June 26, 2025 • 31 mins
Erik Zeyher’s gym, Warlock CrossFit, generates over $200,000 in annual revenue from its semi-private training program.
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Erik breaks down the exact steps he took to build a premium program that works across the board—for clients, coaches and the business. As Erik puts it, “It is aces.”
Erik shares how he structures sessions, pricing and coach pay, and he explains how he generated internal buzz around the program to fill it fast. When his first semi-private session filled up in just 45 minutes, Erik knew he had a winner.
He also gets into logistics issues such as scheduling, onboarding, space constraints and last-minute cancellations.
Now, with expert mentorship and dialed-in systems, Erik can rely on his semi-private program to add $15,000-$22,000 to his gym’s revenue each month.
Thinking about adding a high-value semi-private personal training program? Tune in to hear from a gym owner who’s done it successfully.
Links
The Prescriptive Model
Prerequisites for Semi-Private
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:01 - Semi-private revenue boost
6:51 - Increased coach pay
12:41 - Biggest challenge in this model
18:36 - Time and space logistics
29:36 - Should gyms implement this?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
My name is Eric Zier.
I own Warlock CrossFit.
We have added$200,000 insemi-private personal training
for our revenue number.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Whoa, that is a big number.
Semi-private training is solvinga ton of problems in gyms and
generating mountains of revenue.
Eric is your proof.
Today on What a Profitable Gym,you're going to get the exact
details of the semi-privateprogram at Warlock Athletics in
New York.
You just heard from the owner,Eric Zier.
I'm Mike Workman, and you shouldhit subscribe right now so you
do not miss a single Now,newsflash, the age of group
(00:33):
training only is at an end.
Top gyms now have severalrevenue streams, and group
training is usually just one ofthem.
And it's actually the discountoption.
PT is the premium service andthe service in between.
Semi-private training or smallgroup training, they're slightly
different.
The quick details.
Semi-private training.
In that program, one coachdelivers personalized workouts
to four to six people.
(00:54):
Can be two sometimes, but it'saround that four is a sweet
spot.
These sessions might bring inabout$240 an hour and coaches
can make way more than just$25 aclass.
It's a win for clients.
It's a win for coaches.
It's a huge win for gym owners.
Now, let's dig into the books atWarlock Athletics.
Eric, are you ready to roll?
SPEAKER_02 (01:13):
Ready to rock and roll, Mike.
Thanks for having me on board.
SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
I am pumped about this.
As always, we just chatted alittle bit before the show and
you've got some numbers andstats and so forth, so let's dig
into that.
How much does your semi-privatetraining program generate each
month and how long did it takeyou to reach this epic level?
SPEAKER_02 (01:30):
Yeah, that's a great place to start because I think a
lot of people kind of might seeit and get overwhelmed from the
start.
We generate somewhere betweenlike$15,000 to$22,000 a month in
semi-private training.
SPEAKER_01 (01:41):
Whoa, look at that.
SPEAKER_02 (01:43):
We do most of our billing on like Mondays.
So if we get a longer month andthat month hits on a Monday, we
see more revenue that month.
So that's why like there's alittle bit of fluctuation there
between the 15 and the 22,depending on what's going on.
SPEAKER_01 (01:56):
It's scaling up.
So how did that take, like whenyou started this program, what
was like, do you remember likemonth one, month seven, like
what were your early numbers inthis?
SPEAKER_02 (02:03):
Yeah.
So I, it's funny.
I remember very vividly becausewe were kind of upside down on
our numbers.
Like we were crushing groupclasses.
We had 140 hours of PT and like,we still weren't like fully
profitable.
Like we were still like fightinglike 1000 up, 2000 down, 2000
up, 1000.
And like, we were just teeteringback and forth.
(02:24):
So we looked at the semi-privatemodel and we're like, man, like,
We're having members pay apremium when some of these
members should be in aone-on-four setting.
So we started out with just onehour of semi-privates.
So just dipping a toe.
Yeah.
So I kind of had like a planwhere like we needed to just
like create enough buzz aroundit to make sure that it was
(02:45):
successful and i think that'swhere a lot of gym owners kind
of struggle and this is where ican kind of offer some insight
for everyone listening at homeis like you got to make sure you
have the conversations on theback end before just launching
this thing and really know wherethe demand is so we had 140
hours of pt a month we knew thatthere was a ton of demand from
like 4 to 6 p.m and um ibasically knew that like i had a
(03:06):
lot of back-end conversationsbut we started out with with one
hour of this thing at 66 bucksfor the hour um i put it out in
our members-only Facebook group.
I was like, hey, we're launchinga semi-private.
This is what it entails.
If you are interested, eithercomment below or shoot me a DM.
And that one session filled upin about 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01 (03:29):
And that's 66 bucks per person, right?
SPEAKER_02 (03:31):
66 bucks per person for the hour.
So we were generating$264 inrevenue.
The members were paying lessthan PT.
What's the PT rate?
the PT rate for us at the timeis still is 120.
Yeah.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (03:43):
So there, but you said they're getting their own
programs.
SPEAKER_02 (03:46):
Yeah, but they're getting, yeah, they're getting
their own programs and they'reable to like still get the
watchful eye of a coach.
Like they don't need to like, Ifeel like some of it, like,
especially with PT is not thatit's babysitting, but like,
They're some of our athletes areadvanced enough where like, they
don't need us to sit there, butHey, like, let's do a warmup
together.
Right.
