Mike (00:02):
Can you make six figures without chasing hundreds and hundreds of gym members? You can, but you have to set your prices correctly. Today, we’re talking to a gym owner whose average revenue per member is $284 per month. Storm Strout is here right after this.
Chris (00:16):
Hey, it’s Chris Cooper here. Programming is the service that you deliver to your clients. So I partnered with Brooks DiFiore, who had one of the highest adherence rates for his group classes in the world to build TwoBrainprogramming.com. Now we built this for Two-Brain gyms and we give them free access in our mentorship program, but I’m now making this available to the public. Programming that’s proven to improve retention and cash flow in your gym. Visit TwoBrainprogramming.com to get it. Your gym’s programming won’t attract new clients, but it can help you keep your clients longer. Good programming includes the stuff you know, like your benchmarks, novelty, skills, progressions, leaderboards, but great programming contains something more. It’s a link between each client’s fitness goals and the workout of the day. Your coaches need to tell the clients more than what they’re going to do every day. They need to explain why they’re doing it and how it will help them achieve their specific goals. Gyms whose coaches could explain the why connection had a 25% better retention rate during lockdowns. Imagine how that translates into better retention when things get back to normal and a better bottom line at the end of every month. That’s TwoBrainprogramming.com. Take a look.
Mike (01:32):
This is Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Let’s do some quick math, shall we? Let’s say you want your gym to gross 300 grand. If you charge each member an average of a hundred dollars per month, you need 250 members to make 300K. That’s a ton of people, a lot of marketing and a lot of retention work. But if you charge an average of $300 per member, you’d only need 83 members to gross 300 grand. I know what you’re thinking. No one will pay $300 per month. That’s impossible. I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. And so is Storm Strout of Veneration in Ohio. He was one of Two-Brain’s average revenue per member leaders for December, 2020. We call this ARM or ARM. Storm was number 12 on a top 20 list that ran from $262 to a huge $510 per month. Storm. Thanks for jumping on to, Two-Brain Radio. How are you today?
Storm (02:22):
I’m doing great, Mike, thank you so much for having me on.
Mike (02:24):
It’s my pleasure. I’m going to ask you this. I’ll set the table and tell me the story. Five years ago, 2015, you’re 19. You founded your own company. If I had told you then that you’d have an ARM on of $284, what would you have said to me?
Storm (02:37):
At that time the first thing that I would have done is asked you what an ARM was cause I would have had no idea. And then once you explained to me what I was looking for in an ARM, I would have been very overwhelmed by a figure like 284. At that time, our only membership option was $70 per month. And that was for everything as many classes a week. It it was all you could fitness. And not only did I have a very low membership rate, majority of those people were on a discount, I would say like 90% of them for everything that you could think of. So that would have been a very overwhelming figure. And.
New Speaker (03:30):
I couldn’t have pictured that whatsoever.
Mike (03:34):
So 70 bucks and you’ve got discounts in place. How is the business doing and how are you surviving at that point?
Storm (03:40):
So we were very fortunate because we started young, my wife and I, she was my girlfriend at the time we were 19. And so we were living at home and I had saved up some money prior to starting the business. I was training out of my dad’s garage, and also working some construction. I had my vision in mind, I’m stockpiling so I can buy some barbells. And fortunately we had a little bit of money in the savings, so we didn’t take any kind of pay, for, I think it was around like 15 or 16 months, which I wouldn’t recommend. But we didn’t know any better. I had no mentors at the time. I kind of just went in blind, so we were living the dream.
Storm (04:30):
It’s actually funny. I remember there’s a picture of me. I thought it was the coolest thing. I ratchet-strapped a hammock in the rig and instead of like working on things like building my ARM or my LEG, I was hanging out in the hammock in the rig. So I didn’t know any better. But to answer your question, because we weren’t taking anything, we never, I mean, we were paying rent from day one. Like we were never in a panic, at that time to try to pay our bills or anything. But sooner than later I realized that this was, you know, if I’m going to call this a business, it needs to be a business and stop treating it like a hobby. And also I needed to eat food. So that’s when things started to turn around for the better.
