Run a Profitable Gym
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Run a Profitable Gym
Profitable With 15 to 20 Members: The Small Group Advantage
Can a gym be profitable with just 15 to 20 members? The answer is yes—and Oskar Johed is proving it.
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host Mike Warkentin sits down with Oskar, co-owner of two thriving CrossFit facilities in Sweden, to talk about why he chose a different path for his third gym: a small-group training model.
Oskar breaks down the advantages of small-group training, from lower overhead and reduced staff burnout to higher client retention and stronger profitability.
In a small-group model, gyms with limited square footage can break even with just a handful of high-value members—and scale up to major profitability with 80 to 100 clients.
Oskar also explains why individualized attention in small-group settings produces better results and how he uses affinity marketing and community partnerships to grow without relying solely on ads.
Listen and find out how to blend the best of group and personal training to build a sustainable, profitable gym.
Links
The Prescriptive Model
Semi-Private Launch Playbook
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
2:46 - The burnout problem
7:52 - Pricing small-group training
14:20 - Using the Prescriptive Model
18:40 - Advantages of small group
27:32 - Oskar’s marketing strategy
One top gym owner opened a successful big group gym and then replicated it. Now he's got two similar world-class facilities. So why open a third gym with a different model? Together with Carl Stolberg, Oscar Johann owns CrossFit Medicine CrossFit Cycla in Sweden, and he's just opened Aspire Personal Training, where he is right now. It's a small group training facility, very different from his other two. So why did he do it and will he be rewarded? You're gonna get the answers today and run a profitable gym. I'm your host, Mike Workin, and please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Oscar, welcome in your new gym. This looks great. Thank you, sir. Are you uh are you ready to roll over there? It looks like a fantastic facility.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like yeah, we we've we we're kind of feel at home and uh we've been open a few months now and super excited to bring some fitness to the people that live around uh this gym.
SPEAKER_01:So it's long enough that you've got a few uh handstand push-up uh kick-up holes in the wall and some chalk on the floor and all that stuff, or not quite?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we might have a few people that do box push-ups, so uh and a few people in a plank position, but maybe we can get a handstand push-ups in the future.
SPEAKER_01:We're gonna talk about that because that's a little different than your CrossFit gyms. You're doing something different here. So let's get right into it. What's the short answer here? What do you hope to accomplish in this third gym that has a very different model?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's the goal is the same, is to you know fundamentally improve the health and quality of our members uh and their and their families. And that's been our goal for since 2014 when we opened MEDIS. And um, you know, Medis and Siclar are thriving. We are deeply ingrained in the CrossFit community, like large group, even though our gyms are by North American standards maybe smaller. We run no more than 12 people per class because that's like all we can fit. But you know, we can't find real estate. We want to help more people, we want to create opportunities for staff to maybe run a gym or or have more trainers to do this amazing job uh full-time. But we've been looking for for years for for that type of space that is you know, three, four, five, six thousand square feet gyms, and we can't find them here in Stockholm. So we have to go a different route and uh like smaller spaces. This one is you know, workout space might be you know 80 square meters, like less than thousand square feet, I think it comes out to something like that. And uh so we can't let the the um the real estate market dictate our our um hopes and dreams of maybe fitter. So we have to pivot a tiny bit, like it's very different in some ways than the exact same thing in in other ways. So if we can make this work, which we think we can do, we want to open up uh far more gyms because we still think that we can help uh people fundamentally improve their health and quality of life.