So like, but they're also notgoing to warm up on their own.
So that's why like thesemi-private model is so great
(04:07):
for the client.
It's great for the coach.
But like when we started thisthing about it's coming up on
two years in September, August,September it was, it was one
class in it very quickly.
I had probably 10 to 12 peoplego, Hey, that time doesn't work
for me, but these are the othertimes that it does work.
So we started to be able topiece together very quickly
within 48, 72 hours, foursessions in that week.
(04:31):
So we were generating over$1,000of revenue.
The coaches were getting paidmore.
The members were paying less.
And what we were able to do wasalmost the same as the PT.
SPEAKER_01 (04:42):
Whoa.
So you started off with onesession.
So you're making basically$264and you've now scaled this up
to, you said 15,000 a month.
Is that what I heard?
SPEAKER_02 (04:51):
Yeah.
15,000 a month is the low end.
SPEAKER_01 (04:54):
And that's taken you for two years, essentially.
SPEAKER_02 (04:56):
Yeah.
We kind of hit like a fewdifferent levels of this thing.
So like one to four sessions wasfine.
When we grew it to around eightsessions, we started to hit some
different bottlenecks andstruggles in terms of like
scheduling, rescheduling people,programming, the coach's
capacity.
We're like, we kind of need tolike...
not put it on pause, but likekeep it where it was for a
second, just to control some ofthose bottlenecks.
(05:18):
So we could then scale it to thenext level, which was around
like that, like 12 to 14sessions a week.
And then we refined it again andwe ended up where right now
we're around like 17 to 20sessions a week, I believe.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Okay.
So listeners, 260 some dollarsper hour in these sessions, but
a couple of things that arereally important here is that
Eric did not just throw thisthing out and say, we're
launching a giant semi-privateprogram and the slots are at 10
30 on Tuesday.
and I don't care if you likethat slot.
There was a bunch of steps thathe followed and I'm going to put
a link in the show notes here toDaniel Purrington's show where
(05:52):
he talks about the exactprerequisites for this program.
He talks about exactly what Ericsaid.
He did not, you don't just throwthis thing out.
You have to have a prescriptivemodel in place so you're talking
to clients and start to knowtheir goals and tell them, you
know, here's what the solutionis.
You have to have internalcontent marketing and external
content marketing so that youcan tell people what this
(06:12):
program is.
Eric said he posted in hisFacebook group he's telling
people about something new youhave to have that messaging in
place and then from there youhave to have the space and you
have to have uh coaching coacheswho can run this program because
it's not easy right it's verydifficult to manage six people
once you have to have high levelcoaches you have to have space
for it obviously and then you'vegot to have time slots so
there's a lot of stuff that goesin here and the final thing is
(06:34):
that when daniel said isessential you do not try selling
this to outside people first youmarket it internally right away
and this is a huge key thatpeople will get backwards listen
to that show i I won't get intothe details here because we're
digging into Eric's exactprogram, but do click that link
in the show notes for yourprerequisites for that program.
So tell me what you pay coachesin this model because there will
(06:54):
be some coaches listening and Iwant them to see what's
possible.
SPEAKER_02 (06:57):
Yeah, so right now we end up paying them.
We kind of do it.
It's still a four-ninths model,but we do their normal hourly
rate plus a commission.
So rather than just do like,hey, you get four-ninths of it,
we make sure that that base payis there for them.
It's just easier for us on thebackend business-wise.
We use MindBody as our software.
(07:18):
And then from there, we've builtin commissions for that.
So the commissions rangeanywhere from 10% up to 25% for
that session, depending on theexpertise, the coach, and all
that kind of stuff that's goinginto it.
SPEAKER_01 (07:31):
Safe to say they're making more than they would for
a one-class group session?
SPEAKER_02 (07:34):
Yeah, so they're making somewhere between$53 and
$96 an hour.
SPEAKER_01 (07:38):
Yeah, so those are like livable wages where you can
actually support a family andbuy a home on that kind of
thing, whereas$25 a class Asmany coaches know, that runs
into a wall pretty soon.
SPEAKER_02 (07:47):
Yeah, it's been game-changing.
I mean, we have two coaches thatare probably going to break or
be right around$100,000 thisyear.
One that's going to smashthrough that.
But it's cool to have that pieceand know that our members are
getting exactly what they need.
We've never had more PRs in ourgym.
It is working across the board.
It is aces.
SPEAKER_01 (08:06):
Yeah, and that's what I said.
It's a win for the gym owner.
You're taking in more revenue.
The coaches, some of them makingsix figures.
You're not the firstsemi-private gym owner who's
told me that their coaches aremaking six figures now, which is
like a good wage for a coachwhereas you know 40 classes a
week at$25 a class you run intothat wall and you can't do more
and you burn out and then youbecome a firefighter real estate
(08:26):
agent that's a problem you knowso this is like and it's also a
win for the clients becausethey're getting personalized
program tons of attention butexactly like you said I did
personal training and I standthere after, you know, okay, we
did the set.
We did the tip.
We are going to kill the time inbetween by talking about the
baseball game and some otherstuff.
And there's nothing wrong withbuilding that client
relationship.
And some clients want to pay forthat one-on-one time.
(08:48):
However, I could also give you,Eric, you know what?
I just need to pull yourshoulders back in that next
lift.
And we're going to hit that inthree minutes.
I'm going to move to the nextclient, talk about her deadlift
and move to the next client,talk about his running form.
And you circle around andeveryone gets the exact amount
of attention without some of thefluff in between.
