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
Use This Data to Grow Your Gym in 2026: Sales and Marketing Deep Dive
How do you turn 13 leads per month into sustainable gym growth?
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper and chief marketing officer John Franklin analyze new data from Two-Brain's 2025 “State of the Industry” guide and show you how to use it to grow your gym in 2026.
John, who is also co-founder of Kilo, explains why most gyms still struggle to get enough leads, what high performers do differently and how to make the most of every lead.
The pair dig into the numbers behind pricing, sales and average revenue per member, and they list simple changes gym owners can make to dramatically increase revenue.
To help you close more sales at your gym, Chris and John role-play common scenarios, demonstrating how to handle objections—such as timing, price and spousal concerns—and help clients take action.
They also provide tips to help you survive the slowest months of the year so you stop getting crushed by seasonality.
Watch this episode, then take action to generate more leads and add more clients to your gym every month.
If you want to dig deeper into the numbers, download the full “State of the Industry” report for free via the link below.
Links
State of the Industry
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
1:08 - Lead generation and nurture
12:38 - Seasonality and planning
18:07 - Live sales role-play
30:03 - Pricing strategies and psychology
41:42 - Sustainable gym ownership
Gyms in general are growing. We've got the proof in the state of the industry guide 2025. But today we're going to talk about why and how you can use these numbers to actually grow your gym. With me is my friend, my chief marketing officer for Two Brain and one of the co-founders of Kilo, John Franklin. John, welcome back to Run a Profitable Gym. It's been a while. Happy to be here. Yeah, I know. It's one of those things I think where we get myopic and we're always inviting in guests from outside and we forget like how much talent and genius there actually is inside TwoBrain sometimes. So I'm I'm really grateful that you're here. You know, when you and I are building this state of the industry guide, we have this constant chatter going with us and the head editor Mike Workington. And a lot of that dialogue is enormously valuable. And so I wanted to bring you on today to share, especially around the marketing metrics, like what should we be learning from this? So, first off, let's just kind of go over the the high points, right? Like what stands out to you this year from the state of the industry guide with regards to gym growth, marketing, that kind of thing?
John:Well, people are getting more leads, which is nice, but like we've always said, there is a huge delta between the mean and the median. So if you look at the guide in the where new clients come from section, you'll see that the median gym is only getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 leads per month. And the mean gym is getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 50 a month. And so what that tells me is we have the far end of the curve of the people who are running paid ads, maybe in urban markets. Like I was interviewing a gym owner this week where they said their their absolute minimum to maintain their current size was 500 leads a month. So they're in San Francisco, but and now is with a 5% monthly churn rate. And so, which is which is on the better side for a big transient urban area like that. So I can tell you from my experience as a gym owner in New York City, we were gunning for we averaged 10% monthly churn a month. And I know that probably makes uh the hair on your arm go up with anger, Chris. Uh, but where we were located was this area where people would go live for two years and go to the bars and stuff, and then they'd go start real life. And we were hoping for you know, 93% uh monthly retention was was our target at the time. But if you think about it, if you're uh we were a group training gym around 250 members, 90 90% retention, that means I'm losing 25 people a month, right? And so I gotta get 25 people in the door just to say the same size. And so that's why you see that that huge disconnect. And and what that tells me is some people are still grinding it out with ads, they're they're making it work, they're getting the leads in the door, they're understanding the math and making that money up on the back end. But based off of the amount of people who took the survey and the discrepancy in the median, it sounds like the average, it's like middle of the pack. You know, when we say average, sometimes we we do mean, median, but like I'm saying the middle of the pack, the the median, they're not, and and they got to make do with an incredibly small amount of leads, right? Like if you're the big group gym where you got 13 coming in the door and you're hovering around a hundred members and you have five percent churn, right? So you got a hundred members, five percent churn. So five of them leave every single month, and you only have 13 leads that you have to replace those five just to stay the same size. Like, you got a lot of work to do. You got to be aggressive with your lead nurture. Uh, you really got to squeeze the juice out of every one of these leads because that is um that is not a lot of wiggle room. There is not a lot of room for failure there.
Chris:I I can remember a couple of years ago talking to, I think it was Ben Bergeron saying that you know they had a they had a small churn rate, but they had 300 members. And so every month they had to uh get 30 new members in the door. That's like a new member every day. And what we're gonna look at next is like how many of those leads actually become members? Because it's not just a matter of getting 30 leads, you know, in a lot of cases, you need five times as many leads as clients um that you're getting because our lead nurture is not that great. So, in in that case, he would have had to get like 150 to 180 leads a month just to stay the same. I that's wild, but but I think let's go to that section, John. If you're cool with that, maybe we'll go to that lead nurture section. I mean, let's rip the rip leads.
