We’ve been running our Gym Checkup for two years. Thousands of gym owners have completed it.
Most finish the checkup and book a free call with me to discuss their answers. Sometimes we invite those callers to mentorship.
Some of these guys are generating over a million in gross revenue per year. Some are looking for a lifeline to make it through the month. Most are in the middle. But almost ALL gyms, rich or poor, give us this answer on at least one of the questions in the Checkup:
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know my goal for this business. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“I don’t know how long a client stays with me.”
“I don’t know what my coaches want.”
“I don’t know my profit margin.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to retire.”
….in fact, many gym owners bail out of the Checkup partway through, use the “phone a friend” button, and book the call anyway, because it’s obvious their business is out of control.
You manage what you measure. You control what you know.
As a coach, you’d never let an athlete post an estimated score. “I think I did Fran in under 3:00.”
You’d never guess at their body fat percentage. “I think you’re around 30%, and I think you used to be around 33%. Great work.”
You’d never accept a guess. “I bet I could lift 500lbs.” You would test, and retest. You would KNOW.
When you open a business, coaching isn’t your job anymore; it’s your service. Your business provides a platform for that service. Your job is to build that platform. That means it’s your job to know your ARM, your LEG, your profit margin. It’s your job to know what your coaches want: is to more work, or less? Has that answer changed in the last two months?
We can blame poor software options for our lack of knowledge, but they just report what their users ask them to report. We can blame HQ for lack of “best practices”, but most owners don’t record any metrics on what’s actually working. We can blame our teachers for bad math, preachers for bad prayers, banks for bad fees…
…but it’s our responsibility to KNOW.
The answer that keeps me up at night is “I don’t know”. It scares me because, in my efforts to keep this Movement going forward, I see gym owners being swayed by bad advice. Without data, advice is just a guess. And without data, the gym owner can’t tell the difference: we’re just pawns to their game.
The Checkup provides a piece of our data–the largest and most comprehensive data set in the world. Ongoing mentoring calls with hundreds of gym owners provide the rest.
Start here: take the Gym Checkup. It’s free. Write down the questions you can’t answer. Then start finding the answers, with these four taking priority:
- Profit margin
- Coach’s “Perfect Day”
- ARM (Average Revenue per Member)
- LEG (Length of Engagement)
Those are the four answers most gym owners tend to “guess”–or assume, or estimate–most. Guesses aren’t good enough anymore.