SPEAKER_01:So the mission remains exactly the same. You're just gonna do that same thing in a different space, and we're gonna talk about exactly what you're doing there. So when we say small group, which is what you're doing over there, what are we talking about? How is this different from what you're doing at the other two gyms?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So at CrossFit Medicine Cyclaw, we run more of a a uh traditional, like as I said, max 12 people, maybe 14 if the if the work permits, but generally like 12 on one is what we run, like group classes. Yep, so big group model, sure. Sure. And what might be slightly different than than uh some just but I think more and more commonly now is we do a lot of personal training, and uh it's not necessarily because something we we uh like aspired to uh to do, it just happened naturally. People asked us for it, and we started providing those services to members. And uh that caught on. Uh, I think you know, we started just doing you know, no sort intros, and we asked that that question of like, hey, would you like to start one-on-one in a group? And lo and behold, some people said, you know, we would like to start one-on-one. Uh, even though Carl and I said that's that's ridiculous. Why would I it'll never happen? No, it's never gonna happen. And then we started doing goal reviews and asked people if they want to progress faster, and some people said sure. Yes. And um, so it just happened naturally, and then at some point, May of um uh May of 2023, we delivered 919 one-on-one 30-minute sessions. Yes, it was and it was it was amazing financially, and it was it was great. Our members got great results, but we were starting to see that we burned out staff, like it wasn't because they were doing back to back to back to back to back 30-minute sessions, and it was financially rewarding, but we know we felt that we have to get out of this, this is not gonna work. We're gonna burn out people. So there were so many people in Tubrain that were doing far more semi-private. So we started bundling people together, and uh we're doing that. So cycle and medis are like a large group, or that might be smaller for some, but like mass 12 people, a traditional like CrossFit model, and then a lot of personal training, but we do it in in groups of between three and six, but there they're doing individualized programming.
SPEAKER_01:So we'll call that the semi-private model where they've got their own programs where one coach is serving several PT clients at once in the same room with high skill.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. And that's and that's something we are are have been become really proficient at. Well, here it's at a small group facility. Yeah, they're people that come in that we had a class that just or a session just in the 20 minutes ago, they're doing the same stuff, but they're far less people in the room, which means that we can personalize or or pay more attention, obviously, because if it's only maximum six people versus 12 or 14, then uh, you know, by just math, you can serve them, you know, twice as much.
SPEAKER_01:So the key distinction here is you've got about six people in a group at Aspire, but they're all doing a variation of the same workout with obviously like your coaches are experts and they're gonna tailor this workout to each person specifically, and they'll do it more with more efficiency than they can in a group of, say, 12 or more, but they're doing essentially the workout of the day. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and so far since we're relatively new, like we haven't had, I think I had a few classes where or sessions where people have that's been six people, but currently I think three to four or five people is is where we currently are, and it's uh so it's a it's a very different experience, and because you don't necessarily get that a raw-rah type thing, do you get from a a larger class? But at the same time, you don't get as as uh worn out from that stuff. So there's stuff like in I have the benefit of doing both, which is awesome, and all the coaches that have been here they like the the uh combination of both. But it's it's it's a some parts is very different, but also it's the exact same thing we're doing thrusters and burpees and and pull-ups. But here the demographic is at this location, it's also we have a you know, our cyclone medics are you know 45 plus individuals, but here's probably 50 and far further closer to you know the sick spectrum, not necessarily in terms of like obesity and so on, but just in in um physical performance or health markers in terms of like uh being able to move large loads along the system quickly and and and that stuff. So um the you know, we have an you know 84-year-old lady, she's crushing it, she's here, and so I think the youngest member here is is you know closer to 50 to 40.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Okay, so you're solving a problem that pops up. Personal training is a great thing in terms of revenue and results for the clients, but it's hard to deliver at a huge scale because if you do eight personal training sessions or a staff member does eight personal training sessions, that'll swallow your soul. That becomes very difficult to give you a really, really high level of service and to maintain that over a month. Like it's very difficult. So semi-private and small group are two great ways to start scaling up, delivering excellent service, but serving more people at the same time. Talk to me about how how do the rates for this compare for your small group, how does that compare to your semi-private and your group classes?