The 1-Hour Marketing Audit for Gym Owners

Your gym is leaking leads. But you can fix it in 60 minutes with this marketing audit.

Get a free copy of the 26-page audit workbook here.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper walks you through a complete one-hour audit of your gym’s marketing funnel—from lead generation to closing sales.

He demonstrates the audit live with his own gym, Catalyst, revealing every problem he finds along the way.

The audit covers four critical parts of the marketing funnel:

• Lead generation: Can prospects find you?
• Lead capture: Can they reach you?
• Lead nurture: Do you follow up?
• Appointments and closing: Is there a path forward?

Most gym owners think they need more leads. In reality, they’re often getting enough leads but losing them because follow-up is poor, calls to action are unclear or sales processes are weak.

Fix the leaks before pouring more water into the funnel.

Tune in to find out what to look for and how to prioritize fixes. Just one hour of focused work can help you recover thousands of dollars of lost gym revenue. 

Get your free copy of the “The 1-Hour Marketing Audit for Gym Owners” via the link below.

Links

1-Hour Marketing Audit for Gym Owners

Gym Owners United

Book a Call

0:01 - Intro

2:26 - Part 1: Lead Generation

15:56 - Part 2: Lead Capture

28:05 - Part 3: Lead Nurture

38:21 - Part 4: Appointment and Close

49:40 - Results

Transcript

Chris 0:02

Gym owners, your marketing funnels are leaking prospects. But we're going to fix that today in about 60 minutes with this workbook. To get your copy of this workbook, just message audit to TwoBrite. This is the one-hour marketing audit for gym owners. And if you spend this time with me today, you're going to get more leads, more sales appointments, and more clients. And that means your gym will earn more, you'll change more lives, and you'll take home more cash personally. In other words, you're going to make an impact, you'll make a profit, and you'll make it home for dinner. We're not going to be spending more money on ads, we're not going to be offering deep discounts or creating wild bait and switch offers. Instead, I'm going to help you see your business as potential clients see it from the outside in. You're going to become an outsider with me for the next 60 minutes. I'll help you change your perspective and then take really clear action to improve your gym. We'll use this 26-page workbook to find out exactly where your clients are bleeding out of your funnel. And then I'll help you repair your funnels fast. This time investment is going to pay off in a big way because we're going to cover lead generation, we're going to cover lead nurture, we're going to cover lead capture, and we're going to cover appointment booking and closing too. And then I'll help you evaluate your results and give you a plan to fix your marketing funnels. Now I've done this at my gym. I went through this entire audit and I've done similar audits many, many times over the last years, but I always found more problems to fix. And the results of fixing them were immediate. If you take action with me today, your lead flow will improve and you'll add more high-value clients. Here's what you need: you need 60 minutes of uninterrupted time. Close the office door, turn off the music in the main gym, and let's do this. You need your phone and you need a computer in front of you. You want your computer open to a private or incognito browser window so that you can see your gym as an outsider would. And you need this workbook. We're going to go through it together right now. Just message audit to TubeBrain to get your copy. Let's get going. Now before we start, I just want to say this. You're going to find problems. And that's the point. Every problem that you find is an opportunity to improve your marketing. And every opportunity to improve your marketing creates more clients, more profitability, more opportunities for your staff, and a better chance of getting home in time for dinner. Part one, lead generation. You can think of your marketing as a funnel. And ultimately, we want to pour more people into the funnel, as many people as we can. Not every person that starts at the top of your funnel is going to become a client at the bottom, but the more people that come in the top, the more likely we are to have more people signing up for your gym at the bottom of your funnel. This work is really important because when people are ready to join a gym, we want to be the gym that's in front of them. When they're searching for you, we want you to be found. And if you're not being found, we want to know now so that we can fix that. So the rewards are more people coming into the top of the funnel, more people finding you when they're looking for you instead of joining another gym. We're going to start here on step one. What I'd like you to do is open up your incognito or private browser window. And the first thing that I want you to do is to go onto Google and search for your gym name and your town. Now I've done that here. I've gone Catalyst Gym, Sault Ste. Marie, that's the name of my town. And what do I see pop up? Well, my gym pops up first. That's good news. You know, there's no other gyms with the same name. There are gyms called Catalyst down in Buffalo. There's a great gym called Catalyst, but there's none in my city. So what shows up first is my gym and my website. Am I the top result? Yes. Does the preview, what does the preview text say about me? It says that we're the best gym. That's great to hear. If people are out there searching for me because they think I am the best gym, I want them to realize that yes, I am. And then we build strong bodies. Okay, and you're going to want to copy this down verbatim in your workbook because you want a record of this for later. Then we'll help you make a plan to hit your felt health and fitness goals. We'll help you make a plan. Now, if you've been doing this for a while, you're probably already seeing a place I can improve, and maybe you can improve in your gym too. I can look at this and say, well, I don't really talk about the problems that my clients are trying to solve. So I need to improve that. And I make a mental note like this might be important. The next thing that I want to do is do another search, but I want to remove my gym name. And now I'm just going to search for a gym in my town. So Gym Sault Ste. Marie. Where do I appear in the results? Well, bar ones comes first, the refinery comes second, good life comes third, bar ones appears again fourth, and then me. So I come fifth. Yikes, that's scary. You know, I publish more content than anybody else here. Uh, so that's not my problem. I've been around for 20 years, that's not my problem. What is the problem? We're gonna dig deeper and figure that out. Because while these are good gyms, you know, bar ones and refinery, I know the owners of both, they're great coaches, these are good gyms, but I want my gym to appear first, and I want your gym to appear first in your town too. So who appears above me? Well, I've got bar ones, okay. I've got the refinery. I've got good life, which is kind of the the big Globo gym brand in Canada. I've got bar ones again, and then me. So the top three results were these bar ones, the refinery, and good life. Again, good gyms, you know, good trainers. They've been around for a while, they've got great reputations. Why are they showing up above me on Google search results, though? You know, we're gonna we're gonna find that out next. Step two is to look at our Google business profile check. Now, remember, when people are sitting on their couch, it's midnight, they've just binged five episodes of their favorite Netflix thing, and you know, they they're halfway done like a liter of ice cream, they are ready to make a change in their lives. They're looking at themselves and saying, I am not happy with who I am. I want to be somebody different. And that's when they open up their phone and they search best gym near me. We want to be the number one result, but