When Every Client Pays You More Than $500 a Month!

Quite often the best service that you can offer somebody is a one-on-One option if you've got an Olympic athlete or if you've got somebody who's knocking on death's door or they've got some kind of chronic injury or something else that you can solve the best and most efficient way to get them that result is to provide one-on-one coaching.

And as you're gonna hear from a lot of our leaderboard leaders for a RM, that's what they focus on. So today I'm gonna give you the top 10 gyms in two brain for a RM that's average revenue per member. I'm also gonna give you some context. In some places I'm gonna share how much revenue these people do and how many clients they actually have.

Now if you're primarily running a group training gym , for example, use this episode to guide you on what you should be offering to clients as an option. You don't have to get rid of your group training program, you don't have to stop doing CrossFit groups or whatever you want, but you should stop pushing people away by not offering a one-on-one or a semi-private offering.

Let's face it, there are a lot of people at my gym who want to do hard workouts. They want to do stuff that looks and feels like CrossFit, but they don't really wanna do that in a group. Or maybe they don't wanna do it at noon. Or maybe there's another reason why they want the one-on-one option.

And so what they're paying for with one-on-one is privacy , uh, schedule flexibility, maybe a little bit of extra accountability, you know, or maybe it's they just wanna come in with their spouse and and do that time together.

So when you're listening to these high a RM , don't discount this as like, well this is personal training and semi-private gyms, the reality is that we are providing a professional service as coaches. That's a very high value service, and this is the quote that always gets me into trouble. The group training option should be your discount option.

Listen, if you want to hear more and if you don't want to hear more, if you just want to get mad and take that quote outta context, you go right ahead. So first, let's start with the top 10 gyms in two Brain for a RM last month in 10th place. And these are all in US dollars. We've converted them even though the top 10 are from all over the world. The 10th Place Gym had an a RM of $500 and 74 cents. Amazing.

They were from the states, the the Ninth Place gym was 5 0 8 69. The eighth Place Gym last month earned $522 and 23 cents US per client. And they were in Canada. The seventh place gym was 528 38. The sixth place gym was 568 70. So imagine every client in your gym paying you $568 and 70 cents. Well that is many, many, many times more than the average person in your gym pays for the industry average.

You know, every year we produce this state of the industry report and we look at the averages. I also publish every month what the top gyms are doing because these are the ones that we want to emulate and these are the ones who pull the averages up. What are these gyms doing differently? Well, we're gonna get into that in a minute, but first let's go through the top five.

So in fifth place, and this is a US based gym, they were doing $579 and 13 cents a RM last month. Now this isn't a one shot deal. It's not like they sold a super duper extra package or what they used to call , uh, you know, high, high value or high ticket package to like a bunch of clients. That's not what happened here. This is like a monthly average for them in fourth place, 585, 83.

And now things start to get crazy because in third place, the third place Jim Worldwide for in last month had an a RM of $692 and 97 cents. That's very close to 700 bucks. And the second place gym, which was in Germany, had an A RM of $784 and 59 cents. That's every client in their gym is paying them close to $800 a month.

Us , the number one gym was 821 42 and they were in the US $821 and 42 cents per month a RM. Now you might be looking at that and thinking like that is just beyond the scope of possibility, especially if you're a CrossFit gym and you're charging like one 30 a month for unlimited or something. But use these numbers the way you would look at Matt Fraser's snatch, okay?

Or the way that you would look at like Rich Frons Fran time. You look at it and you think like that's beyond the scope of what I'm gonna be capable of. But what that does is it sets the bar for everybody else. It says, okay, well here's what's actually possible, right? And that's what we want to do is we want to say like, here's the high water mark , here's the average.

You wanna be above average and trending toward the high water mark for a RM. Now let's talk about how they got there. Because Two Brain is not about just giving you more information, it's about giving you action. It's about making, giving you things that you can copy and just do yourself.

The overall theme with these gyms is that they might have a group coaching option or they might not, but if they do, it's their least expensive option. So a client comes in and says, I have this goal. So starting off with the No Sweat intro number one, that's the key to a high A RM and better retention. You're sitting down with the client, you're talking about what they care about, the goals that they wanna reach.

