Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Confession: Summer months at my gym were usually Death Valley. We usually lost money, and we had to climb out of a hole for the rest of the year. It was brutal. My guest today posted huge revenue in June, his best month of the year. He’s going to tell you how he did it, so you can avoid the summer slump in 2025. Welcome to “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you are watching or listening with my thanks. Stan Skolfield runs Skolfield’s Sports Performance in Maine. He landed on our leaderboard for June Revenue. That leaderboard runs from $63,000 to $90,000. These are huge numbers in summer months. We’re going to dig into one of those numbers today with Stan. Welcome, Stan. How are you?
Stan Skolfield (00:43):
Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Mike Warkentin (00:45):
I wish I had spoken to you in 2009. You probably would’ve saved me, I don’t know, $200,000 or something like that. What we’re going to do is even better; I’m going to speak to you today, and you’re going to help all the listeners save that money and have a better year in 2025. You ready to roll?
Stan Skolfield (01:00):
Sounds good. Let’s go.
Mike Warkentin (01:01):
Alright, so, June: I want to dig into that number first. Huge revenue number when many other gyms are struggling to break even. How did you do this?
Stan Skolfield (01:09):
So, I think before we kind of go into that, it’s important to know that in the world of sports performance and training the youth market, our revenue cycle is different than your normal gym revenue cycle whereas like January, February, March, you guys are going gangbusters, for us, that’s our June. So, June, July, August are our biggest months of the year. And the reason for that is all the kids are out of school. College kids are home, kids are out of school, and they’ve got a lot more free time, right? But then you hit September, October, and all the kids are back in school, and everybody plays a fall sport, right? Everybody plays field hockey, soccer, football, cross country, golf. Then, so you go through that for September, October, then November, those sports start to let up, athletes begin to kind of creep in.
Stan Skolfield (01:57):
And now, not as many kids play a winter sport, or if they do play winter sports, you look at like hockey, like much more conducive to strength and conditioning, and also the schedule allows them to kind of come in and train a little bit more. So, November things pick up; December, things get busy. January is very busy for us. March, February, March are all great months. And then things take another nosedive. April and May, everybody plays a spring sport. Baseball, softball, outdoor track, lacrosse, you know? So, our revenue cycle is much different, so for us, June is our big month, right? That’s where we’re going to capture a lot of our business and we’re able to offer some different profit centers that we wouldn’t normally be able to do throughout the normal school year.
Mike Warkentin (02:43):
Hey, listeners—Stan, I’m going to interrupt you—listeners, what Stan has here, he knows his avatar cold, and he knows the cycle of his business. So, because that’s based on his avatar, he knows what people are doing when, when they’re likely to buy his stuff, when they’re going to be off at college. If you don’t know your avatar in your business cycle, that is your cue to learn it. Stan, go ahead. Tell me June’s specific stuff because I know you got cool things going on in there.
Stan Skolfield (03:04):
So, for June, obviously we get a ton of kids who begin to return to our program, but it’s also for us is we run speed camps, and that’s been kind of our bread and butter, and we slowly began to grow that from year to year. But for us, like for the month of June, we did 37k in the month of June, just in speed camps.
Mike Warkentin (03:27):
Just in speed camps.
Stan Skolfield (03:29):
Just in speed camps. Like that’s over 227 kids that we got into our program. And the beauty of that, too, is they’re all outside the facility, right? So, these are all taking place outside your facility. You’re not interfering with your regular programming. In terms of expenses, there’s not much for expenses because you go out and do those on fields, right? And there’s so many benefits to doing that, but it’s a very easy way to not only boost your revenue, but also gain a ton of exposure for your facility, right? So, now I’m able to kind of go outside that normal 10- to 15-minute market from where we are to go and expand that out to 20 to 30 minutes outside that expose kids to our program, what we do, expose parents to our program, expose coaches to our program. So, now they’re get—that’s like our low barrier offer, so they get with us for like eight weeks, and then you leave a breadcrumb trail at the end about, “Hey, here’s how to kind of get involved in our program down the line.”
