12 Mistakes That Feel Good Now But Will Kill Your Gym Later

Just because a decision feels good now doesn’t mean it’s the right one for your gym’s long-term success.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper breaks down 12 choices that seem smart in the moment but can sabotage a gym's profitability down the line.

He explains how mistakes such as paid-in-full deals and monthly discounts erode value and bleed out revenue, and he shares how short-term conveniences, such as hiring friends or subleasing to trainers, create downstream operational headaches.

You’ll hear how ego-driven decisions to criticize competitors or train to be the best athlete in your gym steal focus from the systems that actually grow revenue.

Coop also discusses retention and pricing errors, and he explains how three major growth traps—expanding too early, trying to serve everyone and buying failing gyms—create more problems than they solve.

Tune in to learn the sustainable strategies top gyms use to avoid these mistakes and make smart decisions that pay dividends for decades.

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1:23 - Discount death spiral

8:07 - Staff and space nightmares

14:40 - Ego-driven mistakes

21:33 - Retention and pricing errors

24:50 - Growth without foundation

Transcript

Chris: 0:02

Some decisions that you make in your gym feel really good right now, but they're really going to cost you later. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And it's really easy for us to convince ourselves that we're making the right guesses, that we're making the right choices, because we're always in our own head. We're always thinking and we're thinking really fast, and we can convince ourselves of anything. We know this is true in our gym clients. We know that if they work hard today, eventually those wins will compound. They will have short-term pain for long-term gain. But we struggle sometimes to see that in our own business. And we do things that feel good right now that were actually going to hurt us long term. We affect our own health and longevity of our gym business by making decisions that seem good right now, but they're going to hurt us long term. Today I'm going to walk you through about 10 of those decisions that I've seen. I'm going to share some stories about how they have hurt gyms in the long run. And I think this is really timely right now because let's face it, there are a lot of business coaches in the fitness space now. And some of them are giving you advice that they just don't have the experience to know is actually going to hurt you long term. Some of them just don't care. But the reality is that most of them just haven't been around long enough to know that this is a bad idea. So let me start with an easy and obvious one. This is paid infull discounts. A lot of gyms, especially coaching gyms, when they open up their doors, they think like, oh, I need cash really badly. I'm going to sell some lifetime memberships. But they don't actually do the math on these memberships and realize that somebody's buying a lifetime membership that's worth, you know, a couple of thousand bucks. But 12 years down the road, not only are you paying them for free, but your service will have upgraded multiple times. Your pricing will be dramatically different, probably twice as much. And really what they bought wasn't, you know, pay covered in what they paid. There's another short-term example of this, too. So uh using a Black Friday sale, this gym that had three locations out west, they were a kind of a flagship gym for the CrossFit brand. What they would do is every Black Friday they would run this paid and full discount. And so you could pay for 10 months in a row up front, and you would get the last two months of the year for free. So, you know, starting in January, you would pay for 10 months and you'd stop paying basically in October. And November and December would be free. This seems like a good idea at the time. And a lot of people took them up on it, like 30 or 40. And so they had all kinds of cash in January. And February looked pretty good. And by June, they were starting to say, Oh, we better pay close attention here. And by July, they were like, uh-oh, what do we do? And then in October, those 30 people were no longer paying and the gym was out of money. So, of course, what did they do? They offered the same discount again, except this time they ran out of money in July. And then they said, Oh, what are we going to do? And by the time I spoke to them, they had run this promotion three times. They were absolutely broke, and they couldn't afford to run the gym for a year to fulfill on the memberships they had already sold. Now, this is really common in the fitness industry. And this is why in a lot of states, you are required to have a bond so that you don't pre-sell a bunch of memberships and then close down before you can fulfill on them. It's very common. None of us thinks it's ever going to happen, but it happens quite a bit. Short term, you get a big lump of cash that feels pretty good. Long term, it actually can put you out of business because you'll run out of money. Now, you always think like, I'm just going to get more clients, more clients, more clients, and they'll backfill for the clients that I'm not making money on anymore. That is called a pyramid scheme. Let's keep that out of the fitness industry. Instead, you need to set your rates to be what they should. You need to provide a high value and confidently sell that value instead of trying to do some kind of weird paid in full discount thing that's going to put you out of business later. You're not just going to make it up with more clients. The second big mistake that a lot of gym owners make that seems good at the time, but causes them long-term