Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Could you add a niche program to your gym and generate more revenue? The answer is yes, but only if you do it properly. We’re going to talk about that today. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and today, we’re talking about 55+ programs that are also called Masters or Legends programs. In some parts of the world, an older adult program can be a huge win for a gym. Great clients get fitter and healthier. Trainers make more. Gym owners make more, but you have to do it right. My guest today is Brian Foley. He runs Activate in Kerry, Ireland. He’s got the largest 55+ program on the Emerald Isle, and he’ll be speaking of the Two-Brain Summit; that’s coming up June 8th and 9th in Chicago. His topic? “Growing a 55+ Program in Your Gym.” This can generate revenue for you. It can also fracture your offer if you don’t do it properly. So, we’re going to talk about that today. Brian, welcome. How are you today?
Brian Foley (00:50):
Great, Mike. Thanks so much for having me on.
Mike Warkentin (00:52):
I am excited. This was an area of passion for me when I was running a bigger gym. We had an older adults’ program, and they were some of the best clients in there. And so, I’m going to dig into it right away with you. Are you ready to go?
Brian Foley (01:03):
Absolutely. Let’s do it.
Mike Warkentin (01:04):
Alright. Alright, so let’s talk first—I want to get to some numbers because people want to hear this stuff. It’s important for them to get some metrics. So, what’s possible? Do you have any metrics that can show the value of a program for older adults? Like what’s average revenue per member or revenue or any numbers that you’re willing to share with us?
Brian Foley (01:19):
Yeah, absolutely. So, our average revenue per member for our Masters program is the same as our group, our general population program. So, it’s 140 euros per member. The revenue we make from our Masters program is around 10% of our gross.
Mike Warkentin (01:34):
OK, that’s good.
Brian Foley (01:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s a significant portion of our business. We have between 50 and 60 clients in the program. Really the only reason that it’s not expanding more than that is just capacity, which is a great problem to have. And then you mentioned how long those clients stay around for, and absolutely, our length of engagement with this particular group is higher than all the other groups in our gym.
Mike Warkentin (01:58):
Oh, that’s good. That’s really good. So, listeners, just to put in perspective, in our “State of the Industry” survey in 2023, gyms will run nutrition programs, get about maybe 4% of their revenue on average. It’s not a great number. Some gyms will get up in the 10, 20% range. That’s where you start seeing some money. So, to put in perspective here, Brian’s got a program that’s kicking in 10% of his gross at the exact same average revenue per member as his normal classes. When I ran a Legends program, I charged below my average revenue per member. That was a bit of an issue. And he’s got people who are staying longer than his normal members. So, this is a huge win across the board that shows you what’s possible. And if you look at your revenue and say, “What’s 10%? Could I add that in?” Yeah, you probably could with a great population. So, we’re going to dig into the details of this so that you can take action and add something like this in. Brian, how long has it been since you put this program in place, and how did you market it given that, at least in North America, older adults tend to just sit on the couch and watch TV? How did you get these people in here?
Brian Foley (02:55):
Yeah, so that’s a question we often get. And we’ve had the program going since we’ve had the gym going more or less. So, it’s seven years in place now. Yeah. Yeah. So, we love it. They’re a great group, great bunch. I’ll have to say that because my own parents are part of it. Awesome. So, we started with one group, and we’ve built it to four, and we’ve got plans to expand to eight separate groups. Our marketing funnels are a little different to what we use traditionally. We still operate four funnels, and it’s really important to make sure that we do this right because you can’t treat a 55+ program like everyone else.
Mike Warkentin (03:34):
Oh, so we’re going to get some good details here.
Brian Foley (03:36):
Yeah, I’m not going to give away everything because you’re going to have to come to the Summit to get it all. But you need to approach this particular cohort and understand that you can’t really target them with paid ads. So, what we found was two referral funnels, two really strong referral funnels, is what built this program from the ground up. So, what we had were clinical referrals. So, they were our main go-to at the start. So, we linked in with local physiotherapists, local general practitioners, orthopedic surgeons and rheumatologists were kind of main go-tos who work with this particular demographic. So, we made sure that we made a lot of referral links with these particular clinicians. So, that was funnel number one. Funnel number two was member referrals, so affinity marketing—making sure that we had mavens within our program who were telling all their golf buddies and their paddle buddies that they were getting fitter, stronger for their chosen pursuits and making sure that when we were doing member check-ins with our Masters members, that we were asking them, “Hey, have you got anyone else that you played bridge with at the weekend?”
