Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Big gross revenue in gyms. What’s the secret? You’re going to find out today. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. My guest today, he’s going to open the vault and tell you how he earned a spot on our top 10 leaderboard for gross revenue in January 2024. Chance Beam, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Chance Beam (00:21):
Absolutely, thanks. I’m excited to be here, and thanks for having me.
Mike Warkentin (00:24):
I can’t wait to talk about it. So, you’ve got a whole bunch of stuff going on. Titans Sports Academy in Kennesaw, Georgia is just one thing, but your operation pulls in upwards of 80 grand per month gross. And you’ve got all sorts of other stuff going on. So, we’re going to dig in and talk about these numbers and see if we can help gym owners. Are you ready to go?
Chance Beam (00:43):
Absolutely, happy to.
Mike Warkentin (00:44):
Alright, so let’s start here. Give me a breakdown—any percentages or numbers you’re willing to throw at me just for revenue streams in your gym. Like what goes into this number that’s bigger than 80 grand?
Chance Beam (00:56):
Alright, and so one of the things I like to really think about is—and so in kind of preparing for this call and thinking about it—is that our revenue streams are membership: We have lessons, which is private lessons, which would be considered PT in the gym world. We have camps, which would be considered kind of like the youth camps. I know some people are doing that in the summer. We have apparel sales. Then we also have some upsells for like showcases, which kind of falls under that camp scenario. And so those are probably our five or six revenue streams. And like myself and most gym owners, you’re going to have different peaks and valleys of those revenue streams throughout the year—and trying to figure out a way to manage those. I think one of the … I probably have on my side, other than others, is I have time.
Chance Beam (01:42):
And so what I mean by that is that, so Titans Sports Academy or Titans started back in 2003. They started this full-time-full-time in 2008, 2009 under another organization—broke off on my own in 2013. So, the biggest difference I probably have from most is I’ve now been doing this 10, 11 years under Titans Sports Academy. So, I can go back and look at 10 years of financials to kind of get an idea of, “Hey, these are the things that are doing well. These are the things that are not doing well.” So, for us, our membership, like most people, is kind of what puts me to sleep at night, lets me know that I can pay the bills. So, our membership has grown, and we’ve done a lot of things over the time to really focus on that. One of the things that coming through Two-Brain—that has been vital during COVID and after COVID is kind of stripping away the emotion of a lot of things.
Chance Beam (02:32):
So for example, length of engagement is huge for us. I talked with you briefly about that yesterday, but length of engagement. So for us, our membership percentage—out of 800,000-900,000, right at close to a million, we may be showing—is going to be right at about 25 to 28% of that total number. So, you’re looking at about 250 to 280, 2 90, somewhere in that ballpark as far as the total number of memberships. And then from that—well, we’re very different, being a baseball academy—that may not apply to some of your other gyms is we’ll have about 40% of our stuff is apparel sales, uniforms, “mom and dad need a hat, “Jenny down the street has a cheerleading event.” So, we ventured into some other things that still fall under our gym. But also, my thing is, like last night I was at our gym kind of preparing for this call, and I made it a concerted effort to see how many people had our logo on. And I would argue that … percent of our people are having our logo on, and that includes parents that are bringing the kids. And so that’s something I’m kind of proud of. Or like when you pull out of a stoplight and you see somebody have like the little magnet that has your …, that’s still kind of cool to me. But you know, that’s something that we really kind of focused on is really treating our logo and anywhere that we can have that as another opportunity to market to expose people to what we’re doing.
Mike Warkentin (03:55):
OK. So that was—if I break it down again, that’s about 25% is memberships, you said about 40% is apparel sales and then the remainder is going to be camps and other things of that nature. Is that correct?
Chance Beam (04:06):
That’s correct. So that’s going to be your college showcases, your camps, your clinics, group classes, things of that nature—all of those kind of bundled into that category. Also, for us it’s a little different, like cage rentals and some other things. But you may have certain people that have big enough space, and I know I’ve talked to a lot of gym owners, and they may have a space in the back; they rent it to a cheer group because they have some turf area or a batting cage or something like that. So that would kind of fall into that category as well.
