Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Coop, you nabbed some unreal speakers for the Summit this year. Am I right?
Chris Cooper (00:06):
Yes. My favorite lineup ever.
Mike Warkentin (00:08):
Is it really? Oh man, I’ve got to hear this, and so do our listeners. I’m Mike Warkentin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is here, and he’s going to give you the lineup for a 2024 Summit for gym owners and coaches. It goes down June 8th and 9th in Chicago, Illinois. You can get tickets in the show notes, and I’m going to give you a special note. Those tickets are $100 off until April 1st. The clock is ticking, so head there, if not right now, right after you hear this lineup. Enough of that. Coop, get to the lineup. Who did you manage to lock down for this Summit?
Chris Cooper (00:38):
Yeah, man, so I’m super stoked about this. In years past, we’ve had Jocko Willink, we’ve had Seth Godin, Lisa Nichols, Dan Martell—massive, massive speakers, but I’m actually most stoked about this one.
Mike Warkentin (00:50):
Really?
Chris Cooper (00:51):
Yeah, man, because—for a couple reasons. Like these guys are big names in the fitness industry—guys and girls, of course. But also, I know exactly what they’re going to be talking about, and it’s exactly what gym owners need to hear right now. Like, our theme is virtuosity. Let’s get into the one-on-one presentations here.
Mike Warkentin (01:07):
Yeah, let’s do it. Roll.
Chris Cooper (01:09):
OK, man. So, Jason Khalipa is one of our favorite speakers of all time, and this year he’s actually going to kick the Summit off. So, he’s going to be talking about virtuosity in the gym business. And I’m not sure he has ever shared this story before with gym owners—for what he’s going to talk to us about—but he’s going to give good examples of expanding an empire really, really quickly, condensing it down to its most important parts, and then building back up and the lessons that he’s learned from that. It’s an amazing story. Jason’s actually a pretty humble guy despite all his success, and he’s totally transparent with this stuff.
Mike Warkentin (01:42):
And man, he’s got some energy, like he brings energy to this thing. Like, I saw him leading the workouts like 5:30 last year, and he was fired up to go. And I had to get my A-game going to photograph that guy with a wide-angle lens because of his arms.
Chris Cooper (01:55):
It’s very hard to keep up to this guy. He calls me once a week to talk about this—like, he is stoked, and he adds so much to the Summit. It’s going to be good. I mean, if you flew in, you listened to Courtney’s warmup—hilarious—you listened to Jason and then you flew back out again, like the flight and ticket would be worth it just for that.
Mike Warkentin (02:13):
You’d be ready to run through a brick wall with him speaking first, I think.
Chris Cooper (02:16):
Oh, 100%. Like, yes, he’s going to improve your business, but he’ll probably put 10 pounds on your clean and jerk while he’s there. Like, he’s that good at this. Another speaker that I’m super stoked about who we haven’t had on stage before, but we’ve been close with for years is Jon Goodman. So yeah, Jon works with online trainers around the world. He’s written some really amazing books, and right now, he’s especially focused on things like Instagram. He’s got this brand-new book coming called “The Obvious Choice,” and he’s going to have a lot of copies of books there to sign, and we’re going to give them away. Obviously, we’re going to buy them for a lot of attendees, and he’s going to get up on stage, and he’s going to talk about “People Who Buy … Buy Lots. And it’s really about knowing who your ideal client avatar is, and then just giving them more and more and everything that they want to solve their actual problems and becoming the obvious choice for those people in your market. If you haven’t heard Jon speak before, you’re going to be blown away. Like, this guy is a genius at making complex tasks like marketing, really, really simple and actionable. And so, Jon’s talk will pay for all of your travel and Summit tickets and everything else too if you just take action while you’re there.
Mike Warkentin (03:29):
Well, that topic lines up exactly with Two-Brain Business stuff—what we’re talking about. Find your ideal clients and then serve them to the nth degree to give them the value they want. Your gym is profitable; like, that sounds like a perfect matchup.
Chris Cooper (03:41):
It’s so good. Yeah. And you know, we’ve been exchanging ideas and stuff for years, but yeah, “People Who Buy Buy Lots”: That is absolutely in line with you providing the best value to your best clients and giving them everything that they need so they don’t have to try 50 different gyms. You’re just solving their problem for them. Jon’s a master of that.
Mike Warkentin (04:01):
That’s an average revenue per member booster right there. I guarantee it.
Chris Cooper (04:05):
One thousand percent, man. So good. Another big name that we’re bringing in this year is Carrie Wilkerson. Carrie is my business mentor, and she’s been doing this for a long time. She’s the author of “The Barefoot Executive,” and she’s spoken at our Tinker meetups before. She’s a fan favorite. She’s going to talk about “Building an Impactful Business and Life You Love With the Three Margins™.” So, this is really interesting. And Carrie’s, she’s a professional presenter. You know, she goes on stages; she does this for a living, and I haven’t heard this talk from her before—the Three Margins—so I’m super stoked for that.
