The Content Strategy That Gets Gym Clients

Chris Cooper has been publishing content since 1998. It got him fired from one job—but it also built all of his businesses.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin and founder Chris Cooper give gym owners a step-by-step content system that builds trust, brings in leads and keeps working long after you hit publish.

Chris shares his personal content creation process: how he plans everything during his 25-minute drive to work and then spends another 10 minutes producing the content with AI.

He also explains why AI search is changing the game, with 30 to 40% of your audience searching for your gym using tools like ChatGPT.

The pair also share the four principles your content should follow to get results: local, helpful, shareable and authority-building.

You’ll see real examples of the kind of content that works and walk away with a clear starting point for your gym’s content strategy.
 
This is episode 3 of 4 in the Marketing May series. Next week: the paid ads funnel.

If you missed the previous funnels, check them out via the links below.

Links

The Social Funnel

The Referral Funnel

Gym Owners United

Book a Call

2:35 - Content vs. social media

3:43 - The content playbook

9:40 - Distributing content

13:40 - Where AI comes in

16:14 - Your action steps

Transcript

0:02

This is Marketing May on Run a Profitable Gym. I'm John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain. Business. And joining me today is a very special guest, the founder of Two Brain Business, Chris Cooper. And Chris, we're talking about one of your favorite funnels today, content. Why is content one of your favorites? Content is my favorite because I think it's probably the best lever that you have long-term to establish local presence and authority. And it's something that I used to start getting clients way back in 1998 for my fitness personal training practice. It's how I built my gym starting in 2005, and it's how I built Two. Brain starting in 2009. This morning, you told me a story about how you got fired for making content. Can you give people a little background? Yeah. So I was reading T-Nation back in the day, and I realized that the top strength coaches in the world were getting clients by publishing content on T-Nation. And in many cases, they didn't know necessarily more than I did, but they had a really great way of boiling information down into something that was digestible by their fans. And so I started doing that for my local audience. And I was writing a health and fitness blog every week for two different local newspapers online. And all the clients that were coming into the personal training studio were then asking for me instead of looking for the studio. And some of my clients were saying, this is crazy. You've got to go start your own thing. And so we booked a tour of a local space. I wasn't even seriously considering leaving. But the owner of the personal training studio found out about it and fired me. But the reality is that if I hadn't been posting clients, I wouldn't have been that busy. And all the clients wouldn't have been coming to see me. And I ultimately wouldn't have started a gym. So content is what got me started. Content is what got me established. It helped me build. And now that content is compounding over and over and over again, because it lives forever. When we talk about content, I think it's important to set intention like we did in the social media video. I think where a lot of gym owners go wrong with content is they try and be Joe Rogan. They try and be the best fitness podcaster in the world. But the reality is you just need to be five mile famous. For you, you were trying to make the best fitness content in Sault Ste. Marie, rather than trying to make the best fitness content in the entire world. And I think the second piece of that is just consistency, right? When you take that weight off your shoulder of having to be the best YouTuber, the best podcaster in the entire world, and think, about it more like, I just need to be the best for my audience, it takes this huge weight off and makes it easier to be more consistent. Before we get into the nuts and bolts, we should talk about the difference between social media and content in the two-brain sense. So what is that difference? Well, social media is kind of a flash in the pan. It's ephemeral, it'll show up, and then it's gone. And it'll get you attention, but it won't usually get you trust. So I use social media like an amplifier. I build my key content to answer questions that the people that I care about have. And then I'll grab attention for that content through social media posts, short-form videos of the long-form content, or maybe just a quote from a blog post that I've made. And we break this longer-form content out into three blocks. There's podcasts, so just doing this, whether as a team or solo. YouTube videos, which is just a video version of this, or just a simple talking head. And then the third piece is blogging. So that's just writing a longer-form article. And posting it on your website. You are actually one of the examples that I use when I give a talk on the four funnels on how to do content properly. And you are still doing it in your gym. So why don't you walk me through your actual content process? And I think, let people know how much time it takes, because I think they'll be shocked at how much time you put into it. Yeah, these days it's a lot shorter. It's a lot easier. And so I have a short drive to my gym or my office every day. It's about 25 minutes. And usually there's something on my mind. I've seen something on Facebook or a member has asked me a question or I've gotten this email, something has come up and I want to get that out of my head. And so I'll grab my phone, I'll turn on voice recorder, and I'll just say, okay, I want to do a podcast about how to eat for fat loss. Or a great question that I got from a parent last week was, I'm worried that my kid is getting addicted to exercise. I'm not out there trying to produce the best two-hour episode on how mitochondrial density works. What I want to do is talk about the things that matter to my local audience in. Sault Ste. Marie. And if a parent cares enough to say, what if my kid gets addicted to exercise, then I care enough to answer that. And so I'll just do kind of a brain dump. Here's what I know into my voice recorder. And when I get to work, I'll throw that into Claude and say, okay, organize my thoughts into something that makes sense. And it'll kind of script out a podcast episode for me. So while these things are coming from my head, Claude is number one, organizing it. So it's succinct and understandable. Number two, it's fact-checking for me. And so if I say something like, if you vary out of zone two for five minutes, you've killed your whole workout, It'll fact check me and push back and