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so at Secret Medis, our are like three times a week is one seventy-five US dollars, which I'd say probably like 40, 50 percent more than the average. Okay. And personal training, so we we can a one in one 30-minute session is the same as a semi-private session of 50 minutes. So we ask them, hey, would you like to do essentially 50 minutes or 30 minutes of fitness for 70 bucks? And people almost everyone goes, well, 50, of course. So while we charge, as I said, like 175 for three times a week, 185 for four and a half, whatever it comes out to, and and essentially 70 US dollars for for every semi-private session. That's at Sikla and Metis. And here it's like$35 per session. So most people here are doing like twice a week, so it's like 70 bucks a week. Okay, and so it comes out to somewhere like closer to 300. So if if you let's say you're doing two and a half times a week, if that would be possible, it comes out to like$300 a month, US dollars. And where it also becomes interesting, like it's obviously we we had no other choice. This is the way we have to operate if if we want to you know train more people, but this space here, you know, we I think we pay like 3,000 here, which means if we have 10 members, essentially they we cover like it obviously doesn't cost cover everything, but it covers rent at least for that. If you look at medicine sick, I think specifically at Medicine, I think we pay 112k a month or so. And if you have you know 170 member 100 175 members, or sorry, 175 US dollars per member, you need 80-90 members or so. So from a from a um you know risk perspective, and we bought this gym, it was it was it was a like kind of like an open gym type fitness studio. So the risk was kind of low and it was completely kitted out with amazing eleco equipment. So we thought, hey, the risk is relatively low, we can just offload the equipment if needed, but you know, we think that we we can still provide an amazing service and help people uh with their health. So this is where we're here, and and so far I think the the uh the route here we could have gone like the semi-private route, but you know at the same time, we kind of like you it's your play on words, or what is it like because we are our coaches are really good, even though they're doing the same workout of the day per se, they're still gonna like the 84-year-old lady is gonna have some modifications that are different than the 47-year-old dude that is ex-triathlete. So uh, but it it it's from a from a selling perspective, it it's easier. We sell one product essentially. We do have do offer one-on-one personal training as well. But what a one-on-one 50-minute session is$130, while a session with no more than five other people is$35. So uh we try hard not to sell personal training. One-on-one.
SPEAKER_01:You know, Oscar, you sound a hell of a lot like a CEO and a business owner rather than a guy. I mean, we haven't debated the hip crease below the knee, you know, even once yet. We're talking like business models. That's weird. You know, back in 2013, we wouldn't have done that. We would have just bought the biggest space we could find, tried to fill it, probably lost money for five or seven years, got Chris Cooper to fix it, and then got our acts together. And you've done the other thing where now you've got your act, you have the other two gyms, you're just picking a business model, you've got the pricing, you've got the whole structure, you've figured out I need this many people to break even on this space. I've got the equipment as an act, extra resource, and all of a sudden you're operating like a business owner CEO, as opposed to someone who's just writing trading programs and cleaning up chalk. So this is a cool evolution because that wasn't the case back in the day. So let me ask you this challenges and advantages in a small group gym. What are you seeing in the early stages of Aspire that's different from your other spaces?
SPEAKER_02:I think one of the challenges is probably that there aren't too many other gyms doing this. So there are a few personal training, like one-on-one traditional personal training studios, where are it's more of a status thing to be a member there, so it's more of the traditional like health club type thing. Yeah, like one-on-one, and then there's some large group facilities as well. And and uh to our knowledge, there are very few that are doing the same thing as us. So you got to carve out a market for it here, yes, but also like we're laying the tracks as we kind of go, so it's kind of hard to explain to someone like you can get personal training for 130 bucks, you can get personal training essentially for 35 bucks, and they're like, Well, how can you give the same? We we can't, but it's very similar. So that is a I think it's more of like probably more of a a problem or or issue in our heads, but that's something we're trying to explain. Like, we can't just point to say we're doing what they're doing just but better. So we have to like are you group? Oh, kind of, are you personal training? Well, kinda, and and we like when we look at it, it's kind of like hey, you know, there's generally three facets of fitness. There's a one-to-one, which is awesome. It's it's there's very, you know, when you talk to clients, very expensive, it's like it's everything is tailored to you. Then there's traditional 30, 40, 50 people in a room where it's all of rah-rah, it's low price, and it's you know, it's not necessarily anything else than the instructions on how to turn the knob on your bike. And and we're there in the middle, we can get like both, and then people kind of understand what we are doing. So I think that has been maybe a challenge, maybe even big of a challenge in our brain. Like when people come in here, they don't ask if we're doing personal training or if we're doing group or is it CrossFit or like what is the thing? They come in here and they see that we you know take care of them and we meet them where they are, and and we make sure that they squat below parallel if they can squat below parallel and we do all those things. And but it's it's I think we probably made it a bigger uh change or thing that it actually is. Like we we still have to get people to come talk to us and understand that we can help them. And once they're here, they you know it's it's the same thing. They get kind of the community type feel when you work out with other people. But at the end of the day, we are we are you know trying to change the lives of people like one-on-one, one at a time. And I think that's that's where we are uh heading.