And clients get great resultsbecause personal attention is
better than group attention.
Group classes still get results,but it is your discount option.
(09:09):
Let's talk about that.
You talked about why did youcreate this revenue stream?
You covered a little bit ofthat, but hit me with just
again, the reason why you didthis and what were the greatest
challenges to getting it inplace?
SPEAKER_02 (09:20):
Yeah.
So we were kind of back andforth with like profitable, not
profitable, profitable, notprofitable.
And we were crushing PT.
And like, we were a little bitupside down in our numbers where
we were overpaying our coaches.
We weren't charging enough.
The coach was getting morecommission.
I'm like, Meanwhile, like we'retrying to cover 140 hours of PT.
I'm like, we just don't haveenough staff.
So like the payroll has gone up.
(09:40):
The commissions have gone up.
The members are getting betterresults, but the business wasn't
where it was supposed to be.
So we had to really look at thisthing in terms of why we did
that.
Like, we knew that it was a winfor the client.
It was a win for the coach andit was a win for the business.
Like very, very few things inbusiness.
And I've owned my affiliate for11 years and I've been doing,
(10:02):
I've owned my own business foralmost 25 at this point.
Like it is very unlikely you seea win, win, win across the
board.
And as soon as we saw thatmodel, I was like, man, like
this is, this is where we needto go to.
We've also used it.
And this is a little bitdifferent too.
Like we've also used it as partof like our on-ramp program.
So like we've built it up withinour gym members where our gym
(10:23):
members do it we actually havein terms of stats we do pretty
well in the open we have apretty high participation rate
like we still do it eight of ourtop ten males did semi-privates
nine of our top ten females didsemi-privates so this is
performance yeah so it'sperformance based too and it's
not that we're like a hugecompetitive gym but like the
(10:44):
reason why people are doingfitness is they want to see
improvement they want to getbetter and we need to lay out
that path for them but when youshow the statistics and I go
through with my members and say,hey, by the way, if you want to
be a big dog in the gym, thesepeople are getting results the
fastest.
Top 9 out of 10 are doing semis.
People go, oh.
That's a part of it.
And to go into on-ramp, wenoticed that going from
(11:08):
one-on-one training intoclasses, not always the best.
And some people can't afford thePT side of things.
So we've literally streamlinedit so it goes one-on-one and
then they go into training twosemis a week and a class.
And then they've at least hadenough exposure after six weeks
of like, hey, do I like semis?
Do I want to stay with semis?
Do I also want to do classes?
(11:29):
Where do I fit with this thing?
But it also kind ofpre-qualifies in terms of how
we're looking to grow thebusiness with average revenue
per member.
So it kind of hits all of thosepieces of what we want while
still getting people exactlywhat they need and keeping it in
a reasonable budget.
SPEAKER_01 (11:43):
Yeah, and you hit on a couple of things.
Like I tried to solve thecompetitive athlete problem with
low-priced open gym that was anunmitigated disaster.
It almost sank my business.
if you have special interestgroups people who want to do
their own thing or get a specialattention or do certain things
semi-private training is a greatway to supply it to them it's
way better than$20 to add onopen gym in which they take up
(12:04):
all your barbell spread chalkeverywhere and have 16 different
things going on at once take allthe space that's a huge problem
another two brain gym I believeit's in the Bay Area I think
they were running something like30 PT sessions one-on-one the
coach was max had no time or theowner was max had no time to run
his or to build his businessbecause he's working in it he's
now gone down to 10 10 or 11 or12 three-on-one sessions.
(12:26):
So, instead of serving 30clients in 30 hours, he's
serving 30 clients in 10 hours.
He's taking Wednesdays off,hanging out with his kids and
he's making I think the numberis 84% more revenue in this
model.
SPEAKER_02 (12:38):
So, that's a really interesting thing.
UNKNOWN (12:40):
Talk to me about the biggest challenge.
What was the biggest hiccup forthis thing?
SPEAKER_02 (12:43):
Yeah, I think the biggest hiccup came actually
like from that like eight to 14where like we started we had to
like figure out kind of like theBecause we had a bunch of
sessions open so like we onlyallow one switch every six weeks
in terms of scheduling becauseif you have Let's just say
there's four people, there's 32people, and you have 50% of them
(13:05):
changing every other week.
You have to reschedule 16people.
It slows down the coaches.
It messes up the schedule.
And then you have two and one,five and another, and we try to
keep it at four.
So us kind of like honing in onthe communication on the front
end of what's expected.
So we rewrote that whole kind oflike onboarding process.
Hey, when you sign up for thesemis and we assign people a
(13:26):
specific time, I know there'ssome gyms that kind of like let
people jump around with that.
We try to keep it in a specifictime because we know that when
people are accountable to time,they get the better result.
They also are onboard longer.
And if they need to make thatadjustment, it's once every six
weeks.
SPEAKER_01 (13:40):
So they sign up for a block of six weeks.
I'm coming at Tuesday at 10 a.m.
and I can make one adjustment insix weeks.
SPEAKER_02 (13:47):
Yep.
And if they do one adjustment,totally cool.
If they do two, they end upsitting down with a goal review
for us if it's three they mostlikely need to be in a different
program doesn't fit with whatwe're doing but the biggest
bottleneck was like it was acombination of like the
scheduling the communication onthe front end even like the
cancellation because some peoplelike we didn't really set a
clear expectation of hey likewhen if you don't want to do
(14:08):
this thing again how long do youneed to give us right so like we
had a few people like two daysbefore like hey I'm not going to
renew this thing but they
SPEAKER_01 (14:15):
were
SPEAKER_02 (14:15):
already members of the gym so we're not going to
hold them to like the same 28day cancellation policy because
the thing is six weeks long.