Mike (05:21):
So you had kind of a safety net in place there at the start that allowed you to kind of make some mistakes. And like I did kind of the same thing where we opened our gym, but I still had a full-time job. And so there was a little bit of backup and I did the same thing where I didn’t take any money out of the business and it was my goal just to make it break even. And, you know, honestly, I succeeded, but I didn’t do a whole lot better than that until we started doing, you know, working with Two-Brain and putting some actual effort in. So fair enough to say that you started as a hobby, but then realized very quickly that you had to, you know, when you got rid of the safety net, you had to make it a real business.
Storm (05:53):
Yeah. I don’t want to like bash myself or my wife because we never came in, like I always took it serious. Like I always wanted to be professional. But I just didn’t, I didn’t know that this world existed. I didn’t know that that networks like Two-Brain existed and that people were doing what we’re doing.
Mike (06:16):
Yeah, it’s not like you didn’t care about the business want it to succeed. You just, like, I did not know that there was a way to figure out prices besides guessing, you know.
Storm (06:25):
By just going lower than the guy down the street and even lower than the one beside him and like that, I am a very classic example of that.
Mike (06:36):
Yeah. So you said your early era and let’s be generous. We’ll just say it was 70, even though you had some discounts in place that might’ve driven it down. So we’re looking at 284 now, you know, a huge improvement. I’m going to ask about some specific aspects of ARM in a bit, but I’ll ask you a really broad one just to start here. What’s the one thing that’s been most responsible for this new high ARM? Like, is it value, revenue, diversity, marketing, onboarding, what is the one thing you’d put your finger on?
Storm (07:03):
There’s so many variables that play into this, but it certainly has to be private coaching. Private coaching drives a lot of revenue. That’s synonymous with value. Certainly. So, private coaching would be the answer to that question.
Mike (07:18):
That’s like PT as opposed to group classes.
Storm (07:22):
Exactly. Yeah. Personal training. Private coaching. Yes.
Mike (07:25):
Yeah. I don’t know if you—I’ll ask you a question that makes me look stupid, but I’ll ask it anyways. I didn’t know that you could do CrossFit in a one-on-one setting for a long time. Did you?
Storm (07:35):
No, I thought, I don’t know what—it never even crossed my mind, which was so silly because I started training people one-on-one, two on one in the garage.
Mike (07:48):
So did I!
Storm (07:48):
Like I had such a beautiful opportunity to have this story where like, we translated that over into like a bricks and mortar location. And that’s how we scale the business. But no, as soon as I got my actual spot, I was like classes. Let’s drop the price and fill them up.
Mike (08:11):
Yeah. You know, I did same thing where I remember vividly in my driveway teaching the snatch in my driveway to people and filming them and show them videos and stuff, and we’re doing CrossFit workouts. And then we open a gym and all of a sudden personal training ceases to exist. And we’re going to put everyone in group classes, whether they like it or not, that’s the way it’s going to be. And I’m like, wait a second. I was making $50 an hour before, and now I’m making like six, like, it didn’t hit me until I worked with a mentor.
Storm (08:38):
Yeah. What a silly thing to miss. But that is exactly how it played out.
Mike (08:44):
- So, like you said, again, I’m putting you on the spot making you give me one thing related to ARM when it’s such a multifactorial situation. So let’s dig into a couple of the other things, I’ll ask you first, have you ever increased rates, or you said you didn’t set them properly, but how did you get around that rate increase? Was it just, you know, you gotta grandfather a few people, I guess that’s a grandmother, we’ll use a non sexist term here, but did you let some people kind of hang out and bring new members in? Did you do a big rate increase? Did you some small ones, how did you get moving from 70 bucks?