Mike Warkentin (04:39):
What’s the short version of how you found her? How did you find her as a mentor?
Chris Cooper (04:42):
Yeah, I had to pass through several places. So, I was working with Todd Herman who wrote “The Alter Ego Effect.” Before that I was working with Dan Martell, who just wrote “Buy Back Your Time,” and they were kind of in this secret group for business coaches. And I joined that group after working with the two of them for about five years. And then in that group, one of the coaches—so the person who’s coaching the business coaches who coached the business coaches—was Carrie. And she’s been doing this for a long time. She’s very senior. She knows how to get action from people. She’s also an amazing storyteller. And that’s why she’s such a fan favorite, and I’m stoked to have her there.
Mike Warkentin (05:23):
Me too.
Chris Cooper (05:23):
Yeah. Also on the owner stage: Brian Chontosh. I mean, this guy literally just rode a boat across the Atlantic for his Big Fish Foundation. Big Fish Foundation is our title charity this year. But Tosh is just an incredible guy with such an amazing set of stories in the background. Like, I don’t even want to share all of them here, but his military stories are the stuff that you used to read in comic books.
Mike Warkentin (05:52):
Guys, it’s incredible.
Chris Cooper (5:53)
Yeah. Storming a nest of machine gunners and taking them all out by himself. Like it’s this kind of stuff. And these are the stories and the experience that Tosh brings. But more than anything else, he’s just such a great role model. Like, you hear him and his humility, and you know his background, and you leave, and you think, like, “I just want to be like that guy.”
Mike Warkentin (06:11):
He’s pretty cool. Yeah.
Chris Cooper (06:12):
Yeah. I mean, you’ve got more experience with him than I do, Mike, but—
Mike Warkentin (06:16):
You know what? I’ve never met him actually. It’s funny; I’ve been in so many of the same places and Nicole O’Hara was like, “Oh, you’ve got to meet Tosh, and he’s over there somewhere,” and I never got a chance, but I’ve bumped into and around him so many times and like the stories and stuff—and if you guys don’t follow him on Facebook or Instagram, check him out because he posts some really cool stuff. You know, just as an example, I saw a video of him: He had a trail camera and a cougar came by, I think, and took a pee. And so, Tosh went out and checked his trail camera and peed in the same spot and just said, “It’s on.” That’s the kind of guy he is.
Chris Cooper (06:44):
This is the guy. Yeah, you want to follow this guy. I mean, all of these people really: Follow them on Instagram. Jon Goodman especially, you want to be there; you’ll learn just by watching him go. And Tosh just makes you want to be a better human, you know? And then, these are the speakers we brought in, but honestly, our mentor team is so good that we’ve put a lot of them on stage too, and they’re so passionate about this; they all get speaker training, so they’re professional presenters. They’re not just going up there and winging it and boring the audience. Like they’re getting up there, they’re presenting a topic, they’re doing it extremely well, they’ve had success, they’ve coached other people to success in using these things, and you’re going to actually work with them. It is more of a workshop than a lecture.
Chris Cooper (07:29):
So, you’re given work to do while they’re on stage. And these presentations were so good this year, honestly, Mike, that I couldn’t even get on stage. Like I made a pitch, and it wasn’t in the top five. That’s how good these guys are; they’re so good. So, Kieran O’Dwyer and Nick Habich are actually teaming up. Kieran is so, so, so good at the social media funnel, and he’s going to tell people what to do, and he is going to give them an exercise to have them actually making their social media posts there. And then Nick is going to get up and talk about non-slimy sales. Nick has become extremely good at coaching people to buy memberships at his gym, coaching people to buy coaching, and he is going to teach you how to do it. These guys are both super organized, super tactical, and they’re a lot of fun too. And that’s why I love having them up on the stage.
Mike Warkentin (08:23):
You know what’s funny about Nick, and I believe I saw this in his pitch, I think he said he used to be an Army recruiter, if I’m not mistaken. He said, “If I can sell people into that job, I can sell people into a gym, and I can teach you how to do it too.”
Chris Cooper (08:35):
It’s funny, man. I often say a gym membership is the hardest thing to sell. Like, nobody wants to do it. It’s going to be hard. It’s not going to ever get easy or fun, but I think it’s probably the second hardest thing to sell behind the Army.
Mike Warkentin (08:48):
Yeah. But Nick’s a great guy, and he is going to help people out. And teaming up with Kieran is amazing because I saw in our last office hours for clients, he had a huge crew of people working on their social media funnels, and it was a big deal. People were fired up to get out of that meeting.