John:We can rip down the funnel. We can rip down the funnel. So let's talk, let's talk big big group, right? Because that's gonna be the the biggest chunk just based off of it's just gonna be the biggest data set based off of you know the providers. Okay, and so we got 13 is the median for leads, right? And so of the 13, uh, seven book an appointment. And then of the seven, this is all self-reported, five are closing, right? Okay, so if we have seven divided by 13, that means about 50% of leads that are coming in for the average gym are booking a call, which is which is would be phenomenal if that was paid traffic. Yeah, but when you have th if I hear a gym owner has 13 leads, I'm assuming that's pretty warm. You know, someone went in, yeah, somebody saw, maybe, maybe somebody knows your members, like that. That's lay, you know, at that number, it's likely those are layup leads. So we got half there. And then if we have five buying out of seven appointments, that's about a 70-ish percent close rate. So which is also very good. It's not bad. But again, it we we we need it to know other variables, right? We need to know if they're selling something for $90 or they're selling something for $2,000, right? That's gonna, you know, if I'm selling a $5,000 front-end package and I have a 70% close rate, that's amazing. If I'm selling a no on ramp monthly membership, $99 unlimited class, like that's not as amazing. So, you know, you got to take all this with a grain of salt, but but yeah, like I those numbers are trending in the right direction. But the reality is you have to get more like that's because gym owners have had to get better, right? Like I was uh, you know, you you predated me a little bit, but my first gym opened end of 2012, early 2013, and I got to ride that CrossFit trend up, which was amazing, just going on that that rocket ship. And when I uh opened my first gym, I had a marketing budget of a couple thousand dollars, and I got 5,000 leads on my email list for a couple thousand dollars to do my presale with. And I thought I was a genius, right? But then when I did the exact same pre-sale, the exact same ads on a triple the budget in a different gym in a different area four years later, I got like 20. And and and that was in an environment that is better than it is now, right? Yeah, like like it's harder to do that. If I ran that same campaign today, who knows? Maybe I may get a handful. You know what I mean? And and so by default, some of these things that were insane at the time, like call. I I heard this uh talking to someone yesterday. They said, uh, John, what's the heaviest weight in the gym? Do you know the answer, Chris?
Chris:Is this gonna be a metaphor? Is it is it like the it is a metaphor? Okay, no, I can't wait to hear it.
John:The heaviest weight in the gym is the phone. Nah, it's true. Good one. Uh I love it. I I don't know who to give credit to, but whoever told me that, that's hilarious. And I agree. But like, you know, if we would have done a survey in 20, we weren't doing this in 2015, but it, you know, if we would have done a survey, like what percentage of gyms are calling their leads in 2015, like what it what is that number? I you know, I I yeah, I don't know. It was it was an insane idea that someone would come in and you would like call them on the phone, where now it it's down to you know under a quarter of the gym owners are never calling their leads, which is which is bad. It's a it is horrific, but you know, it's still you know, we're trending in the right direction out of necessity because you just have to do so much more with so fewer leads.
Chris:I can give you an N equals one on experience in 2015 because I was traveling every single month for CrossFit, working for the journal back then, and I had a Chris at CrossFit.com. That was my email address. Like there's no warmer drop-in lead than that. And every time I'd go to a different town, I would call six or seven gyms. I would call every single one that I could find in the first page search listing, knowing that maybe one would get back in time for me to actually drop in within the next 48 hours. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah, it's crazy.
John:All right. 15% leads.
Chris:Yeah. Especially because I'm showing up with cameras. Like you're gonna be CrossFit famous, but yeah, sorry, go on.
John:CrossFit famous. So yeah, it it so it's about 15% that never call, and then about another 10 or 11, say same week. And I have a sneaking suspicion that that is uh bucketed at never call. So that's why I say that 25% number because I'm kind of bummed. You know, if you're calling someone a week later, we might as well not call them at all, you know. Right.
Chris:So if you're following along in the State of the Industry Guide, we are now on page 23 and we're talking about, you know, lead response time. The thing is, what upsets me about this and is so frustrating, is because these people have raised their hand. They say, I need help, you know, I'm in the water, I'm flailing around here, and they're counting on you to take the next step and to you know grasp their hand and say, I'm here, I got you. And most gyms are just not doing that because they think that they're doing something slimy. When the reality is, you know, this is the first act of coaching, is is grabbing their hand and saying, Come and meet me at the gym.
John:Yeah. And uh I I love that that thing that you say that you know, coaching starts during the the sales process. But you know, you you speak to uh you probably have your PhD from the School of Hard Knocks in gym owner psychology. Uh what is it about, you know, someone puts their information in saying they're interested in their business. Why, why are so many gym owners reticent to see that as like a you know a an immediate fire, someone they need, you know, someone that they can help immediately. Like, why is there so much delay, so much reticence to to call and get that person into the gym?
