How to Get More Referrals for Your Gym

Your best clients already know your next best clients. Here’s how to find them.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin and founder Chris Cooper kick off Marketing May with the most underused growth tool in the fitness business: referrals.

Referrals are free, they get results faster than any ad campaign, and most gym owners are leaving them on the table every single day.

John and Chris walk through the seed client exercise, a simple process to identify your best clients and find more people just like them.

Chris shares three questions to ask seed clients over coffee to sharpen your offerings and open the door to referrals without feeling pushy, plus how to use goal reviews with all clients every 90 days to increase retention and referrals.

The pair also lay out a full playbook for in-gym and out-of-gym events that bring non-members through your doors and turn them into paying clients.

Subscribe and follow along all month. Every week in May, we’re breaking down one of the four funnels you need to grow your gym. Next up: social media.

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0:50 - Why referrals first?

2:10 - Seed client exercise

9:21 - Goal review process

15:58 - Internal and external events

21:05 - Your actions steps

Transcript

0:02

The most common thing we hear when a gym owner comes into Two Brain is, I need more clients. And if you're in that boat, we got you. I'm John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain Business, and this is Run a Profitable Gym. With me today is a special guest, the founder of Two Brain Business, Chris Cooper. Chris, let's talk about the four funnels. What are they? You've got referral funnel, social media, organic, content funnel, and the paid ads funnel. And when all four work, they multiply one another. And we're kicking off something called Marketing May. And each week we're going to go over one of the funnels, give people tactical things that they can implement in their gym and a task with the goal of helping them make more money implementing that funnel in their gym. We're going to kick off with your favorite, referrals. Why are referrals your favorite way to get more leads for your gym? Well, first, the biggest opportunity that most gym owners miss. They've got this emotional bond with their clients and they've got a lot of trust, but they don't take it the next step and coach their clients to bring in their friends. That's the first thing. The second thing is that once you practice it a few times, it becomes easy and natural. And you realize that you're actually doing your clients a massive favor. So you're not only helping your clients by creating a better support network around them, but you're getting more clients to your gym. It doesn't cost you money on ads and you don't have to develop a special skillset like writing content. And I come from a paid ads background. That's what I like to do. And a lot of times when people think they need more clients, it's like, what's the next marketing campaign? Or what do I post on Instagram? And they're looking for that kind of next big fix that solves all the problems. But the reality is referrals are free and they're the easiest one and you can do them today. And we're going to show you exactly how to do it. I think the best way to kick this off, Chris, would be with one of the exercises that you came up for generating more referrals. So we have this saying in 2Brain, your best clients know your next best clients. And in order to find your next best clients, you have to identify who your best clients are now. And so what we're going to do is a quick exercise here. I want you to take out a sheet of paper, actually do it, fold it in half. And then on the left side of the sheet of paper, I want you to write a dollar sign and circle it. On the right side of the sheet of paper, I want you to write a smiley face and circle it. Then let's go back to the left side. I want you to think of your client base, pull up your gym management software and write down the five to ten clients that pay you the most money. Now on the right side of the sheet, I want you to write down the five to ten clients who are the most fun to work with. These are people who put a smile on your face every time you walk into the gym. Now let's look at the names on the left side and the names on the right side. Circle any matches and put a line connecting them. These are your best clients. They're the people who pay you the most and they're the most fun to work with. We need to figure out how to get more people just like them. And the key to doing that is something we call a seed client interview. Chris, what is a seed client interview? A seed client is a person that you want to plant in the ground and create replicas of. And so the interview is you having a conversation with that person over coffee and asking a few questions that will help shape the direction of your gym, but also hopefully lead to more referrals from them because you're going to be very clear about asking for them. And when you're meeting with these seed clients, like it's just something where you ask them out for coffee or maybe, hey, grab a drink from the fridge and come to the office. I just want to ask you a few questions, right? Yeah, I try to keep it really casual. The last one that I did was really funny. It was this couple and they've been doing semi-private training with us for a long time. And I said, hey, what are you guys doing after the gym? Do you have time