Being a good trainer does not make you a good gym owner. We're gonna debate that statement today, and I've got one of the top coaches in the world to help me do it. It it is Ben Bergeron. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Warrington . Please subscribe so you don't miss a show. Now, Ben doesn't need much of an introduction. I'm gonna give you the short version.
He's the founder of CrossFit, new England and CompTrain . He's the author of the book Chasing Excellence, which you can find on Amazon. He has coached CrossFit games and Affiliate Cop Champions and a host of other games athletes who retired from coaching in 2023 at that level. But he's still a major force in the industry. And we've got him coming to speak at the Two Brain Summit June 8th, the ninth in Chicago.
Please get tickets via the show notes so you can see Ben in person. Ben, welcome here. I'm excited to jump into this one with you.
Thanks, Mike. Yeah, equally excited.
I'm fired up because I made a huge mistake back in 2008, I think you and I and Heather met in 2009 for the first time at the ranch in Aromas when we were all slugging it out in the , uh, in the, in the dust there.
A year before that, I made a huge mistake and I thought that just being a great coach was gonna make me a great business owner, and that that thought maybe cost me, I don't know, $500,000 over the next, the next few years. So take me back to like 2008, 2009. You were in earlier than that. I know, but like, what did 2008 Ben Bergeron think of that statement?
You know, being a great trainer is gonna make your gym successful.
Yeah, I think that's what we were , that's kind of what we were all sold essentially is like, that was the prerequisite. Uh, if you, if you love this, if you're passionate about this, if you've gone done your level one, certainly if you were going to or sending people to the games, it was like you gotta open an affiliate and you'd be successful. And there's, that's not, not true.
Like, it , it is important to have passion. It is important to have ability, but fast forward 25 years and , uh, or whatever that is, 17 years. And , um, we know that it takes quite a bit more than that. Um, but yeah, in the 2008 world, that was , uh, that was, that was the prerequisite and that's what we thought the right thing was.
And , um, I still to this day do think that that is, if there's two sides of the coin, and that's the why I , I think it now, I , it's just that you can't have one without the other. So it's not, you need to be, there's this phenomenal book called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera . Um, he is the, he was the, he ran 11 Madison Park in New York City, which got voted best restaurant in the world.
And the thing that I really took away from that was, there is two aspects to being a successful restaurateur, and that is to be restaurant smart and business smart. And gosh, if there was ever a good parallel for us as gym owners, restaurants are, it, like, it's the same model. You, you have a product that you hope people come to on a daily basis, and they , they're served it by somebody, a coach or a waiter.
There's the programming, which is the, the , the, the food. There is the ambiance, there is the excitement, there is the vibe. There is, it's a really, really strong parallel for us. So, you know, that's the not so well kept secret at this point that it takes both sides. Yeah,
And you're right, because I, my gym didn't go under, you know, back in 2011, we opened it after I did did training on the side and bootcamp stuff. We opened this gym and I tried to be a great trainer, and I guess I was good enough that I kept clients and, you know, stayed open. The reality was that there were only two gyms, CrossFit gyms at the time in a city of 700,000.
So by default, I got half the athletes and we managed to survive. As competitors started to show up , uh, in the market, I realized that whoa, marketing and retention and all these other systems just, I didn't have any of them. And like, I was still getting by by trying to be a great coach. And I started to think maybe there's something else I gotta do.
You know, like when, when did that realization start to hit for you? Because for me it was maybe like three or four years after I opened my gym in 2011, it was about 2014 other gyms started popping up and competition started happening. And you , the market was not just me and somebody else. What happened with you?
Yeah, it wasn't , uh, it probably wasn't as binary as like all of a sudden going like, oh, okay, I need that. Mine was a little bit more , um, like a turning of a seasons. It was a little more phased because I always had an interest in the business side, but my, in my business side wasn't complete.
I was only , um, when I thought of business, I was like, I still thought it was , um, hire and develop great coaches and create a great culture slash um, community. That's what , and that's really where my efforts went into in terms of creating systems and processes and , uh, standardization and trying to really drive towards a mature business.
But it was really, there was definitely a, a few sort of , um, key moments for me. So I affiliated in 2007. 2009 is when we , uh, went from doing it as a part-time business to getting a, a real gym, our own location, hiring, training coaches, not just Heather and I running classes. So that was the first kind of step to like, okay, we are true business owners. We're not doing this on a hard time basis.
That was at 2009. Had some early, that's where we met you at the first ranch. Um, had some early success of the games. We won the affiliate cup in 11, I think, which kind of put us on the map. And then we ran a really competitive gym. We had a lot of members and ran a really competitive gym for about the next four or five years.
