Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Buying gyms, buying out partners and buying more gyms. Mike Turnquist has done it all. And he’ll tell his tale on this edition of Two-Brain Radio. I’m Mike Warkentin, your host, please hit subscribe and like wherever you are watching or listening. Mike Turnquist is in the land of wineries and olive groves. Paso Robles on the central California coast which is beautiful. He’s had an interesting path to running two gyms and we’re gonna hash it out today. So, Mike, how are you doing?
Mike Turnquist (00:26):
I’m having a great day, Mike. Thanks so much for having me on.
Mike Warkentin (00:30):
I’m good. Where are you right now? It looks like you got some work going on.
Mike Turnquist (00:34):
I am in our newest gym, Atascadero CrossFit, which is just finishing up the construction, waiting on the Rogue truck. It should be on its way here really soon. Then we can load it up with beautiful, beautiful equipment and, get some fitness done.
Mike Warkentin (00:52):
Yeah. It’s gonna be Christmas in March for you when that truck rolls up. what does Atascadero mean?
Mike Turnquist (00:58):
Atascadero means, the translation is mud hole, which is, it’s really interesting. I grew up here, so I’m allowed to make fun of it. Yeah, little, little small town, about 30,000 people and, yeah, means mudhole.
Mike Warkentin (01:12):
It’s funny. Cuz I saw somewhere, the name popped up when I was doing some Googling and I remember someone saying, do they know what that means? And I was like, they do.
Mike Turnquist (01:21):
Yes we do.
Mike Warkentin (01:22):
All right. So let’s talk about this. I wanna talk about your current situation. How many gyms do you own and when did you begin ownership of each one? Bring me up to speed.
Mike Turnquist (01:30):
Yeah. Currently own two CrossFit affiliates and it’s always been a dream to own a gym. I’ve always just been fascinated by it and when I got into it, it was just like, OK, let’s spread this out. Let’s you know, leverage it and see, you know, grow this company and open up multiple locations. Cause what that can in theory do is triple, quadruple, you know, your revenue and the goal is not to grind for the rest of my life, but to own some businesses. So, way back, been in the real estate sales, residential sales for over 20 years. Got into that really, really young and found CrossFit in 2011 at a globo gym.
Mike Warkentin (02:23):
Old school. Nice.
Mike Turnquist (02:24):
Yeah. So, this was my 10th Open that we did and it’s come a long way. So just been, you know, seeing what fitness and health has done for me personally. You know, I used to be well north of 300 pounds.
Mike Warkentin (02:43):
Did you really?
Mike Turnquist (02:43):
Yeah, and was one of the people that just said, oh, it runs in my family, my whole family’s overweight and blah, this is just my destiny, but it’s absolutely not true. And I, you know, just fell in love with CrossFit and I’ve always been an entrepreneur, always been a business owner. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had a, you know, regular day job. It’s been decades. So, you know, when I started, I helped my friend open CrossFit Ergo. we went from the globo gym, they opened their own gym and then we moved over to CrossFit Inferno and then,
Mike Warkentin (03:24):
Bill Grundler’s place.
Mike Turnquist (03:27):
I love Bill. It was a really good start and my buddy decided to open his own gym and I’m like, Hey, I’ll help you out. You can’t barely turn on your computer on, let me, you know, let me help you out with membership software and marketing and little things there. And it was a real, you know, we just did it as a trade. I got a key to the gym and you know, pretty typical stuff.
Mike Warkentin (03:53):
Some protein supplements.
Mike Turnquist (03:55):
Yeah. He went along and you know, decided to go a different route. And the, you know, one of the coaches was like, Hey, we’re kind of afraid that we’re gonna come in Monday morning and the place is gonna be empty. Like no email, no nothing. And luckily that didn’t happen. But one of the coaches kind of twisted my arm and was like, Hey, you’ve been talking about this. You’d be great. Buy the gym, please. We love it here. So, after a 5:30 AM class, another member hit me up and said, Hey, I heard you’re looking to buy Ergo, CrossFit Ergo. And I said, yeah. And he’s like, you need a partner and I’m like, you got money. Let’s go. Right. So, his name was Steven. And to be honest with you, CrossFit Ergo would not exist without him.
