket item in gym, what they're actually doing is buying the whole package, right? The the holistic view of fitness including exercise and nutrition. So a lot of gyms will have like a high ticket offer. This could be anywhere between 1,003 thousand bucks. I would say that an on-ramp that costs $300 is like a higher ticket offer than what most gyms sell. So, you know, consider that whole spectrum. But in many cases what these gyms find is that when a client comes in and they're paying $2,000 for the first two months month even, they are getting so much attention from the coach that they can't fail. And what's interesting is that like it forces the gym to be just on top of that client because they're basically saying, we're gonna guarantee your success here after that initial two months. The conversion into group classes is, is pretty high. Like a lot of people will take that the first two months, they change their whole life, they get some good habits established and many will continue with that. But let me go again. Another 90 days at your top tier offer, some will convert into group, but the best gyms after doing this for a few years have found that they need to build the two things together. So I'll give you a great example from a , a gym that's really crushing it in two brain. And these guys are in San Francisco, so their , their uh , high ticket offer is $2,700 and that gets them through their first three months. Okay? So 900 bucks a month, you've got a dedicated coach who's overseeing your journey and that coach is gonna tell you, okay, you need personal training twice a week, but you need five workouts a week. So your other three are gonna be group, here are our group classes, which ones can you make? Then I need you to talk to our nutritionist. And then I've got a sleep expert that you're gonna talk to, or I've got a habits per , like they can prescribe anything, they've got a bigger toolkit and three months in the client has established amazing habits and patterns. And so now the client has a different perspective on things and they say like, okay, well you know what, what parts of this do I need to keep going? Well you need to keep exercising four times a week. Do you wanna keep going one-on-one or do you wanna do group or you know, what is it? And basically like this, this health coach or, or this expert or whatever you wanna call 'em , is telling the client, go to two classes, go to two personal training sessions. Like they can, they can draw from all the different offerings that the business has. And that is dramatically different than saying you pay this and you're allowed to come to this many classes per ,

Speaker 1: 15:33

And that, you know, that kind of leads into the other model that's in there, group plus plus personal training where you're just selling a , you know, a number. It's not like a thousand personal training sessions a month, but it's like a smaller number where you have this second revenue stream. We don't have to beat that one to death, but if the idea is just you've got a bunch of group clients, you're also selling personal training, those two revenue streams combined to produce a hundred thousand dollars a year in net order benefit in our spreadsheets. Chris, what are the key aspects of that model that you wanna point out?

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, so I mean the , the person who's using this uber successfully is para Matson over in Sweden. And this model is working so well for him that he's actually buying up other CrossFit gyms and partnering with them . And you know, it , it's really awesome to see how fast he's growing. But what happens is somebody signs up for a membership at his gym, that membership , uh, includes both group classes and one-on-one training. Now of course the price reflects that the price is quite a bit higher than if he was just selling group classes. But what he's doing is basically taking the prescriptive model and saying, here's exactly what you need except here's our, here's our base, our minimum is going to be group plus one personal training session a month so that we can work on your weaknesses, address your , uh, program and maybe change course if we need to. The thing is, like if, if people can't change course, if, if their option in your gym is just do these group classes, eventually they're gonna change their mind about what they're doing. But as a real coach who has a higher level perspective on things, if you can say, okay, this isn't working, we need to change and do more personal training or more nutrition, like that's how you keep the client because they can shift direction without shifting gyms. And so, you know, adding like that base personal training to the group model does a few things. It increases client value, it serves as a bit of a filter because not everybody's gonna want that. There are other CrossFit gyms close to all of Paris's gyms, but it also creates a more standardized income stream for his trainers, the people who work for him . It creates better long-term client results, it increases retention. So it's good for the business and good for the client. And that's, that's like what's beautiful about some of these models is it's not just what's best for the business or, or what's best for CrossFit HQ or it , it's what's best for the actual client and the business owner and the staff. And like that's what we wanna show in these spreadsheets too.

