Chris Cooper (00:02):
“It is the end of the year. Coop, I need revenue. What do I do?” I get asked this question pretty often around this time of year in our free public group, gymownersunited.com. You can join that group by the way. Just go to gymownersunited.com, and you’ll be guided right to it. And I’m in there once in a while answering questions and sharing free guides like this one that I’m about to show you. So, if it were me and I were not in Two-Brain’s mentorship program, and I wanted to generate some cash at the end of the year without giving ridiculous Black Friday deals that are just going to poison the well and hurt me later on, what would I do? Well, that’s why we put this guide together for you. And if you want to get a copy of it, I’ll show it here.
Chris Cooper (00:40):
If you want to get a copy, just go to gymownersunited.com and ask for it, and I’ll just give it to you. Okay, no strings attached. There are five ways that I would use to generate revenue in my gym at the end of the year—if I needed it—without hurting myself with Black Friday deals or paid-in-full discounts or anything like that. I’m going to walk through each one of these for you step by step and tell you exactly what to do. But it’s also in this guide, which you can have just by joining the group. So, the first is a retail presale. Now, at this time of the year, I want cash, and retail is a great way to do it because people are buying things for their loved ones, and they’re trying to find gifts that their loved ones care about.
Chris Cooper (01:16):
But I don’t want to put out a bunch of cash, bring in inventory, and then hope that enough people buy it that I actually make some money. So, what I’m going to do is set something up with our friends over at Forever Fierce where they pick out and create a design for me—maybe two things—and they’re going to set up a form for me, and I share this with the people in my group and the people on my email list. And I say, “Hey look, if you’re a Catalyst client and you want a really cool hoodie, you can share this with your parents; share this with your friends—the people who are dying to figure out what to buy you.” The people who are outside your gym are most likely to buy these things for the people inside your gym. But honestly, there’s a lot of people in my gym who want to buy this stuff right now.
Chris Cooper (01:56):
So, for example, right now, the people in my prime group—the people over 55—are asking me, “How do I get a T-shirt? How do I get a zip-up hoodie? How do I get a Toque?” It’s just French or Canadian for a knit cap. And so, I have these things for them. They’re set up on a pre-order form that Forever Fierce helped me put together. Forever Fierce designed this shirt. I doubt I spent three minutes on this whole project, and it will generally gain me about $1,000 to $2,000 in profit. So, what I’ll do is I will, I’ll put the pre-order form together. I’ll approve the design first, share the pre-order form in my private Facebook group, send it to the clients on my email list, and say, “Hey, forward to your friends if they don’t know what to buy you.” A lot of them will just buy it for themselves anyway. So, this is a really easy task. And in this guide, I give you the easy button that you can press just to connect with Forever Fierce. I don’t make a commission on this; I’m just telling you exactly what I do. And I’ve done this every year at Catalyst. It’s probably the seventh or eighth year that I’ve done this through Forever Fierce. It’s so easy. You can set this thing up in like 10 minutes.
Chris Cooper (02:59):
They’ll probably have a design back to you without within a day or two. And then you just hit “Go.” Your clients get the stuff that they want. They’re already asking for this stuff, or they share it with their friends, and now their friends are like, “Hallelujah. I didn’t know what to buy that gym fanatic. Like, what was I going to get them? A stretching mat, a treadmill for their house? No, I they want a t-shirt, I’m going to get them a t-shirt. They’ll love it. Check. Done off my list.” Alright, the second way that you can generate year-end revenue is gift certificates. Look, this tactic has been around for 20 years. You know, I was doing it before I even opened a gym—back in like 2001. All I would do is put together like a five or a 10 pack of personal training, and I would just send this out to all the people on my email list.
Chris Cooper (03:42):
I would put up signs, “Hey, buy your packs,” and clients buy them for one another. Sometimes parents will buy them for their kids or vice versa. “I want my parents to get started; I want them to get started, right. Here’s a package of five personal training sessions for them.” Uh, I don’t discount those at all. So, five personal training sessions are $399. That’s a one-hour session for 80 bucks each. And people can just like buy them. You are solving their problem already by telling them what to buy for their loved ones. You don’t need to further discount this stuff. And this is a common theme you’re going to hear me say over and over again. You need to get good at providing value, and you don’t provide value by discounting. You don’t provide value by giving like 20% off for buying the package. You provide value by solving problems.