Mike Turnquist (04:49):
It was a really good partnership. We had, as far as partnerships goes, he brought in a lot of capital. A lot of insight to business, he owns a couple of really high end businesses himself. And I ran the operations and it went like that really, really well. We didn’t step on each other’s toes. We just, you know, got Ergo to go where it was gonna go. But the plan was, he was a short term part of it. You know, he knew it was my passion and owning a gym wasn’t really in his long term vision, but he didn’t want it to go away either. So ended up buying him out, shoot, it’s coming up on a year that that happened. And I kind of understood that I’m gonna need some help. So a few months before that I secretly hired Two-Brain Business as a mentor and I paid for it outta my pocket, I didn’t run it through the gym. I didn’t want, you know, I didn’t wanna have to explain that big cost to him.
Mike Warkentin (05:56):
It’s fair, but I’ll still slap your hand for not putting it through the business.
Mike Turnquist (05:59):
Yeah. He wouldn’t have seen it as an investment like I did.
Mike Warkentin (06:05):
That’s fair cuz he’s getting out too. I get it.
Mike Turnquist (06:08):
You know, so, and it all happened all at the same time. I just, my mentor, Greg, another guy that if he wasn’t in my life, CrossFit Ergo wouldn’t exist.
Mike Warkentin (06:21):
This is Greg Strauch, right?
Mike Turnquist (06:24):
Yes. And the great thing about Greg is when I was, you know, watching the videos of who should you pick for your mentor, Greg happened to be the first one I watched. I’m like, that’s my guy. And I watched two other ones. And I just was like, Nope, that is my guy. You just know.
Mike Warkentin (06:43):
That’s great.
Mike Turnquist (06:43):
Yeah. You know, during rampup, it’s like, he saw me and he’s like, if I put too much plate on your plate, you’re gonna try to do everything and you’ll get nothing done. And he saved me from overwhelm and he just had me little baby steps along the way. And we ended up going from 9,000 in revenue, which was losing money at the time. And then late last year we hit 30,000. So in the course of one year we had tripled revenue. Now I wish it had stayed, you know, at that linear path, but you know, business.
Mike Warkentin (07:20):
COVID going on there too. And some other strange things in that period.
Mike Turnquist (07:24):
Yeah. So, you know, we ended up tripling revenue and it it’s just been fantastic. The members are loving it, everybody’s loving it. And I started paying myself, you know.
Mike Warkentin (07:37):
Congrats, that’s it.
Mike Turnquist (07:38):
You know, following the profit first model, which, you know, really works. It sounds weird at first. But when you start breaking it up in my bank, tried to talk me out of it. Like you don’t need all these. And I was like, Nope, I’m gonna do it. And, it just had a really good trajectory.
Mike Warkentin (07:57):
I’m gonna interrupt you Mike for one sec, listeners, if you wanna see the profit first model, we have John Briggs in our show archives profit first for micro gyms is designed to teach you what this is. The short version is you pay yourself first, before the gym eats up your expenses. Then you push yourself to create the money you need to get the gym to cover it’s sheet. All right, go ahead, Mike. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanna make sure people know what they’re getting into there.
Mike Turnquist (08:18):
Yeah. Owning a gym is a passion project for most people, but you’re not gonna do it for free forever. You won’t, you will catch up and it’ll hit you like a ton of bricks. So getting paid every single month is really cool.
Mike Warkentin (08:35):
Especially when you create it yourself.