And it was really centered around the sport of CrossFit and it was really centered around hiring really high level athletes as coaches that were great coaches. They were, we had great coaches that were great at athletes, but that was the first really eye-opening moment for me was about 2015 maybe. I was running an event called the East Coast Championships. The ECC
Remember it . Yep .
Yeah. And uh, we had at the time probably six or seven full-time coaches, which is crazy. Like, I , I don't , I've won now, you know, I just paid the other part of that was like, just paid no when I said like early on I was paying attention to culture, I was paying attention to doing things the right way in terms of putting on a good product. But I had no idea about , uh, the finances side of thing .
That was the biggest missing gap in for me, way more so than marketing or retention or, you know, what's your CAC or leg or all of that stuff to me is still not the most driving factors.
Digressing back, we had the ECC and we were doing the load in for the ECC, which is basically what we, the , the gym, CrossFit England was the staging ground where we kept all of the stuff year to year that we had then load into U-Haul to bring down to the World Trade Center in Boston. And this was the, like the aha moment for me.
We had great coaches , um, and we had a good community and culture in the gym, but we didn't have the right culture in team in terms of running a business. And when we did the load in , it's a big project. I mean it's four U-Haul, you know, it takes two days to do the thing.
And we're loading it in and we kind of run this dual business where we have some people at, at CrossFit New England that are also helping run this. But then we have a bunch of other coaches that aren't, some of 'em are competing in the event, but as we're loading it in, it's only three of us that are doing all of the loading. And the other coaches are kinda just doing it like one's, you know, making some food.
The other one's plugging away on the internet and the other one's, you know, working out and we're just walking by them and they're not looking to help a hand at all. And that's when I realized that was the aha moment for me of like, in terms of what I thought I was creating for culture is not culture.
I thought I was creating culture in terms of like a place where people are positive, they don't complain, there's no gossip, there's no drama. All of those are very important, very, very important. And you can't not have those for a really strong culture. In my mind, what I yet to define was truly what it meant to be , um, someone that would excel in a team environment.
And that to me was the real , I, I took a big step back and had an , uh, a , a come to Jesus moment with my staff. We call it the picnic table talk, where I brought them outside, you know, maybe a few weeks after the e CCC and I, I would say , Hey guys , um, you know , things are gonna change around here a little bit.
Um, and I think that you'll be really surprised in a year from now how few of us are here. And that kind of like , um, to that point we had had next to zero turnover in four years. Nobody left. And why would they, like it's a great job. Yeah. Full time employment. You , you coach two classes a day and you get paid for 40 hours a week. And that's where I was like, I'm not, I'm not running this business.
I'm just not like, I don't know what the heck I'm doing. So I went like full circle , like all the way back. And I didn't, I I , I had, we had, again, we had about eight employees. I fired one. All the others left on their own except for one. Wow. So at the end of the year, we, no turnover for four years realized what I was doing with mistakes I was making , um, without firing anybody. Everyone.
So six of the eight left on their own. Um, all on great terms, but they just, I told 'em it's this , you're not, this might not be for you and I don't blame you 'cause this isn't what you were hired for. This isn't what I said you were signing up for. So if you don't feel like this is for you, I get it. I get it.
Like, go do something that lines up with what it is that you truly wanna be doing, but this is not what we're gonna be doing going forward. And to your very similar to your like all of a sudden this, the business started being a business.
Wow. So that was actually known in New Crossroad England lore as the picnic table talk.
Yeah, yeah.
. Wow. Yeah . And like literal listeners are like, let's not forget. Like then at this time, I mean, you're still like, I think you were doing level one seminar staff at that point as well. Probably you were running, or at least
I was doing seminar staff. I was doing seminar staff I think in like 13, 14.
Yeah. 'cause I remember interviewing in like CrossFit Minneapolis on a tire in the back or something at some point around that area. And like, so you've been doing that, you've been got top athletes, you're running the ECC, you've got a gym, you've got all this stuff going on, and then you kind of have this screeching halt . You're like, whoa, this business is not doing what it should.
And then you go from like you these long-term staff members to you said you kept one. Like, that's incredible. And I had a similar thing, not on the same scale, obviously, as , as you were doing, but we had a moment where we're like, this is just not going well. And that's actually how I ended up connecting with, with Chris Cooper. I'm like, I haven't paid myself ever.
This gym is losing $5,000 a month and I am in trouble. And if I don't do something, we're done. You know? And so that's was real, that was my come to Jesus moment where I had to start thinking like a business owner. And luckily Coop was able to help me and fix that. What did you do?
So that, that's a huge speed bump where you just draw this line in the sand between the previous version of CFNE and going forward, what changed? Like what did you change and how did it, what happened with the business?
