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
From $0 to $200,000 in Semi-Private Training Revenue
Erik Zeyher’s gym, Warlock CrossFit, generates over $200,000 in annual revenue from its semi-private training program.
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Erik breaks down the exact steps he took to build a premium program that works across the board—for clients, coaches and the business. As Erik puts it, “It is aces.”
Erik shares how he structures sessions, pricing and coach pay, and he explains how he generated internal buzz around the program to fill it fast. When his first semi-private session filled up in just 45 minutes, Erik knew he had a winner.
He also gets into logistics issues such as scheduling, onboarding, space constraints and last-minute cancellations.
Now, with expert mentorship and dialed-in systems, Erik can rely on his semi-private program to add $15,000-$22,000 to his gym’s revenue each month.
Thinking about adding a high-value semi-private personal training program? Tune in to hear from a gym owner who’s done it successfully.
Links
The Prescriptive Model
Prerequisites for Semi-Private
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:01 - Semi-private revenue boost
6:51 - Increased coach pay
12:41 - Biggest challenge in this model
18:36 - Time and space logistics
29:36 - Should gyms implement this?
My name is Eric Zier. I own Warlock CrossFit. We have added$200,000 in semi-private personal training for our revenue number.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa, that is a big number. Semi-private training is solving a ton of problems in gyms and generating mountains of revenue. Eric is your proof. Today on What a Profitable Gym, you're going to get the exact details of the semi-private program at Warlock Athletics in New York. You just heard from the owner, Eric Zier. I'm Mike Workman, and you should hit subscribe right now so you do not miss a single Now, newsflash, the age of group training only is at an end. Top gyms now have several revenue streams, and group training is usually just one of them. And it's actually the discount option. PT is the premium service and the service in between. Semi-private training or small group training, they're slightly different. The quick details. Semi-private training. In that program, one coach delivers personalized workouts to four to six people. Can be two sometimes, but it's around that four is a sweet spot. These sessions might bring in about$240 an hour and coaches can make way more than just$25 a class. It's a win for clients. It's a win for coaches. It's a huge win for gym owners. Now, let's dig into the books at Warlock Athletics. Eric, are you ready to roll?
SPEAKER_02:Ready to rock and roll, Mike. Thanks for having me on board.
SPEAKER_01:I am pumped about this. As always, we just chatted a little bit before the show and you've got some numbers and stats and so forth, so let's dig into that. How much does your semi-private training program generate each month and how long did it take you to reach this epic level?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a great place to start because I think a lot of people kind of might see it and get overwhelmed from the start. We generate somewhere between like$15,000 to$22,000 a month in semi-private training.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa, look at that.
SPEAKER_02:We do most of our billing on like Mondays. So if we get a longer month and that month hits on a Monday, we see more revenue that month. So that's why like there's a little bit of fluctuation there between the 15 and the 22, depending on what's going on.
SPEAKER_01:It's scaling up. So how did that take, like when you started this program, what was like, do you remember like month one, month seven, like what were your early numbers in this?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I, it's funny. I remember very vividly because we were kind of upside down on our numbers. Like we were crushing group classes. We had 140 hours of PT and like, we still weren't like fully profitable. Like we were still like fighting like 1000 up, 2000 down, 2000 up, 1000. And like, we were just teetering back and forth. So we looked at the semi-private model and we're like, man, like, We're having members pay a premium when some of these members should be in a one-on-four setting. So we started out with just one hour of semi-privates. So just dipping a toe. Yeah. So I kind of had like a plan where like we needed to just like create enough buzz around it to make sure that it was successful and i think that's where a lot of gym owners kind of struggle and this is where i can kind of offer some insight for everyone listening at home is like you got to make sure you have the conversations on the back end before just launching this thing and really know where the demand is so we had 140 hours of pt a month we knew that there was a ton of demand from like 4 to 6 p.m and um i basically knew that like i had a lot of back-end conversations but we started out with with one hour of this thing at 66 bucks for the hour um i put it out in our members-only Facebook group. I was like, hey, we're launching a semi-private. This is what it entails. If you are interested, either comment below or shoot me a DM. And that one session filled up in about 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01:And that's 66 bucks per person, right?
