Have you ever heard of a gym with a waiting list?
CrossFit Leiden in the Netherlands has capped its membership at 400 clients. Instead of adding more people, the gym is focused on retention, increasing value for clients and raising average revenue per member (ARM).
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host Mike Warkentin chats with gym co-owner Jeroen van Duijn to learn how CrossFit Leiden obtained—and retained—so many clients.
One of CrossFit Leiden's top strategies for getting new clients is a weekly bring-a-friend event, and Jeroen shares exciting tips for making similar events successful at your gym.
To hold onto each new patron, members of Jeroen’s team focus heavily on relationship building and the client experience.
From No Sweat Intros to Goal Review Sessions to 100-visit gifts, the gym has touchpoints all along the client journey to make sure clients keep coming back—and want to bring their friends.
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:56 - "I don’t want to increase my client count"
6:57 - Jeroen’s projects
9:12 - The client journey
15:58 - Finding great clients
22:18 - Making some changes
Have you ever heard of a gym with a waiting list?
CrossFit Leiden in the Netherlands has capped its membership at 400 clients. Instead of adding more people, the gym is focused on retention, increasing value for clients and raising average revenue per member (ARM).
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host Mike Warkentin chats with gym co-owner Jeroen van Duijn to learn how CrossFit Leiden obtained—and retained—so many clients.
One of CrossFit Leiden's top strategies for getting new clients is a weekly bring-a-friend event, and Jeroen shares exciting tips for making similar events successful at your gym.
To hold onto each new patron, members of Jeroen’s team focus heavily on relationship building and the client experience.
From No Sweat Intros to Goal Review Sessions to 100-visit gifts, the gym has touchpoints all along the client journey to make sure clients keep coming back—and want to bring their friends.
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:56 - "I don’t want to increase my client count"
6:57 - Jeroen’s projects
9:12 - The client journey
15:58 - Finding great clients
22:18 - Making some changes
CrossFit Leiden has CAP'S membership up . They are full and they have a waiting list. One of the owners is gonna tell us how he did it. This is Run a Profitable Gym . I'm your host, Mike Warton . Please hit subscribe. So you get all of our shows . Our December, 2023 leaderboard, the client count. It ran from 324 to 10 34. It's 1,034 members. I've got one of the top 10 gym owners with me today. His name is Yaun Van Dunn, and he's the co-owner of CrossFit Leiden that is south of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His gym is full, and you can take a number if you wanna join because he's capped his membership. We're gonna get into that today. Yaun , thank you for joining me today. How are you ?
Speaker 2:Very good, Mike. Thanks , uh, for asking me. I am feeling very honored to be here.
Speaker 1:I am excited because it's rare that you see a gym that actually caps this membership. So you've done this magical thing, you know, you've reached a place where you actually don't want more members. I gotta ask you, why don't you want to increase your client count? What's going on?
Speaker 2:Well , first of all, I never thought we would've been at a 400 member gym at all. Like, it's all started off as a hobby, you know, thinking I knew business, but never thought we would be at 4 0 4 oh members. So, but once we got at like 3 50, 400 , um, we've changed. We've been changing a lot over the years. Pricing number of people in the class . The one thing we noticed growing to 400 is that it's exponentially harder to keep all the relationships. So my , my team is like, like sometimes they feel like exploding with all the , like the head is exploding with all the relationships they have to , uh, to maintain with the members . So , uh, talking with the team, they felt , they felt for honored is a great, great number. But if you look at actually a number , so if you want to have , like, it's , it's nice and my me that my staff doesn't want any more mom members, but actually I can't have any more members because the way we organize , organize it right now we have the, the , we have a regular, like a , a bigger group class with 14 people in there. And currently we have, I think it's, I'm reading it down somewhere, but we have 65 classes per week, and they're almost like always full. There's still some spots left, but like, we can't have any more members than 400 there to make sure that everyone can come and visit us three times a week. So that, that , that's part of the GMS Fool , the regular group. We also have a small group , uh, offering or like a same semi-private , uh, setting. We still have some spots over there, but it's, it's like on on , on times that are less, you know, less attractive to potential , uh, clients. And you really need a , like, you need a good codes . And we are like , uh, we love the team we have right now. We love the number of members. Uh , our bottom line is it's perfect. So for this game , like we feel great, we just wanna maintain this right now. Okay.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit, how many staff members do you have and how much space do you have? Like, I wanna get a sense of why you're bursting at the seams and packed and don't have any more room.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I have 10 staff members , uh, from the top of my head, I should like, probably know every little , but we have, it's around four full-time employees. Uh, one of them is more like a contractor, but making the, the full-time , uh, hours. And then , uh, the rest is part-time. But part-time means, like, on average it's still like 15 to , uh, to 20 hours a week. Our, our, the , the space of our gym is around 500 square meter. I have no idea what it , what it is in , in , in , in , uh, in your , uh, metric