So we came up with, they have togive us 14 days notification
because our coaches startprogramming 10 days out for the
next session.
So basically what that lookslike is the member says, no, I'm
not doing it.
(14:36):
And then we don't have to worryabout programming.
If they don't, 10 days out, thecoach starts programming.
Programming gets reviewed andapproved.
And then this way, the week of,everything gets printed up.
They still get it on a sheet.
We don't do the onlineprogramming.
I'm not a huge fan of it becausethen people feel like they can
kind of just do it wherever theywant with access to it.
I like the physical piece of itwhere they write down and take
(14:56):
notes on it.
But refining that process togrow from eight hours to 14
hours, it wasn't just merefining it.
It was like me creating thebuy-in with my staff we sat down
for six to eight weeks everyweek for about an hour and like
they thought I was nuts likejust hammering like beating a
fucking horse to death and theywere they got it after the point
(15:17):
I'm like the reason why you guysare growing now is because we
did the work 12 months ago whichis again two brain has allowed
me to see those things withworking with Anastasia and with
Dan so I can understand likewhat that path looks like and
help me get through thosebottlenecks that I wouldn't have
seen on my own
SPEAKER_01 (15:33):
and that's exactly it a mentor will show you the
short path that involves nomistakes or one very small
mistake that you just oh okaywe'll change that and upgrade
that it whereas you figure itout on your own you hit all
those potholes hard and you arein major trouble i know it
because i did it but a mentorcan show you this easy way so
book a call to talk to a mentorvia the link in the show notes
if you want to get the easybutton uh when someone misses a
(15:56):
class how do you handle thatbecause i know what happens in
some of these things wherepeople say they paid for the
session they got the block iwant to reschedule and like do
you carry things over how do youhandle a cancellation or missed
SPEAKER_02 (16:04):
Yeah.
So if they cancel it 24 hoursahead of time, we will move that
within that one session, right?
So like, let's say like they'rescheduled for Wednesday at 5 PM.
They messaged us at Tuesday atnoon saying, Hey, I need to push
it.
We kind of have like, at thispoint, because we have so many
sessions have like a flexsession on Saturday or Friday.
We're like, we can kind of havea little bit of leeway with
that.
And the coaches know becausewe've seen the data, what's
(16:26):
going to happen with this stuff.
So In terms of if it's in that24-hour window, they lose that
piece.
We have to hold that level ofaccountability for our members
and for our staff because theycan't be running around chasing
their tail, trying to hunt downpeople at last minute.
Obviously, there are exceptions.
Someone's kid is sick.
Someone's in the hospital.
There are exceptions to thisrule.
(16:48):
I'm not saying we roll with aniron fist, but we do hold
people's feet to the fire tomake sure that they show up
because then you're taking theslot away from somebody else.
An emergency on your end doesn'tconstitute an emergency on our
end
SPEAKER_01 (17:01):
and that's the reality of business because if
you don't do that all of asudden people you know
legitimate stuff happens andthat's cool but sometimes other
stuff happens where it's likei'm running a little late i'll
just cancel the session i'llmake it up later and all of a
sudden your coach has two peoplein a slot that should have six
and then the business hasfinancial problems we've seen
that all over the place sopolicies and procedures and
communication thereof isessential to running any type of
(17:23):
business but especially afitness business and a program
like this well and then can ishare one more thing yeah yeah
go
SPEAKER_02 (17:28):
ahead I'll tell you one of the issues.
We had a coach, again, she'sgreat, trying to help a member
out and accommodating thoselast-minute changes.
A member would be like, hey, Iknow I'm at 4 today.
Can we do 4.30?
And the coach had theavailability.
Down the road, when she wentfrom PTs to semi-privates, that
flexibility wasn't thereanymore.
And because that courtesy wasalways extended, she got upset.
(17:51):
She actually canceled on us.
Because it was expected.
That was what she always did.
And it wasn't that the coach wasdoing anything wrong.
It was just that it wasn'tconsistent with what we were
able to deliver over the longterm and then we had to actually
backtrack with that client andbe like hey just so you know we
we apologize but this is whatthe procedure of what should be
happening she's back on boardnow but it definitely like took
(18:11):
a little bit of saving andfinessing on the back end and
that's why part of that is soimportant we don't realize it
till afterwards
SPEAKER_01 (18:17):
yeah if you make an exception for one then you're
probably going to make anexception for a dozen and then
also everybody and then at somepoint the expectation is there
that this is the way things runand your exception has now
become policy by default andit's not a good thing and then
any cases so again listeners getyour ducks in a row here and
roll this thing out properlydaniel purrington is our expert
who can help you do that settingyour slots and managing your
(18:37):
space so this is an interestingone daniel purrington at his gym
i think it's 650 square feet hewill run i believe it's 10
clients and two coaches in thatspace which is gnarly but you
can imagine the revenue persquare foot there is insane so
what have you got
SPEAKER_02 (18:52):
so we we have 8600 square feet in our whole gym so
it's massive it's a big gym werun class on around 3,000 square
feet of it.
We have the other 3,000 for PTs,semis, kids classes, legends
classes.