The client says, I have this goal. You say, okay, well the fastest path to get to this goal is X, Y, Z, and I'll leave it to your coaching expertise to make that prescription you know best. And that's why the client's coming to you, they're not coming to you by CrossFit or your Fit Body Bootcamp workouts or your F 45 workouts.

They're coming to you to solve a problem and they're looking to you, the coach to tell them how to solve that problem. Best, fastest, simplest, easiest, with the greatest likelihood of success. For most people, that's gonna be a one-on-one coaching option. At worst, it's gonna be like a small group coaching option where I can spend time looking directly at you and talk to you almost every day.

So, okay, you present the option and they say, that's just outta my budget, I can't afford it. Okay, you know, fair enough, how about this option? And maybe you give 'em an option for semi-private and they say, ah , it's still too high, I can't do it. Okay, what budget are we working with here? Ah , $200, $300 a month. I understand if that were my budget, what I would do is participate in group training.

Now you're gonna go through a little on-ramp period first to make sure that you're up to speed and safe and knowledgeable. And then we'll put you into our group training program. Our group training program is broad, general, and inclusive. We're gonna work on everything, strength, power, mobility, speed.

At Catalyst, we also work on metabolic flexibility, but you know, make your own prescription and the group training option is the least expensive of the three. Okay, I'll take that now. You're not gonna get to where you wanna go as quickly as you can, but it's a great start and we'll meet again in 90 days and we'll talk about your options and your progress. How about that? Okay, great.

So 90 days later you're gonna meet with them again. And this is where you say, are you satisfied with your progress? And you give them options to speed it up, which of course requires more attention from you. More one-on-one care from them, and higher accountability, all those things. And that's what pulls a RM up.

So when we say that group training is your lowest price option or even your discount option, what I mean is that you don't need to have a lower option than that.

Like don't just go out and sell access because people will always go to your lowest option, lowest priced option, and you're a coaching business, so your highest price option should be one-on-one if you offer it, your medium priced option should probably be a delivery in a small group or semi-private setting. You know, just the way that CrossFit started.

And then your lowest tier offering should be in a group and those tiers should be priced according to speed. How quickly can I get you to your goals? Fastest one-on-one eventually group programming, right? And so that's what these gyms do. And so when we talked to 'em and said like, how are you getting these A RM numbers? Their responses were like, well, it's just what we do, but I wanna share some specifics with you.

So some of these gyms responded to our pointed questions about how did you get such a high a RM? And one said, this number has gone steadily up over the last five years and it will jump again in January as we raise our PT rates. Another said, I focus on personal training and I've gotten rid of group classes due to lack of interest. This leaves more hours in the day for one-on-one and semi-private training.

That's really, really interesting. Another person said, what I do might be a little different than other gyms. I focus on one-on-one and semi-private personal training as my business model. And I offer group classes as a supplement to private training. I'll explain what this person means because this is what we do at Catalyst. Now when somebody comes in, everybody starts one-on-one through our on-ramp process.

At the end of on-ramp, we say, you're making good progress. Would you be most comfortable continuing one-on-one or in a semi-private group? And if the person says, oh no, I've got some friends in the group, I wanna do the group, then we'll offer them the group training.

But most people take semi-private at Catalyst now, and this has been a big pivot, you know that from where we started 20 years ago to now, we've gone mostly semi-private. And so what happens is these people will be doing their semi-private workouts and then they'll say, oh, you know what? I gotta miss a week. I'm gonna be on holiday, I'm going hunting. I'm in Northern Canada, I'll be away. No problem.

You can make up the ones that you miss with our group classes. And so the group class is kind of like the, the safety net for people who can't make their regular high value semi-private training. Now of course we still run group classes, but we don't run as many as we used to. And the people who are in them are super knowledgeable, friendly and they're making extra little connections too.

There are people who come to Catalyst and just do group classes, that's wonderful. They have lots of fun. They're gradually getting more and more fit. You know, I think we have good programming. The people who are doing semi-private and PT are really the bread and butter. Now, there are also some people who offer a hybrid option. So you've got group training and you've got one-on-one.

So this person said, we offer comprehensive packages, for example, personal training plus nutrition, small group plus nutrition or personal training plus small group. Another person said, we start everybody with a base of personal training two or three times a week for as long as they need, and then transition them to one or two days of personal training and add on small group PT as their base.