Yeah, so the first thing, I mean, first thing I took full responsibility, like it's, it's totally on me. Yeah. It's to , it was totally on me. It wasn't their fault at all. Uh, the coaches we had are , were phenomenal, amazing people. I mean, it's like people would know the names, you know, it's the Rachel Martinez is the James Hobarts. It's the Kevin Montoya's. Like they're , they're , it was awesome.
We had like an all star studied staff. I think at one point we had like five or six L one staff members, like , like coaching at the gym. You know, Mel Lockerby , Matt Frankel . Yeah .
All these big names from history .
Yeah . Yeah . It was amazing. It was amazing. But , um, the basic, what I, I started with what I thought was the most important thing is, and I still to this day think this is the most important thing is to get the right people. And what I right , what I deemed as right people was a miss . And it wasn't that they weren't awesome people. It wasn't that they weren't awesome coaches. What I needed to do.
And it was , these people might still be these people , um, meaning that the people out that left, but I wasn't clear enough at the, at the onset. So we , I totally revamped what, what , what we stand for. Like what, what is does it mean to be a coach at CrossFit New England? And it became crystal clear and it was to be here, you're a team player. Like just through and through super simple, like crazy simple.
So then you, then you just like start to create the characteristics of what does it mean to be a good team player? Humble, you're, it's not about you, it's about team wins. And we started defining these things and started like creating all these like, so what does that mean? Like, we want people to stand up for what they believe in.
If you're on a basketball team and you're a player and you think that against the next team you should be playing zone defense, God , you better go up to the coach and say, coach, I think we should be playing zone. But if the coach decides to play man to man , you still give all of your efforts , everything you have when you go to that game and play man to man , even though you didn't get your way.
So yeah, everyone gets a say, but not everyone gets a vote. Like that's what being on a team is about. It's about team wins, not your wins. If you're on a team and you know, it's really easy 'cause we're in athletics, it's, it's perfect parallel. Like it's what we do. We coach people to compete.
If you're on a team and the team wins the first round of the playoffs, but you had zero points, one rebound, one assist, and you only got in the game for six minutes. When you normally play 36 minutes and you're sulking in the locker room, that is not a team player. That is not what it looks like. That is not. And the reason it's not is humility. Do you define wins in team wins or your own personal success?
The biggest characteristics of humility is somebody that embraces, looks for and seeks feedback. Teach , tell me how to be better. I don't have this thing figured out. I'm coachable. Like I want to learn, I want to grow. So we have that one. Next is work ethic. Like good teammates work hard. No one has to, no one has to poke, no one has to pride.
No one has to say, Hey, can you do , like, they're going above and beyond. They're looking for ways to help the team. They're looking for ways to expand their role. They're looking for ways to take on more responsibility. They're looking for ways to not only do what they do, but to not make their own position better, but make the team and the organization better.
So it's people that don't look at the clock and we, you know, it's people that want to be at work. And the last one is people with emotional intelligence. People smarts, good communicators , um, don't make things socially awkward. They don't gossip, they don't complain. They have really good sense of group dynamics.
So you put those things together and we became, I became, as people were leaving, as people were coming in, I was so over the top. I called it like, it's from a great book called The Hard Hat .
But being a great teammate and I , Cornell lacrosse, and I learned that this is one of the ways that they, Cornell Cross is like a powerhouse, yet they're in upstate New York and they play in shorts and the season starts in the 1st of February outside. So what do , what do they not wanna get? They don't wanna get these divas that are just like there for like the, the spotlight and want to be.
So they tell 'em in the, in the recruiting process, like , Hey listen, we're not, we're gonna be straight up with you . We we're in upstate New York practice to start February 1st. We're practicing in shorts a lot of times we have to ourselves shovel the field from snow before we go on the field in shorts, in shorts. And guess what? I know that you were a stud in high school. You're gonna sit for the first year.
You're not gonna play if that, if you're not, if that doesn't sound like something you are excited about, this is not the place for you. And they call it the hard hat because it's about going to work. Bring your lunch pail . They have a workman-like attitude and they're just very clear. So what do they get? They get the people that fit their team.
And that's what I just wanted to , so we did a, what we call a core value speech in the hor hiring process. After they went through a couple stages, you know, from a, send us a video, send us a letter, come and have a call. Okay? Then somewhere in between like , um, have an in in in-person meeting, I would give the value speech and we go something like try to scare them away.
You know, Hey, like, you know, just so you know, this doesn't make you a bad person. It's just the way we operate. If you're gonna be uncomfortable with a couple things, this is not gonna be the place for you. After every single class for the first three months, I'm gonna give you feedback on things that you could do to improve. Now, some people don't like to hear that. It doesn't make 'em a bad person.
It's just gonna make you really awkward. It's gonna make it really awkward and uncomfortable for you if that's something you're not excited about. We work really hard here when we're prepping for an event the next day. No one asks anyone to be here, but everyone's here at 8:00 PM on a Friday night.
