Run a Profitable Gym
Run a Profitable Gym is packed with business tools for gym owners and CrossFit affiliates. This is actionable, data-backed business advice for all gym owners, including those who own personal training studios, fitness franchises, and strength and conditioning gyms. Broke gym owner Chris Cooper turned a struggling gym into an asset, then built a multi-million-dollar mentoring company to help other fitness entrepreneurs do the same thing. Every week, Chris presents the top tactics for building a profitable gym, as well as real success stories from gym owners who have found incredible success through Two-Brain Business mentorship. Chris’s goal is to create millionaire gym owners. Subscribe to Run a Profitable Gym and you could be one of them.
Run a Profitable Gym
4 Surefire Ways to Get More Gym Members Without Discounts
Want more gym members without slashing your prices? Discounts can undermine your gym’s value, hurt your profit margins and attract the wrong clients. There’s a better way.
In this episode of "Run a Profitable Gym," host Mike Warkentin is joined by John Franklin, chief marketing officer at Two-Brain and Kilo.
John shares four proven strategies to help you attract and retain new clients without offering discounts: events, holiday challenges, New Year’s Day check-ins and black card referral campaigns. He lays out examples of each tactic and offers practical tips for implementation at your gym.
John’s advice is clear: Focus on attracting high-value members who will stay for years instead of using discounts to lure in low-paying coupon clippers who won’t stick around.
For more support on running a profitable gym without discounts, get Chris Cooper’s free guide "The Gym Owner’s Guide to a Discount-Free Black Friday" by joining Gym Owners United, linked below.
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
01:10 - Get more clients before 2025
06:08 - Holiday nutrition challenge
09:09 - New Year’s Day check-in
12:55 - Duplicate your best members
16:05 - Execution matters the most
Gym owners are often tempted to use discounts to get more members, but it's a trap when you cut your rates, you actually need more members to earn the same amount you'd get from a single full price sale. So how do you attract more members without discounts? My guest today will tell you his name is John Franklin. He's two brains Chief marketing Officer. He's also one of the big wheels over at Kilo. I'm Mike Warton . This is Run a Profitable Gym. Please sit , subscribe. So you get more shows like this. John , can we help people avoid Black Friday disasters and earn more clients before the end of the year?
Speaker 2:We can, but I understand the temptation. Mm-Hmm , me too. You know, if your rivals in the big box gyms around, you're doing all these promotions and all you have to do is slash your prices by 10, 15% and members just keep rushing through the door. Uh, you know, that's how we plan it out. But it doesn't always work like that. And there are also some secondary effects that come with discounting, which is why at Tub Brand we don't like doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if you have a bad profit margin and you, so let's see your profit margins 10% and you offer 15% discount, what's going on there? You're sinking underwater. That's not a good thing. So definitely run your numbers and if you do, I think you'll find that discounts are not great to bring . We have techniques to teach you to get high value full price members and keep them for two or meters or more and grow a great business. So fall along for all that stuff. So John , let's get to your stuff. I know you put it together before the show. Some really cool stuff that'll help people get members before the end of the year without discounts. What do you got for us? What's the first thing?
