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
$OPs: Business Basics That Make Big Bucks
Tired of answering the same questions, fixing the same mistakes and doing everything yourself?
In this episode, Corey Lewis, Two-Brain mentor and owner of Xtra Mile Fitness, shares how systemizing his gym with SOPs (standard operating procedures) has helped him save time, improve retention, onboard staff more efficiently and build a more profitable business.
Creating SOPs doesn’t have to be painful. Corey reveals his quick hack for writing them in minutes with help from AI, and he explains why systemizing even the smallest tasks—like opening the gym or cleaning equipment—can unlock massive growth.
He also walks through his process for presenting SOPs to staff to get their buy-in and create a better client experience.
Stop doing everything yourself. Tune in to learn how to buy back your time, reduce stress and run a more profitable gym.
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
3:01 - How to create efficient SOPs
7:04 - Presenting SOPs to your staff
10:01 - When to review & update SOPs
14:41 - Examples from Corey’s mentees
17:52 - Buying back your time
Almost no one likes standard operating procedures SOPs. Yet every successful gym owner has a complete SOP package. That is a hard truth. If you wanna delegate and grow your business, you need SOPs and checklists today on Run a Profitable Gym. We're going to show you exactly how to create pain-free SOPs and we'll show you the rewards for doing so, because if you don't wanna do it, you need to know why you should do it. It's worth it, I promise. I'm Mike Warton . This is Run a Profitable, profitable Gym. Please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening with me today. Corey Lewis Extra Mile Fitness in Missouri. He's also a two brain mentor. Welcome to the show, Corey . How are you ?
Speaker 2:Great. Thanks for having me, Mike.
Speaker 1:I am very pumped to talk to you about this, even though we're mortal enemies right now. We got the Winnipeg Jets and the St. Louis Blues locked in a playoff series. So Corey and I are best buddies outside of that, but we're fighting today. But no matter what, we're gonna get to SOPs and help you guys create better gyms by doing it. So Corey , let's talk about it. Hockey fight here. A lot of entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, they hate SOPs . Like we got into this to avoid rules. Let's show people the carrot first. What are the direct rewards for systemizing a business, digging in and creating SOPs? Have you got any clear examples from your gym ?
Speaker 2:I think for us it's been a wide range of benefits from first just the to ease of onboarding staff. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . From any of our roles, from the lower EHR roles to the higher coaching positions, it makes onboarding easier and it keeps everyone on the same page. Uh, and I think the other big thing for us is it sets the expectations I have and it keeps everyone up to those expectations. That way I'm not beating my head against the wall of things aren't being done the way I want. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, it's stated in the SOP , the staff is given the tools on how to hit those expectations. Uh , and it makes my life easier, their life easier. And it's helped me remove myself from my gym and keep our standards super high.
Speaker 1:So it prevents disappointment and it also saves time. And you mentioned EHR , that's effective hourly rate. Here's the thing, if you're saving time somewhere as a gym owner, you then have time as the CEO to build your business. So if you're not changing the toilet paper because you have an SOP for someone to do that, you can then say, how can I create a brand new high value program market that sell it, earn more, serve better, more my clients better? That kind of makes sense. Hey Cory .
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it gives me a clear head space because I'm not thinking about other tasks or is the coach doing this or is the cleaning person doing this mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , so it truly gives me that mental freedom to grow the gym and impact more lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1:And I think your example is great because if you are , you think about you as a listener out there, what if one of your key staff members leaves? You've gotta onboard a new person and that kind of sucks. But what if you just had a complete list of everything that person needs to do in that role? And this is the 10, 10 standard for being successful. You just slide that paper across the desk, away you go. Now it sucks to create that thing the first time, but every other 10 of the 10 times you use it, you are just saving time. So I'll , I'll encourage you to do that. Now, the gut reactions, Corey for me is like, I don't need to create an SOP , I can just do it faster myself. I'm gonna put that off to another day and I'll just, you know, I'll get to it eventually. What would you say to that entrepreneur who's listening right now saying, I don't have time to create an SOP ?