SPEAKER_01:So an easy way that you're solving this is with a prescriptive model when someone comes in, they tell you their fitness problem or their goals, and you figure out the solution or the path to those goals and tell them, here it is, you're gonna meet me, you know, two and a half times a week, as you said, in a group of you know, five other people who have similar goals, but I'm gonna tell the work out to you and your fitness history and training age and dings and dents, and away we go. And they're like, cool. Because what you've shown them is the solution to their problems and the path to their goals, and you didn't have to go through all the other stuff of like, well, it's it's this person's the explaining the whole thing. You can just tell them this is the solution, and they're like, okay, cool. Like when a contractor comes to me and wants to build something for me, I don't ask him about like the physics of the whole thing. He just does I can put that there and we're good. I'm like, yes, done, problem solved. Uh are you also producing any content or any educational stuff to solve this problem, or are you just doing it right through the prescriptive model and the no-sweat intro?
SPEAKER_02:So right now we have been so we we kind of like we got Keith to the newcastle in in in the spring, and then we essentially like launched it, so to say, right before summer. So then summer came and now we like started to pick it up. So we haven't really done a lot. We're probably gonna do far more. And once again, like I don't necessarily think we have to explain what we're doing. Like CrossFit Medicine Sekula, sure, they're doing their CrossFit gyms. We had this discussion with we had a sales meeting today, and and we do some role-playing and you know, looking at the sales calls from last week and see what challenges we had. And and uh we had this, you know, come up on a call. Like, I don't remember the last time I had to talk about what movements we're doing. Like, rarely do we get in a conversation of like what type of fitness do you do, or like what equipment do you have? Like that's that's years ago. So people come because we somehow have a sure, they probably Google us and see you know stuff what we're doing, but even if on Instagram and and and Facebook, we don't necessarily see a lot of working out type stuff. It's more like, hey, you have this problem, we can maybe help you with this thing if you just come come talk to us. So we are probably gonna ramp up the the um our our messaging, but not necessarily talking about how we are running you know personal training, but in a group, but it's not large group, but it's small group, because at the end of the day, for most people that's not relevant, like they have a problem, and uh our job is to figure out if we can help them and and the benefit here, which is also might be a constraint, but like because we know that we are only running class up to six people or sessions, like we have somewhere in the back, there's like three bikes and three rovers, that's all we need, and there's a lot of stuff we don't need. And and if someone comes in with, hey, I want to have an open gym or whatever, we just say no, we'll essentially say we think we can solve your problem, and if we can do it, we can do it twice a week, three times a week, or maybe even four times a week. So, how quickly do you want to have your your your fitness you know needs met? So it makes it easier for us. We've you know, we've obviously turned away some business because some people want different stuff, but you know, eventually I think this is gonna make it easier for maybe open up new locations. We have one thing, it's like this is this is the burger we offer, and it you know, is we're gonna make a darn good burger, but if you want a pizza or sushi, we're not the place for you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know what's fascinating because as you know, like we we've tried to solve the the answer. What is CrossFit for like over a decade now trying to explain that whole thing? And like it's a hard thing to to explain to to communicate with the broader market on that, but what you're doing, as I said, with that prescriptive model is like you're not even you don't have to define your method, you're just taking what the client needs and saying, here's how you do it and here's the speed at which you can do it. Do you want to sign up? And they're like, yeah, three times a week. Let's go. And you're like, good, done. And then they just show up and you tell them what to do. They don't have to know what they're doing, they just know that they're working toward their goals. And so it's really a fascinating way around the method to just solve problems for clients. And I think that's such a fascinating thing that you're doing. You mentioned a couple of advantages, and I I'll just reiterate a few of them. You can tax some more on. Uh, you're in a very small facility in the sense that like you don't have a massive overhead, you're not like trying to fill 17,000 square feet or something like that. In a small space, you got limited equipment where you don't have to buy 70 barbells or 16, you got probably five or six or whatever it is, and they're beautiful Lego bars. That that takes a lot of pressure off where you don't have to get a million clients with that. I imagine also because you're working very closely with clients, I imagine the retention and the relationships are gonna be in really good shape. What other advantages do you see in the small group model?