Storm (09:15):
It was really fun to look back at this because, we went from 70 and then I don’t even know why, because again, I wasn’t—my mind was not in the right place. I wasn’t reverse engineering our rates, so I just, I was like, I think we’re starting to provide more value, like a few months in, so I bumped them from 70 to 105 and then from 105 to 115.
Mike (09:43):
Was that for everyone right at that time?
Storm (09:45):
No. So that was people that are coming in and still no type of onboarding at this time. So, you know, I’ve got members working out beside each other that are all paying different rates, classic mistake. Right? So, when we moved from our first location into our current location, which was so one year in we moved facilities and then we’ve been at our new spot for four years now. That is when I went from that 105 to 115, and then I started getting a grip and kind of wrapping my mind around where this thing was headed. Our current rate is 140 and it was at that time that I did a price raise for everyone. I did not—to give a little bit information on the price raise, just because if you’re looking at like 70 to 140 and someone is in that position, that would be overwhelming. I did not do that. I didn’t raise rates any more than $30 for that particular membership that they were on.
Mike (10:58):
We and our mentors work with clients to figure out exactly what the right numbers are like, there are systems for this. And like I said earlier, I didn’t realize it, but there are systems to figure out your pricing based on what you want to make. So our mentors look at everything individually. If you’re listening out there and saying, Oh my God, these rate increases are terrifying. We actually have an easy system that helps you do it. And it’s sometimes it’s incremental. Sometimes it’s just removing discounts, but there’s a whole process in place. And we teach clients exactly how to do this. And we’re not going to just jack up all your rates by double and have all your members flee to the hills, that doesn’t happen. There are ways to do this. So I’m really glad you brought that up because, you know, a rate doubling isn’t recommended practice necessarily.
Storm (11:38):
Mike, I would like to speak on that for a second too. I did this prior to working with Two-Brain, I did my rate increase and I was close, but I did not hit the nail on the head, because there’s a lot guessing involved and I did not use the systems and I was not leaning on Josh, my mentor. So it would have been a much smoother, much prettier scenario if I would have done it the right way. And I would’ve found Two-Brain earlier. So yeah, absolutely.
Mike (12:11):
And for my part, I mean, we did a rate increase. I wouldn’t have done it. I would have been like, you know, worse than you. I would have been scared. Right. I wouldn’t have known how to do it. I just didn’t do it. And we set our rates and I think it was 2010 or 11. And I left them till like 2019 or something like that. Even when I knew, like in 2013, literally I had in 2013, I knew the rates were too low. I actually entered the new rates in Zen Planner. And then I sat on them for six years. It was probably about a hundred thousand dollar error because I’d never put them in place because I was scared to do it. And then when eventually we did it, we had members come up to us and say, wow, I’m so glad you did that. We want you to stick around.
Storm (12:48):
Exactly. Yeah. I don’t want to beat a dead horse here and stay on this topic. I know we’re here to talk about ARM, but on that, on that price raise topic, man, it is, I’m not going to sugar coat it. That was like, that was probably one of the worst periods of my life, just because of the anxiety around it. I wouldn’t want to admit that, but yeah, it was awful. And it turns out that you make it through it and it’s a really, really good way to make sure you have the right people in your organization. So that’s all I have to say on that.
Mike (13:23):
You’re at 140 now, is that correct?
Storm (13:25):
Correct. And we have been there for quite some time.
Mike (13:28):
- So let’s take a look at that for a sec. So you’re at 140 now yet your ARM is 284. Now I don’t see your rates on your site and you know, but I know that you offer group training, PT, nutrition, remote coaching, you’ve got a kids program. So that rate of 140 has gotta be balanced out by some people that are paying quite a bit more than that through other add-ons or other services stuff. Tell me about how that 140 gets to 284.
