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Episode 156: Building Kids' Programs In Your Gym

February 21, 2019 Gym Operations Podcast
Announcer:                            00:02                       Welcome everyone to to brain radio. It is our mission at TwoBrain is to provide 1 million entrepreneurs the freedom to live the life that they choose. Join us every week as we discover the very best practices to achieve perfect day and move you closer to wealth. Announcer:                            00:26                       This episode is brought to you by ForTime Design. The real focus of this episode is talking about the value of your time. Is it worth it to outsource your programming and what I started to bring business.com to bring coaching.com I built these sites myself from scratch because I wasn’t satisfied with what else was out there. It’s important to know how to build a website yourself. It’s important to know how to change your own oil. It’s important to know how to rotate your own tires, but the value of your time is what’s most important. I’m not a graphic designer, I’m not a website designer and so I trust liquid state design to take care of all this stuff for me. Check them out. Toxic Teresa, they do some pretty amazing work and a lot of two brain gyms are already using them. To huge advantage in their local market. Greg Strauch:                        01:10                       All right. I’m here with Jason Rule, owner of Driven nutrition. Jason, how are you? Jason Rule:                             01:15                       I’m good. Thanks for having me on Greg. I appreciate it. Greg Strauch:                        01:18                       Happy to. I know personally within my gym, I love the products that Driven nutrition has been able to offer us. I would say as a business owner, I love the profit margins as well. Uh, before we get into all that, let’s kind of start with your story. Let’s start with kind of what led you up to open driven nutrition and uh, Kinda expand and we’ll go from there. Jason Rule:                             01:37                       All right. Right on. We’ll dive ...
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Where To Build Your Gym

February 21, 2019 Gym Operations
My second gym was a CrossFit gym. I built it in an industrial park, because #hardcore. It looked nothing light my bright, open personal training gym, which had tiled showers and sparkling windows. In fact, I remember by CrossFit landlord staring at my chalkboard wall and asking: “Don’t you want it to look NICE?!” I said, “Hell no!” and laughed. Of course, the joke was on me: over the next few years, I had a hard time getting people to drive across town to do puke-inducing workouts in a dusty garage. (You know, now that I say it out loud…) Meanwhile, downtown in my airy second-floor personal training space, my clients were begging for CrossFit! And I, stubbornly stupidly, told them to “drive up to the Industrial Park if you want CrossFit.” Most new affiliate owners are smarter than that. We work with dozens of future gym owners to help them avoid the crazy expensive mistakes we all made; open profitable; and kickstart their dream career. If you’re about to open, here’s a podcast I think you’ll LOVE (and I know will make you money). Entrepreneurs go through four phases in their journey: Founder Phase, Farmer Phase, Tinker Phase, and Thief. If you’re not sure which phase you’re in, take the test here. Then, whether you’re considering your first lease; an expansion; purchasing a building; adding a second location; or moving house, follow these guidelines: Founder Phase priorities: Convenience is more important than exposure. Choose a location that close to your ideal clients’ homes or workplaces. If it’s closer to their work, you’ll need showers. If it’s closer to their home, you might not. Don’t be swayed by proximity to a highway. “But 30,000 cars drive by every day!!!” Exposure might get you the first half-dozen clients, but won’t be measurably more valuable in the long run. If you have two buildings in mind, and they’re priced the same with ...
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The Real Reason I HATE Bait-And-Switch Advertising

February 20, 2019 Gym Marketing
If you go read the CrossFit.com message boards all the way back to 2001, you’ll find questions about marketing.   The very first affiliates struggled with marketing. Affiliates in 2014–during the highest-growth period of CrossFit affiliates worldwide–still struggled with marketing. And in 2018, affiliates were still struggling with marketing.   So when some gym owners started to find success with various Facebook marketing strategies, I was thrilled. FINALLY, we could talk about actually running a business! FINALLY, more affiliate owners could afford the service that would really make a difference: mentorship!   And it happened: on more and more “Free Help” calls with affiliate owners, I heard: “I ran this six-week challenge and now I can afford mentorship!”   It appeared that the marketing problem was solved–at least, temporarily. No Facebook strategy lasts more than a few months, but I hoped that gym owners were being given some breathing room to work on the stuff that works forever.   But then I started hearing about the “bait and switch” advertising (I refuse to call it “marketing”.) You know how it works already: “FREE challenge! Sign up here!” Then the potential new client is told the challenge is actually $499…but they’ll get their money back IF they leave a good review…and check off a bunch of other boxes.   I heard stories about coaches leaving, because they no longer trusted the box owners (“If they’re lying to clients, they’re probably lying to me, too.”)   I heard stories about great, long-term clients being “washed out” of the gym by the tidal waves of short-term, in-and-out groups of 30 or more.   I heard stories of burnout by owners. Stories of clients who thought they had “done CrossFit…and now I’m looking for the next thing” because they thought CrossFit was an 8-week mass challenge.   Stories of marketing companies charging tens of thousands of dollars for this stuff!   But what really ...
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The Feedback Loop