SPEAKER_02:66 bucks per person for the hour. So we were generating$264 in revenue. The members were paying less than PT. What's the PT rate? the PT rate for us at the time is still is 120. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So there, but you said they're getting their own programs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but they're getting, yeah, they're getting their own programs and they're able to like still get the watchful eye of a coach. Like they don't need to like, I feel like some of it, like, especially with PT is not that it's babysitting, but like, They're some of our athletes are advanced enough where like, they don't need us to sit there, but Hey, like, let's do a warmup together. Right. So like, but they're also not going to warm up on their own. So that's why like the semi-private model is so great for the client. It's great for the coach. But like when we started this thing about it's coming up on two years in September, August, September it was, it was one class in it very quickly. I had probably 10 to 12 people go, Hey, that time doesn't work for me, but these are the other times that it does work. So we started to be able to piece together very quickly within 48, 72 hours, four sessions in that week. So we were generating over$1,000 of revenue. The coaches were getting paid more. The members were paying less. And what we were able to do was almost the same as the PT.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa. So you started off with one session. So you're making basically$264 and you've now scaled this up to, you said 15,000 a month. Is that what I heard?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. 15,000 a month is the low end.
SPEAKER_01:And that's taken you for two years, essentially.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. We kind of hit like a few different levels of this thing. So like one to four sessions was fine. When we grew it to around eight sessions, we started to hit some different bottlenecks and struggles in terms of like scheduling, rescheduling people, programming, the coach's capacity. We're like, we kind of need to like... not put it on pause, but like keep it where it was for a second, just to control some of those bottlenecks. So we could then scale it to the next level, which was around like that, like 12 to 14 sessions a week. And then we refined it again and we ended up where right now we're around like 17 to 20 sessions a week, I believe.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So listeners, 260 some dollars per hour in these sessions, but a couple of things that are really important here is that Eric did not just throw this thing out and say, we're launching a giant semi-private program and the slots are at 10 30 on Tuesday. and I don't care if you like that slot. There was a bunch of steps that he followed and I'm going to put a link in the show notes here to Daniel Purrington's show where he talks about the exact prerequisites for this program. He talks about exactly what Eric said. He did not, you don't just throw this thing out. You have to have a prescriptive model in place so you're talking to clients and start to know their goals and tell them, you know, here's what the solution is. You have to have internal content marketing and external content marketing so that you can tell people what this program is. Eric said he posted in his Facebook group he's telling people about something new you have to have that messaging in place and then from there you have to have the space and you have to have uh coaching coaches who can run this program because it's not easy right it's very difficult to manage six people once you have to have high level coaches you have to have space for it obviously and then you've got to have time slots so there's a lot of stuff that goes in here and the final thing is that when daniel said is essential you do not try selling this to outside people first you market it internally right away and this is a huge key that people will get backwards listen to that show i I won't get into the details here because we're digging into Eric's exact program, but do click that link in the show notes for your prerequisites for that program. So tell me what you pay coaches in this model because there will be some coaches listening and I want them to see what's possible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so right now we end up paying them. We kind of do it. It's still a four-ninths model, but we do their normal hourly rate plus a commission. So rather than just do like, hey, you get four-ninths of it, we make sure that that base pay is there for them. It's just easier for us on the backend business-wise. We use MindBody as our software. And then from there, we've built in commissions for that. So the commissions range anywhere from 10% up to 25% for that session, depending on the expertise, the coach, and all that kind of stuff that's going into it.
