Our top 10 gyms for client count have between 363 and 741 clients. Now you can make a great living with a lot of clients, but I wanna show , show you something really cool today. It's a gym that tripled its net owner benefit without going above 200 clients. What an incredible increase we're gonna get right into it. The point here is that you have many ways to earn what you want from a gym.
And while you can chase big numbers of clients, the best plan is often to start small and then grow from a position of strength. When your foundation is strong, you can chase big client counts or not. Whatever you want. The choice is completely up to you. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Warton. Please hit subscribe before we go any further so you don't miss a show like this.
My guest today, Andy and Ed Conway of the tribe in San Antonio, Texas, they're part of an awesome four person ownership group with Nick and Chelsea. Vera Andy is also the chief financial officer. Guys, can we dig into your business today?
Absolutely.
Welcome here. I'm so excited to do this because your mentor Storm told me that you have done amazing things. And again, without going over a huge number of clients, you have done a great job of increasing net owner benefits . So we're gonna figure out how you did that. So talk to me a little bit about how did , how did your membership count and net owner benefit figures change over the last three years?
I'd love to hear what the evolution has been. So
Really, gym member numbers honestly haven't changed a whole lot. I mean, we fluctuated month to month a little bit here and there, gained and , and had attrition, but it's really covered around a hundred seventy seven, one seventy five I would say. But the most significant is certainly the net owner benefit one , the after the first year that doubled from what prior to working with store store members were.
And then at this point in time, we are tripling doing triple what we did prior to two grain.
Wow. And this is without increasing the number of members a great deal. Yeah. So I'm guessing, now you correct me on this, is that because you've dramatically increased average revenue per member? Or how is this happening?
Yes, yes, absolutely. And some people have transitioned from the big group process classes and training or small groups. And we've, storm has definitely helped us be really consistent with seasonal events that we do and not just adds to the community. And obviously they're revenue new . So,
So I'm gonna dig into this a little bit further, but I gotta know right now, like average revenue member, how have you managed to move that number so dramatically? Like what's, what's the stuff that goes in there?
What I was my average revenue remember number when I was running a gym with a group program, it didn't move a whole lot because I didn't have a mentor to show me how, what have you done to change that number?
There's, I think there's a , a few things . Before working with Storm , our business philosophy was really service minded first . So, but that came along with a price. We ended up giving away a lot of discounts and a lot of trade memberships and really weren't charging what we were worth.
And so the storm goes, all right , at first let's get rid of all the discounts, let's get rid of, of all the couples memberships, let's get, you know, rid of all these trades and bring everybody up to two main options of memberships.
And then we also did a rate increase that we hadn't done up until that point, in addition to introducing the on-ramp program for every new client , uh, that we weren't doing prior to that.
Well , so there was multiple things and then like Andy was saying , um, storm helping us out with how to more acceptably run , um, the , the event stuff that we do ingen , I mean there was this probably like four or five things that we did within the first year that between the ownership group, we were like, man, I don't know if we're comfortable with this.
And then all of a sudden at the end of the year, you know, I have my wife kidding me, you know, net owner benefit checks, I'm like, oh yeah , I bet everybody was on boil after then . So
What got you over the fear? Because I've done the same thing. Rate increases are scary, changing membership options, scary, all these things. Very scary. How did you get through that and do it?
I would honestly say Storm being our mentor. I think Tub Brain did a fantastic job pairing it with him. Um, he was a perfect fit for our team. It the trust really within the first, after the first meeting was the air with him. So it was just kind of nice.
Like we, we would have a little disagreements, but you know, we, one person thought this way, the other thought this way and it was great to have the time , but Storm was just always so positive and like it worked for him and he just made us feel way more comfortable. And obviously, like Ed said, seeing the numbers change even just after a few months was, okay, we're , we're doing what we're doing.
But I , in addition to that, and it , like one of the things that stuck with all four of us was he said, it's okay to be a service-minded business, but you're not gonna be able to serve people if you're not in business. Right. And um , that was one of the, the biggest like light bulb moments I think for all horrible was like, okay, well then what do we need to do to, to sing that ?
And that's a really common one because as gym owners we wanna help everyone and we'll regularly do things like, ah , I wanna serve this client so I'm gonna offer a discount so that I can get this person in the door and the husband will offer discount for that spouse or whatever. And all of a sudden your , your average revenue per member is below what you can sustain. You're actually losing money on the memberships.
