Top Tactics From Gyms Earning $400+ Per Member Per Month

What if every one of your clients paid $400 or more per month?

You probably wouldn't need more clients, staff, equipment or space, right?

In this episode of "Run a Profitable Gym," Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper shows exactly how 10 top gym owners have solved the "need more clients" problem by earning world-class revenue from existing clients.

In short, they price coaching services correctly and deliver monster value with premium services such as personal training, small group personal training, semi-private training and nutrition/habits coaching. 

These high-value members get results, so they stay longer and refer friends, creating a very profitable business model.

Coop's got key details from our leaders, plus expert perspective to help you drive up average revenue per member in your gym. 

Your first target: $205. If you hit that—use Coop's tips!—you can earn $100,000 per year with just 150 members.

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0:01 - Intro

4:03 - Leaderboard reveal

6:18 - How they increased ARM

7:50 - Focusing on high-value clients

9:50 - Starting a gym with Two-Brain

Transcript

0:02

So you don't need more clients. And here's the proof. Take every client that you have in your gym right now, multiply them by $400 per month. I bet you'd be thrilled with that monthly revenue, right? $400 per month is world-class average revenue per member or ARM, but that's not out of reach. Today on Runner Profitable Gym, I'm going to roll out our top 10 leaderboard for average revenue per member per month. And then I'm going to tell you how our leaders hit these numbers so that you can start moving in the right direction. I'm Chris Cooper. I'm the founder of 2Brain. And please hit subscribe if you haven't already. Now, way back in the early days of 2Brain, back as far as 2012, and most notably in my book, Gym Owner's Handbook from 2018, we started talking about the average revenue per member. Of course, your gym can take more clients. And of course, you need a certain amount of clients. But what's even more important is the average amount that you can charge per client. And that's because our gyms are coaching businesses. That is a premium service. And that premium service means that we should be charging a premium that's very much like personal training or nutrition coaching. Even in our group coaching program, we're still selling a premium service. A lot of gyms, when they started out, including me, made the mistake of chasing headcount. We thought that all we got to do is get 200, 300, 400 clients and we're golden. But most of us now understand, especially with data from publications like State of the Industry, that you're actually better to stick with a smaller number of clients at a higher average client value. These clients stick around a lot longer. They're way more likely to refer their friends who are other high value customers. And it just makes for a much smoother business because your overhead goes down, you need less staff, less equipment, less space, etc. More and more in the industry, you're seeing this focus on ARM improve. And that means that the best gyms are doing better and better and better at getting a higher ARM from their clients. And a lot of this is due to attrition. It's not just because of me preaching this for the last 13 years. It's mostly because the gyms that chased headcount are gone. There are a few, like me, who just grounded out and struggled and suffered and went poor and broke and hungry for many years while we did figure that out. But a lot of gyms just didn't make it. And chasing headcount is what put them out of business. And that leaves us with a larger percentage of high-value gyms in the space. The rise of small group personal training, the rise of semi-private, these all contribute to higher and higher perceptions of value in our space. and that helps everyone. So today, we're going to talk about the top 10 gyms in 2Brain as far as ARM goes, and I'm going to tell you exactly how they did it. I contacted their mentors. I got exactly the steps that these gyms took to improve their ARM so that you can do it too. Before we get into the top 10 leaderboard, I want to give you an example. There's a big difference between 200 clients paying $100 a month and 100 clients paying $200 a month. And what that difference is, imagine you're making the same revenue, but you've got far fewer costs. You've got a closer, more intimate relationship with each of the clients. There's fewer problems to manage. You know what comes up, the dirty bathrooms and stuff like that. There's smaller equipment. You can do way more of this business by yourself. You have to manage fewer staff. You've got less churn. You've got to do less marketing because instead of losing three clients a month, you might be losing one or two. and two, you don't have to replace them as fast. The whole business is just easier if you focus on high value. A lot of people are skeptical about that. And that reveals something inside their head that they can't get around. Like, how am I going to sell high value? I couldn't afford this myself. How are other people going to do it? It works. It's happening. In fact, what we've found to be kind of the secret recipe for two