Mike Warkentin (04:35):
So you’ve covered a little bit of it, but I’ll ask you again for the 60-second summary. Like what is a sports training academy with a focus on baseball? What are you selling there? What are you doing? And give me some—chuck at me some space size, some sizes and some staff numbers too, if you have them.
Chance Beam (04:49):
Yes. So, for example, so I tell people that my elevator pitch, if you will, is we train athletes, boys and girls. We want them to be champions in the game and in the game of life. And so, our core principles are accountability, responsibility, attitude, effort and integrity. And we talk about those on the daily. And I tell people all the time, that’s what we hire on. That’s what we fire on. That’s how we grow. That’s how we decide to contract all of those things. So, when I tell someone that, for example, I followed traction very closely in an EOS book and start how we build our business. You know, I tell—they ask you for your guarantee in that book. And I say my word is my bond. If I tell you that I’m going to do that, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. Because of that, that’s given us—
Chance Beam (05:39):
And so they say, “Well, what makes you different?” We’ve done it for 20 years, and if I’ve done it for 20 years, that tells me my word has to be good for something. So, a framework of who we are: We do baseball training and softball training from eight to 18. We have roughly 40 teams. Organizationally, we have about 440-some odd members. Staff wise, I’ve really segmented it down to—probably we have six full-time staff, not including myself. So, what we’ve done using kind of the Two-Brain model of each of those staff members have somewhere between 80 to about 130 players/members under them. With, in my mind, knowing that in an optimal world, I’d love to get each of those people to about 150, right? That’s where—that’s kind of a max number, but that’s also where they can be the most profitable.
Chance Beam (06:30):
They can go deep inside that group for additional group lessons, camps, clinics and things of that nature. And so, that’s kind of how I’ve started to segment my business. One of my full-time staff members is my apparel guy that runs our store, which is, again, very unique. But under that, I’ve got—under Titans Sports Academy, we have baseball and softball, so we have Titans Baseball, we have Wahoo—we have Wahoos, which is another brand of baseball. We have Southeast Socks, which is another brand and the Stars Fastpitch brand. So, Titans Sports Academy kind of becomes an umbrella, and under there you have four different brands.
Mike Warkentin (07:06):
OK. And what kind of space are we running—are we talking about here?
Chance Beam (07:09):
So, space-wise, I would tell each and everybody, the biggest, scariest part of this whole business is your space. It can kill you. It could be a blessing or a curse. So, when it’s 2013, I had my—rented a space, just like most people watching this, and I had a larger space because with baseball you need a larger space inside. And I think we had roughly about 11,000 square feet inside. We had a great rental deal, but I was doing the math, and I can carry a one and if inflation happened, and it was basically—I was going to have to raise rates just to pay rent. And I was like, “Man, what a terrible world.” So, I had started looking with a long, like a four- or five-year window. I’ve got to have my own space.
Chance Beam (07:50):
I’ve got to be able to secure my overhead into perpetuity. So, if I raise rates, I’m paying off things or paying myself more. I’m not just paying rent. So, I say all this to say that I—our current space that we have is 16,000 square feet inside. It’s a two-story brick building where when we bought it, we got a great deal on it. We put a second floor in it so that we could have that entire second floor be open. So, it’s a 90 by 90 brick building. So, 8,101st floor, 8,102nd floor. Then we also just in December expanded to an outdoor space with about another 5,000 square feet. And then we also have a mid-sized baseball field behind us. It’s a turf infield, grass outfield.
Mike Warkentin (08:33):
OK. So, you’ve got a big operation. That’s pretty cool. Have you—what’s the highest level you’ve ever put a player into? Have you seen anybody go into the MLB?
Chance Beam (08:41):
Yeah. No, we got seven guys in the big leagues right now.
Mike Warkentin (08:43):
Oh, care to drop a name, or two?
Chance Beam (08:45):
Yeah, so for example, one of my guys is Nathaniel Lowe just won the World Series last year, Texas Rangers first baseman. He played for me. So, one of my favorite memories—and bear with me for a second. This past year—so Nathaniel’s playing first base with the Rangers; they had a former player of mine named Alex Speas, he’s a first rounder. He comes out of high school, and he’s like 97 to 99. He could throw the ball forward very hard. He had no idea where it was going. Fast forward, he’s had Tommy John, all these kinds of crazy things, and so now he’s like 20, 23, 24. I talked to him in December just over a year ago, and he was in North Carolina doing some baseball stuff. I was like, “Man, are you sure you’re done?” He is like, “Yeah coach, I think I’m done. I’m just going to start coaching.”