Mike Warkentin (04:35):
OK, so, you’ve got basically a low barrier offer that kicks in about well over $30,000 in revenue for you in June, and it feeds your main programs for the rest of the year. That’s incredible. I’m going to guess that you are somehow connected to an Italian javelin thrower named—do you want to say his name?
Stan Skolfield (04:54):
Yeah. So, yes Bill Parisi. We’ve been—I’ve been associated with the Parisi Speed School for over 15 years. And part of that and being part of that process, like that’s our bread and butter. And the important thing about running a speed camp, but just like anything else in your programs, it can’t just be something you kind of throw together and just show up one day, throw some cones out, and away you go; it’s got to be a systemized approach to what you’re doing, right? So, and it’s something different each time, or everything’s kind of a progression that builds off it, and that’s all stuff we do within the program. But you’ve got to be able to have your staff—it’s just like any other SOP, like, “Here’s what we’re doing on day one of camp all the way through day 18 of the camp from start to finish.” Not only from the training side, but also education and getting them indoctrinated into our social media culture as well as, “Hey, here’s how to find us at the end.”
Mike Warkentin (05:50):
Wow. OK. So, listeners, I’ve had Bill Parisi on this show. I’ll put a link in the show notes for you to that one so you can see what he’s all about. Bill was also a speaker at the Two-Brain Summit this year, and I chatted with him there. He’s a great guy, fired up and he’s very good at getting kids, youth and even professional athletes to move really, really fast. If that’s something you’re interested in, check that out. Parisi Speed School. Stan, give me the 60-second summary of your business. You’ve covered some of the stuff, but let me know what you’re doing in that place. Like how much space have you got? Who do you serve? Adults, like what have you got going on there?
Stan Skolfield (06:17):
So, Skolfield Sports Performance, we’re a comprehensive sports performance facility. So, what I mean by that is we do a little bit of everything from strength, speed, power, agility, mobility, flexibility, injury prevention and nutrition. Right? We serve athletes eight years old on up. I would say our primary demographic is 13 to 18. We have a very, very small adult following, and that’s primarily—we’ve launched some stuff that hasn’t quite gone, taken off the way I want, but I also don’t put a ton of effort into it. And so our facility is 10,000 square feet. I’ve got a four lane, 50-yard track.
Mike Warkentin (06:54):
I see it. It looks great.
Stan Skolfield (06:56):
Yeah. It’s an ideal space. 25-yard turf field and then a weight room to kind of go along with it.
Mike Warkentin (07:02):
OK. It looks beautiful. I love the—I looked up online some of the pictures, and listeners, you can do the same thing, but it looks great, and I love how you’ve got some stools right around the side where you can actually have, people can watch what’s going on there, and that’s kind of a cool thing for it. I even saw a foosball table in there if I wasn’t mistaken. Is that there? Is that right?
Stan Skolfield (07:19):
Yeah, we did have a foosball table in there. We did take it out. We’ve had ping pong, but we end up—you know, as you evolve, I end up kind of turning that room into something a little bit different. That’s more of like our sales room versus kind of like an athlete lounge.
Mike Warkentin (07:34):
Yeah, and that’s an interesting one too because Chris has talked about on the show that certain areas of your business, and I made this mistake—I had a great big lounge, and it was 1,000 square feet; it was never full. And then, towards the late stages of my ownership in that building, we turned it into a personal training studio and ran yoga out of it. So, that’s an interesting thing. Listeners, what are you using your space for? Are you getting a return on it? There’s another one you can look at. So, how many coaches have you got?
Stan Skolfield (07:59):
I’ve got seven right now. Not all are full-time. A lot of them are kind of part-time coaches. In the fall, I’ll pare down to four, right? And then as the volume picks up, I’ll pick up coaches as well.
Mike Warkentin (08:13):
OK. And then if we’re talking revenue streams, is it fair to say kids revenue is like 90% or something like that? Or what have you got for a general breakdown?