Brian Foley (04:49):
Just getting them to refer friends. So, there are our two referral funnels. And then we’ve got two more funnels, and that’s the content funnel and a social media funnel. So, the content funnel, again, we didn’t really go down what people would traditionally think when they’re talking content. We went to old school; we went to print media, which is a bit almost taboo nowadays. We took out an article every week in our local newspaper, and we made sure that we built trust by writing in that every week. And we knew that the readership was really high amongst 50+ for this particular newspaper. So, we spoke about the reasons for strength training and why it was so beneficial as we age. And that was a regular topic, so we kept beating that drum. And then the last one is the social media funnel.
Brian Foley (05:38):
Again, we don’t really rely on that that much. Our clinical referrals and member referrals are really where we get the most bang for buck. But the social media funnel, what we do is that we post about our Masters program. What we most—we show them what we do, but more importantly we show them why we do it. And I think that’s what’s key. And I guess when we looked at this originally, we looked at what gym culture was like for 55+ when they were growing up. And you know, in the 70s, jazzercise was the big thing. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was what symbolized gym culture. And we wanted to make sure that we were showing that that’s not really what it’s about anymore. So that’s what our social media really speaks to.
Mike Warkentin (06:21):
OK, so gym owners, if you are listening, Brian has laid out a number of funnels. He knows exactly how these people are getting into his business. He’s identified some special aspects of this niche. Some of them, like print advertising—in most places in the world for younger athletes and clients, you’re probably not going to take out an ad in the local newspaper, if it even exists anymore. You’re probably going to do social media advertising or something like that. That’s just different for this generation. Some of them are tied to newspapers. My parents still get a physical printed paper delivered to their door every day. They read it cover to cover. Other older adults are like that. They often are on Facebook, but not Instagram. There’s a whole bunch of different varieties that you’ll have to figure out in your market. The point though is you need to know how to connect with these people.
Mike Warkentin (07:04):
My funnel was exactly what you said, Brian. I got people, I said to them, “Hey, do you have a parent who needs our help?” And they said, “Oh my god, I do.” And they just started funneling them in. Their friends started coming in from there, and it spiraled. Then we had this group of amazing people. COVID hit, and we shut the whole gym down at that point. But before that, we had plans to expand into like connecting with local fitness groups for older adults and things like that. And senior centers. You need to figure out how to get to these people. And the biggest one, I agree with you Brian, is trust. A lot of older adults don’t want to be injured. They don’t necessarily understand fitness. They’re a little bit scared of it. They’ve seen a lot of different stuff like Arnold back in the day, weird things that maybe they don’t understand.
Mike Warkentin (07:43):
They need to understand what you do, why you do it, and how it solves their problems. And for us, it was strong enough to lift your grandkids, fit enough to carry your groceries, you can move around without injuring yourself. It actually prevents injury, helps you stay independent. And all those things went into social media and every other aspect. So, Brian, this is really good stuff, and I want to ask you before I go to the next question, something you said at the beginning: You had four programs for these guys. Is that by age cohort, or is it just like time slots, or what do you mean by four programs?
Brian Foley (08:11):
Yeah, so, time slots. So, I guess this is kind of going to another portion of what I was going to speak to today. But our intake process is quite similar to what we do with our general population clients. We do an intake process, they do a No Sweat Intro, and they do an on-ramp program. So, their on-ramp program determines what level they start at, so that we make sure that it’s appropriate for them and that the coach knows them and that they’re comfortable within their cohort. So, we split it by ability, but not really make it that obvious. You know, it’s more for the coach and more for actually the programming of the entire thing.