pain are other discounts, recurring monthly discounts. So a lot of gyms will confuse discounting with marketing. They think like, well, if I offer a 10% discount or a 15% or a 20, I will get all the first responders. I will get all the teachers, all the nurses, or whoever they're applying this to. And trust me, I did this. I know. The reason that you're doing that is because you're scared of actually asking for the dollar value that you're charging. And so when somebody comes in and you're presenting your product, here it is, it's $150, $205 a month, $400 a month. You don't have the confidence to sell that. And so instead you say you soften the offer. You say, okay, it's $200 a month, but, and that but is you backing down, hiding, but there's a 20% discount for first responders like you. So the number one reason that gyms offer discount is because we're first-time entrepreneurs. We don't know how to coach somebody to buy yet, and we're not confident in our prices because we couldn't afford it ourselves. The second reason that we offer these discounts is because we think it's marketing. Well, if I give that police officer a discount, he'll bring all the other police officers. If I offer a 20% discount to that new corporation that just opened across the street, they'll all want to come in. But that's not true. Police officers will want to come to your gym because you will save their life. The corporation across the street will want to come to your gym because you're across the street from them. The discounting is just you hiding from actually presenting your value. So here's the problem. Let's say that you give a nurse 20% off your price. Everybody loves nurses. Everybody knows that nurses need a break. They have the worst job in the world. I would, I couldn't last 10 minutes as a nurse. It's tempting to want to help them by giving them a big discount. But here's the problem they might get excited about the discount in the beginning, or they might not, but they're not going to turn it down. Three months in, the discount has become the norm. This is just how we're wired. Things that are novel now are normal later. Novel, normal. Six months in, that's just what they pay. They forget that they're getting a discount at all. And so eventually these things add up. They compound 20% off $200 a month is $40 a month. And after six months, that's $240. And after a year, that's $480 out of your pocket. You're still delivering the same service. You have all the same costs, but you've given up $480 to somebody who didn't need it and doesn't appreciate it anymore. What's worse is that when you remove that discount because you realize your mistake, they're probably going to think you're raising their rates on them. And so these things compound and just get harder and harder to remove over time. They hurt you. You know, $500 times 10 members is $5,000 a year. By the way, that's straight out of profit. If you really want to see the effect of this yourself, ask yourself, would I take $40 out of my wallet right now and slide that across the table to subsidize this person's membership? In other words, if your membership is 200 bucks a month and uh you want to offer that nurse or police officer or fireman a discount, ask yourself, my business can't discount. Am I willing to subsidize this person? Am I willing to charge them $160 and take $40 out of my wallet every month and put that in their business account? That's how you should treat this because when you discount people, you're not reducing your expenses. The landlord doesn't take 20% off your rent because you're giving a 20% discount to first responders. You're taking it from your profit. That's your wallet. That's the money that buys you groceries and puts shoes on your kids' feet. You have to ask yourself Am I really willing to do that? And am I really willing to do that forever, every single month? Here's 40 bucks for Bill, here's 40 bucks for Susan, here's 40 bucks. And you're subsidizing all these people. Or should you maybe work with a mentor and get comfortable selling your actual value? The third short-term gain for long-term pay mistakes that a lot of gym owners make is hiring your friends. Now, some of you just rolled your eyes. Some of you said, not me, not Sally. She's my BFF. And some of you laughed out loud when I said that. This is probably the one common mistake that I can confidently say every gym owner has made because it feels good to help your buddy. You feel like you're giving them a winning lottery ticket, a new chance at life, a chance to do what they love with you in this fun and creative environment, and you're going to be successful together. Trust me, 90% of the people that I've hired started as my friends. Maybe that number is lower now, but especially when I first started, I was hiring friends, family. And what happens? Well, long term, you get these blurred boundaries. When am I your friend and when am I your employer? You have a tough time evaluating them and improving their performance because you can't give them feedback without harming the friendship. Or likewise, you can't be their friend because they're not doing a good job at work. So you avoid the tough conversations, you avoid the evaluations. And then not only do you lose them as a staff person, but you also lose them as a friend. Trust me, the amount of times that hiring your friend turns into an amazing employee and an amazing friend is less than 1% of the time. The more likely reality is that you will ruin your staff relationship and you will lose a good friend unless you set clear business boundaries up front. And even then, it's extremely hard. You know, my sister is an amazing HR professional. She's she's able to work with some friends, but it doesn't have, it's not without challenges. And she has this