Stan Skolfield (08:20):
So, our kind of breakdown, I mean, yeah, kids makes up probably 95% of our revenue, but if you really look at it—so our on-ramp program, which is kind of really our one-on-one program, that that kind of breaks down to about 20% of our revenue, semi-private is closer to like 55, 60% of our revenue, and then we do have classes, and our classes are really for the eight- to 12-year-old demographic; it ends up being about 10%. We do a little bit of remote training, a little bit of retail, and then team training and speed camps ends up making up overall about 10% of our annual revenue.
Mike Warkentin (08:55):
OK. So, that, listeners, is a really interesting breakdown. You guys should take note of that. When you have your—you said on-ramps or one-on-one. Semi-private, is that like two to three to four, or what are the numbers in there?
Stan Skolfield (09:07):
So, it’s up to five. Anywhere from two to five athletes, and we’re a little bit different. So, just how we do things, so we’re more higher ticket. That’s been my process. I don’t care about—I’ve run programs in the past where it was about volume and class base, and I just learned I would way rather have way less clients, but get great results, but also charge a premium for that, and I’ve found that that’s exactly what parents are looking for. And in this industry, I try to educate them all the time, like, you’re willing to go out and pay $120 for a hitting lesson or $150 for a skating lesson, right? But I’m over here charging $10 to teach your kids the stuff that’s really going to impact yourself on the field, on the ice, and on the court.
Stan Skolfield (09:55):
So, we’ve gone to the mode of like, “Hey, we’re going to charge a premium for our service, but we’re going to deliver great results.” And so,kind of how we do it a little bit is, we have an on-ramp program, but our on-ramp program is 18 sessions in length. It’s 18 one-on-one sessions. Everything’s scripted out from the very first session to the 18th session of all the different things that we’re going to teach them along the way. So, by the time they finish that, we say you’ve earned the right to move into semi-private, and then 95% of our kids kind of move into that semi-private model. So, it’s a kind of—that’s why we’re so heavy, kind of one-on-one and semi-private in our services.
Mike Warkentin (10:36):
OK, listeners, I’m going to ring the bell again. This is the system. Someone, a gym owner, a top gym owner has come on the show and said he has a system for something. I ring the giant bell because every successful gym owner who comes on the show without fail has a documented system. No one is doing it by the seat of their pants. So, that is a really, really cool one. I love what you’ve got there. I love the fact that you have one-on-one intro stuff that feeds into a different program. And the thing that you said that’s even more important for listeners is this one, gym owners: By and large, we charge way too little for kids programming. I did it; I charged like 35% less for a kids membership, even though I had to buy special equipment, develop special expertise and put in way more effort to watch, manage, a smaller group of less attentive people.
Mike Warkentin (11:19):
I charged less for that. It’s ridiculous. Look at your kids programming rates. They should be at least equal to your adult rates, if not more expensive, and people who specialize in kids—Bill Parisi told me this as well, and martial arts and cheer gyms, things like that—they will tell you kids programming should be charged more expensive than adult stuff. So, keep that in mind. Now I’m going to ask you this: You mentioned breadcrumbs that lead from your June programs, your outdoor speed camps, into your program. What are some of those breadcrumbs? Because this sounds like a $100,000 question.
Stan Skolfield (11:52):
So, number one, very early on within those speed camps and whatnot, our social media game is pretty tight. I’ve got somebody who does our social media, and like everything else, there’s a system that’s based into it, right? In terms of, “Here’s what we’re going to post on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through,” and we’re very consistent about that. But most importantly, you’re celebrating your clients within that. Because kids want to see themselves, right? Like kids are the biggest consumers of social media, right? So, getting them involved in our social media platforms is number one. So, now they always know where to find us, right? And then having funnels, obviously following John Franklin’s recipe of sell by chat. I have my social media person on top of that as well. And then the other big thing we do that we’re doing this year is the event I’m hosting tomorrow, so it’s called Summer Slam.
Mike Warkentin (12:42):
Well, I like that too.