SPEAKER_01:Safe to say they're making more than they would for a one-class group session?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so they're making somewhere between$53 and$96 an hour.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so those are like livable wages where you can actually support a family and buy a home on that kind of thing, whereas$25 a class As many coaches know, that runs into a wall pretty soon.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's been game-changing. I mean, we have two coaches that are probably going to break or be right around$100,000 this year. One that's going to smash through that. But it's cool to have that piece and know that our members are getting exactly what they need. We've never had more PRs in our gym. It is working across the board. It is aces.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's what I said. It's a win for the gym owner. You're taking in more revenue. The coaches, some of them making six figures. You're not the first semi-private gym owner who's told me that their coaches are making six figures now, which is like a good wage for a coach whereas you know 40 classes a week at$25 a class you run into that wall and you can't do more and you burn out and then you become a firefighter real estate agent that's a problem you know so this is like and it's also a win for the clients because they're getting personalized program tons of attention but exactly like you said I did personal training and I stand there after, you know, okay, we did the set. We did the tip. We are going to kill the time in between by talking about the baseball game and some other stuff. And there's nothing wrong with building that client relationship. And some clients want to pay for that one-on-one time. However, I could also give you, Eric, you know what? I just need to pull your shoulders back in that next lift. And we're going to hit that in three minutes. I'm going to move to the next client, talk about her deadlift and move to the next client, talk about his running form. And you circle around and everyone gets the exact amount of attention without some of the fluff in between. And clients get great results because personal attention is better than group attention. Group classes still get results, but it is your discount option. Let's talk about that. You talked about why did you create this revenue stream? You covered a little bit of that, but hit me with just again, the reason why you did this and what were the greatest challenges to getting it in place?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So we were kind of back and forth with like profitable, not profitable, profitable, not profitable. And we were crushing PT. And like, we were a little bit upside down in our numbers where we were overpaying our coaches. We weren't charging enough. The coach was getting more commission. I'm like, Meanwhile, like we're trying to cover 140 hours of PT. I'm like, we just don't have enough staff. So like the payroll has gone up. The commissions have gone up. The members are getting better results, but the business wasn't where it was supposed to be. So we had to really look at this thing in terms of why we did that. Like, we knew that it was a win for the client. It was a win for the coach and it was a win for the business. Like very, very few things in business. And I've owned my affiliate for 11 years and I've been doing, I've owned my own business for almost 25 at this point. Like it is very unlikely you see a win, win, win across the board. And as soon as we saw that model, I was like, man, like this is, this is where we need to go to. We've also used it. And this is a little bit different too. Like we've also used it as part of like our on-ramp program. So like we've built it up within our gym members where our gym members do it we actually have in terms of stats we do pretty well in the open we have a pretty high participation rate like we still do it eight of our top ten males did semi-privates nine of our top ten females did semi-privates so this is performance yeah so it's performance based too and it's not that we're like a huge competitive gym but like the reason why people are doing fitness is they want to see improvement they want to get better and we need to lay out that path for them but when you show the statistics and I go through with my members and say, hey, by the way, if you want to be a big dog in the gym, these people are getting results the fastest. Top 9 out of 10 are doing semis. People go, oh. That's a part of it. And to go into on-ramp, we noticed that going from one-on-one training into classes, not always the best. And some people can't afford the PT side of things. So we've literally streamlined it so it goes one-on-one and then they go into training two semis a week and a class. And then they've at least had enough exposure after six weeks of like, hey, do I like semis? Do I want to stay with semis? Do I also want to do classes? Where do I fit with this thing? But it also kind of pre-qualifies in terms of how we're looking to grow the business with average revenue per member. So it kind of hits all of those pieces of what we want while still getting people exactly what they need and keeping it in a reasonable budget.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you hit on a couple of things. Like I tried to solve the competitive athlete problem with low-priced open gym that was an unmitigated disaster. It almost sank my business. if you have special interest groups people who want to do their own thing or get a special attention or do certain things semi-private training is a great way to supply it to them it's way better than$20 to add on open gym in which they take up all your barbell spread chalk everywhere and have 16 different things going on at once take all the space that's a huge problem another two brain gym I believe it's in the Bay Area I think they were running something like 30 PT sessions one-on-one the coach was max had no time or the owner was max had no time to run his or to build his business because he's working in it he's now gone down to 10 10 or 11 or 12 three-on-one sessions. So, instead of serving 30 clients in 30 hours, he's serving 30 clients in 10 hours. He's taking Wednesdays off, hanging out with his kids and he's making I think the number is 84% more revenue in this model.
SPEAKER_02:So, that's a really interesting thing.
