How I Get More Leads From Facebook Than Paid Ads

Before you spend another dollar on ads, listen to this episode. Chris Cooper is getting more leads from free Facebook posts than almost any other marketing channel.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Coop shares how he writes Facebook posts that start real conversations, bring back lapsed members and attract new clients.

The core idea is simple: Start capturing what’s already happening in your gym. The breakthroughs, the mistakes, the 6 a.m. class where only three people showed up and everyone crushed it anyway.

Chris also challenges you to make your clients the star of your content—just a good photo and two to four sentences that make everyone who knows them stop scrolling. These posts cost nothing and don’t require a social media manager or a fancy content strategy.

You’ll also hear about the posts that kill organic reach (like unfiltered rants) and why protecting your reach matters more than making a point.

Your gym’s best Facebook content is already happening in front of you every day. It’s time to start capturing it.

Links

Gym Owners United

Book a Call

0:00 - Intro

0:50 - Why organic Facebook still works

4:04 - Capture, don’t create

5:57 - The posts that perform best

6:45 - What kills your organic reach

7:20 - Make your clients famous

9:40 - How personal posts juice the algorithm

Transcript

0:02

So most gym owners think that Facebook is dead and paid ads are the only way to get leads right now. But I don't believe that for a second. While tons of gym owners are spending thousands of dollars boosting posts, building funnels and chasing little hacks while their organic content gets ignored and brings in almost nothing. I get more leads from organic Facebook posts than almost any other marketing channel that we use. And most of the posts are just photos with stories attached to them. I'm Chris Cooper. I'm the founder of Two Brain Business, the world's largest gym mentorship company, working with over 3,500 gym owners to help them hit six figures in profit. Because yes, that is possible. Now in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how I write. Facebook posts, why they work and why gym owners massively overcomplicate social media. I want to tell you two quick stories. First, I was in my favorite bike shop last spring, and it got me never met, said, Hey, are you Chris Cooper? While we were both waiting in line, he had seen a post that I'd made on Facebook about cycling. It was something about organizing your life around your priorities. It went, I'm not training because I'm motivated or inspired or excited. I'm training because it's 9am on Tuesday and 9am on Tuesday is when I train. And he said to me in the bike shop, Well, it's easy for you to make time to exercise. You own your own business. And that started a whole conversation about priorities in life. Now, he had never met me. He found me through a Facebook post about cycling. But the point was that the post started a conversation. In another story, and this was more recently, my blog post for the day featured this guy who'd been a member for a long time, but just dropped off. He was just in the picture from my gym. And putting his picture in that post got me a DM from him. And I hadn't spoken to him in probably two or three years. And we had this great catch up conversation. It was just the one photo in one post, but that was enough to start the conversation. The point is that you don't need to be an influencer to everybody on Instagram. You don't need to be famous. You're already an influencer to the people who might actually buy from you. Here's what I mean. Nobody outside the gym industry has ever heard of me. And I genuinely do not care if they ever do, but for gym owners and for the people in my city who are thinking about getting healthier, I have a lot of credibility. And so do you, you don't need a million followers. You need the right 200 people in your city to pay attention to you. Now our state of the industry data shows that leads are going up for small group and personal training gyms, not because those owners are better at running ads or they're spending more on ads, but because their organic social and referrals are working way better for them. The channel is not dead. It's just being used wrong. Now, here's why this matters. It's because you don't need to create outrageous or viral or hilarious content. You just need to translate what you already know into posts that your local audience cares about. So stop trying to go viral. Stop trying to reach strangers who will never walk into your gym. Stop trying to impress other gym owners. Think about the people within 10 miles of your front door who follow you, who know somebody who trains at your gym, or they're just watching from the sidelines. These are the people you need to reach. Reach them. What I want you to do is think more about translating what you know and the messages that are out there from other people instead of creating content from scratch. Low production value is fine because consistency beats perfection every time. That means you don't need a professional photographer. You don't need a social media manager. You don't need an agency. You need to put something out every day, even if it's just a photo and two sentences. A great post published weekly loses to a decent post that's published daily every time. Now, by the way, if you want to talk to other gym owners who are just figuring this stuff out in real time, come join us in gymownersunited.com. It's a free. Facebook group with thousands of gym owners sharing what's working right now. And the link is in the description and the podcast notes here. Now, I just said that the best Facebook content isn't invented in your brain. It's captured from what's already happening in your gym and in your life. Most gym owners, when they make time, they sit down to make content and they stare at their blank phone screen. That's the wrong approach. You're not a content creator. You're a gym owner with a front row seat to transformation and failure and hard work and breakthroughs every single day. Your job is to capture it, not to try and influence or would do. So what are you doing today? What did a client say before a class that made you laugh? What mistake did you make last year that cost you money? What PR did somebody hit that made the whole room go crazy and clap and erupt, right? That's your content. It's already happening. You just have to be a window to the story that's going on in your gym. You just have to take your phone out and capture. Don't create. Impressions are okay. And