Today I'm talking to a gym owner whose average revenue per member is off the charts, and she's doing it without relying on group classes. You're gonna get all the details in just one minute. Welcome to Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Kinan . Please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening because I talk to the best gym owners in the world every week. I want you to hear what they have to say.
One of 'em is here. My guest is Amanda Buckner of Untamed Fitness in Washington State. She was on our leaderboard for average revenue per member. That's everything a client buys in the course of a month, from membership to a protein bar and everything in between. Our top 10 at two brain ran from 500 to $821. These are amazing numbers. Amanda is gonna tell us how she earned her spot on the leaderboard.
Welcome here, Amanda. How are you?
Oh man, I'm great. How are you? ?
I'm fired up. I'm excited to talk to you about this because I love seeing this. But back when I was running a gym, my a RMI believe was something like 121 or $130 and now I'm watching people hit like 800. And I think, wow, if I could have done that, I would've needed so many fewer clients. I wouldn't have had to market. It would just would've changed my whole life. So I wanna talk to you guys about how it's done.
So I'm, I'm fired up to talk to you. You ready to go?
Yeah, I'm ready.
Alright . So I gotta ask you first, right off the bat , 'cause I relied on group classes, you're not using a lot of group classes. So how does your a r mnu number , like how does it come out without using group classes or how do you work those into it?
To be honest, I, I feel like I've tried to do the generic group class, like business model for, for my, my business for a few times. And I feel like every single time I've tried to market the group classes , um, I always end up getting more personal training clients. And I don't know if like I'm just, it's
Your problem .
I know, right? Like , I don't know if I'm like , like marketing it wrong. Yeah . But like, I'll be like, Hey, like come on in for this group class. It's super cheap and you know, it's gonna be amazing. You're like gonna do all this awesome workout stuff. And people will literally come and be like, actually I'd rather just work with you one-on-one. I'm like, you know, it's more expensive, right?
And they're like, yeah, whatever. I'm like, well, cool. Okay. Turns
Out you're good at sales too, right? .
Yeah. And like, I think a lot of it comes to how I was like marketing myself, like online on like social media and stuff of like, you know, being an expert in my field. And people were like, oh, well, yeah, group classes is cool. I can go anywhere for that. But people would come to me for, you know, the, the expertise of like, you know, functional fitness or whatever it is that they were coming here for.
So like, they were already in the mindset of wanting to pay a little bit more to talk to somebody that wanted, like to give them what they wanted. Mm-Hmm.
. So we , are you running group classes right now?
So we only do , uh, five week programs for our group classes. And so this makes it a little bit easier for us to tailor to specific people. And then also for our clients, it's easier for them to come in and join our gym for a short amount of time. So the, the reoccurring just kind of like, oh, come in for a group class anytime . I feel like we had like two and three people that would be interested in it.
But like I said, for the most part it was really just like, you know, I don't wanna say like a waste of an hour, but like it could have been used more beneficially for both the trainer as well as for the client. And so what I ended up doing was we got rid of the, you know, open-ended come in any time type of thing. And we structured it to just have a five week program.
So it's like, okay, right now we have a strength five week program and we have a lymphatic drainage five week program. And both of those are like a little bit more niche, right? Especially like that lymphatic drainage one. And to be honest, like I am not a lymphatic drainage trainer, but my trainer is a lymphatic drainage trainer and she will talk your ear off about it .
So people that like see the value in that, they're like, oh, oh, it's only five weeks. It's like not as big of an ask of, all right , sign up at this gym for the rest of your life. Right? It's like, okay, five weeks from now I'm gonna get all this information, all this knowledge of how to move better.
And um, usually those people that sign up for the, the five week programs, they'll usually transition over to personal training , um, clients at the end.
Okay. So that's interesting. Now, if you're listening, we're not hating on group classes because I was passionate about running those. Lots of gym owners run those and they can be very profitable. They are. If we think about it though, a discount offering in a service package, because your one-on-one attention as a coach is the best thing you can give a client after that would be a semi-private or small group setting.
And then after that is big group classes. There's, you can get results in all three. But if I wanted to get someone to the Olympic final of something, I would do one-on-one personal training with them, and then you would go down the scale from there.
So know that you can run a very successful business with group classes, but we're gonna talk about some ways that you can boost your average revenue per member, whether you run a group class gym or not. So tell me a little bit, Amanda, about your gym. What's the 4 1 1 here in like 60 seconds? What is your business model? What are you selling? How much space do you have? Where, what do you got?
Yeah , what do I got? Okay. The whole deal. Yeah. So here at Untamed Fitness we focus specifically on one-on-one and semi-private group personal training. I have about 2,800 square feet. However, I really only use half of that, like to the point that I've rented out the other half because I never go back
There. That's cool. Yeah.
Yeah. So I have another, another trainer that just does his own classes. He runs a kung fu class in the, the back part of the space. And then all of my personal training goes, you know, happens in the, you know, a thousand feet that I have up front . But we focus on a lot of like education for strength training.