Speaker 2:So the easiest thing to do if you want to get new people interested in your gym is host some type of event. The holidays lead themselves really well to all kinds of creative event ideas. It is a great thing to do to keep your members retained and engaged and build a vibrant community. But if you do it the right way, you can also encourage your members to bring their spouses or their friend or their roommate. And , uh, you get a couple drinks in them, they're talking with the other gym members. Turns out they vibe. Maybe, you know, joining this gym is less scary than they initially thought. And , uh, boom, all of a sudden you got yourself a couple extra members. I can give you some actual concrete examples of gyms I've been to or been a part of that I thought did , uh, interesting stuff. If people want something to plug and play, if you think that'd be helpful, let's
Speaker 1:Do it. Yeah. 'cause I made the mistake if I had Paul Holiday parties, people would email me and they'd say, Hey, can I bring my spouse? I was like, yeah, of course. I didn't realize this was a huge golden marketing opportunity, slapping me in the face. So gimme some hard , uh, examples.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So , uh, fitness by the Sea , they were , uh, ex affiliate that I was a member of for a little while. They really only threw one party a year. And this was their Christmas party. They did a lot of promotion ahead of time. They, they tried really hard to get the membership out there and get like over 80% of their membership to show up on the good years. And so in addition to that, they would bring spouses and like I said, ba bing , ba boom , you , you got yourself, you know, a couple spousal memberships sold by the end of the night. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we didn't do like this blowout rager type hall day party. Uh, we would do something different , uh, at my gyms. So I, this was more of a suburban market. We were more of an urban market. So what I would do is we would rent a couple , uh, like long tables in a popular beer garden in December. And we'd do it on like a Friday or a Saturday night when we knew the place was gonna be like pretty busy. And so then we'd invite all our members to go and we'd crowd around these tables and drink beers. And then naturally as the place got packed, people's friends, roommates, family coworkers would show up and they'd say, Hey, what are you doing here? And they'd say, I'm here for my gym event. Oh, what gym do you go to? And then that would lead into a conversation in and of itself. So, you know, site selection and promoting are two of the big things that , um, that happen here. If you're not into partying and drinking, there's , uh, you know, my friend Mike Baris out in Long Island, he likes to do more creative, quirky, weird events. Uh, one he does , uh, a little late for that now, but around Halloween time he does a Smashing Pumpkins contest. So he'll partner with a local brewery. The brewery will provide every entry in a beer or two. Uh, and then they'll go buy a bunch of pumpkins and then they'll do like an actual pumpkin throwing competition and they'll charge 30 bucks and they'll give that 30 bucks to charity at the end. So everybody feels good about it. Uh, and typically the type of people who like drinking beer and throwing pumpkins are the type of people who like , uh, you know , uh, lifting weights. So again, you're just kind of creating this , uh, honeypot of bringing prospective members to you.
Speaker 1:So you've got three options there . You've got like a Catalina wine mixer kind of thing, fitness by the sea, then you've got your takeover, local brew pub or whatever and just kind of people are clustering around and all of a sudden there's a lot of interaction. And then you've got the kind of weird fitnessy sort of event that , uh, like pumpkin throwing is a huge deal. And have you ever seen those, the ones where they're shooting them , the building cannons to shoot them as far as they , uh, can go? Have you seen that?
Speaker 2:No, but it sounds like something that should be on my corner of the internet. I
Speaker 1:Was just gonna say, it's kind of a Florida man sort of thing, but it's incredible. So pumpkin tosses, things like that are great ideas. Other holiday stuff, everyone will , for holiday parties, find a way that works for your crew, wherever that might be. And then John , at this stuff, did you guys do anything like formal where you would take email addresses and try to get people booked into on your mailing list or for no sweat intros? Or was it more casual?
Speaker 2:No, you don't have to over complicate it . If you're doing something like a formal Christmas party with an RS VP list, obviously you're gonna get emails for all the guests there. If you're doing something like Mike did where it's a competition or something along those lines , um, you know, say you're doing gingerbread decorating or something like that, you know , something that requires su supplies, you're gonna have a a name email there. But you know, if you're seeing someone at an event and they just happen to mesh together, like in the , in the instance of the brewery I was talking about, Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> I'll , uh, you know, and it's like Deborah's roommate. I'll just ask Deborah , Hey, when are you gonna bring your roommate in? You know , there you go . It's typically one degree of separation removed. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm
Speaker 1:<affirmative>. So there's are three great options for you. And you have time when this show comes out, you have lots of time to plan something before the end of the year. Use that as a great way to get full price members who are already closely connected to your current members. In a lot of ways these are warm leads that are probably begging to get into your gym. They just need one final shove and you can definitely give them that before the end of the year. What else you got? What's next on your list? John ?