Storm (13:55):
Yeah, absolutely. This is a fun topic because I’ll start with nutrition coaching. This is one that we actually struggled with to set a price point, because at this time now we kind of, we understand how to set a price point, right? How to work backwards from everything from the macro like perfect day, you know, all the way down to determining price point and what we ran into, we started our nutrition coaching. It was at 120 a month. This is in addition to whatever your fitness membership is. You know, there’s no discount for bundling or anything. It’s a separate service, oftentimes a separate coach. So we landed on 120 and then after a few months, my wife, who’s our head nutrition coach, and I, we had to sit down and say, you know, we talk to our incoming clients and our current clients about the value of nutrition coaching so much so that we say, you know, if someone is running into a budget issue when it comes to starting with us, we will say, if you’re going to go one route, if you’re going to choose one thing, make it nutrition coaching, let’s start there.
Mike (15:05):
That’s really interesting.
Storm (15:05):
Yeah. And I was having a really hard time speaking out of that side of my mouth while at the same time it was a lower rate for no apparent reason. So, today our unlimited group class coaching membership is 140 and our nutrition coaching is 140 as well.
Mike (15:30):
I’m doing some quick math in my head. I’m starting to see a 280 come in there.
Storm (15:34):
Yeah. So it works and our clients appreciate it. There’s so much value in our nutrition coaching, that we would be doing our coaching team and our clients a disservice by charging less than that.
Mike (15:52):
So that’s nutrition and those two services add up and we honestly know, people in CrossFit and other places, obviously we’ve said you can’t really have fitness and nutrition separately, if you really want to make progress. Like sure you can work out, but if you’re eating like crap it doesn’t cancel out and if you’re not working out and eating really well, you still have, you’re missing part of it. So those two things pair together so nicely. Tell me a little about some of these other programs that you’ve got. Like I see, you know, got obviously group, you’ve got nutrition. Talk to me a little bit about this PT, because that’s the one that you pointed to as one of the huge things or the one-on-one coaching that’s a huge part of your ARM.
Storm (16:27):
Absolutely. Yeah. This would probably be a good time to, I can kind of give like a revenue breakdown. And so 50% of our revenue comes from our group class coaching, which is really awesome to look at now because just two years ago, 100% of our revenue was group class.
Mike (16:47):
That’s a huge change in two years.
Storm (16:49):
Yes. And very purposeful. And that’s, you know, to touch on like, that’s what we have focused on in our storytelling. Like our external marketing, like we talk about the value of having a coach, a private coach. So, 50% of our revenue is group class. 30% is our private coaching, leaving 15% nutrition coaching. And then our youth program is brand new in 2021. And right now that’s at 5% of our revenue. So that is going to start piecing the math together of how we land on our current ARM.
Storm (17:31):
Half of our clients, 50% of our clients have multiple services.
Mike (17:36):
That’s interesting.
Storm (17:37):
Yeah. Whether that’s a combination of private coaching and nutrition coaching, or group class coaching, nutrition coaching, or even private coaching as well as some group.
Mike (17:48):
I like that, the hybrid stuff, I love that.
Storm (17:51):
It’s proven to be so successful with multiple different avatars. So for example, we have a woman right now who just had a surgery and she was crushing it in class. She thrives with the community and being pushed and pulled by her friends. But she had a surgery that would make group class very inappropriate for her. So we transitioned her over into private coaching. And in time, like her plan is to graduate from all private, to like a hybrid of some private, some group. And she’ll likely come back to group. But that’s been a really awesome service offering and combination of service offerings.
Mike (18:41):
And, you know, what’s so funny, again, my ignorance of like, not being able to have the concept of personal training and group classes, it was so funny when we talked to Two-Brain, started working on this stuff. We said, what if we just, you know, as the mentor suggested, go and talk to some of your members who are struggling with something and say, do you want to book 30 minutes with me and fix your double unders once and for all? And we did it and they actually wanted that service and purchased it. And all of a sudden, you look at your ARM, go from, I think we were charging a 157 or something like that for group classes, plus, you know, $40 or whatever it was for a half hour PT session. That’s 210, right. So like things change. And it was just asking the clients, I didn’t have to sell the stuff. I’m a horrible salesperson, but just ask them, do you want some help on double unders? Yes. Oh, OK.