Chris Cooper (04:29):
And so, most of you are underpriced already. I know that’s you. You can admit it. I’m not going to call you on it; I can’t see you. But the reality is that you shouldn’t be further discounting your underpriced rates already. All you have to do is just tell people like, “Here is how to buy this thing,” and they will buy it. So, gift certificates are great. If you want to send people gift certificates that they can buy to prepay for another member, or prepay for a member of their family, or prepay for On-Ramp—that’s a great one. You know, hey, if you’ve got somebody in your family who you’d love to get started, but they’re nervous, they don’t want to commit, you can pay for their On-Ramp. Here is the price, “Click here.” Now you do want to spend 10 minutes setting this up in your billing system.
Chris Cooper (05:10):
So if you’re using Wodify, for example, you want to set up the gift card feature in Wodify. If you’re using Mindbody, Zen Planner, PushPress, Kilo—whatever that is—you want to set that up in your billing system so that people can just click the link, buy it, and it will assign it to the client. And hopefully, you’ll get a little printout that they can have and hold in their hand, that’s tactile—that they can put in an envelope and hang on the tree, or whatever they want to do. Give it to them at a Christmas party. If you don’t have that set up, this will not be perceived as valuable as if it is. And look, if your billing system doesn’t allow you to do this, just make up a really simple PDF with your logo on it that you can just type the recipient’s name into and email to the buyer so that they have something that they can give to their loved one.
Chris Cooper (05:57):
Okay? So, my top gift certificates would be five personal training sessions, 10 personal training sessions, or On-Ramp. Or you could also do like pay for a month of their training and just sell it for its full value. Remember, you’re solving a problem, you’re not giving a discount. Next, a promotion—save your spot for January. So, look, I know you’re going to have an influx of people in January. People are just thinking about their fitness in January. They’re actually thinking about it now, but they might not be willing to start right now. In between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s kind of like this this crazy cultural zone where we’re all expected to eat whatever’s put in front of us. And in fact, if you go to a holiday party in our culture and somebody’s like, “You’re not eating the pie. What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with this pie?”
Chris Cooper (06:42):
“How dare you.” Right? Like there’s pressure to eat badly more than any other time of the year. You and I are immune to it, of course, right? We solemnly swear, but your future clients are not yet, and they know that. And so, they’re telling themselves these cultural beliefs or pressures or whatever—they’re telling themselves, I’m going to start in January. Well, you can really serve them by having them commit now, and it serves your gym because it boosts your cashflow a little bit during that lighter time. Okay? So, if you say, “I’ll tell you what; we’re only going to take 10 people through our On-Ramp program in January” or five people or whatever that is for me—that’s usually five—I would say, “You can reserve your spot right now with a deposit or even by paying for it now. Look, I know, okay, you’re not ready to commit.”
Chris Cooper (07:29):
“It’s November 30th; you don’t want to start a gym now. I understand. But let’s make sure that you’re scheduled to start with somebody who’s going to hold you accountable, undo the damage that you’re going to do to yourself, and get you on the right track as soon as January 1st happens by booking your spot now. And the way that you reserve that spot at my gym is that you pay for it. Here is the link.” Okay? So, you might not even need to set up a special link. You just make the January On-Ramp session available, or whatever that is, and send that link out to people. Again, you’re solving people’s problems just by putting this solution in front of them and making it easy for them to click one link and pay. As few clicks as possible is necessary. I don’t want them to have to call your gym or schedule something.
Chris Cooper (08:13):
Just like, “Click here to pay.” Okay? That’s it. You’re solving their problem. The fourth way to make money toward the end of the year is to host a “Bring a Friend” holiday party. Now, it’s okay to do this every quarter anyway, but you can have a holiday theme, and you can do a couple of really fun things here. So, one thing you could do is you bring a friend on the last Friday before Christmas or something like that, and you’re going to have a fun partner workout. They can try it. The key here is not like “if they try it, they will buy it.” They never do. The key here is that you get everybody’s information upfront. You have pre-registration required. You throw a fun party. You have some protein samples for people to try and sign up for to pre-order if you want to.