brain success is 150 clients at about $205 a month ARM. Now, we're going to reveal tactics from the leaders that will help you get there if you're not there. And we're also going to show you the tactics that took them all the way to the top, like $400 per month. Now, let's get into the top 10 at Two Brain, according to our leaderboard for ARM for last month. In 10th place was a gym from the US with an ARM of $406.92. ninth place, $415.15. Eighth place, $422.71 per month, also from the US. Seventh place, I love this one, $430.07 ARM. This is a startup gym that just opened in the UK with the help of. Two Brain. Sixth place, $447.19. Fifth place, $457.64. Fourth place, $470.16. Third place, $570.32. Second place, $492.04. And first place, $567.74 per month per client. Those top four are all in the US. We don't always see a US-based sweep like this, but it's amazing because these all come from different states, different geographic areas, different demographics. The most common thing that I hear when people are saying, I can't improve my ARM is that they're located in a place with poor demographics. The problem is that they're looking at the average family income for their location instead of looking at the people who are going to be their actual clients, which are the top 10% probably of earners in your location, depending on where you are. Those are your clients. You want to make a great business on those clients. You want to make money on those clients. You want to make an impact with those clients and then turn around and donate the extra money to people who need it. Do not discount your services because you want to undermine yourself by trying to make it affordable for everybody. You are a high value coaching service. Charge appropriately, change lives, you know, make an impact, make a profit and then make it home for dinner. Let's get into what these gyms actually did to get there because these are all tactics that you can do too. I want you to pay close attention here, but if you're mostly running a group training gym, you might want to rate increase. You might also just want to start with high value services such as personal training or semi-private or small group. But there are also little hints in here about supplements, you know, other retail products, nutrition, remote programming. They're all in the mixture. There's many ways that you can do it and that's why you want to work with a mentor to find the best way for you. The first mentor I spoke to was Courtney Brownlow. She was talking about this gym owner and said her ARM is directly tied to running a gym that prioritizes personal training as the first service they offer new clients. She also focuses on getting them started and then they get in a routine or they start to see success. That's when she upgrades them to more sessions per week. She's not afraid to price her services in a way that allows her to pay her coach as well. awesome. The next mentor that I spoke to is Jolene Bingham. Jolene said this gym's ARM is the direct result of shifting from a large group model to a semi-private model in order to create a more tailored service. Since then, they've continued to hit revenue PRs month after month over the last few months. They've provided careers for their staff and they've been able to increase their net owner benefit by nearly 50%. So it's not just that they're making more profit on the clients they have, they're increasing their overall revenue, feeding the pot, paying their trainers more. Next, Liam O'Toole said that this gym owner has stepped back from the day-to-day delivery of sessions to really focus on marketing and sales, which has allowed him to maximize high value personal training and semi-private memberships. Amazing. The next mentor I spoke to is Scott Romine out of Chicago. And Scott said about this gym owner, through 2Brain, she has implemented the no sweat intro and the prescriptive model, increasing her small group and personal training revenue stream. As she increased her level of service, we also implemented a price increase. Continuing to add to her ARM, she recently started offering an online nutrition program and specialty clinics coming soon. The next mentor I spoke to is Kenny Marquardt, who said simply, they focus on a great experience for their high ARM clients. Now I'm going to just hit pause here. They focus primarily on their most valuable clients. You know, in a future episode, I'm going to talk about where to place your focus because you've got different types of clients and it's very easy to get drug into the high drama clients, the high churn clients, the clients who complain the most, the squeaky wheels and put all your attention on them. It takes a lot of discipline and focus and experience to put all of your attention on your best clients and work really, really hard to replicate them instead of being distracted by the others. I'm going to tell you how to do that in a future episode. But today I just want you to take note of that, that this gym increased their. ARM by doing exactly that, focusing on their best clients. Back to Scott Romine, a mentor at Two. Brain who works with a lot of these high value gyms. He said, after starting with Two Brain, this next gym introduced testing for athletes coming in, which increased ARM. They also implemented a price