conversation with her staff up front, like, hey, when we're here at the office, you are my staff person and I'm gonna treat you like a staff person. But likewise, when we're out at the pub, I'm not gonna talk to you like a staff person and we're not gonna talk about work and I'm not gonna do a performance evaluation on you when we're out at dinner. And I'm gonna work really, really hard to maintain those boundaries. And I'd like you to do the same thing. We're also gonna tell each other when we're crossing those boundaries. Does that make sense? Does it feel like uh you're not even a friend if you got to talk like that? Yes, it should, because they are not your friend when you're paying them money, right? You're not paying them to be your friend, you're not hiring people to like you. The reason that you're giving somebody a job is because hopefully they are the best in the world for that position or the best person that you can find. If they're also friendly, that's great. But you have to understand that when you hire your friends, there's a chance you're gonna lose both your staff and your friendship. It also means that this is gonna stop your business from growing. Because let's face it, who wants to have a conversation with their best friend about doing a better job at work? Who wants to fire their buddy? Nobody does. And so you wind up putting up with stuff way too long until you can't take it anymore. Then you just react with kind of this over-the-top response that ruins your friendship. There's a thousand ways this can go wrong. I'm sure you've got your own examples, but if it hasn't gone wrong for you yet, do yourself a favor and just like have friends and have staff and try not to mix them. The fourth mistake that I see commonly, not in two-brain gyms, but in in gyms in gymownersunited.com, is subleasing to other trainers. So you take the big risk and you open up your gym, and it might be a coaching gym, it might be like an access gym, and you say, okay, how can I make more money? I need to make more money. Oh, there's a trainer that wants to rent for me. I will just charge them a certain fixed amount per month. Maybe that's 500 bucks a month. That sounds good, right? It sounds like found money. But think about this out of the gym setting. Okay. Think about owning a restaurant and letting somebody else sell their food in there, like letting the hot dog vendor, you know, bumpity bumpy brings his cart up the steps and he pushes it down the aisles and he's selling his hot dogs in your restaurant. Would you let that happen? Of course not. Would you let the Girl Scouts sell their cookies in your cookie restaurant? Of course not. The reason that you don't let other trainers sublease space from you is because fitness is what you're selling. And if your clients need coaching, you should be the one to provide that. You have built this amazing platform for fitness. You have taken the lease on the space, you have taken the loan on the equipment, you are paying the taxes, you've you're insured, you've set up the banking, you've gone out and you've recruited clients. Letting a trainer come in for three or 500 bucks a month or anything less than like $2,000 a month and benefit from all of that really is giving them the winning lottery ticket. Let me reverse roles for you. Let's say that you didn't own the gym and you came into the gym and you could get your own clients or you could recruit from clients who were already there. You could charge whatever you want. They would pay you whatever you wanted. You could hold your own insurance, and all you had to pay was $500 a month or even a thousand to not have to do any marketing ever again and to have a high affinity, trusting audience who sees you doing your job every single day. I would pay that in a heartbeat. And frankly, if that option had been open to me, I would never have even started a gym. Imagine having a gym, having access to all these clients, training them, charging them for training, and all of your expenses are $500 a month, covering your rent, your payment gateway, your marketing, your sales, everything. Come on. Like you, you need to offer this service. You know, of the top gyms in the world right now, you really need to understand like most of their revenue is coming from training. Even the access gyms, like the big gyms from Golds, they are not going to let somebody come in and subly space. It seems like found money to you, but it's actually stopping you from capitalizing on the larger opportunity and a responsibility. Because here's the thing any trainer that comes into your place of business and works there is going to be associated with your brand. If a client has a bad experience with that trainer, what's going to happen? Are they going to keep coming to your gym anyway? Probably not. Are they going to complain to that trainer and then fire the trainer? No, they're going to complain to you because that trainer was working at your gym. Anyone that's doing any business inside your business is part of your business and needs to be treated this that way so that you can set the standard for delivery. You can set here's how we want people to be treated. You can keep the clients who will quit when this subleasing trainer pisses them off. Trust me, it seems like found money, like mailbox money, like easy money when you start subleasing the trainers, but you're missing out on the long-term gain here. The fifth thing is running down other gyms. Look, this is a trap that I'll admit I fell into. I was so unsure about my own value, lacking confidence, terrified, broke, that I had this scarcity mindset. And I am embarrassed to even admit it now. But if somebody would bring up another gym in town, my immediate knee-jerk response was slam those, slam that gym, run them down, you know, belittle