SPEAKER_02:I I think, as I said, I think if you if you do large group predominantly, I think it's gonna be one is very hard to do build a career doing a large group purely. I think it is the financial for most gyms doesn't add up. And I think, at least myself, you know, you burn out. I like, I like, you know, if I had to choose one of them, I I prefer the larger group by group on a you know in a you know sports teams environment. I like the banter that goes on in larger you know settings. But from a sustainability perspective, if you want to the longevity of a coach in a large group is is limited compared to this. So if you can balance out some of that stuff, and we have that at Messi Club, but even here, like because it's a smaller space, when we have six people, like you know, it it it it surely if if you look across, you know, the room is not that big, but it's six people working relatively close to each other, you know, it's it's not too different than a like you know, our version of a great CrossFit class. So it's got a vibe for sure, right? It it for sure does. And so coming back to the longevity of it, it's I think it's gonna be it's easier to stay in the business, I believe, uh if with this model for for if you know for the culture. So I think that would be a benefit. And then two points, well, like especially where we're located, like we people I think leg is gonna be good. You know, this is a suburb here, and and uh people don't leave here, so they live here. And sure, it's slightly slower than our around medicine cyclot, they're slightly more central, but I think leg is gonna be very high here because unless we screw up completely, people are gonna stick around because we solve their problem. Like these are yeah, yeah, this is obviously a very, very affluent area we're in, and we couldn't open this type of facility like anywhere, you know. That that would be it would be uh ludicrous for me to say something like that. However, they also have higher expectations and they know the standard of good, regardless, like in other you know, aspects of life. So we really have to deliver top-knop service, but when we can show them that we can take care of fitness in a very simple way for them, and twice a week might be in all they can do, but they're still gonna, in many cases, improve their fitness and eventually only like maintain, but at a higher level, you know, they're gonna be happy. They are super happy that we have outsourced that responsibility to us. So I think leg is gonna be slightly slower in terms of growth, but also leg is gonna be be higher. And as I said, it's it is a slightly different vibe. It is slightly slower, which means that you don't really have to be a clown the entire, you know, from 6 a.m. in the morning until you know 7 p.m. at night.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And we know from data that PT and the closer relationships produce better length of engagement and retention than the big groups, and that's just by default. So you're doing a version of that where your leg is definitely going to be better. And then you pointed out an interesting thing, and I'll tell you listeners, uh, I think our state of the industry data uh that's gonna come out in uh late November, and rates for coaching big group classes are not going up, right? So Oscar was talking about that as a staff member. You know, can you coach eight classes a day for 25 bucks an hour? That's tough to do, and the financial reward isn't spectacular. So this is a solution to a problem there because, like I said, those rates aren't going up fast enough to make it like I can make a great living coaching eight hours a day. And again, let's be real. Can you coach eight hours a day and still deliver great service? I couldn't. Oscar, I don't think you could. You're a better coach than I am, but it's still very, very difficult to do it. I don't think a lot of listeners could do it. So let's let's move on to metrics here. And I know you're in the early stages here. How does is how is the new facility performing and compared to the others? And again, if you don't have all of that, that's okay. But just give me a snapshot based on what you do see already.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so at this, like we obviously don't, because he only runs six-person uh sessions. No, it's if if everybody wants to come in the morning, eventually we're gonna hit like a ceiling. But we we believe that we can probably cap out that hundred. I think if people are spread out relatively evenly across like mornings, middays, and afternoons, I think 100 people is is gonna be optimal. I think we might 80 might be a slightly more realistic number in terms of people tend to be one and more like middays are relatively slower because it's a suburban people are in the city um working. Uh so that's what we're like working towards. Uh like 80 is probably like a good number. And you know, as I said, if we if we break even, if you just look at breaking even from a a um facility perspective, let's say all in, exclude you know, the variable cost of of running the sessions. Yeah, I think okay, let's say 5,000. It's that would cover a lot of marketing and some giveaways, because obviously these clients are slightly, they expect a few things, but 5k would cover everything except the variable cost of running sessions.
