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
$600 Per Member in 1,400 Square Feet—It Can Be Done!
Think you need a huge gym and hundreds of members to make serious money? These gym owners proved that wrong by generating $600 average revenue per member (ARM) in just 1,400 square feet.
In this episode of "Run a Profitable Gym," Mike Warkentin sits down with Jake Parton and Jenser Gomes from Evolver Fitness in Connecticut, who made Two-Brain's Top 10 leaderboard for net owner benefit (owner take-home) with only 90 members.
Jake and Jenser reveal how they built a high-ticket, high-touch personal-training model that keeps overhead low and maximizes profit.
They share their bootstrap approach to opening during the pandemic and explain how they lost 85 percent of their clients before rebuilding with systems that now allow them to work fewer hours while earning more.
Also up for discussion: their referral-based marketing strategy that eliminates the need for expensive ads and their extraordinary retention system that keeps clients for years.
Tune in to hear how these gym owners worked with a mentor to create the systems that transformed their business and allowed them to build a team of trainers to deliver high-quality service.
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1:27 - Key to high net owner benefit in a small gym
4:42 - Planning for high ARM
9:57 - Earning more for their time
14:47 - Acquiring and retaining clients
27:25 - Systemizing their business
You need a massive, massive space and a ton of members to earn a lot as a gym owner.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me interrupt you right there, Mike. What? What do you think about that, Jake?
SPEAKER_02:I don't think we did that at all. We're pretty small. Lean, mean fighting machine. Like how much square footage? We are 1,400 square foot and we cater to about 90 members right now.
SPEAKER_03:And you made Two Brain's top 10 leaderboard for net owner benefit. I think we're going to have to dig into this because a lot of people are believing the first line I said, which is obviously not correct. So my guests made our top 10 leaderboard for earnings with 90 clients, more or less, in 1,400 square feet. If you're interested in how they did it, they're going to share their secrets today on Runner Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Bork. And please hit subscribe before you go any further. Now, Jake Barton and Jenser Gomez, they run Evolver Fitness in Connecticut. They made Two Brain's net owner benefit leaderboard. As I just said, that leaderboard runs from$1,700 thousand to forty five thousand dollars a month now that's not gross revenue that is what the owners took home and these are three month rolling averages so there's not one hit wonders in here these are consistent owner income numbers seventeen thousand to forty five thousand dollars the gentlemen have decided to come on the show and talk about how they did it welcome guys how are you
SPEAKER_02:hi we're great dude thanks for having us
SPEAKER_03:I'm fired up to talk to you guys. So we're going to dig deeper into this topic, but I want to ask you right off the top for the short answer. How did you earn so much in 1,400 square feet with a relatively small number of clients?
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to sit there and say the secret to our kind of method is high arm. It's a high ticket method. high profile offering basically as close to a done for you as you could possibly get. Jennifer and I were talking before we came on here that it was kind of like we live in Connecticut on the Gold Coast of Connecticut, which is super high real estate costs. And when we started to dabble in the space, we're sitting there kind of like, what can we afford? I mean, we were trainers at the time. We bootstrapped the operation. We were nervous about it. So it made us very, very, very, very safe with our numbers. We were very, very pessimistic. We wanted to keep it lean. We wanted to keep our operational costs as low as possible in hopes that at some point we'd be here on the Net Owner Benefit Leaderboard for 2Bring. And yeah, here we are.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so ARM, average revenue per member. If you have a high ARM, you do not need a ton of members. If you have a low ARM, like say$30, you're going to need a lot of members. And that's where people get into trouble because it's hard. Like in an access gym, maybe that works. In a coaching gym, if your ARM is low, you're selling your time for a low value. And all of a sudden, you're going to need a ton of people. It's just this hamster wheel. It doesn't work. And we see people get on this marketing hamster wheel. I need more clients. I need more clients. I need more clients. But what you really need is probably a rate increase. You probably need to boost those rates up, you probably need to add some services, add some high value services like personal training, semi-private training, all those different things. TRM is a secret recipe for revenue in gyms, right? And I'm going to ask you this, guys. I'm going to dig in with a couple of questions based on what you said here because I really want to kind of figure this out. Back in the day, there was a lot of like when group fitness exploded with CrossFit and so forth in about the 2010s or so, there was this if you build it, they will come mentality. You get a great big space and you're going to fill it with people, except that doesn't often happen very much. And very few CrossFit gyms and group training gyms have been able to get 200, 300, 400, 500 members. It doesn't happen. You guys went the other way and I love what you did. You said, I'm just going to minimize my expenses and risk in a small space and we're going to maximize stuff in there. So how did you come up on that plan when so many people did it the other way?