Mike Warkentin (08:47):
OK, that’s great. See in my gym, we didn’t have enough people to do that, but that’s a brilliant idea. And I’ll suggest, listeners, No Sweat Intros are more important for this population than any other because they’re not just going to sign up for some weird fitness program. They want to talk to you face to face. They want to hear what you have to say. They want to learn about you; they want to trust you. They want to ask questions: Will I get injured? You know, how can you help me? That process, and it’s laid out in Two-Brain’s media everywhere. That No Sweat Intro, prescriptive model, will work for this population almost better than any other, I’ll suggest. It’s essential for a gym. It’s ultra-essential for a gym with a 55+ program. How did you identify this niche? It’s not common. A lot of us, when we were looking back in the day, like you talked seven, eight years ago, “I want to do CrossFit workouts,” or “I want to do functional fitness stuff for tattooed Navy Seals, and we’re going to crush it. Do a Fran, as a big group.” How did you ID this group seven years ago and say, “Hey, older adults is a good market”?
Brian Foley (09:38):
Some of it was by chance, if I’m going to be honest with you, because when we opened the gym, it wasn’t, “OK, we’re going to open a gym for 55+.” We did a lot of market research before we opened Activate. So, we did a lot of—we looked at the census data for our town. So, we’re in a beautiful little town in the southwest of Ireland called Killarney. Some listeners might know it. It’s a very popular tourist destination, but with that tourism comes a lot of retirees who like to move here when they get to the age where they’re not working anymore. And what the census data was telling us is that Killarney has a very large 55+ population, and that is growing. And that’s actually something that’s growing everywhere in the world really because the world’s population is getting older.
Brian Foley (10:23):
But particularly in Ireland, within the EU, we are getting older faster, which is funny. We’re getting older faster than every other country in the EU. So, we’ve got a very rapidly aging population. So, we identified that, and it wasn’t something that we were like, “Yeah, this is something we’ve got to do.” Because I had spent the bones of 20 years trying to convince my parents that strength training was for them, and they just would not convert. Mike, I cannot tell you the amount of conversations I had with my mom, and I’m going to tell—I’m going to tell a story about that at the Summit so people can listen in for that one. But there was no guarantee that this program was going to work really with that kind of trying to convince people and not understanding. But we had seen that doing a little bit of research, less than 10% of people aged 50 years plus were not partaking in any strength training. Yet, all the research has shown that there’s a strong correlation with bone density, fall prevention, independent living, and we knew that that had to be part of our mission. When we rolled our mission, we wanted to prolong the lives of people living locally. And you don’t just stop once someone hits the age of 50. So, we knew this had to be part of what we were doing.
Mike Warkentin (11:32):
OK. So, market research, and that’s a thing that most gym owners don’t do. We’re just like, “We’re opening a gym because we like to coach.” Where are the clients? Market research maybe didn’t happen 10 years ago. It must happen now. So, if you’re thinking about starting a gym or putting one of these programs in place, research your market. Is there a local population? And Brian’s right, most populations in the world are aging right now. You’ll probably find these people. I’ll ask you a demographic thing, Brian. Are older adults or 50+ retirees in Ireland, are they generally affluent, or do they have the money to spend on this? Or how does that go?
Brian Foley (12:02):
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. Like it’s also very hard to measure because the census data will show income levels in employed populations because they’re paying their taxes more frequently. So, it’s a bit more, I guess, pertinent for the government to know that data. But we made a, a mistake initially. We undercharged for our Masters program.
Mike Warkentin (12:24):
OK. By how much?
Brian Foley (12:25):
Too much. We under—I think we definitely undercut our regular prices, and we did the same thing with our youth’s program because we projected what we thought, foolishly enough, people 55+ could afford, as opposed to putting the value in the program and then pricing it appropriately. And we’ve done that, and there was no data to tell us what people were—were they affluent or not—but we found out that they are. And when you give them a strong enough why and a strong enough reason to train, it’s part of an investment for them. And it’s an investment into further living and prolonging the years in their life.