UNKNOWN:Talk to me about the biggest challenge. What was the biggest hiccup for this thing?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think the biggest hiccup came actually like from that like eight to 14 where like we started we had to like figure out kind of like the Because we had a bunch of sessions open so like we only allow one switch every six weeks in terms of scheduling because if you have Let's just say there's four people, there's 32 people, and you have 50% of them changing every other week. You have to reschedule 16 people. It slows down the coaches. It messes up the schedule. And then you have two and one, five and another, and we try to keep it at four. So us kind of like honing in on the communication on the front end of what's expected. So we rewrote that whole kind of like onboarding process. Hey, when you sign up for the semis and we assign people a specific time, I know there's some gyms that kind of like let people jump around with that. We try to keep it in a specific time because we know that when people are accountable to time, they get the better result. They also are onboard longer. And if they need to make that adjustment, it's once every six weeks.
SPEAKER_01:So they sign up for a block of six weeks. I'm coming at Tuesday at 10 a.m. and I can make one adjustment in six weeks.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. And if they do one adjustment, totally cool. If they do two, they end up sitting down with a goal review for us if it's three they most likely need to be in a different program doesn't fit with what we're doing but the biggest bottleneck was like it was a combination of like the scheduling the communication on the front end even like the cancellation because some people like we didn't really set a clear expectation of hey like when if you don't want to do this thing again how long do you need to give us right so like we had a few people like two days before like hey I'm not going to renew this thing but they
SPEAKER_01:were
SPEAKER_02:already members of the gym so we're not going to hold them to like the same 28 day cancellation policy because the thing is six weeks long. So we came up with, they have to give us 14 days notification because our coaches start programming 10 days out for the next session. So basically what that looks like is the member says, no, I'm not doing it. And then we don't have to worry about programming. If they don't, 10 days out, the coach starts programming. Programming gets reviewed and approved. And then this way, the week of, everything gets printed up. They still get it on a sheet. We don't do the online programming. I'm not a huge fan of it because then people feel like they can kind of just do it wherever they want with access to it. I like the physical piece of it where they write down and take notes on it. But refining that process to grow from eight hours to 14 hours, it wasn't just me refining it. It was like me creating the buy-in with my staff we sat down for six to eight weeks every week for about an hour and like they thought I was nuts like just hammering like beating a fucking horse to death and they were they got it after the point I'm like the reason why you guys are growing now is because we did the work 12 months ago which is again two brain has allowed me to see those things with working with Anastasia and with Dan so I can understand like what that path looks like and help me get through those bottlenecks that I wouldn't have seen on my own
SPEAKER_01:and that's exactly it a mentor will show you the short path that involves no mistakes or one very small mistake that you just oh okay we'll change that and upgrade that it whereas you figure it out on your own you hit all those potholes hard and you are in major trouble i know it because i did it but a mentor can show you this easy way so book a call to talk to a mentor via the link in the show notes if you want to get the easy button uh when someone misses a class how do you handle that because i know what happens in some of these things where people say they paid for the session they got the block i want to reschedule and like do you carry things over how do you handle a cancellation or missed
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So if they cancel it 24 hours ahead of time, we will move that within that one session, right? So like, let's say like they're scheduled for Wednesday at 5 PM. They messaged us at Tuesday at noon saying, Hey, I need to push it. We kind of have like, at this point, because we have so many sessions have like a flex session on Saturday or Friday. We're like, we can kind of have a little bit of leeway with that. And the coaches know because we've seen the data, what's going to happen with this stuff. So In terms of if it's in that 24-hour window, they lose that piece. We have to hold that level of accountability for our members and for our staff because they can't be running around chasing their tail, trying to hunt down people at last minute. Obviously, there are exceptions. Someone's kid is sick. Someone's in the hospital. There are exceptions to this rule. I'm not saying we roll with an iron fist, but we do hold people's feet to the fire to make sure that they show up because then you're taking the slot away from somebody else. An emergency on your end doesn't constitute an emergency on our end
SPEAKER_01:and that's the reality of business because if you don't do that all of a sudden people you know legitimate stuff happens and that's cool but sometimes other stuff happens where it's like i'm running a little late i'll just cancel the session i'll make it up later and all of a sudden your coach has two people in a slot that should have six and then the business has financial problems we've seen that all over the place so policies and procedures and communication thereof is essential to running any type of business but especially a fitness business and a program like this well and then can i share one more thing yeah yeah go