Chris:Well, I mean, that's a that's a complicated question, but the reality is that most of us, when we start a gym, we're first-time entrepreneurs. And so all of our purchasing and sales experience is from the the consumer side, where you know, we're used to getting those phone calls that we don't want. We, you know, we've had the the people calling us at dinner time and us hanging up, and we've seen the Seinfeld episode about it, and we feel like now we're on the other side of that. But the reality is that people are asking for help if they're on your website if it's 10 p.m. and they're filling out your form, it's because they've reached a low point of liking themselves and they need you to step in and get over your own internal BS. This is very hard for everybody. Like my sales pitch used to start with, I'm not good at sales or I'm not a salesman, but and um finally this woman named Melanie was like, Well, why don't you just tell me the price? And I started to realize, like, oh, wait, I'm doing people a disservice by not telling them the price, by not coaching them, by not being inviting and saying, Are you ready to start now?
John:That was uh yeah, the the original two-brain business sales call would be you hop on a Zoom call with Chris Cooper and then he'd pull up your website and tell you to what was wrong with the website, and then he wouldn't ask you to buy.
Chris:I would tell you 10 things to do, and then not tell you the right thing to do, which was like get a mentor. Dumb.
John:Yeah, yeah. Well, uh we fixed that. If you want to see that, you can go to two brainbusiness.com and book yourself a call and you can see what the new process looks like and see if you like it better. But uh uh yeah, we we we've done some work there. You want to talk about seasonality a little bit?
Chris:Yeah, I do think that's really important, especially right now.
John:Cool. So the data reflects what everybody there what everybody knows that January is a very busy month. One thing that I think is worth mentioning is for coaching gyms specifically, kilo and two brain works less with access gyms, so I just have less insight into data there. So you know, I'm trying to speak from what I can see behind the scenes out. But one tip for you gym owners at home is I think one of the most underprepared for seasonality swings is that back to school rush. Like our data shows that in some markets it's even larger than the January rush. And so we know like there is a summer slowdown, and it's kind of this like slow bleed over three months. And then when everybody gets into back to school mode, that's when it starts picking up. So that's why you see in the reported data that most leads come in that August time frame, and that's because the kids are back in school, people are thinking about routines, parents are feeling a little feeling the the lake house, uh the the bud lights, uh, you know, packing on a little weight there. And that's a great opportunity for running promotional marketing. And when I say promotion, that doesn't necessarily have to be a discount. There are plenty of things that you can do to draw up demand, but that is something where when you are sitting down next month to do your annual plan, you want to make sure that you have solid marketing in place for that August rush. And then again, obviously the one everybody knows that New Year's rush. But what's funny is you see the fewest leads and fewest appointments are now. That November, December time frame is is rough, right? Everybody's in holiday mode, nobody wants to start a gym when you know you're gonna take a week off for Thanksgiving, you're gonna take two weeks off for Christmas. So the secondary piece of that is like uh, you know, I talked about setting up your marketing plan, I talked about annual planning. If you're not doing that, now is an excellent time to do so because if I had to guess, you're not uh your phone's not ringing off the hook based off of what the data say.
Chris:What I find really interesting about this, and we're on page 27 of the state of the industry guide, you can get it at two brainbusiness.com forward slash data. What I find interesting here is that while August is historically like one of the worst months in the industry, it's also the month when you've got most leads. So what you know, people are not coming to the gym to work out, but they're setting themselves up to work out in September. And you kind of see the same thing happening in November, too. So what I had to learn from this, and this, you know, it was August when I nearly went bankrupt back in 2008, was you got to plan in advance for these months. You know August is gonna be slow, you know September is gonna be better, you know December is gonna be slow, but you know January is gonna be better. The best thing that I ever did was think a year in advance and say, okay, how do I stop next August from being just like this? Because I'll never make it through August again. And so what I would do is I would have a competition in September and I would really target like um sports teams in August because they're getting ready to go back on the ice or bask on the back on the court in September. Same thing in December. I would pre-sell my on-ramps for January, save a space, or I would have a really great like marketing email that's like top gifts for CrossFitters, buy here, you know. So you hammer your retail pre-sales, you hammer your pre-sales of like on-ramp and your packages of personal training or whatever, and you try and boost your revenue in December because in January you're gonna be busy and you're not gonna have time to do retail, you're not gonna have time to, right? You've got so many people coming in naturally. So the key is just like knowing that this stuff's gonna happen in advance and preparing for it. And you don't have to go through it like I did and you did. You can look at the data in this guide and say, Oh shit, August might be bad unless I have a plan and plan for it right now with a mentor.
John:It's also a great opportunity to practice your objection handling. So if you are somebody who's sitting in consultations, you're having these uh sales meetings, people are referring people in, uh, you should be able to give them a great reason as to why they shouldn't put off their fitness through the holidays. Or if they are gonna put off their fitness through the holidays, you should have some type of mechanism by which you can uh you know get them started or sign them up in November or December and have them get going in January. And again, that is something that uh is best served with a marketing mentor or a sales mentor who can walk you through uh the tricks of the trade, so to speak.
