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
Pop-Up Session Generates $720 and 6 Leads in 1 Hour!
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host Mike Warkentin talks with gym owner and Two-Brain mentor Tim Caputo about a simple idea that brought in $720 in one hour—and generated six new leads.
It all started with a client suggestion that evolved into a “moms and kids” pop-up class. The event sold out quickly, generated profit right away and opened the door to a steady stream of high-quality referrals.
Tim explains the strategy behind his pricing and promotion, how he used the class to build relationships and why this type of event works even in slower seasons.
He also shares how he designed the workout to be fun and accessible while creating an experience that kept participants talking long after it ended.
Tune in to hear how a single pop-up session can generate immediate income and new leads.
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
1:07 - Pop-up class logistics
4:20 - Pricing & marketing the class
8:11 - Post-event lead generation
10:22 - Planning the pop-up class
14:49 - Changes for his next pop-up
Jim Oder ran a pop-up class and grossed$720 in an hour. Even better, he got six new leads, one of whom was very interested in setting something up for her daughter's lacrosse team. Tim Capu of One Life Fitness and Nutrition is going to tell you exactly how he did it so you can run a pop-up class too. Tim is also, by the way, a two-brain business mentor. I'm Mike Workington. This is Runner Profitable Gym. Please hit subscribe wherever you're watching a like or watching or listening, and hammer a like on this video if you don't mind. Tim, welcome. Are you ready to talk pop-up classes? Yeah, let's go. So I'm going to run through these stats one more time because these blew my mind when you told me about them. One pop-up class for moms and kids, 16 people at$45 each,$720 gross,$300 to the coach, plus six in the leads column, including one hot lead who was interested in something much bigger. Have I got all that right? You got it all right. So sounds like a massive win. So let's dig in. Like, was this your home run of marketing or what?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And just so everyone knows, I had an amazing client that made this so easy for me. So, you know, I want to make sure that everybody knows that.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, let's start right at the beginning. So you hinted at it. Where did this idea come from? Have you ever done pop-up classes before? Like I've heard of this, and I remember back in the day, CrossFit, you used to just like put a sign up and then you just do a workout with a kettlebell in the park and all of a sudden you had a gym. But how did you come up with this?
SPEAKER_02:So actually, the the client approached me and she said, Hey, can we do a class on a day that my daughter and her friends have off? Side note, her daughter uh was a personal training client. She just had to stop because of uh sports. So she's looking for ways to get her daughter back into the gym. And so this was an easy way for her, you know, day off, no sports, no school. I want to get a workout in as well as mom, right? And um, something for my kids to do. So I told her, like, yeah, we could pretty much do anything if it makes sense, and that's how it started.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so that was so someone greased the rails for you and gave you a great idea, and then you ran you ran with it and it scored. So let's let's talk logistics. Tell me about like where did where did you do this? How did you set it up? Equipment gear, the whole thing. Give me the details and I'll ask a few questions, jump in if I if I feel the need here.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. Yeah, so I mean, she she just told told me what she was looking at, and of course, it was a day off. So we picked a time uh we did 11 a.m. We picked a time that was like mid-morning, we don't have any classes. Typically, we we do have some personal training going on that at that time, but not anything where the gym was going to be crowded. So it was at our gym. Obviously, we have equipment, and so we just needed to get people signed up. We needed to have a coach coach it, and then the rest is is really easy, right? Coming up the workouts, stuff like that. Everyone who is listening to this has created workouts, is an expert in programming, and that's the easy part.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so you did this at your gym, but could you think you could pull it off? What if she said, hey, could we do this at my office or something? Could you pull it off there? Do you think?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. We didn't do a workout that was super complex. Uh so again, you just you know you could do it outside, you could do it at an athletic field, in a school, you know, uh a work office as well. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so the logistics of it, you know, you could use your space or you could go somewhere and do something like that. Uh, I would recommend, you know, if you go somewhere, use like limited equipment, make it fun and easy. Like I used to drive around with like 18 kettlebells in the trunk of my Honda Civic, and when I turned a tight corner, it was pretty rough. So there's still scars to show that. You don't necessarily need to do that. You can get away with a lot of stuff, especially if it's a beginner group, because the goal here is fun. You're not trying to kick their butts and make them vomit like we did in 2009. Uh, do you remember the workout you did by chance? Or even uh yeah, what was it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so the the main workout that we did was a 15-minute amrap, 15 sit-ups, 12 ring rows, nine burpees, and then six plated ground to overhead. That was more for the adults. The kids did uh 20 mountain climbers.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so the very accessible amrap, or like if you're tired, you can sit around and breathe for a little bit, high-five your friends. Like, there's nothing here that's gonna kick people's butts. You also don't have to do a lot of teaching. You know, burpee is like you get down, you get up. There's not a lot of technique to that. Pretty simple, and that's good advice for any time that you're getting people in a gym to try something. Uh, talk to me a little bit about how you set up like pricing and all that other stuff. So you got 16 people at 45 and uh moms and kids. How did all that go?