SPEAKER_02:ahead I'll tell you one of the issues. We had a coach, again, she's great, trying to help a member out and accommodating those last-minute changes. A member would be like, hey, I know I'm at 4 today. Can we do 4.30? And the coach had the availability. Down the road, when she went from PTs to semi-privates, that flexibility wasn't there anymore. And because that courtesy was always extended, she got upset. She actually canceled on us. Because it was expected. That was what she always did. And it wasn't that the coach was doing anything wrong. It was just that it wasn't consistent with what we were able to deliver over the long term and then we had to actually backtrack with that client and be like hey just so you know we we apologize but this is what the procedure of what should be happening she's back on board now but it definitely like took a little bit of saving and finessing on the back end and that's why part of that is so important we don't realize it till afterwards
SPEAKER_01:yeah if you make an exception for one then you're probably going to make an exception for a dozen and then also everybody and then at some point the expectation is there that this is the way things run and your exception has now become policy by default and it's not a good thing and then any cases so again listeners get your ducks in a row here and roll this thing out properly daniel purrington is our expert who can help you do that setting your slots and managing your space so this is an interesting one daniel purrington at his gym i think it's 650 square feet he will run i believe it's 10 clients and two coaches in that space which is gnarly but you can imagine the revenue per square foot there is insane so what have you got
SPEAKER_02:so we we have 8600 square feet in our whole gym so it's massive it's a big gym we run class on around 3,000 square feet of it. We have the other 3,000 for PTs, semis, kids classes, legends classes. And sometimes like the legends, the kids class and the semis are all going on at the same time in those 3,000 square feet. So what we have set up for our semis is basically four squat racks. Two of them are connected with a six foot bar and then there's about 10 feet in between. And then two of them are connected again by a six foot bar. So they all have their own like half rack on the back. Everyone has kind of like their own slot. We liked to run the one to four. We will run a one to five. We don't do more than a one to five with our space. Our coaches, feel like they really not that they struggle with it but like it could be a better service with that there's still some skills to refine um and like keep in mind like i my staff that does this is level three and level two full time like very very good at what they do like they are world class at it so like if you're new at this thing and you're thrown in one to four like your coaches are probably going to drown a little bit and by a little bit i mean probably a lot and we also like built out that space over time originally where it was you know three squat racks we We built the fourth one. We bought the fourth one. We put in all the racks. We connect to the rig up top. We've tried to develop the space so it looks like a premium space. We bought Concept2 bike ergs for these things. So we're trying to reinvest some of that money back in the program. So it actually stands out a little bit from what the rest of the gym gets with Assault bikes, Concept2 or Echo bikes, different barbells, different plates, newer rig setup. It looks a lot cleaner. And overall, if you can imagine what does four rig spaces look like, maybe 40 feet and it's maybe 10 to 15 feet out. So it's not much bigger than what Dan's working with in terms of 650 square feet and generating$220,000 in revenue, 210, somewhere in that neighborhood. So again, if you're in the tighter space and you manage it right, the other part is we also don't program ring muscle-ups normally in the semis because that can be a specialty piece. We also try to avoid sled pushes and double unders just because they're space out. No GHDs in there probably either, right? Yeah. I mean, we have, again, we have a little bit of play space on the side, but we try to keep it, and this is one of the problems we first ran into, is like the programming was all over the place. So I got some people and all the equipment wasn't there. So I have some people going to the other side of the gym. I'm like, coach, you can't see what is going on when your member is 40 feet away in the gym. Then you have to go over there to coach that piece, then walk back. I get it, but it wasn't ideal. So that was part of the growing pants. I'm like, man, we need to solve this thing quick. So we had to fix the programming we had to fix the space of it and just set it up so like it was what we needed to to reinvest that back in there but we did that with the profits from what we pulled off of from the semi-private programming
SPEAKER_01:yeah so key things here you can do this in a small space or slightly larger space like 3 000 like eric's got the key though is making this space either with curtains or even just some racks or just the way you arrange it making it feel a little bit different and special and kind of elite you just can do that you know you can do it with just like plate trees if you want make it feel different you're going to program for that space you're not going to do with 80-foot sled pushes, ring muscle-ups over there, deadlifts over there, and some other stuff over there. You're keeping it clustered. You're going to make people fit in a smaller space. That totally works just fine. Here is an important one. When did you set your slots for this? Because Daniel has said that many people will say, this could be an awesome way to fill my 10-30 Thursday slot where no one is.