If you have family obligations, I obviously, it doesn't make you a bad person, it's just, it's gonna be weird if you are not here and it's gonna , it's gonna stick out like a sore thumb. And we don't whine , we don't complain. We don't make excuses like we wear bracelets, white bracelets that say that on that. It's a real thing.
Yeah. If you get off on talking about people behind their backs, you know, and like, just kinda like, not in a bad way, just like that's how you connect with people. You gossip about people when they're not, hey , like this is gonna be a weird place for you. You're not gonna like it. So from there, all of a sudden, like fast forward a year and the people that are rolling in, it's a different ball game .
And now like when, instead of the e ccc load in where it's, you know, three people working and six people doing their thing now it's like these crazy, like a good example of that. Is it , it popped out 'cause it was so obvious to me. But, 'cause it was very shortly after , um, we, those that coaching staff rolled out and a new coaching staff rolled in. Connor Nugent and Dan Lumbo were two of them .
Connor Nugent was coaching the 5:30 AM class and he is coaching the filthy 50. Anybody that's ever run filthy 50 in a class knows how much setup that takes. That's chaos. And yeah, it's 10 different stations. So, and we have classes of 25, 30 people. So you have to be there. So our members start showing up at about 5 0 5, 5 15 for five. So he shows up at four 30, which is awesome in itself.
Like that's what we want. He shows up at four 30 to start help . So that's what we want. Dan, who was working the front desk that day, who doesn't need to be there until five 30 at 4 45 walks in the door. Car's like, what's up man, what are you doing here? He goes, filthy 50 thought you could use some help. It's like no one told him, no one asked him.
But like the contrasting those two things of like one, it's just like getting re right people on the bus is , is more than what people think it is. It's not just get talented people. It's not just get, you know, and it's all about the entre . It's all about the business owner, it's all about the founder , it's all about the on .
And I thought I was doing a great job of it before, but I wasn't doing it intentionally enough to drive the behaviors that we wanted.
Wow. So you, you , you know , you really cleaned house, got a brand new thing in place and really, like, I was having like shades of Dave Castro there where he was given the briefing of like, you may not wanna be here after the first day, like that ring the bell, get outta here, kind of thing, right? You've seen that a hundred times at the games, but you got these people and said, this is the deal.
You're gonna get feedback and laser focus on this team building aspect. My , for me it became, I need , I realized that it wasn't so much about my team building, it was like I needed to put some structure in place for my team members to thrive. So for me, I started looking at like, I had no standard operating procedures.
I had no plan for, you know, how people do a class, how they, you know , how things were structured. The finances were a complete disaster. And that's where I really had to start focusing. Talk to me a little bit about that end of things . So you've got, you've now got the people in the bus and you've got these amazing people that are showing up early and doing the culture well .
How does the nuts and bolts and the finances go on your end? Like, do you start to see a real change there where things get better? 'cause for me, I had given nobody any structure. I was, you know, paying too much, not taking enough in. I was giving people classes I shouldn't have. I was bleeding revenue. I didn't know how to get new members and I was scared to tell 'em I was, I didn't wanna bounce a paycheck.
How did that stuff go for you? And did things improve?
Yeah, the, the , um, operating procedures, that's what I kind of liked to do. So I had a, I had um, an operations manual for , so we had that good place, but , but if you don't have the right people that are like, it didn't matter. It didn't ma like, you know, you're supposed to clean the rig on these days, but no, they coach your classes and work out .
Like, so then I'm like, and I just get frustrated 'cause I didn't know how to lead. I, I , no matter what you have in terms of SOPs or expectations, roles, responsibilities, checks and balances, qc it like, no matter all of that stuff, it has to start with the people. And the people starts with the hiring process. Even with the hiring process, you're going to get it wrong. I've gotten it wrong so many times.
Just, I mean this is the talk about timely hired someone two weeks ago , um, let them go yesterday.
Okay. So you're quick to fire now if someone's not right. Yes. Okay. Yep . That's hard for dream owners and that's, that's excellent though . It's , it's , it's
Hard. Really hard. It sucks. Mm-Hmm . like, it , it sucks. Like it's the worst part of the job. Okay. But then just to answer your question more pointedly , um, finances was , uh, so again, open in 2007, full-time, 2009 , um, embarrassingly , um, probably didn't get finances dialed till covid hit.
Really? Hey,
Like 2020. Okay.
Like
12 years in really didn't have much eyes on uh, p and ls budgets, projections where the money was going. Um, and, and that's, you know, we , we had a big business so we got away with it, but it was so suboptimal.
Okay. Like that's fascinating. I know people wouldn't assume that.