Chris Cooper (09:01):
Yeah. Kieran’s a young guy; he’s brilliant at creating systems, and people in Two-Brain often just copy what Kieran does, and Summit attendees are going to get to do that too. So, I’m stoked for these guys. We actually have a panel too. So, for the first time at Summit—we do this in the Tinker Group sometimes: We’ll bring together three or four experts, put them on a panel, and then I’ll just ask questions and you’ll get different perspectives. Now, often we don’t do this because I want you to have the answer, like I want you to just go and do the thing, but sometimes it really helps to get some context on things. So, what we’re doing is we’re bringing up the founders of Kilo, Wodify and PushPress, and we’re going to put them on stage, and we’re going to ask them specific questions about metrics.
Chris Cooper (09:45):
So we’re not going to say, like, “What features does your software have?” It’s going to be like, “What do you think is the most important metric that a gym owner can track, and why is that?” And each one of them has a different perspective, but they’re all good. And they’re all heavily involved with gyms. Two out of the three started as gym owners. They all work with thousands of gyms around the world. And so, they’ve got kind of this unique perspective. And so, I’m really stoked for that panel because it allows each one of the three of them to give some brilliant insight on what they think is most important and why.
Mike Warkentin (10:16):
And those three companies were a big part of our State of the Industry Guide this year and provided a ton of data. So, that report, which you can get for free is incredible, and it’s full of data from Two-Brain of course, but then also from the software partners who give us all sorts of insight into popular class times, revenue, retention, all this other stuff. I think that’s going to be really cool, and it will be really interesting to see the different perspectives because, like you said, they’re all a little bit different.
Chris Cooper (10:40):
They are, yeah. And so, I listened to Dan Martell talk about the North Star metric of client adherence. And it really makes me fired up to get people to class more, and then I listened to John at Kilo or Kaleda, the CEO of Kilo, and they talk about retention and engagement. It makes me really, really stoked to go out there and just send my clients more text messages, send them more videos, get them engaged, map out their journey. And then I listen to Brendan, and I think like, “Man, I can really do a lot for my clients that will also benefit my business too.” Like, these people are all absolutely brilliant. They have different areas of focus, and they just get you stoked up to think about numbers, honestly.
Mike Warkentin (11:25):
Well, and one of the things you brought out when you got Brendan Rice on the podcast recently was passing on processing fees to clients. He’s got apparently just—you can click a button now, and it shows you: “This is what you could save by making this small little change to pass on processing fees.” What a great feature for gym owners to at least see what they’re actually giving up and how they can use that to either make more money or put that price into their membership fees or whatever, so they’re not losing money on processing.
Chris Cooper (11:49):
Yeah, I mean, and that’s it. It’s these conversations that I have with them. Brendan just mentioned this to me one time, and record scratch, it’s like, “Wait a minute. You can add about 7% profit to a gym’s bottom line just by flipping this switch here? And you’re going to tell them how to do it?” And very minimal kickback. I mean, this is adding thousands of dollars to a gym owner’s bottom line every year. And it comes out of these conversations. And that’s why I really want to invite the thousand gym owners and coaches who are there to sit in on this conversation with me and just kind of get the value of everybody playing together and jamming. It’s awesome.
Mike Warkentin (12:29):
I bet one of our clients comes up with some crazy idea or question, throws it at these three people, and all of a sudden, they are out in a race to build something cool for gym owners. I bet something like that happens.
Chris Cooper (12:37):
It happens, yeah. I mean, one of the greatest things about the collaboration between these companies is that, you know, we all add data to the State of the Industry. We all work together for the betterment of microgym owners around the world. Like CrossFit HQ can’t do that, FitBody bootcamp—like they all the franchisors, they can’t do that with as much breadth and depth and power as the four of us working together. And that’s why I’m super stoked to get these guys up on stage, collaborating together, answering questions, and just kind of almost brainstorming.
Mike Warkentin (13:11):
Rising tide floats all boats. I love it. Who’s next? Who else you got?
Chris Cooper (13:15):
Well, I know you’re going to love this one. Brian Bott is going to talk about “Leveraging the 4 Personality Types to Boost Sales, Training and Teams.”
Mike Warkentin (13:21):
I like Brian. Yeah.
Chris Cooper (13:23):
It’s so good, so good. And more and more, if there is a trend in the coaching business, it’s probably toward semi-private small group right now. And we published this guide—first, a series of podcasts and then a guide several months ago called “The Four Client Avatars.” And so many people said, “I get it now.” And it solved so many problems for them. And they started using this guide, and they started coaching people better. They started signing people up better, they started keeping people better, and they also applied the guide to their coaches. And it’s like, “Oh yeah, this coach is the expert introvert. This coach is the passive extrovert. Oh, now I know how to relate to them better.” And it’s just a simple model for working with people. It’s brilliant. And that’s why I love it, and that’s what Bott’s going to present on stage to the owners is these four personality types to boost sales, training and teams.