Mike Turnquist (08:38):
Yeah. So know to back up, when I first started with Greg, I said, Hey, Greg, you know, I don’t know if it was Jason Khalipa or whatever, just like owning all these other gyms. I was like, I wanna expand. I want to, you know, get things going and then move on. And so owning multiple gyms was always part of the plan. So now the story of Atascadero CrossFit, Atascadero CrossFit was opened up by another Inferno coach, Dustin and Curtis. They opened this up in 2012, I believe, again, as a passion project. And, Dustin’s an L1 seminar staff. Dustin Virgil.
Mike Warkentin (09:20):
I haven’t met him but I know the name.
Mike Turnquist (09:22):
Just a good dude, you know, just a super good dude. And he ended up selling it to another guy. We’re all former Inferno guys, you know? And, so he ended up taking it over, letting the CrossFit affiliate expire and merged it in with his other gym in San Luis Obispo. It’s called Headstrong. So it became Headstrong instead of Atascadero CrossFit. But the cool part is none of the, the building never changed. The signage never changed and I kept hitting him up, you know, every couple of months, Hey, you know, I would love to take over that. I don’t know if it’s a problem or whatever. I, you know, things are going really good. And he kept saying, Nope, got big plans, got big plans. And three months go by I hit shoot him another text. He said, Nope, I’m gonna keep plans. I said, great. And, come December, his big plans came to fruition and he bought a big giant globo gym next to a big grocery store in a retail store.
Mike Warkentin (10:25):
This is Dustin?
Mike Turnquist (10:27):
No, this is the other guy guy. And in the meantime Dustin’s been a member at our first gym. So like he was moving out of the space and me and Dustin had just been talking like, dude, it’d be really cool to, you know, reopen ACF. And, so when he moved out, I nabbed up the building and I said, Dustin, I got the building, with your blessing, can I rebuild ACF? And he said, yep. So he’s super excited about it. The community is super excited to bring it back. And, yeah, so that’s how we came up with the tagline ACF Reborn. And we ended up naming the LLC ACF Reborn. It’s kind of just a really cool story. And when the word got out Dustin’s phone was blown up, Hey, I heard ACF’s coming back. So it’s really, really kind of fun to take that legacy and that reputation that he built and honor it and make sure that I don’t tarnish it. Like my friendship with him really means a lot to me. And, the last thing I want to do is disappoint Dustin. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but it’s a really cool story, and it makes it worth it, you know?
Mike Warkentin (11:53):
So this gym that you’re in right now, so this was the building, this was the same building that it’s always been in?
Mike Turnquist (11:59):
Yep.
Mike Warkentin (12:00):
But when, so you only had to acquire the building, not buy the gym, right. Cuz Atascadero CrossFit was gone.
Mike Turnquist (12:06):
Correct. So yeah, it was basically a blank slate. They took the floor, they took the equipment, you know, all that was left was that mural that’s sitting behind me, you know? I repainted it.
Mike Warkentin (12:19):
Let’s see it.
Mike Warkentin (12:21):
Woo. That;s nice.
Mike Turnquist (12:22):
Yeah. So what’s really cool is it’s just, it was a blank slate and re affiliated. And once I got the blessing from CrossFit, you know, we relaunched.
Mike Warkentin (12:35):
OK, so now I gotta figure this out. So you’ve got Ergo is, you’ve got that going nicely, you know, you 3X revenue and you said, you know, it’s not one of those linear things where it’s like now at 90 grand a month. But like we talked about this, entrepreneurship is always that series of like a little bit forward, couple steps back and then a big jump forward and so forth. So we’re working in good shape it there, you got it to a place where you were comfortable, then you go and you’re going to start location two. How far away is it?
Mike Turnquist (13:02):
About 15 minutes.
Mike Warkentin (13:04):
- So not too far.
Mike Turnquist (13:05):
Right on the cusp of where people will drive to you, you know?
Mike Warkentin (13:09):
Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So now how does this work or how are you gonna split your time? How are you going to like manage both are you gonna share staff members? Like what’s the plan to get this second one to the space where Ergo is?