Chance Beam (09:25):
I was like, “You only get one shot at this.” So fast forward to last June, in January, a scout had showed up. One of the guys I talked to was like, “You’ve got to …” so he had him throw a bullpen. He was still 95, 97 at 23, 24. He hadn’t thrown for almost a year. He gets him to come to spring training; he starts to figure out he can throw strikes. He makes his big-league debut in the middle of last summer. So, I say all this to say this: So, when he makes his big league debut, I got a picture of Nathaniel Lowe, Alex Speas, who both played for me; his agent is a guy named Spencer Kebo who also played for me. So, I got three guys, two of them in the big leagues, and his agent all played for me, former players. So, it was a pretty cool moment.
Mike Warkentin (10:06):
What a cool story. That—I love it. I love hearing about stuff like that. I was looking forward to talking to you because I knew you’d have somebody in the MLB that I could put a face to a name. So, that’s pretty cool. Talk to me a little bit about—so you got some interesting stuff going on. I’m going to get into this one right now because I know it’s a bit of a different one. Talk to me about the apparel thing. So, some gyms just sell a few T-shirts on the side. Other gyms I know of sell a lot of equip—apparel, like some of these destination locations like Las Vegas, Hawaii. You’ve got an entire apparel empire going. It actually generates more revenue than your basic memberships. What’s going on?
Chance Beam (10:38):
Yeah, I say that Titans many times is the great accident, and many of the things that we’ve been—that we’ve failed at and that we’ve been successful at, I think I was like, “Don’t be afraid of either one of those because when you start them, you never know if they’re going to be a success or failure.” But our apparel business literally started out of the frustration of us having teams and mom would come to me, and mom or dad would be like, “Hey, I’d love to have a hat,” or “Hey, I’d love to have a T-shirt,” and that kind of thing. And so, it was kind of the experimentation process where I brought another third-party company in like many of our people do. And “Alright, well I’m going to have them do it.” And the problem was that I would have someone else doing the apparel, say uniform or spirit wear.
Chance Beam (11:18):
They would do it wrong or wouldn’t deliver on it. And then I would get yelled at for something that—and I was like, “This is crazy. I’m getting yelled at. These are my customers, and I’m not making any money off of it, so I’ve got to really start to rethink this.” So, when I was a kid—I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, so we’re in the South—so, when I was a kid, we would go to Myrtle Beach, or we would go to these Redneck Riviera places: Myrtle Beach or Panama City Beach. And you would go to these stores, and you would see—alright, I’m a youth large at the time, and I would look at these walls, and they would have like 50 different logos, and it may have been airbrushed or whatever, but it was like the heat-press type of thing.
Chance Beam (11:56):
And they would have all these logos. You were like, “I want this shirt with number 27.” And they would dig back there and put it on there. And I can remember this as a kid, and it was like that really thick, heavy vinyl that made you sweat when you put it on. It was terrible. And so, I had this epiphany and so I started calling around to little people and going like, “You’re not—there’s got to be a way to do that.” And they’re like, “Yeah, it’s come a long way. It’s basically called screen print transfers.” And so that’s kind of how it started where there’s just got to be a better way. And because I had a guy that was doing it, and we were trying to do a revenue share, and he would order all the stuff and get it printed. I felt terrible for him. They would sit—maybe it was the wrong size, maybe the logo the people didn’t like or whatever. And I was like, “There’s just got to be a better way.” So, all of that to say that we just kind of kept experimenting, kept experimenting. And now it’s become a huge part of our business where I’ve got a full-time employee and some part-time people that help him as well. So, it’s kind of taken on a life of its own.