Speaker 2:That was actually my first instinct to SOPs. Uh , and why I was resistant to it at first. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But now, you know, what I would tell those people is yes, you can do it quicker initially, but in the long run it's gonna be more time consuming if you keep repeating the process. So standardize it and then it makes it so efficient for you going forward. It buys back so much time and gives you so much more freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's, I mean, what you're saying essentially is you need to invest. Yep . And that means like putting, you know, seeing the long-term reward and doing the short term work in exchange for that, as opposed to saying, I'm just gonna put it off, put it off, put it off. If you make the investment now one time, you can use that over and over and over again and it's gonna pay off in spades. Whereas right now, if you just put it off, you're gonna save time maybe today, but you're gonna lose that time over the long run. So think about it as investing if you're listening out there right now. So let's talk about this one. You and maybe five other gym owners out there love creating SOPs. Everybody else hates them. What is the swiftest way to get through? What is a difficult task for most people, even if you don't like it, how do you get through it quickly
Speaker 2:For creating the SOP ? Yeah. I actually steal the Dan Martel method of, I record myself doing the task. Okay . And then produce that into an SOP . Uh , and now as I create new ones, I'm even able to use chat. GPTI take that video or I just put in there what I do and it produces it out for me. But ours are filled with bullet points. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And then we video everything into it. So there's no questions asked. If you need to know how to clean the rower, there's a video of how to do it. If you need to know how to set up a member in our admin system, there's a video to show you how to do it. And so I've kind of done it both ways. I've done the Dan Martel way of just video myself and then give that over to the staff. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And they actually build their own initially and then I fix it. Okay . Uh , and I've done the other method of, I do the task once I bullet everything that's needed and then I just reproduce that to the staff and give it to 'em.
Speaker 1:Let's dig into the chat GPT angle at AI for a second because people love using this stuff and this is a cool way to, you know, get through it . A process that most people really don't like. So gimme an example of a task and how you would use chat GPT or an AI platform to make it happen.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I actually just rewrote our onboarding, like our sales process. Ah , nice . How to onboard someone, set 'em up in the system. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , and I literally just had chat GBT on my phone. I hit the, the microphone and I listed out what we have to do. Told it to put it in a bullet point for me. It produced, I would say something that was 80% accurate and detailed to me. Uh, I copied that, put it in a document, and within 20 minutes I had a bullet point of what to do. I made a checklist out of that. And then all I had to do was the first time I ran a , a new member through it, I recorded each step by on my computer, linked that into the SOP and it was done. And now my , uh, team can successfully set someone up without me having to hold their hand that first time.
Speaker 1:Wow. So that's as easy as just recording yourself into the, into chat GPT and asking AI to summarize this thing into an SOP for a staff member and it'll spit something out that's probably in the range of like a B, which you then brush up to an A plus .
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Wow. How much time do you think that saves you?
Speaker 2:Oh , that saves me a ton of time . 'cause I have two main staff that set up memberships. But , uh, several of them have the ability to onboard a , a new client. Uh, and so if I were to sit down and walk each of them through it, you have to assume that's 30 minutes each person the first time, which could be a couple hours. And then I, if they ever have questions, now I have to re meet with them, reshow them. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Where now if they have a question, I just reference the SOP , they go to that and it solves all the issues we have. And it eliminates a lot of questions that I used to get asked.
Speaker 1:So how do you present these SOPs to staff? 'cause some people are like, ah , you know, I rounding a business 'cause I don't wanna do the whole corporate thing with the procedures and manuals and all that stuff. People resist that. And then some staff members in small businesses, especially owner operator businesses that grow, some staff members are like, I don't wanna wear your your shirt, or I don't wanna do it like that. How do you present an SOP to staff and make sure that it's followed?