Mike Turnquist (13:20):
Yeah, so what’s really exciting is Greg has helped me build up my coaching staff at Ergo. It was just me and two original coaches. And, so just followed the steps and I no longer coach, you know, an emergency I’ll step in and whatever, I’m just handling the operations and the marketing and the sales. So I do all the no sweats and, you know, handle the staff. So purely management role. And so our staff is super excited about the new gym, because we all know it. We all know, we see Dustin every morning, you know, it’s like, so they’re really excited to split time, get more hours, more coaching. Maybe they’re super excited about new equipment. I don’t know. but everybody’s on the same wavelength. And they’re really excited to coach here and coach there. I’ll probably coach a little bit too, just to kind of get it rocking and rolling. You know, but, eventually it’s just gonna be, Hey, I just wanna do, you know, do the no sweats for both gyms and then I’ll, you know, bring on, a general manager that does the sales and step out and then location number three, wherever that may be.
Mike Warkentin (14:37):
- OK. So, sorry to interrupt you. I’m gonna ask you about sales, knowing that you were in real estate. So we’ll get back to that in a little bit, but, what I really wanted to ask you about in that situation, you’re sharing some staff right away, are memberships gonna share as well?
Mike Turnquist (14:52):
No, it’s specifically gonna be two separate companies. So that, you know, if I ever, Hey, I’m not interested in this one, I can sell it off as an asset. So they’re not tied together.
Mike Warkentin (15:05):
Yeah. Clever. I like it. Now with that model, have you, so are you gonna start with zero members or what’s your plan for the grand opening and when’s the date of this one?
Mike Turnquist (15:14):
I have one member so far, we’re doing our founders club and
Mike Warkentin (15:20):
That was my next question. You beat me to it. Nice.
Mike Turnquist (15:22):
So, I started marketing probably three or four days ago and the leads are just kind of rolling in and, you know, calling ’em all and I’ve got no sweats set up through the week, so it’s gonna happen. The Rogue truck should show up. it should leave Ohio on the 23rd. And that puts us, you know, first week of April, if we rush and put it all together, which, you know, should only take a couple of days to get through all the cardboard. So we’re looking first week of April.
Mike Warkentin (15:51):
- So we’re in good shape. So do founders club is a plug and play plan that Two-Brain has for gyms to start like open on day one with members. And I think the record is like 94 or something like that, that might even have been beaten, but it was at one point 94. So gym opened on day one with 94 paying members, which is incredible because I think when I opened think I had 6,000 square feet and I think I had eight.
Mike Turnquist (16:14):
Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (16:15):
And, it was rough.
Mike Turnquist (16:16):
It’s stressful, Ergo’s kind of funding a lot of it. But another like epiphany moment is Chris’s book “Start a Gym” came out the day that I was meeting with the landlord.
Mike Warkentin (16:32):
Oh, hallelujah, let it rain yeah.
Mike Turnquist (16:34):
Showed up and I’m like, OK, I don’t need anything else.
Mike Warkentin (16:38):
And listeners, if you wanna take a peek at, I’ll give you a tip, there are free resources go to startagym.com. You will find some free founders club resources you can download right now without even buying the book. And if you wanna buy the book, I recommend you do it. You can do it on that site too, it’s startatgym.com, the founders club is a huge, huge deal because your first goal, when you open a gym is to get to breakeven. Second goal is profit, but break even first. And if you get members ahead of time, your stress will go way down. So tell me, Mike, have you got the whole founders club plan, just lined up and ready to roll now.?
Mike Turnquist (17:12):
Yeah, I’m just following it to the T, Greg has taught me don’t question it don’t overthink it. Just execute. Yep. And, so yeah, we have the founders club all ready to go. We you know, set up the landing pages through GLM. And, yeah, the marketing is fairly the same as, as the Two-Brain Marketing course, you know, just it’s plug and play.