Mike Warkentin (12:50):
OK. So many gym owners aren’t going to be able to get into the idea of large-scale apparel manufacturing and printing. But the concept that you’re laying out here is super important. Chris Cooper has talked about this forever. It’s figuring out how you can solve more problems for your clients and obviously for your business at the same time. So, you saw, “Look, this apparel is just not coming out right. I’ve had the same problem. It’s always printed wrong. Everything’s wrong and backwards. The sizes are wrong. I get flack for someone else’s mistakes.” You are running with teams and sports teams who constantly need tons and tons of stuff, so you looked at that and said, “How can I solve more problems for my clients?” And now it’s creating 40% of your gross. So, if you’re listening out there and you’re not into apparel manufacturing, that’s fine. But think about: Are there other problems that I can solve for my clients? And if you find the right ones and solve them properly, you might be able to tack on some revenue. I love it. That’s an incredible story. What’d you got for me?
Chance Beam (13:40):
I want to add to this. And so, I think that most people, especially when I’m thinking like when I first started or other—they look at your apparel or maybe people having your logo as an expense or a headache. You’ve got to flip that thought to: That is advertising and marketing. So as I said earlier, one of the things that we still do is—and when I first started doing this, I couldn’t afford it, I’ll be honest with you, but those little magnets that you give to all your clients and then I went through a phase where “I’m going to charge them for” or whatever; no, give those things away. And so, the reason why I say that is to say this: So, if you’re, say, a microgym and you’ve got 50 members, you’ve got 80, 90 members, the more times than I can get my logo on their back, and they’re out in public, or maybe they’re at another gym working out—say for example, I used to be a CrossFit member, and now I’m somewhere else and I’m wearing somebody else’s logo—those things start to embed in people’s heads.
Chance Beam (14:31):
So instead of looking at it as an expense, looking at as—almost put it under a category of a marketing advertisement opportunity. And so, and I think I—if you want me to, I could share kind of how I can take my model and decelerate it down to honestly about 500 to a thousand dollars. You could do this at any gym.
Mike Warkentin (14:51):
Really? What’s the short version of that? Like how could someone do that?
Chance Beam (14:54):
So, the short version of this is that somebody somewhere in your gym has a mom or dad—probably a mom—they have a heat press somewhere in their house that they’re not using. Yeah. Alright. And you can get on Facebook Marketplace, and you can buy a cheap heat press for 200-300 bucks at most, whatever.
Chance Beam (15:10):
Now, we have a really nice one because we have a lot more stuff, but it doesn’t have to be really nice. Get a cheap heat press. From there, you want to get your logo, and I’m sure they’ve got it digitized. And what I would do if I was in your little world, ask your clients—I think if affinity marketing’s a great place—but ask your clients, “Hey guys, I want to offer you guys a T-shirt, and we have an event coming up,” or “We’ve got the Open,” or “We’ve got intramurals,” or whatever and, “If you can design me the best T-shirt or the coolest t-shirt—we’re going to take five and then we’re going to vote for them—and if you win that, I’ll give you a free T-shirt.” It’s kind of a free way to have them kind of do your marketing for you or just do a basic T-shirt.
Chance Beam (15:48):
So what I would do is I would do that little exercise. So, I’ve got one design here, and then I’m going to have my basic Titan Sports Academy. I’m now going to—I’ve got my cheap heat press and then I’m going to go to SanMar, SNS—there’s tons of cheap T-shirt places online. Your customers know—the Two-Brain people, they know the most comfortable, cheapest T-shirt is 2, 3, 4 bucks. Go to a place called Transfer Express, and I can take that logo, and I can literally upload just any kind of digital file in there, and it’ll digitize it and do it for me for free. And then, based off the number of those logos that I order, the price comes down. So, for example, if I order 12 of—it starts to get a little technical, but you can read between the lines.
Chance Beam (16:33):
So for example, in our world, in gym world, they’re going to want something that’s kind of stretchy—on a T-shirt that’s going to be moving; think about working out. So, it’s called elasta-print, but without getting too technical, if you did 12 of those, those prints would cost you—we’ll call it a two-color, three-color—it’s going to cost you $10 or $11. Now if you order 24 of those, it’s going to come down incrementally and so on. So, I have two logos I put out. One that I’m doing a pre-order for: Our “CrossFit helps me look better naked” T-shirt. And then the other one is my Titans Sports Academy T-shirt. OK. Or Titans CrossFit, whatever you want to call it. And so, I do the pre-order and maybe I do a couple for my coaches, so now it brings those costs down.
