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
Never Launch a Semi-Private Program Without Doing THIS First
Small-group and semi-private training can dramatically increase your gym’s revenue, improve coach pay and boost client results.
In this episode, gym owner and semi-private specialist Daniel Purington shares exactly how to build a high-revenue, high-retention semi-private program from the ground up.
Certain prerequisites must be in place before you offer this service. If you miss steps, your program will flounder, you'll get frustrated and your members won't sign up for coaching that can help them get better results faster. Daniel's got your do-this-first checklist.
Daniel also identifies the biggest mistake gym owners make when building semi-private programs, offers his tips for success and explains how to fill your program. Hint: You don't need to spend money on ads or create a new marketing campaign.
As a bonus, Daniel breaks down how his own gym—Woodslawn Fitness in Portland, Oregon—runs concurrent sessions in just 650 square feet, generates $230 per session and pays his semi-private coaches up to $11,000 a month.
Thinking of adding a high-value revenue stream to your gym? Tune in for a step-by-step guide.
Links
The Prescriptive Model
Gym Owners United
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1:00 - Small group & semi-private revenue
3:25 - How to know if you’re ready
6:56 - Big vs. small group logistics
14:13 - How to fill a program
20:41 - Next steps to get started
Semi-private training is a revenue home run in gyms. So, how do you know if you're ready to set up this revenue stream and how do you launch the service? You're going to find out today. Daniel Purrington is a two-way mentor and the owner of Woods Lawn Fitness in Oregon. He specializes in generating revenue outside of the big group model. Daniel, welcome from Oregon. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:I'm great. Thanks for having me in this morning, Mike.
SPEAKER_01:I am pumped up to talk about this because we're going to help some gym owners make some money. Before I ask you my first question, I'll give a very short summary small group one coach one workout modified for a small number of people it's usually like four six something like that they're doing variations of a workout semi-private different one coach personalized workouts delivered to about four people can be less two to four at the same time it's essentially personal training in the same space and it takes a lot from a coach to deliver four programs to four different people, but it's very possible if you have great coaches and these are high-value programs that make money in gyms. So, I want to know, Daniel, as an expert two-brain mentor on this subject, what kind of revenue is possible per hour with small group and semi-private training versus big groups?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so with our with ours, we do majority small group private training, we do do a little bit of the semi private. So I'm going to kind of stay more towards a small group. But I did some quick numbers when you sent this over to me. For a one hour session with our six people in our small group private training, we're looking at about$230 for an hour. And then for our group, we're looking at with the same six people, you're working at about$80.
SPEAKER_01:When I was running a group class, I was making like 18 sometimes an hour.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Three people, seven bucks.
SPEAKER_02:And that's the cool thing about that is we tend to use a much smaller area with the small group private training than we do with my larger group. And because I have such great margins on the revenue, I pay my coaches about 3x an hour for the small group private training versus the group private training or the group, the larger group.
SPEAKER_01:Is it fair to say this is a career building tool in a gym for a gym owner?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we run... So when we started this program about eight years ago, we started with two or four sessions a week. We now have 25 small group private training sessions a week, not including some of our smaller ones. We have 28 large group. As far as like the revenue split, just I'm going to look at some of my numbers. We're looking at about$24,000 a month. Within the small group, if we use the same amount of people and in that large group, that same amount of people will be 12. Really? Yeah. Now, these aren't my numbers. My numbers are thankfully higher than that, just based on the city that I live in. But again, that allows me to pay coaches in my small group private training$11,000 a month versus$4,000 a month.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. And that's, that's, that's a wage, right? Like that's a career wage where you can then retain good people and pay them what they're worth so they can live versus$20 an hour for CrossFit classes or whatever, where all of a sudden you're maxed out at 40 hours, you're burned out and you can't make any more money. You're not making enough money. And then you put in the application at the fire hall, right? And that's always, that's a big problem in the fitness industry. So this is an obvious win and many two brain gyms on our top 10 leaderboards rely on these programs. When I interview them, they always point to the stuff because it's generating big revenue in gyms. So how does a gym owner know if If they're ready to launch something like this, because I, you've told me that this is not just something you can push a button on. There are some steps ahead of time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. There's a, there's a few mindset shifts specifically if you're accustomed to running group fitness and there's a few systems and processes. And so talking just kind of upfront with the systems and processes, like, You've got to do an introductory consult. You've got to learn why people are coming to you, what they need, and not just assume that they want something that has worked