Speaker 1: 17:51

Yeah, and it's really neat because if you take the industry average for a group training, it's about $160, something like that, and add in the industry average for a PT session, which is about $75, all of a sudden your average revenue per member if you sell that hybrid program is about 2 35, which as opposed to one 60 is a huge, huge difference. If my a RM was 2 35 back when I was running a gym 10 years ago, I probably have a different car in the driveway. But the idea is like, it makes a huge difference and it's just one extra session. The cool part about this though is that people say, oh , I can't find people who are gonna pay $235 a month. We only need 150 in these models. We break down the exact number of clients that you need and it's not 500 people. You, maybe you can't find 500 people who wanna pay this, but could you find, you know, 150 and the spreadsheets will show you exactly what these numbers are. And like Chris said, you can take these things and start playing with them and saying, if I reduced this to 70 clients and I charge this , then okay, and now you've all got, this is the beauty of the model. I wanna get into this one because it's a really interesting one. It's a newer model that we've come up with semi-private training. What is this and how does it work?

Speaker 2: 18:56

Yeah, man, so semi-private has been around for a while and it's slowly cropping off more and more. And the trend, we, we spotted it on our leaderboard. Like who are these people who are doing four or $500 per month in a RM Like, you know, one of these guys, honestly, Mike last night texted me, he's like, my net owner benefits . So my take home this month, one month take home from two semi-private gyms is $35,000. What do I do with it? And I I just went like, that's insane. So the , he's got two gyms that are about 2000 square feet each. He provides, you know, an income for his trainers that's like double the industry average. His retention is incredible. What's he doing? It's semi-private. So the way that semi-private works is this, there are 3, 4, 5 of us training together in the gym at the same time. You and I have different programs, but we're sharing the same coach. And so at 11 o'clock today, literally an hour and a half from now, I'll go into my gym, there will be three people warming up and you know, each one of us has our clipboard with our program on it. The coach has looked at each of our clipboards in the , in the past, like she knows exactly what we're doing today. And Chris, you're warming up on the rower. Uh, Lauren is warming up on the assault bike , uh, who else is in there? Kelsey is like 36 weeks pregnant, so you know, she's doing like some air squats to warm up and stuff and uh, Bev is brand new, you know, and so she's gonna be doing a lot more one-on-one with me. So during the course of the next hour, I know what I have to do. I have some press today and I have some front squats today. So my coach Jessica is gonna come around and be like, coop , you know, why is your right elbow sagging on your front squats ? Like, let's really focus on that. Whatever. She goes to Kelsey, Kelsey, slow it down. We don't want you to give birth on the floor. She goes to Lauren, Lauren, hold that. Get your bum down on the plank. You know, and like that's semi-private training and for most of us that ticks all the boxes. Like I've got a fun little group that I work out with. I've got a personalized program for my goals, so I know what I'm doing today, but it's not what they're doing today. I've got a coach overseeing me, you know, 25 years into coaching fitness. I still want a fitness coach. And what's really amazing about this model is not just that it's great for the client, but it's amazing for the gym. I mean that that coach will be making $80 an hour to coach four of us. Each person in our little semi-private is paying slightly less than they pay for personal training, but way more than they would pay for like CrossFit group classes at at my gym. It's, it's just such a win for everybody that like my coaches really just wanna do semi-private all the time now . And this is the biggest challenge in semi-private. It , it's a really growing model. It's very effective. And to be honest with you, Mike, like, and , and absolutely Frank, if I'd known about this in 2008, I would not have opened up my second location. I would not have tried to jump to group classes. I would not have starved myself for three years and almost gone bankrupt trying to figure this out.

