Exactly How to Sell Personal Training in a CrossFit Gym

For almost a decade, CrossFit affiliate owners followed a misguided mantra:

"CrossFit is done in big groups only."

In 2026, we know this is false. CrossFit is an incredible tool you can use to get clients fit, and you can deliver coaching one on one, in semi-private groups, in small groups and in big groups. The more individual attention a client receives, the higher the rate.

That's critical: High-value services such as PT help CrossFit gyms dramatically increase average revenue per member (ARM). Back in the day, ARM scores of $100-$150 were common, and many gym owners struggled to make a profit.

Now, with PT sales and group-plus-PT "hybrid packages," CrossFit gyms can push ARM north of $200.

Chris Vasseur of Bionic CrossFit is the proof: His ARM is $400+ on the strength of PT sales. 

The best part: Vasseur doesn't get slimy to sell PT. He just tells people exactly how to accomplish their goals.

"Want to be able to link 20 double-unders? I can teach you. Let's book a one-on-one slot next week."

It's that simple.

Tune in as host Mike Warkentin gets all the details from a CrossFit affiliate owner who uses real talk and a desire to help to sell lots of PT.

Links

"Help First" by Chris Cooper

Affinity Marketing: How to Get Clients Fast

Gym Owners United

Book a Call

0:01 - Intro

0:45 - Who needs more help?