for you in the past. That is critical, critical. You've got to know who your avatar is. That is also very key because we can't build these small groups without that. On the flip side of it, Recognizing what you're selling when it comes to small group private training versus group training. When I talk to CrossFit gyms, oftentimes they're like, well, my CrossFit classes only have four or five people in them. How is this going to work, right? You're selling something very different. Cooper says this all the time, but private training sells you speed to your result. And that is what you're doing. So you're selling specificity. You're selling accountability. You're selling speed. You're selling specific programming to get to a specific goal. CrossFit is a lot more generalized. So the subtle nuances, they are critical. And as we move down along the list, I would say the next most important thing system-wise is your organic messaging. We grew our small group private training and all the mentees that I work with, the first thing we do is grow it within your doors, right? They're already purchasing fitness from you. That know, like, and trust continuum is ongoing. Don't forget that. Like lead nurture is equally as important as member lead nurture. Your members are your next best client here. So if you're... don't have a strong organic media you're not doing emails you're not doing in-house stuff you're not using sugar water whichever posting board your coaches aren't trained on how to talk to this stuff you don't have an audience that's right for your knowledge and for this program so deploying it before you do those things really ends up having it fall flat on its face
SPEAKER_01:before you get to the next one let's just i'm going to give you a summary here if you are just dumping every person who comes to the door into big group classes and it's just like in you go there's no on-ramp there's no call consultation. You just go right into big group classes. You don't blog. You don't have any of these services like personal training or anything else. And you just start saying, I'm doing small group training and I'm raising your prices. It will not work. That's just not going to work. And if you're doing this like by accident, because I did this, I ran big group classes, which were at five o'clock at noon, where 20 people rocking the whole deal. And then at other stuff, three or four o'clock, there were two or three. I was running a small group by default. I can't just tell those people at that point, oh, your membership price doubled, right? None of that works. Like all of this is a bad plan. What Daniel laid out is based on the prescriptive model, where you're going to get people in the door. You're going to sit down. You're going to find out who they are. And you're looking... You have your avatar in mind and you know how to solve their problems. You'll talk to them, find out what they want to do, what their problems are, what they want to accomplish. You'll prescribe them a solution that would be, I know that you need to do this by this point. I'm going to recommend this program. It could be PT. It could be small group. It could be big group, but you have options there and you have to start telling your inside members, your current members that this program could solve your problems faster. If you have none of those things available to you, if you're just dumping people in a big group, don't consider this yet. You got to talk to a guy like Daniel who can help What else have you got on that,
SPEAKER_02:Daniel? So if you're running just exclusively a big group, you've got to work out some of your logistics. Oftentimes when we have big groups, the people fill the space that we have. So it's dialing in some of your big groups. And this is really critical because you don't want to all of a sudden bring in this small group and push your big groups over without having the conversation. Animosity can develop very quickly in that environment. So getting that involved is something that can be missed. Do we have a separate area? So our small group private training has a separate area. It's got separate Bluetooth for speakers, separate weights. It's got everything. It feels different.
SPEAKER_01:That's good.
SPEAKER_02:The music selection is different. The whiteboards are different. The way that we talk about it's different. So you can do some subtle things that differentiate this. And you can do this in an open gym. We'll use lines of weight trees or things like that just to kind of give that subtle line. The coaches know what it is. Running logistics with the coaches. So before a launching this hey this is how this is going to run this is where they go like these practice runs so it feels professional again we're selling speed we're selling accountability we're selling a higher level here the members should feel that day one
SPEAKER_01:yeah and here's a thing i'm going to just jump in with this one goal review sessions listeners if you are not doing goal review sessions every 90 days you need to start them because at that goal review session is the perfect time to say to a big group plan hey i've noticed your attendance is spotty what's going on like i'm not making enough progress I have a new program launching. It's called Small Group or Semi-Private Training. I think it's going to help you get to your goals faster because we're personalizing some stuff in this semi-private program. You get your own, you know, your own program, the whole deal. And this is a way to roll out these programs. Again, it's not available to you if you don't do goal review sessions. In goal review sessions, Two Brain Data proves that revenue goes up, retention goes up, average revenue per member goes up. They are the key to everything in a gym. If you're not talking to your current members, you are lost. Start doing that. Daniel, what happens if a gym just launches? I think it's obvious, but we'll just lay it out. What happens if a gym just launches a program like this without any of the prerequisites that you have laid out?