Yes, we get like the occasional weight loss person, but a lot of the times it's people that are like looking for, Hey, I just wanna wake up in the morning and not hurt. Right? Like that functional fitness overall feeling better about themselves. Like our motto is literally like strength through or confidence through strength, right?
So people come here and just try to get education of how to lift better and they usually stay just 'cause our environment's really positive and uplifting. We have a really awesome community.
And you used to do this in home with clients, right? Yes. So that's kind of cool.
My first, I'm gonna say like four years as a personal trainer, I would drive to people's houses all over Washington and , uh, just train with them in their house. I
Have to ask you this, what was your gear package? Like, what did you just roll up with, like a couple of dumbbells in a skipping rope, or what'd you walk up with?
You know what, this is a great lead in . Uh, so I would roll up with a kettlebell and a slam ball . Yeah .
So two things. Hey , .
Um, and I just remember this actually, I, it led me to inventing my own thing called a Kettle Buddy , which is . Um, it was like kettlebell has a handle. The slam ball was really awkward to carry, and I would just be carrying this like to parks and like to people's houses. And I was like, there has to be a better way.
And so like, I pretty much just like merged the two and I invented something called a Kettle Buddy. So that is also like another thing that we sell at the gym that we use for, for our workouts and stuff.
Do you have one handy?
So this is the original Kettle Buddy? Yeah. Um , it's a canvas bag and this one has 40 pound slam ball inside of it. So it has a handle on the top, and so you can like slam it, like you can do everything you can with a slam ball plus, plus a kettle , uh, kettlebell.
And then our second one, this one, so it weighs, this one weighs 20 pounds, but yeah, it, it like fits a weight all the way up into like a 40 pound slam ball . So it's a , it's a pretty intense workout, but like it takes two very explosive movements and kinda like combines it. And then also I don't have to carry two things into people's houses. . Yeah.
And if you're on the podcast, what is essentially it's a canvas bag with a hand line . You put a slam ball inside of it and you could swing that thing, slam it, or carry it handily from place to place.
And the reason I asked you about this, Amanda, was Chris Cooper talked about when he originally was doing stuff, if he was gonna go back to it, just like he'd probably just get like a ply box with a skipping rope, maybe a, you know, a dumbbell in there and he would just walk around and maybe a , a resistance band . And that would be his personal training package. Maybe a barbell eventually.
But you don't need to start a gym with a million dollars worth of stuff necessarily. You can do it with, you can get great results with clients. Obviously you did with minimal equipment. Like one thing that , or you know, two things that you combine into. One got great results, then you decided to open a gym.
And again, you did , you did the thing that I didn't do, I opened a larger space and I couldn't fill it with group clients.
You opened a smaller space, packed it with, you know, your personal training clients and got some group stuff going on the side, but like a completely different model where I struggled for a long time and here you're on the two brain leaderboard within, you opened your gym, like, what was it a year ago, I think? Yeah,
Yeah. It was like a year and a half
Ago. Yeah. So this is, so this is great. I'm pretty, I'm pretty excited to dig into this further. So now we know we got the lay of the land and so forth. Talk to me a little bit now about how your average revenue per member has changed , uh, since you started working with Truban . How did this thing move and were there any big jumps?
Sure. So when, like I said, I, I started out doing mobile training and I was like, I was pretty, I I knew what I was doing, right? Like training wise , and I've always been kind of a little bit more like, I don't wanna say nervous, but like, you know, if you mess up on the business side, it has like far reaching implications, right? .
And so I actually ended up opening up my, my gym space because my, like I said, like I had a good amount of clients, like everyone was doing really well and we talked about it a little bit earlier that like, I do competitive kickboxing and Muay Thai on the side, right? And so two years ago we, I qualified to go to the Pan-American Championships for WKA and so that was gonna be all the way down in Brazil.
It was gonna be like a week long trip. And I was like, oh, well I don't wanna take a week off of not only like my business, but I don't wanna have people take a week off of their goals and like, you know, have to reset and try to find that motivation again, right?
And so , um, at the time I had two other trainers that were working with me and I was like, well, I need to give them a space to take care of my clients. So that was like the , the lead in to finding a space and then eventually like kind of growing from there. But I wanted to make sure that I was doing it right.
I, you know, was looking on the internet, reading all these like horror stories of people buying too much space and then not having enough clients or or , um, you know, just not knowing what they were doing. Right. And I always say like, you don't know what you don't know.
So I thought it was really important to get a mentor and, you know, set it up correctly and do it right from the beginning versus setting yourself back, having to dig yourself out of a hole and then getting a mentor, spending all that money, right? So two Brainin had really good reviews.
Like, I think I probably stocked two Brainin for like six months before I actually, you know, made the, the jump to make a phone call. And I think I made like two different discovery calls with two different people, . And it was like, it was one of those things like I definitely really wanted to do, but it was like, you know, is it gonna be worth it type of thing, right?