5:29 - PT rates

7:56 - Selling PT

13:30 - New PT clients

16:31 - ARM boosters

Transcript

0:02

personal training in a crossfit gym today i'll show you what's possible with the help of chris vassar of bionic crossfit this is run a profitable gym i'm your host mike work and please hit subscribe right now before we go any further so you don't miss a show just like this our most recent leaderboard for average revenue per member per month ran from 406 to 567 these are incredible numbers chris made that list by selling a lot of personal training he's going to tell you how he did it right chris i want to do my best all right i appreciate that because this is a concept that i could never figure out back when i was a younger crossfit affiliate owner i tried to solve the problem of people needing more help badly by offering open gym youtube videos and too much personal coaching and group classes at the expense of the other members i did not get this right so your mentor matt michaud he said you sold a ton of pt in january and have a real talent for identifying people who need more individualized coaching how do you do this i couldn't do it how do you determine who needs more help i think it starts with the culture that we have here at bionic i think that a lot of gyms that i've seen have kind of gone away from the old school grassroots of crossfit um and we've kept a lot of things kind of from that early stages of crossfit back in 2013-14 where you sit around a whiteboard you go over the workout yeah and we still do that every single day we post our scores on the whiteboard and i love it and it kind of creates that little inner competition within within the members but what it also does it gives us a chance to every day before class we talk about nutrition we talk about building skills and we start those initial conversations with people just kind of get their brain firing about things that they want to work on and we kind of start dropping hints every single day we're just things to work on and we just we have this we've created this culture here where every single class when we're in in a group setting when we're talking to our individual athletes we really focus on what is your goal now what is your goal coming up what is your goal long term and then we try to accommodate that during that class time and whether it's difficult for them is it always starts that conversation of working on that goal and that's really turned in and developed into a wide variety of things that we do probably one of our most popular options is a lot of our clients ask coaches or hire them to write them individualized programming so we have a lot of people that we do that for whether it's working on getting their first pull-up or working on barbell whatever the case is but i honestly think that that starts from that culture of always talking about goals. I've never really found crazy success in like the 90-day goal review. We do them, but we throw them out there. Nobody ever schedules them. So then you try to pull them in when you can to sit down with them. So this is more like an everyday conversation we have. So kind of like reaching those next steps every single time is just something that we talk about routinely. And it took me a long time to get there of valuing my time and my coaches valuing their time and understanding that, hey, we're here to help and we will help. But if this requires anything more outside of like a 10 to 15 minute conversation, we're going to charge for that. And understanding that not everybody can afford it and that's okay. And understanding what your value is. And if someone can't afford it, okay, that's fine. I'm not lowering my rate. I'm not discounting it. I'm not giving it away for free. And over time, and it's taken time, but people finally understand that if they come ask for help, they know it's going to be an additional charge or additional price, whether it's personal training, nutrition, or anything of those. Yeah. So you've rattled it all off matter of factly, but this is mind blowing stuff back in the 2011, 2012, 2013 days. Like when I started, it was like, you get a warehouse, you fill it with people, you run group classes, and then you coach the hell out of them. And then you stay after class and you coach some more and some more and some more, and you don't charge for it. Offer some open gym, which usually blows up in your face because all of a sudden people are doing all these like small off programs and blowing their knees up and everything. It just spirals, right? And I made all these mistakes. I wasted a ton of time. And I don't say wasted because my clients got results, but at the same time, I wasn't getting paid for it. I didn't get it home for dinner. And my wife was, you know, where are you and why are you doing personal training for free? Right? Like all these conversations, this was so common. So many gym owners and affiliate owners in particular made this mistake. CrossFit is an excellent program. It can be delivered in a group setting. It can be delivered one-on-one. It can be delivered anywhere in between in small group or a small group, personal training, semi-private training, pardon me, any of that stuff. It all works, but it doesn't work if you don't tell people about it. If I had literally said to people in 2011, hey, I know you're frustrated with double unders. You spent the entire workout doing singles and missing. Your shins are all bloody. You want to book like four sessions over the next month and let's dial this in. I guarantee we can get you to a set of five, probably set of 10 and sets of 50 won't be far off after that. People would have said for $50, I will buy that because my shins hurt. I hate this. I'm mad. It would have increased my retention. They would have got better results. I would have made more money. The whole thing works. Chris has figured this out, just laid out the exact plan for you. Just know that if you are not offering personal training right now in a CrossFit gym, start doing it. You're not changing the program one bit. And the coolest part