SPEAKER_01:It's a great question. We tried different modalities throughout our years of experience doing this. And what gave us the tool that we could share with people that they could consistent and faster, get a result faster was this personal training tool. Which is a very individualized, specific to the client needs. Through all the years, the way we developed this process was like, how can we simplify fitness or their lifestyle or their movement so they can get the most out of it?
SPEAKER_03:So you focus the results right off the bat.
SPEAKER_01:Straight. Because if you can get clients happy, they will keep coming. and they will refer their families and friends.
SPEAKER_03:When did you figure this out? What year did you open this, Jim?
SPEAKER_01:We opened in 2020, August of 2020, right after the pandemic.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh, I was going to say, that sounds like a tough time to open.
SPEAKER_01:It was. Like, in this transition, we lost about 85% of our clients.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh, yeah,
SPEAKER_01:that's a tough thing. So we just had to put our heads down and work really hard, which we did. It was great. I think when you have that intention of, helping people especially at that time people they appreciate that kind of stuff and they stick to you uh and at the time because our spots were so small people were avoiding big box gyms
SPEAKER_03:right that's interesting yeah
SPEAKER_01:so people were looking for places like that they would come out with just me and jake and two other people in the room they'd be like oh this is great you know like we can share so it was uh was also a benefit for us at the time
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so did you guys, did you plan, like, did you have your avatar, your client, your perfect client laid out right when you opened in 2020, or was that something you developed after that?
SPEAKER_02:That's still, I would say, a continuous process. We have this conversation on a weekly basis. Who are we catering to? How are we catering to them? What can we do better? What do we feel comfortable and confident with? So one of the things that we find in 2Brain, so much of this stuff we try and make as measurable as possible. And then we reiterate. You look constantly, and I'm sure everyone listening to this, I'm sure everyone that's kind of within this group, You're always learning. We're always learning. So we're just trying to slowly but surely just get a little bit better day by day so we can serve more people and hopefully help some more people along the way.
SPEAKER_03:Did you guys spend a lot of money on equipment when you opened? Or did you kind of, like you said, bootstrap? Did you start small and kind of chip away? What was your plan for equipment and gear?
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, we went the completely polar opposite of like the big box chain model. So we really, we couldn't afford, couldn't afford big machines. So we went a couple of rogue monster light racks. We got a dumbbell stack. We had some slam balls. We got a couple of plate trees, but really like we kept it as bare bones as possible. The big, big spendy stuff that we got were some Kaiser machines, which were fun and look frilly and people get excited about them. But otherwise we kept it pretty inexpensive to start up.
SPEAKER_03:And that's interesting because, you know, Chris Cooper, we had similar histories, he and I, and we opened, you know, group gyms. He had a personal training studio as well, but group gyms and filled them with stuff and bought all this things things we didn't need essentially he said if he would go back and do it again he'd probably do almost exactly what you guys are doing where he'd get a couple of barbells maybe a pile box some dumbbells just like some inexpensive stuff that you can get a lot of mileage out of and he would have gotten a very small space and he wouldn't have expanded out of that space until he was bursting at the absolute seams and he would have sold high value stuff maybe not group training anymore maybe it would have been semi-private or small group coaching and obviously pt but that model allows you to scale up and out rather than like panicking about paying the rent. And that's where I was, where I had the 6,000 square foot space, bought a bunch of stuff. And I'm like, I need more members. I'm panicking about stuff. And I wasn't focused on client results because I was focused on trying to spin the plates to keep the place from closing. So you guys did it completely opposite. Talk to me about the growth of that plan. So you start in 2020, obviously you got to get through the pandemic and you go through that way. Did you always have a high ARM or was that something that you built over time?