SPEAKER_02:You're going to get frustrated right off the bat. You're like, this doesn't work with my gym. Like we've learned that with, oh, no, sort of shows don't work here. They don't work because we don't have the foundation set up. And so it's, Yes, the numbers are great. Yes, it's awesome to pay a coach this, this. It's really amazing to be able to provide your members with faster results and better results, but you've got to lay the foundational work before. Number two, you've just devalued that service to your members. You just showed it out like, oh, we can't fill it. Now we've got to backtrack. Now we've got to have some form of a waiting period before we can go back into it. And just really to piggyback off the goal reviews, I cannot emphasize any more than you already have. Like goal reviews are critical. We built this program based off of members within our gym. And it was done through goal reviews. It is a huge checkbox. If you're not doing that, it's going to be very difficult to truly know what your members are. need and so be aggressive with that goal review it doesn't have to be in person zoom phone get to know them then you can figure out the problems that they're needing to have solved
SPEAKER_01:yeah the mistake that i made was i brought people into a gym and i just assumed they all wanted big group crossfit and dumped them into classes eventually after two brain helped me out i started telling people hey we have personal training available and a I can get help with this one-on-one so I can do a muscle up? Yeah. And I didn't even tell people that. Same thing. We have a kid's program. Oh, I'll sign my kid up. This warm pile of no like and trust people inside your gym was available. They're available to you out there right now, but you have to stay in contact with people and then you have to get everything together so that you can solve their problems with a new program and do it properly. And that is, I have talked to other gym owners. They have done this converting group clients to small group or semi-private or PT clients to semi-private. They're doing it successfully and their revenue per hour revenue per square foot both are going up dramatically daniel tell tell listeners how much space you allocate to this in your gym this is cool this is very
SPEAKER_02:cool so i'll give you a really brief brief overview so i have two spaces they're separated by a very small block wall big door you can hear everything on either side my crossfit side has 1100 square feet of usable space
SPEAKER_01:so small by crossfit tavern standards super small
SPEAKER_02:yeah my semi or my small group private training side is 650 square feet we have six wall mounted squat racks we run a six-on-one and a four-on-one small group private session concurrently
SPEAKER_01:so 10 people in 650 actually
SPEAKER_02:it's 12 because you've got coaches coaches so back to what i was talking about about running logistics like when people say i don't have enough space i'm like we do it in a postage stamp
SPEAKER_01:yeah i think there are russian submarines that have larger gyms
SPEAKER_02:you can like i'm the office i'm standing in now is half the size of my my small group
SPEAKER_01:isn't that incredible so listeners like think about that think about the revenue per square foot and daniel mentioned this before the show so i'm going to steal something from here but real estate isn't getting cheaper Your rent is not going down. This is an awesome, awesome way to maximize revenue per square foot because you don't need a ton of space.
SPEAKER_02:And I want to add a little piece to that too, is it also is a great way to maximize what you pay your coaches. This year, we had two coaches buy houses in our neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01:You can't do that.$20 an hour group class usually.
SPEAKER_02:It's one of the things that I'm most proud about. Like both of those coaches get 100% of their home income, their own personal income from our gym.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Yeah. I'll ask you this and we don't have to get into the deep weeds, but just the high level, how do you manage 12 people, 10 plus two coaches in that small space? What's the plan?