Chris:I think you know, if you're putting yourself in the shoes of your client, okay, so they you run a coaching business, it's more expensive than a normal gym. They're thinking about their budget with the holidays coming up and what they're gonna buy for everybody they care about. But everybody that they care about is thinking about what to buy them and they have no idea. So if you write an email, make a blog post, and it's like, what to buy your fitness fanatic family member for Christmas, and you link like, here's how you pay for a month of their service at my gym, here's how you buy them the shoes, whatever. Like, that's that's where you capture revenue from at this type of year. It's not your clients because they're spending revenue other places income other places, it's their friends who are trying to spend money on them. So, John, I I would because you're so good at this, man. I'd love to put you on the spot here. And I want to um maybe run through an NSI and I'm gonna give you the timing objection so that we can show people how you would handle that. Is that cool?
John:Let's do it.
Chris:Okay, man. So I'm the client. John is the gym owner. I'm sitting in front of him. It is today, November the 21st. And I I want to join a gym, but man, like I'm starting to think maybe now's not the right time. Go ahead, John.
John:Well, hold on. Let's uh let's uh let's start from the beginning here. So yeah, you know, I I've just uh I've just presented you with uh the pricing of my package, Chris. Yeah, and what are you gonna what are you gonna say? Are you are you telling me, you know, it it costs six hundred dollars for our 12-week whatever? How does that sound, Chris?
Chris:It sounds good. Uh what I might do is put it off till January. You know, I got Thanksgiving and then Christmas coming up, and I'm just thinking, like, am I really gonna be able to stick to this? You know, I we've got some holiday parties and stuff. I I don't know, I might wait till January.
John:I totally get that. Uh your timing's important, Chris. But just so I understand, we're good on the pricing. It's just a timing issue for you.
Chris:Yeah, I mean, obviously budgets get tighter this time of year, too, but I I could swing that. It's just I'm worried about the timing, really.
John:And you told me your goals were you wanted to lose an extra 10 pounds by springtime, uh, you know, because hockey's over then, and that's when you you take your shirt off in Canada. In addition to that, you said you want to feel better, have more energy with the kids.
Chris:Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Like I by 5 p.m. when the kids get home, I am absolutely drained. I don't want to do stuff in the evenings, you know, it's driving my wife crazy. And I just kind of like, you know, I wake up feeling tired in the mornings. Like, I gotta get over this.
John:And if like we wait until January, we go from November, December, you're not working out. You said you're gonna be going to a lot of holiday parties. Do you think we're gonna be closer to that goal or farther away?
Chris:Well, actually, when you spell it out like that, it it's actually it feels like we're cutting my time in half that I can get this done if I miss November, December, and start, you know, second week of January. So yeah, I I don't know, man. Maybe uh maybe I should just get started right now. I mean, can you kind of work with my schedule a little bit if I already know in advance the days that I'm not gonna be able to come to the gym?
John:Yeah, so we talked about coming in three times a week, and I understand that that is pretty aggressive because you know, you got the holiday parties that you mentioned, you got family in town, but we can do something where maybe for the next six weeks, we'll do two times a week instead of three times a week, and that'll actually save you a little bit of money because I know you you gotta buy holiday presents for the kids. Uh, and then we can start with that 12-week challenge program comes January, but we already have that routine in place, the ball is running, and we're not starting from scratch or even behind where we are today. What do you think about that, Chris?
Chris:Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. I I feel I feel calmer about it now. Like, in fact, I think coaching is gonna help me even more. Because if I was trying to do this on my own over the next six weeks, I would fail.
John:Cool. Let's get the credit card.
Chris:Okay.
John:Uh, so yeah, I I would I would just, hey, what's the pain point? Where they are, just frame it like, are you gonna be closer to the goal or farther away? Obviously, it'll be farther away. I would down sell to something like you know, if it's like a I can't come in three or four times a week, I'd try and do two or even one, depending on what it is you're selling on the front end. I'm assuming most gym owners listening are gonna be selling something in the you know six to twelve week range. And then if you gave me some type of objection on the hey, I absolutely can't start, I can't do two times a week. It's a week off, a week on, something like that. I would either downsell to like a pack, you know, if that's something a gym owner offers. So, hey, let's let's buy 10 sessions. And if you got to take a week off here, a week off here, at least we can burn through those and get going. And then if you told me no there, it would be something along the lines of, well, why don't we, you know, make the commitment today? Because if it's something you're guaranteeing you're gonna start, let's make the commitment today and we'll start the ship in January. So I would just keep going down, keep going down and trying to chip away at those objections until we got something that was right for each of us.