Storm (19:26):
Super awesome. And obviously that’s a win-win situation for both. Well, I guess a win-win win, which is what you want, right. For the company, for the client, of course, for the coach as well. One of our next focuses here in Q1 of 2021 is actually skill sessions because we are missing a huge opportunity there to help. We are like our private coaching revenue is really people that are coming in and have no desire to train in group and work. They just work one-on-one with their coach period.
Mike (20:02):
After you gave me the revenue breakdown, I gotta like set a calendar alert for February, 2022. And ask you to tell me, come back on the show and tell me what your kids program, what percentage that is.
Storm (20:13):
Yeah, for sure. We have goals in place and we are pursuing them and so far so good. So I’ll be excited to report back on that.
Mike (20:21):
Let me ask you a question about this. When you said that your group used to be about a hundred percent, now it’s about 50%. Did that revenue go down or did it stay consistent, but you added in all the other stuff?
Storm (20:33):
Great question. Our group class revenue has actually been within a couple hundred bucks steady for a long time.
Mike (20:45):
So you’re just straight up growing then.
Storm (20:47):
Yeah, probably, correct. It’s probably been like two years. And at first I was discouraged by that, just not having experience and no time under my belt, but it is indicative of our focus. And again, our storytelling, like we’ve been trying to reach the people that want the one-on-one attention in our area that’s not being—that was a huge opportunity and gap in the market that people wanted to do this CrossFit thing. And I think that they understood that it was valuable and that you can have success, but they were terrified of group or just had no desire to work in a group. And we filled that gap. And, yeah, so it has been growth.
Chris (21:35):
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Mike (22:15):
Yeah. So you’re selling the higher value service, like, you know, I never thought about that before, again, Chris Cooper, Two-Brain founder, was the one who got me to understand this. Group training is your discount option. For me, I thought it was the expensive option, right. But in reality, group training, you don’t get as much attention. It doesn’t cost as much because if you break it down by class, you’re probably paying like seven, eight, 10 bucks a class or whatever it is. Whereas with personal service, you’re paying, you know, 50, 70, $90 an hour or whatever it is. So you’re actually selling the harder stuff. And then you’ve always got that group option available as your quote unquote discount option. Correct?
Storm (22:48):
That is correct. And it is so important that the, I mean, obviously first the owner CEO of the company, and then most definitely the person that is doing your consultations or your no-sweat intros understand that and then that they embody that, because once you get that and you truly believe in that, it makes sales and helping so much easier. That’s such valuable thing to understand.
Mike (23:21):
And if you’re listening and you want to learn more about that, get Chris Cooper’s book “Help First.” if you hate selling, this is the way to not hate selling. It works. I don’t like selling and this one changed my mind. So get that book. Do you mind telling me Storm a little bit about some of the pricing for your one-on-one or personal packages?
Storm (23:38):
Absolutely. This is something that we did, right, Mike from the start.
Mike (23:43):
Congratulations! I love it when that happens.
Storm (23:43):
Because I don’t have any terrible horror stories about, Oh my gosh, this is actually funny how the numbers play out. It costs $70 per hour session, which used to be my monthly rate.
Mike (24:01):
That is awesome. Oh man, you got to get like a t-shirt for that or something. You know.
Storm (24:06):
I guess I didn’t even put two and two together until we’re talking about it now. That’s pretty cool. But private coaching is $70 for the session. That’s for 60 minutes, we do offer a 30 minute. And that’s $40 for the session. That is what you were speaking on earlier that’s most utilized in like the skill session fashion. However I did give you the example of the woman that we’re working with that recently had a surgery. She started back 30 minutes at a time. That’s all that was appropriate for her. So that’s our private coaching rates. And we definitely don’t yeah, right now we don’t have anyone that trains less than two times a week.