Speaker 2:Yep . So we kind of do it two different ways for a new staff coming on . I meet with them their first day. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . I lay out our expectations, our mission, our vision. And then I give them the SOP that they have to then review and then sign off that they reviewed every aspect of it. We have a coaching expectation or a staff expectation they have to sign off on mm-hmm <affirmative> . But like with my staff that's been here forever, especially when I first rolled out SOPs, or even now, if I make adjustments or I make new ones, I presented at the staff meeting. I tell them the importance of why we do it. I also tell them how it's going to elevate our members' experience mm-hmm <affirmative> . And how it does that. And also, you know, ultimately we all like things to be easier. So I state how this is gonna make their lives easier, make them more successful in their role. We review it and then they sign off on it also in our expectations form. Uh , and then as we go, if I make minor tweaks, I just communicate that through our communication in house . Uh , but any major tweak is done at our quarterly meetings mm-hmm <affirmative> . To make sure everyone's on the same page. It allows them to ask questions. And then it also just allows me to get across to them like, Hey, this isn't, you know, to make us corporate. It's to make your life easier and to make our members experience better. Which everyone on my team wants that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , and so it drives home the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So listers, there's a couple of important things. Three I think there that are super important is you gotta lay out your mission and vision for the entire business. And then you're explaining why does this SOP relate to that? And again, you know, brushing the toilet and your mission for improving the health and lifestyle of, you know, your community seems like a bit of a jump, but it all relates because you are trying to give members a great experience and keep them coming back and training and being happy. And filthy bathrooms do not, are not a part of that. The second thing that Corey said is that you're giving your staff members exactly the tools to succeed. So if they don't know, and I, I was so guilty of this, Chris Cooper's talked about this. You hire someone, you , you expect them to do it your way. You give 'em a task, they suck at it and you're mad. And the problem is you, it's not them. You didn't tell 'em what was success. Right. So if you lay out this is how it's done, this is what a 10 outta 10 looks like, then we're good. We're all on the same page. They sign it, you sign it, then it's easy to just tap the sign and be like, Hey, you forgot this one part. All good. Go about your business. The third thing is that we're all here to help clients get a better result. And everything that Cory lays out in these SOPs is designed to do that. Right. Everything that happens in the gym will become better if you have a policy that governs it. The staff experience is great, the customer experience is great. All of a sudden the gym is running like a top. Everybody's happy retention, it's financials. It's just this giant snowball rolling downhill. Let me ask you this, 'cause here's another huge mistake I made. Worked with a two brain mentor, standardized my business, put it in a big giant playbook, thought I was great, patted myself on the back, gave it to my staff members. I never looked at it again. And all of a sudden everything was out of date. So how often should you review and upgrade your SOPs? Is it the annual thing, biannual? What do you do?
Speaker 2:I think we're all guilty of that and it really depends on which one it is. So our, you know, the ones for cleaning the gym and things like that. I review them probably on an annual basis unless something comes up or something structurally changes in the gym. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But for our more important ones, so my CSM, my client journey , um, even our how to coach a , a personal training client or a group class, I review them quarterly. Usually those are quick brush overs. And then at the midyear mark and the end year mark, I do a more in depth . But since I stay on top of 'em so regularly, I literally block off about an hour. A
Speaker 1:Quarter's, not bad,
Speaker 2:Sit down, I go through our main ones. Um, it doesn't even take me that long 'cause I stay on top of it now. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And that saves me so much time. 'cause before when I first created, just like you said, I didn't review them for probably a couple years, then it's trouble . And then I , yeah. And then it took me days to improve 'em <laugh> . Um , so now on the, on the important ones, the ones that truly are client facing or that have a big impact on our arm or our leg, I definitely review those off, you know, quarterly to make sure we're staying on top of things. And it also gives myself and my staff a chance to talk and see where we can improve. 'cause we know now this is the standard of what we're doing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Where is there opportunities we can improve? And we just slide those in at that time. Okay.
Speaker 1:So listeners, I'm gonna give you something here. If you create SOPs and invest that time that we talked about, you are going to save time. Right. And if you save that time, you then have that one hour per quarter that Corey just mentioned to review your SOPs and make sure they're all in line where it's like, Hey, I said we do this, but this changed. I'm gonna upgrade that and alert the staff to that change so that everything is under control. A second tip that Corey pointed out that I'm gonna just highlight for you is I would focus if it were me not necessarily first on some of the nuts and bolts. Like this is where the toilet paper order comes from. That kinda stuff. You should do that. But I would focus first on client facing stuff. Yep . Anything that affects the client experience and the client journey and the key metrics. So Corey mentioned average revenue per member length of engagement, arm and leg. These are huge things. For example, if you right now after this show sat down and systemized your retention processes, you will make more money. You'll keep clients longer. And if you just do that after the show, that is a win. Now you should get to the rest of your business. I'm not saying that, but I would start with the stuff that's gonna move the needle most. Yep . Retention is a huge one. So like Corey for example, have you ever reviewed your length of engagement wrench , retention checklist and been like, whoa, that is a hole and that is costing me people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that was a big one we did at our year end . Uh, we sat down and noticed there were some, especially in our personal training, we kind of took it for granted that, you know, those are more personal relationships. Yes . They're a little easier to retain most of the time. But we had holes in the big one was how consistently they were getting their InBody scans. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or how consistently we were reviewing their goals and holding them accountable. And it was because the coaches had a lot going on. Um, and so we systemized that improved our SOP . So now my CSM and my trainers work together, you know , now we're taking the, the personal training client, which is already a easier one to retain and 10 xing that by giving them a higher quality service mm-hmm <affirmative> . Gonna keep 'em happier or longer and we want to keep impacting their lives. So that's gonna allow us to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I wish I'd spoken to you about this, you know, eight years ago because I had created a retention system with a document and everything, checklist and little boxes and the whole deal. And I was, I was super proud of it. I thought it was great. Signed up to a staff member and then we had a staff change and all of a sudden like about three months later, our retention was brutal. We're bleeding people. And I'm like, what's going on <laugh> ? I go back to the document, it's not being filled out somewhere along the chain. Someone had not communicated that this document guides our retention efforts when there was a staff transition. So I mis missed a step that you laid out in a staff transition and all of a sudden my retention was bleeding me out and I didn't realize it for about six months because I wasn't doing those regular check-in. So again, listeners, if you're on this plan, check the most important stuff a little more regularly. Especially retention, holding onto your clients is the most important thing you can do. If you have an airtight system there, you're going to make more money. Gross revenue and profit. Now Corey , you work as a mentor. You're not just a gym owner. You teach other gym owners how to be successful. Talk to me about, have you been in a situation where you , you tell someone like, Hey, you should really standardize this stuff and your business will grow. And they're like, I don't wanna do it. Eventually they come to see Jesus and they make it happen. What happens in that situation? Have you dealt with that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Actually just had a few mentees recently that pushed back hard on it.
Speaker 1:<laugh> . Okay .
Speaker 2:Like we all did probably. Yeah . Yeah . But now that they've done that, a, they've been able to onboard new staff quicker. They got to the point where their revenue was high enough they needed new coaches and that wasn't such a burden. Like it was probably for me and you early on mm-hmm <affirmative> . Because they had systemized it and it onboarded them quicker. Um , but now they're seeing that they have more mental bandwidth and more time to grow a specialty program to do different things that are now increasing their EHR and ultimately growing their net owner benefit, which is why we're all in this business. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When they push back on you, what's, what is the thing ? Is it, is it just I don't have time or is it something else? It's
Speaker 2:The I don't have time or they don't see initially the reason for it. Yeah . Like why am I gonna write all this down? Like we all, the biggest thing I probably hear, and I think I said this to my two brain mentor when I started, was like, this is common sense. We all know how to do this. Yes. Yeah . But like you stated earlier, if we assume that with a staff, they're not gonna hit our expectations. Yeah . We can't assume that everyone's gonna think the same way we are and do the same things that we do. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's why we have to systemize it because the members do expect that. So now we need to systemize it so that everyone's on the same page and that the members don't see a drop off when the owner steps away from the gym or steps away from coaching as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I wrote a newspaper column for about a decade called uncommon sense because I truly believe that common sense isn't that common, right? Yep . And I think it's very difficult for people to see inside your head obviously, and know what you want done. You know, and that's just, that's a huge problem. Businesses and listeners. If you're out there and you're an owner operator, like you're a sole proprietor right now and one woman man would ever show you're doing your thing, you're like, I don't need SOPs. But you do. Because if you don't have them, you can never replace yourself. Like think about that. If you don't have an SOP for how to run a class, you have to coach every single class in your gym or your members will get crappy service when someone jumps in. Right? So you have to do that if you write that stuff down now as you're doing it. Like think about this. You hold every role in the business. You are in the perfect spot to then systemize ourselves and say, this is exactly how I want it done. Take the time today, do one task, write everything down, use chat . GPT ai. Like Corey said, if you do this, then you can eventually get rid of that task. And Chris Cooper has been explicit about this. He's like, I drove to the gym and I wrote down, drive to the gym park in this spot. Use this key to open this door, turn the lights on, turn the music onto this volume and it was just da da da da da da da . You can literally do that voice record, like Corey said, feed to chat GPT and say, systemize my opening procedures. And if you do that, you can then hand that off to everybody. I'd recommend you do something today. Right. Do one thing. It's not a huge deal if you just chip away a few things. It gets overwhelming if you try and do all of it. Here's where this really gets interesting. I'm gonna ask Corey about this in a second, but I'm gonna lay it out the value ladder. Eventually a two brain mentor will say to you, we need to buy some time for you to grow your business. How are we gonna do that? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And what you're gonna do is you're gonna look at your, your , your time on it , everything that you do, where do you spend your time? What are you doing? And then you're gonna look at all the stuff that's like five hours cleaning, three hours coaching, 10 hours at admin , 15 hours, whatever. You're gonna look at that and say, what is the value of each of these things? So I could say like, I pay myself $15 an hour for cleaning. I spend 10 hours a week, whatever it is. Then you start, you know, buying your time back by farming these roll out. So I'm gonna hire a cleaner for $20 an hour. I'm gonna buy back five hours a week. In those five hours I'm going to make $400 an hour because I can sell high value packages. That is how you grow a crazy business. So Corey , when you've seen people do this, they've got SOPs and they start climbing that value ladder. What happens to the businesses?