also if they're looking specifically at our gym for more information, we want to make sure that they're finding the information that will guide them to coming into my gym or taking the next step. This is what lead generation means. We're generating interest in strangers. So if I'm looking at my Google My Business profile, it's showing me some places I can improve. First, when was my last post? Well, I've got to scroll down to see that, but it looks like the last post that I made was September 9th, 2025, six months ago. Yikes. A lot of us forget that Google is the most important social media platform there is. And so while I am posting to Instagram daily for my gym, I am not updating this nearly often enough. My last post was six months ago. People might even think that I'm not open anymore. That's scary. When was my last photo added? Well, it was the same day. It was that graphic of heart rate zones. And if you search for Catalyst Gym Sault Ste. Marie, you'll see all this stuff for yourself too. When was my last review? Well, that was a little bit more recent. I've I see I've got one there from someone called Mike back in January. So that was uh January. We'll just write that down. January 2026. So that's that's good. It's a little bit more recent. I should have more though. When did I last respond to a review? Uh-oh. Now, here's the thing about responding to reviews. All of us have some kind of reviews. Nobody's gonna have a perfect score of five stars unless they're brand new. But what's most important is that we're responding to them, showing the bots and the humans who are searching that we're humans too, and that we're gonna respond to every review, good and bad. So if I look at the last time I responded to a review, this is kind of a scary realization. The last one was 2023. Somebody left a one-star review on my gym because they said they didn't like it, but they'd never actually been there. Maybe they thought they were visiting another catalyst or something. And I responded to that review just to let them know you haven't been there. That review, I think, is still up on my page. But the the important part is that anybody reading that review will also read my comments. Now it's even more important that we respond to every comment, every review, good and bad, because a lot of people are searching with AI instead of going on Google. And I'll show you that in one moment. So the last activity date for me was January 2026, but that was passive. That wasn't me. I'm gonna actually put down 9925, September 9th, 2025, nearly six months ago. So this is a big flashing beacon for me that I need to improve here if I want to get more leads. By the way, if you need more five-star reviews after we're done this little hour together, watch this video. Open up the guide again, click here, and I'm gonna tell you exactly how to get more five-star reviews. Step three is our social media stranger test. And we want to make sure that our social media appeals to people who are trying to solve a problem. Nobody's just out there looking for a gym for the sake of joining a gym. Unless you're the first CrossFit in some remote backwater now that everybody's excited about trying for the first time, they're not searching for that. They're searching for a way to solve their problem. And so we want to open up our Instagram or our Facebook. These are the two that really matter the most right now. And you want to look at your last 10 posts as if you're a stranger. If you want to look at mine, just go to at CatalystGym and you'll see my profile too. Are my posts welcoming to new people or are they inside jokes for members? Well, I try to be welcoming and I show smiley, happy people working out every single day, but most of my posts are just like, here's today's workout. So they're not really for strangers. They really are, you know, for my members. I'm gonna write that down. On the other hand, I do post every single day, and that's 80% of the battle. So I'm not totally screwing up my social media platform. It might not be my top opportunity, but it is an opportunity to fix nonetheless. Is there a clear way for somebody to contact you? I am pretty good about having a clear call to action, but only about once a week. Once a week, we post our podcast on our social media platforms. There's a clear call to action, click this link, link in comments, whatever. I also do sometimes say, send me a DM for more information, but not often enough. And a lot of my posts don't tell people what step to take next. So they might be interested, they might be looking at the post, they might hit the like button, but those likes don't count. I want them to be able to take the next step. I need to do better at having a clearer call to action so they know what to do next. Then, could somebody tell what you offer and who it's for? I think so, judging by the pictures, especially on Instagram, which is a more visual platform, I'm gonna give myself a yes. But overall, I'm kind of a C plus at this. I am posting consistently. And again, like that'll get you 80% of the way there. Okay, so I'm posting consistently. That's good, but I'm not speaking to people about how I'm gonna solve their problems, okay? So not solving problems. That's bad. And can somebody you know contact me very easily? My call to action. I'm not consistent enough with that. I'm I'm gonna give myself an X on that too. So this is this is good because it's good opportunities for me to fix my problem, get more leads through social media. It's probably not my biggest glaring priority, but you'll see why in a moment. The next thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna see if AI is finding my gym, and here's why. Already about 30 to 40 percent of people who are searching for things will use Chat GPT, Claude, another AI engine, their favorite one, Gemini, to find the answer to something. So, Google, if you ask it, what's the best gym near me? Google, Google will give you options, AI will give you the answer. And so more and more people are turning to AI. But here's key AI doesn't know anything on its own. What it does is it searches Google and it searches proximity to you, it searches reviews, it searches information, and then gives the user an answer based on that. So it still depends very heavily on your Google My Business page. So if I go into Claude, which is my preferred AI, and I started a brand new profile so that it didn't know anything about me, and I said, What are the best gyms in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario? This was like a knife through the heart. I didn't even appear. I wasn't even in the top 10. Instead, what it does is it goes into greater depth about bar ones, the George Leach Center, which is like a university gym, Fit for Less, the Discount Gym, Good Life Fitness, the Globo Gym, the refinery, again, a good gym. And then it says overall, bar ones and the George Leach tend to get the strongest consistent reviews in the city. Yes, it hurts, right? This is breaking my heart that I'm not at the top. I've been around for 20 years. I have the greatest trainers, I love them all. I love our gym. And I'm not saying that the other gyms are bad, but I want to be the answer when ChatGPT or Claude is out there looking. But it does give me a clue here. They have the strongest consistent reviews. And so that tells me that if I do better at getting stronger and more consistent reviews, that will bump my rating up inside the AI, too. So if I'm working through this, what are the best gyms in your city? Or can you recommend a CrossFit gym or a kids training gym or a high rocks gym near me? What comes up? Do you appear at all? I gotta say no. Yikes. Who else appears in the results? Well, it's actually the same people, right? It's bar ones, good trainers, but I don't want them to appear before me. Uh it's George Leach, which is a university gym. Which could be why they have so many reviews. It's mostly kids using that gym. Um, I've got the refinery, I've got good life, I've got fit for less. Okay, it's probably winning the price war. I need to