SPEAKER_02:So we came up with a price, and you know, that was the easy part, right? I said$40. She said, I think I was thinking$50. I said, that's amazing. Nobody ever tells me more. Then ever I want to charge, let's do$45. Okay. Uh, we came up with a time, and then I still use Zen Planner, so I created an event in Zen Planner that people could just sign up for, pay, and and that's it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, and was this do I have this right? You had 16, was it 16 moms plus 16 kids, or was it 16? Like, how did that was it 16 total?
SPEAKER_02:16 total, and that's uh 16 or 17 total, and that's how we got to$720 in revenue.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So did you charged 45 for the parent and 45 for the kid? Yep. Okay, so there you go. So that's perfect. Uh and do did this client, did she handle some of like getting this link in front of people, or how did she how did that link get to people to sign up?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, again, she made it really, really easy. This is like the ultimate seed client that has given us, you know, about six referrals since starting in March, and they're incredible. So she definitely she definitely helped with that. But I gave her the link, and then just like TwoBrain recommends and I do in my gym, you know, we we sent it to our email list, we texted our whole entire list, we posted to social media and our stories, we posted to uh local Facebook groups. And so if if people out there are not posting marketing things and events in the local groups that they have, that's a huge opportunity. Like in your town's group. We announced it in our classes, we posted it on our whiteboard in the gym. And so, you know, that's kind of the playbook essentially for rolling out an event, a class, you know, bring a friend day, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00:So you carpet bombed everything, all your channels, which is exactly what you want to do because you can't just post this link and hope people find it. And you used your your seed client to get this stuff in front of people. Do you have an idea of how many people came through her and how many people came from your other channels? No problem.
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah. Yeah. Yep, for sure. So actually, uh, I believe 13 came from her. Wow. And then three came from our other channels. This was definitely also a somewhat what I would consider like a last-minute thing. We didn't have um a month in advance. We just did it maybe a week in advance. Yep. And so there's definitely opportunities to you know get more people from inside my gym, but also like outside my gym without their help.
SPEAKER_00:But you know what's cool about this is like she picked this time at 11 or whatever it was. So that excludes a number of people right off the bat, where not everyone could make that, but her audience obviously could. It was tailored to that audience. So she supplies 13, you kick in the next three through your audience. If you decided to do it for a different time for a different client, you might have a different result. But that's like if you listeners, if you take nothing else from this show, connect with your very best clients, the people that you want to replicate, and talk to them and see if you can find ways to like get more people just like them. Because these clients are the your high-value clients. They want to tell people about your gym. They love it, they're getting results, and every gym has some of these people. And you would do very well to even to make a list of five of them and then just sit down and have coffee with those five people. And I guarantee if you do that, you will find some marketing ideas and some ways to make some money and serve more people, guaranteed. Ask your best five best clients for referral. That's the short one if you don't want to pop-up class. But this is the big deal, right? Like you did you went the whole whole hog here and get 16 people in. Now, I I love this. So, did you like back in the day? What I would do is I would just I'd do an event and like I would just hope that people would have fun and maybe on the way out ask me about if you know other training and so forth. And it was the worst marketing plan ever. How did you like you know build lead gen into this into this event? And like, how are you following up to try and get these people into your gym?