about this is what Chris said. You have all the data, right? It's all on the whiteboard in these gyms. They literally put their stuff on there. They have their PR numbers. It's like, you know what they're working on. Even without goal review sessions, you can see it. You know your members because you're not running 700 member gyms. You're running 200, 150 member gyms. Whatever it is, you know what your clients need to work on. And you can definitely supplement that with goal review sessions. Or as Chris has done, you can integrate that very easily into your culture where you're talking to people about their goals all the time. All of it works. So that's your short plan. Chris, let's dig into your business specifically a little bit. Talk to me a little bit about your group and PT rates. What do we got? So my group classes just moved up to, it's 205. That's our monthly rate. And then our personal training sessions, it's $120. an hour for one session. You know, one thing I wanted to touch upon is that I think a lot of it comes down to building trust with your members, where I have had members that have come to me and asked me, hey, can you write me some programming or can I work with you on this? And there's times where I've said, I don't think you need that. I think that if you just work on this skill during a class time or if you spend five minutes after class, I think you'll get to that goal. So then when the time comes where they do want something and you say, I think you need this, you've already built up that trust of like, I'm not just trying to take their money. Like I'm trying to value that individualized training over just trying to take everybody in and just trying to make... I don't know. I know it's probably not the smart business choice, but I think it starts with that trust where when they come to you, like, I want to give you $120 an hour to work with you. And then you say, I don't think you need that. And then when you go to that same person a month or two months later and go, I kind of think we need a little extra here. There's more of like that buy-in process. So I just wanted to... I just wanted to touch upon that as well. No, you've laid out exactly the principle that Chris Cooper talked about in his book, Help First back there. What you're doing there is you're being a coach and you're telling the client the best thing that you think they need right now. And maybe that thing isn't spending money on PT. Maybe it's something else. Chris has a story where he told a client, you are stressed right now. You're having trouble making it to the gym. You're just, you're dragging in workouts. You're not happy. Take three months off and let's come back in three months. And that's good coaching because that's what that client needs for long-term success. You're doing the exact same thing. So that trust factor is huge. And then when you do say, hey, I can help you with this. They're like, he always tells me the right thing. He's always giving me the truth. And that's exactly why it works. Your rates, excellent 205. That is an awesome group coaching rate. That is fantastic. And then from there,$120 an hour, we all priced our PT. It's fee $50 back in the day. Many of us never increased it ever. 120 is an awesome rate. You can find what works for your business, but don't price it at $50 per hour. Your coaching is worth far more than that. And 120 is a great, great number. So you can see how this would spiral very quickly. Great baseline average revenue per member. Let's say this group class is 205. Some people buy PT at $120 an hour. Everything starts to go up from there. And again, you're helping people get the results they want with your direct attention, which is incredibly valuable. So you've mentioned it a little bit, but talk to me a little bit more about the mechanics of approaching existing members to sell PT. I know you said it comes from this trust factor, but is there any other things that you get, you do like to package things? Do you present it to people? You know, what do you do to get this moved? Probably one of my, you know, gifts and curses that I'm a very honest person. So if someone comes up to me and they ask me a question about something, I go, Hey, we're not, we can't have this conversation right now. If you want to sit down after we could talk about it then. And I'm just very honest with them. I'm like, Hey, what you're doing isn't working. You keep kind of running into this wall. I think you need personal training. Like, well, how much is that? Or I think you need additional, you know, accessory programming or whatever it is that we're going to write for you. That's what I think you need. If you're that determined for your goal, I go, when you're ready, let's have a conversation. Let's talk about it. How do I identify those clients is that our client base is very much on, I mean, we're first name basis with everybody. We know what they do for a living. We know what kind of cars they drive. We know if their son had a birthday or daughter had a birthday, if they went on vacation. So we're very, very tight. And I think it just comes back to those goals where we identify those goals. And then you can kind of see a level of frustration or when they're looking at the whiteboard at the end of the day, or they come in for class, they kind of have like that fear of missing out. Or they see someone kind of jumping ahead of them that they were at the same skill level at based on the energy that we're getting from the person. And we're seeing them kind of start progressing. We kind of just approach them and we say, Hey, you know, where, where are we at? What are we looking to accomplish? And if this is what you want to do by a certain date, this is what you need. I go the way it's going right now, you're not going to get it. If you want to get there, I can get you there in X amount of months or packages or whatever it is. And I think it just starts with those everyday conversations that you have and you're always keeping an eye on them. I mean, even noticing someone when they walk in with a new