Speaker 1: 21:48

It makes sense. Listeners, this is the basic summary. This is like PT lights . So if you think about a PT session and you're talking to your clients in between sets and you're just like shooting the , the stuff about the weekend and so forth, basically think about you didn't do that part, you just moved on to another client, coach them on something, watch their thing, go to the next person, next person. You're just administering say four individual programs at once. Takes a lot of skill but you can't do it if you're a good coach and you're just cutting out some of the other stuff that you maybe don't need.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Yeah, I mean the hardest part about personal training honestly is boredom for the trainer. Like once the, once the program is written, the exciting part's kind of done and what we would find when we were just doing one-on-one training is you would have 10, 11 clients in a day and you'd have the exact same conversation every hour on the hour and you ju at the end of the day you'd be like mentally exhausted from making small talk . That doesn't happen. I mean, yeah, there's beauty in the group, right? Like, but you can get that beauty from four people instead of from 12. There's cheerleading that goes on, you know, like when Linda in our group like was coming back from an injury and she was able to squat to a 13 inch box, like the other four of us just went bananas, you know, and like it's awesome. Semi-private is different from small group though, and like maybe this is where we segue into what small group training is, Mike .

Speaker 1: 23:04

Yeah, and before you do that , I'm just gonna say listeners, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to uh , uh, Brian Bott is our expert on semi-private training. He did a whole show on this. So if you wanna dig into this model, Brian lays it out in total detail. You can find out everything you want about this. So you review our spreadsheets and the new guide and check out what Brian has to say. There's some really cool stuff in there. Small group Chris, a little bit different. I'm not doing my own program, but what am I doing?

Speaker 2: 23:27

We're all doing the same program. So now instead of you and I training with two other people and everybody's got their own program, we're sharing a coach, we're all doing the same thing, but we're sharing a coach and you know, it's really, really interesting this model. So usually you charge quite a bit more for it because what you're charging for is like I did , yeah, yeah, I

Speaker 1: 23:45

Did this but I did it with three person group classes.

Speaker 2: 23:47

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. We were , we were doing small group training at like big group rates and that , that's the mistake is so

Speaker 1: 23:53

You can charge more for this,

Speaker 2: 23:55

Wait , like twice as much and you know, you're attracting people who value privacy having their own little tribe of five or six regular buddies, you know, buddies , um, having their, the , they can determine kind of the schedule that they're on, you know, and what's interesting is like this was Glassman's path. If you listen to my interview with him at his kitchen table, he describes exactly what he was doing and he went from one-on-one personal training to I can't fill any more sessions. Hey, I've got this other person training with me, I think you guys would be a great match. Let's try it, let's do two on one to three on one to four on one . And you know, he's talked about this in a lot of the, the journal videos too. Eventually he got up to maybe five or six on one , but he was still charging close to personal training rates and that's why he didn't need a bigger than like 1500 square feet. I mean, I think you've been to the original gym, I've been there like, yeah, tiny 800 square feet down below and like a, you know , uh, a little tiny balcony thing up above, right? People can see pictures. That's where the confusion is, is what was small group training back then. And, and we never heard about that. And so there are gyms like Daniel Purton who's absolutely killing this right now. He is doing CrossFit with these people and they're getting amazing results. He's got amazing retention and he is charging like double what the other gyms are in town. It's a really good model. And the only thing that stops gyms from doing this is mythology that comes from like other biz coaches telling you to have big groups and what's in between their own ears.