Speaker 1:Oh times . Uh , you know what? I'm not even gonna hazard a guess. I think that's gonna be, you know what, I'm not even a hazard to guess . We'll just go with 500 square meters <laugh>,
Speaker 2:<laugh> . So 500 square meters. Um, and, and we, like, on a day like Monday, we have around 23 classes . Okay . And of those 23, there's around eight , uh, I would say seven to eight time slots that are, that have like two classes running at the same time. We basically only have between one and four that there's no class running at all. And now we're offering services to like firefighters, rugby teams, schools. So we're filling up , filling up those times with those kind of , uh, customers actually.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you're, you're , you're , you're physically, you're full. And even in those, in those few hours when you have a little bit of extra space and time, you're now filling them with special groups like firefighters and corporate programs. Yes. Yeah . And then you recognize that maintaining relationships with these 400 people is more important than adding people. That will definitely make it confusing and you might end up losing people because you, you're fractured. Does have I got that right.
Speaker 2:De definitely, you know, like in , in , in a perfect world, I don't wanna lose anyone. Mm-Hmm , <affirmative> and don't invest anything in new members. I, but, you know, life happens. We're in a , we're in a , in a city that has a lot of , uh, experts, students, so there's always people on the move. So we lose around 2.8% per month. I think that's the attrition we are right now. So we have to maintain our current level of members with adding around 12 members per month , uh, which we don't have a problem with at all. Uh , so like, we don't have to invest a lot of time in that . So all our time currently goes to our current members. Like we invest a lot of time in our current members.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. So you, you have very good retention, which is one of the reasons why you've reached this number. But you only have to replace 12 members a month, which is, you know, pretty doable. If you have a good sales and marketing system, getting 12 more people isn't that difficult. So you can maintain this number pretty comfortably. And if you wanted to add to it, you know, adding two people per month, getting 14 people probably wouldn't be that much of a stretch if you wanted to. So you're in this great position. I gotta ask you this, you said your financials bottom line are great. So I'm guessing your coaches are making careers and they're happy with the money they're making as well. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:I, we probably like , like fit the fitness industry, of course, everyone knows is not the best paying industry, but we , we pay above the fitness standards so our coaches can just make a living from , uh, working at our gym, which is special of course. Especially like also in the Netherlands. Like in the Netherlands, private like fitness is , I think is maybe even less paid than in the , in on your side of the, of the Atlantic. Uh , personal training is something that has been growing only in the past. So paying coats is very well is something that has not been done , uh, very much so, yeah, I think there's more gyms like us that are really, I'm really proud of having coachs just to stay the stick with our gym. A few , they get paid, paid well for it.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's, that's amazing because you often hear about that where coaches aren't making enough to do to , to have a career at a gym. So for you to get enough members to that you are happy, live the life you want, and for them to make careers, you're in a pretty great spot and now you can focus on other things. So the question is, obviously you're focusing on retention because you want to keep the number that you need and you want, what else are you focusing on? Like are you looking at driving up average revenue per member? Or what are you trying to do now to enrich your member experience, maybe make more money or whatever you wanna do?
Speaker 2:You know, we, it's , it's, it's multiple things. One of the projects I'm working on right now is adding more nutrition in , uh, to our offering. We're already o uh , offering nutrition, but it's always, I always find it a challenge to, to have more members doing nutrition. I've been talking to my mentor and Two Brain as well, and you , you notice it's a , it's , it's a common theme among the gym owners, but work , like going into the two brain , um, there's been some great stuff on, on, on adding more nutrition to it. And we're doing this, we're doing this group thing right now that we're testing , uh, and we hope to hope to get at least 10% of our members into the, into the nutrition , uh, coaching so that we can drive up our efforts revenue per member. But also, of course, we just, in the end, the goal is to give them more results. So we, like, we know the people that join our nutrition coaching , they get great results. So it's also finding a way to get people in there and they have that same experience and yeah .