Stan Skolfield (12:42):
Summer Slam is going to be our end of summer event. So, we have big testing days that we do where we’ll go and reevaluate all of our clients. So, it’s their opportunity to retest in like the 40-yard dash, the five-ten-five, vertical jump, chin up. So, we’re inviting all the kids from our camps, all our current clients, their friends, any coaches who want to come by. So, they’ll come in here, we bring them through a whole warmup, bring them through all the events, and then at the end we’re going to kind of have a cookout. We’re going to have a spike ball tournament. We’re going to have corn hole, golf, tug of war against the coaches, and a dunk tank.
Mike Warkentin (13:20):
Are you going in the tank?
Stan Skolfield (13:21):
Well, it’s going to cost you. So, it’s not just like, “Hey, you get the throw and put Stan in the ice-cold water.” Like you may have to bid some pushups or burpees or something like that for it, but it’s just a way to get all those people into your gym. Let them see like, hey, this facility and the culture and everything involved, and so then now you’ve also kind of captured all that intel in terms of names, email addresses, you put them in Gym Lead Machine and let them begin to kind of do the work.
Mike Warkentin (13:52):
OK, so, listeners, Stan has just laid out another system. This is his funnel of how he gets people into his business, and it involves strong social media game, which is essential, especially with his market because these kids are on social media. He’s got sell by chat working, he’s got events that get people into the gym and trading their information for whatever it is, whether it’s the chance to dunk him in a tank or not, gets their information, funnels that in Gym Lead Machine and lead nurture, and this is where people are coming from, and that’s where he is getting high-value, long-term clients. Again, it is a system. Two-Brain teaches clients how to build four different systems. This is one of them. And you can build four of them that run at the same time to fill your gym with high-value leads. And it’s not flash-in-the-pan, weird bait-and-switch stuff. It is just established short, easy, slick marketing stuff that works if you do it every single day. So, I’ll ask you this, this is an interesting one: Would you ever invest more time into an adult program? Or is it just better for you to just focus on the kids? Because it seems like you’re crushing.
Stan Skolfield (14:50):
Absolutely. That’s my next step, right? It’s the biggest missing hole because, again, in the sports performance realm, your gym usually sits empty until noon, right? And that’s a whole big time period where you’re just missing out on revenue. So, this year I’m kind of filling it with some hockey team training in the morning, but that is my next place I’m going to attack and how I’m going to do it. I’ve tried a couple different versions without success, but at the same time, it hasn’t been my core competency. So, I know where the bills are paid, where the effort needs to be, but this is my next part I’m going to conquer. So, I’ll throw it out to any of the listeners out there, man: If you’ve got a great adult program in a standalone facility, I’ll trade you ideas about how to crush a summer camp to teach me how to run a great adult program.
Mike Warkentin (15:37):
There you go. There’s an open offer from Stan. I was curious to see what you would answer that because I’ve talked to some gym owners and I said, “Hey, would you expand into this obvious market?” And they’re like, “No, I just want to focus on this.” But for you, you’ve identified in your facility a space that could be filled, and the cool part is you’ve got all these kids running around; their parents are there too, so I’m sure you’ve got a target market laid out where you just need to figure out how to get these parents in. Correct?
Stan Skolfield (15:59):
Right. And it’s more about the programming, and my goal is just like, hey, I want to get them into that, that morning area and just filling that time period, getting some revenue generated during those off periods where it’s so quiet.
Mike Warkentin (16:12):
I’m just throwing this out off the top of my head. Could you ever do a 55+ program for retirees in there? Like a legends program? That’s what I filled my 10 a.m. slot with.
Stan Skolfield (16:20):
That’s—absolutely, and I did, when I went to the Two-Brain Summit, I paid close attention to, I forget the presenter’s name—alright, how’s he doing it? And I took copious notes and said, “Hey, this is an avenue that I could definitely attack.”