And , uh, two Brain was, was definitely one of the few mentors out there. Like, you know, anyone nowadays, if they have enough like ad spend, they can say, oh yeah, I'm an expert in X, Y , Z . Right? Um, but Two Brain was like probably one of the only people that I saw putting out not just like the general recycled information of Oh, here are the top 10 ways to be a good gym owner, right?
It was like they were actually putting out good information and they had good results and their people were saying good results for them . So yeah, like my, when I first started opening up my gym, it was only me, like, I was the only trainer I was doing all of the hours and , uh, like I got two little girls, they were five and seven and like, they were like, mom, why do you work so much?
I'm like, it's only for a little bit of time I could pay for diapers and stuff too, you know , . Yeah, right. So , um, you know, I have like a little area for like the kids to hang out here too, so, you know, I I always tell them like, this is your gym. Like I wouldn't do this without you. Right. So this is your gym and that makes 'em feel a little bit better about it.
But yeah, my, my , uh, revenue, like I think before Two Brain I was like probably six KA month. Right? Not really anything too crazy. But now that I have like, it's me, I have two other really, really amazing trainers and we're consistently doing like probably 15 KA month. So,
And that's in less than a year?
It's a year and a half, yeah.
Year and a half. Okay. Wow. Is that ever incredible? So that's changed a lot. And is the revenue, is that from generating more clients or is it from generating more clients at a higher a RM? How does that work out?
My location was very strategic, so , um, like I said before, like I was doing all this mobile training , um, if anyone that's listening knows, like the layout of Washington, like I lived in Bothell, which is probably like 20 minutes from Seattle, and I literally would drive an hour in every single direction to these in-home like clients, right?
And I was just trying to see where is, where is like the, the area that most of them are living in. And so that's why I ended up settling in Mount Lake Terrace is because all of the clients I was working with at the time, they were within like a 10 to 20 minute driving area from Mount Lake Terrace. So it's like, okay, I don't need to know why this is happening, but I know that this is like a central area.
So a lot of our clients that we get, even without paying for like Google Ads or anything, like people would just type in personal trainer near me. And just because we're a personal training gym in the area near Mount Lake Terrace, we would pop up. Um, and, you know, our , our business model's a little bit backwards.
Like we do personal training and oh yeah, by the way, we have group classes versus, you know, the normal way of, we do group classes and by the way, we do personal training, right?
So yeah, like just people that are looking for personal trainers that know that they want a little bit something more, like they're already, we're already gonna pop up first in their search results versus , um, them trying to have to sort through a whole bunch of people.
Okay. And your a RM , has that been a steady climb? Has that gone up like just over the last year and a half? Has that moved up steadily or, or what made it change?
I mean, I feel, you know, when like that frustration as a business owner, I don't wanna say like, even, even just in life I guess, but like, there's two ways that you can do a thing, right? If something isn't working, do you keep tinkering on it and try to figure out a better way to do it? Or is it like a lost cause you drop it and you go on to something else? Right?
And I feel like in the beginning when I was just running my gym, I didn't really have , uh, a good like a mentor that, you know, was directly mentoring me, right? It was more of like what I could find on YouTube or whatever, right? And they would always like just say like, oh, well do something different, right? Like, okay , uh, group classes aren't working. Okay, drop group classes, do , uh, small group classes.
Okay, group classes aren't working, let's try kickboxing, let's do, you know, like , like you're like running all these different things to the point that like your , your attention's so scattered that you're just like, why is none of it working? You have like ones and twos in every area, but you're also burning yourself out.
Um, and so working with , uh, my, I've, I've had, I'm on my second mentor with , uh, with Two Brain , which , uh, my first mentor was awesome. He's , he was like, just focus on this one thing, . And I was like, but that sounds scary. And he is like literally just focus on just one .
Yeah. And he is like, just do the one thing that's like selling and making money, but I'm like, but but, and he is like, no ,
But nothing .
Exactly. Yeah. Like working, working with him and then eventually, like working with my mentor that I have now, like both of them have been very supportive and encouraging on like, Hey, cool, these other ideas that you have are awesome. They're, they're good, but let's get this one going first. Let's like, make this one as good as we can and then we will , you know, then you can work on the other stuff.
. So is it fair to say focus is , is the reason why the a m is going up just focusing on serving clients better and giving more value?
Yeah, like our best selling like package that we have is usually two and three personal training times a week, right? So, like I said, like people that come in here, you know, we're a personal training gym, people already know, you know, it's a service and you're gonna have to spend money for it, right? Um, usually it's, it's working with people that are just super busy that they forget to take care of themselves.
Like these are the people that will literally forget to eat if you let them go about their own day, right? So those types of people, like, they know the value of having a good personal trainer, and so being able to focus just on personal training and being able to find more of those people of like, oh, okay, if if you're not telling me to work out , I'm not gonna work out. Right?