SPEAKER_01:That's like 15 to 20 members, right? Something like that? Right.
SPEAKER_02:And if we can go to 80, maybe 100, you know, it's a hockey stick, hockey stick pieces, right? But it's gonna be like a hockey stick type thing. And obviously we can then we can then here pay our coaches far more here because we will don't not have the same ability. They can still run personal training one-in-one sessions, but we've priced it in a way that we don't want that, which means that they you would technically say they run like a class or session, but instead of paying them the 25 bucks, you say we could eventually pay them 50-60. So it would be like probably even more, depending on you know what it we're gumps up to. So you know, we can and so that's gonna be a pretty decent opportunity for someone. So that's that's the metrics from you know, where you're off from metrics. So right now, I think we have let's say 25-ish individuals that are are paying us regularly, which essentially is that we can cover that with three classes a day. So and you're breaking even already, right? So and I was here today, I was working, and I was coaching the morning class and then or the session and then lunch in here. So now, so I was doing all my my you know working on the business type stuff, and then I just you know slid my computer to the side and then you know, um, coach the session and then did a thing. So if I would just look at like, you know, it could essentially be four, you need to put a person on the floor four hours a day. So that costs you don't need someone here the entire day because we don't have walk-ins, like everything is by appointment, which means that technically, you know, I can come here as a person that spends not too many hours on the floor these days, but I can still come here like one once a once a week. I can take Mondays and I coach three sessions, cars can take Tuesdays, our other GM from two locations can come. So we can cover you know the the needs of the sessions relatively well. And as I said, we don't have any walking, so we don't have to worry about that. All appointments are done. We do a lot of sales over phone. So the the the financials could be extremely beneficial if we can get those numbers that we're aiming to. And that's obviously one thing, but you know, and it's great if we can we can allocate more money to staff because our our overhead is lower, that's gonna be amazing, which means that we can keep them longer in this industry and we can we can pay them really, really well, which is amazing. But also, we like we're making an impact here on these people's lives. Like Betty's 84 years old, I think, and and like she's deadlifted and doing burpees and other stuff. So like there's extremely rewarding to um to have the opportunity to help more people. So, yes, we do look at the financials, they look rewarding. We can also provide opportunity for staff, uh, which is great. But another metric that is really important to us is actually like you know, for every tick we can ever every member, every individual that signs up, is uh where we can alleviate the the um some pressure on the of the healthcare system because it's you know, even though we're maybe not as bad as in in Canada and for sure not as bad as US yet, but we're catching up pretty quickly. So if we can be like a lifeboat in the tsunami of chronic disease and and um uh you know really unfit states, then then I think we can we can uh at least make a dent into that that uh negated statistic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's a key point. Like you, like you said, for you to help more people, you couldn't really find the spaces that were, there wasn't a lot of spaces available, so you made a space and now you're gonna make it work and you're gonna help people in that space and you're gonna do a great job of it. Uh you've got a small space, a sustainable business model. You've got not a lot of pressure on staffing, you break even as a low number. You've got the possibility for a great financial reward, you've got a high value product, so higher ARM, you've got great length of engagement because you're a great coach and you're working very closely with people. This all sounds like a great business model. I'll ask you this. You hinted at it. Where are you gonna find the 80 people that you might need? What are you doing to market?