Mike Warkentin (13:00):
We made the same mistake. We undercharged for our kid’s programs by at least $50. We undercharged for our older adult program by at least $50. And when you say it out loud, like what is the value of being able to live independently for another 10 years? It’s like millions of dollars, right? So, 150 euros or whatever a month, it’s worth it. It’s a great investment, but you have to lay that value out for people and tell them how your program actually makes that happen. Right, they won’t understand that. They won’t see that value. And they’ll say, “I could go to whatever the local gym is for $20 a month access. Why wouldn’t I do that?” Well, you are not going to get personalized coaching. You’re not going to get the exact plan that’s going to help you stay independent later in life. You’re not going to get check-ins; you’re not going to get community. You’re not going to get all these benefits that will help you accomplish your goals. That’s where that prescriptive model, No Sweat Intro, that Brian mentioned is essential. So, you said you made a couple of mistakes. Did you—how many times did you have to raise prices on this program? Was it just that one time?
Brian Foley (13:53):
One and done. Yeah, we fixed it fast. So yeah, we worked with our mentor, and we figured out that, look, this thing was underpriced. And we knew it. We knew it, I think, almost immediately because the coaching required in this program, it’s at a higher level. The delivery of it is at a higher level. There is quite a bit of work. And that’s not to put anyone off, but you just need to be very mindful of who you’re coaching. So, a coach needs to be pretty strong to make adaptations on the fly. People at 55+ typically can come to you with more flashing red lights on the dashboard than everyone else. And you’ve got to be able to make those adjustments. So, there is a little bit more coaching involved, so there’s more time involved, more programming involved. So that all has to be imputed into the value of the program.
Mike Warkentin (14:43):
Yep. And I can tell you from experience, you’re dealing with more hip injuries, knee injuries, anything. “This hurts.” “I literally cannot do this because my shoulder does not go above my ear anymore.” All that stuff. Your coach has to be really clever to figure this stuff out. But when you figure it out for these clients, they are thrilled to be able to keep moving, and they’re some of the most rewarding to work with. I can tell you that from experience. So, when you raised rates, how did that go? Did you lose a bunch of people, or were you able to communicate value and retain them?
Brian Foley (15:10):
Absolutely. So, we actually lost nobody. And we’ve done that recently, and we’ve lost nobody from that cohort. And again, it’s because of what you said: We showed the value. And it’s interesting; only recently, we had feedback from—initially when we met with orthopedic surgeons on this, those guys saw us as a threat to their kids’ college fund, potentially. Less hip replacements, less knee replacements means less trust fund, potentially. But sorry to all the surgeons out there. But what they’ve actually found now, and a lot of what the research is telling us is that the outcomes post-surgery—because even if surgery is inevitable and which it is in some people; there’s no way that like squats and deadlifts are going to get rid of everyone’s surgery needs.
Brian Foley (15:58):
But what it is showing us is that the outcomes post-operation and even pre-operation are far better if the person has been involved in some resistance training. So, we’ve gotten a lot of the surgeons on board, and then you look at this, and you display the value to a member, and you tell them, “Well, look, yes, you are going to do a hip replacement in five years. If you strength train and get really robust up to that five years, you can save yourself all these healthcare issues: stair lifts, bath aids, all these things, carrying assistance.” All this stuff that you can actually impute into the price. That’s thousands and thousands of euros every year for 150 euros a week or a month is—it’s very hard to argue with that.
Mike Warkentin (16:41):
Wow. And yeah, listeners, Chris Cooper has written about this local referral funnel that Brian’s talking about where you talk to local care providers, you explain to them how you’re not a threat; you are a complement. And some of these relationships—I think Chris had one, I believe it was a chiropractor in his city, I think that relationship alone was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last decade. This person and Chris had this great relationship. Chris would send clients that way, clients would come this way, and they both made money off of it, and it became complementary. Building up those referral networks. I know there are other gyms that have done this with medical. There’s another gym owner who I spoke to on the show who talked about how she took baked goods to local clinics and so forth and doctors and had them refer clients to her. If you can build up these relationships, especially in this population, you’re going to succeed. If a client trusts their doctor and the doctor says, “Go see Brian at Activate,” what do you think’s going to happen? Right? And that client’s going to bounce back from all the medical stuff better. So, those are no-brainers. Brian, you’ve actually, like—I’m glad you’re speaking on Summit about this because people are going to take the information you give them there, and they’re going to make money off of it probably in the next month.