Speaker 2:Holiday Nutrition challenge. Ah , and there's definitely some stuff to do from a logistics standpoint and how you design the challenge matters a lot here. A lot of people feel generally terrible during the holiday time 'cause they're just eating with reckless abandon. They're going to your holiday party and drinking their face off. Um, and uh, it's typically where people fall off the bandwagon. One of the things that I've seen work particularly well is like a micro or mini all day nutrition challenge. So something that runs , uh, after Thanksgiving but ends before Christmas. So we're talking three to four weeks tops. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , uh, with a clever name like Slim for the chimney or something like that. You charge a hundred to 200 bucks with some personalized nutrition coaching. You make some teams and add a competitive element to it and encourage your members to sign up with family, friends, spouses. And that's it. You know, you have an accountability element. There's personalized coaching. So if someone, if you're working with someone's spouse, you're talking with them directly and then it's an easier sell because holidays are pretty, like, they're , they're literally a religious thing. But a lot of people take a , what they eat on holidays is religion as well. And so there's a lot of tradition. Yeah. That's a very American thing. That's a Southern American thing. Um , and so they take that pretty seriously and personally and they don't want to be seen as the weirdo at the Thanksgiving table or the weirdo who's not eating whatever the family eats every Christmas. And so by keeping it outside the holidays , uh, you know, you frame it as like this reset. So then you can go back in, eat like a pig for a week going into New Year's and then you can sell 'em on a great transformation program on the other end there.
Speaker 1:I like it. And two brain business clients have access to a whole host of plug and play challenges and all sorts of events like this. Ask your mentor and you can find this stuff and just use it. It takes all the drag outta this if you don't under two brainin client, John's idea works easily. You can also do with a habits based , habits based kind of thing where it's, maybe it's not a big nutrition thing, it's just some habits on try to eat vegetables once a day or whatever it is. Like frame it in an easy manner. But people do need this accountability and they do need this help between the holiday periods. The idea is run some sort of challenge, get them on board , provide some accountability, provide some help, and you'll get them, you have a chance to earn as clients essentially at the end of those challenges. John , would you , uh, talk to 'em about ongoing things? Like would you pitch them or how do you do that?
Speaker 2:I mean, you could at great times at the beginning of the challenge, it's like, Hey, do you wanna see better results? But a lot of the times you're gonna get like a , I'm too busy. So, you know, going into, going into Christmas is not the best time to sell someone into a gym membership, but maybe there's a way to like, that's gonna be your objection. And you know that going in, you can parlay that into, hey, you know, you're gonna wake up January 1st feeling bad. What we can do is we can get you started , uh, you know, we can enroll you into class or on-ramp or fundamentals or personal training on January 2nd. And that way you can have the whatever, two weeks to, to consider your last hurrah . And then you show up and , and we're gonna work through this. So , uh, that's how I would frame it. I
Speaker 1:Like it. And that kind of syncs up with your third thing on your list. Uh, I really like this one. Tell me what it is .
Speaker 2:So it's sending a simple check-in email on New Year's Day. So a lot of people when they say they think of the gym industry, they think January is like this gold rush. Our data shows. Otherwise for like premium coaching gyms, it is not our best time. Typically best time for, you know, a higher ticket. Coaching gym's gonna be sometime around back to school when people are done traveling for the summer and have been going on vacation and eating poorly. Uh, January is good but not great. And so you still have people feeling like , uh, guilty and , uh, bad about themselves after stuffing their face for a month and they're typically hungover going into New Year's . So you're , you're hitting 'em at rock bottom. So one of the things that , um, I tell the two rangers to do is on January 1st, send an email to any of your unconverted leads. So these are people who came in to do a sales appointment with you, but maybe didn't buy for whatever reason. Um, just check in. Hey, are you still looking to get fit in 2025? And just that's it. Don't overcomplicate it, don't add a special, it's just you're looking to get a yes or maybe or you know, f off. Any answer is a good answer. But once you give them that little friendly nudge and you get a response back, then it's game on and you can work them through the normal process, but you , it's just a good time to get people to raise their hands. And typically, like while January isn't the best time for raw numbers for, you know, two, $300 a month, Jim, it is a great time to sell big packages. 'cause you're really getting people in that trough of despair when the pain point is the worst. Um, they're gonna be more receptive to more personalized coaching, personal training, nutrition, like they're gonna feel like a lot's wrong.
Speaker 1:And I can tell you listeners that gym owners that just reach out to their leads, they're un unconverted leads regularly. They add members and I know Eric Connor across reform down in San Diego, he in four weeks added 5% to his client count just by reaching out to people and saying, Hey, what you up to? How you doing? That kinda stuff. Simple things. And you did that in an hour a day. It's the Chris Cooper golden Hour concept. You can get that book on Amazon if you want to read more about it. But the idea of reaching out to these people works. And like John said, the trough of despair, I like that one that is there . Send a message. The best part about this, sending those messages takes minutes and you can actually make tons and tons of money by doing this. If you're collecting email addresses and have these people's contact information, that's the secret. So start collecting that stuff now and then prepare to send those messages early in the year. Nice and simple. And then get them in for consultation and sell some stuff. John , number four on your list. This is an interesting one.