This allows them one day to focus on their goals and the other days they jump into community workouts. Well that's a lot of fun, right? That sounds like a great model. And the cool thing is that you don't have to scrap what you're currently doing. You don't have to throw what you're doing in the trash and start from scratch. You can add these things with the help of a mentor from two brain.

That means you don't have to go through this complicated and scary process of changing. You can start new clients on these new prescriptions and then gradually change over months, years if you want to, or always keep your group training classes and just have options for one-on-one if you want them. The trap that you don't wanna fall into is confusing your method with your model.

So maybe you're a massive fan of CrossFit, maybe you're a massive fan of kettlebells or just strength training or whatever that is. That's your method. Your model is how you deliver that method to people. And that's usually determined in a partnership. You tell the person what's best for them, they tell you what they prefer. When those two things come together, that's your model.

And if you don't have a personal training or a small group option, you're probably pushing people out the door who don't just wanna do big group. Conversely, if all you have is one-on-one, you're probably going to hit your own capacity pretty quickly. And while your a RM might be big, you won't have enough clients to sustain you.

What's interesting, I'm just gonna share a little bit of extra data because obviously a RM is like one metric that you really need to care about, but it's not the only metric. You multiply that by the number of clients that you have to get your revenue and you multiply that by leg to get your lifetime value, et cetera . You have to look at the whole picture.

But I just wanted share a couple of other data points with you because I look at these as a mentor to these gyms. So for example, while the average a RM of the top 10, if you just took a mean average is $608 a month there , average client headcount is only 56, but that means that their monthly gross is $34,000. So think about what it would take to train only 56 clients.

Well, you don't need a massive amount of space. You don't need a massive amount of equipment to make a $34,000, you know , mean average revenue. Think about what you'd be taking home. The flip side of that is, and I've lived this, is that there's a high demand on your time. So you can be doing quite a bit of revenue , uh, as a personal trainer. You can be taking home a pretty high profit margin.

But the reality is that you can't sustain that long term . And that's why a two brand , we really promote having a a , a good mix of one-on-one options with some kind of group options. It might be small group, it might be big group. It's really up to you. I wanna help you build your business. But building a better business means not turning a blind eye to different options that your clients want.

It means being client centric. It means focusing on what they want and um, what they need. And when you pair those two things together, you get an amazing business. So looking at this leaderboard, you can see like what's possible from an a RM standpoint. It might not be the exact model that you want, but we can work with you one on one to build a model that you do want.

There was a time in my life when I only wanted to coach group classes, but we didn't shut down the one-on-one option. I had other trainers doing the one-on-one. Now we're at a point where my audience at my gym is a little bit more mature, you know, 40 to 60, and looking at the state of the industry data, that's pretty common. Like the average client coming into your gym is 41 to 50 years old. What do they want?

What do they have? What do they need? Well, they probably want some schedule flexibility. They probably don't need a discount because they're settled. They have their home, they have their job, et cetera . These are high a RM clients. And if you think I'm gonna get 300 people into a big group, then you're mostly missing these people. These people want some schedule flexibility.

They want some customization, some tailoring of their program. They want to train with just you or the same two or three people a lot of the time. And so you need to have a program that helps them, that also benefits you because you get a high A RM, which means that you can do way more with way less.

You can have a much more meaningful impact on these people because they come in and stay and actually change their lives instead of come in and washing out five months later when they don't like your group workouts. And you can build careers for your coaches using these people too . It's much harder to build careers if all you're selling is group classes than if you have a PT or semi-private group option.

Anyway, the point of our leaderboard show is always to show you what's possible and to get some quotes from the people up ahead of all of us who are leading the way that can help you build your business. Sometimes it's context, sometimes it's descriptive. Do exactly this. Today, what I hope you take away is just a little bit of mind expansion on what's possible.

I hope you're as blown away and inspired by these people as I am. And I hope also that it makes you really think about your business and where you're going and what the future holds and what's possible. Thanks to these trailblazers, thank you for your service. Thank you for running a gym. Thank you for helping people. Let's stay in the fight together. I'm Chris Cooper.

If you want to chat more about this or you've got questions you know you want to debate about the value of RM and personal training, just go to jim owners united.com. We'll have a meaningful discussion there.