And sometimes like the legends,the kids class and the semis are
all going on at the same time inthose 3,000 square feet.
So what we have set up for oursemis is basically four squat
(19:15):
racks.
Two of them are connected with asix foot bar and then there's
about 10 feet in between.
And then two of them areconnected again by a six foot
bar.
So they all have their own likehalf rack on the back.
Everyone has kind of like theirown slot.
We liked to run the one to four.
We will run a one to five.
We don't do more than a one tofive with our space.
(19:36):
Our coaches, feel like theyreally not that they struggle
with it but like it could be abetter service with that there's
still some skills to refine umand like keep in mind like i my
staff that does this is levelthree and level two full time
like very very good at what theydo like they are world class at
it so like if you're new at thisthing and you're thrown in one
(19:56):
to four like your coaches areprobably going to drown a little
bit and by a little bit i meanprobably a lot and we also like
built out that space over timeoriginally where it was you know
three squat racks we We builtthe fourth one.
We bought the fourth one.
We put in all the racks.
We connect to the rig up top.
We've tried to develop the spaceso it looks like a premium
space.
We bought Concept2 bike ergs forthese things.
(20:18):
So we're trying to reinvest someof that money back in the
program.
So it actually stands out alittle bit from what the rest of
the gym gets with Assault bikes,Concept2 or Echo bikes,
different barbells, differentplates, newer rig setup.
It looks a lot cleaner.
And overall, if you can imaginewhat does four rig spaces look
like, maybe 40 feet and it'smaybe 10 to 15 feet out.
(20:41):
So it's not much bigger thanwhat Dan's working with in terms
of 650 square feet andgenerating$220,000 in revenue,
210, somewhere in thatneighborhood.
So again, if you're in thetighter space and you manage it
right, the other part is we alsodon't program ring muscle-ups
normally in the semis becausethat can be a specialty piece.
(21:03):
We also try to avoid sled pushesand double unders just because
they're space out.
No GHDs in there probablyeither, right?
Yeah.
I mean, we have, again, we havea little bit of play space on
the side, but we try to keep it,and this is one of the problems
we first ran into, is like theprogramming was all over the
place.
So I got some people and all theequipment wasn't there.
So I have some people going tothe other side of the gym.
I'm like, coach, you can't seewhat is going on when your
(21:27):
member is 40 feet away in thegym.
Then you have to go over thereto coach that piece, then walk
back.
I get it, but it wasn't ideal.
So that was part of the growingpants.
I'm like, man, we need to solvethis thing quick.
So we had to fix the programmingwe had to fix the space of it
and just set it up so like itwas what we needed to to
reinvest that back in there butwe did that with the profits
from what we pulled off of fromthe semi-private programming
SPEAKER_01 (21:47):
yeah so key things here you can do this in a small
space or slightly larger spacelike 3 000 like eric's got the
key though is making this spaceeither with curtains or even
just some racks or just the wayyou arrange it making it feel a
little bit different and specialand kind of elite you just can
do that you know you can do itwith just like plate trees if
you want make it feel differentyou're going to program for that
space you're not going to dowith 80-foot sled pushes, ring
(22:09):
muscle-ups over there, deadliftsover there, and some other stuff
over there.
You're keeping it clustered.
You're going to make people fitin a smaller space.
That totally works just fine.
Here is an important one.
When did you set your slots forthis?
Because Daniel has said thatmany people will say, this could
be an awesome way to fill my10-30 Thursday slot where no one
is.
SPEAKER_02 (22:27):
No, no.
That's not wise, but it seemsright.
We looked at the busiest PTtimes.
Yeah, there you go.
A lot of back-end conversationswhere I was like, hey, I have
this program.
We're launching semis.
I think you would be a reallygood fit.
what time would work best foryou.
The client, yes.
Yeah, and again, we started toget some data, like, hey, I
(22:48):
could do 4.30, I could do 5, andwe started to play with some of
these times a little bit.
Then when we launched, I knew,hey, 5 o'clock, I'm going to get
three to four people, like,right off the bat, like home
run.
So we looked at the times thatwere busiest, and then from
there, kind of were able to movesome people around.
Because even as we opened moreslots up, some people would go,
oh my gosh, I didn't know youwere going to do a Thursday at 5
(23:08):
p.m.
I'm in Monday at 4 p.m., can weswitch me over?
like totally cool, then we justhave to backfill that one.
So there's a little bit of likecheckers just being played on
the back end in terms ofscheduling.
And my two full time coacheshandle all of that.
SPEAKER_01 (23:23):
Listeners do not put these slots in God forsaken
hours that solve your problems,but not clients problems.
If you want this program towork, put it in prime time when
clients would want it.
I won't beat that to death, butthat is hard rules to start this
thing.
Do not put it at bad times.
It is not a solution for thoseproblems.
Let me ask you this.
Now you sold me how you got yourfirst clients internally, 45
(23:45):
minutes.
You filled this thing just bytalking to your current clients.
How did you, how are you gettingclients now?
Or how did you scale that up?
When did you move from internalto outside or have you?
SPEAKER_02 (23:53):
I'd probably say that when we recognized how good
the results were from theprogram, we're like, oh my gosh,
we're missing the on-ramp sideof this thing.
And that was probably prettyrecently, like this year.
SPEAKER_01 (24:05):
Yeah, so it's taken you a while to get to this
point.
SPEAKER_02 (24:07):
Yeah, it's taken us over a year and three, four
months to get to that pointwhere we're like, hey, we're
going to start doing this withexternal people.