Chance Beam (17:16):
So, say I order that and then I order my Titans Sports Academy, but now I have those logos in hand, and I add—you know, buy a couple T-shirts, the ones that are pre-ordered and size run—or you know, most of your gyms are going to know women’s medium, women’s adult large, your basic sizes that you know. Order a couple of those. So now all in. I may have 500 or 600 bucks. Now, I sell out those T-shirts and if I pay for what I just bought this first time, well I’m even, so now I have 30 or 40 people running around with my logo on it. Well, that’s a win. And now, the next time I already had—so each time I do this I could do it a little better. So now I have my Titans CrossFit T-shirt per se; I have that logo.
Chance Beam (17:59):
So a new member comes in; I want to give them a T-shirt, or a new coach comes in, or you know, and it’s those type of things. So, my point of it is: You don’t have to do it at the scale I’m doing, but that’s the basic concept that we started with of doing something really, really small and easy. And the other thing that I would say is that there’s a lot of tremendous companies, and I kind of think it’s Forever Fierce. They do great T-shirts, and they work with you guys. So, it’s not a knock at them or any of the companies that are doing it, but what I found with our clients is that the faster I can get a T-shirt in their hand, the happier they are, and they’re willing to spend an extra—let’s face it: No offense, nobody’s going to wear our T-shirts for 12 years.
Chance Beam (18:38):
OK? If I can get them to wear them for 12 times, that’s golden. So, I’m not trying to get—I don’t need the Maserati of T-shirts; I just need something that’s going to hold up seven or eight times. And if they pay 20 bucks and they throw it away after the seven or eight times, it’s great. So, I think a lot of people get so caught up in, “Oh it’s got to be this, or it’s got to”—stop. Get them a T-shirt, have it feel comfortable, have it say something cool or something that they identify with, and it’d be comfortable and quick are the two …
Mike Warkentin (19:06):
So the principle there that you’ve just laid out, if you’re listening: return on investment. You think about your time, and you think about your money. Could you make more money if you invest in a heat press? Do the math; figure it out. And if the answer is yes, maybe invest. If the answer is no—like for me, it’s not because I’m bad at retailing; that’s me. If you’re like that, don’t invest there. But if you’re good at it, chance is you might want to go that route. So that’s an interesting way to generate some additional revenue. Tell me about, in your gross revenue scheme, there’s a lot of things that go into that—a lot of different metrics. So gross revenue is this big number at the peak of the pyramid. What else do you focus on below that? Like what is your main focus? Is it length of engagement, average revenue per member? Where are you focusing on other metrics?
Chance Beam (19:47):
So for us, length of engagement is a huge one. So, for example, if we’re right now at about 19 months, 20 months for length of engagement, which is huge. So that means that almost 50% of our people are staying almost two years. If I can get that number to go to 26, 27, that means that a large portion of our people are teetering on being with us for three years. So, to my point of what I just talked about: How many t-shirts can I sell them in three years? How many hats? How many lessons, clinics? All of those things start—so that number starts to really snowball. Whereas, now I’m not spending nearly as much money as having to rebuild my client base. And then by—and then also if somebody’s with you for 18 months or eight days, there’s a different level of engagement with that client.
Chance Beam (20:42):
Meaning, so for example, last night we were looking at trying to pivot some of the things we were doing. I talked three times with three different people that I knew or thought were pretty good fans of us, and I said, “Hey, here’s some things we’re talking about. I’d love to have your input.” And each of them, they were—at the end of those conversations they said, “Thanks for asking.” It was just that kind of thing of them feeling like they were part of it. And I was like, “I don’t know if we’re going to do this or not. Just some hair brain idea I have, and what do you think of it?” And they were like, “Yeah, that’s really cool, but you know, more than anything, thanks for asking.” Whether I do it or not, I had five minutes that I kind of earned some equity with them.
Chance Beam (21:16):
And so, but length of engagement is a huge one for us. And then with that same client, how many times can I service their need? So, their need may be private lessons. So, in the—it could be a PT, and I know they’re doing nutrition. We don’t do nutrition; it’s not great for kids, but you know, or a T-shirt or hat, and then there’s college showcases as they get older. So, trying to find different checkpoints that your clients are needing and servicing that need and having that available. So, when they get to that checkpoint, you’re already there, so you’re kind of having to stay ahead of them. So, I’m constantly—I tell people—so this morning, I spent like 30 minutes going through a pro forma of between now and the end of our fiscal year. Our fiscal year is July 31st. And I tell people if I’ve messed up, and I’m worried about today, then we’re toast. I’ve got to be three, six months in advance to figure out what’s coming next because if I’m not there, then you’re going to miss some huge opportunities.