Mike Warkentin (16:34):
Yeah. Because we just did general CrossFit and group training, and we struggled to fill that same time slot. I couldn’t get adults in there because they were all working. I got like three or four realtors from time to time, but that was it, those flexible schedule people. When I got legends people, so retirees, that’s where I filled that spot. So, I’m curious, I want to talk to you in a year and see what you’ve done with your space there, but we’ll circle back on that. Tell me about this, gross revenue. How has it improved over time for you? Has it been like a steady climb to the level that you’re at? Or have you had peaks and valleys, or how has it gone over the last five years or so?
Stan Skolfield (17:05):
It’s been a steady climb. I will say there are two big jumps that kind of occurred. One was actually when I joined Two-Brain, right? And learned so much, like the processes that we put in place. Joleen Bingham is our mentor. She’s fantastic and really got to straighten out a lot in terms of like billing structure and program offerings. But, so that was the first big jump for us in terms of revenue. The second one was actually this year, basically from April on. And a couple things have happened during that time period. And when I talk about jumps, like this April, we had a 70% jump in revenue over last year, and May was like 30%, June, July, actually, this past month was another 50%.
Stan Skolfield (17:59):
But I think it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but I think part of it is like the cumulative effect of all the work that you do in the background to try to grow by putting all the processes in place that Two-Brain recommends. But also, I hired a training director to take my place in terms of just servicing all things related to training. And he actually began to do all the evaluations for us, and the evaluation for us is our sale. So, getting me out of doing that was the last big hurdle where I could continue, begin to kind of really focus on that opportunities pipeline or the sales journey and being able to focus, put a lot more focus there, and I think that’s been a big jump for us, as well as the other big thing we focus on is retention.
Stan Skolfield (18:47):
You know, as I said, you lose big numbers, and come, like I said, you get to September, and you have this booming summer, and then you’re like, “Man, I hope that all these kids kind of come back in November.” But what I’ve begun to do is twofold. One, educate the staff about like, “OK, so we’re a month away from fall sports starting up. Here’s what you need to do. You need to go approach your clientele. Here’s what you need to say. ‘Hey, you’ve got pre-season coming up. I’ve got some really exciting ideas about what your program’s going to look like. Here’s what we’re going to do in September; here’s what we’re going to do October,’ so, now it begins to get in their head that the programming is not the same; it’s different,” right?
Stan Skolfield (19:33):
But it’s a foregone conclusion that you are going to continue to train versus just that idea of, “Well now I’ve got sports, which is going to compete with my training time, so therefore I’ve got to drop the training.” And it’s like, no; you look at high-end athletes if your goal is to get into college program or above, you’re going to have to train year-round. So, you might as well begin to kind of instill those habits now. So, providing that education to the staff and making that more purposeful has had a big change. I mean, just this year alone, like April, we were—between new sales and retaining clients—we were able to grow by 30 people over the month of April, and now if you add that in with like a good ARM, that’s going to have a pretty good effect on your bottom line.
Mike Warkentin (20:22):
Wow. Listeners, retention, repeat sales and referrals do not just happen. You must make them happen. Stan took himself out of a role that was taking up lot of his time and has more time to focus on these kinds of things and make them happen. That is staff education to get clients to rebuy and re-up when their terms are up or when they have to go off to school and come back or whatever it is. All of this doesn’t happen without planning. Again, that’s a system, and that’s something you can put in place if you have the time to build those systems. If you’re cleaning your own toilet and coaching your own classes, you may not have that time. So, you got to start thinking about, “Where can I offload?” It’s called the value ladder. “Where can I offload lower value jobs to buy back the time to grow my business?” Stan offloaded a really important job, which is that evaluation sales process so that he could do something even more important, and you can do the same thing wherever you’re at. Start at the bottom with cleaning; work your way up to those levels. I’m going to ask you this: Are there any metrics that you’re working on improving in the next quarter? What’s on your mind right now?