Speaker 1:So it's it's adding value.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Adding value. So that's , uh, one of the things we're focusing on right now. We also just like to do a lot of fun stuff. So adding in more and more events, you know, we're doing the intramural open of course , uh, again this year, which is great. We have currently, we have 130 members actively joining. So they signed , they , they , uh, they signed up. So that's that the way of doing the, the open at two , two Brain , uh, what is prescribes. It's, it's a great way . We , we've been doing that since 2018, even before we were joining Two Brainin . 'cause I've always, I've always been reading , uh, Cooper's emails and stuff, so I've always been using his stuff. So, but that's one of the things that is a game changer for your community and also adds , increases the a RM as , uh, as well.
Speaker 1:So it's neat because you've, you don't have this pressure to add more people. You've got this great, this number now where you can just focus on making their experience better and then you'll get compensated for doing so. So adding in nutrition so they get better results , adding in more events, adding in special things that make them healthier and fattier and happier. They pay a little bit extra. Your coaches win. You win. And the clients win because they're having a great experience. So it's , it's, it's a really neat position to be in. And I know so few gym owners that are here. I gotta ask you, what does your client journey look like? Like how do you get these people into your business and get them to stay for so long?
Speaker 2:Well, the , the obviously the first thing we do with them, we talk with them . So we don't do any free intros,
Speaker 1:Like a free, like a free trial where you work out with them .
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we don't do a free trial workout at all. You know, we don't believe that you can get the experience of coaching by doing , doing just one class. So we always start with an intake or a no sweat intro, or if you are a friend of a , of a client and you can come to our Flex Friday sessions.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask about that later. We're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 2:I'll talk about it later. Yeah . So it's a great way to get referrals. But so basically, but everyone, even coming from the Flex Friday, you , you start with a no Sweat intro. You talk with our , uh, with our general manager for around 30 minutes. You do some movements so that we understand where your starting, starting position is at . Um , we really want to understand what you are looking for and create a connection from the beginning. So from the beginning, create that connection. Then after the No Sweat intro we go into, into, for us it's a 28 day program. It's, it's a kickstart basically Kickstarter of fitness and, and nutrition , uh, increasing the, the connection , uh, during the, during the month. So you train with the same codes in the small group for three sessions a week. So we want you to have that, the , the , the right frequency , um, immediately from the start. So training three times a week, we believe that it's the best , uh, frequency that you can , uh, can have. And then working on your nutrition at the same time for four weeks so that you get the , the best results you could have in that first month. All thanks to coaching , uh, accountability , uh, uh, basically a team that is supporting you and all the attention that comes with it. And then after that first month, you can go into our regular membership or you go into, into our , uh, small s semi-private membership, but basically into a , into a membership. But then we, it doesn't stop, you know, then the every three months we like to have new members going into a goal review to talk about what, what they achieved in the last three months and what they're want to focus on in the upcoming three months. Maybe helping them, adding in more PT or putting them , putting them in semi private or just , or just creating that connection, you know, even if it's just a 30 minute talk is , having that connection with a coach at your gym is a great way to stay connected and never feel that barrier to get into the gym that you feel like, you know, we , we took over a second location and we , they're not doing that at that gym. And then you really see people struggling to get back in , uh, and they don't really have that connection with , uh, with the coaches team, with all of them . Uh, and, and , and that's something we wanna , we want to have from the, from the beginning. And then during that journey, we always celebrate. So if you go to our Instagram, there's a lot of pictures with gifts that members get. So if they have 50 visits, they get, I don't know, like I think we give them socks. I don't know all the visits . I don't know all the gifts because I'm in a happy position that I don't have to know every day of the gym. Um , but basically every 50 to 100 visits you get something like a little gift, an appreciation, and a celebration, and something that keeps , uh, the journey in the , in the spotlight of all the other members and puts a little target for others to achieve as well.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to know who, who , what the gifts are. Who does, who's handling this whole thing? Who, who, what is that position in your
Speaker 2:Well, it's the team, the, the , the , the day-to-Day operation , uh, manager <inaudible> . She has to , uh, she has to do everything , uh, that , that keeps the day running day by day . So I'm , is is
Speaker 1:She a client success manager or does she have a different position? Yeah, I ,
Speaker 2:I call her my general Client Success manager. So it's like a , a a mix of , uh, CSM with , uh, with the general manager function. She's not coaching at all, so she's only doing DM and CSM tasks. And I have another coach, it's called er , so that's one of my coaches. Uh , she's also adding some CSM work. So it's , uh, it's , uh, they are both responsible for the CSM.
