Should Your Gym Become a HYROX Affiliate?

Are you sleeping on HYROX? That's a mistake.

In this episode, Two-Brain CEO John Franklin and founder Chris Cooper discuss the hottest thing in fitness right now: HYROX.

John, fresh off a race in Miami Beach, had nothing but praise for the event, and Chris Cooper suggests the races give your members a reason to keep training and way to find success and smiles outside the gym.

The best part? HYROX affiliation fees for gyms are low—about US$150 a month—so it's easy to get huge ROI, if you have a plan. 

No plan? No ROI. Solid plan? Huge ROI is possible.

For example, one Two-Brain gym generates $12,500 a month in HYROX revenue, and another added $100,000 in annual revenue just by setting up two HYROX training sessions a week.

Chris and John dig into the details to help you determine if a HYROX program is right for your gym, even if you're a CrossFit affiliate. Newsflash: CrossFit gyms don't need to be scared of HYROX; the program is complementary. 

Check out this discussion, and if you want to take the next step, "The Complete Guide to HYROX Affiliation for Gym Owners" is available if you DM Chris Cooper through our Gym Owners United group, linked below.

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0:29 - Why is HYROX working?

4:02 - The opportunity

5:48 - Should CrossFit gyms be afraid?

8:05 - How to get ROI

15:48 - Marketing, selling, retaining

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Run a Profitable Gym. Today, we're talking about High Rocks, the biggest opportunity for coaching gym owners that we've seen in a long time. I'm your host, John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain Business. And joining me today is a very special guest, Chris Cooper, the founder of Two Brain Business. Now, Chris, you're going on 20 plus years in the industry. 30 plus years in the industry, 10 plus years within Two Brain. We've seen a lot of these fitness opportunities come and go. Why do you feel differently about High Rocks? Well, High Rocks isn't paying me a dollar, has never paid me a dollar to say this. But if you look at the actual data from gyms, High Rocks is working. It's an amazing opportunity that really only comes along every 10 or 20 years. And I think now is probably the best time for gyms to capitalize on it. And that's why we're recommending it. But John, you just did a High Rocks race. What do you think Hyrox is capturing that maybe the rest of the industry has missed? So before we get into this, let me preface this by saying I own five gyms in the New. York City area. Three of them were CrossFits. I started in that 2012, 2013 era. And when I opened the door to my gym, I had 120 members already signed up despite not being a great coach or being a great gym owner. Riding trends when they're hot. I experienced that, right? And then like the last gym I opened, the last CrossFit gym was like 2017. And I could tell like a marked difference. And so this moment in time is important. Now to answer your question, I think there are three buckets that we need to think about High Rocks, right? The first one is the training. So there's a lot of variety. And that's one of the things that makes CrossFit great, right? You keep coming back because the workout's different every day and you don't get bored. It's not the same three machines. It's not just a running race, right? Where I think it does a better job than CrossFit is the competitive experience. So as a beginner, I did my High Rocks race in an arena. I had thousands of people cheering me on. And my experience was not markedly different than the guy who won the race, a professional athlete there. And I was a college athlete. Most people within the fitness industry probably competed in sport in a high level. And in my adult life, that was the closest I came to feeling to like a college game day or something like that, where you just like, you know, it felt really, really awesome. There are other events that provide a great race day experience for beginners, like let's say a Tough Mudder, a Spartan, or like a very large running race, right? But if you look at like a Tough Mudder or a Spartan, it's done in this massive field and there are like 20 plus obstacles. And the only person I've spoken with who had like a Spartan specific gym had to build all his equipment from scratch. So it doesn't lend itself to this global movement where you can train in your backyard or in gyms across the country, because this is a show for gym owners, right? The race day, the race day is, is a thing, but then it has to come back to why are gym owners doing well with this? And that training element, that, that replicatable aspect, I think is important. You have not done one yet. Have I done a decent job of explaining this yet? Do you feel like, uh, does it make sense of what they're capturing here? Yeah. And it does remind me, there was kind of this sweet spot in, in the CrossFit games, 2012, 2013, where you would attend an event, a sectional, a regional, it would be hosted by CrossFit and you would feel like a real athlete out there, but the unknown, unknowable nature of CrossFit would sometimes be discouraging or intimidating to people. And unfortunately by 2014, 2015, the games had professionalized to the level where we had no hope in hell of qualifying anybody to, to have that experience anymore. You couldn't just sign up for it. And I think that's what High Rocks is really getting right is giving the beginner, the experience of feeling like an elite athlete on game day. So let's talk about affiliating, right? Because there's been a lot of statistics coming out about the growth of. Hierox. I think they've surpassed CrossFit in the number of affiliates that they have. And let's talk about some of the data