say, that's not correct. If I'm asking for resources, hey, you know, is there a study that backs this up? Claude will find that for me. And what comes out is about an eight minute quick cast episode, a script that I can follow. I'll follow that script. I'll read it into a microphone just like this one. I'll publish that as our quick cast for the week. The text from that will go straight into our blog post and our emails, and I'll usually clip that out for three or four social media posts a week. The entire process is done in my drive to work plus about 10 minutes. And so, I have two examples here that we'll pull up on screen. So, one of them, these were pulled in February. So, one of them was a post about seasonal depression. Yeah. And then the other one was about kids playing hockey. Yeah. So, again, not something that's going to hit on a worldwide scale. I live in Florida. I don't get seasonal depression. And even though Florida is the hockey capital of the world, I don't have a lot of people in my network talking about hockey very often. So that's what we mean when we talk about being five mile famous and answering the questions in your gym. I want to provide another example of a gym owner and two brain and two brain mentor, actually. And that is Brian Bott. So Brian Bott lives in this really talent dense part of the world. He lives in the New York, New Jersey area. And his content strategy is he'll do seasons of podcasts. So he'll rent a studio just like this one, and he'll go out and find the best chiropractor in his area, the best physical therapist in his area, the best chef who makes like healthy meals in his area. And they'll do a podcast just like this. And as somebody who's done a weekly podcast for almost four years now, I can tell you your expectation when making a podcast like this should be that nobody listens to it. And that is completely fine because what you're doing is you're having a casual conversation and building a relationship with another influential business owner in your niche. So when you make that piece of content, calling, let's say Chris is the best chiropractor in the area, calling him the best chiropractor in the area, and you post about it, what's Chris going to do? What are you going to do, Chris? Share it. You're going to share it. And that's going to give me a backlink. That's going to signal authority that I'm a local expert and I'm well-networked. And while these interview shows are a little harder, it does really drive home that point. It does make you really five mile famous. And Brian, what's great about Brian's model is he doesn't put pressure on himself to do it every single week. He'll do a season. He'll find the people, he'll line up the interviews, and then he'll take a break. And if it's a six month period before he finds another group of people that he wants to interview, that's completely fine, but it's still putting out a high quality piece of content that serves a purpose in his gym. So when thinking about it, we typically say you should follow four principles. What are those four principles? The first one is to be local. You know, as we've said a few times now, you're not trying to become this influencer where you are the primary source of expertise on metabolism. What you're trying to do is find the information that your local audience needs and give that to them. We tend to assume that people know what we know and that they're going out there and they're listening to all the same podcasts and getting all the same advice that we are. They are not. And even if they were, they probably wouldn't understand it. So our job is to be hyper-local, talk about the problems that are being faced in your community right this second. Some of the podcast topics I've done recently have been about how to eat well on a of budget because our community is going into a recession right now. Things like that, you know, how to battle seasonal depression is a great one. We've had a very long, dark winter here in my community. And that shows that this is local content, that it's not being generated by somebody out of town, by a local resource that people can turn to. Here's another example we can pull from. You can have like a local section on your website where you share like, hey, this is my favorite high protein lunch to get when I have 15 minutes. This is what I order at whatever the most famous restaurant in your town is. So that way, when people are searching for that, again, it signals that you are that local expert. So we talked about the different content types. We have your podcast. We have your YouTube videos. We have your blog posts. But making the content is only the first piece of the puzzle. You actually have to get it in front of people. So how do you think about distribution, Chris? Well, I try to cover as many channels as I can. So I want to shoot a video, take that audio and make that the podcast, take the transcript and make a blog. But I'll constantly be sharing this on social platforms too and looking for places where my local audience congregates. So for example, everybody in our city reads the same online newspaper called Sue Today. And so I share all of our content there. I also work really hard to curate and cultivate our email list to make sure that my content reaches the people who have shown interest in it. And then I go to social media after that. And as someone who was your ads guy for a long period of time, I can tell you when you have a strong base of organic content, that makes paid marketing so much easier. TubeBrain tripled in size in our first like three or four years working together. And you didn't do much in terms of changing your content flow. I just was able to look through the stuff that was most impactful and then just put a ton of ad spend behind it and get it in front of more people's hands. So it was the same raw material. It was just larger distribution. And so if you're a gym owner who has this big backlog of really helpful content, it's so easy today to get it in front of. More eyeballs. And that's why when we talk about ads, we'll talk about how social content and ads are kind of turning into one funnel instead of three separate ones. Yeah. And so, you know, we said that there's really four keys that we want to content. The first is local. But what John is talking about is amplifying that to make sure that it reaches everybody in your local city. The second is helpful. It has to actually be useful to your audience. And that means you want to boil things down to something that a beginner could. Use, you know, the, the first three exercises you should do, how to pack your shoes, what to wear to the gym the first time, what to expect in your first workout, help them feel comfortable. A lot of us fall into this thing called the technician's curse, where we imagine that people know what we know. And so to be helpful to them, it has to be produced at their level. The