Stan Skolfield (21:18):
So, what’s on my mind right now is obviously retention for the fall. Right? That’s a big one. That’s number one. That’s the biggie too is obviously grow an adult program, like being able to put some thought into like, “Hey, what is it that we’re going to do?” You know, those are my two as it relates to what I’m looking at for the fall. I mean, obviously LEG, is the biggie, you know? And if I can continue to just have that, not as big of a pitfall in September and October, that will play huge dividends to our end-of-year numbers.
Mike Warkentin (21:49):
I like it. And again, that’s that cyclical nature of your business. There’s nothing you can do when a kid finishes off summer break and heads back to their fall sports thing that’s going to take up all their time. They only have so many hours in the day; they’re not going to be trading with you. How do you fill that? What do you do? So, listeners, the lesson for you is look at your business, and we talked about this in the beginning: What is your business cycle, and can you make changes, or can you put in additional revenue streams to shore things up? And that’s what I should have done. So, what I should have done back in the day when we started—June, July, August was Death Valley, as I said in the intro—I should have put in some kids sports performance programs, maybe an outdoor camp, something like that, towards the end of my time in a physical space.
Mike Warkentin (22:28):
We did that. It helped a ton. Chris Cooper had the same thing. I believe he said August 2008 was the worst revenue month in the history of his gym. He couldn’t pay the rent; he couldn’t pay himself. It was brutal. He made a vow that he would fix it in 2009, and he did it predominantly with kids sports performance camps. Now that’s not saying that’s the only thing you can do. You could do nutrition program, you could do more PT, you could do all sorts of other stuff, but you can add additional revenue streams, and Chris has always been clear: Don’t add every single revenue stream under the sun. Add the ones that you can focus on and capitalize on, and do not kneecap your main revenue stream. So, when Stan is talking about adding an adult program, it’s not at the expense of a kids’ program. It’s in addition to that kids’ program. Gym owners out there listening right now, and I think I have an obvious answer, but I’m going to ask for details based on what you say: How would you help them add $2,000 to next June’s revenue? What would you recommend? What’s your exact plan?
Stan Skolfield (23:22):
So, I mean it, it shouldn’t come as any big surprise that, yeah, adding some sort of youth programming, right? Whether it’s in the form of speed camps, right? Or whether it’s in the form of like some sort of youth membership program, and you begin running classes for them. And again, not to pitch anything but the Parisi speed school, like we have that model laid out, right? It’s really a turnkey model, right? Yeah. Plug and play. “Here’s what you do.” And literally from session number one to session number 12 for a summer camp. I mean, it’s easy revenue, and the back end of it will help your business on the backend, so that would be mine.
Mike Warkentin (24:00):
Do you get clear ROI on the Parisi Speed School?
Stan Skolfield (24:02):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s pennies compared to the ROI.
Mike Warkentin (24:07):
Would you say the same thing about Two-Brain mentorship, does that do the same thing for you with ROI?
Stan Skolfield (24:11):
Hands down, like those two right there, what we pay for that, I mean, month after month, year after year, what that has done for us has been exponential. Two-Brain in itself, like I’m the best salesperson in the background, in terms of the people that I’ve—and I’ve said this before, like, especially those in the sports performance industry because it is tough. It’s a niche business, and there are some people who are doing well with it, but there’s no one really out there that’s kind of like saying like, “Hey, here’s the exact formula.” You have to take kind of—even in Two-Brain, you have to take, “Hey, here are the principles. Here are the principles you need to follow in order to run a successful gym. Obviously having SOPs and a standardized process and a great sales process. And here’s your intro offer. Here’s—adapt, our NSI is our evaluation,” but take those principles and adopt them to sports performance, and it works. And as I talk to other sports performance owners, I’m like, “Man, this is the best money that we’ve spent, and I can show it year to year, like exponentially what our revenue, revenue, growth and success has been.”
Mike Warkentin (25:23):
Oh, I love hearing stuff like that from gym owners. I’m going to put you on the spot. Let’s do this. Let’s help gym owners up there listening. Let’s do this right now. What is a low drag, the lowest drag summer, June, like a June sports camp, that they could put together? Like what would you put in there? How many sessions would it be, and what would you price it at? Let’s give them an exact template that they could potentially use next June to make some money. What would it be?