Speaker 1: 25:22

So it's just creating value instead of saying, you know, group classes are this price and you know, you come and whoever shows up gets the same treatment. It's saying these are capped small group training sessions where I'm giving you x amount of attention. It's high value, you promote it like that and you can charge more than, you know, what essentially worked out to like seven 50 a class for me if I was charging 150 for unlimited, right? So that's a really interesting way to charge more. And like I said, I literally did this, but I charged the wrong rates because I just charged $150 unlimited. And honestly, many of my classes had three or four people show up. Some had one , I was giving great coaching, but I wasn't making any money. And then I had to come see you because I was going under <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Well that's the real irony, right? Is like small group coaching is the model, but most of us only have six or seven people in the average like class anyway. The , the problem is not that we're not doing a good job with this. The problem is just that we're, we don't understand what our actual service is and we're not charging for it. You know, it's, it's not like, oh , you should just double your prices and that'll fix everything. It's, you need to understand what values and it , it's not just like having a time for people to work out in a big group of 15 and like, I'm gonna, if you're doing something seriously wrong, I'm gonna come and like triage your knees or whatever. It's like we're gonna coach you. I'm only gonna split my attention five other ways. You've got just enough people to keep you moving forward, but not so many people that you're lost in the big group and that's, you know, you you've got some time flexibility there. A lot of my clients who do personal training, it's not 'cause they're scared of the group, it's because they're scared of what happens at noon in their business or their life. Like they can't comment , so they're paying for convenience. Yeah. And , and I really think like this is a really successful growing model. There is so many brand new franchises like Alloy, where they do small group personal training. They will not allow their franchisees to say the word class because gyms, you know, have basically created such a low value proposition for the term class that like, they don't even wanna be associated with that . So it's, it really is like a growing market segment and you're going to hear a lot more from Jims doing semi-private and doing a small group in the future.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Jim owners , if you're not making what you wanna make, I would encourage you to dig into this part of our new guide. Look at that spreadsheet, look at the numbers and think about what you might be able to do with this. I wanna go to the last one, model five, and this is one that I hadn't heard of until earlier this year. Guided access. What is that and how does it work when you've got this large space and you're not running, you know, the corporate gym where you're hand out towels at the front desk?

Speaker 2: 27:53

Yeah. This is kind of a different value proposition of clients. And so Joe and Alessandra from CrossFit Mass, they came outta Covid with no staff, now they're in Boston, right? CrossFit mass is short from Massachusetts and Boston was locked down longer than a lot of other places, you know , uh, California and Canada, we were kind of the same New York. But what they found is like, okay, now we've got reopen, it's just the two of us. Do we really wanna do this again? They had a very successful gym and they said there's gotta be another way. And so what they actually did was incorporated programming with coaching at certain specific times and access to the gym. So there's a fantastic podcast on the , on this, but we'll

Speaker 1: 28:34

Link to that.

Speaker 2: 28:35

Yeah, okay. In a nutshell, you sign up at their gym, Joe, who is an expert at writing programming or Alessandra another expert at writing programming, they're gonna write your program for you. You're gonna do some one-on-one sessions until you know like exactly what you're doing. And then you can show up at the gym anytime between like 6:00 AM and nine o'clock at night. You just like you , you boop in with your little key swipe thingy and or your app, whatever system you're using. And if you wanna come while there's a coach on the floor, there will be a coach on the floor from nine until 12. You don't have to start at nine sharp, you can start at nine 15, you can start at 10 0 1, whatever. The coach will guide you, like semi-private. If you can't make that window of time, no problem. Show up at one o'clock. There'll be somebody in the building. And if, if we're busy, like we won't be coaching you, but we'll be around. If, if you don't understand something, do your own thing. You know , if , if you've been around for a while , you don't really need the coach, but you wanna show up when there's other people here come between nine and 12. If you've been around for a while and you just like need to get in and get it done, hey come at three o'clock, get it done, let us know it's , we'll see it in the app that you've completed it. And this model is brilliant because , uh, Joe and Alessandra and I can testify to this, they're in our Tinker program, they're with me four times a year, like in in Vegas, in Dallas, wherever they can leave their gym, they have like one part-timer who fills in for them sometimes. Uh, Alessandra works from about 7:00 AM until about 11 in the morning at the gym. Joe goes in from four until seven, the rest of their work is completely remote, very successful gym , very high a RM uh , they don't need a massive space to do it. It's amazing. So I do love this. And you know, Mike, I just wanna reiterate like our, our goal with this guide in this podcast is not to say that one is better than the other. What we're saying is that you need to have a model. You need to have a plan, and you need to select a plan based on the strengths and weaknesses and your personal preferences. You can make a great living with big group training. Sure, follow the plan. Like if you're going to do that, you have to have a high a RM , that's all because you're gonna have a higher churn rate. That's just how it's, you're gonna need to recruit more clients, you're gonna need to do more marketing. That's how it is. But if that's what you want, you can do it and we'll show you how. If you want to do guided access, you need to have a bigger skill set and programming. You need to have a different clientele, you need to have a different space layout, right? Like you need to have , um, the key card access thing. You can do it and we'll show you how. You just have to know the pros and cons of each one before you start. And we, we made semi-private and small group really sound rosy. But of course there are challenges to that too. Like it's very hard to introduce semi-private if you've just been doing group classes , uh, if you're a personal trainer, like you're crazy not to do this. But you know, there's pros and cons to both. We can help you with any one of these models. Absolutely. The key is just to get gym owners picking a model, knowing what's involved and making an informed decision. We're not against, we're coaching <laugh> , we're not like only telling people to do semi-private. We're business mentors. We want you to understand your metrics so that you can make decisions that will benefit you for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1: 31:40