formatting the perfect post with chat GPT. Okay. That gets the job done, but you need depth, real connection, not just eyeballs on your content. A post that gets you 200 likes from strangers is worth almost nothing, but a post that makes one of your members forward it to a friend and say, this is just what my gym is like. That is really impactful. That is more likely to get you a client. You want depth over breadth every time. So share your mistakes, your wins, and your backstage moments. That's what people can't get anywhere else. And I promise you, if you make a pledge, or a habit to publish every single day, it will get really easy because now you'll be looking for things to capture and share. Your clients already trust you. Show them the unglamorous part. Show them the 6 a.m. Class when only three people showed up and you all crushed it anyway. Show them the equipment that broke and how you fixed it. Show them what you're learning. Show them what you look like in high school. Nobody else has access to that. That is your competitive advantage. Here's something I've noticed about my own posts. The ones that do the best are always the ones that. I'm kind of hesitant to publish. That embarrassing picture of me from high school with glasses so thick that I could like see into the future and bad posture and a dorky haircut and an unathletic body that got more interactions than almost anything that I've ever carefully planned. Or when I post about a mistake that I made with my diet or my training or my business, nobody posts that stuff online because we're all so worried about looking good in front of people that we barely know. But that's the stuff that works. The heartfelt, the embarrassing, the stuff that makes me joyful, that's what people respond to. Don't try to impress strangers online. You just have to connect with 150 people in your audience and that's the whole game. Now here's the flip side because this is important. The opposite of capture don't create is the rant without filters. Long posts about how hard it is to own a gym or political opinions and grievances. And the stuff doesn't just underperform. It actively damages you. If somebody hits show me less from Chris or block Chris, I've lost the chance to ever reach them again. I've burned the opportunity to get them into my gym and change their life. For what? To make a point? To show people that. I'm smart? It's not worth it. Protect your reach. Connect. Don't perform. The other opportunity that you have on Facebook is to make your clients famous. And this is the most powerful thing that you can do. Make other people the star. Nobody else is doing this for your clients except you. You're the one with the platform, small as it may feel, and you're the one who actually knows their story. Use it. Tell their stories. Not biographies, not testimonials, but little snippets, a moment, a sentence they said that stuck with you. Brag about them. Show a before and after that isn't about looks. It's about confidence or energy or showing up. Wow. Look at how she showed up at the gym today. That's a great post. Here's what I've seen work. You don't even have to ask permission every time for the small stuff. Maria crushed her first pull up today after six months of trying. I'm not crying. You're crying. Something like that. That's a good post. That's two sentences. It tells a story. It makes Maria feel great. And everybody who knows Maria sees it, even if nobody sees it and it makes Maria feel great. That's a win. Nobody outside your gym is making your clients famous. That's your exclusive territory. Your boss is not bragging about them on Facebook and Instagram. Other channels are going to want to compete with you on price, on convenience, on programming. They can't compete with you on knowing your clients' names, knowing their goals, knowing their kids' names. Use that. The warm, local, relational content that you create is literally impossible for anybody else to replicate. So tell your client stories, brag them up, tell small snippets, things that you remember, not full biographies. Do it consistently. Three client stories a month is a great floor to set. You don't need a long blog post. You need two to four sentences and a good photo. The photo of the client matters more than the caption. Tag them if they're comfortable with it and watch what happens. Look, Facebook is not dead. Whether you use it or not, your best clients are definitely using. Facebook. Organic reach is not dead. You don't have to pay a ton to take advantage of the algorithm. What's dead is the idea that you need a production budget, a viral strategy, an ad agency, a social media manager to make this work. You just need to show up, tell real stories, and make the people around you feel seen. Be more human and celebrate their humanity. Now, I'm not great at this, but I am consistent and consistency makes me better. Consistency juices the algorithm. Consistency wins. And hey, here's one more thing I want you to hear because it changed how I think about this years ago completely. I once made a post about my two summers ago. It had been standing in this farm for over a hundred years and it was getting pretty dangerous. So I shared a photo of it leaning to the right at sunrise. There were hundreds of impressions. There were dozens of comments. That post had nothing to do with fitness, nothing to do with business. It was just honestly a way for me to remember the barn. But here's what happened. All those interactions moved me up in the algorithm of a lot of local people, people who had driven past the barn, people who knew a story about the barn, a story about the farm, the property, the previous owners. That meant that all of those people who commented saw my next post, which was about the gym. That's how it works. When people interact with your dog pictures or your anniversary picture of your wife or your love letter, it boosts your relevance in their feed. So share what's going on in your life too. Some of my personal posts outperform my ads, not in no sweat intros booked, but in impressions. They juice the algorithm and they keep me relevant to the people around me. And those are exactly the people who will eventually walk in my front door because they are ready to embrace their humanity and change their life. If you want to connect with thousands of gym owners who are doing exactly this stuff, building their businesses with real community, real content, and real systems, come join us in Gym Owners United. It's free and the link is in the description below, but it's easy to remember. It's just gymownersunited.com. I'll see you there.