Build a Systemized, Profitable Gym (Without Losing Your Freedom)

Many gym owners burn out because they reinvent everything daily. In this episode, Chris Cooper shows you how to systemize your gym without killing your creativity.

He introduces the concept of “freedom within a framework”—the solution to decision fatigue, staff chaos and businesses that get stuck in the Founder Phase forever.

Coop explains exactly where to systemize and where to be creative in each area of your business:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Retention
• Operations
• Leadership

You’ll also hear how Two-Brain Business mentors help fitness entrepreneurs build solid systems that support their gyms’ growth without forcing a model or method.

Stop starting from scratch every day and start building the stable, profitable gym you want to run.

Links

Gym Owners United

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0:19 - The problem and its solution

4:41 - Marketing and sales systems

9:26 - Retention and referral systems

11:53 - Ops and leadership systems

17:26 - Mentorship gives you freedom

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

you became an entrepreneur because you wanted freedom i know it i'm the same way you wanted to reap the eventual rewards from your hard work you wanted to do it your own way determine your own path right and that means you wanted the freedom to be creative but here's the problem almost every entrepreneur tries to be too creative they wind up reinventing the wheel every single day. They create exceptions for every client. They want to negotiate different deals for different people. They want to design their own t-shirts and they want to create their own protein powders and they want to write their own programming and they want to do the art for their logos and their signs. And so everything that they do is done from scratch. And that means that every single day at the gym is like its first iteration. It's like playing 51st dates with your business where you're starting over again every single day. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And today I'm going to introduce you to a concept that I call freedom within a framework. I actually learned this system from Good to Great. It's a fantastic book that I recommend just about every year when I give you my top books. But I want to tell you how this applies to your gym. Now, first, the reason that you can't just be creative and vent everything from scratch all the time is because this creates a ton of stress and Your business exists only in your head and every decision has to be made over and over and over again. And you get decision fatigue. You get burned out. You're constantly changing things and tweaking things and inventing. And to you, this feels like you're really thinking fast and being smart. But to your clients and your staff, it looks like absolute chaos. It looks like there's no organization or no plan and there's nothing that's predictable. Nothing makes sense because what you said today might actually change tomorrow. Now, after five years of doing this, your business is still going to be in founder phase because everything is always brand new and it might feel fresh to you for a little while, but eventually you're going to burn out and get tired of making decisions. And when somebody comes to you and you say, I've told you that already, what they're not saying is, yeah, but you've told me five different things and I can't remember which one is still correct. And this has a grinding effect on people. you, your clients, and your staff because it feels unpredictable and therefore unsafe. It also doesn't help you grow because you're just making random efforts over and over and over again until you're exhausted. That means that your service delivery is inconsistent, your staff performance is inconsistent, your workouts are inconsistent, and you're getting worse, never better. So you start to get decision fatigue and you get frustrated and you wonder why your staff can't just step up and just do their job, but only you know what that job is and it keeps changing all the time. So eventually you get burned out. It might take two years or it might take 20, but that whole burn it to the ground fantasy just shows up more and more often. And this is because you're being too creative in your business. You're starting from scratch every single day on every single decision. The answer is is not to open a franchise and follow somebody else's system. That's sometimes tempting, but you didn't sign up to be a cog in somebody else's machine, right? The two brains of your business are creativity, the right side of your brain, and consistency, the left side of your brain, creativity and consistency. You need systems or you have chaos, but you also need to feel creative or what's the point? When they work together, you have this beautiful business that makes you money, makes careers for your staff, and makes a big difference for your clients. So the answer is to create systems for your operations that allow you to be creative. We call this freedom within a framework. So it's not a matter of one thing or the other, complete creative control versus a boring fixed model. It's a matter of learning where you should set things in stone and do them exactly the same way every time, and where you can be creative without harming your business. We call this freedom within a framework. You structure the business in a way that lets you be creative without tearing it all down and starting from scratch every single morning. Now, if you've ever read Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink, then you already know what I'm going to tell you here. Structure the non-negotiables in your life and the rest of your life will feel free and creative. If you create unbreakable rules about the important parts, you can just kind of float a little bit with the rest. Even if you