SPEAKER_02:So, of course, they need to sign up, they need to pay, you have their name, you have their email, you have their phone number already. And so you you make sure that you keep track of that stuff, you make sure that you put it into your uh CRM or your wherever you email people, keep track of leads, right? So that you don't get their contact info and then like it's gone and they never hear from you again. So that's that's step one. And so it only happened on Friday or Thursday, so it's only been a couple days, but the way that I approach bring-a-friend days and events and and things like this is like you you just reach out, you ask them how they're feeling, how what they thought of the workout, and then you gently invite them in if they want, because it's not the same as a lead that's like, hey, I want to sign up at your gym. Now they are super warm, but you also don't want to turn them off by coming in too hot or too strong because of course if they want to sign up at your gym, they're gonna almost assuredly reach out to you as well.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:What was your target market here? And I asked this because you had moms and kids. And I've talked to other people who are like, we target kids, but we sell to the parents while the kids do a trial workout. There's some really interesting dynamics there. So, what was your exact target market here and who are you hoping to get?
SPEAKER_02:So the we did it, uh, I believe the age was nine to fourteen or nine to nine to thirteen. And so, you know, mainly moms maybe in their later 30s, early 40s, uh, and that's that's definitely who came in. And, you know, what's really funny about this is we were talking about uh this pop-up event, and then I went to my daughter's gymnastics gym, and right there on the table was a flyer for this exact thing for people to sign up for at my daughter's uh gymnastics gym. So you know, other places are uh are doing it for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you what was the lead time again that you said when you came up with this and then marketed? It was a couple of like three days or something like that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it wasn't even a week. So um it happened really, really quick. And you know, typically I'd love to have about two weeks to just kind of put it out there and then you know, the week before really ramp up the marketing.
SPEAKER_00:But the reality is, is like, I mean, you can gyms can run bring a friend events and just you know kind of do it for free. You actually generated revenue out of this thing. I didn't do the math, but it looks pretty close like you paid the coach four ninths or something like that. Am I am I close on that? Yeah. So the coach gets three$300 out of the out of the$720, which so you're making$420 right there. So, like gym owners, if you're looking for an end-of-year kind of revenue driver, something like this might be a great way to do it. How did you present the value? So when you say, okay, it's$45 for this thing, what did you tell them that they were getting for that?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, just a super fun, you know, strength and conditioning class. Uh, we also highlighted kind of like actually, I'm looking at it right here. It's like quality time together, full body workout, perfect way to spend your day off from school with your kids for moms and their family.
SPEAKER_00:Did you program this on like an in-service day or something like that where there was no school? Is that what it was?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there was uh it was a day off. I I forget which uh I think it was maybe Yom Kippur or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So you're picking a day when you've got an audience that needs something to do or wants to wants to do something as a family or whatever, give them a great option, teach them some stuff, have a great fun workout, and away you go. And again, there's all sorts of different things. Like TwoBrain has all sorts of resources for clients. If you wanted to run a bring-a-friend event, there's all sorts of things like a wine and wad, or there's all different ideas of how you can put these things together. But the formula is more or less the same. You you get your offer in front of some people, you get them to sign up, you collect the contact information, you give them a great, great time. And if they're adults, you're gonna try and if you can, right at that event, book them for a no, like do a no-sweat intro right there, pull them aside. Hey, can I talk to you about your fitness goals? You might make some sales right there, if not that. Uh-huh. You book them in, ideally, for a no-sweat intro in the next two or three days, get them to come back and sit down in your office, and then you go through what we call the prescriptive model and go through this whole script that helps people present offers and sell them by solving problems. Or if that doesn't work, barring those two things, those are your first two options. The third one is you put these people into your contact or your CRM and you start sending them nurturing messages. But well, I think what you said, Tim, was I think you directly reached out to these people without just automating. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I always recommend, especially a warm lead or a friend, you know, you just you just say, Hey, just checking in to see how you're feeling, how you enjoyed the workout, uh, and if you wanted to talk some more. What was the response to that? Pretty good. Like, so before we even essentially wrapped up the class, we had a mom come to us and ask us, hey, would we be able to do something like this for my daughter's lacrosse team? And of course, I'm like, absolutely. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So, what's the plan there? What are you gonna do with her?
SPEAKER_02:Just reach out and uh, you know, to have a conversation like always, and and and see what comes of it and um set something up.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do team training or anything like that at present?