I didn't even know, like I was like, that's why we ended up with eight coaches, because I was like, Hey, you're a cool dude, you're a good athlete. You wanna coach for us. Yeah , yeah. You're in, you know, I met you at the games and like, you wanna move to Natick? Like, this is really cool man. Yeah , you're
Awesome . They were like, payroll is outta control here.
. Right. It took until Covid when it was like almost like a forcing function that like you had to like, 'cause we're gonna go outta business. So, you know, that's the biggest thing. In hindsight, if I was to go back from day one, that's the thing I would've paid way more attention to. Like, it is, you can not run your business without your eyes on on finances. Like, you just can't.
And again, we got away with it, but to your point, like we're doing, you know , we're doing a million dollars a year in one single location, one location, million bucks. And I was, a lot of times I was taking home less of my coaches. Wow. Really ? A million dollar gym in some of these years. I'm taking, I'm taking home, you know, 40 grand. 'cause I wasn't paying attention. I didn't know that .
And I was like, you don't know where it's going. You don't know what it's doing. Now, as you said, I had other, I had other business Sure . Revenue streams. But that was something like I sometimes good comes from bad covid , bad learning finances. Good. Well,
Chris Cooper had a similar experience where he had his CrossFit gym going and his personal training studio down the road was floating the boat because that was losing money and the PT studio was working and you know, he got in the same spot where he realized that, like, he coached, I think was something like 13 PT sessions in a row and still was arguing with his wife about expensive cheese.
And he's like, I cannot work more. I need to do better. And started putting an eye on those things. And then we started during Covid, the same thing. There were a lot of gyms that like, you know, we were coasting along and you had to make some really tough decisions to start. Like if you didn't, you were dead. Right. So I guess I wanna dig into that a little bit .
Like when you , so 2020 then what do you start doing? Like how do you start getting excellent at business? And you said it wasn't a passion of yours to like look into spreadsheets and p and l and all that stuff. How did you get excellent or achieve excellence in that realm so that your business could thrive and survive and, you know, create careers for people?
Actually, I actually like it. I I you do . Hey . Yeah , I think the p and l like , uh, tells stories. It's, it's , yeah , I like projecting it out. I like seeing what, you know, changing a number and seeing what will happen and , um, what if we move this, you know, I , I think it's , uh, I think that in most, I was scared of it. It was a thing and I didn't understand, I lemme say it another way.
I didn't understand how easy it is and simple it is. It is not confusing. It is very simple. I just didn't have an understanding of how easy and simple it was. And I didn't have an understanding of how impactful it was. So I just went like, Hey, that's like, that's not the way I do my business. I, you know, I'm just striving for excellence.
You know, I'm just trying to make a, a great user experience, get my members results, and make a place that people want to be at that don't wanna leave after the workout. That was the , that was the , the aim. Um, but it was sim like when Covid hit, it's like you had to go, where's the money gonna come in from? Where's the money going out? How can we create any additional revenue stream?
So rent out equipment, do zoom classes, like do whatever we like, do whatever we can to stay alive. And you had to become really crafty. Um , you had to figure, you had to figure it out. And it's now, it's, it's pretty simple, honestly. I mean, once you get the, the template laid out of what a penile looks like and you get the numbers on, you know, month to month and you put 'em in,
It's fun .
It's like, yeah, no, it's like you get to see the rewards for your effort . You get to see what's happening. And man, it feels so much better to be making , um, these educated decisions such as like throwing darts in the dark. You know, maybe this will work and maybe we can do this and I don't know.
And that's where the coaching excellence, the actual on, you know, boots on the ground in the class with the chalk on the bar, that's where that starts to get amplified. Because if you've got your systems and structures and , and everything else in place, that excellence is still there. 'cause that's hard too, right? Like that's the thing where you can't, you can't make a good, great coaches are hard to create, right?
Because they're , they're these people that have this thing in them that makes them great. If you can put the business around those people and then put the right people in the right spot, it's like rocket fuel, right? But if you have these people and they're great and they're just, you still can't pay the bills, that's not gonna help.
I guess going back to like 2008, 2009 or , or even earlier for you maybe it wasn't so much about like, you know, chasing excellence just as a coach, but chasing business excellence as a whole, you know, would you agree with that?
Like it's trying and you, you've written a book chasing Excellence, but would you agree that that was a more accurate, you know, interpretation where we have to be excellent trainers, but we also have to make sure that we pay the bills and achieve excellence, you know, in the structure of a business?
Are you , are you saying that that was the , um, are you asking if that was the,
Is that what we should have thought back in the day? 'cause when I saw excellence, I was like, if I'm a great trainer, if I'm a great coach, people are gonna come here and they're gonna wanna train with me .
Okay. Got it.