SPEAKER_01:We always had the high ticket service, right? The hype touch service that's all that's we've been doing this for our whole life not our life our whole professional life so we did always had a high arm but that doesn't translate into an ob right away correct so like i said we lost about 85 of our clients and then jake and i got into work and we got members back into the gym and we're like, Oh my God, we're doing all these hours. We need to hire someone. So then we hire a trainer, train them. They didn't do it. They didn't do a good job. So
SPEAKER_02:we did a good job actually in fairness to them. I think we did a pretty bad job now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then we, as we joined, um, two brain, we started learning the importance of SOPs and then, how we do service, and then how we train our staff. And like now we have three trainers, two full times, one part time, and they're pretty much managers. They run the place really well, like it's their own. They know how to do NSIs. They know what we're looking for. As we move, as we take ourselves from the business a little bit more and focus at different parts, our NLB will grow that way right make sure there are trainers building up their schedule and and becoming successful professionals at this
SPEAKER_03:so how many hours a week do you guys coach now is it mostly management stuff or do you still work on the floor
SPEAKER_02:we are still we are still very heavily involved in the floor which is so like gents was just talking about one thing when when we did this we we built the almost built it fundamentally wrong. So we kept it small. That was all good. But in our naivety, we built a business that was reliant, or at least we thought was reliant upon us from the get go. So when Junster says we were working like dogs, we would get into the gym 5 a.m. We would open up those front doors. And if we weren't training on the floor, we were sitting outside and we'll sit there. We're just begging for business. Any person that walks by would be like, hey, you look like you work out. What do you do? Come on in. So we built that back up. But as part of that, it just becomes what's ingrained. So prior to owning the gym, we were trainers, too. And we were our reward system was always put more in, get more out. put more in, get more out. And now slowly but surely after 13 years, give or take, we're starting to say, oh, you know what? Well, if like we put it onto the marketing cog and we get some leads and we facilitate that and bring them into the space, all of the guys that work with us, they can take care of these people. But honestly, in some cases, most cases better than us. And that is like, a game changer for our business. With our NOB, it's high right now. It may come down a little bit as we start putting more money into the staff, like into the staff pay. And that's okay. Like both Jensen and I have had this conversation time and time again. It's like, you know, at some point, you start to decide where your value is like. So, Jenser and I are both family people. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old son. He's got two kids. And so, like, getting some of that time after working long hours for five years, it's nice. And so, we're going to, you know, start leaning into the EHR a little bit more than maybe... and OB as we grow a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:And that's effective hourly rate, listeners. That's the amount you take in divided by the hours that you put in, or sorry, the amount that you earn divided by the hours that you work. That means that if you work fewer hours and you can make more in less time, essentially. But interestingly enough, one of the other leaderboard members, he said the same thing. He's reducing his net owner benefit just a little bit to invest more in staff development. So this is not an uncommon plan. And some of these things aren't always just like one line up. There are peaks and valleys or plateaus in there where you have to invest in the business and then things spike up and that's really interesting i want to dig into that part because you've obviously done an interesting thing where you went from like two dudes doing all the training with like protein bars on fishing line and trying to reel in new clients right off the street you guys went from that to now having a staff, I think you said five people between full and part-time. Talk to me about that transition because it's really interesting how that works because sometimes staff is seen as an expense. In other cases, staff is seen as an investment and they allow you to scale up your business. So talk to me about going from two dudes to a staff.
SPEAKER_01:So like Jake said, our reward system was like, you work really hard, you get paid by the hour and you do a good job and you're going to get paid. And now from like getting the business and trusting that our staff is gonna deliver the product that we promised them, for me, I would speak for myself, for me specifically, that was really hard. So until we had systems in place that assured that our trainers could deliver the product the way I picture in my head, I didn't feel comfortable enough taking myself out of the business and letting them run the show like I am now. So it's been a very hard transition in my head, but it's paying off. And as I see our staff doing better, it actually motivates me more. I it gives me the same joy as giving as getting a client to their goal. And I think that's something that for me, it's going to be one of my main goals now is is how can I get each staff to the point that they're like, just like Jake and I am.
SPEAKER_03:So let me ask you this. So you've got, who gets the clients? Who finds the clients? How do you acquire these people? And are you acquiring them for your staff members? Are staff members expected to do that? Or how does your business set up?