SPEAKER_02:So with our small group private training, you always pair people up because most of it is done in a strength training format. We're not doing a lot of high intensity intervals. So we don't have to worry about space. We're not doing a lot of explosive or dynamic movement. Box jumps aren't happening. Power cleans aren't happening. And then we role play. So we've been running this program for about four and a half years. The first year we role played. We did logistics. We did this and that. So now the coaches submit their programming materials. Two weeks in advance. And then the thing that I look for is, is there going to be flow with this? Can we run an on-ramp over here while we're running this? So logistics really, really play a huge role. And all the way down to where you set your squat racks up. Where are your barbells? Where's your weight tree stand? What is in there that really doesn't need to be? You can get people ridiculously fit. with a small amount of equipment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you're programming for the space and for the audience, you know, your avatar, you know, a coach is not programming 70 foot sled pushes and dynamic muscle ups plus snatches or something like that. So Amanda plus sled pushes, like that's just not happening in that space. You don't necessarily need to do that. No, that's where the other spaces are for. So this is a very, very different program and you can maximize these small spaces. So we've laid out essentially like what the benefits are, the prerequisites We've given a look at your program. Let's talk about the high-level steps of how to sell something like this. So what do you do to fill a program?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so when I talk to mentees about this, and this is what I recommend people starting out that don't have this program is, first off, we want to look, are you doing private training? If you're not, then nope. And if you're not doing a two-on-one or a three-on-one, we need to look at that. If we have passed all those, I recommend people doing a beta test, selling an eight-week program. The people train two times a week, same days, same times with specificity. So ours typically starts with a hip thrust block on eight. Day one and then day two is going to be some form of horizontal pressing. We'll do accessory work for the opposite on each week. And then there's midline work, core work, things of that nature in both sessions. We're going to sell that out first. and deploy that.
SPEAKER_01:To current members?
SPEAKER_02:Yep, to
SPEAKER_01:current members.
SPEAKER_02:And the deal is with the coaches, because I don't sell them anymore. If we're starting a new one, they need to come to me with three members whose problem this solves. One of the big mistakes, especially in CrossFit gyms, is people try to build programs around what coaches like to coach and not what their members need. Do not make this mistake.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a big one.
SPEAKER_02:Within my demographic, and I would suspect a lot of the demographics, Handstand pushups are more of a novelty and not actually going to get people to the results they want. So don't just assume like I'm really good at handstand walking. People want to learn how to handstand walk. Goal reviews, no sweat intros, talk to your members, make sure like what we're deploying in this eight week block is solving the problems that people are talking to us about.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So that's an internal plan. Now, when we move, let's say we're going to start looking for outside clients. Let's say we got some roots down. We have some inside people doing this program and we've got a little bit of momentum. What do we do outside? Are you basing this now on the prescriptive model? How are you selling people into that program?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we'll fast forward four years and I want to reiterate that. We're fast forwarding four years. This is not how you should start the program. We have a small group private training on-ramp. No one can come into it now. We have 80 members in our small group private training program. To give you an idea, I have 110 in my CrossFit program. So it's big and it's not nearly as flexible. So when they come in, they have a choice. They have a small group private training on-ramp or a CrossFit on-ramp. They both are the same exact thing, movement pattern are separate, then one with nutrition, one without. That's it. Coming into my gym, you have Two ways, yes or no to nutrition, CrossFit or small group private training. That's it. So we're marketing that on our website. We're marketing that in all of our emails and our social media. We're marketing it within house. Right now, we're looking at about three to one small group private training to CrossFit coming into our gym. That's what they're buying for on-ramps.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. So you're essentially at the wedding and you're just asking, do you want beef or do you want chicken? And it's one of those two things. And then you have access points going into a well-established program so down the line listeners after you get this thing established that's something you can look at when you're selling outside but the first step is not to do that right now because it's tempting to say i'll just go outside put up some ads and do this thing and make all this money daniel is saying that doesn't work we've laid out prerequisites and he's got his experience you need to start working on this inside so let's ask this this is a problem solving for our listeners what's the best way to get a new revenue stream like this set up and what have you seen happen when gym owners follow this plan