Chris Cooper (08:56):
You have some other healthy snacks. You probably have some music, okay? But this isn’t like your big client celebration party. This isn’t where you all donate gifts to people in foster care—we do that every year at my gym. This is the “Bring a Friend” workout, and so they bring the friend in. You have a fun group program that’s going to involve like some stuff that everybody can do. You’re going to take a lot of pictures of people. You are going to have them stand in front of your whiteboard underneath the CrossFit mistletoe or whatever you want to do, okay? But then most importantly, you’re going to book an NSI with everybody who shows up for this party, okay? What you’re not going to do is have a fantastic party that costs you money and give people a great time and then wave “bon voyage” while they all leave the gym without signing up. You’re going to book an NSI.
Chris Cooper (09:43):
You’re going to talk about their goals, and probably this is going to dovetail into, “Let’s book your spot for January right now.” Okay? So that’s a “Bring a Friend” holiday party. And again, all the steps here that I’m skimming over are all available for free in this guide to you. We just want you to make some money, survive the holidays, and not stress over how much you can afford to buy your kids for Christmas. Alright? I had one call one time with a gym owner where they talked about which piece of equipment they were going to sell so that they could buy their kids’ Christmas gifts. That broke my heart, and I never forgot it, and I never want you to go through that either. Okay? Finally, a January Kickstart specialty group. So, you do want everybody in your gym going through like an On-Ramp program to start, and you can pre-sell that to non-members.
Chris Cooper (10:28):
However, your members are going to want something fun and exciting in January also. So, this group is for them. This could be a nutrition kickstart, it could be like a fitness reboot, you know, or a kickstart. And there’s a couple of ways that you can make this really, really awesome. The first is to have a nutrition kickstart for your members, and I’ve got some really great tips here. The second though is to do a reboot for your former members. So basically, this is the only time I would ever do a group On-Ramp is with former members. The benefit here is that you’re giving them like a timeline to sign up, okay? “Hey, you can sign up for this—Catalyst Reboot is what we’ve called it in the past. Come back in, we’re going to start with the foundations, okay? I don’t want you going too hard, too fast.”
Chris Cooper (11:14):
“That’s a recipe for like rhabdo. I want you coming in and we’re going to, we’re going to start from the basics, and you’re going to do with all the other former members that you missed too, okay? We’re limiting this to 10, and that’s our Catalyst Reboot in January.” You send that out to your list, and you’re probably going to get some former members back. As long as you’ve got three or four, it’s going to be a fun group, and you’re basically going through your On-Ramp curriculum with former members but in a kind of group setting. That’s the only time that you’d want to do your On-Ramp as a group by the way. The other option is that you just have a kickstart that’s available to the public, that’s not like your On-Ramp.
Chris Cooper (11:50):
So, it may be more like a 30 day kickstart program: We’re going to have healthy habits, and we’re going to do some like group workouts, but you’re not really teaching them. And you know, honestly, from there, they should go through your one-on-one On-Ramp program anyway. Okay, so three options. One is for your clients: Run a nutrition kickstart. The second is for your former clients: You run a reboot. And the third is for people who are not your clients yet, but you want to bring them in and have a taste. That’s the order that I would prioritize them, and a nutrition kickstart for your clients is probably the easiest and best. Second would be a reboot for your former clients—just a great way to bring them back in. And third is to do some kind of like 30-day challenge for non-clients. I don’t always recommend that last one, but if you’re in a gym where you know you’re just going to get absolutely swamped with people who are coming in in January anyway, on-ramping them as a group might work for you.
Chris Cooper (12:43):
So, to recap, and you can get these step-by-step at gymownersunited.com: A retail presale is usually good for $1,000 to $2,000 for me. Gift certificates are usually good for about another $1,500 on average. You know, people will buy those for their loved ones. A promotion, which is like save your spot for January—it’s not a discount; it’s not a price deal or anything like that—that’s usually going to generate between three and five On-Ramps. These are people who would want to sign up anyway, but they’re like waiting. Now, they’re going to save their spot. Fourth is a “Bring a Friend” holiday party: That should generate hopefully three to 20 more No Sweat Intros for you. And then a January Kickstart should raise the arm of your gym by selling either to your current clients or bringing previous clients back. Or if you’re going to get 30 new people anyway, on-ramping them all properly together and increasing your retention. These are five ways that I would generate revenue at my gym before the end of the year. Get your free guide. Here it is at gymownersunited.com. You’ll see this picture in the group. Just ask for it, and we will give it to you. Happy holidays, and we’ll see you in 2024.