SPEAKER_02:No, no. That's not wise, but it seems right. We looked at the busiest PT times. Yeah, there you go. A lot of back-end conversations where I was like, hey, I have this program. We're launching semis. I think you would be a really good fit. what time would work best for you. The client, yes. Yeah, and again, we started to get some data, like, hey, I could do 4.30, I could do 5, and we started to play with some of these times a little bit. Then when we launched, I knew, hey, 5 o'clock, I'm going to get three to four people, like, right off the bat, like home run. So we looked at the times that were busiest, and then from there, kind of were able to move some people around. Because even as we opened more slots up, some people would go, oh my gosh, I didn't know you were going to do a Thursday at 5 p.m. I'm in Monday at 4 p.m., can we switch me over? like totally cool, then we just have to backfill that one. So there's a little bit of like checkers just being played on the back end in terms of scheduling. And my two full time coaches handle all of that.
SPEAKER_01:Listeners do not put these slots in God forsaken hours that solve your problems, but not clients problems. If you want this program to work, put it in prime time when clients would want it. I won't beat that to death, but that is hard rules to start this thing. Do not put it at bad times. It is not a solution for those problems. Let me ask you this. Now you sold me how you got your first clients internally, 45 minutes. You filled this thing just by talking to your current clients. How did you, how are you getting clients now? Or how did you scale that up? When did you move from internal to outside or have you?
SPEAKER_02:I'd probably say that when we recognized how good the results were from the program, we're like, oh my gosh, we're missing the on-ramp side of this thing. And that was probably pretty recently, like this year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's taken you a while to get to this point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's taken us over a year and three, four months to get to that point where we're like, hey, we're going to start doing this with external people. And even the internal people, a lot of them were kind of curious about it. And you guys recommend Bring a Friend. So not only did we do Bring a Friend, we did Bring a Friend Semis. And rather than do it for just like one slot, we do it for the week and let them bring a friend. They're like, well, I'm already a member of the gym. Can we come for the bring a friend for a seminar? Like, yeah, like we want you guys to get more fitness in. Like, that's the point. So a lot of people test it out and they're like, hey, this is actually what I needed. And we also gave a referral gift to our members that brought friends along with them. So we printed up like custom warlock socks and wrist wraps. Because again, the revenue was there. I would much rather reinvest it into our members and marketing dollars with them than pay pay it to Zuckerberg and like the endless pit of mediocre leads that we've all wanted to bash our head in the window for. So like it's been a really awesome piece where it solves both of those problems.
SPEAKER_01:Eric said referral gift, not referral discount. There is a huge difference. Do not discount your services. I will never tell you to discount your services and no one at Two Brain will tell you to do that either. Discounts are a bad idea in all formats and gyms, but a gift, everybody loves that and it's branding as Eric said. So thank you. of clever ways to make these things happen you do not have to discount your services to get clients in here Now, starting this thing off small is a great idea. Like I love what you said, Eric, there are demands on coaches in this thing. If you toss your coaches in and they don't have one-on-one experience and you give them six one-on-one clients and they got to program this and manage these people and whatever, this is much more difficult than running one CrossFit group class where everyone's doing variations of the same thing. Much more difficult because you could have a marathon runner training over there, a powerlifter over here, a gymnast in the middle, a general fitness person here. You've got four completely different things. You have to remember their programs. You've probably got four clipboarders at least you've got different sets and reps you've got different goals you've got different personalities you have different coaching styles you cannot just toss a coach in here and hope that they swim because they will sink but you could do something like this I have a PT client I have another PT client they kind of have some similar goals and they kind of might work well together do you guys want to try a semi-private session together where you're still doing your individual programs but you're meeting at the same time there's a small price break because of this do you want to try that for six weeks that is a very interesting way to start a program like this that allows your coaches to spin out allows the clients to feel it out and all those other things that would get overwhelmed if you just say, I have a six slot semi-private training program for all you people. Coach is going into the fire and we're coming out wounded. Like that's not a good plan. Eric, what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that that's, I mean, that's a home run way to do it. Even like, even if they don't match, right? Like it's totally cool because everyone's going to have their own programming anyway. Yep. I'm such a fan of this thing and it's been such a game changer for