them, talk about how the owner doesn't know anything, or even just roll your eyes, let your body language give it away. It took me years to get over this. And honestly, until I was successful myself, I was not generous to other gym owners at all. Now it's different. Now I host the other gym owners in town every month for lunch. I want us all to grow. I want us all to collaborate. I think the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. But even back then, this actually hurt me. And so when somebody would say, Oh, my best friend has this trainer that she really loves, I would immediately want to run down that other trainer. Now, they don't know as much as I do. Now, I've heard bad things. No, that trainer, blah, blah, blah. And what would happen is my client would be like, Whoa, Chris really is not sure of himself. Nobody wants to be around that person that's running down other people. Nobody wants to be around the gossip, you know, because you know as soon as you leave the room, they're saying bad stuff about you. And so it felt like I was winning points, like I was convincing my clients to stay with me and selling them on my gym over everybody else, but I was actually doing long-term reputational damage. There are still other trainers in town that won't talk to me. And while I do have a good relationship with most of the gym owners, the reality is that some of the other gym owners still ascribe to this belief that running down the other gyms is what's going to keep clients in there. So I hope that that doesn't uh describe you because word always gets around. You know, your reputation is not just what you control, it's the conversation from one person to another, too. The sixth thing that gyms do that feel good in the moment but cause long-term pain are trading memberships for coaching. And so what happens a lot of the time is you'll see somebody in your in your membership who's a great person, they're willing to learn, or maybe they're a great mover, or maybe they're always helping people, maybe they're even looking for a job. And so you offer them something, you offer them a coaching job. And hey, here's how we can all save on taxes. I'll trade you for membership. If you coach, let's call it a class a week, I'll give you a free membership. The mistake that we make is that we never do the math on this. Now, I believe that cash was created, money was created to normalize trade, to help people trade of equivalent value. And that's why I trade my coaches for membership and they buy or I trade them for money, I pay them and they buy their membership with what's left over. When you do trades, the problem is there's no scoreboard, like money keeping track of how much value they bring and how much value you bring. So the first problem is that if you've got three coaches doing trades, one of them is probably getting a better deal than the others. If I'm coaching one class a week at your gym and that free membership that I'm getting is worth 200 bucks, I'm getting 50 bucks an hour. Are you making that? But what if somebody else is coaching six classes a week? They're making 40 bucks an hour. What if somebody is coaching two, you know, two classes a week and now they're doing eight a month for the same membership that's worth 200 bucks? Well, now they're earning about 25 bucks an hour and I'm earning 50. You know, does that make sense? What happens if a coach wants to take time off and somebody else has to step in and coach their classes? Well, they're not getting compensated anymore for that. It's it's not fair. And the reality is that most people are dramatically overpaying their coaches because they think that trades are free instead of calculating the value of that trade against the client's membership and working that out. So if you don't want to exchange money because you know you don't want to do the payroll taxes and all that stuff, I understand the motivation there. I do. I, you know, I don't always love paying taxes. I love generating money so that I can pay taxes. I don't like how my taxes are spent always. But the reality here is that if you're trying to save money and you think that you can trade, you need to actually calculate what you're giving away in value versus what you're recouping. If you can pay somebody 25 bucks an hour to coach a group class, but you're giving away a $200 a month membership to somebody who only coaches four classes, you're basically overpaying them by $100 a month. You know, you could do way better. So long term, you need to pay people and have them buy memberships for you or at least do the calculation every single month. Make sure that people are doing an equitable job because your top performers, they'll go above and beyond, right? They'll coach extra classes, but they're also noticing that the bottom performers are not doing nearly the same amount of work for their free membership. It devalues their role when that happens. It creates unmotivated staff and it weakens their professionalism because why should they do extra? Why should they try hard? The seventh mistake that gym owners make because it causes them like short-term good feelings, but long-term pain, is training to be the best athlete in their gym. I thought for many years I had to be the strongest in the powerlifting gym, I had to be the most crossfit in the CrossFit gym, I had to be the best athlete in whatever class I was in, or people wouldn't respect me as a coach. After all, why would they want to do what I tell them if they're fitter than I am? Right. And you get this kind of ego boost. But long term, what that does is it takes time and energy away from leadership. It means that you're focusing on the wrong things because, you know, people don't really think that way. Uh, they don't think that you have to be the fittest