get my rating up because more and more people are using AI to answer the questions for them. So if I now look at all these opportunities, and it might sound like I've just gone through like a litany of problems with my gym, and that's true, while it hurts to uncover these, I've also discovered a ton of opportunities to fix my biggest problems, which is lead generation. So if I now go to the last page of this book and say what is the biggest gap that I found, I could list 10 things here, couldn't I? But what I'm gonna actually do is say it's the Google My business. Here's why. This acts kind of like a lead domino. If I solve this problem, it won't solve every problem, but it will definitely improve my search ranking. Uh both in Google and AI. So it improves my discoverability. It will definitely help with getting people to continue the conversation because I will respond to those messages. Okay, so responded. Okay. So what I'm looking at here is probably and I need to make more posts so they can show that I'm current and relevant. What I'm looking at here is probably 60 minutes of work, right? And if I invest 60 minutes into fixing up my Google My Business, getting people to give more five-star reviews, et cetera, that's gonna be the lead domino that's gonna affect a lot of that other stuff. Yes, social media is still, you know, kind of a priority, but it's not the top priority right now. It's important, but it's not urgent. Part two, lead capture. Now, this is really important because all of this attention that we're getting through improved social media and Google search results and AI, it's great. But if those people just come to our website and we never hear from them again, then we don't even know they're out there, right? We can't even tell how many leads that we're getting unless we capture something about them. We need to coach them to take the next step, to get more information, to book a no-sweat intro at our gym. Because the reality is that likes and comments on our social media posts don't pay the bills, do they? We need people to take the next step. And so lead capture is critically important to our marketing. In fact, I would rather have perfect lead capture than perfect lead generation because it means that I have a sticky net and all the people who are flying around paying attention are actually taking the next step with me. So, what we're gonna do next is we're gonna look at our website. Our website is our primary spot where we capture leads, and we wanna open up our website. Now I've got I've got an advantage. This is like blood doping for gyms. I've got a kilo site, and so I know that this site has been optimized. I know that they're constantly testing different variables and updating my site. I don't have to worry about that. They're doing all of that for me. So when I'm going through this, I should be getting really good scores on lead capture, but let's find out. First, let's go to our website homepage, and you can see mine at catalystgym.com. Um find your get started or contact us button. And what I'm looking for here is book a free no-sweat intro. I want people to know like here is the next step. So I've got one here, I've got one here that's twice above the fold. Like they just open up the page, they don't even scroll. They've got two options to book a no-sweat intro. If I scroll down, look at book a no-sweat intro right there. Okay. And again, here's now here's our programs. Most people are not going to read this far. All I want them to do is be encouraged to take the next step. So, how many clicks does it take to find your next step, your book a free no sweat intro? None. They were there. I mean, it's twice there on my page. Next, is it visible without scrolling? Yes. That means does it appear above the fold? Imagine you're looking at a website like it was a newspaper. You want your book of free no sweat intro to be above the fold in the newspaper. Okay. Um, fill out your own contact form. Okay, so if I click free no sweat intro, fill out the form to get started, pops up right away. I can fill in my own name and email address, okay, with my cell phone number. I can fit that in. Okay, so boom. That took me like 10 seconds. What happens immediately after you submit? Well, I get this message that says thank you for your submission. And look at that. I got a text right there on my watch already. Hey, it's Chris from Catalyst. Thanks for filling this out. Did I get a confirmation? Yes, I did. And did I receive an automated email? Probably. Let's look. So if I open up my email here, there it is. Hey, thanks for your interest in Catalyst. Right away. Did I get an automated email? That's perfect. Now, automations and bots and automated emails will never replace the human contact. But what's most important here is speed of outreach. So if you aren't responding right away to these leads, you need to have a safety net. And that's what a system like Kilo is there for. It's an automated email system that we call a CRM, and that's there to respond to people automatically. It doesn't have to take over. It doesn't have to be a robot having a conversation with them. Instead, it can just let that person know that they're heard, that they fill out the form properly, and that you're going to get back to them. And then it's up to you to get back to them. That's how you capture a lead. What did I receive? Well, I got a text in under one minute. Really impressive. I got an email about five minutes later. Okay, as a person that likes email, you know, I like to see that. And I also know if I'm waiting around here, I'm gonna get a call from that gym within eight hours. By the end of the business day, somebody is actually gonna call me and talk to me. Now I know that because I own the gym, but remember the client doesn't know that. So the client sees I filled in this form, they immediately acknowledge me. I got this text. This feels good. Do I need to keep contacting other gyms or should I wait and talk to this gym? So this is why this is really important. You want to be the first to respond because most clients are gonna call you and they're gonna call two, three other gyms. And the first person to get back to them is gonna win. If this is automated, it's not as good as a human getting back to them, but it's something, you're winning the foot race. Okay, let's move on to step two. This is critically important. And in our state of the industry data, the follow-up time was horrible for most gyms. A lot of gyms never even call people back when they leave a message on their machine. Like over 8% of the time that happens. Not only are you not responding, you're pissing that person off. Like they're never gonna call you again. Why wouldn't that gym respond to me? Here I am, I'm waving my hand, I'm in the water, I'm drowning, I'm flailing around, and they don't even care enough to return my call. I'm never going there. And if somebody asks me about it, I'm gonna tell them about my experience. If you have a social media account, if you have a phone number, if you have an email address, poor response time is an indicator to the potential client that you're not caring enough to take care of them. Every time you open up a channel to yourself, you have to be at the end of that channel waiting with open arms to respond and have a conversation. So let's do this. Let's call my gym right now and let's actually see what happens. Does somebody answer the phone? I'm praying that they do because I'm doing this live without testing this and without uh warning them that this is actually gonna happen here. So let's call and let's turn on the speaker. Let's see what actually happens. Now, I could start making excuses why they're not answering the phone, but I'm not gonna do that because I I want you to do this honestly with yourself too. Two rings, three rings. I know they're busy. I I know that the coach is there. You know, I just saw them before I came in here. And uh boy, oh boy, here we are. Three rings, four rings. It's probably going to voicemail.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