Mike Warkentin (14:16):
Those posts—when we talked about those avatars; there were four of them—we put them together, and we talked about how you can use—like, how to sell to an extrovert or something like that. Different things. We put them up on social media. They were a huge hit. People were super interested in them. That guide was a huge hit. And Brian is a very funny, very great speaker. So, I saw him for the first time last year at the Two-Brain Summit. He was great. He was talking just on semi-private stuff there. This is going to be really, really fun. And I think he’s just going to be entertaining, but also super insightful.
Chris Cooper (14:43):
Yeah, man, he’s so good. And it’s so helpful just to understand this. You know, that’s one of the most popular free guides we’ve ever published is “The Four Avatars.” If you want it, you just go to gymownersunited.com, search for “avatars” in that group, and we’ll just give you the guide. You know, it’s so helpful. Also on the owner stage this weekend is going to be Joleen Bigham talking about “Creating a World-Class Client Experience.” What we want to believe as gym owners is, like, “If we give people results, if we help them lose weight, if we help them get stronger, if we help them like do their first box jump, we’re going to be successful.” Right? And that’s what we want to all believe. That’s not what actually happens. Like what actually happens is you have to do things to retain a client.
Chris Cooper (15:24):
It’s really not the reality even of what’s happening, but the way that the client experiences that—that’s important. So, if a client is getting amazing results, but your lobby is dirty or the door lock system doesn’t work and they can never get in when they want to get in, they’re going to quit. It’s almost like the results come secondary. And so, Jolene is going to talk about creating world-class client experience because if you’ve got a world-class client experience, you’re going to keep people at your gym longer, they’re going to get better results, they’re going to love it more, they’re going to refer more friends, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this is kind of like the operating system on which you should be running your entire business.
Mike Warkentin (16:03):
Yeah, I like Jolene a lot because she is super detail oriented and super focused, and she pays attention to small things. She’s just like—if I asked her right now, if I sent her DM and said, “Hey, where will you be in 73.5 minutes?” She could literally tell me based on her crazy schedule, how organized she is. And I love how she brings that in a presentation that’s just clear and focused, and you can take action. So, she’s going to be a great one.
Chris Cooper (16:25):
Yeah. One thing all these people have in common is they are geniuses at making complex ideas simple and actionable. Like you could take any one of these presentations and make an entire business book about it—300 pages—but what they’re going to give you is the one-page “Do this right now,” and in most cases they’re going to say, “Let’s do this together right now.” So, the reason that people love the Summit and why there’s already 700 tickets sold, and it’s the beginning of March and like it’s going to sell out at 1,000 tickets this year, is because it’s not just lectures. You’re not sitting there: “You should be signing up for my nutrition coaching products, software,” whatever. It’s, “Let’s work together, and let’s actually do these things right now.” It’s more like a workshop. The cool thing this year too is that what’s going on in the coaches stage really, really supports and aligns and supplements what’s going on in the owner stage too at the exact same time. So, we can get into that too if you want.
Mike Warkentin (17:22):
Yeah, let’s do it. I love it. The coaches side is very—it’s a different audience, but there’s just a synergy between the two sides. And you can’t—if your coaches are on your page as an owner, your business will succeed.
Chris Cooper (17:32):
Yeah. You know, the greatest thing that you can do for your business, honestly, is bring your coaches to something like this. Get them stoked up and give them one good idea. So, if, for example, your coaches show up in Chicago with you and after listening to Bill Parisi, spoiler alert, they’re like, “Oh, we need a system to train high school athletes. Here it is.” And they’re stoked up to do that. Wow. Like, you’ve just added another leg to the chair of your business here, and you’re letting them pursue their passion. It’s growing the pie for everybody. And now you’ve got an excited staff member who’s excited to grow your business. I mean, there’s nothing better in the world. So, I already gave that one away, but Bill Parisi is going to be speaking. He’s the founder of Parisi Speed School. They have just over 100 licensees, affiliates, in the States right now. They work with young athletes, high school athletes, college athletes. They’re a strength and conditioning program that works kind of like a belt system, so there’s a progression that they’ve built. It’s, again, absolutely genius. Bill is a very popular speaker, but he’s never been on our stage before, and we’re really stoked to have him.
Mike Warkentin (18:34):
Yeah. Speed School. So, he gave them a 20-minute slot instead of 60.
Chris Cooper (18:38):
Exactly. Yeah. It’s like when you’re listening to this podcast, and you hit double 2x speed. Yeah. So that’s—
Mike Warkentin (18:43):
No one does that. They want to slow it down so they can get more without—
Chris Cooper (18:47):
This guy is so chock full of knowledge; I could talk to him for hours and hours and hours and just learn and learn. So, it’s awesome.
Mike Warkentin (18:55):
Alright, who’s next?