for coffee? And they both looked at me suspiciously like, okay. And they came over to the cafe and we sat down and he's like, oh, I thought you were going to ask me for more money or something or give us some bad news. And I said, no, no, I'm really interested in your feedback. And every. Every time I do this with our seed clients, I get enormous insight because it's coming from the people who care about my gym and who are probably the most important people in my gym. And so just as usual, these people gave me amazing feedback because they answered the three questions that. I had for them. It took 10 minutes. I paid for the coffee and it was one of the most useful exercises I did all year. So let's talk about it. In an average gym, they're going to have like three to five seed clients. Okay. So these are like your crown jewels. You should pay more attention to them than you do any other member. And so we talked about taking them out to coffee. It's a little 15 to 20 minute meeting. It's marketing May, Chris. We're going to give them the questions. They need to be able to plant those seeds in the ground and have trees come out. So when they go into that meeting, what are they saying? Well, these are your best clients. And so you want to know how can I get more people like you? And so the first thing that you're going to ask is what brought you to my gym in the first place? Because if ads, for example, are bringing in 30 clients a month, but none of them are turning out to be your best clients, then you want to know what is going to create the best clients. And so these people were actually brought in by referral. The second thing that going to ask them is like, what have you done in the past that you didn't like? Because that's going to tell you, hey, don't do this. It's going to give you some guardrails on your business. And the third thing that you're going to ask your clients is what is your biggest challenge when you leave the gym? And so for these folks, the answers were something like, you know, a referral brought us in. As I said, we couldn't stick with the program before because nobody was holding us accountable. And the third thing is like, it's always eating. We leave here. And if we don't have our lunch pre-made, we're going to go to a restaurant and pick something up on the way home. That's an opportunity for you to expand your business. And so that 10 minute meeting really focuses you on here's the marketing I need to be doing the most. Here's the things that I need to avoid doing or chase. I'll chase these people out. And finally, like, here's the potential. Next service that I can offer that will actually benefit my clients. And so how do we take that information and turn it into referrals? Well, that's going to be the next step. So you have the conversation with them. And from there, you're going to say, is there anybody in your network who you think could benefit from being part of my gym community? And that's the line that I always use. Is there anybody in your network who would benefit from being a part of my gym? It doesn't feel like anything other than an invitation, which is just what it is. Quite often, the seed client will rack their brain and say, actually, my sister, and they'll actually give you a name. Sometimes they're a little bit more wary. I don't know. I'm not sure. But that's okay, because we're going to address that in a goal review, which we're going to talk about next. And you're going to do that with all of your clients. So once you ask the question, hey, do you know anybody who would benefit from coming here? It's a binary answer, right? It's a yes, no. If they say yes, what do you do? Well, 30% of the time, they are going to say yes. And you shouldn't expect it to happen every time. You shouldn't be discouraged if they say no. 30% of the time, they're going to give you a name. But keep in mind, that name is going to become one of your best clients, just like they are. So that's what makes it worth doing. The next thing that you're going to do is say, hey, do you mind if I get in touch with them and CC you on the email or connect you on chat? And so as I become more confident in doing this and comfortable with it, I'll say, can we text this person right now? And I'll include my member on the text thread. So, you know, John says, you know, my cousin Maria would be a great fit for your gym. Great. Do you mind if I text Maria right now? What's her number? I text her, hey, it's Chris from Catalyst. I'm including John on this thread. We'd love to have you come in and try a one-on-one workout with John. The other thing that you can do, but this is a little bit more passive and less effective, is going to be, when can we invite them in for a one-on-one workout with you? The reason that that's more passive is now you're putting the ball in the hands of your client who has no incentive or motivation to be your salesperson. You're way better off to hold the ball and call the play yourself. And so we find that a lot of clients in Two Brain do these seed client exercises, but they tend to skip the last part because it's uncomfortable, right? Asking for referrals is a muscle that you need to train. And so, you know, I think the first step is something like a, hey, what would it take to get this person in for a workout? But as you develop that, you'll realize if you take more of an assertive approach in helping that client, you're going to have more luck in getting them in because like you said, they leave, they forget, whatever. So if you're doing all