We are open for personal training, nutrition coaching, our team's program. And group fitness. If you'd like to learn more about these programs, you can leave us a message and someone will return your call as soon as we can.

unknown 22:33

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

And have a great day.

Chris 22:35

So not terrible, right? I'd give us a B plus on that. Ideally, somebody would be answering the phone, but in reality, my coaches are busy. They're not hanging around. My partner in the gym, he's busy too. He's not sitting there answering the phone. Let's see when they actually call me back because they know if they see a uh a phone number on the phone, even if that person doesn't leave a message, they're gonna call back. So let's see when that happens. In the meantime, we can do this for your gym. Okay, does someone answer? Yes or no? For a lot of us, it's gonna be no. Okay. If it's a voicemail, what does it say? I'll tell you, I went through this exercise a week ago and I changed our voicemail. It was just you reached Catalyst Fitness, please leave us a message. Now the voicemail is way better. It talked about personal training, it talked about nutrition coaching, it talked about booking an appointment. You heard it. So what does it say? Well, you wanted to say, here's what we offer. Or even better, here's the problems we solve. You wanted to say, we'll call you back. And ideally, what you wanted to say is, here's the next step you can take. So in a perfect world, that would have said to book a free no-sweat intro with us, please visit catalystgym.com and click on the no-sweat intro link. That would have meant that the person calling could have maintained some momentum and kept going instead of waiting for me to call them back and running the risk that the other gyms call them back first. Okay. So I'm gonna put down next step. That is what you want. Now I did this pretty well. I did that okay. I did not have the next step on there. You want to audit your own phone message. Is there a clear next step mentioned? No. Now I want to text my gym number, okay? And I want to see if there's an auto response. But then I also want to know how long it takes before I get a human response. So if I text my gym right now, hey, I'm interested in personal training. Send. And we can start the clock here. About 40 seconds later, I get an auto response. Fantastic. How long until I get a human response? Well, that's up to you. I want you to write this down in the workbook as you go. We want a human to step in. I said earlier that that that CRM is an amazing social safety net. It's going to respond to you, it's going to get back, it's going to let people know that they don't have to go on and contact the next gym. But ultimately, they probably know that's a bot. And so we want a human to step in as soon as possible. I want you to be keeping track of when somebody from your gym actually responds. Now, if that's you, okay. But be honest about the time it usually takes to respond. For us, when I tested this in our pre-audit exercise, I it took us about eight hours for somebody to respond to a text message. That's not fast enough. You want to bring that down. In general, under two hours is kind of the gold standard. Under five minutes wins. If you can't meet that five minute standard, focus on the two-hour standard first. Let's move to step four, which is our social media DM test. Now, just like somebody calling you, sending you an email, they might prefer to just DM you on Instagram or Facebook. Especially the younger generation, they tend to do this more. If you're not responding to those texts, they're going to think that you're an unresponsive person. You know, if you open up a communications channel, you have to monitor that channel, or people will feel like they're just shouting down the well. And so if I open up my Instagram and I send a DM to Catalyst, first off, is there an autoresponse? Yes, there is. Hallelujah. Kilo's got that covered too. But also, how long does it take for a human to step in? People who DM and get an autoresponse usually know that's a bot now. And this is a good social safety net. You know, you you really want to be the first to respond so that they're not out there looking for the next gym, looking for the first person to answer their phone. But the reality is you want a human to step in at some point. And when I ran this test before we recorded, it took about eight hours. So good that we responded. That's not a great response time. However, this is the biggest hole for most people in their marketing is lead capture and lead nurture. 14.6% of gym owners do not call their leads at all. That means they're not even answering the phone. The lead is there. The lead is in the water, drowning, waving their arms, save me, save me. And they're just like looking the other way and motorboating on past. It's really important that you capture these people. This is the first act of coaching that you actually get to do with them is coaching them to take the next step to book a no-sweat inch or to come into your gym and change their lives. What you want to do now is list the places that are completely broken where people are reaching out and not getting a response or they can't figure out how to reach you. So for me, that was probably phone. I need to improve our phone, but also texting. While people are getting a good, fairly quick response thanks to our CRM, uh, they're not getting a human response for about eight hours. It's too long. So I need to set up a process where somebody from my gym is checking those messages at least every three hours. The gold standard is two hours or less. The best gyms in the world do it in under five minutes. For me, my next goal is going to be under three hours. So I want you to document, you know, what's broken for you here in lead capture and work on fixing that. It might be your website, that comes first, but it might also be your response time. Part three, lead nurture. This is really important. This is where you've captured somebody's attention. They're looking at your gym. Maybe they're reading about it and they've actually said, I want to talk. They've put up their hand. The way that we talk to them is coaching. We're coaching them to come into the gym and take the next step, or even the first step, on their road to better health and fitness. Lead nurture is the first act of coaching that we get to do with a lot of people, but a lot of gyms just ignore it. They think that people will see their website and that will make them come in on their own. Or they'll see their Instagram post about a free trial and they'll just show up on Saturday morning. That doesn't happen. Lead nurture is critically important because it's the first conversation and therefore the first impression that a client gets from you. Now, we're going to improve our lead nurture. And in so doing, we're going to get better results from all the other leads that we're getting. We're making the rest of that funnel better. This is the biggest flaw for most gym owners. They're actually getting more leads than they think, even though they think they're not getting enough leads, but they're wasting these leads because when the lead hits this point of the funnel, lead nurture, they're just not doing the work. And so the lead leaves and goes somewhere else. They've got all the attention they need, but they're not getting the clients because they suck at lead nurture. So we're going to go really deep