Chris Cooper (18:56):
Another big headliner this year is Mayhem Nation. So, Mayhem is, yeah, I know. So, Mayhem is our programming sponsor this year. So, they’re going to show up, they’re going to lead the morning workouts, they’re going to follow Mayhem programming, they’re bringing some coaches: Christi Novak and Darren Hunsucker are going to lead a session on the coaches stage about “Handling Some of the Most Difficult Coaching Challenges.” This is awesome because it’s not just like form correction, it’s like “Client doesn’t do what you tell them,” “Client isn’t listening,” “A client thinks they’re doing it right, but they’re not.” Like, these are very experienced coaches from Mayhem who are going to help your coaches and really get your coaches super stoked. Like, there’s definitely a fan quality here where your coaches are going to be excited just to meet Christie and Darren from Mayhem.
Mike Warkentin (19:43):
Yeah. And this is like a nice technical thing. Like we—on the coaches side, we talk about business stuff as well, building careers and things like that. But this is a nice technical coaching side where it’s like, “Here’s—yes, it’s not enough to see that this person’s doing it wrong. Here’s how you actually fix, get them moving; here’s why they might not be listening to you.” Things like that. Like I love that coaching side of it too, and it’s a great way for the coaches and that hands-on way to get moving and probably practice things.
Chris Cooper (20:05):
Yeah. I mean, I would love to have two of me at Summit just to go do the coaches side stuff too, like more than ever this year. So, what they’re learning is making them excited, but it also helps your business. You know, the first speaker is Chris Plentus, and he’s going to talk about “Unreasonable Hospitality in the Microgym Industry.” He’s going to talk about the things that make us different from the big chains—the things that we can do that add personal touches to the client. Like knowing their kid’s name, knowing that their dog was sick last week. These are really important things, but it’s unreasonable to expect that you would get this from a business, right? I mean, and that’s what Chris is going to talk about. So, Chris is a Tinker. He is a very high level Two-Brain mentor and client, and he follows these principles all the time in his own gym. These are from the books “Unreasonable Hospitality” and “Setting the Table.” And he’s going to tell you how to apply those in your gym. So, if you’re a fan of those books or you’re a fan of the TV series “The Bear,” you’re going to see a lot of this stuff coming into play, and he’s going to tell you how to do, like, “The Bear” in your gym.
Mike Warkentin (21:08):
Wow. Chris is a great speaker as well. I’m super looking forward to that one. I’ll give you guys, listers, something to try right now to get it ready for Chris’s presentation. Take a look at your last group picture from your holiday workout. Go through as fast as you can, everyone in the picture, and name what they do for a living. And if you can’t, you might have a thing where you want to just start digging into your membership and finding out more about your members. Try that. Alright, what else we got?
Chris Cooper (21:30):
Just being curious about your members is a massive tool that you can use for retention and that’s something Chris is going to talk about. Next, Matt Temby is going to come up. So Matt is actually the head of sales for Two-Brain. This guy gets coaching and mentorship in sales, and he’s going to talk to the coaches about why they should want to sell and how to sell better. I know a lot of owners get good at selling; some are uncomfortable with it, whatever. We want the coaches to feel comfortable about the process. In a gym, selling is just coaching. Like, the first act of coaching that you ever get to perform with somebody is getting them to pay and show up the next day. And so, Matt is going to help your coaches understand that, help them through the process, help them encourage people to upgrade, et cetera.
Mike Warkentin (22:17):
So Matt’s not going to get up there and recreate the “Glengarry Glen Ross” “Always be closing!” scene, is he?
Chris Cooper (22:23):
No, no. That would be funny. But that’s not Matt. That’s not Matt.
Mike Warkentin (22:27):
Alright.
Chris Cooper (22:28):
The thing about Matt is he is another guy. You just want to be like him. And so, if he’s a salesperson, I want to be a salesperson. You know, he’s awesome. And then, Brian Bott’s going to present to the coaches too, and he’s going to talk about programming for semi-private. Now, he talked about semi-private last year. He’s going to talk about semi-private from the business side on the owners stage, and now he’s going to teach the client or teach the coaches how to program for clients in semi-private. It’s a really interesting model. So as an example, you know, I’m a client of semi-private at my gym, Catalyst. And so, when I go over there today at 11 a.m., there will be three other people in the group. One, she’s a busy entrepreneur with four kids. Another person is like one week away from having a baby, and a third woman is—she just lost her husband, unfortunately, to Alzheimer’s and so she’s worried about lifespan and health span.
Chris Cooper (23:16):
We’re all at completely different levels, and we’re all following our own programming. I train for cycling, but we’re going to share one coach. And so, we get this kind of little community where everybody cares about each other. I’ll walk in, and it’s like, “Coop, what’s up?” You know, it’s a lot of fun. I’m doing back squats; they’re doing something else. We’re sharing one coach, and that’s what semi-private is. And so, he’s going to talk about how to build programs for each of those four different people in that group. And I think a programming talk is probably long overdue on the coach’s stage.