You get burned out 'cause you're working 60 hours a week and all of a sudden everything you know is in trouble. And Addie , I see you nodding because I think you and I probably went down the same path. .
Well, so I took on the finances about three years ago and when I was going through it I was like, oh my gosh, like 90% of our membership had a discount. It was crazy. So yeah, that was a huge change .
So when you started changing these things, so you said uh, you raised your rates, you got rid of discounts and uh , what was the third one? Was it just membership options? Did I hear that one ?
OnRamp .
OnRamp. That's the one , yeah. So High Value intro. Mm-hmm . Okay. So we've got those. I know there's other stuff in there, but those are three monster ones that like really start to make a difference. So you've got like an on-ramp, it's a high value intro for your clients.
You're bringing them in, charging 'em a little bit extra to get started and get more the attention that they need legitimately to succeed long term and stay with you. 'cause we know that on-ramps increase retention. So that's a great thing. Then you've got, you're changing your um , getting rid of discounts, which right off the bat that that improves your bottom line.
And again, listeners, we have a formula for doing this. It's not just get rid of the discounts and you know, raise your rates. There is a formula and a mentor will help you walk through this with a spreadsheet and say, okay , these people are solid. They're not gonna bat an eye . These people we might lose, but if we do this math, you lose these people.
You still ahead long term , we bring in new people at the better rate and this is what's gonna happen. And when you look at the numbers, like did you guys go through that process?
Yes, absolutely . Did
It make it easier?
Yes, a hundred percent .
And we had the same, we had the same concern. It's like, oh well we're probably gonna lose these people that have been with us forever. The reality is, is that we didn't lose as many people as we thought we were gonna, but I think there was maybe like one or two that over time after we did the rate adjustment over time it did trickle out but they weren't our top C clients anything .
So it really didn't affect the bottom line .
So in terms of a RM, how did that number move? Do you have any percentages or ideas there to help let people know what it , how it changed?
I did not pull up the a RM . That's
Okay. I'm putting you on the spot.
I focused on the net owner benefits . I can get those Sheila .
Yeah, no worries on that. I'm putting you on the spot. I didn't ask for that number ahead of time. But what I'll tell you listeners if we're looking at it is if you're not increasing your client count and your net owner benefit is increasing dramatically, something else is changing. And it's always I would revenue per member and length of engagement because those two things multiply client client count big time.
So think about every client you have. What if that client pays $10 extra per month and stays an extra month, do that math and all of a sudden you start to see how you can pay yourself more because your business improves just dramatically. And that's these metrics.
If I give you one piece of advice from the show, no matter what track metrics, track those key metrics and at we have a dashboard where you enter the things in, you've got a graph, your mentor reviews it with you and says, this number's good, this number could use some improvement, let's focus here. Here's exactly what we're gonna do. Boost that number up now this is the next number we wanna work on.
So let's go on, gimme the quick summary. You've talked a little bit about what's the quick summary of your gym, like who are we selling to, how much staff , how many staff people do you have? What the size? Gimme the 4 1 1 on the tribe.
Well we have a big facility over 6,000 square feet, roughly about, and we average about 170, like 170 members. Like Andy said, we have pinned non-owner, non-owner coaching.
Okay . So big staff.
Yeah, but most, most all of them are part-time. So no , we , we don't have a a as of right now and full-time . Our focus is obviously class, group classes with small group and one-on-one training going on as well.
So you have on-ramp , did you mention some events? What, talk to me about those events a little bit.
Yeah, so we had started a new year kickstart that we've done. This will be the fourth year now. We had started it the first year before Tube Brain and then third with Tub Brain . And I mean the difference in just sign up between the first year we did it and now it's been amazing , um, having a system in place each year for it. So it is just rolled out very strategically to get people signed up. We do that one.
We also, Murph is a big one for us. We had the biggest Murph out we've ever had this year, which was amazing. The gym was just packed. I think we had close to 80 people doing Merv , which was wild in two separate classes, but
A lot of squats. .
Yeah. And then we have a yearly fundraiser. We do, we have some members who we like to honor. Um , he lost one of our members in our first year and so his father is still with us so we get to do an honorary workout for him every year in fundraiser and that's very special to to our whole tribe.