Mike Warkentin (17:36):
- So this is cool. Are you doing anything like in the founders club, there are a couple of variations where you could like, you know, include like t-shirts and things like that. Is there anything special that you’re doing? That’s very like Atascadero for the founders club.
Mike Turnquist (17:47):
We have a really orange t-shirt. Cause as you can see, Atascadero’s colors are orange and gray and, yeah, we just offering supplements and kickstart sessions. And then if you, one thing I kind of changed was if you prepay for three months ahead of time, you get our nutrition challenge. You know, so it was just kind of like, how can we triple the income here and, you know,
Mike Warkentin (18:14):
Yeah. Get money in the bank earlier. I, yeah, I get it. And what you’re doing there is you’re creating a valuable package. Chris has always been adamant that you don’t discount your rates, because if you offer discounts in the beginning, you have to find that many more clients. But if you package some things together, you know, like free nutrition seminar, things like that, all of a sudden you can create like $500 of value to a client who can sign up on the spot, gets you some cash and get some members. And then the best part about this is that your founders club members become your best marketing tool, because then you use the Two-Brain affinity marketing guide, talk to them, get their friends and family and go from there. So I’m sure Greg’s talked to you about that too.
Mike Turnquist (18:49):
Yep. He sure has.
Mike Warkentin (18:51):
Yeah. Greg is checking all the boxes. I love it. I love it. So what are the main challenges to Atascadero right now? Is it just waiting for the trucks to come in and doing the renos? Or is there anything else that like in the startup phase is tough?
Mike Turnquist (19:04):
Yeah, it’s I’ve been doing most of the work myself and just with a couple of volunteers, I subbed out some electrical and some drywall work. But we built a, no sweat intro room, that wasn’t here and good place to do InBodys and things like that. But yeah, it’s just the waiting game, you know, I would’ve pushed the construction faster. It’s kind of nice to be a little lax on the timing, but like, I want that equipment. I wanna open, I wanna start training, you know?
Mike Warkentin (19:36):
Yeah, yeah. You just go and a couple rocks and put em in there and start teaching to deadlift. It’s been done. What have you learned at the other place doing no sweat interest and consultations. And how does that sync up with your experience selling, you know, what I’m guessing are probably a million dollar properties?
Mike Turnquist (19:59):
It’s a different product. So instead of selling, you know, 500, a million dollar product, you’re selling, you know, $200 thousand dollar stuff, but the core concept is exactly the same. It’s listening, finding out what makes them tick, what they want and then providing the solution to them. And the fundamentals of sales when you do it this way, when you, I say, when you do it right, are exactly the same. So it, wasn’t hard for me to be like, oh, cool. I gotta sell gym memberships. Here, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. And you keep digging deep. and then it’s really not a salesy. It’s not, you don’t really have to close. It’s like, you already know. And believe you have the answer to their problem. You just don’t know what their problem is, or maybe they don’t know what their problem is yet.
Mike Warkentin (20:56):
That’s the motivational interviewing, you know, why, why, why is that important.
Mike Turnquist (20:59):
Right. Yeah. And it’s just been, just a couple of shifts, couple of tweaks, you know, managing, you know, the expectations and it hasn’t been a very hard transition.
Mike Warkentin (21:13):
When you sold back in the day before you were doing the Two-Brain stuff, did you use a consultive process like that or did you just do what we all did back in the day in CrossFit just like, Hey, come do Fran, throw up and maybe sign up?
Mike Turnquist (21:25):
We did a couple, yeah. A little bit, but that included like this horrible assault bike workout, and then before that, it was just like, Hey, come try a free week.
Mike Warkentin (21:39):
Sure.
Mike Turnquist (21:39):
And, you know, we all know they come and maybe they do one or two, but then you never see ’em again,
Mike Warkentin (21:44):
Go do yoga for a free week. And then they’re. Yeah.
Mike Turnquist (21:46):
Yeah. Our onboarding has completely changed and it continues to change and get better and better and better. And as far as I know, we’re the only gym that actually has onboarding.