Brian Foley (17:44):
Guaranteed. Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Warkentin (17:45):
Yeah. So let me talk about this. What other mistakes did you make with that program? Was there anything else that—like major learning experiences that you could share with people right now to help them out when they start thinking about this?
Brian Foley (17:55):
Funnily enough, naming the program. It’s a touchy subject, and it’s not something that we expected to be quite as touchy. So, we called ours Activate Masters. Great and all as that is because you more or less know what it is when you look at the brand and you look at the name. But there is a little bit of stigma around—what we found is that our members that are 55+ in this program, and we are actually rebranding the program, what they loved about what we do was we weren’t wrapping them in cotton wool. We weren’t treating them any differently. They were part of the gym culture. They were part of the community. They didn’t like to be referred to as our Masters crew or our Legends crew. Or I know some people call them like Silver Barbells, and you know, there’s a little bit of stigma around it.
Brian Foley (18:40):
So I would say we’d rename it. I know someone that called theirs Prime; I think that’s excellent. But possibly not making it very obvious that, “These are older people. We wrap them in cotton wool here.” Make sure that you’re very appropriate in how you brand it and how you market it. Apart from that and the pricing, I wouldn’t say anything else. I mean, we’re really lucky, Mike. We’ve got a physiotherapist who we work very closely with who rents the space from us in the gym. And he’s an amazing part of the program. He manages the program, and he’s got a lot of the clinical referrals that we use. But you don’t necessarily have to have a physio in your gym. You just have to start with one connection and then start building those networks. So they were the only mistakes really that I can earmark.
Mike Warkentin (19:26):
Yeah. And the people in these programs, they don’t tend to be your classic old broken-down person who’s cranky and doesn’t want to do anything. These are vibrant people. They might be like 70, but they’re still doing things. Everyone in our program did other things. They had other hobbies, whether it was fishing or hunting or just walking with their friends or pickleball or whatever it was. There’s all sorts of different things. These are vibrant people, so I get it. Like name your program something that appeals to them and makes them feel like active, vibrant people rather than old broken-down cars sitting in the corner of the driveway. I agree with you on that. So those are two big things you can think about. Get your pricing right; name your program right. Two-Brain mentors help people figure out exactly how to price programs.
Mike Warkentin (20:04):
They have exact formulas to figure out the value that you’re delivering and the profit margin that you need to make and all the other things that go into that. There is an exact system. If you don’t know about that system or want some help, book a call; you can do it in the links below, and our mentors will be able to tell you exactly how these things work and work you through the process because you can save a ton of time. And Brian, I underpriced this by $50 for eight years, so do the math on that. You did it for a while too. We lost a lot of money if we had just worked with the mentors, started sooner.
Brian Foley (20:34):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Exactly.
Mike Warkentin (20:37):
Talk to me about this.
Brian Foley (20:38):
It’s a common issue with bolt-on programs. We don’t—why we don’t value them the same or not more than our regular programs.
Mike Warkentin (20:47):
They’re specialty programs. Specialty programs and other stuff are more expensive generally. Right. If you want to do a general thing, it’s this. If you want to do the specialty, it’s usually more, except I did it backwards. So did you, so did many gyms, and we’re fixing that now. Some other essentials: What are other must-haves when you start this program? And I know you already listed out you’ve got your marketing funnels. What are other must haves?
Brian Foley (21:07):
Yeah, so I took a few notes on this, and the main one for me, the number one is build trust. So, you mentioned it as well at the start of the show. This particular demographic, they need to trust the person who they’re talking to. So, ways of building trust, like you build it with the public who are not yet members, and you build it with local clinicians. So, that might be bringing them baked goods, but it’s also showing them how the program—what’s in it for them? How the program can improve their referrals clinically, and how they can improve outcomes for their patients. With the public, it’s things like, you know, you’ve got to treat everyone like your own parents essentially and show the public that you’ve got that level of care for these people and for your members.
Brian Foley (21:50):
So it’s just building that trust with content, building that trust by being consistent with your message, building the trust with your members as well. And to do that you have to have a very robust intake process. So, to give you a little bit of an insight into ours, it’s a No Sweat Intro, and then it’s straight to a physiotherapy assessment. And that varies in length, depending on the person. So, it’s not like our regular on-ramp program. It’s essentially the same. They go through one-to-one coaching to learn everything, to feel comfortable with movements. But we don’t designate it’s got to be four or six sessions. It’s: Let’s take it at your pace. You know, it’s: We’ll make the referral to the class and to the group when you are ready.