And even the internal people, alot of them were kind of curious
about it.
And you guys recommend Bring aFriend.
So not only did we do Bring aFriend, we did Bring a Friend
Semis.
And rather than do it for justlike one slot, we do it for the
week and let them bring afriend.
They're like, well, I'm alreadya member of the gym.
(24:29):
Can we come for the bring afriend for a seminar?
Like, yeah, like we want youguys to get more fitness in.
Like, that's the point.
So a lot of people test it outand they're like, hey, this is
actually what I needed.
And we also gave a referral giftto our members that brought
friends along with them.
So we printed up like customwarlock socks and wrist wraps.
Because again, the revenue wasthere.
I would much rather reinvest itinto our members and marketing
(24:51):
dollars with them than pay payit to Zuckerberg and like the
endless pit of mediocre leadsthat we've all wanted to bash
our head in the window for.
So like it's been a reallyawesome piece where it solves
both of those problems.
SPEAKER_01 (25:05):
Eric said referral gift, not referral discount.
There is a huge difference.
Do not discount your services.
I will never tell you todiscount your services and no
one at Two Brain will tell youto do that either.
Discounts are a bad idea in allformats and gyms, but a gift,
everybody loves that and it'sbranding as Eric said.
So thank you.
of clever ways to make thesethings happen you do not have to
(25:26):
discount your services to getclients in here Now, starting
this thing off small is a greatidea.
Like I love what you said, Eric,there are demands on coaches in
this thing.
If you toss your coaches in andthey don't have one-on-one
experience and you give them sixone-on-one clients and they got
to program this and manage thesepeople and whatever, this is
much more difficult than runningone CrossFit group class where
everyone's doing variations ofthe same thing.
(25:47):
Much more difficult because youcould have a marathon runner
training over there, apowerlifter over here, a gymnast
in the middle, a general fitnessperson here.
You've got four completelydifferent things.
You have to remember theirprograms.
You've probably got fourclipboarders at least you've got
different sets and reps you'vegot different goals you've got
different personalities you havedifferent coaching styles you
cannot just toss a coach in hereand hope that they swim because
they will sink but you could dosomething like this I have a PT
(26:11):
client I have another PT clientthey kind of have some similar
goals and they kind of mightwork well together do you guys
want to try a semi-privatesession together where you're
still doing your individualprograms but you're meeting at
the same time there's a smallprice break because of this do
you want to try that for sixweeks that is a very interesting
way to start a program like thisthat allows your coaches to spin
out allows the clients to feelit out and all those other
(26:31):
things that would getoverwhelmed if you just say, I
have a six slot semi-privatetraining program for all you
people.
Coach is going into the fire andwe're coming out wounded.
Like that's not a good plan.
Eric, what do you think aboutthat?
SPEAKER_02 (26:42):
Yeah, I think that that's, I mean, that's a home
run way to do it.
Even like, even if they don'tmatch, right?
Like it's totally cool becauseeveryone's going to have their
own programming anyway.
Yep.
I'm such a fan of this thing andit's been such a game changer
for our business.
Rolling it out consistently isway more to get it right.
I looked at this as a long-termplay.
(27:03):
We weren't hurting for money.
It was one of those things wherewe need to build it right
because it's such a strongrevenue piece or it can be if we
create the buy-in.
If you open up 10 differentsessions and tell everybody that
there's all these openings now,you've opened up the floodgates
and it's no longer a premiumservice and people then just
have the Well, I know thatthere's opening at 5 p.m.
(27:24):
on Thursday.
Let me switch over to that day.
And they jump around.
But when you actually createthis thing and roll it out over
time in the demands that youneed, it's way more effective.
It's kind of like a red ropetheory, right?
We're like the things that areless available, people want more
of.
Yeah.
Guys, I'm sorry.
This thing filled up in 45minutes.
We opened up another threeslots.
Those filled up in 48 hours.
(27:45):
I want that.
So like this thing, yeah, thisthing is a hot topic.
They go, when's the next onegoing to open?
I'm like, I don't know.
When we figure it out, I got to,when would work for you?
So it allowed me to have a lotof conversations for us to go,
cool.
This next slot isn't going toopen.
We have Jojo and Sally.
They're both on board with thisone.
We just need to hunt down twomore people.
So we would open it up with twopeople in there knowing that we
(28:05):
were going to fill it over time.
But again, a lot of this camefrom internal members.
I'd probably say it's like 80%internal members, 20% external
at this point.
And most people that comeexternally, believe it or not,
do semis two to three days aweek.
SPEAKER_01 (28:23):
Whoa.
Yeah.
So I mean like, so their
SPEAKER_02 (28:24):
ARM is like 700, 800 plus bucks where they're the
ones that they know that theyreally need that.
And they come from like the PTmodel.
They're cool with the semistuff, but they're definitely
not prepared or any way readyfor group classes.
Like they will drown.
UNKNOWN (28:38):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (28:39):
It is borderline impossible to put a program like
this.
This program is a hit, but it'simpossible to put it in place if
you don't talk to your membersin introductory consultations
when they come into the gym andgoal review sessions throughout
the year.
Those things are essential.
So a link in the show notes willbe to the prescriptive model.
I would encourage you to take alook at that.
If you're not using it, get thisthing in place.
(28:59):
It is a home run.
Before even semi-private stuffcan even be considered, you get
this thing in place.
It increases revenue andretention and average revenue
per member.