SPEAKER_02:So we've always relied heavily on on Facebook advertising. And so for me, a sickland medicine is still working uh extremely well. Uh, here it's it's been uh slightly different. Like we don't like the messaging does have to be different because at Sikl and Medis, we are not offering, we we're not like marketing CrossFit, we're just asking if we can help them. But it's it's it's a slightly different in this suburb than there is in in the in uh there. So we tried some Facebook ads and they're they're not performing poorly, but here it's uh probably gonna be far more affinity type marketing stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Right, some referrals and asking, hey, can you bring a partner in for a free workout? That kind of thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think so. What we're gonna do is we are we're talking to the local tennis club and see if we can invite them in. And there's a so we're like the golf club. And uh so we can we can we you know we can ask for one-on-one type stuff, but that you know, technically we only need every current client of ours to get four flyings and then we're more than full. But right, you know, you know, I've been in the business you know for 11 years. I've still have members that have been with us for 11 years that haven't brought a single friend in, it's not because they have asked, it's because their friends for some reason haven't you know felt the need or or whatever to come in. So if we can just like talk to the local tennis club that has you know six or seven hundred members and and they can somehow finally we're gonna how we can help them. Like if it's only offering them a you know six-week course of figuring out how to warm up for your for your tennis, that's gonna be great. But I I think a lot of these people can like drop over. So instead of doing the one-on-the-one, we're gonna try we we still do that, we ask our current clients if for friends and families, but we're gonna see if we can like talk to someone that has more people behind them. And we haven't tried that in the past. And if that works, we tried some of companies uh for circular medics because they're more central, which means that we get some companies that work out and and we can talk to the HR department, but there are no very few businesses here. So our goal is like to find like Lions Club or Rotary Club or the Tennis Club or the Golf Club or congregations of people, so we can see if we can help these people.
SPEAKER_01:Oscar just laid out his exact marketing plan. He's gonna do a little bit of advertising, but he's gonna work harder to connect with current clients and find the people connected to them, affinity marketing, and get those people in there. And the beauty of it all is that, as he said, he doesn't need to find 350 people, which is really hard, and retain them. He needs to find about 80, and he's already got 15 or 20, and they probably have friends and spouses. And so forth. So, like you can see how this snowball goes pretty quickly at low cost. And, listeners, if you are not running a referral program or you know exactly how to ask your clients for referrals, you need to start doing that right now. The referral funnel is one of the most valuable things a gym owner can do, and it comes at zero cost except for your time. And all you have to do is ask your clients as part of the prescriptive model. I'll put a link in the show notes to the prescriptive model. It'll lead you through that and tell you when and how you should ask clients for referrals. Oscar, I won't keep you much longer because I know you got to do some muscle-ups on the rings back there. Uh I'll ask you this one expert advice, because you are a two-brain mentor, a long-term one. What is your expert advice for someone who's thinking about adding small group training or opening a small group gym? What would you tell them? What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_02:I try to stay away from absolutes because it's easy to say, like it's, it's, it's obviously it depends. Yeah. But there, like, if I saw from our experience and from the clients I worked with, and like it's it's an obvious value add because we're not doing this for us. We're doing it because there is a need for in the market, and in this specific case, this is one of the only options we have, and it's we still serve clients really well. So I think it makes really it makes good, great financial, you know, sense, uh, which is awesome. And if you look at from our medicine cycla, you know, we didn't introduce personal training because we wanted it, it was something our clients asked for, and it's really helping them and you know, it helping our staff a lot. Like I think, as I said right before we got on here, last week at Cicland Medis, our five personal trainers delivered semi-private worth 12,000 US dollars, right? And it is a PR week. So and and it's once again, they just ask if people want