SPEAKER_02:No, not really.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that's something that like you could do on the side. It's a great way, like specialty programs. Again, we're talking about say end-of-re-year revenue. A specialty program would be a great thing. You could market one right now, six weeks to learn Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, habits, coaching, anything you want. Again, Two Brain has all these plug and play resources that you can literally download and market and run and make some cash. But this is another great one that Tim's gonna explore. This is like one lead that's spiraling spiraling into what could be a specialty program forum. How did the how did the coach do? Like one coach, 16 people, that's both probably the limit of what one person can do, I'm guessing. But like, how'd it go?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, she's great. So, you know, again, you're dealing with parents with their kids. So it was like it was fun. The parents are watching their kids, the kids are watching their moms. Uh, the coach is used to working with youth. It was mainly females, and uh, so like the the energy of the class was was really easy and awesome. But the coach did amazing. I was I was there watching the whole time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you could see that if you let's say you had 20 and you're like, well, there's gonna be a big group, you know, you're charging an appropriate rate. You can very easily from that$300, you could like, okay, you know, you get$250, you get$50, and both people are still making more than the$20 a class kind of thing. Yep. There's lots of ways to pay for that if you price something like this appropriately. Uh so I'm curious now that you've had this massive home run this you know with this, will you do this again? And if so, would you change anything?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we will absolutely, absolutely do this again. I just want to like circle back to something you just mentioned, which is really important. So we price this at$45 per person very strategically because we got 16 people, we made$720, the coach made$300. We do not expect that to be every single time. I wish it were. But if you price it appropriately, even if you have six people, as an example at$45 per person, that means that that hour is, I believe,$260. And so, you know, a coach could make a hundred quick dollars or a little bit more for you know an hour's work. You could maybe get a couple of warm leads or or make you know some current clients happy. So it's really important that you price it, you know, to make sure that it's successful and not just work for the gym.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I love that. And if you do price it properly like that, your coach is going to make a decent hourly wage. And then the the reality here is like it not even as a revenue driver, if you get some leads and a client or two out of that, and then you look at your lifetime value, like your length of engagement times average average revenue per member, all of a sudden this thing could, if you get one person, stays for 24 months at 205 or whatever your rate is, you're talking like a lot of cash and a great thing. So getting pe getting in front of people and contacting people and showing people what you're all about, anyone who comes to your gym, these are all huge wins. And obviously, you got the 16 plus the six leads. Those leads could be nurtured into, you know, and I know that you're a great gym owner, you've got a great length of engagement ARM. All of a sudden you're looking at time six LTV. These are all great things. Uh, so go back to that other question. Would you do it again? What will you change?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we are absolutely gonna do it again. We were we were looking at Columbus Day next week, but uh, I'm not sure if that's gonna work out. But you know, we're definitely planning ahead of time now, looking at the school calendars with the uh different holidays and and the breaks. And so we'll we'll definitely do it again. If I what would I change? I I think the only thing that I would really change is maybe marketing ahead of time a little bit. I would print out a flyer with a QR code and put it in the gym, uh, and maybe also just like in the in the area and probably just send out a couple more more emails about it. We only sent out one email, uh, so there's definitely an opportunity to send out you know maybe two or three emails ahead of time so that people can just know about it, or you know, I don't open every email I get.
SPEAKER_00:So I understand. It's like that these days, but that makes sense. But you did a great job. You put it out as fast as you could, and in a few days or less than a week, you said you got all these people in there. If you had a little bit more time, you can certainly play that up and you can start talking to individual clients and saying, Hey, do you have anybody who would be perfect for this? And then again, you start with your like your mavens, your your the best clients you've got, and those people that are kind of the hub of activity in their social group, talk to them first. Hey, do you have anyone who'd be perfect for this event? And I I would suggest any gym owner can probably find eight to ten people to fill this. And if you put a price on it, you might get some cash out of that at the same time. And there are people that will run bring a friend events where it's just like, hey, you're a member, bring a friend, no cost, anything that happened that works too. There are campaigns like that. But I specifically wanted to dig into this one with Tim because this was priced to clear some cash and generate some lead. So this was a fascinating one. So Columbus Day may be doing it again, and the only thing that you would generally change is just promote it for a little bit longer, but that's not a huge change, that's just a little bit more volume, correct?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, because the workout was great. Uh, you know, it was hard enough and and uh also simple enough at the same time. And that's what I would make sure that you know gym owners do make it make it challenging for somebody that's pretty fit, also make it something that's appropriate for children, and just you know, have fun, have a good workout. And that's the main focus of the class.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Tim, thanks so much for sharing your secrets with us. I appreciate it. Anytime. That was Tim Caputo, One Life Fitness and Nutrition. Thanks for listening to Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Warkin, and please hit subscribe or tack a like on this on your way out the door. And now here's Two Brain Founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
SPEAKER_01: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.