increase following the Two Brain model. Most recently, they streamlined their sales and increased options for small group personal training, making the process easier for athletes. They've added nutrition and remote programming as well, which has increased ARM significantly. Again, focusing on their best and duplicating from there instead of just trying to catch everybody and please everybody, which is an impossible task. The next mentor I spoke to is Matt Michaud, who said about this gym owner, he had a big month in January where he sold about an extra $15,000 in additional personal training. He's delivering those sessions himself so that revenue flows directly to him. He's done a great job applying the Two Brain framework and focusing on opportunities inside his existing client base. While he has a big goal of getting more members who fit his ideal avatar, he's very good at identifying existing members who want more individualized coaching and offering personal training and sports performance programs that meet that need. When that strategy is executed well, ARM climbs quickly and January is a great example of that. The next interview I heard from was Sarah Snellman. And Sarah said, this is a startup, you know, which is even more impressive. So then, you know, we talked to the mentee and the mentee said, as we just opened, my mentor helped me decide what type of gym we should be based on our size and helped me create the right pricing structure. We offer three memberships. First is one-on-one coaching. Second is small group personal training. And the third is hybrid, which is a combination of one-on-one and sport massage. And they also have some physio and recovery treatments because that's who they have on staff. The mentee continued to say, the biggest thing that's really helped us both in improving our. ARM and onboarding members is our on-ramp. On-ramp takes a maximum of two weeks. And after that, members can join any membership. So in one month, we will actually get two payments from them. That same mentee who's brand new said, we've only been open for just three months. And during our last call, my mentor, Sarah said, you don't look stressed at all. What's changed? And the answer was that knowing that we're going in the right direction and that I'll be able to pay all of our bills, pay our staff without touching our savings is a huge way off my mind. Now, imagine you've been through this. If you're listening to this, you're an entrepreneur. Imagine three months in, all of that stress about paying your staff, going broke, failing, those are all gone. I mean, that took me eight years, probably. Now, that gym is a startup. So this is amazing because I mentioned earlier that a lot of us just kind of managed to barely survive hanging on by the skin of our teeth, going through stress and poverty for many years while we figured this out. The gyms that come into Two Brain from day one, don't have to go through any of that. And so they have this like four year head start where they immediately jump into a high value gym that's providing great opportunities for staff and great opportunities for the owner. So the owner is not getting burned out. They're not churning through staff and feeling like they've disappointed them or made false promises. They're not churning through clients and getting a bad reputation in town. They're starting, you know, beyond all of that learning from the experience of all of us. That's such an amazing head start. And I can't wait to see where these gyms are five years from now. ARM is a force multiplier. Mentors can really help you identify how to improve your. ARM. There are some tactics in this book, but the implementation is what the mentor is really all about. So maybe you raise your rates, but maybe you don't have to yet. Maybe you add an on-ramp to start and that shows you the value of personal training. And then you add a personal training program and you create income for your staff. And then you eventually convert into small group or semi-private, which really increases the value to your staff. And then your retention problems start to fall away, which solves your marketing problems. And it's this massive domino effect. The thing that kills most gyms is not a lack of clients. It's their inability to keep the clients and their inability to charge what they're actually worth. If you focus on ARM and then focus on clients after that, you will slowly get the right clients who will stick around and let you build a business on a concrete foundation instead of building on shifting sand. Whether you're a brand new gym just starting out, or you're about to start, or you're an established gym, we have a plan to help you earn more from every client. Once you've increased your. ARM and set up your retention systems, your lifetime value, your LTV for every client will skyrocket. And then every client that you add after that is a huge win. Imagine if every client that you added paid $250 to$300 per month, and they stayed for at least two years. These are not aggressive targets anymore. If you have a mentor to guide you, these eventually just kind of become your normal. To talk about a plan to boost your ARM and LEG at your gym, book a call through the link below. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. Thanks for watching.