here. First, I want you to look at the email that you received after filling out the form on your website. Did you get an email? If not, that's probably your top priority under lead capture. But if you got an email, and I do from my gym, you want to write down exactly what it says. Okay. Now that email needs to be succinct, very brief, to the point. People shouldn't have to scroll through it to see all of your different options and prices and class time and schedules and coaches' bios and history of the gym. What they need is a clear call to action. So if you open up the gym the email from my gym, what you would get is a thanks for contacting us. And then I'm not going to have like this long thing about we respond to phone calls between nine and five. Nobody cares. What they want to see is how do I take the next step? So you thank them, then you're going to have a clear call to action. Click here to book a free no-sweat intro. Okay. Then you can say, at Catalyst Fitness, we work with people one-on-one or in groups in a coaching positive environment, et cetera. Okay. Does it tell them what happens next? That's your call to action. That needs to be above the fold. They shouldn't have to scroll through their email. If you if people's emails are popping up on their watches, they should see that on their watch. Like, hey, thanks for contacting Catalyst. Click here to book a free no-sweat intro. Okay. Wait and check your email over the next few days. Is there a second email? Is there a follow-up? Like this is this needs to be part of the sequence because very few people will book from that first email. They need to have a conversation with you. They need to have several. Okay. So I'm actually doing really well at lead nurture, but it's because I invested in a safety net and that's my CRM through kilo. Is there a third email? Yes, there is. They're going on a long-term lead nurture sequence. They'll keep getting my emails every couple of days until they opt out, basically. How many total emails do you send out automatically? Well, there's 12 in my sequence, but the reality is that every time I do a podcast and a couple of other times a week, I'm going to manually send out an email to my entire list. This has been my primary marketing for 20 years. Email is the one channel that never goes away. People take it seriously, no matter how much spam they get, no matter how much time they spend on Instagram and Facebook, they always come back to email. This is really important to have. So we've got 12 automated emails, and then from there, we go into a long-term lead nurture sequence. Each one of those 12 emails gives them some information, talks about a client story, shares a win, something that we've helped a client do, and gives them a clear call to action. When you're ready, click here to book a free no-sweat intro. That's really important. Step two is to look at how you're tracking leads. Are you paying attention? Are you tracking these conversations that you're having with people? Or are you just hanging up the phone and hope they show up on Saturday sometime? It's in this digital age, we need to be tracking where people are in the conversation. Because if you're getting a lot of leads in, there's a good chance you're going to forget what you've told that person or who's the closest to actually showing up. You need to track these. This is what a CRM is for, okay? Now you could do this manually through a spreadsheet, but I'll tell you, over time, over a few years, this becomes a massive spreadsheet. But you do want a record of these because very few people will see something about your gym and immediately sign up. The longest lead nurture that I can remember at my gym was nine years. This guy named Lee had signed up for my email list and he was getting regular emails. And then one day later, like nine years later, I walk out of the gym after the Saturday morning class, and there's a guy standing outside the garage doors like this, and he's looking in. And I walked over to him and he introduced himself, and it was Lee. He'd been on my email list for nine years, and I finally said the right thing that got him to start now. Lead nurture is a long-term play. But the reality is that if your leads are just coming into your funnel and washing right out again and you're not continuing that conversation, you'll never have a shot at most people because most people don't make quick decisions about gyms. So lead nurture is critically important. Can you are you tracking them? Can you see everybody who filled out your form who inquired this month? Yes or no? Yes, I use kilo. How do you currently track follow-ups? Kilo. So I can go into my kilo screen and I can see like who has just contacted me, who has been responded to, who got a text back, who has booked an OSWET intro, who booked but didn't show, who showed up but didn't sign up, et cetera. And it's very tactical. It feels like a game. It's actually kind of fun to look at this every day because every single person on that sheet is a massive opportunity. I have the opportunity to change their lives. They have the opportunity to join my gym and create financial freedom and impact for me and my family. Do I have a system? Yes, I do. And in truth, I was one of the very first people to adopt a digital system for this years ago because I realized a lot of people were just coming and going in the dead of night and not signing up for anything at my gym. I needed to capture those people so that I wasn't wasting my marketing time and money. Step three is to check how fast we're responding to people. So open up my email or my text message. You can do this on your own too. Find the last five conversations that you had with potential clients. Okay. This might be email for you if you're not using a CRM, but if you are, open that up. How long did it take you to respond to each one? So you're going to go through the last five and you're going to say, how long did it take to respond? When I did this exercise, the result was about eight hours. Now that's not great. It's way better than average, but it's not at my standard. I want us responding within three hours max because while that client has me on hold waiting for me to respond, they're talking to this gym and that gym and all the other gyms that appeared before me in that Google search. So my average response time was eight hours. Next, I want to look at how many times I'm talking to that person. So speed to respond is key, but also frequency of response is critical. From the moment somebody inquires to when they book an intro, how many times do we reach out? The average is either six points of contact or six months. So these days, either somebody will book an appointment on average, like their sixth email or six text from me, or if they require more long-term lead nurture, it could take them six months. Very few people fall in the middle. Those people who take six points of contact, they're gonna join fairly quickly. Like that's about a week's worth. The people who take longer just take longer. That's okay. I want them both. And so what I want to do is make sure that I have a set sequence. It's great. The number of touch points is gonna vary. It's either going to be six for most people, or for some people who take longer, you know, it's gonna be like 42. I'm gonna have automated emails set up. I'm going to have uh emails about my podcast. I'm gonna have content that I created going out to them too. This is the scary one. Because if you have