Mike Warkentin (22:01):
It’s a market separater, big time.
Mike Turnquist (22:04):
Yeah. I don’t,
Mike Warkentin (22:05):
I mean, actually, sorry, we know like with data at Two-Brain that the better job you do at onboarding in the first 90 days, the longer that client will stay with you. Right. You might get the occasional person will still drop off. That happens. But the more effort you put in the first 90 days, the longer your length of engagement, which is one of those huge metrics, LEG, as we call it, combine that with ARM, average revenue per member and that’s revenue. Right. So that’s what we’re looking at. How fast do you think that you can get this gym spun up to where you want it? That’s a huge question. Cause the idea, Chris and I have talked about this all the time. Once you have entrepreneurial experience, and especially as a gym owner, you should be able to replicate that success at another location faster than the first time. But some people don’t have that because they get overwhelmed and get pulled into directions and so forth. So how do you avoid that? And how fast can you get this spun up?
Mike Turnquist (22:56):
I think you avoid that with your systems and you know, your SOPs. And that is one thing that I wish I had spent more time in the beginning is finalize my SOPs and cuz they’re still not done all the way, but we have, you have to systemize and then once it’s systemized, you can leverage it. You can teach it to a staff and then there’s that, you know, that whole transition period of like, they can’t do it as good as me. Until you realize these people are better than you at a lot of things. Yeah. So like my coaches, they’re way better coaches. I have no business coaching.
Mike Warkentin (23:40):
It’s a good feeling, right?
Mike Turnquist (23:41):
The girl who does our social media, our joy girl, she is way better at social media and all sort of stuff. She’s our party planner. You don’t want me planning the parties. You know, she basically ran our whole intramural open and everybody’s like, this was so great. I’m like, that’s Marley. I had, you know, I just write her checks, she did it all, give her all the praise and yeah, just finding the right staff and systemizing it. And then you can feel comfortable spending time elsewhere. And they’ve made a couple comments like, you’re not here anymore. I’m like, I know I’m doing floors. You know, but, it’s allowed me to come here and spend time in the new gym, launching that, you know.
Mike Warkentin (24:23):
That’s gonna be music to Chris Cooper’s years. Cause he’s the systems guy. He loves that stuff. And I just actually spoke to another gym owner this morning, Dean McCarthy in New York. He’s another Two-Brain guy. he was saying that getting systems in place was one of the most important things that he did at his gym. So I’ll ask you this, is Greg gonna grind you to get that playbook done and get everything finished.
Mike Turnquist (24:40):
It comes back. Yeah. Like, Hey, finish this SOP and it’s not the systems that’s the hard part. It’s the documenting the systems.
Mike Warkentin (24:51):
Oh, I know. Right. Cause it, you could just do it in the time that you would take to write it down. It’s a pain, but yeah.
Mike Turnquist (24:56):
Yeah. But spending the three or four times longer the first couple of times to do it, to document it is well worth it. Well worth it. Cuz then you can just take that.
Mike Warkentin (25:05):
I think that’s what a lot of people missed. Yeah. And I think that’s what people missed back in the day is like a lot of gym owners in the early days were racing to get that second location. They would just open it without a single system or a playbook or anything like that. No policies, no procedures. You know, we were taking money with the envelope on the wall and stuff like that. Right. That doesn’t replicate. But then you look at a business like McDonald’s, they’ve replicated that with a rubber stamp all around the world because they have those systems and procedures and whether or not they’re serving healthy food, doesn’t matter. They know how to create a system like nobody’s business. And that was my first job out of high school. Right. So future’s looking bright at a Atascadero. Ergo. How much time are you gonna plan to spend there now? So is it gonna be just like check in once in a while, you gotta manager there?
Mike Turnquist (25:45):
I think probably, maybe like a 40, 60 split. I, you know, that’s my baby, that’s, you know, it’s three minutes from my house. So, yeah. That’s where I have my real estate office, you know, it’s in the back of the gym, so yeah.