Mike Warkentin (23:46):
Yeah. And if you were there last year, you saw Brian talk about semi-private programming—he brushed up against a little bit of this stuff in his overview of the whole thing, but this is going to be detailed on the programming side. So if you happened to see him last year, know that you’re going further this year, and if you weren’t there, he’s going to bring you right up to speed and then show you how to dial this in as a coach, which is a really, really cool way for you to make more money as a coach and for the owner to make more money. Whenever I’ve messaged Brian literally and said, “Hey, what are you paying your coaches at your gym?” And he’d tell me these hourly rates that are crazy, and then he’ll give me—
Chris Cooper (24:15):
It’s like 80 bucks. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (24:15):
Right. And then he’ll give me the amount of money that the gym is retaining, which is also crazy. And everyone is winning, and the clients are winning too. So, this is a really great system. If you haven’t heard of it, come check it out.
Chris Cooper (24:26):
Yeah. What’s crazy is we just published our leaderboard for profit, and Brian was on there. And we don’t publish a leaderboard for how much the coaches are making, but if we did, his coaches would also be on there. And so, where people are like, “Oh, the 4/9ths model: I want to pay my coaches more.” Ryan is a living example of a gym owner making a ton of money. His coaches are making an income that’s more than double the industry average. They’re making a good career, they love their jobs, they’re not getting burned out or overworked, they’re not leaving to go start their own gyms, and his semi-private model is a way to do that. The other beautiful thing about this programming is it’s not just like, “Let’s come up with the spiciest, hardest, most killer workouts.” That’s not it at all. It’s like, “Let’s look through the lens of who that client is, which avatar they are, and program something that they will like, that they will do and, and will provide success for them.” I think it’s a unique perspective on programming in the industry that’s sadly needed.
Mike Warkentin (25:25):
I can’t wait to see it because I am at that stage where I just can’t stand the “hard for the sake of hard” workouts. Everyone, you know—I like the tailored approach to things, and I love the way Brian has created this, especially because it’s creating careers for coaches and great incomes for gym owners. It’s like a perfect storm for me.
Chris Cooper (25:42):
Yeah, it’s awesome. Then we’re going to bring Peter Brasovan up to the stage, and he’s going to talk about career roadmaps. So, what he’s actually going to do—
Mike Warkentin (25:49):
This is big.
Chris Cooper (25:50):
Yeah, it’s massive. I mean, what typically happens in the industry is you hire a coach, you get them trained, they become a good coach, and they say, “Well, I really can’t make very much money here. The industry average is still under $24,000 a year. Like, that’s not enough. The only way that I can make more money is to go and start my own gym.” And that’s exactly what I did back in 2005. And that’s exactly what’s happening 20 years later. And what Peter’s going to do is actually help your coaches map out their career path so that not only do they see, “I can make a good living at this gym,” but also, “I can probably do better with less stress working where I am instead of going out, starting my own thing, potentially bankrupting myself and then folding in five years.” So, he’s going to do a career roadmap exercise with them. The beautiful part is that the way that these coaches make a better income is by growing the pie also for the gym. And so, the owner benefits, the coach benefits, and most importantly, the client benefits too.
Mike Warkentin (26:46):
It’s—I’ve literally seen this conversation so many times, and I’ve had them personally in the past where a coach will say, “Hey, I got a job offer here for this and that, and I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem very good. What do I do? I really want to make a career.” This is how you do it. You find a gym and a gym owner who can do this career roadmap session with you, and you create a career. And we have breakdowns for this. Like Two-Brain has published exact examples of how this works. This many classes, this much admin, this much social media, this much programming, this much personal training, whatever: $80,000, which is way beyond. And I’m not making those numbers up. Like we’ve seen people at our Two-Brain gyms put together these packages where coaches are now making $60-80,000 with benefits and actually having careers that support a family instead of picking up applications for the fire department on their way home from the gym where they didn’t make any money. It’s a game changer. So, gym owners, you want your coaches to see this, and then you want to learn how to do it so that you can create this amazing business that gets careers and profit for everyone.
Chris Cooper (27:42):
It’s also your best way to keep your own business growing is to keep the coaches that you have making careers under your roof. I mean, the model for a lot of franchises and even for CrossFit affiliates is like, you have somebody you get them passionate about your thing, they take their certification, and now they want to go open their own gym. And that’s how they keep expanding, right? Well, that works great if you’re CrossFit HQ or you’re the franchisor of Orangetheory or F45 or whatever; it doesn’t work great if you are the franchisee or the licensee or the affiliate because you’re just basically churning through these coaches and starting your own competition all the time. So, what you actually want to do here is help your people make good careers, and that’s a win for them: They get to keep doing what they love and serving the people they love.