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So it kind of depends on what type of gym. And I have two really great examples. One is a very, very large CrossFit gym in Mississippi. Steve is an absolute stud of an owner. He's been in the business for about 15 years. One of the challenges he was having is he was having some of his demographic age out of wanting that intensity. And so we started building a small group a year ago, and we had a goal of selling out eight people in these ones. Again, All to his current members. He's now running 10 programs like that in a gym that's 12,000 square feet. So your traditional big box CrossFit gym is doing this. Flip side, I have a garage gym in the Bay Area with Ryan and Christiana. They're just amazing. Outstanding. Husband and wife only have three little kids that run around. They were doing just one-on-one training and Ryan's schedule was completely stacked. We started pairing people up, pairing people up. Then we ran into a calendar problem. Then we established solid baseline. Now he doesn't accept anyone in a three-on-one training. or bigger. Everybody's got to be in a minimum three-on-one. He gets to take Wednesdays and Thursday afternoon off now to go to gymnastics with his daughter. He took a two-week vacation in Kansas with his wife to see their family. And now, instead of having to cover 30 clients, they're talking about covering 10 to 12 sessions.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. So is it fair to say the average revenue per member in these two gyms has shot up?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Yeah. With both of them, it's big, specifically within Steve's.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And you said a really cool thing. Now, this is a very interesting thing for a we often say, OK, you're running big group. A good way to add more revenue is with personal training with some personal trainers. They're so packed that they have no more hours. They're just done. And again, 40 hours of personal training is brutal. Right. Like that's a very tough schedule to keep. what can you do you can start pairing people up and now if you go back chris has talked about this cooper greg glassman and crossfit the original thing that he did was he started doing this and no one knows this except chris told you know he told this to chris at his coffee table or in his kitchen table greg did just starting with a couple people one person one-on-one training then pairing them up then pairing three or four and then it spirals into the big group model that we all caught on to but that model may not be the best in every single case it works really well for some people it works not so well for other gyms. So there's ways to scale up from one-on-one PT. There's ways to make more money per hour in all these different formats. Again, Two Brain Mentors have an exact plan for every type of business, whether you're big group, small group, PT, access, whatever it is, they can look at your business, find your weak spots, prescribe a fix, boost those numbers up, and then go to the next weak spot. And away we go with tactics and toolboxes and advice and accountability. The whole thing is laid out for you. Daniel, Do you talk to people about this as a mentor regularly? Is this one of your specialties and how do people work with you?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would say I'm sought out for requesting that. I also do a lot of specialty calls for the small group private training as well within Two Brain. The mentees I get oftentimes are curated, you know, through the sales process of like, this is what they're looking to do. Let's see if Dan has some availability to take them on as a full-time mentee. So I really enjoy working with people that are trying to either combat smaller spaces. They want to get back more time. I mean, that's the celebration. for me is the time. And with the team in the Bay Area, they increased their revenue last year by 84%. Their overhead didn't change. 84%. Yeah, they went from between 7 and 8K to more like 18.
SPEAKER_01:That's life-changing numbers, right? That's incredible stuff.
SPEAKER_02:They went to Disney World. That brings a tear to your eye, right? They're some of my favorite humans. They're wonderful people. And so being able to help people like that who are like, I don't have any more hours in the day. I get that. Let's fix that, right? And so that's what we did.
SPEAKER_01:So we're going to give you a starting point as we close this show out. I'm going to tack on one thing at the end here, but Daniel, can you lay out your most important prerequisites for starting one of these programs? Late at the beginning, let's seal it up. What do people need to do right now before they can launch this thing?
SPEAKER_02:Prescriptive model, if you're not doing that, right? So goal reviews, no sweat intros.
SPEAKER_01:Link will be in the show notes. Put that in there for you.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, you absolutely got to have that. you need to be talking to your members through email, social media. Google is a huge one that people are not posting to nearly enough. It is a free call to action in Google. All of that is organic. So dialing in your organic structure, using that information once you get people to start to talk to you in the Google reviews and building something that solves their problem, right? Don't try to build something that you really wanna coach. If you don't wanna coach this, move it to a coach that does, but solve their problems, the value's there, the speed is there, then it just becomes a transaction.
SPEAKER_01:And my final point tacked onto what Daniel just said, book a call to talk to a Two Brain mentor about this program. If you have questions about this or any other adjustments to a business model to change your metrics for the better, you can get on a call. You can talk about your business and you can see how we can help you do it. So that link will also be in the show notes. Do click it. It's going to take an hour of your time. It's a huge investment. You will see ROI on that. I guarantee it. Daniel, thank you so much for laying this out for us. I hope we get some people calling you soon to talk about it and get some more revenue.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sure enough. I appreciate your time, Mike.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that was Daniel Purrington. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Warkman. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Hit a like on this if it helped you out at all. I sure hope it does. And now here's 2Brain founder, Chris Cooper with a final message.
SPEAKER_00: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 gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today. Hey!