the work to do the seed client exercise, if you're getting them in, if you're asking them the questions, don't skip the last part. Be sure to ask them, hey, who's going to benefit from coming here? Now, next piece, we have our seed client interviews. You also mentioned the next step if they say no is something called a goal review. What is a goal review session? A goal review is for all of your clients. So the seed client interviews you want to do just with your best because they're going to give you a focus on your gym and the right perspective. Instead of just doing a survey and seeking feedback from everybody, you just want to get it from your best clients. A goal review is for all of your clients. Every single one of your clients, especially if you're only running a group training program, has goals and you don't know about them yet. If they're one-on-one clients, you might know their goals, but you might need to update your knowledge too because goals change. So a goal review is when you bring your client in, this should happen every three to six months, you sit down like this, you're going to spend 10 minutes. The first thing you're going to do is look up their goal and you're going to say, here's the progress that you've made toward this goal. You might measure them on your in body. You might look at their WOD scores. You might look at their deadlift PR, match it to their goal and say, here's the progress that you've made. So you're starting with that framing. That's really important because they might not see that themselves. Then you say, John, are you completely satisfied with your progress? And you let that sit. And they're going to say one of three things. going to say yes, no, or maybe. If they say yes, they don't need a new prescription. Great. I'm so proud of you. Now I've been thinking about your wife. I've been thinking about your coworker, Lisa. I've been thinking about the friend that you keep mentioning, Amy. What would it take to get your wife to come in and do a one-on-one workout with you? So if they say that they're completely satisfied with your progress, the next best thing that you can actually do for them is to help them build a set, a support network in their personal lives. And this is the step that a great coach will take is not just coach you to change your diet and your lifestyle and your exercise, but coach everybody around you to make that same change because that will support you long-term. It takes boldness. It takes practice. But when I got over the old BS in my own head and started doing this, not only did my business grow from the referrals, but my clients started getting much better results because now I'm not just in their face one hour a day. Their entire lifestyle has changed. Their support network has changed. So if you say, are you completely satisfied with your progress? And they say, yes, I am. The next best thing that you can do is start building their support network for them. And so you want to go into that knowing. John's wife's name. You want to go into that knowing Maria's coworker's name. You want to go into that knowing who does Amy hang out with on the weekends and suggesting a specific name to them. Hey, do you think Bill would join us for a one-on-one session next week? And one of the things that I learned from you is you have to set the expectation of referrals in your business. It can't be this passive thing. How can gym owners set the expectation of referring someone on day zero when someone just signs up for the gym? Well, this is brilliant. And it actually increased our referrals by about 30% when we started doing it, just framing it. So somebody comes into the gym, you sign them up, they're excited. You've got their first on-ramp appointment booked and you say, okay, at the end of on-ramp, you and I are going to get together again, review your progress and talk about the next step. And if you're perfectly satisfied with your progress at that point, I'm going to ask you to name somebody who will help support this journey with you. And again, what you're doing is you're building their support network. If they have a workout buddy at work, they will work out more. If their wife eats the way that they eat at home, they will eat better, et cetera. And so just framing that, and they always say, yeah, okay. It just means that it's not a surprise when it actually comes up in their first goal review. And quite often they come into that goal review saying, oh man, Chris is going to ask me for a referral. I'm going to mention my buddy, John. And if you're new around here, OnRamp is basically a series of one-on-one classes that prepare people for whatever your main offering is, whether that be small group personal training or group classes. If you are a gym owner who maybe has one offering and haven't established an OnRamp yet, a simple way is, hey, you told me you want to lose 10 pounds. If I'm knocking it out of the park for you, you lose 10 pounds 90 days from now. Is it fair that you refer me one of your friends? And they'll say, yes. They're not going to say no. And that just gets them thinking and it allows them to know it's coming at least. So when you ask that question at that first goal review, it's not going to feel salesy because they already know. You've already set the table for the referral. Now, Chris, one of the things that we hear a lot about this is, feels salesy. I don't like doing it. And so, fine. We got something for you anyway. You recently filled up an entire class. So, you know, if you missed it, I