a follow-up system and you're using a CRM, you can go and look at like leads versus closes and you can see how many people are falling through the cracks. I love having this information, even though I look at it every month and I say, like, well, there's$200 a month, there's$200 a month, there's$200 a month, and I can see how many opportunities for revenue I'm missing. You can also see how many people whose lives you had an opportunity to change and you blew it. I take this to heart. I really do. But if you don't have a system, then the number of leads falling through the cracks could be infinite. You have no idea. It could be 10 a month, it could be 100 a month. These are people who are ready to join a gym, they're actively searching for a gym to join, they're actively coming to look for information about your gym, and they're not taking the next step because you are mute, you're in the background, you're not responding to them, there's no way for them to contact you. And so they're not giving up on their fitness, but they're giving up on you. They're going to the next gym or the first gym that calls them back. So do you have a follow-up system? Yes, thank goodness I have kilo now. It's the best. Uh, how many leads probably fall through the cracks? I can tell you exactly how many leads per month. We have about nine who fill out a form and either don't book a no-sweat intro or book it and don't show. Our close rate is good, and yours is probably pretty good too. But getting them to that point is the real point of leverage for me. And so if my close rate is high, you know, over 80% close, I need to be focused on these nine people who are entering my system and not signing up every month. Because I know if I can get them in front of me, I can sign them up. You're probably the same. That means what should I be doing? I should be calling them sooner, I should be calling, emailing them more often. I should make it easier for them to book appointments, I should be improving my call to action. Let's move on to part four booking appointments and closing. Now, this is really important because when somebody does work all the way through your funnel, they want to make a change in their life, they find you, they get to your website, they, you know, fill in your form. You said something that tells them, yeah, I think they're right for me. If they come in and they don't sign up, that's on you. You need to be good at sales. Now, I know that's a bad word. None of us wants to be good at sales, right? None of us wants to feel like a used car salesman or a slimy, you know, dirtbag salesperson. But the reality is that sales is just coaching. You're coaching the person to take the first step. And if you can't coach them to take that first step, they're probably not going to be successful anyway. This is critical to understand. It is a big part of coaching. And I want to give you the tools and also the knowledge to make sure that you're actually good at it. Coaching people is less about telling them to push their knees out in the squat and more about telling them to make a change in their life and stay with that change and holding them accountable. All of that is selling. You're selling your program, you're selling the change, you're selling working through the dip, you're selling not eating the cookies, you're selling uh showing up even when your their spouse is getting mad, or showing up even when they got to shovel the driveway first, or showing up even when the pet has to get up earlier. That's coaching. And that's what this is all about. So we're gonna first look at your booking process. Pretend that you're a new lead trying to book an intro appointment through your website. So again, if I go back to my website, it's pretty easy for a new lead to see here's what you need to do. I can book a free no-sweat intro. Really easy. I got two links right above the fold. Okay. How do I do it? I click the link. Now, I can also go through all of my messaging on Instagram, my DMs on Facebook, my emails, and say, is there a clear call to action on those? No matter what channel people are coming through, they need to know how to take that next step. Okay. So if they make it to my website, yes, it's easy. But if they're on my email list or my Instagram, it's not yet. Okay. Is the process clear? Yes. Can you book online or do you have to call? Online. It's 2026. If you don't have a way for people to book an appointment with you online, this is your top marketing priority because people are running through the maze to get to you and then they're just slamming into a brick wall at the finish line. The next thing we want to do is look at our confirmation because let's face it, a lot of people are nervous about making this appointment at first and they're very likely to back out. If you've got people booking no sweat intros or making appointments to come and talk to you and then not showing up, that's a huge problem because they've gone from high interest, I'm willing to do it, to you've lost them somewhere. So do you send a confirmation email? Yes, we send both. So we send an email right away of the confirmation of their appointment. It says if you need to change, please click here. Uh we send them a reminder 24 hours out, email and text, and then a reminder 60 minutes before. There's no excuse for them to say, I didn't know what to do. There's no way that they can say I was running late and couldn't call you. They know exactly what to do. We we eliminate that possibility. Does it tell them what to expect, what to wear, and where to park? Now, I've been very careful about this. If you get the emails from Catalyst, it will say, park in the back, wear comfortable clothes, bring gym shoes. Because I want people to picture themselves actually in the gym. Fear of the unknown is why people don't join gyms or sign up for other services. If you can tell them what to expect exactly, have them picture themselves doing that thing, that's really gonna ease that fear. And you have to be very careful with that. Will this reduce their anxiety or stress? Yeah. If all they get from you is workout updates, we're competing at the HyROX event this weekend, and these five people, here's what they did, that's gonna increase their fear. If all they see is people going harder than them, they're gonna get intimidated. I want you to reduce their anxiety by telling them everything they need to know. Don't worry, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna meet me. Here's a picture of me. You're going to walk in through this front door, here's a picture of the door, you're gonna leave your shoes here, here's a picture of the mat. You're going to wear this. We're going to do this. We're going to talk about that. And then we're going to do stretches. I'm going to show you some basic exercises. You know, the more you can prepare people in advance and tell them what you're going to be doing, the less their fear will be and the more likely they are to show up. So here's the next step. We're going to open up our sales binder. Now, I walked over to my gym to grab this before we shot this video. It took me eight minutes to find the sales binder. That's that's a big red flag. Because if somebody books an appointment and their coach or the person doing the no-sweat intro shows up immediately before, they might not be able to find that sales binder. And I knew where to look. So it's really critical that this stays front and center, that you've got this. Number one, this is