Speaker 1:So you have two people in your gym that are your , and they have other additional roles, but they are responsible for making sure the clients are happy, making sure clients are retained, making sure clients understand how they're progressing through the business, upgrading their services. So you have these two people. Yeah . Do you see those? I , I've asked, I think I know the answer. I'm gonna ask the question anyway. Is the pay that you pay A CSM is, do you get a return on that investment
Speaker 2:<laugh>? Well , definitely. So last year we hired our g uh , <inaudible> . She was over a year ago. Uh , I was still doing what she was doing, and we were at that point, okay, so I want to , I want to create some space for myself to, to , uh, do something else to maybe start a second business or acquire another gym, which ended up in acquire acquiring an another gym. And we're at this point where we're like, okay, so we have to invest in a , in a , in a gen general manager, but that's like, we have to pay another full-time salary. We were a little bit, I wouldn't say afraid, you know, it was, it was exciting or what , a little scary, but in the end , uh, last year was even better than the year before even adding , uh, even with that extra cost of a GM full-time , um, it's a full-time contract. So we had the best year ever and it's thank to my whole team and adding in soft chaos gm . So I would definitely, definitely , uh, advise people to, or advise other GMs to , uh, to add , add a role in like that.
Speaker 1:The reason I ask is because people who are not at your level, where they , they're still looking for members. They have all these things they wanna do, they look at the expense of a client success manager sometimes and say, oh, I'm paying extra money. What am I getting for this? But every successful gym owner that I speak to who has a client success manager says the role pays for itself many times over. And so that's , wanted , wanted to ask you that question. I'm gonna ask you this one. I'm pretty sure I know the answer. I'm gonna ask it anyway. Do you have a , like a precise list, list of systems that you use for your managers to take care of business and make sure that everything including retention, is taken care of? Do you have a staff playbook that's just laid out perfectly? Well,
Speaker 2:I , I wouldn't say perfectly, but there's definitely a stuff playbook, there's checklists, there's, there's overviews, there's there , there's a lot. And it's always work in progress. It's one of my more challenging , uh, tasks. 'cause I, I love to start a lot of different things. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> completing stuff is a little harder. That's why I need some di that's why I need employees to actually finish stuff. But the , yeah, they're definitely there and there's always, they're always being updated or changed or , uh, but without that, it would , it would not be possible.
Speaker 1:And every gym owner that I speak to that's successful has systems. That's just like, it's without doubt. Every single time I talk to a leaderboard gym owner, they have systems in place. So listeners, if you don't have those systems, start with basic stuff. How should I, how should my business run? Lay it out and then get people to do it that way. I'm gonna ask you, we're gonna circle back now to Flex Friday, and how do you acquire clients? So you've got, you don't have to acquire a lot to maintain your number, but you had to acquire 400 to get there. How do you find these great people?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that we, that we do is , is the Flex Friday session. It's every week , uh, at , at noon and in the evening at 8:00 PM And I have two great coaches that are running these classes. And the idea behind Flex Friday is that , uh, members can , can bring a friend. They want to try out CrossFits and , you know, it's, it's, it's not really a tryout , uh, because they still need to go into the, into the free Nose , sweat intro, but they get a feel of the vibe of the gym and the come with of friends. And the Flex Friday session is, it's a low skill session. So we won't do any snet or, you know, this high skill movements that might scare people away. We want to have a fun session, want , want people to win. Uh, we actually allow more me more members in that class than in the regular class because we want to have a lot of fun. So we say more people, more fun. And because of the lower scale , it's, it's possible to have more people in there as well. And my coaches, they always make a surprise workout. So people have no idea what's coming up, but they make it , it's my coaches that are actually making it a great session, put along , put putting in a lot of effort in those sessions. And after the session, especially in the evening, it's like people are going out, they have some drink , they have some drinks together, they chat, they , they meet new people. And Friday was our slowest evening for , uh, for years. And now it's our most busy evening in the week. And like, I don't know any gym that has as Friday evening as their most busy evening <laugh> like here, it's like, it's buzzing. It's, it's , uh, it's really a fun evening. And because remember she doesn't need like, as a nice , uh, way to, to go out with a friend as well. You have a workout, you hang out afterwards. There , there is a , you can drink a beer if you want, but it's al also just, we have a nice belt bar area where people can hang out and chill. So people love it. And that's, that's, that brings in a lot of friends because the most important people, more , most important thing for, for, for , uh, for our new memories is they , that they walk out with a smile and they usually do after a Flex Friday session.