Yeah. And this guide has that laid out. There are five clearly defined models, but we're not tied to those models. It's not the only five that exist, it's just five very common ones where you can, we've got executive summaries in there. So if you don't care for spreadsheets, you can look at the bullet points of like, here's the pros, here's the cons, here's the essential details. If you wanna dig into the spreadsheets, you can go further and then you can recreate this stuff and start fiddling around to see where the numbers work for you. But these aren't the only five models. That's the benefit of , uh, to bring membership is they're gonna create the model and help you , uh, implement the model that works for your exact business. And it might be one of these five, it might be a combination, it might be something slightly different. And we're always looking to figure out what's working right now. That's kind of where semi-private and guided access came from. That was something we weren't talking about a year ago. And then Joe and Alessandra come up with this . Brian bot starts telling us these amazing things that are working elsewhere and we get these new things. So that's the benefit of the data Hit group .

Speaker 2: 32:30

Yeah, and really this is the long-term benefit of tracking these metrics. Like you, the gym owner listening, watching this, you have to track these metrics so that you can make these decisions yourself. It, it's not enough for me to be like, big group training is the way to go. You know, ultimately you're gonna be doing this for 30 years. I would love to be with you every day , but I won't be. You need to know how to make these decisions. And so the interesting thing though is that when you're as big as Two Brain is, we see these decisions being made and the metrics being tracked across hundreds, thousands of gyms. And so we start to see these trends. Like we weren't talking about small group training in the last guide. We had never heard of Guided Access in the Last Guide, but as these things prove themselves to be better with actual numbers and owner lifestyle, we can start talking about them more. We're not just guessing, we're not hyping like our favorite method or like whatever HQ or, or F 45 is telling us to say, we can say like, here's what actually works because we've got the proof proof

Speaker 1: 33:31

And the data is available. Chris, how can people get this new guide?

Speaker 2: 33:35

You just gotta go to gym owners united.com and that's a Facebook group and you'll see the guide stuck to the top and all you do is just send me a quick DM on Facebook and say, can I have that guide? In fact, if you're just on Facebook, you can shoot me a DM there and say, can I get that guide? And , and like, you know, we'll, we'll give you this five models guide. It doesn't mean you have to change what you're doing. It doesn't mean that what you're doing is wrong. It just means like this is, you're gonna pick one of these models and that's your goal and you're gonna slowly work toward that model. If you wanna work toward getting to that model faster, you use a mentor,

Speaker 1: 34:06

Go on Facebook, send Chris a dm, head to G Owners United. You can interact in there. Continue the discussion on this and other thing, you could talk about models that you see working, ask some questions. Two brain mentors are in there all the time. And you can get the guide through that group as well. Thanks Coop for laying this out. This is really interesting. I'm really curious to see what happens when some people start working on these newer models and see what happens. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 34:25

Yeah man, thank you. Use these as a template. Everybody should have their own business model. Use a mentor to help you build money . If you don't know

Speaker 1: 34:33

How this has been, run a profitable gym. Please hit subscribe on your way and be sure to get that guy by DMing Cooper .