haven't read that book, you've undoubtedly said this to your coaching clients in your gym. Book your appointments for next week so that you know your workouts are going to get done. Wrap your meals on Sunday so that you don't have to scramble and make poor choices all week. Now, here's how to do it in your business. And I'm going to go through this system by system, metric by metric. We're going to start with marketing because that's the first thing people always want to hear about all these podcasts, isn't it? In your marketing, it feels like you need to be an artist. Like you have to be creative and you need to invent the perfect ad copy. You need to make the perfect social media post. And the answer is that there is room for some creativity, but you need to be systemized in your ads and creative in your conversations, right? So what that means is that you don't try to dream up the perfect ad and then be surprised when it doesn't work. What you need to do are test three ads at once, run them for two weeks, let the algorithm learn, just figure out which one's working the best, and then kill the two that are performing the least best, keep the one, duplicate it, tweak one word, two words, run another three ads. And what you're going to constantly be doing is like pruning the bush and and making the ads better and better and better as you go. This needs to be your system. So you start with three, you pick the one that's working the best, you double down on that, and that is your system over time. And you don't stop. You let the algorithm continue to learn and your ads get better and better. What you don't do is look for an ad that's working for other people right now because that's not going to work for you. That's trying to do art and business is not about art. Business is a science and increasingly advertising is even a science. Likewise, just like you need to be systemized in your ads and creative in your conversations that the ads lead to with real people, you need to be systemized in your branding and creative in your content. So you want to get a very basic, easy to understand brand, right? If you look at the brand for Two Brain Business, it's really, really easy to read here. There's a simple logo and words, right? If you look at the brand for my gym, it's Catalyst Fitness, green and white with a little green arrow. That's all you want. You don't want to be artistic. You don't want this complicated logo that appeals to the artist within you, but nobody can read when they're driving by in their car. Then you want to be creative in your content. So in your content, You want to have videos, you want to have podcasts, you want to have blog posts that talk about a wide variety of subjects so that when people are looking for that subject, they will find your brand. People never go looking for your brand, right? They're not Googling Catalyst Fitness. What they're Googling is Jimny or me. They're Googling nutrition program that works. They're looking for like fitness in Sault Ste. Marie. And then that content guides them to my brand, which is simple to understand and memorable. So you want to be systemized in your branding and creative in your content, just like you want to be systemized in your ads and creative in the conversations that the ads lead to. Sales is the next thing that we track. And we coach gym owners on sales because we all come into this thinking like, oh, sales are gross. I don't want to be good at sales. Salespeople are slimy. But the reality is that sales is the first act of coaching that you get to perform on anybody. You need to coach them to commit to your coaching. And that means sales. Just like you need to be systemized in some things in marketing and creative in other parts, you need to be systemized in your pricing and creative in your prescriptions. A lot of people try to make up for their poor sales habits or their feeling of ickiness by being creative in their pricing. So they've got a discount for that guy and a discount for her, and it's completely different. And every time somebody comes in, it's a completely different conversation where they're starting from scratch and rarely succeeding. You need to be systemized in your pricing and creative in your prescriptions. What that means is that you need to have three options, no more, and have the exact same price for each of those options each time. Then when somebody comes in, you can have a conversation like a human and be creative in your prescription. I recommend this. Here's the price. So you need to eliminate discounts, set the precedent instead of needing to make a different decision for every single client who comes in. Because I know you, you're generous like me. You want to give everybody the best deal you can. And so you start thinking like, how can I give this nurse the same 30% off that the fireman gets, right? So get rid of the discounts. Your price is the price. That's the system. Then follow a no sweat intro process the same way every time. You ask the same questions, but make different recommendations depending on the client's needs. You don't need to be creative in your sales process. Just creative in your prescription, depending on what the client needs. You also don't need to make up a sales pitch that's different for every single client. You need to be systemized about how you sell your program and then creative in what your recommendation is based on what the client actually needs. Be creative with their programming and their prescriptions. Be systemized about the way that you sell your system and your pricing. Let's talk about retention. You need to be systemized in your goal reviews and creative in your gifting and gratitude. So a lot of people, they want to approach retention with creativity, right? They want to turn it into an arts and crafts project. They want to make badges. They want to make a leaderboard up on their wall. They want to like celebrate