But yeah, just, just finding more, more people that know the value of working out two to three times a week instead of, you know, the people that come in that wanna only work out once a month, you know, and then realize like, I don't know why I'm not getting results. Mm-Hmm , . Mm-Hmm . .
So you know where you're selling and you know who you wanna sell it to. And that's, that's a big deal. And it sounds like a silly observation, but like, I didn't know that at the time when I opened my gym, I was like, I'm selling thrusters and put up and it's amazing. And I didn't realize that, like, that's not really, that's not a target market, that's just kind of a thing, right?
Like, I need to say , you know, like my wife, for example, runs fitness, nutrition, nutrition business. She basically wants to make women between 30 and 60 strong. And she does that through fitness and nutrition. She knows who she's selling it to. I didn't have a clue when I ran my gym, I just thought everyone would wanna come and listen to Metallica while I do thrusters.
Like it was kind of a bad business plan, but you have a great idea of exactly who you're selling to and what you're selling. And I love that because it means that you're so much more focused, then you've got a mentor to provide some extra focus. Who is the mentor you're working with right now?
I'm working with Courtney Brownlow.
Oh, she's a mc from our two brain Summit. Yeah. She's great for that for sure. Yeah , she's awesome. , she's , uh, and she's, she's loud enough that she'll tell you right away, you get back on focus and get back on track. Hey , have you ever changed your rates? Have you ever changed that as you've evolved as gym owner?
Yeah. I feel like knowing your own worth was , uh, uh, one of the first things I had to address when
Oh, really? Hey.
Yeah. Yeah. So when I first became a personal trainer, right, it was group classes and like I became a personal trainer after nine years in the Navy, right? And it was just like, I don't know what I wanna do. And I did group classes, I did, you know, martial arts classes and I , you know, it was fun. But then I discovered personal training and I was like, oh my goodness, what is this? Right?
It was like, I just like lost my mind. I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. And through that I found like functional fitness and that's kind of like what we focus on now today. When I first started out, it was like, oh, well I'm a I'm a group class instructor, I get $20 an hour. Okay, I'm a personal trainer, I'm gonna charge $30 an hour. Right? It was like, you know, realize . Yeah, exactly.
And just, you know, people, if you're charging people $30 an hour for your time, those are usually the people that you're gonna attract that are just gonna like always be bartering with you of like, are you sure you can't, like, you can't go any lower. Like at one point I was charging somebody $35 an hour, and every single time she came in a train with me, she was like, are you sure you can't go any lower?
I'm like, listen , you're not even covering my babysitting right now. . So like . But like, you know, one of , uh, one of my first mentors , uh, who got me into personal training, he told me, he was like, you know, you can make yourself more valuable by learning and experience. And like now I'm like, you know, almost 10 years in this area, like in, in the gym membership area, right?
But like, the more valuable you have, like, just the more experience, like, you know, the, the more value that you can bring to somebody of, oh, you wanna do squats and then you're gonna do pushups, and then you're gonna do, I don't know , try kickbacks. It's like, you know, a more experienced trainer would be like, oh, obviously bigger muscle group . The smaller muscle group, right?
And then like a newer trainer, like, I don't know , let's just bicep curls, I guess. Like yeah. Feel burn . Yeah. And it's like, you know, cool, yeah, you'll, I'll work out the workout. Right? But you're paying more for the more experience and like usually the people that, that see that you are worth a little bit more, they have no problem paying .
Like, I've had people, you know, pay over $200 an hour just to do a workout with me, right? And I'm just like, my time is very limited. I can't train you unless you pay this much. And they're like, okay, fine. I'm like, really? Okay. And then I have other people that are just like, are you sure you can't do less than 30? Right.
So I really think it , it comes back to like just knowing that what you have like accommodated or acco like accomplished over the years, right? The knowledge that I have as a functional personal trainer, right? As all of my background of, you know, fitness and fighting and like military, like all of that stuff leads into me being this type of trainer. And so like this is the price of that.
So yeah, I think helping know my own worth has helped with like charging a little bit more and like, I don't feel, I don't feel like I'm charging people anything that's like outrageous. So , mm-hmm,
well if they're getting results and they're happy to pay it, then there's value and you really hit on it because so many people don't realize, I did not realize this. You only have so many hours in the day and if you don't sell them at a good rate, you don't end up making a living and then you wanna leave the industry. And that's kinda where I got to.
If you're selling your hours at a premium rate, you may only have to work 20. Right? Like, there's a lot of different ways to look at this whole thing. And I love that you've hit on that early, early on in this, because I did not realize that for a long time. And I was probably, you know, I was basically doing , uh, one-on-one personal training in a quote unquote group class.
But I was maybe charging the person seven bucks an hour because it was a group program, badly marketed as it was. So that's interesting. Now, you touched on a little bit , uh, you have I think great SEO where people are, you know, personal trainer near me and you come up. How else are you getting these clients? Do any other marketing or referrals or advertising or anything like that?