Chris Cooper (28:31):
It’s a win for you: You don’t spread out the whole market. And it’s a win for the client because they get to work with the best coaches too. It’s such an important concept, and I’m really proud that Two-Brain is leading the charge on this. And I’ll give you guys the dream scenario because this just happened to me for the first time. A guy comes to my gym, hand delivers a resume: “I really want to work here. Please call me when you’re hiring.” OK. When we’re hiring, we call this guy up. “I’ll be right there. I can be there this afternoon for an interview.” OK. This is a trainer at two other gyms in town. He’s working part-time at both trying to make a career for himself and his wife who moved to Canada to find a better life. And he can’t do it at these other gyms. We sit down, and I say, “Why do you want to work at Catalyst so bad? Like, you’re knocking on my door, you’re coming into classes. Why?” And he’s like, because I read the Two-Brain stuff, and I know that I can make a career at a Two-Brain gym.” It wasn’t about Catalyst at all. It was working at a Two-Brain gym that attracted him, and that was—it was amazing for me.
Mike Warkentin (29:34):
Did you hire him?
Chris Cooper (29:35):
Oh, 1,000%. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (29:37):
Are you bringing him to Summit?
Chris Cooper (29:38):
Absolutely. You can meet him. His name is Felipe. He has broad shoulders, green eyes, just an amazing smile, and he will probably shake everybody’s hand in that room. But again, what attracted him was he wanted to work at a Two-Brain gym more than he wanted to work at Catalyst, so.
Mike Warkentin (29:53):
Oh wow. That’s incredible. So, he checked all the boxes and away we go, and I’m excited to see what he does after he spends some time in that room.
Chris Cooper (30:01):
I know.
Mike Warkentin (30:01):
Have we got more? Did we get to the—
Chris Cooper (30:03):
We do, man. Yeah. So, Oskar Johed, who’s on the CrossFit Seminar Staff, is going to be teaching “From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Crafting World-Class Coaches.” Oskar teaches L1 and L2 seminars, but in Two-Brain when people are studying for their certified CrossFit coach—they used to call that the L3, the L4—he’s the one that runs those sessions, and he helps people pass those exams. He is used to ascending his coaches. They have the most L3 CrossFit certified coaches in Sweden—definitely possibly in Europe—and he is amazing at elevating and ascending coaches up to high levels. Yeah, you want your coaches in front of this guy.
Mike Warkentin (30:42):
It’s an area of passion for him. I know he loves training coaches and teaching coaches, and he is an amazing gym owner at the same time. So, I can’t wait to see him get back up there.
Chris Cooper (30:50):
He is one of the most successful CrossFit affiliate owners in the world. And then after that, Aleksandrina Angelova-Brandt—she’s from Germany; she’s going to be talking about “Getting Clients to Change: A Guide to Transformative Communication.” So, she has a very successful nutrition coaching program, and what we’ve learned over the last decade is that coaching nutrition is not really about the food; it’s about the habits. And Angelina—Aleksandrina, sorry; she has a lot of nicknames. We all just call her Alex.
Mike Warkentin (31:20):
Alex, yeah.
Chris Cooper (31:21):
Alex is an expert at behavior change, and that’s what nutrition coaching is really all about. And more and more, I think that’s what fitness is really all about. And so, she’s going to be giving people a really unique perspective and instead of standing up there and selling her nutrition coaching program, she’s going to teach them, “Here’s how you build your own nutrition coaching program or your own habits coaching program,” or “Here’s how you improve what you’re already selling with exercise.”
Mike Warkentin (31:46):
Yeah. And I think you said one time: What’s the best workout in the world for the client? And it’s the one that they’ll do. And even if you’re not a nutrition coach, learning how to change people’s behavior, modify their behavior and change their habits is going to help you in any coaching scenario because like you said, it’s not just about teaching the squat; it’s getting someone to do the squat or whatever they want to do to get toward their goal. So, this is going to be really, really important for coaches to give them a new perspective on modifying behavior.
Chris Cooper (32:13):
It’s an amazing skill to have, and it even helps with your parenting. Like, my kid who’s away at college will send me pictures of her dinner just because we both like food, and I can look, and it’s like, “There’s a protein, and there’s—” You know, it’s amazing. If you know how to change somebody else’s habits, you change their life.
Mike Warkentin (32:34):
The psychological aspect of this stuff is so cool. And we had Bonnie Skinner last year speaking about that stuff. People were so into Bonnie because that whole psychological angle of mental game is so important, and I think this is going to be a great compliment to that.
Chris Cooper (32:47):
Yeah. She’s actually speaking on the Tinker stage, which is like the private stage for the high performers that happens Friday. She’ll be there this year. And then also on the coaches stage, Brian Foley is going to talk about “Growing a 50+ Program in Your Gym.”
Mike Warkentin (32:59):
Oh, there’s one.
Chris Cooper (33:00):
It is, and honestly, this is the fastest growing demographic in the microgym industry. I love our program. It’s called Prime; yours is called Legends, I think. And you know, it sells out every single time: 12 to 14 people, age 50 to about 84. They always want to be there. They don’t want to miss a class. They don’t show up late. You know, they want to buy every T-shirt we make; they want to refer their friends. It feels like CrossFit 2013, honestly. And nobody is like, “Let me make it to the Masters Division of the CrossFit Games.” That’s not who they are. They are people who have a little bit of disposable income. They see their own parents struggling later in life, and they don’t want that to be them. Like they have the best motivation to succeed, the best incentives, and they are amazing clients. So, Brian’s going to tell you how to build that.