Mike Warkentin (22:17):
OK, so that’s a really interesting one. Gross revenue is very strongly tied to length of engagement and average revenue per member. Those are force multipliers and really great things that build up that huge revenue number, and gym owners out there, if you’re not quite at this level, think about this one: Selling one T-shirt every quarter is going to boost your average revenue per member by $20 to $40—whatever you price that T-shirt at. Not per month obviously, but you’ll break it down if you do it per quarter. But you could also sell one personal training session to a client per month. And this is just what Chance was talking about: servicing your client’s needs. “You are not doing very well at double unders. I can’t help you more in this class, but in a one-on-one session, I can get you double unders. Would you book a session with me?” $75: Your average revenue per member goes up by that much. So, you can really look at those concepts, and they work really well. Chance, have you had any big bumps where—really rocket ship moments—where your average or your gross revenue went up where it was like, “Wow, that was a huge, huge thing for us.”
Chance Beam (23:14):
I would tell you COVID, oddly enough. COVID for us was just incredible. So, I would say before COVID and after COVID, we doubled, and people would—and one of the things is that we do have a private facility. In my world, everybody’s using local rec parks and those types of things. And so, the rec parks were closed because of COVID. We’re a private facility; we could stay open. In Georgia, we were only really closed down for about 30 days. But going deeper, I would tell you the main reason that I think that we doubled in size was not because of what I just said; it was because during that time, my competitors all sat on their hands, and they did nothing. Meaning when COVID hit, they just stayed quiet. They didn’t say anything; they didn’t do anything. There was no activity on social media. There was no outreach.
Chance Beam (24:03):
I had talked to my personnel, and at that time we had four full-time employees. And I met with my board, and I had an emergency meeting. I was like, “All hands on deck. We’ve got to meet, we got—” And so basically, I said, “Here’s the deal, guys. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can keep you employed, and I can pay your payroll for 60 days. I’ve got a 60-day window.” Talk about a tough conversation. And I was like, “So here’s the deal. For 60 days, I can keep you employed, but if we’re going to keep you employed, I’m going to need your help. And every day, we’ve got to try to add value somehow. I don’t know how we’re going to do that.” So, we sat for like three hours, and we just started brainstorming like, “Alright, kids are at home.”
Chance Beam (24:41):
“How do we help them at home? What can we do?” And so, what we came up with was our game plan was, during that time, every person on our staff had to come up with a video of a skill or something they could work on at home. So for example, we taught them how to throw long toss by yourself, take a baseball, put a sock on your arm, put duct tape around it, throw the ball; it stays in there so you could throw by yourself or drill work that you could throw balls off a wall and little baseball type of drills. Or in the CrossFit world, it would be like, “How do I get better at handstand pushups when I could barely do a pushup?” Right? And again, you guys have experts on these kinds of things.
Chance Beam (25:20):
Every day, we did a video and then every day at three o’clock, we did what we called “PE Live.” So, it was like a kids’ version; they’re stuck at home. We would do it on Instagram. We would go live, and I would have my daughter; I would invite another kid from the program in. And my local CrossFit actually gave us free programming to—they said, “Hey, we’ll program this for you, but if you’ll give us a plug.” And so, every day, I’d give CrossFit—I’d give it to them and give them their plug. “Now and out of Woodstock, Georgia, CrossFit Garage.” So, they programmed us a workout that we would be able to do that way with no weight, so kids could do it at home. So, we would go live, and we would do that. And then we also did individual programming for every kid in the program.
Chance Beam (26:03):
I mean, we basically filled up our day with just programming. And because of that, I think in retrospect, we kept the main thing the main thing when everybody else got really quiet. And the main thing in our world and everybody’s world is: Your clients are first. They have to be the focus of what you’re doing. If you’re making it about your managers or your GMs or your—somebody’s initiatives, you are going to lose. And then looking back, the biggest thing that it taught me is that we have to think about our customer experience. We have to think about: What are their struggles? What are they going through? And if we can meet those needs, they’re going to be our biggest fans, and they’re going to be customers and stay with us much longer.