Yeah, so we, we just started doing our paid ads maybe like a few weeks ago just because in, in this area there's something called the light rail. So it's like the train system that goes from our area all the way down to Seattle and back, right? Um, that just opened back in August , uh, end of August.
And so I had people that are just like signing up just to get a free intro for like a no, no, no sweat intro, right? I had a , a whole bunch of people sign up for that and like, I was just like working through all of those leads and those were like good solid leads of people were like, oh, I didn't know, I didn't know I had a personal trainer gym here. Yes, I want to do this. Right?
And so, yeah, I had like, just from one event I had like 30 leads that were good follow ups and I got like five new clients from that, which is an amazing amount, like an amount , amazing amount of money for the amount of effort that was put in, right? But yeah, like I'll go to different markets, like I think I've maybe done three markets this year.
Um, and it was more of experimental of just getting out into the community, trying to like find other businesses that maybe we can like partner with. But yeah, it's like a lot of people looking on social media. Again, when you Google search personal trainer near me in Mount Lake Terrace, our business comes up just because we're primarily a personal trainer, Jim , right?
And then I've had , I just had one of the first people come in and they're just like, your social media was so good, I had to book something. I was like, okay, cool. Like I've never heard somebody go on my Instagram and be like, yes, I wanna work with this person. Where
Can people, where can, let's just find you. What is it?
We are, well my business one is just untamed personal training. Yeah . And then , uh, I am the Barefoot Trainer, so Okay . Not Barefoot Trainer.
Okay , we'll check that out listeners. Check that out. Uh , and you can see what's going on, why clients are looking at social media and saying they wanna work with you. I cut you off. They'd ask that question, keep going. Oh
Yeah. But referrals, I've had a lot of people come in, they are having a good time, they're seeing results and they're like, my roommate would do really good with this. Or one of our other people who's three times a week for a few months, he's seeing such good results that he's like, Hey, I work right down the street.
I wanna have a small group class happen with all of my people at my gym or at my , uh, at my work, right? So hopefully you're gonna be get something set up through that. People coming in and being like, Hey, I wanna work out with my neighbor. Do you do semi-private? Right? So some people have working out together, they get like a slightly more discounted rate.
But a lot of it, a lot of the things that I'm seeing is yes, people wanna work out . Yes, people wanna like achieve their goals, but the community factor is such like a , a big aspect of it and not just like the bigger the better. Right? I wanna be part of a thousand person gym. Like, people don't want that.
It's like a lot of times when I'm interviewing these people during their no sweat intros, they bring up like, you know, I, I don't really see people or you know, I work so much and I don't want to talk to my co my coworkers 'cause I see them all the time, right? It's like, it's almost like a , like an extracurr extracurricular hobby, right?
So once a month, we'll do, you know, some type of event where everyone can get together and they don't work out, they just like hang out. They can talk to each other. Like we just did a pumpkin painting thing for the end of October, right?
And , uh, me, I'm like running around like crazy trying to organize everything, but all the other people, like they said, that was hands down the best Halloween party they've ever been to. I'm like, okay, cool. And they were just sitting and painting a pumpkin, right? But yeah, that community aspect is like really important.
So you've named a bunch of different things. We have four funnels that we teach g orders to create. There's the content funnel, organic social media funnel, paid ads funnel and referral funnel. And you've got things working on all fronts. And the advice for the listeners, figure out one of those, make it work really well, and then move on and get the next one going. Don't try and do 'em all at once.
That's that focus thing that Amanda was talking about. Stay focused. But if you have all four of these things running, you're gonna get a ton of great leads and then you can, you know, you're getting great referrals, spend some money on ads, fuel the fire, everything goes really, really, really well. So you've got a bunch of marketing things going on. You're obviously getting high value clients.
You know who you want and you're, you're getting great results just from SEO. So I love, I love the whole plan . It sounds pretty great. I'm gonna throw some numbers at you here and I'll, I'll tell you want your opinion on this. So our annual report, state of the industry guide just came out , uh, and you can get that@twomainbusiness.com slash data .
If you're listening a RM and big groups is $167 on average, it's $230 in small group gyms . And it's $353 in PT gym. So from big group to pt, it's up the cliff. If you were just starting out, like go back, say two years ago or something like that, would numbers like that influence the kind of gym that you would wanna open, Amanda?
I mean, I feel, I I kind of look at those numbers a little bit , uh, differently. Like I, I know that like big gym, like smaller a RM right? But you're also serving more people. You also have to know what you're doing and know what you're selling. 'cause you have a higher churn rate, higher turnover rate, more selling, more like, you know, I, I sell maybe, let me think.