SPEAKER_02:So we lean with the hire ticket. This has been interesting because we've done the Facebook ads and we've done organic social. We were all in on all of these little levers. What we find works most for us, and Jens touched on it earlier in this conversation, is is referral business because the average revenue per member is higher. Because our average ticket price, like on the books, it comes in around$600 on a monthly basis. These people are paying, but we're charging. We're still like people will hate us for this. It's not monthly recurring revenue. The way we organize our structure, our packages, we sell it at four, eight or 12, depending on what a person is doing on a weekly basis. because we do it like this there's a massive barrier to entry you know anyone that's worked with cold traffic on facebook knows it's hard enough to sell them a 30 membership people have locks on the wallet they're scared what if it's not going to do what they want you know it's it's a it's tough it's really really tough so we've tried that and it's really really tough to get that person apart with 800 bucks so what we what we found is we try and keep our referral structures like bring a friend stuff like that a little bit more premium we try we try and create or craft events that feel exclusive they feel built out they feel like the client's going to get an experience a perfect example of it this is like this upcoming sunday jen sir and i are going to host a nice like light workout we're going to do refreshments we're going to do some bagels post-workout and then we have a shopping event at uh the clothing brand viewer's store local to us and so our clients get their private shopping experience they all get 20 off and so it just feels like a like something cool. And that really, honestly, the big secret here is that's a no cost to us. Those people are taking care to get some people in their door too. It just feels really good for our community building. And as part of that offering, we decided we were gonna bring in anyone that signs up with us has to bring a friend. So has to bring a new face. And so that'll give us, we'll call it 15 to 20 people we've never met. They're all friends of clients Our client list is pretty curated. They're all pretty specific to our space or our avatar. And it gives us 15 leads that we'll start to communicate with. We run weekly newsletter. We'll get them involved with our social. And hopefully that amounts to one or two new faces in the gym. So that's really like the bread and butter for us for lead acquisition. And Jensur and I are pretty, like we really have our finger on the pulse there. But like Jensur said too, with our trainers, because they do a good job, because they want to help first, they do get results. They do become part of people's families. And so it's not uncommon, too, for like our trainer, Miguel, trains a woman named Pam, and Pam loves it. She's crushing it. She's happy. Pam loves it so much and having so much fun with Miguel that Andre, her husband, comes. Andre fits right in, brings his dog every Monday and every Wednesday to come play with my dog, Norman. And then... You know, fast forward to the summer, their daughter Sophia comes in and now it's like, oh, everyone's hanging out. And so we see a lot of that, a lot of referral business in our space.
SPEAKER_01:On top of that, we also work with affiliates with business nearby us, which is your physical therapist, chiropractors, and we have a really good relationship with those people and we get referrals back and forth.
SPEAKER_03:yeah and that's such a great way to do it and like in your business model you're not looking for 350 clients that's hard to do with referrals now if you want to get 90 to 120 you can do that and the great part about it is that you're going you've got your clients You talk to their friends and family. Let's say you get 45 clients and each one brings in someone else. That's 90 right there. You don't have to spend a ton, a ton of time on marketing and cold traffic, like you said, especially because if you found that the cold traffic isn't the best play for you because you're going to say, and our prices are$600 a month. And a lot of people are clicking on Facebook, aren't looking for that at all. Whereas your friends and family and coworkers of the people you're already crushing it with, they're like fish in a barrel. And this is not the first time I've heard this. And I've heard there's a gym, I believe it was Brian Bott in New Jersey, one of our mentors, He has a program where he gives out, it's like a black card referral program. And what he does is he takes this, it's a super premium looking card. It's not just like a flimsy piece of paper. It's like a very high value kind of thing. He's like, this is for your friend, Tim. And he knows the guy by name or whatever. He says, you tell your friend, Tim, to use this card for, it's like a, I can't remember if it's a free session or it's a free month or something like that, but it's something that's super high value. And he gives them this card that's just personalized and feels like a huge valuable gift. It's not just a flimsy 10 cents off coupon. and inevitably these people come in they're friends of friends they love it they want to work out with their friends and he ends up getting these clients and they're high value clients that stay for like you know years and they end up their lifetime value is like you know ten thousand dollars or something like that so he's got this whole thing calculated other gym owners have done the same thing but two brain teaches four funnels And you've got paid, which is a very