am the CEO of Two Brain Business. I took over the role in January. Chris is now in a full-time content role, which means he has a little more free time on his hands. So he's been meddling around in his gym. So tell me how you built back up your book of business after, you know, 10 years on the sidelines here. Well, I think a lot of people were surprised that my first act as a retiree is I want to go coach in my gym. And so I went to my partner and I said, Ryan, do you have any classes or personal training clients you can give me? And he said, no, go get your own. And so I did this affinity marketing, referral marketing on myself. I put myself in the middle of the circle and I said, who are my closest friends? Who are my connections? And immediately, because I'm a cyclist, I started thinking about the people I ride bikes with. And I knew that one was coaching a group of young teenage athletes and he was preparing them for their mountain biking season. It's a high school sport now. And so I called him up and I said, Lawrence, are you still working with these kids? And he said, yeah. And I said, what are you doing for strength training? And he said, nothing. Some of them are trying it at school. Some of them are doing bodybuilding at the, you know, the YMCA. Some of them are doing nothing. And I said, well, what if we brought them in for eight weeks and we taught them the fundamentals of lifting, the fundamentals of movement, it would help their cycling, but these would be skills that keep forever. And he said, Oh my God, I love it. And so I said, okay, I'll get you a quote. I got him a quote. They signed up for two sessions so far with 16 kids. We had to cap it and we could sell it as third session if we want to. So every Wednesday night from seven o'clock till eight, I coach a group of teenage cyclists. I brought them in through a connection. It was very easy. The kids love it. Sometimes their parents come and watch. And it's just a great example of doing affinity marketing. You know, everybody who gets a job as a coach or opens a gym say, Oh, I want to do this to make an impact. I want to change the world. Well, you can't change the world. If you're waiting for the world to come to you, you have to go out there and extend your hand and care enough about the people in your community to invite them to come and train with you. And that's just all I've been doing. And we have just a laundry list of gym owner success stories in this category from, you know, training local hockey teams, local football teams, getting corporate clients, simply by just going out, having a conversation and saying something as simple as like, how can I help your network? How can I help the people at your corp? But if you want to do that, I got something else. Another easy way to naturally get referrals without feeling salesy is through events. Events are an incredible way to bring outside people into your business. There are two different types of events. You have your in-gym events and you have your out-of-gym events. Let's start with in-gym events. So all the rage right now is High Rocks. And those are your camps, your simulations. We profiled a gym owner recently on the podcast that was doing an extra$30,000 a year in revenue, just offering 12 High Rocks camps leading up to the High Rocks race. We're releasing another podcast shortly with someone in the Tinker program who's doing one camp a week, and she's doing an additional$2,500 in revenue. Just from that, it really is just kind of a no-brainer because when I talked to these people, they said, hey, did you know that the number varies, but it's usually between like 50 to 75% of the people who show up for these camps are non-members. So these are people from local run clubs. These are people from other gyms who want to come in for that specific type of training. Or in the case of the gym owner who's making an additional$30,000, he had like the special center equipment that High Rocks uses in the races. And people just wanted to try that out before. Actually having it be game time. If you're a non-believer in High Rocks, totally fine. Let's talk about some of the ones that you do in your gym. What are some of the more successful in-gym events that bring outsiders in? Well, the easiest is just to take a group that you have. So if I took these kids, the cyclists, and I said, okay, our 16th week is going to be a fun challenge where you can bring in your parents to compete against you. That's an in-gym event, and you're bringing in up to 32 two parents right there. But for the last 15 years, we've looked for local events, 5Ks, 10Ks, Tough Mudder type races, and partnered with them to say, we can help more beginners feel comfortable signing up for your event by running a Couch to 5K program to help them get ready. My partner, Ryan, runs a great triathlon event. So now we run a Couch to 5K event starting in. April every year to prepare people. And it helps more people sign up for his race. And it brings outsiders into our gym. And then we'll segue that into a duathlon training event. And the amazing thing is, we've been this for 15 years. It's not always easy, but it always works. You have to educate the event promoter on why they should push people to your group. But High Rocks does all that for you. Like High Rocks takes this basic concept of extending your help and your care and brings all of this attention to you. So all you have to do right now is plant your flag and say, we're doing a High Rocks mini camp or a High Rocks whatever, mini comp. This