Like, I think high upper end is like eight new clients per per month, right? Whereas a bigger gym, they'll have like 20 new clients a month, right? But they're also losing that same amount, kind of like on the back end , right? So you gain 20 clients, you lose 10 , right? But the more, the bigger the gym, the more space you're gonna have to have, the more you're gonna have to pay for.
Like there's so much more overhead and um, just numbers wise , like a little bit less of an A RM right? But it's more affordable for the larger population, right? I've always loved personal training just because, you know, maybe just like as an athlete, as a person that's like recovered from injury as a person that really, if I'm working out, like I want to make sure it's going towards something.
Like I've always just kind of gravitated towards personal training. 'cause I've seen what it can do, right? I've seen people go to those big gym classes, they're super motivated, they have no idea what they're doing, and then they hurt themselves and then they're out for six weeks, right?
So I've always loved the personal training aspect of sure you're spending a little bit more money, the price is a little bit higher, right? But you're making sure that, you know, you're doing your form correctly, you're doing your workouts, you have someone there making sure you're doing them correctly.
And then , um, you don't have to sacrifice that thing that like, like I said, you don't , you don't know what you don't know, right? So if you don't know that you're doing squatting correctly until you get injured and now you have to like sit on the couch for the next six weeks, it's all like, you know , uh, subjective of like what's what's more valuable, right?
It's like cheaper gym membership for, you know, for a client, right? Cheaper gym membership, but higher likelihood of potentially getting injured or a little bit higher of a price for that gym membership. And then you just know that you're gonna be taken care of.
Well , and speed of results too, right? Like if, you know Chris Cooper's writing about this and saying if you were, if someone said, I need to lose 20 pounds in six months, it's life and death, what would you do? You'd probably prescribe personal training and work with that person. One-on-one in a high touch , high accountability program that involves fitness and nutrition as opposed to saying jump in a group program.
And again, I'm not slamming the group program program model because I ran it for a long time and I know gym owners that are doing amazing things with it. So it can be done, but this is just a little bit of a different perspective and get this, Amanda.
So you, you were giving me some ideas of , uh, gyms taking in clients the average and according to the state of the industry, the big group gym, the average gym will take in five clients a month and lose three. So they're only gaining two per month, which is crazy if you have a huge space that's like 10,000 square feet and you've got seven trainers and 15 barbells and 30 air bikes. And that's scary.
And that's what I got into where I had way too much stuff. I wasn't good at marketing, I was really struggling. Whereas the smaller model allows you like, you know, your client count isn't gonna be a thousand in your small space where you've got a focus on personal training, but you just, you don't have that whole overhead and everything else hanging over you.
So you've got a completely different model and listeners, whatever model you're using, these numbers can all be laid out for you and get on a metric and explain how to maximize your success within that model. So whether you run big groups , semi-private pt, whatever, you can figure out those numbers.
But everything Amanda said here is about thinking about those numbers and how it works, rather than just doing what I did, which was open a gym, turn on the music and hope people show up because that doesn't work for me very well. So I'm gonna ask you this as we close the show out gym owner's out there and they're looking at these numbers and saying 500 and $800 average revenue member is crazy.
What's one thing a gym owner with lower a RM can do right now today to boost it by just 10 or 20 bucks?
Sure. So , uh, I was thinking about this in the car. I'm my drive to work today and I wanted to think of it two different ways, right? So let's say , uh, you need to boost a RM like right now you have bills to pay tomorrow. Yeah,
I like it.
I've always been a big fan of, I'm gonna say something controversial. I would get one 50% off . Oh,
You do that, you would do that. Hey ,
I do that. Yeah, let's talk about it . Quit . I only do it twice a year. Okay . And the two times I do it a year is in October for Halloween and December For Christmas. I know they're like right on top of each other. So the reason for this is, like I said, I'm mostly personal training. We have occasional five week programs, right? But the buy one get one 50% off, right?
That is for people that are like, they've just spent January through October trying to get in shape on their own and potentially not meeting what they thought they could do or maybe falling off of the wagon, right?
So having this, this like buy one get one 50% off right before the holiday season, especially when we're starting to think about candy and Thanksgiving and Christmas and oh my goodness, I have to see all my relatives and I'm eating all of this food and sugar, right?
And I'm stressed having that option of, Hey, you know what, why don't you take care of yourself and you can still work out, you can still get a personal trainer, right? It's cheaper. And look, you're going into holiday season. Like you don't have to guilt yourself for all this food that you're gonna be eating anyways, right? Um, so that's why we do it in October.
And then the next one is for, you know, Christmas people can like, you know, give the gift fitness to themselves, right? Um, and those, those people will like buy it for either themselves. They'll buy it for, you know, a family member, but they all , they almost feel like you ever like get into a, a , a store and like you get the first thing that is on sale, you go and you go home.
You don't have to wait in line for it. Like, it's that feeling of, oh man, I just got everything done. I'm , I'm good. Like you're already set for your New Year's resolution and you don't have to worry about it. So both of those, like we don't do 50% off for the New Year's resolutions because we just, we just implement that five week program.