tough one. You can master it. You should use that at some point, most gym owners, but that's a tough one. You've got organic social media. That's where you're cranking up content. You've got content funnel. That's just generic stuff that's not like your blog and so forth. And then on the other end of it, you've got the referral funnel. And the referral funnel is an incredibly valuable funnel because it takes your time. Not a ton of money, and you're connecting with people, and you just heard listeners. These guys have very specific bring-a-friend events that are very classy. They feel like a big deal. They've got a clearly defined referral program, and you can fill a gym with this stuff. Kubrick teaches us through like four different funnels. Referrals is a non-negotiable funnel because it is the best one that you could possibly have working. All for at all times is a great plan as well. Talk to me about retention. So that's one of the things in a small business model like this where you've got 90 clients,$600 a person. person, that's awesome. But if 10 leave, that's a huge hit. How do you retain these guys and make sure that they stay for a long time and are always happy? Obviously, results is part of it. What else do you
SPEAKER_01:do? Like I said, when we talk to our trainers and train them, this is one thing that it's a must. When a client comes to the gym, that is 5% of your work at Evolver. 95% of the work is going to be texting that client, checking in on that client, researching anything that's going to help that client get to the next phase. So when people come to us, we get the same thing as everybody else. I want to lose weight. Oh, I want to do this. I want to do that. But what we're really good at is listening, seeing where the client is on their journey, and figuring out what is the least amount of work that you have to do to get to your goal and a lot of that comes from literally holding a client's hand and walking them through this path so we'll be texting them on the weekend and we'll be sending different studies that we come across different food recipes different tools that we use and just sharing all those things with them it makes them If you heard, first of all, it makes them get the results and they're happy, man. As long as they're happy, you know, they'll keep coming back.
SPEAKER_03:So it sounds like what I'm getting here is like the gym experience is like a small part. It's all that stuff in between that keeps your clients coming back. And it's a really high touch thing where again, one-on-one, you're going to have just an incredible interpersonal relationship, but you're continuing that outside the gym. How do you message them? Do you use email or DMs or do you use a coaching platform? What do you use to stay connected to your clients outside the session?
SPEAKER_01:All right. So that's something that we created with our mentor. Nice. We created a system that has like dates and times and how the trainer communicates to the client. We keep track of how many times they check in a week, if it was through a phone call, if it was through email, if it was through text message, whatever that is. As long as the trainer keeps doing those touch points and we're seeing that that is actually happening, I feel like that's the...
SPEAKER_02:That's where the money
SPEAKER_01:is.
SPEAKER_02:That's the deal. Yeah, like... So like with all those things, with the touch points, it's email, phone, text message. He makes sure that like Jensur is really like the head of product within our company. He just makes sure he's on it. So what's really nice though too is like it gives us real-time feedback as we start to exit a little bit or hopefully start to make it. A little bit more of an exit. We still need to know what's going on within those four walls. We still need to know what people are working on, what to celebrate because it's, you know, we are still part of the part of the brand. We live the brand. And so just making sure that like when someone posts in our little drive, Hey, to use Pam again, we're, we're celebrating it's her and Andre's anniversary. Well, great. That note's going to be pushed into that Google Doc. Jensen's going to see it on a Monday. Oh, shoot. It's anniversary time. We're going to find out, because we're sneaky, where they're going to their anniversary dinner. And we're going to go get them glasses of champagne. Something's going to happen. But all of those are tools. Gary did a really good job with us. Big shout out to Gary Walsh. And here's my bicep pose. You can't see it. There it is. Big shout to Gary, though, because he really did help us systemize and operationalize our offering. And that's where I feel bad for our first trainer in the space, because he used to ask for it. It's so amazing. In hindsight, we would put together performance improvement plans because we were upset with the outcomes, because we gave him no KPIs. We gave him nothing to work with. And we would just get mad when he didn't do it the way we wanted it done. And he would look at us and he'd say, give me actionable steps. What's more actionable than me saying like, show up on time. We would get so angry, but nothing was in stone. There were no rules. It was a mess. So it was a big shout to Gary last year, like really helped us get that stuff organized. And it's not done by any means or by any stretch of the imagination. We'll keep on improving those processes. We'll start bringing it to our team. to help, you know, they're in it, they're in the thick of it. So get their input on how we can be better at this, how we can communicate it better, how we can deliver it better.