February 19, 2019 Gym Operations
The circle is broken.   The relationship between coach and athlete is now mostly one-way. It wasn’t always like this.   In years past, most fitness coaching was done one-on-one. A client would do their workout in front of their trainer; take homework or book their next appointment, and then the trainer would plan their next workout.   No one “programmed” a month ahead, because tomorrow’s program depended on today’s result. For example, if a client was doing a 3-minutes-on-1-minute-off HIIT workout, and couldn’t finish all five rounds, their future workouts would be altered to reflect their performance.   Likewise, if a client was running 400m repeats at a 1:16 average pace, their coach would program the next workouts based on that score (maybe 200m workouts with shorter rest breaks, or 400m repeats with a target time of 1:15…)   Now, it’s easy to do this with a 1:1 client. It’s even possible to stretch one client’s program enough to cover a second client, if that second client is similar in goal and ability.   It’s very hard to do this with a gym full of members taking group classes. VERY hard. But why isn’t anyone trying anymore?   The original HQ programming, as I understand it from Coach, was reviewed monthly. The workouts were all designed to have objective scores attached. So coaches could look at the scores and say, “90% of our clients improved their max deadlift this month, but only 5% improved their Fran.”   And then they’d program shorter HIIT workouts. Not too complicated, really.   So why aren’t we doing it?   Why are we searching for the hardest workouts we can find, instead of the best possible workouts for our clients? Why are we choosing “hard for the sake of hard” over “here’s where the majority of my clients are weak?”   Constantly varied, functional movement covers all the bases. Eventually. But what if ...
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How Much Time Does It Take To Run A Gym?

February 19, 2019 Gym Operations
What’s your job?   When you start working out, your job is to become as fit as possible. When you become a coach, your job is to get others as fit as possible. That comes first. Your workouts–though necessary–come second. When you open a gym, your job is to make the gym profitable. That comes first. When your primary work is done, you can coach. And when the coaching is done, you can train.   This is a message I’ve repeated very often, because it’s a fundamental concept–AND it’s often forgotten.   Some gym owners refer to “the business side” of owning a gym–as if there were any other side. Owning a gym is owning a gym. Coaching is coaching. They’re not the same. Business isn’t what you do if you have time left over between appointments. Business is what makes the appointments possible.   Other gym owners are running their business upside down: they open a gym so they can train first, coach second, and worry about “the other stuff” in the time left over. Of course, these gyms don’t last long.   But most gym owners started a business to buy themselves a coaching job. And if your dream is to coach for 5-8 hours every day, working only with high-paying clients one-on-one or in very small groups of 2-3, then sure: the model can work. I started out this way. But someday, you might want some time off; or a raise; or a business that doesn’t close its doors when you get sick. And when that time comes, you’re going to have to work ON the business instead of IN the business.   Not sometimes. ALL the time.   It’s not hard to spend 50 hours per week running the business. There’s more than enough to do. And if someone isn’t dedicating at least 40 hours to managing and growing your gym, it will take YEARS to ...
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Don’t Make this FATAL Ad Targeting Mistake!

February 18, 2019 Gym Marketing
In this week’s edition of Marketing Monday, I’m going to walk you through: How the Facebook algorithm works Why using specific, interest-interest based targeting doesn’t work, and How you can use the algorithm to your advantage If you’ve ever launched a campaign only to watch it fizzle out and die after 4 days and you don’t know why, then click to watch this week’s video!
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