It sounds like you have a calendar.
We do.
Aha . So that's another thing listeners, like if you don't have an annual calendar, know what you're doing next year for marketing, promotions, events, retention, you're behind. Anything else that cut you off there? Because I wanna make that point for list . Is there anything else on your calendar that we should know about?
We started this year with Storms guidance, a kind of a midway August time , um, a strength and mobility challenge, kind of like the, the Midway check-in from our kickstart. And we focused on strength in the mobility. It's a team , um, competition, which is always fun at the gym. And that went really like a lot of fun.
Okay. So you've got a solid calendar that includes marketing retention events and is have you got that done for 2025 already?
Pretty much,
Yeah. So that's pretty cool because when I was doing the gym thing with the group classes, I was so frazzled coaching every class. I couldn't think of what was happening next week, let alone next month, let alone next year. And my gym kind of showed it was gonna ragged around the edges. My , oh crap, August, everyone is gone. I need members, what do I do?
Which is very different from you probably already have your plan in place for what you're gonna do and you know Exactly I'm bringing in these people in the new year. Uh , what did you say your New Year's , uh, challenge was ? Or was it how a kickstart for the new
Year? It is, we call it 39 to life. Kinda like take on 75 part and like just you can suck it up for 39 days and pretty much do anything. Do
You , do you have the price set for that or do you mind sharing it with us?
We do. So it's $79 per person in teams of three.
Okay . So teams of three. So I like that. So they're bringing friends.
Yes. Lots of peer, peer pressure to sign up and stay accountable.
Now in terms of like when that challenge ends, so how long was it? Was it 39 days or did I get that wrong?
39 days, correct.
Okay. So 39 days at the end of that, what do you do to make sure these people keep training with you?
Well it's, that's why we started the Midway Strength and mobility to kind of keep people going. 'cause we did notice, you know, everyone does great and it keeps our, our classes huge. And then once the, you know, the summer comes around, people start getting a little lazy, taking lots of vacations.
But um , that's why we added that midway Checkpoint and Murph also did help just kind of remotivate people try or the the open. Another one kind of continues on from 39 to Life,
Mike. Uh, we also are, this year will be the first year that we really dial it in of doing , uh, goal review with people before and then touchy base after the challenge saying, okay, what worked ? I'll do an InBody scan, here's the results. Like what are we looking forward to do now for the moving forward?
Uh, and so though it was a goal of ours last year to do that, we didn't really touch base with everybody this year. We're gonna make it a priority. Yeah.
And it's hard to do. I ran challenges and you get overwhelmed, but what you've got now is a plan where you're gonna meet with these people, get their goals so you have this powerful emotional piece of data that you now know about them. You know , get them as far as you can during that challenge. And again, over 39 days you can do a little bit.
You can't do the whole deal if it's like loose 30 pounds or whatever it is . At the end of it though, you say, here's where we got to, what were the challenges? Here's how we solve them, here's the plan going forward. Do you want to join? And they're like, yeah, I've already lost five pounds. I wanna lose the 30. You've laid out the plan, here's my credit card.
Like that's, I've seen this work in other gyms, like you guys are on the exact right path with that. Do you use this prescriptive model, which is what we call it here at Two Brain ? Do you guys use that with general intake as well? So with your members now, are you doing goal reviews and you know, prescriptive model of finding it out and then selling that way?
Yes. Okay . So up until this point , um, really it's been myself and Nick were the two primary , uh, people doing goal reviews and um , NSIs for that matter. But uh, now we're , we've gotten to the point where we've got some coaches in place that are looking to step into some of those roles.
So now because of the size of our staff, we're able to start training them and aiming it off so that it makes touch and base, especially with the goal reviews with the members , a little easy to spreading it out between, you know, three or four people versus doing it just with one or two.
Yeah, it's hard to start that, especially if you've got a bunch of members like say 170 members like you've got and you don't have goal review sy goal review system in place. It's intimidating to start that, right, because like where do I find the staff and all this other stuff, but the way to start it is with new people, you bring them in, you start doing this consultative selling process.
You schedule after they buy a membership, 90 days down the line, we are meeting it is part of the service package, we're gonna review your goals and we're gonna adjust the prescription if needed. That right there, the consultative prescriptive model selling process increases revenue retention, the goal review process, I believe the stat is 30% of members who do goal reviews increase their , uh, service package by 30%.