pair of shoes, it just builds trust. It builds the fact that you're paying attention to them. Yeah. So you, again, laid it out. Matter of fact, in a directory, there's all these like mystery sales systems and all the bling and all the stuff about how to do things. The reality is that in a. CrossFit gym, you've got a hundred to 300 members. Usually, you know, most of them exactly by name, you know exactly what they do. You know, exactly. You probably remember their PRs, half of them, I would guarantee. You know that, right? You've got all this stuff in your head and you know these people. All you have to do is just say, hey, I know you're working on this. I can get you there faster like this. Do you want that? It's the same thing. You know, there's no pressure there. You can say, no, I'm good with group memberships. Cool. If you ever want to go faster, I'm available. Anything like that. Like these conversations are simple. It's not a high pressure thing. You will move some stuff. And I think about a guy, I picture him, he would come to our open gym sessions every Sunday morning for like two hours straight. He would miss double unders. And he was relentless. He would just keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. And we'd toss him. The coaches would give him tips and stuff. What he needed was a series of one-hour sessions where we just dialed it in. Like start with your hands here, chest up, bounce like this. You know, all the progressions that you could do in a one hour session, it would have changed everything for him. And in workouts, instead of being the really strong, really fast guy who couldn't skip, he would have started to like be in the middle of the pack. He probably would have started winning some workouts. All of a sudden, he's just jacked about the program, signs up, the whole thing and stays for five years. Like that, that whole thing, that process works. All he needed to say was him, my guy, I can solve this problem for you in four sessions. Here's the price. He'd be like, yeah, I'm wasting my time right now. Right? Like this is not a sales process. It has to be tricky or mysterious or any of that stuff. So the way Chris is saying it, just directly knowing your members and just saying, I can help you solve your problems. And again, you got the help. First is back here. Corona Chris Cooper's finest books. That is all laid out there. We'll put a link in the show notes to that one. If you guys want to pick that up, have you read that Chris by chance? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's almost the same mentality that with two brain, right? Where we were paying this investment fee into bettering ourselves and our businesses. And the goal is to get some small wins, right? When you get some small wins, you get a buy-in and it keeps, you keep renewing because you keep wanting to do it. You keep seeing these small little goals that you're reaching. And that's, that's another thing that we do in class, right? If you can get someone to buy into what you're saying and you've given this small little win, even at something tiny, in my opinion, you start building credibility, right? You're like, Hey, look at what we accomplished in a five minute conversation. Imagine what we can do if we spend an hour together, or imagine what you can do if you spend three months together. And that's again, it really, I just keep going back to the culture and, you know, and knowing your members, but I really think that's it. We also, you know, I had a lady who just wanted personal training and her big reason is, you know, we send out a monthly newsletter to all of our members and we highlight things that have gone in the gym. We highlight everybody's PRS for the month. And literally they're like, I want to be on that newsletter that I, that I was able to do this. Oh, yeah. And Hey, if that's motivation, then fantastic. Fantastic. You know, it might be a little different than the person that hires you for, they want to look better in a bathing suit because they're going on vacation in six months, but we have those clients too. Yep. And in a CrossFit gym, nothing, nothing infuriates someone more than two people who have started at more or less the same time. They're frenemies and they're kind of at the same level. And one of them all of a sudden gets muscle ups and starts winning every workout or whatever it is. That second person, you can see the look on their face. They just start to stew. And it's so obvious like, Hey, you want muscle ups too? Hey, he did it through personal training, book a session. Like it's again, it's just giving what they want. It's not forcing anything. It's solving a problem for the client. And again, you laid it out to brain businesses built around this exact principle in the early stages of mentorship. We're giving you quick wins so that you see momentum. You know, things are working and then we build up and scale up faster and faster. And if you want to talk about that book, a link in the call via the show notes, uh, I'll ask you this selling PT outside your membership. Do you have a system for that? How do you do that? So everybody comes in and starts with a consultation and then we have personal training clients that aren't, that are not part of our group session. They just come in for PT. There's not a lot. Most of our PT come from within our in-house, but we do have some that we just determined that the group session was not the best thing for them based on what their goals were and who they were and how they like to work out. So we have a handful of them that come in either one-on-one or they do small group with another person. And it really just comes down to that, to that conversation. You know, it's easy to get somebody into, and it's an easier sell when you're selling the group class. And it took a while to feel confident of, you know, selling a $5,000 package or a$6,000 package. And you have to be okay with someone saying no, you know? And so as far as outside, yeah, we have a couple of people that we program that I program for outside the gym that go