It is, again, a huge home runfor gyms use that model if
you're using it you willobviously see some people who
could use more special attentionat 10 a.m on Tuesday or 5 p.m on
Wednesday and you're going tomatch them up in a group that
(29:21):
works and you're going to haveindividual programming this
thing can be sold in that formatit is a mistake to go outside
and say Hey guys, here's thisthing.
You start internally first.
And Daniel has been clear aboutthat.
So again, that's the other linkin the show notes is to the
prerequisites for this program.
So Eric, I'm going to ask you afinal question here.
I think we know the answer, butI'm going to ask you to
summarize it.
Is this program a no brainer forgym owners?
(29:42):
Why or why not?
SPEAKER_02 (29:43):
Yes, it's a, it's a no brainer for gym owners.
The, the, again, it's a triplewin, right?
Like you have a better productand result for the members.
You have more revenue and lesshours for the coaches and you
have more revenue or profit forthe business.
So like there are very few timesin my career two decades of
entrepreneurial experience thatwe see all of those things hit.
(30:04):
So it's awesome for it all tocome together and something
that's scalable.
You can grow with this thing andrun it and have people.
We've had people in semis forover 18 months.
They love this program.
The retention is longer thangroup classes.
SPEAKER_01 (30:17):
And you've gone from one class at$264 to$15,000 in
monthly revenue and over$2K inannual revenue.
SPEAKER_02 (30:25):
Yeah, I mean, we've gone up 200K in annual revenue.
We do between 15 to 22K a monthin semis.
And again, like the quality oflife that it's then provided for
our coaches, like massive.
It results for the gym members,massive.
Business for us allowed us toreinvest in stuff and do what we
need to do in order to grow thebusiness because that's what
we're passionate about.
SPEAKER_01 (30:45):
Listeners, this thing is a home run, but there
are steps to get it done right,and there are steps that can
lead you into the muck.
Definitely do it the right way.
If you want to talk about abusiness model that's perfect
for your gym that might includesemi-private training, book a
call with a mentor through thelink in the show notes.
Eric, you've opened your entirebooks and told us exactly how
your program works.
I can't thank you enough fordoing that, and our listeners
thank you also.
SPEAKER_02 (31:06):
Yeah, Mike, thanks for being on board.
I always love chatting with you.
SPEAKER_01 (31:09):
Always a pleasure.
And I always am very gratefulfor gym owners who selflessly
share their exact metrics tohelp other gym owners find the
same success.
That was Eric Zierer.
I'm Mike Workman.
And this is Run a ProfitableGym.
Thanks for watching andlistening.
Please subscribe on your way outso you don't miss a single show
just like this.
And now here's to green founderChris Cooper with a final note.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
We'll be right back.
My name is Eric Zier.
I own Warlock CrossFit.
We have added$200,000 insemi-private personal training
for our revenue number.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Whoa, that is a big number.
Semi-private training is solvinga ton of problems in gyms and
generating mountains of revenue.
Eric is your proof.
Today on What a Profitable Gym,you're going to get the exact
details of the semi-privateprogram at Warlock Athletics in
New York.
You just heard from the owner,Eric Zier.
I'm Mike Workman, and you shouldhit subscribe right now so you
do not miss a single Now,newsflash, the age of group
(00:33):
training only is at an end.
Top gyms now have severalrevenue streams, and group
training is usually just one ofthem.
And it's actually the discountoption.
PT is the premium service andthe service in between.
Semi-private training or smallgroup training, they're slightly
different.
The quick details.
Semi-private training.
In that program, one coachdelivers personalized workouts
to four to six people.
(00:54):
Can be two sometimes, but it'saround that four is a sweet
spot.
These sessions might bring inabout$240 an hour and coaches
can make way more than just$25 aclass.
It's a win for clients.
It's a win for coaches.
It's a huge win for gym owners.
Now, let's dig into the books atWarlock Athletics.
Eric, are you ready to roll?
SPEAKER_02 (01:13):
Ready to rock and roll, Mike.
Thanks for having me on board.
SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
I am pumped about this.
As always, we just chatted alittle bit before the show and
you've got some numbers andstats and so forth, so let's dig
into that.
How much does your semi-privatetraining program generate each
month and how long did it takeyou to reach this epic level?
SPEAKER_02 (01:30):
Yeah, that's a great place to start because I think a
lot of people kind of might seeit and get overwhelmed from the
start.
We generate somewhere betweenlike$15,000 to$22,000 a month in
semi-private training.
SPEAKER_01 (01:41):
Whoa, look at that.
SPEAKER_02 (01:43):
We do most of our billing on like Mondays.
So if we get a longer month andthat month hits on a Monday, we
see more revenue that month.
So that's why like there's alittle bit of fluctuation there
between the 15 and the 22,depending on what's going on.
SPEAKER_01 (01:56):
It's scaling up.
So how did that take, like whenyou started this program, what
was like, do you remember likemonth one, month seven, like
what were your early numbers inthis?
SPEAKER_02 (02:03):
Yeah.
So I, it's funny.
I remember very vividly becausewe were kind of upside down on
our numbers.
Like we were crushing groupclasses.
We had 140 hours of PT and like,we still weren't like fully
profitable.
Like we were still like fightinglike 1000 up, 2000 down, 2000
up, 1000.
And like, we were just teeteringback and forth.
(02:24):
So we looked at the semi-privatemodel and we're like, man, like,
We're having members pay apremium when some of these
members should be in aone-on-four setting.