weekend, and you'll feel it. And it's amazing. Like it's lightning in a bottle. I've had so many different organizations pitch me on this concept over the last decade. High Rocks is for real and it works. Other variations of this are like your bring a friend day that happens on like a Saturday. Wine and WOD, you know, like a women's specific workout is another one. Mom's specific ones. So things where you bring in like a baby or something like that and do a workout with a bunch of new moms or other ones that we've seen tremendous success. In the group. Now, if you're just doing in gym events, that's only half the battle. You should also be doing out of gym events. And my recommendation for those is have them loosely related to fitness. So the one that we've seen a ton of success in within the two brain growth group are pickleball outings because pickleball is naturally like a team sport. You play it with a partner and everybody seems to know someone who plays pickleball and you get them out on the court and you can say something like, Hey, if you want to, you know, get a little stronger, jump a little higher, you know, just come in and do some squats. People have actually started within two brain have started pickleball specific training sessions in the gym. So they took an out of gym event and turned it into an in-gym event. Um, you can do stuff like broom ball. We did one where we went out and skated and played hockey. Uh, and this is also like a great opportunity to partner with local businesses. So one gym owner did like a high protein cooking class at one of the cooking schools in the area. So they all went out and they taught them how to do stuff and they tied it into a nutrition challenge that was happening. So the cooking class was a natural sell to something going on in gym, but wasn't salesy at all because you know, that was the theme. Everyone was already talking about it and it just made that referral happen very naturally. Are there any external events that you've done at Catalyst that are worth mentioning? Yeah, so many. I mean, there's a cross country 5k that we give prizes to every year and they actively promote us. Um, I've rented ice time just about every year and taking people to that. But if you want to think smaller scale too, I have clients who are financial advisors, for example. And so we can invite them into the gym. They'll talk about tax planning. I'll go to their clients and talk about fitness. We have clients who are nurses. We've done that for, we've gone to retirement homes and done squat clinics for them. And it doesn't always immediately grab you a client. Often it does, but what it does do is set you up long-term so that when the people in front of you are ready for a gym, you are going to be the one that they think of. So this is marketing may, and we want to keep it tactical so they can take this information and actually use it in their businesses. So if you're someone who's made it this far, our prescription for this week is go out and do one seed client interview. So do the exercise we did in the beginning, invite one of those seed clients out to coffee, follow the script verbatim, and ask for the referral. The second piece is plan one event. Put it on the calendar. It can be an in-gym or an external, but make sure that outside people are welcome, your members know that outside people are welcome, and also invite your alumni base. Right now in 2Brain, we're doing something called the Bring Back 2 Challenge being run by 2Brain mentor Corey Lewis, and he's sharing the strategies that he uses to bring back members in crazy numbers. 36% of all of his signups last were previous members returning. And doing these events is kind of one of the cornerstones of his strategy. And so this stuff works, you just need to do it. So one seed client interview, one event on the calendar. See what the results are like. If you get results, and you will if you follow the scripts, continue to do those seed client interviews until you run out of seed clients. Chris, you recommend once a year for those? Yeah. And then start with your goal review. So try and meet with your clients every 90 days and have those conversations. From an event standpoint, we find that the best gyms in Two Brain are doing one event a month, and they can be internal or external. There really is no limit. People are coming to your gym because they want community. They want to be around other people. You're not going to overdo it here. And again, these can be things as simple as having people bring a friend to a workout, doing a high rocks camp, and it can be something as complex as renting out a hockey arena and having an intramural hockey game amongst your gym members. But I only recommend that for Canadian gyms. Chris, anything else we need to cover here on your favorite part of the funnel? The thing that's stopping most gym owners from getting more referrals is the internal dialogue of, that person broke up with me. They never want to hear from me again. That is not true. And as soon as you get over that, you start seeing opportunities to help people and help them more. And that is what actually brings them into your gym. You coach them to sign up. You coach them to get fit. You have to coach them back. But if you do that, you'll change their lives. So that concludes our episode on the referral funnel. Take this information and go and implement it in your gym. Next week, we're going to be talking about social media. So subscribe to Run a Profitable Gym, and we'll catch you next week.