Mike Warkentin (26:43):
Gym owners, I will summarize that for you; that is a relentless commitment to creatively solving your client’s problems in a forward-thinking manner. You’re not sitting on your hands; you’re asking: How can I solve more problems in the future? And how can I get more creative with what I’m offering to make more revenue? So again, if you’re not selling baseball programming or apparel, take that principle from it. How can I solve my clients’ problems? How can I make the client experience better? If you start doing that, you’re going to generate more revenue. And Chance, I’m going to put you on the spot here. A gym owner out there is at a different level, and they’re saying, “How would I start to add just $2,000 to my gross revenue?” What would you tell that gym owner to do just to put that little bump in there and take a little bit more home to their family?
Chance Beam (27:23):
This is something that we don’t do, but something that I know from afar, being in Two-Brain: One of the things that I’ve seen that Ashley Haun out of Florida and that I’ve heard Coop talk about is the avatar. Going after those 50-year-old clients. I think that’s ingenious because that’s an entire client segment that has probably been exposed to CrossFit. They want to feel good about themself, but in their mind, “I’m 55. There’s no way I could do CrossFit. I’ll die. I’ll break my neck,” right? And then, I think going after those clients and having a softer appeal as to—I think that would be huge because that’s a separate client base than what the normal CrossFit is. So, for us, one of the things that I’m doing is I’m focusing on kids who are seven to nine, which again, totally different cross set.
Chance Beam (28:13):
But here’s my thought process: If I can get the kid who’s seven to nine—or a gym owner who goes after the summer program or the youth program—if I go after seven- to nine-year-olds and I get two of those, let’s think about that for a second. If I get two kids who are seven to nine years old who sometime another join our team. Well, if they stay with me for three years or even if they stay with me the current year, two years: Holy cow, that’s a windfall. Even though maybe that particular program didn’t make a lot of money, it broke even, or it paid me enough to pay for its coaches. I’ve got those two clients that then stay with me for two years. That’s a no brainer.
Chance Beam (28:51):
And I think many times that’s a hard number to calculate as a business owner because everybody’s looking—I need it now. I need it now. We have to take a very long-term horizon of playing—constant battle of playing the infinite game and the finite game. And so, making those decisions in your mind, “I want my business to be here in 50 years.” Well, making decisions based off of 50 years is very different than being here in five months. And so, that would be my biggest advice there. You know, trying to look at those clients who can become potential clients who you’re servicing the need, and in their mind, they don’t think that they’re either ready or able to do it and going after that group.
Mike Warkentin (29:27):
So gym owners, I will give you a summary of that and a shortcut. Use affinity marketing, set up, say, a six- or eight-week specialty program for either kids or for older adults. And then talk to your current members and say, “Do you have a kid, or do you know a kid who could benefit from this program?” “Do you have an older parent or an older adult in your life who could benefit from this?” I bet you could fill those programs and use it as a starting point to generate some revenue, front-end revenue, right on the spot. And then consider, could we get these people to continue? Maybe with a renewable program that keeps going or even just with a membership. We actually—at our Summit, we’ll be having people teach you exactly how to start Legends programs and work with older adults.
Mike Warkentin (30:05):
So, this is a huge market. We already know kids’ programs. We had Jeff and Mikki Martin from Brand X Show up last year at the Summit. We know kids’ programs work really well. So, if you’re looking to add some revenue, try a specialty program, and use your current clients and see if you can get some of them in there. Chance, thank you so much for all this. This is hugely insightful. I’ve been looking forward to talking to you for a couple of years now, and I finally got you on the show. Thanks so much for opening up your books and telling us your secrets.
Chance Beam (30:27):
Absolutely. No, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Excited. Hopefully what we talked about today can help some people. It’d be great.
Mike Warkentin (30:33):
I think you definitely will. If you could help me hit some more dingers and slow pitch, I’d appreciate that too. Too many strikers for this guy. My name is Mike Warkentin, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” That was Chance Beam, one of our revenue leaders for January 2024. Please hit “Subscribe” on your way out. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (30:51):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.