we're seeing within Two Brain gyms. So for context, Two Brain works primarily with coaching-based gyms. And I think if you are a CrossFit affiliate or a gym that did CrossFit and recently de-affiliated, like you already have the bones for a good Hierox affiliate. And from a financial standpoint, like what are some of the things that you've been seeing within Two Brain, Chris? Well, it's great ROI. I mean, we are constantly approached by nutrition programs and kids coaching programs and, you know, different organizations. And it's, you know, $3,000 for the year and you're committing up front. You know, Hierox is like $150 a month and the ROI can easily be $10,000. With equipment that you already have without changing your brand and the Hierox marketing is doing the lifting for you. I've talked to gyms within the program who've added over $100,000 in annual revenue doing one class or one camp on a Sunday and one class on a Tuesday. So that's a game-changing number of top-line revenue for the type of gym that we work with, especially considering that it's only like a two and a half hour a week commitment. Yeah. And you don't have to invest in getting your coaches certified in some, you know, specific program, committing long-term to some new app. Those things are available. Absolutely. But still the investment is low and that's why I'm so excited about it. Again, these guys are not paying us a dollar to say any of this stuff. I'm excited for the opportunity because I think it's going to make gym owners more money. And we were talking over dinner last night. And one of the things that we like about High Rocks affiliation is that it doesn't have to be the entire identity of your gym. You and I were CrossFit affiliates. We were operating Two Brain through 2020 when a lot of people were choosing to de-affiliate from CrossFit. And that was a monumental decision because if your business name is CrossFit XYZ and you want to become XYZ Fitness, you need a new website. You need new email addresses. You need to change the name on the door. None of your old merch is still relevant. It is a huge undertaking where there are very few gyms putting Hyrox in the name of their business. You're just saying, hey, this is the thing that we're into right now. You're not marrying Hyrox for the remainder of your business career. Yeah, they're not competitive brands. They're complementary brands. And Hyrox will make your CrossFit branding better and more attractive to other people. Where some of the. CrossFit podcasts and gym owners, I think, are cutting off their nose to spite their face here is they think that they're in competition with Hyrox. And it really reminds me of the early days, you know, 2008, when I affiliated, you had powerlifters and like the serious strength athletes, Mike Boyle, crapping on the CrossFit methodology. And before that, powerlifters were crapping on the strongman methodology. And before that, weightlifters were crapping on the powerlifting methodology, people are scared of change, but I really recommend that if you want to have a successful business, look at what your clients want, take your blinders off, make sure that you're not making an emotional rush to judgment, and maybe go try a high rocks race yourself. Right. Most of the people speaking negatively are the people who've never tried it, right? And so. I don't think you should take away from this that every gym should be a high rocks affiliate. There are plenty of instances where it may not be right for you, but if you're not happy with where your business is and you're open to change, like, I don't know, paying 200 bucks to go do a race, check it out, and you know, maybe go to a camp of a gym that's doing it successfully just to see, doesn't hurt. If you're a CrossFit gym, your athletes are fit enough for high rocks. This is the best exposure and opportunity to compete using the skills and fitness that you've given them that they're ever going to have. So let's break down some of the different ways people are monetized. Their affiliation, and we'll kind of, like, work backwards. So there's the actual race itself, right? And gyms don't make money on the actual race. But where I think it's helpful for a gym owner is if you have a ton of your membership base really geared towards one goal. Like, they know they're going to have to run in front of 1,000 people, right? Because that's a hard deadline. They're going to have to show up more. And when they show up more, they're going to get fitter and they're going to be less likely to cancel their gym, uh, membership. So you pioneered something called the intramural open, like explain what that is and why like your gym is bumping during that period of time. Well, we know from data that adherence improves, people show up more when there's a firm deadline or they risk, you know, social embarrassment because there's a competition. And so the intramural open is one example. If we say that the intramural open is going to be our event in March, then people will train hard through November, through the Christmas break, through January, through February when it's dark. And they don't feel like going to the gym because they want to do well at that event. And we do that at the other end of the year too, in September with the catalyst games, giving them a high rocks event will actually improve their fitness because they will show up and train more often because they've made that investment in the event and they, they want to do their best. They don't want to look foolish and they want to be prepared. You're actually helping your clients by giving them something to train for. That's really concrete and exciting and maybe even a little intimidating. So let's say you're a gym in the Northeast, right? And you got the New