Mike (24:51):
OK, good. That’s cool.
Storm (24:53):
Yeah, we would do that. I mean, one time a week, four times a month is certainly better than zero, but I don’t want you just spending $70 a session four times a month to see very little results. I don’t want to sell you something that’s going to not really provide value and results. So, our private coaching clients train minimum of two times a week, and then we do have some clients that train up to five times per week with their coach privately.
Mike (25:23):
Yeah. So there’s some ARM numbers just do some easy math that shows me some ARM numbers right there. That’s really interesting.
Storm (25:29):
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a few women that train privately five times a week with nutrition coaching. At that point, you’re looking north of $1,500 a month.
Mike (25:43):
And those, it’s crazy because if you told me again, we’ll go back to like 2010 Mike, if you had told me it is possible to sell like a thousand dollars or $1,500 package in a fitness thing, I would have been like you are out of your mind, that is not possible. And yet the more I talk to Two-Brain gym owners, the more I hear that it is possible, of course not everyone is going to do that. Right? Like you have people that just want to come for group classes and their budget. That’s the budget item for them or whatever, other people like that. But then there are other people and my wife has experimented with this. She runs more of a nutritional online service. There are people out there who want these services. Like, it’s incredible to realize that, like, again, going back 2015 Storm, if I had said you were selling $1,500 packages, would it have blown your mind?
Storm (26:25):
Oh my gosh, I would’ve told you that you’re crazy. And then I would have tried to blame it on all kinds of things, right? Like demographic or whatever. This was definitely Coop, Chris Cooper, a hundred percent, whether it was in one of my original conversations with him or in his books. And he said it nicer than this, like much nicer than this, but like you’re projecting the fact that you’re broke on all your clients. So, and that was, I mean, that couldn’t be any more true. I would have never paid that, $1,500 a month for a coach, but now I, you know, I pay a rock climbing coach to teach me how to rock climb. I have paid for all different kinds of coaching because I see the value in that. And, yeah, that was a huge missed opportunity back then.
Mike (27:21):
Yeah. I keep thinking back to that old, CrossFit shirt that, you know, your workout is my warm-up or whatever it was, and it’s kind of funny. I keep thinking back to you, it’s like, Oh, you know, my group rate is now my PT rate.
Storm (27:35):
It’s awesome.
Mike (27:37):
It’s a super funny one, like, congratulations for doing that. That’s such a cool story because there were certainly gym owners who didn’t make that decision and are now out of the game. And then there are other gym owners who are still kind of struggling with that and chasing the high volume churn fest you know, 300 members. And Chris has been blogging about this and like when he lays it out and you actually think about it, if you go for 300 members, your retention is not going to be a hundred percent. It’s probably going to be lower than 95%. And that means you’re going to have to, like, you’re going to have to intake like 17 members a month just to stay even like, that is unbelievable. And so if you’re chasing those high, high volume things at low rates, that is a tough game and some people have won it. They are out there. It wasn’t going to be me, you know, and we’re going the other direction where we’re looking for smaller number of high value clients. And so I love talking about this. I’ll ask you this. Do you have plans to increase that ARM further or are you just looking to maintain it and then kind of grow those kids’ programs and those things that are new? What’s your kind of outlook on the future for this?
Storm (28:37):
That’s a great question. You kind of touched on it earlier with the concept of like, of skill sessions. That is definitely one area. We kind of have like a three-prong approach to this, again, heading into the new year with our annual plan. One is specialty courses, as well as like skill session opportunities. So you had described, you want to work together for 30 minutes, maybe two to three times and put this double-under thing to bed once and for all. So skill session opportunity there, as well as, we have, I believe it’s at least one specialty course planned per quarter this year. And we anchored those off of our, like our boulder items, being the Open, we have an in-house competition event that we do. And we do some global testing. We kind of anchored our specialty courses off of those things. So that would be one prong. And we can dig into those more if you would like, but we’re really just experimenting with them for the first time. So, the second would be semi-private training, private coaching, but scaling that to two on one, three on one, that is, we have had success with that so far this year, and it increases our coaches’ effective hourly rate in a rapid fashion.