Yeah . And maybe what I needed to think back then was like, what if I'm a great trainer and I run this incredible business where the , you know, the burgers are made the same way every time. They're always delicious. The staff is always asking, how are you doing? They're always giving you an extra perk.
You want to come back to my restaurant to use your analogy, what if I looked at it not just as a great coach, but as that whole thing back in the day? Yeah.
Right. So that gets back to that restaurant smart and business smart . You gotta be Jim Smart. Jim Smart is the coaching. It's how to run a great class. Um, it's how to connect with your members. It's the how to see demo, correct. Teach , um, and group management, build relationships, all the things that go along with being a coach and a leader in front of a class. Or one-on-one.
However, your gym is formulated, but the business smarts is something that we were told in the beginning did not matter, like in this community. Like we were just, you know, it's very, very, you know, we were told Chase excellence is not clients. That was literally, that was literally the verbiage that we were handed. And man, I bought that tooth line sinker. I did too .
I'm glad that, but I'm glad that it was the thing. 'cause I don't know if I would've fallen into this community if it was otherwise
It screened some people out for sure.
If this community was about, like when I came in, if it was about, okay, now create your SOPs marketing funnel, here's the create the standard operating , uh, create the , um, your retention programs create this, here's how to do the p and l and the forecasting. I'd have been like, I don't, yeah. I fell in love with, improve human movements and build community was the mission statement from day one.
And that's what I fell . And I'm glad that that was the thing, you know, and then if we , it was excellence, it was how cleaner are your bathrooms?
Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah ,
That's what I went towards. And that's not wrong. It's not wrong, but to your point, it's not complete. And a lot of people , um, thought that that was the complete answer. And there is excellence in terms of the gym smarts. That's, and that's what it is . Are your, are your bathrooms clean? Do you have a good , um, customer journey in place?
And are the customers , um, excited to show up and be there every day or delivering results? That's what the gym smart part is. But then as we've, as you and I have both experienced firsthand , um, it's a rocky road and very , um, it's a , it's a short road. Um, it's gonna be less than a decade if you're not paying attention to the other parts.
Like , so fast forwarding now, like when you start there, probably, I dunno , a hundred cross affiliates or less or whatever, you're probably very early on , I
Think I was around like four 50 . I I think it was under one of the first 500. And now because somebody had fallen off. Somebody had fallen off. I think I'm one of the a hundred originals now. Yeah.
So you've moved way out with like early adopter, the whole thing and that, you know , so you're get in with that passion. Let's look at it now. Like a new gym owner out there right now is looking at this and doesn't have that same like early adopter 2007 kind of mentality where it's just like all about the , you know, the passion and whatever.
You're going into a , a saturated market in many cases with a ton of competition. Functional fitness is no longer this, you know, mark Dwight warehouse kind of thing. It's like right in front of you. It's being commercialized in like F 45 and all these other studios. How do you meld that passion now with the business excellence side? Like how do you make that perfect restaurant?
Like if you were advising someone who says, I'm thinking about it opening a CrossFit gym in San Diego, what would you say to that person?
First thing I'd wanna know is , um, what are your expecta, what are their expectations? You know, so I'm opening up a , a CrossFit gym in San Diego. Um , great. What do you, how many classes do you plan on coaching a week? How many members do you plan on having? So
You're nuts and bolts business plan right away.
Yeah. Um, what's the, what's the rent in the space ? You have a space, what's the, the rent? So it's the two biggest things. What are your, so you need to know, like, is this person have expectations for profitability? So it's, and the two biggest costs are people and facility. So just start there. Like, how much is the space gonna cost and how much does the, how many are you gonna pay your employees?
Well this is mind breaking stuff, Ben, in 2009. Well , what I was thinking about this, it was like, I need a warehouse and it'll be full. That was my whole thinking, you know? So this is what you're saying now is crazy,
Mike. Actually, my suggestion is always when somebody says that first, I say my first question to them is, how many clients do you have right now? And if you don't have 40 clients that are , you're gonna open up the doors and they're gonna be there to sign up on day one. Do not open a gym. You , you can't open it . We could do it back then because we were opening up in 600 square feet. Right.
And if you were the only CrossFit gym in space, they would, they're gonna find you to do that thing. 30
Soldiers will be knocking on your door tomorrow.
Yeah, exactly. But when you open up now and you're opening up with 4,000 square feet, 6,000 square feet and you gotta buy the 10 person rig and you have to have six rowers. Like our all in startup costs were under 50 K.
Yep . Mine too. Exactly. Same thing.
And everyone's was then, and we opened up one of the biggest, you know, we did a build out . So I was a little bit different where we built some bathrooms and we spent about 80 k to build bathrooms. But the thing that I was able to do was when I opened up, I had 60 clients when I opened the doors, and I knew 40 of them were coming with me when I opened the doors. And 20 of them bought lifetime memberships.