York city race happening last weekend to May, early June. What a lot of gyms will do is they'll go 16 weeks back from the race day and they'll create what's called camps. And these are like one 90 minute session that you're going to build up over that 16 week period. And they'll charge kind of a a la carte pricing. So it's 35 bucks to come for a camper. You can buy a 10 pack for, you know, let's say 300 or whatever. And so some of the larger affiliates that we're seeing will get like upwards of 80 people showing up for these camps on a weekend, which sounds great in and of itself, right? Like that's a nice hit few thousand bucks of revenue for an hour and a half of coaching. But what makes it even better is that some of the gyms we're seeing are reporting that yet 50 to 75% of the people coming to their camps are not members. So these are people who are local run clubs. Other gyms that don't offer high rocks are people who train at home, who are getting ready to the race and just want to recreate that environment, get a little coaching, put their hands on the equipment if you're a gym that has that. And so, you know, we did an entire episode a few weeks ago about how to get a few people into your gym from events. There are people getting like 60 new people into the gym every single week, and they're paying the gym owner to do that. And so that's why I love these camps. Another thing we've been seeing a lot of success with in the Two Brain Realm are simulations. So they're like mini versions of the race. So you come and you do the race within a gym, you pay, you know, we've seen anywhere from $35 to $80 for that, and they run through the race. And that's what a sim is. And so I personally profiled a gym owner who's built an actual business just running larger and larger and larger sims. With the last one, he rented out an entire sports complex, and he did over $50,000 in revenue in one day, completely sold it out. Another one would be classes. And so that's just a High Rocks membership, right? Come in every Tuesday night. We're doing High Rocks specific training. And what's great about this, it's such low barrier to entry. Like you're doing running, you're doing skier, you're pushing a sled. So it's something where, you know, if my wife hasn't done a workout in a few years, but like I would have no hesitation about bringing her into a High Rocks class because, you know, I know she'll be able to run. I know she'll be able to pull the ski. And I know there's like a limited amount of movement. So I know it'll be like a great starting point for her where, you know, I don't know if I would do the same thing by like closing my eyes and pointing at a random affiliate on the map and just, you know, dropping into whatever the workout of the day is there. Right. So these classes are great. And a lot of gymmers will ask you like, Hey, so how do I add a High Rocks class in, or how do I do something like that? Like, how would you recommend somebody starting? Well, I think the first thing would be to just affiliate so that you have some of the resources available to you. And then you announce about three weeks out, we're going to be running this High Rocks class Saturday morning at 10 AM when you've already got a coach in the building. And then, uh, you promote that to your email list. You contact local run clubs. If you're in constant communication with other gyms, you can talk to them and say, Hey, we're offering this program as an option. And, uh, yeah, promote it to anybody who has like a tangential awareness of what High Rocks is. You don't have to specifically run ads to it. And I wouldn't start there. I would start by just looking at my personal connections in the community, run clubs, local races. And so I've interviewed probably half a dozen successful affiliates now publicly, and at least another half dozen just on phone calls and things up a couple of tips that I can give you are, um, one be within the community. So the people we see failing are just viewing this as like a cash grab. Like you, you have to go do a race or two. Now, if you don't want to do that, that's completely fine. One of the most successful gym owners that I interviewed, uh, doesn't like High Rocks himself, but he found this person who loves. High Rocks, right? You know, like you, you've had weightlifting classes in your gym, but you didn't lead them. Right. But the person leading them loved weightlifting. Yeah. And so going out and finding that person, making an advantageous revenue split, like they can plug into your existing ecosystem. So this specific person was a lifetime coach and he wasn't allowed to do High Rock stuff at lifetime. So he brought his existing audience into this other gym. They made a nice partnership and it worked. So maybe if it's not for you, you find somebody who, um, it does work for. Now, if you're in a tier one or two town where you already have, you know, 10 High Rocks affiliates around you, the way you can separate yourself from everybody else is having the official High Rocks equipment. So at the actual race, there's a specific brand of stuff and the sled feels different than, you know, some of the other sleds that I've pushed and the wall balls feel slightly different and the sandbag feels slightly different. And the people who are doing this for the first time want to touch and feel that equipment. And some of the people that I've spoken to said that is a clear differentiator. So if you are, you know, training at a gym that doesn't have that, and you're running a camp or a simulation, you're probably going to draw people from neighboring gyms who just like want to use that stuff. And that's it. That's it. That's pretty simple. You know, uh, just be from within the community of not find somebody. And if you want to