SPEAKER_03:I'm going to highlight two things in what you just said. The first one is extraordinary service. So you said we were sneaky, Pom and Andre, we figured out where they're going for their anniversary, whatever it was you said, celebration, and you give them a special something. And like, that's just one example. I'm sure you've probably got 800 different examples exactly like that. If you guys going the extra mile for your clients, that's how you retain clients. It's, you know, just getting to know them and being part of their lives. That is a huge, huge thing. So listeners, if you're out there and you're saying, how do I retain more clients? Find out what your clients do and become part of their lives and stay in constant contact with them. In fact, get off this show, text five clients that you have and just say, hey, how was your last workout? Or congratulate them on something that you saw in their metrics. Hey, I saw you deadlifted 300 for four reps. That's a huge new record for you. Do that right after the show. your retention will improve if you do that daily and i'm not making that up that will happen you can track it and you can show me the numbers in two months if you do that kind of stuff every day the second thing you said systems every single gym owner who comes on this show the successful ones on our leaderboards mentions systems at some point it is inevitable if you do not have business systems your gym will not thrive you can definitely do okay because you're a hard-working type a kind of person you're talented and skilled you're going to crush it and work the long hours and grind but you cannot scale up to the level that these guys are at if you do not have have gym systems. It is unbelievably important. I know it's tedious to build them. Once you build them, they govern everything and they make everything better. Gentlemen, talk to me about how a mentor helped you build those systems and make sure that you could put it in place. Was that something that the mentor was instrumental in doing?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So Gary was instrumental in doing it. Honestly, when we came on with Two Brain, we didn't have an employee handbook. We had to having, it was two guys in a gym that liked to work out. That's all we had. So he really did. At least we liked it. So it was, yeah, that was it. And so when we came on very, very quickly, he recognized that, None of it was clear cut. No one had a clear path to success. Trainers didn't know what was expected of them. Honestly, we didn't know what was expected of trainers. So like Gary helped us systemize it. from stocking lists for bathrooms to hiring workflows and onboarding. Literally, absolutely anything that goes on in those four walls is on some piece of paper. And what we see now is when we onboard new coaches, it's amazing. It used to take us a couple months or three months, four months to get a person up to speed, to get them comfortable in the space, to know what they're doing. Now we can do it in three weeks. We give them the handbook. We say, this is it. This is like, read this thing through. Then we start doing our NSIs and we have it. It's all defined. And so now we can say, all right, we're going to get on LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter. We're going to put out our ad. We have it all pre-framed out. We're going to hire on a new person. We're going to run them through the races. And it's like, it has simplified our lives unimaginably. And then most recently we've pushed into, we actually switched into the Tinker group. So we jumped into Tinker last month. And so now we're working with Kenny. And so Kenny is helping us with a little bit more of the big picture stuff. Jensen and I are, we're, We like all of the stuff we liked. We like tinkering. We like messing up, messing around in other business space. And so what we seem to be working on right now, like our really like our current, our focus is, is that whole effective hourly rate. We don't need to grind so hard. We need to start thinking about. kind of vivid vision and structuring what life looks like for the next 20, 30, 40 years and how that pans out. And I think it really does all start with pulling ourselves out of the business, not being so much in the day to day and working on growth, working on the bigger
SPEAKER_01:picture. I just want to add something to how he helped me a lot. I have these things, I have so many different ideas and I wanna do all these things all the time. And having a mentor running us through exercises like the perfect day and set up different goals and having Gary come up to me like, is this gonna help you reach your perfect day? And it's like, oh, no, of course not. And then for me, it really clicked when it was, it's just like clients. Clients have like crazy goals and we have to hold them accountable to those things. And having a mentor, it felt the same way. It was someone like, you shouldn't do that. Maybe you should take this route and we'll be better for your goal. So for me, that's how it was very helpful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And that's great to hear because it can be so difficult to do this stuff on your own. You can chase different things and you can get distracted. And I was going to say systems suck one time. You just build them that one time and it's not super fun. But as soon as it's done, the maintenance on them is so low and you just have to keep upgrading them and auditing them over