person to coach them, hopefully, or you don't want them in your gym. You'll never be the fittest person for very long anyway. That training takes you away from marketing, it takes you away from business growth. It does not inspire other people, or not very much. You know, the people who win the CrossFit games or the local triathlon or the local 5K are not automatically recruiting people away from other gyms or inspiring new people to exercise. They might get a few of their competitors to show up, but are those competitors really your best clients anyway? Training to be the best athlete in your gym is a massive uh commitment of time and energy and focus. And you really can't afford to put your business in second place. Let's face it, you know, if if you're training to compete in something, you're probably spending two hours a day training. Next comes your family, then comes your nutrition and your rest. And you know, your gym comes forth. That's why your gym is not growing. It's a matter of priorities. Ask yourself this like if I won the biggest prize on earth at this event, would that help grow my gym? The answer is always going to be no. So why are you training so hard to compete at the local events before you build your business? Build your business, then with the extra time and money that you have, go back to training as hard as you want to. The eighth mistake that causes long-term pain for a lot of gyms is chasing high-ticket sales without retention. Especially a couple of years ago, right before COVID, a lot of gyms were chasing this idea of high-ticket sales, charging people like $2,000 for a membership up front. Before that, they were doing that with gym launch. And before that, they were doing that with the New You Challenge. And gym owners were suddenly able to sell something that was $300,000, $400, $2,000 up front. And they thought, like, hallelujah, this is the answer. But like a lot of trends in fitness, in the fitness business, it's not the answer for very long. I guess that's also true in fitness. So what would happen is these gyms would take training and they would do sales reps and they'd get good at sales and they'd build this complicated package worth $2,000 and they would sell it. And good for them. They'd make two grand, right? And their gym revenues would go up. But the long-term effect of this was churn because the clients would say, like, nah, this isn't worth it. I'm paying $2,000 for this. Those people are paying $120 a month. Like, I don't really see a difference here. And so they wouldn't be able to make recurring revenue and they'd have this treadmill of constantly selling. I mean, if you were around in 2018, you started to see this with the ad agencies that were selling ads on Facebook. You'd have these people come in, they would sign up and they'd churn out. Come in, sign up, churn out. And every time this happened, the leads would get colder, the sales process would get harder, the clients would stay even shorter, and you had this kind of downward spiral going all the time to the point where a lot of gyms failed. And that's because they were chasing a high-ticket sales without any matching retention. The ninth mistake that people make in the gym business is avoiding rate increases. And you do it because rate increases feel painful in the short term, but they create a lot of long-term gain. You're avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. You'll say, Oh, the time is not right. I'm gonna wait till January. Well, I got all these new people, I'm busy, I'm gonna wait till March. Well, I heard somewhere that you shouldn't raise your rates in September, whatever. You procrastinate, you avoid that tough conversation. Oh, if I raise rates, Sally might leave, Billy won't be able to afford it, let alone that you can't afford to not raise your rates, right? The reality here is that it's only gonna be painful for a minute. It's painful when you sit down in front of your clients who might quit and you have the conversation, but it's only painful for 30 seconds. It's painful when you send the email, but it's just painful waiting over the weekend for the responses. Long term, this is what's gonna set you up for success. And especially if you're dramatically undercharging, this is the thing that's gonna keep you afloat. Because every month that goes by that you're undercharging, you erode your margin, you run more and more and more out of money, you get more and more and more burned out, you pay yourself less and less and less less because your expenses are going up. Your staff is being asked to accept an unfair wage or they're working for far less than they're worth. Every month that you kick this can down the road, you're hurting them, you're hurting yourself, and you're hurting your business. Yeah, it's painful right now, and you have to do it. You know, it's just like telling your client they need to do a 200-meter sprint at the end of every you know, 20 thrusters. Yeah, it's painful right now. Long term, you will thank me. And that's the same with rate increases. The 10th thing uh that makes people feel good in the moment, but hurts them long term, is expanding too early. So they've they've got a gym, they opened it up, they were the first one in their town, they saw a lot of really quick growth. Awesome. I'm good at business, they think. I'm gonna go open another gym. I'm gonna buy out that failing gym. I'm better at this than they are. And then something happens. Another gym opens in town and it dramatically hurts their gym. Or there's this big new thing, right? P90X was it for me? Hyrocks might be it. It's going to a gym down the road. Everybody's going over there. Uh-oh, maybe I'm not as good at business as I thought. And I was capitalizing on good fortune when I opened. Maybe I got the timing