the thousand visits club or whatever, but none of these things really matter. We choose to do them because they're fun. It feels like arts and crafts and, you know, it doesn't really take a lot of work, but it also doesn't work that well. You need to do the big things really, really well if you want to have good retention. And that includes goal reviews. It means asking for referrals. It means getting clients results. Those are big, hard things, but that's what keeps people around. And that's what retention is all about. And so you need a system where you're regularly meeting with your client, updating their progress and making a new prescription for them. Again, you're systemized in the goal reviews, you're creative in the prescription, and you also need a system to where you ask for referrals every single time. And you need a system where you're getting clients' results and you're measuring those results every single time. You need a system that allows you to have a one-on-one relationship with your client, whether they're in a group program or one-on-one or small group or semi-private or whatever, you need to have that one-on-one touch point. That's the system that you need to build with retention. What do you say at a goal review? Well, how are things going? Are you completely happy with your progress? And Are you tempted to speed this up? Or do you know somebody close to you who would benefit from our coaching? More specifically, would your husband benefit? Would your coworkers benefit? And if you've got a name, that's even better. That's how a system works. If your retention program is just like, huh, I'll make every workout fun and I'll high five people and I'll make the programming interesting. That is not a system. That's a wish. And you're just hoping that people stick around because of it. It's not enough. So be systemized in doing goal reviews, the things that actually matter and creative in your gifting and gratitude. Say welcome a different way to every single person in your class tomorrow. Give every single person a different thank you for being such a great client after the five-year mark. That's fine, right? Be creative about what you write in the holiday card. Be creative in how you set up the potluck, but do not ignore having a solid system that repeats for every client and that's what's going to retain them. Operations. This is kind of the easy example. It's also the one that nobody wants to talk about, but the reality about your operations is you should be able to set them and forget them. And so this is where systemization helps a lot. So you might ask yourself like, well, where can I really be creative in my systems? If I don't want people running classes differently every time, if I don't want different pricing every time, if I don't want a different cleaner every time, where's the opportunity to be creative in your systems? Well, Let's talk about where you need to be systemized in your operations, and then I'll tell you where you can be creative in the delivery. So first, you need to simplify your operations with clear instructions. Make the experience exactly the same for every client. You should not have clients getting a different experience at 7 a.m. because you've got this amazing coach than they would get at noon when you've got kind of a B-plus coach, okay? Then you need to audit your systems. You need to plan the client journey in advance. Make sure that everybody's getting that same experience. Then you can be creative in your messaging, your celebrations, and your gratitude. So simplify your operations with clear instructions, make the experience exactly the same for every client, but be creative in your messaging and your delivery. Be systemized in your planning. You should have a calendar three months out of which events you're going to do, what specialty programs you're going to be running, who's on schedule to run what class. But be creative within the class. Different coaches can use different cues. That's fine. Be creative in your programming between two clients. If you've got two personal training clients, be creative in their programming, depending on what will get them to their results. You want to be predictable in your operations. You don't want clients having different experiences on different days. You always want your class to start on time, but you can be creative in your delivery. Coaches can have different styles and personalities, and that's fine. Be predictable in your systems and creative in your delivery. Now let's talk about leadership, right? This is the hard one. You need to eliminate decision fatigue with a staff playbook. That means you need to systemize the way that your business actually runs. And you need to do this to a point where a 12-year-old could read it and understand it. And if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, your staff could walk into the gym, open up this playbook and say, okay, I know what I have to do. And here's how I process this client's payment. Here's how I book an Oswego intro. Here's how I run an Oswego intro. Everything. should not depend on you. Then you need to teach your staff these unbreakable rules. We do this exactly the same every time, okay? We start the class precisely on time and we fill the hour and we end exactly on time. We show up early. We message the client at X point. If we have to cancel, we find a replacement by this date, okay? Then you can exercise your creativity in other areas. So once you learn to delegate effectively, which means, you know, doing it exactly the same way every time and using task lists and checklists and SOPs, then you can be creative with a staff's career roadmap. So you can sit down with your staff, you can set up a career roadmap with them. You can be creative in how they reach their goals in their business, right? You can give them options. You can map different paths for different clients. Different staff, you