Mike (30:11):
And that’s like the original old school Greg Glassman plan, you know, where one-on-one training. It’s like, I don’t have any more time, but if I double it up, I make more money. The client pays less and you keep doing that. And all of a sudden that’s how CrossFit started. Again, the irony of that whole story is that that’s literally how the CrossFit movement started. And yet almost every affiliate owner didn’t realize that you could sell PT, you know.
Storm (30:32):
So crazy that we missed it.
Mike (30:34):
We all missed it because we thought again, we’re not dumb, like what happened was we got into these groups with these amazing music’s cranking and people are sweating and high-fiving, and we’re just having an awesome time getting fit. That was so fun that we didn’t possibly realize that anyone didn’t want to do that.
Mike (30:50):
And, you know, what’s interesting is as I kind of aged a little bit and as I became, you know, I’m an introvert, but I ran an extroverted business, as I started to realize that, like I don’t recharge in those environments. I started wanting to train alone. I would have been, I would have had better success with fitness in the last couple of years one-on-one than I would’ve in a group simply because my circumstances changed a lot. And I that’s when I really started to realize this and Chris of course helped me figure that out. But it’s so funny that, you know, we’re all going back to this realizing, Oh, do you have a friend who wants to train at the same time? Let’s do that.
Storm (31:24):
Exactly. Which we can marry perfectly with our affinity marketing. What is the word I wanna use? Like belief systems? Like not only, Hey, who in your life that you care about and love can I help achieve the same amazing results that you’ve achieved? You know, we can marry that concept with, Hey, let’s literally train within the same hour and also save both of you a little bit of coin. Those live together beautifully.
Mike (31:57):
And then the cool part about it too, is exactly what you said, where this helps build careers for coaches too, because you look at that hour now. So let’s say you have two clients at $70 and you give them a little bit of a discount. Maybe it’s $55 each and two on one or whatever it is. That’s now 110, they’re both paying less than the 70, but your coach is getting a greater percentage. We at Two-Brain do the 44% thing or 4/9ths. The coach is gonna make more for that hour. The clients are going to get slightly less individual attention, but they’re still going to get quite a bit. They get a small discount on it. Everyone kind of wins in that scenario. And then at that point, you’ve got trainers who can actually make a living as opposed to scraping by on like eight hours at 20 bucks. And I hate my life and I’m not making enough money.
Storm (32:36):
Well, and not only are they going to hate their life, not making enough money, that’s going to last for a year if you’re lucky to go work for a landscaping company because they need to eat.
Mike (32:51):
Yup. And that happens so often in fitness where some of the most educated, best coaches out there just couldn’t make enough. And so one of the great things about the Two-Brain program now is it’s giving coaches not necessarily gym owners, but coaches within successful gyms, the opportunity to make great careers. And as a result, the owners make great careers, as well. As we wrap this up again, you were the 2015 guy with the $70 group rate, gym owners that are skeptical because they are out there listening. And they’re saying, Oh, this is impossible. I could never do the 284. What could they do today? Just to start moving in the right direction, wherever they’re at, what would you recommend first?
Storm (33:25):
That’s an awesome question. And I want to make sure that I answer that in a very actionable manner, because again, back to, you know, to bring this full circle, when we started this conversation, I used the word overwhelming. It’s extremely overwhelming, man. It’s overwhelming today. Like looking at these things and you know, keeping the wheels turning, keeping the flywheel spinning. So let’s make it actionable. And I would say the first of which is you need to have something to offer. Like you need to have something of high value and in turn a high ticket item, you need to have that service. In the early days, I was accidentally landing on private coaching and literally chasing that person out of there to try to get in the group. I didn’t realize what I was working with like, and sure enough, you know, those people aren’t with us anymore. Cause it’s not what they wanted, but I just, I didn’t have a grip on the service offering. I didn’t know what I was offering. So that would be the first thing is just decide what you can offer of high value. And you do that by talking to people, whether they are your current clients or people that you see in the little coffee shop and asking them what they want to see, what do you want? What do you need? How can I help you?