So that's a huge a RM booster there. And then as you start to do this, your net owner benefit goes up, you can start hiring some staff, training them, and then all of a sudden they can do the goal reviews with existing members who then I can buy pt. Yeah, okay. I wanna get to my goals faster. The whole thing spirals. Is that a kind of an accurate summary of what's happening for you guys?
'cause I've seen this with other gym owners. Yeah. So it's it's not uncommon. I love it.
Yeah , and you know, that again, that's something that we're just starting to really , uh, put our focus on. You know, we started focusing on, I would say like two months ago. Moving forward though, that's really gonna be , uh, one of two big , uh, focuses that we're gonna have. The other one , uh, being uh, increasing personal training.
Okay. I'm gonna ask you about that and I wanna ask you one question beforehand. Do you have a general percentage? You said mostly group right now. What do , what is the percentage of group for your revenue? Do you know offhand?
Probably 92%. Okay. A little more than 90. Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's, that's super common. Like in CrossFit gyms and group training gyms like often, like my gym I think was like 98%, something like that.
And just , uh, I changed that model before just when Covid was happening, we were getting to more pt. So you've done this incredible thing of jacked up this a RM in the , and boosted your net owner benefit with 90% coming from group training and you've got a PT program coming. So Storm said you guys have a really impressive net owner benefit goal and it comes from not adding a ton of members.
Can you share what , what you're looking at for 2025? And then let's talk about how you're gonna do it.
Yeah, so we would like to see both families see hit well as a collective to hit another 50% increase. Yeah , nice. So it's , um, it is ambitious, but I think got all the systems in place, we've done what we need to do. We need to continue doing it. Um , kind of funny, we, we use Storm as kind of a , not only a mediator, but sometimes a threat.
Chelsea and I have been known to threaten our husbands when old habit then mindsets creep back up. We're like, do we need a call still ? But Oh , that's funny . It's , uh, it's all, it's all in love. So
I have been there. I I , I got , I was on a mentorship call with Chris Cooper back when he was doing them personally and my wife and I had a disagreement that he had to mediate and I , uh, we still laugh about that one. So that, that definitely works to use your mentor as a mediator. .
So you're talking about another significant increased net owner benefit, but Storm tells me that you are not planning to add 700 members to do it. You are looking at using a small number of high value clients. Can you tell me a little bit about that plan?
Yeah, so really the, the , the , like I said , the focus is going to be moving forward at 2025 of personal training. And , uh, really the goal I think , uh, is adding 10 to 12 new personal training plans . And if we didn't lose and gotta remember and we just added those personal training clients, it automatically gets us to our net owner benefit goals without doing it
Really. So you have these numbers already kicked out and you know that that's the number of people to kick in this revenue to get to this goal. Yep . So how are you gonna get 'em what Storm told you ?
We're training two of our coaches to be able to handle more personal training, more one-on-one stuff , uh, one-on-one and four small group personal training. Uh, we have one trainer that is coming from a different location , uh, and wanting to full-time. And so charity has a , a little bit of a following that we're hoping to see immediate revenue from.
And then really switching the way that we're doing our marketing to going from the focus of root training to more of, we're a coaching gym and you can either choose one of these three coaching options. You can do big group, you could do small group, you could do one-on-one, but it's a coaching philosophy versus CrossFit versus one-on-one.
Bt picking that mentor and thinking about it differently from an ownership perspective is gonna help steer the, the , the way that we're marketing in into 2025. And then again, just putting the focus on getting our coaches trained up so that they can handle these personal training clients with .
Okay. So you know, Andy, you said that this was an ambitious goal, but edges laid out the plan that you guys have all put together. Does having that plan make it seem like it's ambitious but very doable?
Yeah, absolutely. The um , the spreadsheet with the , uh, the new gold analogy challenge, like just makes the numbers like look so much more possible . It's , I love numbers, that's why I work on that side, but it's real easy to just go in there and change a couple of things and that's why it's like 10 to 12 clients and these programs or these one-on-ones or small groups can make all the difference .
It's really just wild.