Chris:Okay. Can I just point something out for the listener that John did there too naturally? So I I kind of voiced, well, maybe, and then he sat there and waited, and he waited for me to say the next thing. Sometimes, uh, if you're not used to sales, you kind of feel like it's this talking race, and you have to fill the silence and you have to say the next thing, and you wind up over-explaining and complicating things and adding variables and options that paralyze people. John just waited for me to step across the line on my own. John, can we could we do that again with a price objection? Like I think a lot of listeners are gonna hear the timing objection and the price objection too. Can we do one more?
John:A double? So I can't, I I can't do the pri okay. So let's assume, you know, what is it? What do you think the average Jim or listening to the show? What are they what are they trying to sell? They're trying to give me what it what did I just pitch you? Because that'll that'll that'll depend how I handle the price objection.
Chris:Yeah, hopefully they're selling an on-ramp program that's gonna last, you know, two to three weeks and cost four to five hundred dollars. And it's one-on-one training, and um that's the starting point.
John:Okay, okay, and I don't really have a downsell in that situation, so I just gotta I just got we just gotta hammer through.
Chris:Yeah, I mean okay, yeah, let's see what happens here. So, guys, if you're listening, I'm really putting John on the spot here. But he had no forewarning that we were gonna do this. He's just good at it. And it's you know, reps, but also mentorship that makes him good at it. So I'm sitting in front of him. John is at my gym catalyst, and he's trying to get me to sign up for on-ramp.
John:Okay. So the program, Chris, that's gonna be six hundred dollars for the on-ramp and the first month of membership. How does that sound to you?
Chris:Well, it's I mean, it sounds good. Like the way that you've laid it out, I see how it's gonna work. I'm a little bit worried about ho holiday bills right now, to be honest. You know, we're just coming up on um Thanksgiving, and then I've got Christmas. There's only like two more pay periods until Christmas, and you know, I I tend to overspend every year. So I might I might want to wait till January, get my you know, my bills paid, and then start.
John:I totally understand. I got uh three kids of my own. Uh my youngest wants an e-bike and uh money's tight this time of year. But when you say it's you know expensive, or if you're saying, you know, money's tight, is it something where you just don't have the cash to pay for this now? Or is it something else? Is it you don't think the program's gonna get you to the goal of you know uh losing 10 pounds and having a little more energy to play with your kids in the spring?
Chris:No, I feel like the program will work. I'm a little bit worried that if I spend the money now, I'm not gonna have it for gifts next week.
John:So to be clear, you feel like we're gonna be able to get you to your stated goal.
Chris:Yeah.
John:And so the issue is we can just work out this payment, you're committed to starting.
Chris:Yeah, I mean, if we can make the payment work, I would start sooner.
John:Okay. So, you know, I mentioned it was 600 for the program. Is it something where if we did 300 today and 300 four weeks from now, you would be able to get started?
Chris:Um, maybe. You know, it's still high enough that I would want to talk to my wife about it.
John:Well, you told me earlier that you were really focused on losing those 10 pounds and that you went into your checkup and the doctor said, Hey, you know, that blood pressure is looking a little high, you gotta fix it. Is that the most important thing in your life right now? Is that you know, you came here and you sounded really committed to changing it because you said you wanted to be around for your children, you wanted to, you know, get that green light from your doctor, you want to coach hockey for the next 40 years. Are you still serious about making that change?
Chris:Yeah, in fact, you know, talking to my wife last night, like we she knows how important this is to me. So maybe what I could do is tell other family members like, you know, don't buy me a gift. This is what I want to do instead.
John:Yeah, and and that's definitely something we could do. I mean, the the question you gotta ask yourself is is solving this problem, is getting that blood pressure down, losing the 10 pounds, is that worth $100 a week to you?
Chris:Definitely.
John:Yeah. Then even though it's a difficult time, is this something you know we can get going today?
Chris:Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think we should start next week and and she and I'll work it out as soon as I get home.
John:Probably wouldn't have gone that well, but you know, I I appreciate the layup. You thought you were gonna give me a harder run around there?
Chris:No, no, that's great, John. That was great, yeah. And you know, it's it's funny, like as I'm going through that as the client, the answer just appears to me. But if if I were sitting in your seat, I would have thought, oh, the client's not gonna think of this, tell their family to pay for it for Christmas. And if I had said that, the client would have been like, nah, I don't know, but because it was the client's idea, they're immediately bought into it. So cool.
John:Yeah, I mean, I'll I'll just try and ask questions, right? Like that that's that's the game. And so, you know, there are really only like four or five different objections, and you can train for every single one.
Chris:Yep.