Mike Warkentin (26:02):
Still do some selling?
Mike Turnquist (26:02):
Yes sir.
Mike Warkentin (26:02):
I didn’t know that. Nice. Right on. Yeah. OK. So let me ask you this. Now, someone who’s thinking about doing that second location, what would you advise them? What can you tell them that like, the thing that you’re sure about that would help them out?
Mike Turnquist (26:19):
Make sure you have a lot more reserves than you think you need. Cuz you can never estimate every little thing, that you,
Mike Warkentin (26:31):
Are we talking cash or energy?
Mike Turnquist (26:33):
Cash and energy. Yeah. Actually both because it’s gonna be harder than you think it will be. And you have to have a support system because I tell you what, there’s many a days that I’ve left this place, I’ve made a horrible mistake. This is gonna, you have these highs and lows and then the rent comes due and you’re like, OK, this was a mistake. I still have zero members, you know? So you’re gonna go through these waves. So I’d say have a support system and have extra cash and make sure your SOPs are done. Make sure, you know, your first gym can run without you, make sure that it can survive a vacation, like go on vacation, test it, you know? Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (27:21):
Chris has talked about that. That’s a big one. I think a lot of people, they try to open that second gym with the other one, just, you know, kind of teetering on that plate. And then they step away and the plate falls as opposed to getting it like a surplus, we’ll call it, like you said, a surplus of like, you know, profitability and stability at that other gym where you know, this top is gonna keep spinning while you get the other one moving. Let me add you this. If you go for gym three, would you start a new one or would you look at buying an existing one?
Mike Turnquist (27:49):
You know, I’d consider both, I think there’s pros and cons to each one. I think when you buy an existing gym, like we did the first time you have revenue coming in, like you got some problems, you know, maybe you gotta deal with, with junky equipment or just things that aren’t the way you want it. But when you start fresh, you can do it the right way from the start, with no revenue. So it kind of goes both ways. Is it easier to fix bad habits or fix, you know, we had a lot of a big turnover when things started to change because the members aren’t used, they’re like, no, it’s been this way forever. Yeah. Like we don’t want coaching. We don’t want this. Now you’re giving us level? Like, no. Yeah. So there’s a kickback when you start to change things. But then again, having zero members from the start with a bunch of bills, is it just depends which one, which one feels better at the time. I guess. There’s pros and cons. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (28:55):
So you’re not on either side. You like a good business person would evaluate both ’em at the time. Cause I know there are some people that are adamant about, I would only start another gym and other people are like, I would only buy another gym. I talked to a guy in Utah who’s bought six of them and he buys existing ones. And they have to be, I believe he said they have to, he likes unprofitable ones because he turns ’em around fast, which is fascinating and scary for me. But that’s how he rolls. Chris Cooper on the other hand prefer, if he was gonna do a second gym, he would prefer to start from scratch or buy an audience of a gym and probably get rid of just about, you know, a lot of the policies and procedures and so forth. So he’d be looking to buy that audience, which is like the people that are listening to that gym speak. So it’s interesting. I’m gonna be curious when you get to gym three, what you’ll end up doing.
Mike Turnquist (29:39):
Yeah. Maybe you’ll have me back on.
Mike Warkentin (29:41):
I would love to. I wanna thank you so much for being here today. Mike, I’m gonna let you get back to laying your flooring there and wish you all the best of luck in this. Thank you so much.
Mike Warkentin (29:49):
Thank you.
Mike Warkentin (29:50):
That was Mike Turnquist on Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host Mike Warkentin. For more shows like this and advice from Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper, please subscribe for more episodes. And if you’re on YouTube, please hammer that like button too right now, do it with my thanks. Now here’s Chris Cooper with a final word.
Chris Cooper (30:06):
Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook, this is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in. And I’m there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook.
