How do some gyms acquire a lot of clients?
By holding onto their members for a long time.
I’m not brushing aside sales and marketing.
You need to sell if you want 500 members.
But holding clients is more important.
Do the quick math: If a gym with 500 members loses 5 percent of its clients every month, that’s 25 people who need to be replaced.
You must add about one member per day just to stay at 500.
That’s tough. Making a sale a day requires a very greasy funnel that pushes a huge number of leads into free consultations where sales reps close at a high rate.
Systems like this can be built, but they’re uncommon. And they eat up money and time.
So if you want to get a lot of clients, you’d be better off scaling retention first so you can limit churn, reduce marketing costs and spend less time in the sales office. Then slowly but surely add a few clients above replacement every month, always ensuring that your growth doesn’t overwhelm your systems and spike churn.
Example: One of our Top 10 gyms for client count only loses 10 members a month from a roster of 341.
Replacing 10 people in a month is very doable. Replacing 10 and adding two is also doable. Replacing 25 and adding five is less doable.
(This gym, by the way, has a client cap. The owner replaces five departing clients with people from its waiting list. The other five are replaced with former clients who are returning. The gym has marketing costs of $0!)
Before I give you real quotes from the Two-Brain gym owners with the most clients, I’ll show you the leaderboard:
Quotes From the Leaders
Here’s what the leaders had to say—you’ll note that a lot of quotes focus on retention, sales and value:
Consistency/retention: “We have been around this number for 12 months. It is a low point, being winter in Australia.”
Consistency/retention: “The membership is very stable with a low churn rate. It’s continually building.”
Sales: We attribute the number to “sales and marketing.”
Specialty programs: “While our general-population classes form the bulk of our membership, we also offer highly attended, specialized programs such as legends (for those over 60), mom-fit (postnatal fitness), and our youth program. The legends classes run every weekday, with 18-25 participants daily. The mom-fit classes are held three times a week, with 20-25 mothers attending, and our youth program is extremely popular as well.”
Focus and operating at scale: “Our specialization is in ‘group training,’ and we strive to be the best at it. We offer 30-, 45- and 60-minute classes throughout the day, starting as early as 5:25 a.m. and running right through until 8:30 p.m. We have busy classes, with some peak times seeing up to 80 participants in a class—this would be in our more bootcamp-style class. But in our more traditional strength-and-conditioning classes we can still have 30-plus attending.”
Client experience: “I’ve incorporated many principles from professional sports into our gym operations to make them appealing to the general public.”
Client experience despite size: “We are focusing a lot on improving the service and coaching experience at our gym.”
Client experience despite size: “Our first rule is that our members need to leave the box with a bigger smile than when they came. Next to that is that we put a big effort in remembering our members by name.”
Find and Keep Clients for Years!
Retention, sales and value—those elements are critical in gyms with lots of clients and gyms with fewer clients.
To be successful in the coaching business, you need to retain clients for a long time. And you must be able to find and onboard new clients.
It’s much easier to acquire and master these skills when the stakes are lower. That’s why I advise gym owners to first target 150 clients with an average revenue per member of $205.
That formula can pay an owner $100,000 a year while they lock in the systems required to go further—if they want to.