And if you wanna discount, well you should have done it in October or for December. So we'll get the, the typical like New Year's rush, but we only offer that group class or personal training during that time. So , okay.
Can I grill you? Can I ask some questions on this? Yeah,
Go for it.
What does Courtney think about this? What does she say when you talk about this? 'cause we often don't have gym owner's discount stuff. What does Courtney say?
I haven't told her. . .
We're gonna have you back on the show and talk about it. I'm gonna ask you a couple of , I'm gonna put on my pretend mentor hat and I'm just gonna ask a couple questions about it then. So if you offer 50% off to an existing client, do you feel like that lowers the value of that hour? Or does it attract people that, like what happens when, okay, I'm gonna set , let me be more clear current.
Do you give that deal to current clients?
So current clients can use it for family members?
Aha . For , so it's almost , so this is the key. So this is where it's only for
New clients .
So current clients can use it for family members. So that's more of a referral thing than it is a , a discount I guess we'll say. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah,
Yeah. And then we can still offer, we still offer it for new clients. Okay. But after, you know, it's only , um, five or 10 sessions, right? They, it doesn't go any more than that. So once they, once they buy their five or 10 sessions at half price, it just, it just automatically loops into their next biggest price. So, right .
Let's say , uh, let's just make this easy and be like, okay, it's a hundred dollars per session. You bought 10 sessions , uh, it's a thousand bucks, right? You have a thousand dollars to pay your bills tomorrow, right? But you , you have 10 sessions that you as the owner, right?
You'll be doing those 10 sessions so that way you're not losing further revenue by giving it to another trainer and then having to pay them the four nights and all that fun stuff. But you're, you have 10 sessions to build enough rev or build enough rapport with that new client for them to carry over and be like, I don't know why I didn't do this.
Like, okay, I didn't see why I would pay more than $50 per session, but now, like, I've been talking with you the last 10 sessions, I don't know why I wouldn't work with you. Yes, you are worth a hundred dollars an hour.
And then they just, they'll , if they actually can't afford, you know, that much money , um, they'll usually go from, let's say two times a week, they'll drop down to one time a week or once every other week. But they, they see the value of why they would pay that much.
Okay. So that, because that leads me to the question I was gonna ask is what is the retention of clients? 'cause often what I would do is I would drop rates and then I would offer something and I just crazy deal. And then people would sign up for it and then they would never stay when I went back to full price and I lost, I just, I was doing really silly things. And this is why we say don't discount.
So how is the retention for you when you, when you offer this to people and say, okay, and now going forward, the rate is this,
It's pretty high. Like , uh, okay,
That's interesting. I've,
I wanna say the, when we did this last year, I had a lady buy two packages, right? We had two 10, you know, 10 sessions, right? We happen to have two of them . She was like, I wanna give you $2,000. I was like, okay, . And guess what? She is still a client with me today, working with me once a week at a hundred dollars an hour.
Okay. So that's super interesting. And the final one I ask you on this, I'm grilling you. I really appreciate you digging into this with me 'cause it's fascinating. Yeah , no worries . Do current clients ever say like, why can't I get the deal that new clients are getting? Does that ever happen?
No.
Okay. That's interesting. 'cause that was always my fear when I was doing stuff and I was like, ah , I'm doing that, and then I'd end up, what I would do is I would discount it for everyone and then all of a sudden I couldn't afford to pay my bills. And that's what happened to me. You know? So that's interesting. Okay. What
I do is , uh, I have, I have like , uh, like a little bit of a discount for people that do three times a week, right? Yeah . Yeah . So like, let's say it's a hundred dollars for if you train once a week, but it's, you know, 95 if you train three times.
Yeah . So that's a reasonable package deal. Sure. Yeah.
Yeah. So it's like, oh, well I'm motivated, like I'm motivated to do three times a week. Right? And it's like the, the pricing structure makes sense. It's not like, it's not anything discounted crazy to the point that people feel like they're, you know, like getting had or whatever.
But like I said, like being able to show one that they're getting results and then that two, like they're getting the value and the knowledge and the edu like they're getting educated while they do a session, right? Like they do one session here, they can take all of the stuff that they're doing here and they can go to a regular gym and still know how to squat correctly, right? Mm-Hmm,
. Okay. So that's interesting.
Yeah. Focus on focusing on knowledge and making sure that they know how to take that knowledge and leave you with it. Um, so yeah, ,
Okay, well that's interesting. The thing that I wanna pull from that is like, I like the idea of what you're doing of , uh, of a referral program.
And , uh, John Franklin, our chief marketing program or marketing officer, he, he , we talked about a gym that does a , a , a holiday block card gift where they give these, they're metal actually, they're literally made of metal and they're fairly expensive VIP cards that he gives to his members and says, this entitles someone that you give it to, to, it was like 50% off for some free training or something like that.