Stan Skolfield (25:45):
So, what I would say is, is this: It’s number one, like two days a week, right? So, you’re going to offer two days a week. It’s going to be one hour in length.
Mike Warkentin (25:53):
So, eight sessions, eight hours.
Stan Skolfield (25:54):
You got it. And you’re going to—and we typically run like eight-week camps, so you’re going to cover it, and we’re going to charge anywhere from $12 to $15 per person for that camp, right? And again, your expenses are low, and then just script it out from start to finish. What are you going to do? Here’s going to be your warmup. Here’s—for us it’s like, “Hey, here’s what we’re covering today. Today we’re covering acceleration, the ability to reach maximum speed in the shortest time distance possible.” We bring them through our warmup, which is a workout. Then we say, “Hey, here’s some drills that we’re going to reinforce. Thigh high, toe up, body at 45 degrees.” From there, we’re going to bring it to a sports-specific application, right? For the next 15 minutes, maybe we’ll do some 10- to 20-yard dashes reinforcing that technique, and then we’ll finish it off with some conditioning, right? OK. Ding, bang, boom, done. Run it, and away you go.
Mike Warkentin (26:45):
So, if you ran that—let’s say you ran it for, I think you said eight weeks—let’s say we do it for four weeks, and we’ll just give people basics. So, four weeks, eight sessions, and you’re going to charge, you said about $15 per person, something like that.
Stan Skolfield (26:56):
Going to charge about $15 per person and just give it age demographic. I’ll give you a little secret. One lesson I learned today. So, I ran nine camps this year, right? One of which was brand new, and it was our highest producing camp. It’s about servicing a demographic that doesn’t get serviced. So, football, historically, like all the football, everybody goes after the football program, speed and conditioning with football. But the problem is, all the football coaches, high school football coaches, they’ve already got their hands in those kids, and they run good programs with them. But man, if you’re in the fifth, if you look at the fifth-grade to the eighth-grade demographic, you are already bought in. If your kid is in football, like you’re already in the youth programs; your parents have already become fanatical about it: “Johnny’s going to be the next best running back.”
Stan Skolfield (27:42):
And their schedule’s just as tough, but no one’s servicing that group. We had 40 kids in fifth through eighth grade for football. Those kids, when they show up at the beginning of August, still need to be in shape. They still need to have speed, they still need to prevent injuries, right? Like go after that. So, the secret is like, don’t just always focus on the high school kids; man, those younger kids, gyms don’t let them in, but they’re still fanatical about sports when you look at the youth travel sports industry.
Mike Warkentin (28:13):
So, that latches on exactly what Chris has said in other spaces. He said like in certain areas—his town has big hockey camps and things like that—but no one was servicing, I think he said it was downhill skiers and figure skaters and other things like that. So, look, listeners, in your local market. What’s out there? What are kids doing? Who’s not serving them? And can you fill that hole? What can you do to offer value for people in that space? I’m not going to pump you for any more information, Stan, because that is exactly the tip that people need as they head out the door. I’ll just tell you, listeners, right now, put this stuff on your calendar and start working on it in January next year to launch in June. If you do that, you will avoid the summer slump. Stan, thank you so much for being so open, sharing your secrets and helping gym owners avoid the problems that I went through.
Stan Skolfield (28:56):
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Mike Warkentin (28:58):
It was my pleasure. And listeners, if you want to check out more, please follow Stan. Tell them where they can follow you on social media. What should they look for?
Stan Skolfield (29:05):
So, Instagram is Skolfield_Sports. Facebook obviously is Skofiled Sports Performance. We also are on YouTube Skolfield Performance. TikTok, same thing.
Mike Warkentin (29:16):
And TikTok because kids are on TikTok. Check those things out. You’ll save yourself a summer slump in 2025. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” on your way out the door. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (29:29):
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.