Mike (34:43):
It’s such a great question. What would, if your rate, let’s say it’s $200, I’ll just use that example. If that’s your average revenue per member that you’re looking for, what is valuable enough that people would pay $200 for it? And then you build that service around and create this incredible value. And then there’s pressure on you to deliver that value. But of course you can, because you’re a great coach and trainer and you care about your clients, but you also have to put some of those preconceptions on the shelf, which is, you know, I’m just stealing your thunder here on that, because you said it earlier, you can’t put your budget on clients. If you’re starting out, like that’s such a mistake. And if you’re not making a lot of money, it’s easy to say, no one’s going to pay me for that. But you are not your clients. I’m really glad you mentioned that earlier.
Storm (35:23):
For sure. And it’ll force you to rise to the occasion. You know, Mike, maybe we look back and 70 bucks a month is what it was worth at the time. Like that might be the case because I mean, I had a 12 hours under my belt a level one, and some training in the garage. Like, so maybe that’s what it’s worth. But when you are asking questions, like, what do you want? And if you have someone who, you know, let’s paint the picture, she’s 40 mid forties and she’s significantly overweight and wants to do whatever it takes to get back to where she was 20 years ago. Like, can you really provide that with group class coaching, no nutrition coaching, and she’s just going to blend it with 12 other people? Probably not. So it’s going to force you to develop that high value service offering. So I’d say that’d be the first thing. And then the very next thing that you need to do is go sell one, like, just get a win, get yourself some proof of concept because that will lead to motivation. Even if you fall flat on your face, a couple of times, go sell one. And then I would say, share that story.
Mike (36:37):
Sorry to interrupt. Do you remember the first sale you made at your new rates and how relieving it was?
Storm (36:42):
I remember I do remember that and it was relieving later, but in the moment, I couldn’t believe that it was happening.
Mike (36:50):
Right. And it just feels so good. Cause we did the same thing. We raised our rates. And we did it first. I think, believe, I believe we did it for incoming clients first. I can’t remember exactly how we pulled it off, but at some point, and then we also developed some high ticket items. And when we actually sold one of those, my jaw has dropped because I didn’t think, I still had that preconception that I could not get rid of. So I thought it was interesting to ask you that one because, and you don’t even believe it’s happening. But then after a while you probably, at this point, I’m guessing that you don’t have a problem asking someone for a $1,500 package.
Storm (37:18):
No. And that’s exactly, and it comes back to proof of concept. We have sold it. We have created incredible results in short timelines from it. So now I believe in it. So that’s what, yeah, that would be my action step for someone is develop it, sell it, and then tell that story. Definitely externally for your next clients, but tell it internally, chances are someone listening to this probably has, you know, they probably have some form of group. If you were like where I was, you know, share the stories of the people that are having success in your one-on-one settings or with their nutrition coach. We’ve grown our nutrition coaching program in house because people are getting results and we make them famous first and foremost internally. So, again, that’s what I would recommend.
Mike (38:09):
Create it, sell it and share it. I love it. I’m going to have to book you, like I said, for 2022, and you’re gonna come back and tell us about our kids program. Will you do it?
Storm (38:17):
I would be honored. That would be incredible.
Mike (38:20):
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate it Storm.
Storm (38:22):
Thank you so much for having me.
Mike (38:24):
That was Storm Strout on Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Thank you for listening. Don’t miss any episodes of Two-Brain Radio. Please hit that subscribe button on your way out.