Speaker 2:Oh, the revenue skyrockets. Yeah. They start, the revenue starts growing and they are able to get their members to buy higher value packages and to sell higher value. Uh, and then ultimately they're able to pay themselves more and work towards that perfect day and achieve it so much quicker.
Speaker 1:The stuff is nuts and bolts, but it is the foundation of the business pyramid because if you don't have the structure, you can't build higher . And exactly what Corey said, I've seen these charts. <inaudible> has a dashboard, mentees enter their metrics. You can literally look at them and I'll see these numbers where it's like profit, revenue, owner income, and it's just like this. And then boom, it hits the hockey stick and it goes up. And I'm like, what happened? Inevitably it is something like I systemized my business, I started offloading low value tasks and I as the CEO invested my time in growing the business. And all of a sudden all those metrics shoot up. Corey , what is something someone should systemize today? Listeners are out there right now and they're like, I'm not gonna do it. Tell them one thing that they should systemize today. First thing,
Speaker 2:The first thing, I definitely agree with you on the things that are client facing , but I would say the two easiest for me is A, how to open the gym because I got tired of getting here at 4:00 AM mm-hmm <affirmative> . And B, the how to clean the gym. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . We've systemized that. 'cause that's a turnover position. Like we hire high school and college people. They leave and come instead of me wasting time onboarding each of them, I hand them the SOP , they can onboard themselves. And that's an easy task that can be replaced for gyms. And like you said, if we replace five hours a week, that could be five NSIs. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And you can make a ton of money.
Speaker 1:Got two plans there. My idea is like, hey, pick something that's gonna have the greatest effect of the business. Move the needle. You can do that. If you feel intimidated by that, take Cory's plan and pick on the stuff that's right in front of you that you can get off your plate easy. That's a great way to build some momentum. So you win a couple on opening checklists, little things like that. Then you start figuring out how this goes. Right? Because once you create your chat, G-P-T-S-O-P , you now know how to do it yourself. You can crank out the rest of them fast. So Corey's plan is gonna be a greasy rail that's gonna get you all the way to the end of the line. Do something on this today and systemize it. Corey , go through it one more time. Tell 'em the exact steps. 'cause they're gonna , I'm gonna end this podcast about two minutes. Tell them exactly how to use chat, GPT AI to save time. What do they do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So download the app on your phone. Hit the microphone mm-hmm <affirmative> . And say, Hey, I want to create a SOP checklist or bullet point of, you know, say it's the opening task. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . I will walk through each thing I do as I walk through the gym, just like I'm opening the gym. Um, ask it to produce that in a bullet point for me . Then I'll copy it, place it in a document. Uh , we have all of our staff has a folder that we share on Google. Um, I place it in there. I'll link in videos to each thing that needs it and then rock and roll and the staff can duplicate it without me having to show anybody on how to open and close the gym. Or if they have an issue one morning, you know, they can't figure out the radio or the air condition or the heater. They don't have to call me at three thirty, four o'clock in the morning. They open up that they can figure it out and it solves me headaches and lets me sleep in a little bit.
Speaker 1:Corey has just given you the SOP for Creating SOPs. Okay. That is your steps. Just do it. Literally finish this podcast. Take your phone, walk through the gym, talk into it, systemize something, lay it out. Get ai AI to do the part you don't want. Give it to your staff. You can do this in a one hour. I guarantee it. Do it. It will be the first step to systemizing your business. If you wanna go further and get an exact plan to build a business that's gonna be like for 30 years, pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year, make your millionaire book a call via the link in the show notes. Corey , thank you so much for being here and making SOPs smooth and easy for everyone.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you sir.
Speaker 1:That was Corey Lewis, this is Run a Profitable Gym . I'm your host Mike War . Can you do me a favor? If you'd like this hit like, and if you like it even more, please hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And now here's two Brain founder 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.