And John has said in the article, don't look at that. That's, he doesn't consider that a discount. He considers that a , a , a referral program. And these people were always closely connected to his current, these great current clients, highly converted at high rates.
And so it was, it was almost a slam dunk when these cards went out that they would get one guy, I think he raises , uh, gross revenue by $10,000 or something like that. So anyways, the reason why we're having this lengthy discussion is that discounts, if you don't think about them and plan them out, you can shoot a hole in your gym.
And I'm saying this because I literally did it myself, and we've seen some chum gym , some gyms do it carefully. Crafted referral programs are a completely different story. And the reason I ask about Courtney is because mentors will always help you figure these things out and run your numbers. So if you don't have answers to these questions, don't just throw things into the wind . Make sure you have a concise plan.
And I've asked unmanned a bunch of questions about numbers and results. She knows them and that allows her to make informed decisions about things. So if you're listening, that's the way to address stuff like that. Gimme your number two. So you said you had another thing on there for some people to boost a , what is it?
Oh , uh, so yeah, that was like the short term . If you need money tomorrow, right? Yeah . Yeah . Let's say you need money, you know, further down the road, you wanna think longer term. Um, and I, I really think that just means making yourself an expert in your field. Like instead of me just being, Hey, I'm a I'm a fitness trainer. Like, okay, well what do you do? Oh, I do everything.
I do strength training, I do weight loss. I , I can figure out marathon running, you know, I do everything right. But that wasn't really, you know, making me valuable, right ?
What, what actually makes me valuable here is, it's funny 'cause it came from like when I sprained my ankle a whole bunch of years ago, but I went from an ankle sprain to being able to look into like foot strengthening, foot strengthening led me to be like looking at the body as like a holistic, like whole moving unit , right? And that led to me being a functional fitness trainer.
So me identifying as a functional fitness trainer and people walking in my gym and being like, Hey, I want functional fitness. I'm like, you know what that is? And they're like, well, yeah. Like, yes, cool. win . Um , yeah, yeah. So like having that expertise of like, you know , not so niche that I'm like, I am a functional foot expert, right? It's like, no, like feet go for the , the whole body, right?
Like all of your myofascial slings connect to your feet, right? So like you can strengthen your entire body just by strengthening your feet, right?
But having that knowledge of how functional fitness ties in with, you know, making your body not hurt when you get up in the morning and making you a better athlete, making you get those weight loss or strength goals because your body is working as a unit altogether versus individually and being able to deliver that. Like, as a person that like people, people will literally be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, whatever, man.
Like, just stop talking. I get it. You know what you're talking about, right? Like, I love, I love just like ranting about this stuff and you know, I used to think that my clients were just like, all right , okay, we heard enough , but like they, there's like , oh my god , there . Yeah. They're like, tell me more. I'm like, really? Okay, .
Well that just echoes what , uh, bill Parisi from Parisi Speed School said on this show. When I talked to him , uh, about six months ago, he said, there's riches in niches. And he made a huge career, a super successful guy by focusing on making kids faster. That's his thing. And that's what he does. And so what you're doing is a version of that where you are becoming an expert in your area.
Chris Cooper's talked about how people in his town, there's the hockey training expert and anyone who wants to go to Junior or NHL level goes and sees this guy on their sprint coaches and other things. And it feels counterintuitive as gym owner to say, I'm narrowing down and I'm, you know, I'm like, I don't get the whole market. I did the opposite again and I said, everyone's welcome.
And if you appeal to everyone, you don't really appeal to anyone. And so that's a really interesting one. So you've got your market dialed right in, and when people look for that thing, they find you instantly, right? Mm-Hmm. . And there you go. And you've got a huge a RM and you've got a successful gym, and you made our leaderboard within about a year of being a , a gym owner.
So that's, that's a pretty cool story, man . I've kept you longer than I promised I would, but I, I apologize . I appreciate all the , uh, answers to my many questions. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Yeah,
Thank you for having me. When's
Your next fight?
Next one will be Worlds in June of 2025 .
Can people watch it anywhere or track Check it out and track it down?
Uh, yeah . So , uh, WKA is the World Kickboxing Association, which is what I'm gonna be fighting through. Um, they have like WKA tv , they have like a, you know, nationwide like worldwide network , um, that you can go on and you can watch any of the local fights on there.
Oh, cool. And when you sprained your foot, you mentioned, was it kicking someone?
You know what? It was falling down a flight of stairs. Oh , that sounds good . The day before my first fight.
Okay. We we're , we'll just say it was kicking someone. 'cause it sounds funny , It
Sounds better. It sounds better. Yeah.
Right . That was Amanda Buckner. This is Run of Profitable. Jim , I'm your host, Mike Warkin . And thank you for watching and listening. I hope this show helps you boost your a RM . Please subscribe for more shows just like it. And now here is to main founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
Hey, it's Tube 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.
I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gym owners united.com to join. Do it today.