third thing is it should be shareable. So it should be something that people will want to pass to their friends if possible. Now, not all of my content is perfect. I don't check all these four boxes every time. What's most important is that it's consistent. I've been publishing like this every single week for over 20 years at my gym, well over 15 years for Two Brain, that kind of thing. And so people know, hey, I can subscribe and I'm going to get something valuable to me or something valuable to another person in my life every week. And the fourth one is it should signal authority. We used to say at my gym that I want every single one of my clients to know more about fitness than the best personal trainer in town. And at the time, I thought that was a good retention strategy. Now I know it's more the personality of the trainer that matters. But the reality is if we really want to change their lives, most clients are going to be with us for two to three years. We need to give them the tools and the education and the knowledge and the habits that will let them carry this fitness forward forever to educate their friends, to help convince their kids to eat healthy and pass these lessons on because they're going to have to keep doing this even when they're out of our line of sight. So Chris, it is Marketing May. We give people tactics. If someone's struggling with content, they don't know where to start, what is the prescription for this week? I want you to find something that you're comfortable doing. If that's writing like me, then just start a blog. If it's talking into a camera like this or doing a Q & A, start a YouTube channel. And if it's not, either of those things, just do like a voice rant, something that's bugging you, do a brain dump into your phone, throw that into an AI engine and let it clarify and prune things. So you heard it there. Pick one and produce one piece of content this week. And if you want extra credit, distribute it. So Chris, you've been beating the drum on content for as long as I've known you. And still very few people take your advice. With all the changes in AI, creating content has become easier than ever. And you talked a little bit about your process. But how would you coach a gym owner looking to get started? And how has AI changed the landscape a little bit? Well, AI has certainly made it really easy to produce content. And some people are a little bit wary now because it is getting easier to spot something that like ChatGPT has written, for example. However, we're still at this amazing nexus in time when more content is still better than less content. And content is almost instantaneously easy to create. So if the only way that you can get a blog post up, is to have ChatGPT or Clode write it, what I would do is just do an audio brain dump, put the transcript into Clode and say, here, write me a blog post based on this. It's going to be more succinct. But where this gets really important is that about 30% to 40% of your audience now is using AI for search. They're not going into Google and say, gym in Sault Ste. Marie. They're using. ChatGPT and saying, what's the best gym? Or how do I start exercising? And then the AI, the bot, is going to go search for... The content. The AI is the one that's going to read your content more often than not now, or almost as often as humans will. And so you need that content to be present for the bots to find so that they can give examples, they can cite the sources, and they can point people to your gym. I also think it's important to mention there that that's why it's important to be clear on who you are as a gym, what your core service is, and who you serve. Because if you're creating content about group training, small group training, personal training, nutrition, trampoline dancing, it's going to be harder for the models to understand what exactly it is you do, right? So if your gym is all over the place where another gym is just writing about personal training, personal training, personal training, personal training, it's going to signal that this is a place that is serious about personal training. So more important now than ever is kind of like picking a lane and sticking to it. And most of the people listening to this will have multiple revenue sources, or I would steer them as focus on the one that generates you the most profit and the one you want to grow the most. And make that your lane, and these other auxiliary services can be treated and approached as like secondary or downsells. So Chris, before we give them the tactics for this week, let's give them a quick framework of what a good piece of content should be. So each piece of content should be local. It should be... It should be relevant to the people who are in your town. That's who your audience is. It should be helpful. It should actually solve a problem for them instead of just being a showcase or a brochure. It should be shareable, something that people want to pass on to their spouse or their best friend. And it should signal authority. You should be speaking from a position of expertise, somebody that likes what they're talking about, somebody that knows what they're talking about, and somebody that you can trust to give you further advice or information. So the tactical piece for this, is create one piece of content and distribute it out into the world. A lot of people struggle with where to start. What do you recommend for choosing a medium? So you should start with whatever feels most natural to you. If somebody was speaking to you face-to-face and asking you this question, and you'd want to explain the answer of what led you to start a gym face-to-face, then do a video. If somebody asks you the question, what made you want to start a gym and you would rather respond in an email than write a blog post. And if somebody was asking you, why did you start a gym in the first place? And you would be most comfortable talking on the phone to them where they didn't see your face, then do a podcast. The thing that feels easiest and most comfortable is going to be the thing that you're most likely to be consistent at. And that's what's most important long-term. Now, as we conclude this episode of. Run a Profitable Gym, I want to remind you that content is a long game. So do what makes you feel comfortable and do something that you can do for a long period of time. The reason Chris has been so successful is because he has stuck with it. And that is where most people fail. They try and bite off more than they can chew. That's why we're taking the time here to make sure that you pick the thing that is right for you and giving you a reasonable cadence of one time a week. Now, that is it for this episode of Run a Profitable Gym. Go out there and make your piece of content. And if you got value, please subscribe and like the video. We will catch you next week where we're going to all about paid ads.