20 of them gave me $3,000 each.
Are they still around by chance? I
Have about of the , I have about, I'll say 70% are still here.
Look at that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah . Do you ever regret giving them lifetime membership?
No, I wouldn't be here otherwise. Yeah. I I I wouldn't be here. Yeah. You know, so that's what, so, but the biggest thing is I opened up and on day one we had classes running and revenue coming in and we had , um, people out in the streets praising us and talking to other people about what this place was all about.
If you open up thinking I built it now, they'll come like, yeah, you can work, you can do a lot with paid ads and working the funnel and all the rest. It's just not, it's not an effective day one strategy. It's just not. And when you lay out first, last security and you have to do some, hire some lawyers to do some things for zoning or whatever it might be that we had to do special permits.
You lay down the rubber floors, you buy the rowers, you buy the rig, you hire a couple people, you buy a front desk and you're into this thing for a hundred K on day one and on day 30 rent for number two is due. And so is payroll. Like, unless you got, unless you got 40 people walking on the door on day one, don't do it yet. So then what do you have to do?
You have to go and build your business being a trainer and a coach and create a reputation. That's the way I would al and , but I'm a grassroots guy. That's what the other way you do it is you take on investors.
I just think that's a partners investors and the , the amount of people, you know, I do a lot of consulting, you know, for, for gym owners and the number of people, the percentage of people that have started this with partners that want out of the partnership is so close to 100%. It's crazy.
It's really tough. Chris has written about this. It's not, it's an , it's , it's an option, but it's not the greatest option. The better option often is to just go to the bank because when you pay the bank back, they're done. They don't have to be around. And they're not trying to make, push you into decisions and so forth.
And I've seen some gyms, and I'm sure you have two , if you've done consulting four or five, six partners, those are tough to run. It's tough to make decisions. You're splitting this pie your razor thin . If your profit margin's not good and all of a sudden you've got three, you know, a million dollar gym, three owners are taking home 10 KA year or something like that. Those are out there.
So if you're gonna go open up a, a gym with four or five partners, the , the goal can you really need to get on the same page alignment of vision and values. Allow , where are you going to be in three years? Where are you going to be in 10 years? What's the North Star? A lot of business jargon, right? You really have to get like laser focused on that.
And if the goal is open to up , if the goal is to open up one gym, what really well-defined, what are the roles and responsibilities of each partner and get down right to like, okay, are each of , are each of us paying a membership? Are our spouses paying memberships? Are our kids paying membership ? Like, you have to go like right down to the nitty gritty of all of it.
That's the SOPs.
And if it is to open up one gym , um, I'm telling you right now, in , in 12 months, not everyone will be there. It , it , it , you're gonna end up buying people out. People are gonna buy out other people. 'cause it's not gonna work. It just, it will not work. If the goal is to open up 30 gyms in the next decade, that's a different thing. You need the capital. People can play different roles.
They can be silent partners, they can be pure investors. That's a different team dynamic than let's open up one gym. 'cause and people are like, I just wanna be there to work out and do this thing. But they actually have a lot of saying in the programming and they think they show up at class at this time. 'cause that's when they want to be there. That's a , that's a rat's nest.
I gotta ask you this one because this is, I think you're the probably the best person on earth to answer this question. People sometimes think that having success in competition, putting an athlete in the CrossFit games is gonna make their gym successful. I made that mistake. We put a person in the cross their games and the gym was losing $5,000 a month. Is it possible?
Is that a viable business model to think if I get someone in the games, my gym will be successful?
Um , Mike, can you name , um, how many people can you name from last year's games that finished 20th to 40th place?
I can't name a single one. There
You go. No one knows. No , no . Honestly, it's, it will, now here's the deal. If you send 10 people to the CrossFit games and three of them win the CrossFit games, which is the case that we, where we were , that is, that does impact the business.
That's a different story.
It does. People like people are dropping in from whenever they come to Boston. You know, we had 52 drop-ins last week.
You're a flagship affiliate. Flagship affiliate.
Yeah. And people drive past six affiliates to get to us. You know, it's like I would, but it's because of that. But if you get one athlete to the games, it will have a zero impact. It'll have an impact inside of your affiliate. There'll be a lot of pride. But in terms of getting members and even in terms of retention.
In terms of retention, I would actually say that your churn will probably go up if you get an athlete to the games. Why,
Why? Tell me why.
It's a division of focus. You as the leader aren't focused on the, on the, the average member. It
Happened to be exactly like that.
Exactly right. And the the members will feel it and is as much as you try to do otherwise it's churn will probably go up. So it's really, the question is twofold. A member to the CrossFit games, zero impact , probably negative 10 perennially. Like you're always sending people, you win the CrossFit games, you get named Finnish gym in the world on a couple years in a row, you're always sending people.