John:And the idea is making sure that the thing that they're telling you is actually the issue, right? Yeah, so you can see in both cases it was like uh for the money one, it's like do you think you're gonna get the result? And so I wanted to make sure it's not like uh you're not feeling a hundred percent certain that the program is gonna get you what you're looking to do. And so once we have that out of the way, it's just tackling the pricing. So can we do split pay? Can we downsell into a different thing? Can we, you know, reprior, like can we help break any mental barriers that make you think that, you know, this is too expensive? And you know, it's like the price is gonna be the same when you start next time, and those holiday presents are already, they gotta get paid for either way. Um, you know, it's just making sure that you get them over the line there. Or, you know, same thing on the timing thing. The the first thing I asked you is, hey, is this gonna get you to your goal of losing 10 pounds? It's just a timing thing, and you said yes. And so then it just becomes a matter of time, and then it just becomes an issue of okay, can you come in less? Do we do a class pack if you're doing a week on, week off? You know, it's just you you you break it down to one thing where you get stuck in a corner there is if you're trying to tackle like three or four different objections at the same time, and you notice you brought your like spouse thing in in the middle there, and I just kind of ignored it. Yeah, you know, you you tried to get it going on another objection, and so you know, if you would have kept saying that, you know, we would have had to pivot and address that, but you know, I I just kind of didn't hear that and was like, Well, what if we did this? And so, you know, I I just want to stay focused on the one thing we're dealing with at the time, handle that objection, then we can move on to a next one if uh it presents itself.
Chris:Okay, that's great, man. Thank you, and and thanks for. Playing along, like uh I know that was a surprise. What I'd like to talk about now, I think really ties into the sales process, and that's ARM. So if you're following, I'm looking at page 30 of the state of the industry guide. Again, you can get it for free, twobrainbusiness.com forward slash data. And the number one challenge with gyms right now is that the average revenue per member that they're getting is too low. They think they're going to get 300 members. So, you know, if some of them only pay me 100 bucks, who cares? I'll make it up in volume. We know the reality is different. The average gym has 129 members, and they need to make it up with the members that they have. So I'm looking at the ARM numbers, and it's, you know, the average revenue per member last year was $158.54. That's coming up, but it's still too low. Is part of that our lack of sales skills, John, or is it coming from somewhere else?
John:No, or maybe, but uh I think a lot of it is projecting the gym like gym owners projecting their budget on their clients.
Chris:What do you mean by that?
John:So if something like okay, there's an example of uh with someone within the two-brain program now, yeah, where they're in a major urban market and their mentor is trying to get them to charge $85 an hour for personal training, which is under market rate. And the clients think that is insane. The quote was something along the lines of a CEO of a major company wouldn't pay that.
Chris:Yeah, the gym owner thinks that's insane, right?
John:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you know, the mentor and everyone within TwoBrain who's been doing this for a while, like clearly understands that you know, if you are someone who's worth tens of millions of dollars or a high income earner, you know, you're willing to pay extra to ensure you get the results that you're after, right? Like if you are the CEO of a public company, saving $15 for an hour of personal training is way less important than getting the best personal training, right? Yeah, you're willing to pay for that premium service. But I think there's something in the gym owner's mind where if $85 sounds very expensive to them, it probably sounds very expensive to their clients. And so I think there is a lot of that in our world, right? Where you know, we can talk about what gym owners make later, but you know, since we've been doing this guide, it's hovered somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000 to $50,000. And so uh, you know, paying $100 an hour for anything when you're when you're bringing home that amount of money is tricky. But, you know, if you think about it and you're you know selling to a doctor, selling to a lawyer who makes 10 times that amount, you know, paying $85 an hour for someone like that is the equivalent of the gym owner paying $8.50 for something. Because if their income's 10 times more, like the the service when anchored based off the income is you know 10 times cheaper for them than it would be for the gym owner. And so, you know, if you asked a gym owner, would you pay $8.50 for I don't know, any type of service, like they're they're likely going to be like, yeah, you know, it's easy to I can afford it. And same thing for you know, a doctor is making $500,000 a year, paying $85 an hour, especially when you're time strapped and starved, to make sure that you're getting excellent training, someone looking over you and a really personalized service that works around your schedule. Like that's a no-brainer. And so I think there's a lot of that. And then the secondary piece there is there's a lot of like a lot of gym owners set pricing by looking at what the cheapest gym in charge, like the cheapest gym charges, and then like the most expensive gym and trying to put it somewhere in the middle. Or if they're a new gym owner, they're just gonna put it, you know, five dollars under the cheapest gym, thinking that like because they're the cheapest, naturally everyone's gonna go to them. But the reality is people pay a premium for quality. And so if you are someone who wants to sell small group personal training, if you're someone who wants to sell one-on-one training, you need to understand that price is not the most important thing, especially when you look at the numbers you need to make that business work. You know, you can make $100,000 a year as a gym owner with 50 101 clients, you can make $100,000 a year small group personal training with a hundred small group training clients. So you don't need a ton of people. Something that you wrote about in one of your books, I can't keep track of which one, uh, was you know, you were you were personal training during the 08-09 financial crisis. Yeah, and it was something along the lines of like, even