Mike Warkentin (33:50):
Yeah. And it’s so important. They may be the most fun clients in your gym, and you get such a reward from coaching them because you literally see how it changes their lives, or they go from—and we had this: People went from walking in with a cane to not needing that cane anymore. And then they’re such driven, passionate people full of vitality that want to do great things as they age. And it’s like they become these aspirational characters in the gym where the rest of your clients are like, “I want to be like that 72-year-old dude who’s still squatting,” and it’s just such a cool thing that happens in a gym.
Chris Cooper (34:19):
Yeah, I think we’ve all got a story like that. You know, Linda comes in the door, she can’t get up off the floor by herself, and a year later, she’s doing the Intramural Open. And what’s amazing here is that not only can they progress so far, so fast, but any little incremental progression has a measurable effect on their quality of life right away, but also how long they’re going to live. Like, you know, going from that “Can’t get up off the floor” to “Now I can get off the floor without help”: That means another five years where they’re not in a nursing home, which probably adds another five years of being depression free and independent another five years where they’re not paying to be in a nursing home and possibly like five years of life on the end too. Like, there’s good research on this. So yeah, it’s my favorite. Plus, they get my jokes, which are all outdated, right?
Mike Warkentin (35:06):
Yeah, that’s right. You know, and let’s be real. They have time; they’ve got a little bit of money. They can definitely be available at 10:30 in that open slot where your gym is dead. They’re a perfect, perfect market that you can target, and coaches love them.
Chris Cooper (35:19):
Yeah. There’s really no downside. And so, Brian’s going to tell you how to grow that program in your gym. Quick confession, Mike: We started running that program at 4 o’clock, and it got so full so fast that we actually had to kill our kids’ program. This is the first time we haven’t had a kids’ program at Catalyst in like 17 years.
Mike Warkentin (35:37):
Wow. That’s saying something.
Chris Cooper (35:38):
Yeah, and honestly, I can’t fit my kids’ program back in right now because the Legends, Prime at Catalyst, is so massive. So, and then finally, Josh is going to wrap it up—Josh Martin’s going to talk about “The Refined Art of Coaching,” which is his company. And what they do is they teach coaches how to deliver with passion and empathy instead of just tactically. So yes, you need to know to tell people, like “Push your knees in on the squat,” but you also need to do that the right way if you’re going to keep people around and have them feel like they have a coaching relationship instead of just being part of this industrial machine. And that’s what Josh’s specialty is. So, he’s going to wrap the weekend up with “The Refined Art of Coaching.”
Mike Warkentin (36:18):
And Josh has some great stories. I think his dad struck out Pete Rose on three pitches in the World Series, if I’m not mistaken, something like that. So, Josh is—he’s got a ton of great stories as a coach and gym owner, and he’s passionate about this thing, and it’s going to be an incredible presentation. I love listening to him talk.
Chris Cooper (36:34):
Yeah, man. I love all these guys. Like there’s nobody that I’m not excited for. And in the past, we’ve had headliners like Jocko, Todd Herman, Seth Godin—like these are personal heroes of mine, and so of course I’ve been excited for them. But you know going in, “Like, OK, I’m going to get fired up. It’s going to be awesome. Maybe I’ll get to shake their hand.” But you also know, like, “This is not going to give me like a tactical exercise that’s going to literally grow my business.” All the speakers now are selected exactly for that. Yes, they’re going to get you excited. They’re going to stoke your fire to own a gym again, but also they’re going to improve your gym while you’re sitting in the room. And then of course my favorite part is there’s a thousand of us altogether. Like you actually see the industry take a big step forward every time we do this Summit. It’s amazing to be in the room.
Mike Warkentin (37:21):
Alright, listeners, you heard it. That is the release of the lineup for the Two-Brain Summit. It goes down June 8th and 9th in Chicago, Illinois, which is an easy place to get to from just about everywhere. Remember the Summit tickets are $100 off right now, but that ends April 1st. You can get them through the link in the show notes. Click that; bring your coaches. It will pay for itself. Thanks for this, Coop.
Chris Cooper (37:42):
Yeah. Twobrainsummit.com—that’ll take you right there. And look, I know whenever somebody’s talking about their event, they always say, “Things will sell out.” I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. We had 700 tickets sold before the start of February this year, and our cap is like 1,000. We’re negotiating with the hotel right now to say, “What else can we do? How can we arrange chairs differently?” But the reality is this will be full, and it’ll be sold out. So, get your ticket now. Please bring your coaches. It’s going to be life changing for them. They will love you for it, and I hope to see you there.
Mike Warkentin (38:17):
Alright, this has been “Run a Profitable Gym.” We’ll see you in Chicago at the Summit.