time. And that takes so much little time. AI can help now. There's all sorts of tools you can use that way. But you build them one time and then you just maintain them and they govern your entire business. And that allows you to do Everything faster and better and the perfect example you guys said having all the stuff in your head and even not formalized because you couldn't quite figure out what you want to tell people getting upset with staff members and then finally getting everyone on the same page and so that they know what's expected, you know what's expected. We're all on the same page and everything works. That allows you to offload things. Your service standard doesn't decline. You don't lose clients because people are doing a bad job. Everything gets better. And then you've even formalized, you know, stock and inventory and all the other things you guys need. So you formalize the entire system of your business. And gym owners, if this is something that you do not want to do and you don't like it, The shortcut is to use a two-brain mentor to do it because we teach you in the early stages of mentorship how to formalize and systemize your business and build the structures, get some quick wins that allow you to scale up. And then if I pull out back here. This is one of Cooper's books. It's founder, farmer, tinker, thief. That's the early stages as founder. You're just setting this thing up. Farmer, you're scaling up into growth. Tinker, that's where these guys are right now. That's where you've built a successful business that's not wobbling like it's going to fall over. It's doing pretty well on its own. You've offloaded some stuff. And now you get to sit back and say as an entrepreneur, what's next? And these guys are saying, we want to make a higher hourly rate. in less time. We want to earn more in less time. We want to spend more time with our families. We've grinded for a long time. We want to set this up for our staff. That's where you can really make some fun entrepreneurial plays and work on some next level stuff. And so that's kind of the third stage of the Two Brain system is that tinker group where you work with an elite coach and an elite group of gym owners to figure out what's next. And that's super exciting. So gentlemen, next is going to be effective hourly rate. And then how many hours would you like to work in a gym? What are you thinking?
SPEAKER_02:That's what it would say, zero.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, that's fair.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's not true. I love being a trainer. It's what I've been doing. It's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. But I do love training staff more than training clients now. For me, that's the fire. So I will work 40 hours doing that. Training clients, it can go anywhere between zero and 10,000.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, that's awesome. Jake, for you, what's your ideal balance?
SPEAKER_02:You know, I actually, I really like my mornings in the gym. So I would like to go in a little bit later. I'd like to be in there maybe six as opposed to five because it's just... It's too early. That's my time still, effectively. But I'd like to be done and out, not worried about it by noon. I want to be able to. My big goal this year is just I want to be able to pick up my kid from daycare every day. That's my goal. So as long as I'm out by 3 o'clock and I can make it down there, we're good.
SPEAKER_03:And that's what you can do. That's the flexibility you get when you build a great business. If you wear all the hats... and you don't have systems, you have to do everything yourself, you will never get out of that grind. And what will happen, and I'm sorry to say this, this is what will happen, you will burn out. I said, no, it won't happen to me. I hit the exact same thing. I burned out. Then people leave. Talented coaches leave the fitness industry. Gyms go down and staff lose their jobs and clients lose their place to train. If you do it the other way and build a strong business where you can offload jobs and evolve and live your perfect day, Clients get results, they get to keep training, staff members build great careers, you as the owner get to benefit, and life is beautiful. So if you need to know how to do that, you want to hit the easy button, book a call via the link in the show notes, and you could one day be on one of our leaderboards. I did talk to someone on this leaderboard. the same one you guys got and he said i started looking at this stuff to bring content in 2022 and i dreamed of being on a leaderboard i didn't think it was possible and this month he made it three years later with the help of mentors so that's pretty cool thing gentlemen i want to congratulate you on making the leaderboard this is one of our best ones it's super it's because it shows owner lifestyle congrats and thank you so much for sharing your time and insight with us i appreciate it
SPEAKER_01:thank you so much mike
SPEAKER_03:yeah it's my pleasure jake and jen sir from wolver fitness in connecticut on our Two Brain Leaderboard for Net Owner Benefit from$17,000 to$45,000 a month. You can be there too. Book a link via the call in the show notes. Thanks for listening. My name is Mike Morgan. I'm your host. Please subscribe for more episodes so you don't miss a show. And now here's Two Brain founder Chris Cooper with a
SPEAKER_00:final message for you. 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!