Brian Foley (22:38):
So that builds the trust. It doesn’t rush anybody, and it just makes the member feel really comfortable when they get welcomed into the community. Another thing is to create mavens within your program. So, the early adopters typically are those people. Meet with them. You know, take them for a coffee. Find out who they hang out with, what they do in their spare time, and ask them for referrals essentially. And get them to bring their friends. Run social events like a bring-a-friend day, bring-a-parent day. Get them to come into the gym, build that trust within your community so that people bring their parents, and they trust you enough to bring their parents. Then the members carry other members who are 55+ with them. And then, that’s pretty much it.
Brian Foley (23:24):
Just make them feel welcome, make them feel part of it, and just make sure that everyone’s involved. That we don’t do a social occasion, and we don’t invite our 55+ athletes. Our Christmas party, we invite our 55+ athletes. Some of them decided they’d go and do their own Christmas party because we’re clearly boring under 55 year olds. But you’ve just got to integrate everyone into the same thing really into the community and make sure that they’re trusted, and they’re a welcome part of the community.
Mike Warkentin (23:53):
I have a couple of detailed questions about what you just said. How often do you create content to build trust? Is it like a daily thing, twice a week? Or what do you do?
Brian Foley (24:01):
So, our written content in the local newspaper was weekly. So that was a weekly article. So that was put into the local paper, and in all honesty, that got us so much trust and so many people coming in. Now, it’s harder. You can’t like put a pixel on your local newspaper and figure out how many people are clicking the link in your bio, but you do know that when they come into the No Sweat Intro, you ask, “Oh, how did you find out about us?” And they’ll tell you, “Oh, I read Brian’s article. I read Sam’s article at the weekend.” So, we were able to measure it that way and just making sure that we were showing people what we do at all stages of their journey and that it wasn’t their perception. We were breaking down those barriers for people.
Mike Warkentin (24:49):
OK. So regular content creation is essential on this. And you’ll have to determine at your gym the exact cadence of that. But do that, and if you can get into some of these local seniors’ publications, and there are some in just about every area, including seniors’ Facebook groups or Legends or older adults, retirees, whatever they’re called. Find them. See if you can get in and help people. Another question that I was going to ask you was, do you do just personal training with older adults? Is that a thing that happens there as well?
Brian Foley (25:14):
So we don’t actually market it as like personal training for just older adults. So, we just do personal training for anybody. So, if a 55+ member walks in the door and they say, “I don’t really fancy being part of a larger group. I’d like to work one-to-one,” because that’s the one of the very first questions we’ll ask them in a No Sweat Intro. It’s not like a specific 55+ No Sweat Intro. And they say, “I’d like to work one-to-one.” Well that’s fine. We’ve got coaches who are dedicated to your progress, whatever that may be.
Mike Warkentin (25:44):
Perfect. And we had that too. We had some older adults—we didn’t market it specifically, but some would come in and they’d say, “I would like to do training, but I want to do it just with you.” And some of them, they obviously have the time and the money because they’re retired and they have some cash saved up, but they really want that personal attention, and they didn’t even want to share with one other person. Like one guy was like, “I don’t want to bring my spouse. I want all your attention on me to make sure that I’m doing this right and getting the exact results.” It was a great long-term, high-value client. So, I think that personal training option, you don’t have to market it as Masters personal training, but having it is essential. Chris Cooper has said, “If you do not have a personal training option, some of your best clients are going to go find personal training somewhere else.” So, consider putting that in, especially for this population. Your intro doesn’t have to be a funnel to group. It might be an intro to fitness one-on-one with Brian. Right? That works just fine.
Brian Foley (26:34):
Exactly, and you’re never going to know unless you ask them what they want. And that’s the biggest mistake that some people will make. We’ll open a program, and we’ll just assume because you’re 55+, you are going into our Masters program rather than actually, “Would you prefer to work in a group or work one-to-one?” Because you have to ask the question to know.