Speaker 1:Okay. So do you actively tell people, like your members, Hey, you should bring your friend Bob or whatever, or is it just so ingrained in your culture now that they just do it? Like how do, how do you make sure that people keep coming out to these events and bringing friends? Because a lot of gyms have trouble generating referrals.
Speaker 2:It's ingrained. I mean, we've been working on this for years, of course. Okay. So usually like a few years ago we had to really tell people, but now, because it's so part of our culture, like we are like, now that we , uh, took over the second location, you start to see the differences, right? And now you're like, wow, our culture, like the culture we've built is , it's like people just, they just know Flex Friday, bring friends , have fun. If we have a potential new member, they go there. Like the people talk with each other. So it's all in the culture.
Speaker 1:Okay. So listeners, if you wanna start a Bring a Friend program, know that you cannot get to this level right away. You have to bring, put it into your culture. It's probably gonna take many months, if not years to do that. So I would recommend when you start this, these bring a friend defense , actively target people and say, Hey, Tim, your sister Cindy , you said she's running a five KI think I can help her . Why don't you bring her to a, bring a Friend workout and actively target people. If you do this enough over a period of months and years, eventually you'll get to this point where CrossFit light's at, but you're not gonna start there. So make it a very active process.
Speaker 2:Yeah . So I have to add something in. Yeah , because what , what we do with our new members to get, to make this part of the culture ex like from the start, new members, they join Flex Friday . So the way we do this, they train three times a week. So the , we want them to do three sessions a week. That's part of our, our our, our vision or our belief system. And the third session each week is the Flex Friday. We want them to go in there and join with existing , existing members. And because of the low, the low skill , the new members can easily join that session. Then they see friends coming and they just, like, from the first month, they understand , uh, what is happening.
Speaker 1:So that's a key part. That's a really important part. Yeah. Like you just said . Yeah ,
Speaker 2:Really important.
Speaker 1:New members see this Bring a Friend program in action and they have fun in it, and they think I could bring a friend. And now you start to see how this snowball starts going downhill . That's a really, really cool one. I love that idea that I haven't heard before. And that's having your new members come to these, bring a friend events, have a good time, and be encouraged to bring their own friends. When these people finish these workouts, what happens? Do they just walk out the door and go about their evening? Or do you collect email addresses to contact them? Or what happens?
Speaker 2:Uh , you know, the, the way that the members , uh, sign up their friends, we have, we have a little form in our, in our mobile app. So we always collect, collect upfront , but we don't do anything that night. We're not about selling after a Flex Friday session. We just wanna keep it, we wanna keep it easy till , you know, don't be that gym owner that starts to , to try to sign people up while they're having a night , a nice evening. We prefer them to call them the next week. So after the weekends we call them or send them a message if they haven't already got in touch with us , get in if they didn't already got in touch with us. So we do have their, their e their data, everything as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're listening and you start one of these events, you need to find a way to connect with these people. And, and you have to know your market and where you're at. In some places you can actually talk to people on the spot and get them to book . You could do a nose , sweat , intro that evening, or you could book it for another time. Or you could do what Cross Linein does. And you can contact them after the fact with either in person or a nurturing sequence or something like that. But you have to get the contact info and then do something actively to say, Hey, did you have a good time? What can we do to help you ? And this is the way you go. So know your market, know your niche, know your people, and then set something up that works. And , uh, I did the math in my head while , uh, while we were talking here. Uh, your space, 500 square meters I think is in the range of 4,500 to 5,000 square feet. So if you guys were looking for , uh, some perspective on that, it's in that range. So that's a decent sized gym, but it's not 10,000. It's not massive. You're making good use of good space. Four oh oh people and about 5,000 square feet. That's probably getting towards the capacity limits. Uh , 14 people per class, something like that.
Speaker 2:Happy to hear it fits the math .