Then all of a sudden, like the , the , the competitive athletes start to try to seek you out a little bit. And it's a little bit different. But I I really gotta like triple down on the message . You getting one athlete to CrossFit games, you getting two to CrossFit games will have no impact.
Yeah, because I mean, I won't call it a lottery win because there's skill involved, but like how many Invictus gyms are there? Like how many CrossFit New Englands, how many, they're just not that many. Like what you did is so rare that you can't plan that. It's not a viable business model, right? Like you just can't do it.
Right. But people travel all over the world to go and train at Invictus and people travel all over the world to come and train here. It's like, so yeah, it's just like, but that's gotta be a dec decade long plan. Yep . And you gotta get, like, you have some pretty early successes to say like, this is, this is the route I'm going.
Meaning essentially you've already done it unless you've already gotten multiple athletes there, that cannot be the business plan.
I remember having a conversation with Rob Orlando back in the day and he , we were on the phone, he was yelling at me. He was like, it is literally my job as a coach to tell people you are never going to the CrossFit games. He's like, I do it all day, . And I laugh because that's probably the best thing in some cases that you could do and focus on your business.
I wanna wrap this up, Ben , I'm not gonna keep you too much longer, but I wanna ask you a couple of quick ones as we finish this out. CrossFit's got 10 general physical skills. Everybody can list them all. I'm sure you've had 'em on the top of your head. Give me a couple of essential business skills for a gym owner in 2024. What is non-negotiable now?
Mm . Uh, let's start with the ones we've already discussed. Um, the , the ability to build and lead , lead a team. Like there isn't a , I mean that's one A and one B or two is so far down the list, it's not even there. But I would say the next one is to have a grasp of your financials. So
You're talking team building and you're Yeah , and team . Sorry, team building and financials are the two. Yep .
Yep . And then the third is , um, you have to , you have to be, or you either need or need to get a high level coach. Like you have to be, someone's gotta train the other coaches. And if it's not you, somebody has to , um, get coaches to understand more than just the points of performance of a squat.
Um, how to, you know, find the second position of a clean, you know, they have to know more than just, you know, what is the , the , the catch and receiving position of a a row stroke . You have to have somebody that can like, really lead some lead classes. Like , like really know how to lead group classes . Those would be my three.
Okay. So those are three big ones. That's the equivalent of like power, strength, stamina, those kind of things in the CrossFit list. And we've talked about this and bumped into it a whole bunch of times during this conversation. You are speaking at the , uh, the two brain summit. The simple solve for team accountability.
Can you give people a little bit, we've talked about, I mean, you're invested in building a team, obviously you've done it, you had to , you know, the pick a table talk, brand new staff, what are people gonna learn from you at the summit on this topic?
Yeah, accountability. I mean , I think it's the biggest number one thing with, with teams. Like if people always talk about like, you know, the , the power of delegation, like we , you can't do it all. This is the e myth thing, right? You like, you can't see if you want , if you're gonna be a , if you like to cook baked pies, awesome baked pies.
Once you create a business where you're selling pies, okay, you can like sort of, you can still be the one kind of like doing the thing, but if that business is going to expand , uh, you can't be doing all the things. You can't be at the cash register, you can't be doing the marketing, you can't be talking to doing the other stuff.
And one, also washing the dishes and you know, doing the pies and, you know, paying the bills. So you have to delegate. Okay? Like, but after delegation, this is what I think everybody misses. So we got the SOPs in place. Cool. Like, and you delegate to a person. How do you hold them accountable? Like how do you actually get them to do the thing? That's what we're talking about.
And that's huge because there are gym owners listening right now who have a , a staff member that's crappy, that's not doing the job and they don't know how to, A, get rid of that person or b, get that person back in line. And it's, those are the two options because the third option of just letting it go is a disaster in your gym, right? So if you can solve that problem for gym owners,
Just like the other stuff, it's really, it's compared to like teaching someone to coach, it's really simple. It's a framework. It's really, really simple stuff. Okay,
Listeners to Brain Summit, Ben is gonna be there. He's going to solve problems for you and help you keep your team accountable. Please get tickets, be the link in the show notes. Uh, Ben, I can't wait to see. It's gonna be about three months. We'll see you in Chicago and , uh, you're gonna solve problems for Jim Warners . Thank you so much for being here and sharing all this stuff. This was awesome.
Excited for it. Thanks Mike.
My pleasure. I'm Mike working and this is Run a Profitable Gym. Please hit subscribe on your way out so you don't miss another show just like this. And now here's a final message from two Brain founder Chris Cooper.
Hey, it's Two Brain founder Chris Cooper. With a quick note , we created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness Every day I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym.
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