our business. Rolling it out consistently is way more to get it right. I looked at this as a long-term play. We weren't hurting for money. It was one of those things where we need to build it right because it's such a strong revenue piece or it can be if we create the buy-in. If you open up 10 different sessions and tell everybody that there's all these openings now, you've opened up the floodgates and it's no longer a premium service and people then just have the Well, I know that there's opening at 5 p.m. on Thursday. Let me switch over to that day. And they jump around. But when you actually create this thing and roll it out over time in the demands that you need, it's way more effective. It's kind of like a red rope theory, right? We're like the things that are less available, people want more of. Yeah. Guys, I'm sorry. This thing filled up in 45 minutes. We opened up another three slots. Those filled up in 48 hours. I want that. So like this thing, yeah, this thing is a hot topic. They go, when's the next one going to open? I'm like, I don't know. When we figure it out, I got to, when would work for you? So it allowed me to have a lot of conversations for us to go, cool. This next slot isn't going to open. We have Jojo and Sally. They're both on board with this one. We just need to hunt down two more people. So we would open it up with two people in there knowing that we were going to fill it over time. But again, a lot of this came from internal members. I'd probably say it's like 80% internal members, 20% external at this point. And most people that come externally, believe it or not, do semis two to three days a week.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa. Yeah. So I mean like, so their
SPEAKER_02:ARM is like 700, 800 plus bucks where they're the ones that they know that they really need that. And they come from like the PT model. They're cool with the semi stuff, but they're definitely not prepared or any way ready for group classes. Like they will drown.
UNKNOWN:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:It is borderline impossible to put a program like this. This program is a hit, but it's impossible to put it in place if you don't talk to your members in introductory consultations when they come into the gym and goal review sessions throughout the year. Those things are essential. So a link in the show notes will be to the prescriptive model. I would encourage you to take a look at that. If you're not using it, get this thing in place. It is a home run. Before even semi-private stuff can even be considered, you get this thing in place. It increases revenue and retention and average revenue per member. It is, again, a huge home run for gyms use that model if you're using it you will obviously see some people who could use more special attention at 10 a.m on Tuesday or 5 p.m on Wednesday and you're going to match them up in a group that works and you're going to have individual programming this thing can be sold in that format it is a mistake to go outside and say Hey guys, here's this thing. You start internally first. And Daniel has been clear about that. So again, that's the other link in the show notes is to the prerequisites for this program. So Eric, I'm going to ask you a final question here. I think we know the answer, but I'm going to ask you to summarize it. Is this program a no brainer for gym owners? Why or why not?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's a, it's a no brainer for gym owners. The, the, again, it's a triple win, right? Like you have a better product and result for the members. You have more revenue and less hours for the coaches and you have more revenue or profit for the business. So like there are very few times in my career two decades of entrepreneurial experience that we see all of those things hit. So it's awesome for it all to come together and something that's scalable. You can grow with this thing and run it and have people. We've had people in semis for over 18 months. They love this program. The retention is longer than group classes.
SPEAKER_01:And you've gone from one class at$264 to$15,000 in monthly revenue and over$2K in annual revenue.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, we've gone up 200K in annual revenue. We do between 15 to 22K a month in semis. And again, like the quality of life that it's then provided for our coaches, like massive. It results for the gym members, massive. Business for us allowed us to reinvest in stuff and do what we need to do in order to grow the business because that's what we're passionate about.
SPEAKER_01:Listeners, this thing is a home run, but there are steps to get it done right, and there are steps that can lead you into the muck. Definitely do it the right way. If you want to talk about a business model that's perfect for your gym that might include semi-private training, book a call with a mentor through the link in the show notes. Eric, you've opened your entire books and told us exactly how your program works. I can't thank you enough for doing that, and our listeners thank you also.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Mike, thanks for being on board. I always love chatting with you.
SPEAKER_01:Always a pleasure. And I always am very grateful for gym owners who selflessly share their exact metrics to help other gym owners find the same success. That was Eric Zierer. I'm Mike Workman. And this is Run a Profitable Gym. Thanks for watching and listening. Please subscribe on your way out so you don't miss a single show just like this. And now here's to green founder Chris Cooper with a final note.
SPEAKER_00:We'll be right back.