Speaker 2:So let's roll back the clock to Thanksgiving. Now, let's assume your busiest time of year is back to school. So you've uh, been working with the cohort of moms from the back to school period all the way to Thanksgiving. If you're doing your job right, you got 'em shaped, you got 'em looking good, you got 'em feeling good. You know what happens on Thanksgiving, Mike? What , what do you do on Thanksgiving? Well, you take
Speaker 1:Off the belt.
Speaker 2:You personally, we don't , you know, we don't wanna get censored or anything like that <laugh> , but what , what does a normal person do on Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1:Well, we take off the belt, put on the extra loose eating pants and we start, we put on the football games and then we watch the, the , the Cowboys lose usually and we eat a lot of food and then we drink a bunch of stuff to drown our Soros. But
Speaker 2:Who do you do it with?
Speaker 1:Friends and family. I get my best buddies around and I get a ton of people and we all sit there and we throw a little tour duck at , I'm Canadian, but we try to do something like that too. And we eat and drink.
Speaker 2:So if Sandy's been working out at your gym and she's lost 15 pounds and she's hanging out with family and friends, you look great,
Speaker 1:They're
Speaker 2:Gonna ask, Hey, what are you doing for your fitness? You look amazing. And so that's a good opportunity if you're doing a great job. And so , um, Giancarlo, Reni of G Strength is someone , uh, uh, Jim and I talk to frequently and he runs this thing called a black card campaign to capitalize on this. What he does is he prints out these fancy cards and they're these thick metal cards that look and feel pretty premium and leading into Thanksgiving, he gives them out to his best members and says something along the lines of like, Hey, you're an incredible member. Uh, I would love to have more members like you. I want to give you this card, give it to a family or friend as like a gift. And you bring 'em in here and I'm gonna give him a month of, he does small group training. So three times a week, small group training a month for free . Alright ? And I do understand that this is a segment on not discounting and I'm telling you to give away your service for free, which is the, the largest discount. But I want you to, you know, this is more of a bonus. I want you to think of it more of like a referral bonus to your best clients rather than a discount, right? Because if this person buys, they're gonna be buying at your rack rate. So again, we're back at the Thanksgiving dinner, Sandy's looking great, Sandy gives a card to her friend, her friend goes, she comes for a month, you know, it's gonna be , uh, a pretty high likelihood of a close, right? Because Sandy's going to tell her friend exactly what she costs , what's good about your gym, what's bad about your gym. And then there's a high degree of trust. She knows it works . She saw Sandy. And so, you know, rather than running a discount into , uh, the void into Facebook, getting the wrong type of clients, off your existing members because there's a bunch of new people paying less than they are. Something like this allows you to take a much more targeted approach and it allows you to duplicate your best members. You're basically cloning your favorite people in the gym. And , um, yeah, the first time g ran this campaign, he ended up growing his recurring revenue base by 10,000 and he's not like, you know, it's not a massive gym, you know, it's not like this is not someone who's doing $3 million a year. So it can be really, really effective if you put your head down, promote it properly, and make the cards feel very premium and special.