really differentiate yourself and be the people and be the go-to place in town, um, get the proper equipment. I get, Oh, I can give you a bonus, Chris. I can give you a bonus as we're going through here. Um, put it on your website, right? So people are going to search high rocks training near me. So have a page. If you're affiliated, have a high rocks page that explains what you do, when you do it. And like a simple Q and a, uh, structured segment so that information can get pulled by Google and Google can serve that. And they know you offer that service. Just don't do it on the dark. Don't just make like a random social posts. Like you want to broadcast that fact in that $150 affiliation allows you to do that. It also allows you to use the high rocks name when you're doing your camps and simulations as well. So John, we haven't talked about what happens after the race is over because sometimes in the past, when these things have been really exciting, like Spartan race, people come in, they do the training for Spartan race. And then after the race is over, you never hear from them again. How can we get around that and actually capitalize on high rocks even after the event's done? Yeah. So on my Instagram, I make high rocks content and that's definitely a comment I get a lot. It's like, yeah, you'll sell the camp, but then they're going to leave right when the race is done. My initial thought is like, okay. Like you still got paid for that. Like you had somebody coming to your gym paying $35 a session. If you're a group coaching gym, we know your session rate is like, it's way lower than that. So you're being compensated for that. And then the secondary piece, it's your job as a gym owner to provide the value, like show the value of your service. Right. And so if you have somebody who liked it, which a lot of people do, like people do multiple high rocks is like, hey, you want to go a little faster? You know, it's going to make running easier, getting stronger. You know, it's going to help you get stronger. This class that I have over here or a little bit of personal training, right? Or it's like, hey, you accomplished this great thing. What we have going on is this other great event eight weeks from now and kind of like dangling the carrot of that as well. You talk a lot about goal reviews. Like how would you approach it in a situation like this where you, let's say, you know, you have 50 members who are going to be doing this race in two weeks. And then after that, you know, there's a high likelihood that they're going to turn or take a break or whatever. If I had 50 members doing it, I would probably have a post-race party where we just were celebrating. We're putting people on podiums, we're taking pictures and then making sure that I talk to each one individually. Like what's next for you? If I had less than 30, I would try to book an individual goal review with every single person who did that race. Let's review your performance. Are you completely happy with your performance? Yes. Fantastic. Let's take a picture. Is there anybody that you think should be brought in to try High Rocks or the next group? If no, I'm not completely happy. I'd like to get faster at the wall balls. I'd like to improve the rowing. I want to get better at the running. Great. Here's my recommendation as a professional fitness coach. It's one-on-one training or it's our running group that's coming up. And it's easy enough, let's say you have 40 people coming to your camps and 20 of them are members, 20 of them are non-members, right? It'd be very easy to showcase one of your members who performed really well or shave 10 minutes off their time and say, hey, what caused you to do this? And of course, they're going to say, hey, these classes, I got a lot stronger or I did some personal training and they fixed some stuff in my run that was really helpful. And that creates an opportunity for people to raise their hand. So my, my answer would be like, are you doing stuff to show them that there's something other than the race at the end of the tunnel, right? Are you, are you helping them plan their next fitness goal? Because we know if they have a goal, they have an objective that they're training for. They're going to be more likely to stay in your gym and they're going to be more likely to ascend into whatever the next thing is, um, rather than just the camp itself. Now, Chris, we've covered a lot. Is there anything else that you think is important to address here on the high rocks topic? Well, I think that there's a lot of opportunity there and it hasn't even been fully realized yet. High rocks is the incentive. It's the catalyst for a lot of other downstream opportunities. And literally yesterday, my daughter did an interview at a high rocks gym and I said, tell them how you're going to make the money. And it was, well, I'm a collegiate runner. We're going to run the high rocks program. After it's done, you're going to run a running improvement group and a lifting program for people in high rocks. So she, we went into the interview and they immediately saw that here's somebody that could do personal training, run groups afterward. We have a plan. This is an amazing investment in this person. And as a gym owner, you can do the exact same thing. So again, we're not saying everyone should be a high rocks affiliate and we're not saying high rocks is the answer to all your problems, but you're, if you're someone who's watching blindly or a little skeptical, all we're saying is try it. The data we're seeing internally is that this is a promising movement. That's going to provide a high ROI for the people who take it seriously. If you got value, out of this episode of Run a Profitable Gym. Be sure to like and subscribe, and we will catch you