Yeah, and that's, and I asked you that because I know you're the financial person. It's , and it's, I sometimes people will come up with ideas and say, I wanna make this much money. And it's like, okay, great. How? And the how has to be the numbers and the finance and the data and the backup , and I'm similar to you where I need to see the plan and if I don't see the plan, it just, it's a ridiculous idea.
Pie in the sky castle that may never be there. I need to see the numbers. And so that was really helpful for me within Mantra is saying, here's the exact steps, here's how we work the numbers. And when I start to see, like, you guys have, if I get 10 high value clients, I can make this. That doesn't sound that hard.
And then especially with you guys have this ownership or you group where you can start breaking things down, okay, you're handling this part of the plan, you're handling coach development, you're handling this part of the plan, all of a sudden everything starts to make sense, divide and conquer, and you start to get a lot of movement. How critical was Storm in holding this whole thing together and helping you guys do it?
Because I know a four person ownership group could be very challenging. Yeah,
So I , we had been very fortunate that I have two husband and wife teens before we've had a really great dynamic. Um, and Storm just kind of took that and magnified, like I said, he was a really great fit for us and the trucks was there immediately, but he wasn't like, he was , wasn't a just a cheerleader.
He was always there with just a great dancer , you know, and there's , we just have so much respect for him. I think one of the other big things he walked us through was like our vivid vision. And I think that was huge in getting us to the stack that we have currently. So everything from just paths at the gym, but staffing and decisions are filtered.
First our priorities, families and business owners, and then our values. And since going through that, like our staff has just been phenomenal. Their character, just, we have hired people represent us, just if we're not there, right. And we have the ability to trust them , things go and now to take on more roles so we can grow the business.
Ed , you had something to say on this one, I think too. I'll let you rip on that.
Yeah, I think j the only thing that I would like to add to it was that Storm really helped us put each of the owners in the roles that we were both , we were all gonna be ful at, right? So, like, you know, me trying to do the finances early on was a night , it just didn't happen because I hated doing right. But I love doing the sales side of the business.
So , you know, putting me into sales, putting Andy in the , the CFO chair , uh, Nick, and you know, the coach's coach, right? Like he's, he's more runs the staff and , and then Chelsea , um, does the marketing. And I think by spreading out those roles and with sort of guidance, it really helped each of us individually kind of sharpen our focus on what our task was for the business.
Because I've seen ownership groups are very challenging at times. I've seen, I think what a six person ownership group is the biggest one I think I've seen in Two Brain . It's very doable, but it's much more doable if you have roles and responsibilities laid out and everybody knows what that person's doing. Everything is in the wheelhouse and away you go.
So listeners, I'm gonna lay this out for you very quickly here, through the elimination of discounts, raising some rates and bringing in an introductory on-ramp process, we're talking massive increases in net owner benefit without adding a ton of clients. So you're not stressing your systems, you're not stressing your marketing, you're not spending a ton of money, you know, trying to acquire clients.
You are just making things better. Net owner benefits skyrockets at that point. And then from there they want to tack it on even further and push that net owner benefit way down the line. They've got 90% of their group of their training comes, or revenue comes from group training. I've seen gyms some of the best to range gyms.
They have about 25, 30% PT revenue, and all of a sudden everything is incredible because these are high value clients, one-on-one, they're getting better results, they wanna pay for it, they're kicking in a ton more revenue, and all of a sudden the Rev , like the Jim's gross revenue takes off. So I think this is very possible, but those are the essential elements of the plan.
If you want to start looking at increasing your net owner benefit, those are some elements to look at. And if you don't know how to do that, two brain mentor will look at your business and say step by step , here's exactly how we do it. Here's the timeline, here's the spreadsheet that Andy loves, here's how it's going to work, and here is how we're gonna do it. That's the summary for this show.
Andy and Ed , I wanna thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Will you come back when you hit that next number next year?
Absolutely, Mike, thanks for having me . . Yes , thank you.
Yeah, I'm super excited about it because I know you've got the plan. I know you're gonna hit the number and it'll be cool to talk about that. So th that was Eddie Ed Conway. They are the tribe in San Antonio. This is Run a Profit . William, I'm Mike working on your Way out the door, please hit subscribe so you don't miss another episode. Just like this.
We'll be digging to the very best gyms around the world and the owners tell you exactly how they're doing what they're doing. And now here's Chris Cooper with a final message.
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