Speaker 1:And that's not the first time I've heard about the cards. Brian bought up in Jersey, does the same thing. He's got a really thick VIP card and he gives it to, I think it's to clients. Uh, he runs a semi-private thing as well, and I think it entitles them to like a month of accompanying their friend to a , to training or something like that. So there's a very high value on it, but he's got, he pulled out the card on the show for me, it's a great thick card. It's like thicker than a credit card. It feels like a big deal. And when his clients get it, they don't just toss it aside as those crappy referral things. They know it's a huge deal. Like this entitles someone to work out with them for, you know, two or four weeks or something like that. And the people almost always join . And this card you said is actually metal, like it won't go through an airport detector?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he uses , uh, some website called my metal business card.com. I'm not affiliated with it, I've never used it. I don't know if they're good, but I , I think it is important, like, there's two things to note here, right? Because this campaign is as old as time, it's as old as the six week challenge. People have been doing a variation of it forever. Execution matters a lot. Same as the nutrition challenge actually. All of these things, execution is the difference between having a pretty result and like a change , like a game changing result. So, you know, you don't want to just like, if you print a bunch of stuff on this to print and leave it on your front desk and don't really explain what it is, like, it's not gonna be taken seriously by your members. Where if you set the expectation, especially with your personal training clients or small group training clients, like, hey, you earn this by being an incredible member. You earn this by being one of my favorite people to coach. I just want more people like you. And you set a very clear expectation of what it is, how to present it to someone and what they get for it. And just be like, Hey, they're gonna , they're gonna see it as this gift from you. You know, 'cause it , it looks like a gift card. It looks like you bought 'em like a $350 gift card and as long as you're not making crazy advertisements or there's not 50 of them on the front desk, when that prospect comes in, they're not gonna know that they got it for free. So, you know, it could be something where you, you know, you present it to someone like, Hey, I got you this thing and, and looks good. And you know, in the case of gee , like , uh, Brian bought as well, like, a month of training is worth like $400. So there's real money behind it. And so just setting that expectation and making it feel like a premium thing is really gonna separate you versus just doing this half-assed and, you know, printing out some card, stock paper and leaving it around and not really telling people what it is or why it's special. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1:<affirmative> , when you were running your gyms, John , did you , uh, did you have , how did you say no to people who were , who were asking for discounts? Was it just like a flat, like we don't do discounts or how did you do all that?
Speaker 2:I mean, in the early days of running my gym, I was guilty of doing
Speaker 1:Discounts. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I can't sit here and tell you that I've never done them before. I did change that. Um, but yeah, at one point, like later on in my career it was, it was a no. Like , um, you, I don't get a 10% discount if I have, you know, firefighters training in my, in my space. Like that's, that's the answer is, you know, my , I don't pay my coaches 10% less because you and your wife train here. Um, and just making a clear argument that it, you know, there's a select amount of spaces and those spaces, you know, there's a real dollar cost associated with each of those spaces. And , um, you know, the, the way the service was valued was done so in a very deliberate manner. It's not, it's not like I'm just throwing someone else in the class like you , you know, you need to understand that having an extra person in the class makes it harder to coach and takes away coaching from everybody else in there. And so, you know, they need to be paying an appropriate rate so you can have an appropriate experience.
Speaker 1:The reason I bring it up is Chris Cooper has a list of exactly what to say when people ask you for discounts. Jim owners united.com, if you go there right now, you can check it out. Chris has a post that will be pinned at the top and you can ask him for his brand new guide. And it's a guide to gym owners guide to the discount free Black Friday. It'll tell you , it'll give you a Facebook post that you can use to talk about what you offer instead of discounts. It's got it exact lines you can use to tell people we don't offer discounts, we don't do it for these reasons and so forth and whatnot. And it's got a whole list of other things in there that will help you avoid sinking yourself on Black Friday. And again, I say this to listeners, run your numbers. If you start offering discounts, you are literally giving away your profit. The government is still gonna get paid, the landlord is still get paid, your staff will still get paid, you'll get paid less. And as John said, you only have so many spaces in your business for these people. We can teach you at Two Brain how to get high value clients in those spaces. So if you wanna talk to a mentor about doing that very fast, you can book a call through the link in the show notes. But I would encourage you to get that guide again, Jim owners united.com . John , thank you so much for sharing these , uh, these tactics with people. Are you , uh, gonna be going to the Catalina Wine mixer? Uh, this year on the coast?
Speaker 2:I'm currently a member of no Gym , but my backyard, Jim , so, you know , so you're hosting, there'll be a very small, there'll be a very small holiday social at the, at the backyard.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'll be , I'll be there at least , uh, for that then. So I'm coming down to visit. So again, thanks for being here and giving people some great options instead of discounting.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it. Love the opportunity as always.
Speaker 1:Alright , thanks for listening to Run a Profitable Gym. Please subscribe for more shows just like this. We crank 'em out all the time just to help you guys run a better business. And please go get the Gym Owners guide to a discount free Black Friday that is in gym owners united com . Thanks guys .