going to make your sales process so much easier because you have to do less verbal selling and more pointing. This is for you. You get to be a coach, you say, here's what you need, and you know, here's what it costs. Are you ready to get started? That's why this is so important. So could somebody understand your offer without you explaining? Well, let's take a look. You know, if I open up my my sales binder here, I've got, there's my monthly memberships, you know, right there. If somebody found this lying in the street without even talking to me, they would know what my offers are and how much they cost and what they get. That's really important because sometimes we forget to say things and we're worried about forgetting to say things. And so we talk way too much. And the people are like, Yeah, yeah, tell me the price. You want to be able to get down to business, you want to be succinct, you want to tell them what they need to know. You don't have to actually like coerce them. You don't have to trick them. You don't have to talk them into it. You just have to tell them what they need to make a decision. That's what the sales binder is there for. So can somebody understand your offer without you explaining? Yes, this has been hard for me. The first 10 years, I overexplained. It was crazy. Every consultation took like an hour and we did a tour and I would pull out graphs of client progress. Nobody cares about that stuff. You need to be able to explain yourself clearly and have them know what they're getting so that they could explain it to somebody else. Is your pricing clear? Yes, it's printed. I'm not tempted to negotiate. I'm not tempted to say, well, for you, we'll give you 20% off. Because it's all printed right there. Are the next steps obvious? Yes, they are. Because I've practiced this so many times that now I say, okay, here's your goal that you've just shared with me. Here is the best path to your goal. I'm a professional coach. I've been doing this for 30 years. Here's what it's going to take. Would you like to do this in a small group setting, or would you like to do this one-on-one with me? That tells me which service they're going to buy. Then I open up my sales binder, I flip to the right page. Here's the investment. Are you ready to start now? That's the pitch. There's no, well, you should do this because, or that gym sucks and I'm better, or this client reminds me of you. None of that. You don't need to do any of that. So are the next steps obvious? Yes, because I present them. Then, did I ask for a sale? Yes. What feels comfortable to me is, are you ready to get started? Remember, all you have to sell is your on-ramp program. You don't have to sell the next three steps. Just sell the next step to them. Get them to commit to the next step. People don't commit to a massive life change overnight. They you can't say, like, okay, we want you here five times a week. We're going to change your diet. You're coming at 6 a.m. You're going to practice morning meditation. You're going to spend an hour journaling, and we're going to do a cold plunge. That's too much. All you have to say to people is the first step is our five-session on-ramp program. Are you ready to schedule your first appointment? Now, in a perfect world, you would role-play this with your staff or potentially record it, but you have to be very careful about that. Like you don't want to just have a hidden recording when a client is actually in the room without their permission. The easiest thing to do this is role-play this with your staff. Don't tell them you're auditing them or assessing them, but walk through it and then answer these questions. Did you offer the next step? I mean, I can't tell you how guilty I've been of not telling people what to do. You need to coach them into taking the next step. If you're waiting for them to throw their credit card at you and say, sign me up for whatever package, that's not what's going to happen here. You need to say, okay, our first step is our on-ramp program. It's five personal training appointments. Are you ready to book the first one? That's it. Coach them one step at a time. Do you have a written script or process that anyone could follow? Meaning, after you get good at this, does the sales process rely on you being there? For many years, when we'd have a student working the front desk on the weekends, people would walk in Saturday morning and say, tell me about the gym, and they would either hand them a business card or a brochure. So this person has gone all the way through the funnel. I need to make a change. I'm going to find the best gym for me. Catalyst. You know, I'm going to go there. And now they're getting a brochure and they're getting kicked all the way back to the top of my funnel. That's not going to work. We need to make sure that everybody who's in my gym could close as well as I could or as close as possible. Ideally, there's two or three people who are well trained that you practice with, that you do role play with, and they're closing at the same level as you. So is there a clear next step offered? Yes. Do you have a written script? Yes, I certainly do, and we practice it. Answer honestly: Do you have a written sales process? We do, because our mentor at TubeBrain has guided us through that. We've rehearsed it dozens of times. We've tweaked it in a way that feels natural, and we've gotten lots of practice reps. Could somebody else close a sale using your system? I mean, one person in my gym could possibly too. She's pretty good. The the other three people could not. So yes, in general, other people could, but if somebody walked into my gym right now at 11.05 a.m., that coach probably couldn't. There's an opportunity there for me to improve that. There are two big keys here. The first is what happens after somebody books? Do they get a follow-up? Yes. Are we doing everything that we can to get them to show up? I think so. You know, we call them, we send text reminders, we send emails. We're doing pretty well there. After they show up, are they likely to close? Well, our close rate is 80% of the time, 80%, not 8%. And a lot of our leads come from cold traffic. So Facebook, Instagram, that's actually a really great close rate for cold traffic. But we do work very hard on referrals, which should almost be 100% close. So I would say that our close rate is pretty good. Is it repeatable by somebody else, though? Well, you know, my partner is really good at it, as good as I am. We have another coach, she's full-time, she's pretty good at it. She probably closes around 70%. But the other three, I don't think so. So that's my biggest opportunity. Is to coach the other coaches on what to do if a person just walks in or they're out there talking to somebody or they're in the cafe and they overhear somebody talking about catalyst, how to handle that. That is a massive opportunity that I can fix right now that isn't going to cost me anything but time and is going to improve how many people actually sign up. That's how you fix our marketing. Part five, results. What did we learn from this audit? So this is really important because I talk to dozens of gym owners every single day. They send me a DM through Facebook mostly. Sometimes they send me a message through email or through Instagram. And nine times out of ten, they say, I just need more leads. My service is great, my staff is amazing, my bathrooms are clean, whatever. But most of the time they don't actually need more leads. What