Mike Warkentin (26:52):
John Franklin, our Chief Marketing Officer, said that that statement alone right there made him a million dollars. If I had used that statement in 2011 when I opened my gym, I probably would be retired right now, and I’d be working out with Brian in Ireland. It works.
Brian Foley (27:05):
You are welcome, Mike. You’re welcome.
Mike Warkentin (27:06):
Right. But it works. That statement will get you clients in a one-on-one setting, and they’re higher value. Try it, literally word for word what Brian just said, try saying that in a No Sweat Intro next time you do it. Brian, we touched on this a little bit, and I don’t want to give away any of the secrets, but what are people going to learn from you at Summit? And listeners, we only have a very few Summit tickets left at the time that I’m recording this. So, if you want to come see this, you better get them quick. Link will be in the bio. Brian, what are they going to learn from you?
Brian Foley (27:30):
From visiting other Coaches Congress and Summit, the key thing that I want people to take away is actionable steps. So, I’m going to teach coaches and owners a step-by-step system to establish, first of all, and then grow their 55+ program. So, it’s really just going to be—you’re going to walk away from that chat. It’s on the Sunday, so it’s the end of the weekend. You’ve got no excuses. You’re straight to work on Monday, and you’ve got steps laid out in front of you, what you need to do on Monday to grow a Masters program.
Mike Warkentin (28:02):
So if they leave and they do what you say on Monday, how quickly do you think that they can get a Masters program started?
Brian Foley (28:08):
I reckon they could start it that week. They can start building their referral network that week. There’s nothing to stop them.
Mike Warkentin (28:15):
So there you go. If you come to Summit, learn this program within a week, you could start a program that will eventually, hopefully, build you 10% of gross or add 10% to your gross revenue. And who knows? You could even go even further with that. Like I said, there are gyms out there that’ll do 10 to 20% with nutrition. You could do this with a Masters program like that. Brian, is there anything else that gym owners essentially need to know about Masters training before we sign off here? I think we’ve covered just about everything.
Brian Foley (28:40):
I think we covered everything. You did mention it there. We’ve got quite a few Masters who work with our nutrition coaches as well because they do a lot of the add-on programs. Because the strength training and bone density, you need specific nutritional habits for those things, and they’re willing to spend to have someone to hold them accountable. So, there’s a lot of extra benefit and extra value that can be given to this demographic as well. So, it’s not just a Masters program.
Mike Warkentin (29:06):
Yeah, and honestly, when we started, I originally wanted to work with athletes who could crush Fran in three minutes and deadlift 600 pounds. And I quickly realized that that wasn’t the market that stimulated me. When we started training older adults, our coaches literally asked to coach the classes because they’re so fun. They’re happy, they’re vibrant, they’re invested. They’re seeing the results. They’re like losing canes. Like they’ll walk in with canes, learn how to squat, and they don’t need the cane anymore. Like, it’s such a rewarding group. I would wager to say, Brian, that this is the most rewarding group of people, of cohort, that I’ve ever worked with in a gym. What’s your—do you think that’s accurate?
Brian Foley (29:41):
Hands down. So much fun. Just so open to coaching. Definitely good to have a good laugh every day. And sometimes it’s hard to get them to stop talking. But yeah, it’s so rewarding just seeing the change in this group every week, week on week. It’s an amazing group to coach. So, if you don’t have a Masters program in your gym, you’re definitely missing out.
Mike Warkentin (30:02):
It’s a win across the board for the clients, the coaches and the gym owner. You should definitely put something like this in. As we close, I’ll remind you guys, what Brian said can be applied to just about any specialty program. How do you find these people? What do you offer them? How do you get them into your business? What do you charge them? How do you retain them and make sure they’re getting results? Take that to kids, athletes, soccer players, NFL Combine people, whatever you want. Apply that knowledge. Brian, thanks so much for sharing all this stuff. This is super helpful on its own. People can also learn more from you at the Summit June 8th and 9th. Thank you.
Brian Foley (30:34):
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Warkentin (30:36):
This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” on the way out so you don’t miss anything like this because you can make money just by listening to this show every week. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (30:47):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the gym owners United Facebook groups 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.