to different gyms, but really just identifying how that consultations. goes. Yeah. In consultations, it can be as simple as this. You talk to the client, find out what the goals are. You lay out your plan for them to accomplish their goals. And at the end of the conversation, you just say, do you want to work on this in a group setting or with me one-on-one? And Chris Cooper has used that, uh, use that line to win CEO, John Franklin. I believe he said that made him literally a million dollars, that line exactly more or less. You just ask them, how do you want to accomplish these goals? There are two paths. And again, the other thing to important remember to CrossFit gym group training is your discount option because it is like back in the day when we first started, I was like, Oh, $30 gym memberships versus $150. This sounds really expensive. I can't sell PT on top of that. I could have, there were lots of people who wanted it. And Chris has proved that like, yes, you can move $5,000 packages in CrossFit gyms. Maybe not every single person, but like they do happen. And there are other ways to get to it where it's like hybrid, you know, group membership three times a week, plus one personal training session a week or one a month or whatever it is. We see that. Very commonly in gyms with huge ARM, they'll have an ARM of like 325 and like 200 of it is group 125 or whatever is PT. And all of a sudden that is a huge, huge ARM number where you only need 150, 170 clients to see a very good profit in a space. So do you have any hybrid membership at your place? Yeah, we have quite a few. I mean, we have our group package. We got our group package with nutrition. We have our group package with new, you know, group nutrition plus, you know, some PT. Sessions. So yeah, there's, there's quite a bit. Our group session is our lowest. Yep. And that's exactly right. And I knew before I asked the question, what the answer would be, because every gym owner who makes our ARM leaderboard has some sort of hybrid package and some premium service packages like just PT it's every single time. And again, those numbers 406 to 507, they're, they're insane. Like, but they're not that far off. There are gyms. If you think about it, if you just sold one PT package to 10% of your members per month, what does your. ARM look like? It's significant. Like it really, really goes up. What other services you'd mentioned a few of them there? What other services contribute to ARM? Is it, is nutrition fitness? Like do you have any kids or specialty or legends programs or anything like that? No, I, I personally, I'm not, I take, I've worked with kids before and very specific, whether it's, you know, football teams or athletic teams, but we don't have a kids program here. I had it before. It didn't, I didn't really like how it was running. I'm exploring the option of doing it again, but now all of ours is adults. And then we'll have, you know, specific group, specific group, specific stuff with, you know, maybe some sports teams, but the majority of it is coming from the adult fitness, the busy professional, what else? Nutrition. We'll do seminars that we'll charge for, you know, if we're doing a gymnastic seminar, we'll charge for that. Yeah. I mean, it's nothing, I don't know. I'm not reinventing the wheel. Yeah. And you don't have to. Yeah. I don't have a lot of different options. It's just, these are options and we're, we're just adamant about, sticking to it. And if someone turns it down, they turn it down. Yeah. If you know your avatar and your market, you don't have to offer everything. Nutrition programs is a great add on kids programs is a great add on in some places, seniors programs also doesn't work for everything. You do not have to do every single thing to build a huge area. I'm Chris talked about one of his books where he listed all the stuff you could do. People thought it was a checklist. They tried to do everything and failed miserably because it was too much. You don't need to do that. You could really, you could, I've talked to gym owners on this show. They sell group or PT or hybrid, and that is all. And they have pretty, yeah, right. Huge ARM. And you do that because you know exactly who you're selling it to. You know, what's problems it solves for your avatar. You roll the stuff out and away you go. And you don't have to manage, you know, marketing kids and seniors and all this stuff in between you're hitting busy professionals between 35 and 55 who want group training or personal training or personal training plus group done, you know, problem solved simple. And I love the way you're saying it. This again, Chris, we messed this up so many times as early affiliate owners. We had the, we had it all there in front of us and we just thought it was just group classes. If we could have changed a little bit. You know, the world would have been different. Uh, let me ask you this. You have a lot of members, big gym, small gym, medium. What do you got? No, we're not a big gym at all. And that's kind of, I don't know if it's intentional, but it seems to work for us. We're just under a hundred members. Okay. There you go. You got a big, what's your space like? Does that reflect that? It's about 6,000 square feet with a PT business that runs in front that we sublease to. And they're very intertwined with our business. They take all of our classes and they're, yeah. I mean, it's, I don't want to say it's a partnership, but we work very, very, very close with each other. It's going to be, try to make it like a one, stop shop. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's interesting. Cause like I had my space about 6,000 square feet as well. We underused it. We could have done exactly what you did. We're putting in some different PT options would have been great. I was looking to do that towards the end of, you know, 2019, 2020, then COVID hit and we just shut her down that section, but that would have worked very well. That space can easily accommodate a PT thing like that. Plus you've got more than enough space for a hundred members, especially if they're high value people. Tell me a little bit about, you mentioned it, some of the quick wins with two ring. What's some of the stuff that you noticed had helped you get? Some momentum right away. Anything in particular? I mean, for me, I'm a very goal oriented person. So working with Matt and just giving you these goals, like, Hey, let's get this done. We're meeting in a week. Just make sure you get it done. It's more of the accountability stuff. I was part of two brain before and then COVID hit. And I think everybody included myself, you kind of freak out, you start cutting costs to try to keep your business open. So I stopped doing two brain then, and I was really happy with where we were going into it, but I looked at myself and, you know, we did well to this part, but now we're kind of reaching this next chapter and I need, I need some guidance on that. You know, you need, you need the accountability, the coaching, opening your eyes to different perspectives and different things to do. So for me, it's just the accountability part. Like, Hey, we got this homework to do and we're going to do it and get it done. And then Matt just challenging me to do things that maybe I wouldn't normally do. Yeah. I love that. He's good for that. Yeah. Yeah. What are you working on right now? So you made our ARM leaderboard, which is a huge accomplishment. Congrats on that. What is the next thing that you and Matt are targeting for your business to make it home? Creating a career for my manager. So just increasing our revenue. Honestly, my biggest goal that I have is to create careers for people. Personally, I'll feel like I failed if I didn't. So that is a big goal of mine where we can create a career and a good life for, for our employee, our, our staff. So that's, our goal is just increasing our revenue, our arm. I'm not a huge fan of just, you know, I don't do any deals. I don't do any discounts. we don't do free weeks or anything like that. So we, I'm a big believer of, we have a really, really good group of people and I would rather put more energy into them and what we can offer them than trying to get, convince people to come into our doors and just try to get numbers. So. I'm just sticking with what we have and grow slowly with the right members or with the right people. I think I've, I think for every maybe five or six members that we get that come in through our consultations, I probably turn one down just based on the conversation. I don't think it'll be a good addition and not be afraid to do that. So that's where we're at right now. Just growing that arm and creating more revenue with what we have. Yeah. I love that. The last question. I'm going to ask you is to, there, there's a gym owner out there right now who's a CrossFit owner who does not sell PT. What would you say to that person to help them take a step in the right direction today? What do they need to do? I, if they feel confident with their ability level, you need to do it and you need to feel confident with what you're offering. If you don't, then find somebody who can and offer that as a package. You might not be the best at programming workouts or best doing that, but you run a great business. So find somebody that can fill that void because there are people that want it. And. I think the initial charging something to somebody that you may not be able to afford yourself, I think is a big barrier that people need to come over. You know, I don't know when I started. CrossFit, if I could afford a$6,000 PT package, I probably couldn't, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be charging that based on the amount of energy and effort that you're putting into it. So yeah, I would do that. And the other thing that I think helps a lot too, is finding your seed clients and having them be your spokesperson for you. So a lot of my seed clients I've worked with personal training on. So whenever I bring out a new client, I go, Hey, if you're looking for references to see what their experience was like working with me or working with one of our coaches one-on-one this is their contact information or they're right over there by all means go talk to them and see what their experience was like so i think of identifying those seed clients talk to them about how would they feel about personal training options and just kind of getting over that personal barrier of being afraid to charge what you think you're worth i that was for me that was a big one and once i finally got over that i was very comfortable offering that and being okay with someone saying no chris just laid out the affinity marketing this is the two brain playbook by finding your best clients and replicating them that is exactly it we won't talk about that further here that's a topic for another show i'll put a link in the show notes to something that'll help you figure out your best clients and replicate them i mean i said it was last question i'll ask you one more it's a simple one chris is it possible for a crossfit affiliate owner to sell a lot of pt yeah there you go a two-way mentor can help you figure out exactly how to do that if you want to talk about it book a call via the link in the show notes and we'll help you figure out exactly how to create a business model that works for you chris thanks so much for being here i appreciate it hey thanks for having me that was chris vassar this is run a profitable gym i'm mike working and hit subscribe on your way out thank you for watching and listening and now here's two brain founder chris cooper with a final message hey it's two brain founder chris cooper with a quick note we created the gym owners united facebook group to help you run a profitable gym thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined in the group we share sound advice about the business of fitness and fitness every day i answer questions i run free webinars and i give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym i'd love to have you in that group it's gym owners united on facebook or go to gymownersunited.com to join do it today