right, but now that the times have changed, my business is in trouble. And so what should actually happen is you should grow your business to the point where it can pay you $100,000 a year consistently, and you know that. Not just one good month or one good quarter, not just a great projection from the ad agency that's trying to get you to buy more ads, but actually paying you $100,000 for a year. That means that your system is working for one person. You are the crash test dummy and it's working for you. When that system is working for you and the gym can run without you for at least a week, that's when you can start looking at expansion and scale and duplicating your process. Instead, what happens is somebody makes 30 or 40 grand a year from their gym. They think that they're successful. And the best way to make 30 or 40 more grand is to buy another gym. And what they do is they buy somebody else's mistakes. They buy 100 clients who will not pay what the gym is worth. And so now they've got this massive problem. They got bad staff, they've got a maybe a horrible culture. They're trying to change the programming and the paint and the branding, and they wind up changing all the clients and really regretting the second purchase anyway. When you expand too early, all you're doing is duplicating problems and doubling expenses. You are going harder into the learning curve with a smaller chance of success. So expanding too early is a massive problem that actually kills a lot of gyms because while you're over there trying to grow the new flock, your golden goose is back here dying. The 11th thing that feels good in the moment, but kills gym long term is trying to be everything to everyone. So, short term, when you first open, this might attract a few extra clients. You run a few Facebook ads talking about weight loss, you get some weight loss clients. Then you put out some social posts about your legends program, you get a few older clients. And then you maybe run a kids' class in the summer and you get a few kids in, right? Short term, you attract some extra clients. But long term, it creates all kinds of complexity because now you've got 30 different programs, 90 different price points. It confuses clients. Uh, what do I buy again? Like imagine they're looking at your website and there's 12 different options. They're not going to pick any of them. You can only present three options at a time to a client. And this also burns out the owner because, you know, the person who's coaching the kids group is not going to be great at coaching the legends group or the hockey team or whatever. So now you've got way too many staff doing way too few things. You're trying to clump them all together, you're trying to keep all these plates spinning. And it's because you're trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, you should get really clear on who your best client is and give them exactly what they want and duplicate them over and over and over again instead of just trying to be a catch-all. By the way, that perfect client is probably somebody who can afford your service. So if you're trying to make your service valuable but also affordable at the same time, you are chasing two rabbits and you're not going to catch either. My my 12th thing that a lot of people do is one that I kind of already covered, which is buying out a failing local gym. This comes up at this time of year because this is when leases get signed. So short term, it looks like a shortcut. It looks like a quick path to buying more members, buying more money. I can spend $50,000 right now and I will get $50,000 back forever. But what you're actually doing is buying their mistakes. Like there's a reason that they failed. And the clients like their mistakes. They like paying too little. They like the bad programming. They like the free open gym. They like the free classes, they like the 12 coaches, all those mistakes the clients like. And when you try and change that, you change the culture. You lose the clients, you lose the spark plugs, you lose the coach. When you go in and try and build new systems where there were no systems before, you're trying to make order out of chaos and people leave. They hate that. And so you've got these clients who are already conditioned to quit walking out the door. And soon you realize, like, I've sucked my whole leg in quicksand here. So I know it's tempting to try and save a gym. And you know, something that Greg Glassman said to me for the CrossFit gyms is you know, the weakest gym should fail, and their coaches will go get better jobs at the better gyms, and the owner will get a better job as a coach, and the clients will go to the better gym. And like, this is libertarianism in action. But the truth is that that only works over you know dozens and hundreds of years. That doesn't work in the micro time frame that we have right now. Unfortunately, when gyms go out of business, there's usually a reason, right? And it's never lack of passion, it's never the pro. Programming. If you buy their mistakes, you will just welcome that disease into your body and you'll really struggle to fix it yourself. And it'll probably infect all the other businesses that you own too. Anyway, these are all like sugar hives for your business, right? It's quick energy that leads to a crash and creates diabetes over time. So instead of chasing quick wins all the time, build slow, steady, sustainable systems. That's how you create long term profit and freedom. If you're not sure, book a call with my team, talk to a mentor, and say, this seems like a good idea now. How will this affect me in the long term? I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And I want you to be around for the long term. So let's not do things that are going to kill you in the short term.