though most of the town was struggling, you know, the doctors and lawyers were still showing up and still paying for their personal training, despite what the economy was doing. And, you know, as we're recording this, it's Friday, November 21st. The stock market's in the middle of a pullback. How how far back it goes, who knows? But that's that's something you need to be thinking about. You need to remember the fact that if you want to, if you want to do well in this business, we already talked about how the average gym doesn't get a lot of leads. And if you go look at the data, it doesn't change much between a personal training, a small group, or a big group gym. Like at the top of the funnel, every one of those gyms is getting a relatively similar amount of leads. As you go down the funnel as well, the same amount, like a very similar amount of leads show up and a very similar amount of leads buy. But if the small group personal training gym is selling something for $600 a month and you're selling something as a big group training gym for $150 a month, like there's a huge gap there, especially if you're getting the same amount of leads and the same amount of sales, right? You need to be more efficient with the at bats that you are getting, unless you're somebody who, you know, is following the four funnels that TwoBrain Preaches. You still have a way to make ads work. If you're one of these gyms who, you know, you're struggling to keep the lights on, you you got you got $10,000 to $15,000 of revenue, and after all the bills are paid, you know, you're you're you're taking home minimum wage. You got to ask yourself like, is it the model? Is it the pricing? Can I be more efficient with these at bats that I'm getting? Because the way a lot of gym owners think, it's like, oh, if I can just get more bodies in the door, I can close them, or if I can just get the gym from 100 members to 200 members, like I'll be, I'll be raking it in. But the reality is, like, a lot of gyms can hit their goals with the amount of members they have if they just adjusted the service and the pricing to reflect the value that they're delivering.
Chris:I think there's a really great lesson there, man. Thank you. You know, in in times of economic crisis, what happens is people actually spend less on groceries, but supplement purchases go up. And the the woman that said this to me back in 2008, Jennifer, I love her dearly, still see her in the cafe sometimes. She said, Chris, you know, as soon as this financial crisis hits, you're done, buddy. You're done. Nobody goes to the gym anymore. I'll see you on Monday. And what she was missing there is like, yeah, people do cancel gym memberships during financial challenges, but nobody cancels personal training. And it's partially because those people are less affected by the financial challenges and partially because, you know, it's like they're paying for a premium service, they see more value in it. When I was trying to sell personal training back then, um, I couldn't afford a personal trainer. But as soon as I could afford it, that was the first thing that I invested in was more personalized coaching. And I think you'll find the same thing with a lot of like smart professionals, they want personalization, customization, human touch, even more now in the age of AI. So what the point John made is so important here. Like, if you if you compare what people are charging and what their close rates are, even if you look like what what's the ads for personal training versus CrossFit or Metabolic? They're the same ads, it's the same people coming in. It's just, you know, one person is better at closing at a $600 than you are at $120. That's all it is.
John:Can I share my screen? Are we allowed to do that on the Run a Profitable Gym podcast? So yeah, so let's pull up the guide here, right? To kind of put numbers to what I'm speaking about. So if you are a big group gym based off the survey, you're getting five new clients a month. If you're a small group personal training gym, you're getting four. And if you're a one-on-one gym, three. So you know it is less as you move up the model, but then we go down three or four pages here. Oh, this is a nice kilo ad. We go down three or four pages here to talk about what gyms are charging, and let's go find what the most expensive membership is. Did I scroll past it, Chris?
Chris:Um, I'm looking at page 30, ARM.
John:All right, this is the median membership that I want. This page. Okay.
Chris:Oh, we got you.
John:I'm on page 32. What gyms are charging? So this is median monthly price for most expensive membership or service package. So let's run some numbers here, right? We said the average big group gym gets five new clients. And if the most expensive package is $175 a month, that is $875 in added monthly revenue. So five new members at $175. Perfect. Now that's assuming everybody's buying the most expensive thing, which they aren't, but you know, bear with me, guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
John:Now we said four small group changing gets four new members, and let's and then the average, let's see, $399 per membership. That is almost sixteen hundred dollars in revenue per month added. So that's double what a large group training gym is taking home. So five times 175 versus four at 399, like on the same amount of leads, same amount of effort. Actually, it's less because you're doing less appointments. A small group training gym is bringing in $1,600 in monthly recurring. And then we go down to the personal training where they had what did the what do we say there? Three and then three times $900, that's $2,700 a month. So that's almost double what the small group training gym is bringing home. And so you can see how pricing is an incredibly important variable when it comes to how much money you take home as a gym owner. If you are able to set, and and the crazy thing is, if you can sell stuff for $200 a month, you can sell stuff for $900 a month. It's honestly not that different of a process, it is not that different of a sales conversation. And so I'm not telling everybody to go out and become a one-on-one training gym. That's not the message here. But to go back to where we started, how uh the the point is, you know, if leads are relatively constant, going down the funnel is relatively constant, regardless of model, pricing is an incredible variable and probably one of the most important ones when it comes to you know setting up your business model and making sure that you have a viable gym that can pay you a fair wage for a long period of time. Because I, you know, one of the biggest problems that we see is is just people getting out of the game. Like, I don't know how many 10-year affiliates are left, Chris. I I have no clue.