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's something like that. I may have it if someone, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's pretty close to it. Uh , I'm gonna ask you, you talked about your intake process for nude clients, but have you adjusted this intake process over the years to make sure that it, it retains people? Like did you, when you started, did you notice that, Hey, there's some things I could do better to make people stay longer? Did you make those changes?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely did be . Oh man. We've been changing so much. I've been, I I've been having different mentors as well. And actually the , so I started Two Brain , uh, last year, like over 30 months ago. I think this has been my best experience so far because it , it , it completely covers everything. Like everything I need basically. And so over the years I've been changing. We , we did, we did intakes and then we, we, we sold them into 10 to 30 PTs. We've been playing a lot around a lot and the small , but over the last year we've , we've been chasing the intake , uh, process in such a way that people go into a flow of , uh, three times per week training for four weeks. So that's its Kickstart program. Um , they either do that in a small group, in a one-on-one setting or in a PT first setting, and then going into the, into the big group. This has been our last fine tuning . And since then we had, we've had the best , uh, the best success, but we have had so many variations. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , like I can't even remember. And then having Covid in between. So <laugh> ,
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this. How does your intake, your , uh, 28 day intake session, how does the price of that re re uh, relate to the price of , uh, general membership?
Speaker 2:Uh, so our, for CrossFit Lighten , our, our , our , our 28 day kickstart is around 550 euros. If you do the small group variation, that's for four weeks. Uh, our regular membership for three times a week is at one , uh, two nine per month.
Speaker 1:Okay. So about like four, three to four times something like that is , yeah , that makes sense. Sure. Okay . And is that priced , uh, is it, is that intake done one-on-one, or is that done in a group setting?
Speaker 2:No, no, we have , it's in a one one setting. There you
Speaker 1:Go. Okay . The
Speaker 2:Intake is one, one setting takes about 30 minutes. Okay .
Speaker 1:Yeah. Lemme ask you this. Would you ever add more than 400 members? What would it take for you to bump that number up?
Speaker 2:A team that wants to Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or that needs to have more members, but I , I don't see why I would need more members than I would rather increase the price. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , uh, it gets too hectic. So if my team is, if my team wants more members, I can do it. If I have a bigger space and I can add in maybe another small group, then I would definitely add in a small group, because that's easier to manage. You have one coach that is actually managing that small group, and that's easier in the, in the relationship management. But if, if those clients go into the big group, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't add any more members. No , it's too , too much . Like I don't wanna go there.
Speaker 1:Managing lots of clients is very difficult. And that's not to say you can't do it, but it's very hard and it be , you have to be a great business owner. You can't just do it as a hobby. You have to have systems and staff. You have to be very good at it. That's why Two Brain , we always talk about Target 150 members first charge a good amount of money. $205 is a great starting point. You can make a hundred thousand dollars a year with those numbers. That's not to say you can't go further. We have lots of gyms like CrossFit, Leiden , 400 members, we have ones that have a thousand members. You can do that, but you have to be really good at it. I would recommend you start with 150, then decide , do I wanna go further? And what you've done, rerun is amazing, where you've got 400, you've decided this is the max that I wanna deal with right now. I don't need to go bigger. I can make their experience better. I can make the money than I need and more with this group and I don't need to hassle myself with tons of marketing. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more, you know , additional relationships. And now you've got a stable, profitable business that allows you to do other things. And you said you kinda like doing that stuff. So lemme ask you this question as we close it out. If someone was out there, gym owner was looking at getting, they just wanted to increase their client count wherever they are , what's the thing that you would , uh, tell them to focus on most? What would you tell them if they wanted to just get more members in the door
Speaker 2:Creating the best experience they can, can, can imagine. So we've been like, we've been always been focusing on the GM experience and keeping members in. And the better they experience, the happier the clients, the the , the more likely they will refer, refer their friends. So I wouldn't definitely, that's the first focus.
Speaker 1:So is it fair to say that's a combination , that's a retention in a sense, right? You're ma you're making 'em so happy that they wanna stay and tell their buddies about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1:Yeah . And I interviewed another gym owner who's also in Europe . He's in Denmark. Uh, Ru Larson was his name. Uh , he was also on the leaderboard. I asked him what the , he has a ton of members. I think he's got 500 now. And I said, how did you do it ? He said, retention, exact same thing you did. Nobody on this list has said marketing. They've said, hold on to clients first. Yes, there is marketing and there is some other stuff going on, but retention first, thanks so much for sharing all this. This has been really fascinating and it's so neat to talk to someone who has more exactly the number of members they want. Thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 2:It was nice meeting you, Mike.
Speaker 1:My pleasure. That was Irun Van Dunn and this is Run a Profitable Gym. Thank you for watching and listening. Please subscribe for more shows wherever you're at. And now here's Chris Cooper with a final message.
Speaker 3:Hey, it's two Brain founder Chris Cooper. With a quick note , we created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gym owners united.com to join. Do it today.