some extra help, and they're doing a phenomenal job, in addition to running group classes. So I I think that it's you need really strong reasons for not offering this, it's my opinion. There might be some people that have strong reasons, but instead of saying like, why should you, it's probably like the question should probably be like why not? Because it makes sense for so many on so many levels, and so like for us, it's a it's a no-brainer now. It's it's a it's for the longevity of our clients and our staff, and having a business model that is slightly more anti-fragile. Now we only run CrossFit group classes at the other gyms. Like we we've always been tempted to run the hierarchies, like I have nothing against those things, or gymnastics programs, or weightlifting one, our spaces doesn't necessarily uh we don't have the capacity. And we've decided from the start that hey, well, let's try to do one thing really well. So I'm envious of the people who have the sports performance and they're doing hierarchies and they're doing gymnastics and weightlifting, all this stuff, but the simplicity in the model for Bolson 6 line medicine, here it's even simpler. So offering or opening a small group studio like this makes a lot of sense because you you know there's far lower risk than the large group model stuff. And if you're not doing summer private or small group in your current facility, if that's a like a large group type fitness uh space, it absolutely makes sense. And um like we started with zero clients in personal training, like everyone else, and then get one and then zero, and then four, and two, and six, and nine, and you know, 20 May 2023, and 919 sessions. Like so it it like we didn't go from zero to hundred uh or nine hundred and nineteen, and the same thing here. We like it's it's a gradual approach, but we meet people where they are, figure out what's best for them, ask them, and uh that's how I think our our business has become stable and uh even better than stable. So that's a long-winded answer to say the question probably like why not? And if someone doesn't want it because they're against their way of their fitness should be done, or you know, they don't want to spread themselves too thin, or whatever the reason might be, that's perfectly fine. But if you don't have a really strong reason, I I think the numbers, if no other thing, talks really well in your favor, as well as disregard the fact that people pay a higher price for it, which they are gonna see. I'm I'd be very surprised if people don't see greater results and a hedge against sickness if they do more personal training or or individualized or small group personal training.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna tell you, listeners, my advice is to do what Oscar did and put together a plan. If you're thinking about doing this, put together a plan and don't just like write it on a napkin and throw some numbers in the air. Sit down and make an actual spreadsheet and figure out what is break-even. How am I gonna get there? How am I gonna sell this thing? Where am I gonna put it? Or how am I gonna add it? Who's gonna staff it? Answer all those questions and get the numbers down. And if they make sense, run ahead with it. If they don't make sense, do not do it. And I'll give you the easy button. The easy button is to talk to a mentor like Oscar who can tell you exactly what to do when so you don't make any mistakes. Had I had that plan in 2011, things would have gone very different for me. It can go very different for you. So before you start changing everything, I would encourage you to book a call via the link in the show notes. Talk to a mentor who's done what you want to do and can tell you where the pitfalls are, where the benefits are, how to make it happen faster, how to reach profitability very quickly, and so forth and whatnot. That link is in the show notes. You can talk to someone who will help you do this. Oscar, thanks so much for sharing everything, including your detailed plan on uh small group training. I wish you the best in that new facility. It looks fantastic. Thanks, Mike. Stand up for a second, let us see the whole thing. Look at that. Ooh, look at the kettlebells and everything. That's a beauty. There you go. And it's only gonna take about oh, I like that. And you got the Aleco bars in the background. Wow. So you're gonna get to profitability with about 15, 20 people, large profitability with 80. Gonna help change a lot of people, change their lives, get rid of some chronic disease, and make a difference in Sweden. Thanks, Oscar.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:That was Oscar Joy. This is Run a Profitable Gym. Thanks for watching and listening. Please hit subscribe wherever you are for more shows just like this. And now here's Two Brain Founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, it's TwoBrain 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.