Chris:Well, a couple of my friends, they actually went out looking for them at the CrossFit Games and the Rogue Invitational. And what they found is that there are extremely few, and the ones who remain who are more than 10 years along, have usually been through two or three different owners. So I I visited, you know, Bill and Stacy Russell in Cleveland last weekend. They are an actual 17 or 18 year affiliate, single owner that whole time. That's extremely rare.
John:We um, I mean, we have we went down and we uh we have this in the uh state of the industry. Yeah, but I will go dig for it. Okay, here we go.
Chris:You know, what's interesting about the numbers John just showed is it's quite often the same people signing up for personal training or signing up for group training, depending on what's offered them, they don't know when they come in. Like all they know is you're a coaching gym. They don't know if you're gonna say one-on-one is the best or whatever. So that means they really don't have any idea what the pricing is going to be. And yes, there are some people who know about group training and they're only gonna want group training, but there are also people who don't want to do group training. And if you don't have a one-on-one option, like they're gone.
John:Yeah, I'm someone who likes training in a one-on-one environment. I'm a weirdo, but like I would I would prefer to go to a gym and have a personal trainer. I just have like a history of injury and and I like that, but like I want to go to a training gym with a cool environment, like I don't want to work out in a big globo gym. And so if a gym near me doesn't offer that, like I'm disqualified like as a client. And it is not unusual for people to be like me and prefer that. Like my partner Mateo at Kilo, same thing down the street. He goes to uh he goes and gets personal training at uh the local gym down the street. And and we're gym owners, like we are both ex-gym owners. Like we we can write a program, we can, we can, we can do it ourselves if we wanted to, but we just prefer like you know, when I'm busy and stressed and thinking about a million things, like to have somebody else be responsible for thinking about my fitness and not injuring myself and telling me to back down or push harder, like that's worth a lot. And I think that that like you know, as people, some of the data you know, I I know you did a couple podcasts with like uh the younger, the the youths being the trending demo, yeah. But now my generation, the millennials, we're we're getting a little older, our backs are feeling our backs, our knees, our shoulders are getting a little tight, we're getting a little jingle in our pocket. And so, you know, we're we're definitely that next prime candidate for small group or or personal training. I do think even if you are a gym that is primarily group, which a lot of the survey respondents are, you should offer that. Like it just makes sense. It just allows you to, it just allows you to serve a broader clientele and allows you to charge a higher price point for a percentage of the memberships and allows you to get to a point where you can take a good wage from your gym. Like I keep going back to that point. So much of TwoBrain's mission is making entrepreneurship, making gym ownership a sustainable career. And to Chris's point, and you know, it hasn't been, you know, it's very clear if I think of the people who were operating gyms when I was when I started, you know, 12, 13 years ago, they're very I can count on one hand from my initial friend group how many of them still own a gym. And that's sad. And I think a lot of that is and I think a lot of that can be change.
Chris:Yeah, that that's my belief too, John. I'm I'm optimistic that we can change things. And you know, the the first step of change is you got to start from truth, and that's why we do this every single year. So, you know, John, you're a you're a massive part of this. Putting the thing together, you're you know, one of the people behind the scenes that nobody really understands is putting in months and months and months of work to deliver this thing that we just give away for free. So thank you for that. But also thank you for your expert analysis as we go through the process and sharing your expertise and thoughts on this podcast, too. There's there's a lot more here. You know, the the best thing you can do is uh come to a meetup where John is there and and peg him and corner them and and drill him with your own questions because he really is good at this stuff.
John:Two brain summit, two brainsummit.com, go there. I would be there. Uh hanging out in the two brain booth. Come talk to me. That's awesome. Get your ticket now.
Chris:Yeah, I mean, one of the best things that you can do is you can get this guide, right? Start from truth, like start from actual data, two brain business.com forward slash data, download this guide for free. And then if you want to have these kind of conversations, we have this public group called Gym Owners United. It's public, but also private. We put up some guardrails, we get the sarcasm and the funny memes out really quickly, and we can have a thoughtful, meaningful conversation without bias in that group. You can join that at any time for free. John and I are both in there, and people quite often ask questions from state of the industry. What does this mean? How should I interpret this? Should I actually change my business? That's the best place to do it for free. And if you are decided that you're going to make a change, the best way to do that is with a business coach. Just like you know, your clients come to you for coaching and you help them change. We help business owners change from whatever you're doing now to more profitable. So thanks for coming on, John.
John:Hey, love being here.
Chris:All right, man. This has been a profitable gym. Um, you can subscribe to us on YouTube as well as your favorite podcast platform, and uh, we'll keep bringing you this stuff to help your gym become more profitable.