they need is better lead capture, better lead nurture, or a better sales process. You can't lose anything by fixing those things. If you fix your sales process and then you add more leads, you will close more of the leads that you get. If you fix up your lead nurture and then add more leads on top of that, more people will book appointments. If you do both, they will multiply each other. These are not additive things for you to do. They're multipliers of every single lead that you get in the future. So now what we want to do is find our top priority. Is it lead generation? Is it lead capture? Is it lead nurture, or is it sales? You know, answer honestly. The more honest you are with yourself here, the better results you're gonna get. So what's my number one priority? Well, you know, lead lead generation for me was a little bit weak. This is not my only priority. It's just the most urgent one. It's the thing I'm gonna do first. After that, it's probably uh lead capture. While my website is awesome, I'm not doing a good job of having calls to action on my social media posts and emails. Okay, so first for me is lead gen. Then where did things work but could be better? Well, lead nurture is great, you know, thanks to Kilo, really. But they could be better from the human perspective. So that's a check mark, but human nurture could be better. And sales is the same. You know, three out of six of my coaches at my gym are really good at sales, including me. The other three could use some help. So I'm gonna put that down. What surprised me most, you probably saw it on my face. I was really disappointed that the AI search didn't even list my gym, let alone recommend my gym, let alone recommend it before everybody else. So that is my top priority because again, 30 to 40% of people are searching with Chat GPT or Gemini or uh Claude now. Even if you think that they're using Google, they're probably using Gemini. If they say what's the best gym near me, Gemini is going to turn up the about the same answer you saw that I got from Claude. You need to fix that. And so that was my biggest surprise. It's also my most urgent problem, but it's also my biggest opportunity and possibly my easiest to fix. Because if I can fix my Google My Business profile, I will get more five-star reviews in that process. Uh, I'll fix my Google search rankings. That's great. But also I'll fix my AI search rankings and ratings, and I can do all that in about 60 to 90 minutes worth of work. So that shows me and it kind of bubbles up my biggest opportunity to the top, kind of the lead domino, the first thing I'm gonna work on. Now, it's it's not my only domino. It's not the only thing I can fix. I identified going through this 12 things to fix, but I can't do them all at once. I'll just get paralyzed. What I need to do is focus on that first thing, which is going to be fixing my Google My Business profile and working from there. If that's the same for you, that's wonderful. But if your biggest opportunity is sales, if it's lead nurture, if it's lead capture, start with that, fix it as well as you can before you move on to the next thing. Here's the killer question. This is the last question here. If you are a potential client going through this experience, would you join your gym? If I already knew about Catalyst and I was searching for Catalyst and I got to the website, yes, I'm very confident in saying that person would join my gym. Even if they didn't join today, my lead nurture long-term is good. My sales process is great. If somebody was just looking for a gym near me in the Sioux, I'm not as confident at that they would find my gym first. I might be the fourth or fifth one they call. And if somebody else responds to them first, they're gonna get that client. So my next big opportunity is probably not lead capture, because when people get to my website, I've probably got them. It's probably lead gen. And so that means I need to do a better job of storytelling, showing us fixing the problem, but also fixing that Google My Business will really help too. My goal here was not to overwhelm you or show you 50 different things that you need to do for marketing. You already know that you need to be doing all these things well. And maybe you're super busy, you're coaching every class, you're doing the personal training, you're doing the mopping after class ends. But the reality is that when you open the gym, you became the CEO, and the CEO's job is to grow the gym. Part of that job is to know why the gym isn't growing. And you can get this free guide from me by just finding TwoBrain Anywhere, social media, and just sending me a message that says audit, and I'm gonna send this to you. You can watch this video, you can work through it with me. That's your one-hour marketing audit. If you can invest 60 minutes into finding the biggest problems in your gym, I'm completely confident that you can invest more time into fixing them. Now, if you've worked through this, you just spent 60 minutes looking at your business with fresh eyes, and now you know exactly why some prospective clients are leaking out of your funnels. If you take action on the stuff in this guide, you will add more members in the next 30 days. Your gross revenue will grow up and you'll earn more personally. More people will become healthier because they joined your gym. Everybody wins. If you haven't already, just message audit to two brain to get your workbook so that you can repeat this exercise regularly. It's not a one and done. Nothing that I share with you is. You should do this at least every quarter because remember, stuff breaks from time to time. Regular audits ensure you catch problems before they cost you clients. You probably saw the look on my face as I went through this exercise, and I do this at least once a year, but I'm gonna do it every quarter. What if you want to go further and improve all aspects of your fitness business? Because it's not all marketing, is it? Well, this video is an example of exactly how mentorship works. We identified a problem area. We collected data. We made a tactical plan to address the issues fast, in order, and we did it in about one hour of focused work. Two-Brain mentors use this exact plan with clients, and they supply battle-tested resources from our toolkit for gym owners for every facet of your gym. Need to generate more revenue fast? Here's exactly how to run a specialty program. Your rates are too low, here's our step-by-step plan to implement a rate increase. We would go through it with the exact same care and visibility that we just did your marketing audit. Then your mentor provides accountability so that you do the work and you get the results. And they repeat that process in every area of your business. Retention, uh, you know, sales, marketing, uh, delivery of your product, profitability, all that. And that helps you build a world-class gym that allows you to live a life you want. On average, it takes Tubrain about 25 months to get a gym owner to$100,000 in annual income, regardless of their starting point. And some people go way faster. We've even certified 70 gym owners as millionaires now because they did this exact process. And that's what's possible when you work with an expert and you follow a plan that's backed by data. To talk about working with a mentor to systematically improve every aspect of your business, book a free call through the link below. I'm Chris Cooper. Thanks for watching and changing the world with your business.