can say like, hey, look, if you want to make more money, you want more hours, I've got this option. You can start a nutrition program. I've got this option. You can start a kid's program. You can take more personal training. I've got a couple of extra groups you could do on the weekend, right? So you want to systemize how they do things, but be creative in their career path. Let them make some options. Give them some agency. That means you need to tell your staff when to show up and what to wear so that they don't have to guess, right? Be creative in your team apparel, but inflexible in the requirement to wear it. So for example, the staff at my gym have about three or four different coach shirts. When they get up in the morning, they can choose which coach shirt they want to wear, but they have to wear a coach shirt when they're coaching at my gym. So that means you systemize the things that are not negotiable, the things that you want to be predictable, the things that you don't want to be getting mad at every single day, but then be creative in how they can implement that. So Here's my number one rule. This is my system. Every single day, do one thing to grow my business. That is a non-negotiable for me. So every single day at 5.30 AM, I am down here in this office. I'm sitting on a couch. I've got coffee in my hand and I'm doing one thing to grow my business before I do anything else. I'm on a 500 day streak as I do this podcast. It's But the thing that I do that day can change. So on Monday, for example, I'm going to record a podcast. On Tuesday, I'm going to work on distributing that podcast. On Wednesday, I'm going to check in with five clients. On Thursday, I'm going to check in with 10 leads. On Friday, I'm going to schedule my social media posts for next week. This is a great routine for me. You need to adopt this every day, do one thing to grow my business habit, but you don't necessarily do the same things in that hour that I do. A lot of people who do the golden hour challenge, follow the exact same pattern that I do because they aren't really sure what else they should do. But after you've done this for a month or two or three months, you can change what happens on Wednesdays, but you do not change that first hour of the day. You can get too creative. And if you get too creative in your business where you're trying to paint every graphic and you're designing every t-shirt and you're solving every problem without help, that's going to lead to bankruptcy or burnout. On the other hand, if you don't get to feel creative control and you're just kind of a cog in the wheel and you're doing what the franchisor tells you, then what's the point of owning the business? I get it. At 2Brain, what we do with your gym is we help you build solid frameworks. We set the non-negotiables in stone, but we don't force a franchise model on you. I'd love for you to buy all your equipment from Rogue, but you don't have to. We don't tell everybody to run big groups and we don't tell anybody not to run big groups. We teach you frameworks. You want to just run group classes? That's cool. Here's how to make it work with your profit and loss statement. And now we're going to build the framework that supports you having a successful gym with just big group classes. Want to do this all one-on-one? Okay. Here's how to survive one-on-one. We're going to make this work on your P&L. And, you know, let's build a framework. Let's set the things in stone and give you some creativity on how you deliver it. If you never want to run group classes, if you don't want to do semi-private, if you do want to move to semi-private, if you want to go to small group, we can help you build frameworks for all of those. The key is that mentorship does not mean pounding one model into your head. What we like to do is help you build your model and then let you be flexible on your method. You can do CrossFit for your method and you can do CrossFit in a big group. You can do CrossFit one-on-one. You can do CrossFit in a small group. You can do CrossFit as semi-private. Or you can do something completely different. You can do yoga in a big group. You can do yoga one-on-one, et cetera. You pick your method. That's part of the creativity and part of the beauty of owning the gym will help you build a model that supports you making a living with that method. So our mentors can give you specific tasks to do, not just advice or opinions, because they too have the freedom to work within a mentorship framework that we give them. They're not just good at running a CrossFit gym or good at running a sports-specific training gym or good at running a kid's gym. They're good at running a business. They're good at building models that will support your business. How do I know? Because they've all been through our program. We've seen their metrics. They're proven and we know that they can do it. They're not just selling random business advice to people like unfortunately a lot of business coaches are. You don't need a franchise to fix your chaotic gym. You don't need to burn it down. You don't need to start from scratch. You just need a framework. And if you're solid where you need to be and creative where you can be, then you're going to have a gym that is stable and profitable and fun to run. And you'll free yourself from making every decision all over from scratch every single day. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. Look, I know it's going to keep your gym going for 30 years. It has to be profitable. It has to be stable. It can't just be like working with a schizophrenic business, but it also has to be fun. And the day that you don't see yourself having fun in the future, you don't see yourself making money in the future, is probably the day you start thinking seriously about closing. I don't want that to happen to you. Book a call with my team and let's talk about freedom within a framework.