So we started out with just onehour of semi-privates.
So just dipping a toe.
Yeah.
So I kind of had like a planwhere like we needed to just
like create enough buzz aroundit to make sure that it was
(02:45):
successful and i think that'swhere a lot of gym owners kind
of struggle and this is where ican kind of offer some insight
for everyone listening at homeis like you got to make sure you
have the conversations on theback end before just launching
this thing and really know wherethe demand is so we had 140
hours of pt a month we knew thatthere was a ton of demand from
like 4 to 6 p.m and um ibasically knew that like i had a
(03:06):
lot of back-end conversationsbut we started out with with one
hour of this thing at 66 bucksfor the hour um i put it out in
our members-only Facebook group.
I was like, hey, we're launchinga semi-private.
This is what it entails.
If you are interested, eithercomment below or shoot me a DM.
And that one session filled upin about 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01 (03:29):
And that's 66 bucks per person, right?
SPEAKER_02 (03:31):
66 bucks per person for the hour.
So we were generating$264 inrevenue.
The members were paying lessthan PT.
What's the PT rate?
the PT rate for us at the timeis still is 120.
Yeah.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (03:43):
So there, but you said they're getting their own
programs.
SPEAKER_02 (03:46):
Yeah, but they're getting, yeah, they're getting
their own programs and they'reable to like still get the
watchful eye of a coach.
Like they don't need to like, Ifeel like some of it, like,
especially with PT is not thatit's babysitting, but like,
They're some of our athletes areadvanced enough where like, they
don't need us to sit there, butHey, like, let's do a warmup
together.
Right.
So like, but they're also notgoing to warm up on their own.
So that's why like thesemi-private model is so great
(04:07):
for the client.
It's great for the coach.
But like when we started thisthing about it's coming up on
two years in September, August,September it was, it was one
class in it very quickly.
I had probably 10 to 12 peoplego, Hey, that time doesn't work
for me, but these are the othertimes that it does work.
So we started to be able topiece together very quickly
within 48, 72 hours, foursessions in that week.
(04:31):
So we were generating over$1,000of revenue.
The coaches were getting paidmore.
The members were paying less.
And what we were able to do wasalmost the same as the PT.
SPEAKER_01 (04:42):
Whoa.
So you started off with onesession.
So you're making basically$264and you've now scaled this up
to, you said 15,000 a month.
Is that what I heard?
SPEAKER_02 (04:51):
Yeah.
15,000 a month is the low end.
SPEAKER_01 (04:54):
And that's taken you for two years, essentially.
SPEAKER_02 (04:56):
Yeah.
We kind of hit like a fewdifferent levels of this thing.
So like one to four sessions wasfine.
When we grew it to around eightsessions, we started to hit some
different bottlenecks andstruggles in terms of like
scheduling, rescheduling people,programming, the coach's
capacity.
We're like, we kind of need tolike...
not put it on pause, but likekeep it where it was for a
second, just to control some ofthose bottlenecks.
(05:18):
So we could then scale it to thenext level, which was around
like that, like 12 to 14sessions a week.
And then we refined it again andwe ended up where right now
we're around like 17 to 20sessions a week, I believe.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Okay.
So listeners, 260 some dollarsper hour in these sessions, but
a couple of things that arereally important here is that
Eric did not just throw thisthing out and say, we're
launching a giant semi-privateprogram and the slots are at 10
30 on Tuesday.
and I don't care if you likethat slot.
There was a bunch of steps thathe followed and I'm going to put
a link in the show notes here toDaniel Purrington's show where
(05:52):
he talks about the exactprerequisites for this program.
He talks about exactly what Ericsaid.
He did not, you don't just throwthis thing out.
You have to have a prescriptivemodel in place so you're talking
to clients and start to knowtheir goals and tell them, you
know, here's what the solutionis.
You have to have internalcontent marketing and external
content marketing so that youcan tell people what this
(06:12):
program is.
Eric said he posted in hisFacebook group he's telling
people about something new youhave to have that messaging in
place and then from there youhave to have the space and you
have to have uh coaching coacheswho can run this program because
it's not easy right it's verydifficult to manage six people
once you have to have high levelcoaches you have to have space
for it obviously and then you'vegot to have time slots so
there's a lot of stuff that goesin here and the final thing is
(06:34):
that when daniel said isessential you do not try selling
this to outside people first youmarket it internally right away
and this is a huge key thatpeople will get backwards listen
to that show i I won't get intothe details here because we're
digging into Eric's exactprogram, but do click that link
in the show notes for yourprerequisites for that program.
So tell me what you pay coachesin this model because there will
(06:54):
be some coaches listening and Iwant them to see what's
possible.
SPEAKER_02 (06:57):
Yeah, so right now we end up paying them.
We kind of do it.
It's still a four-ninths model,but we do their normal hourly
rate plus a commission.
So rather than just do like,hey, you get four-ninths of it,
we make sure that that base payis there for them.
It's just easier for us on thebackend business-wise.
We use MindBody as our software.
(07:18):
And then from there, we've builtin commissions for that.
So the commissions rangeanywhere from 10% up to 25% for
that session, depending on theexpertise, the coach, and all
that kind of stuff that's goinginto it.
SPEAKER_01 (07:31):
Safe to say they're making more than they would for
a one-class group session?
SPEAKER_02 (07:34):
Yeah, so they're making somewhere between$53 and
$96 an hour.
SPEAKER_01 (07:38):
Yeah, so those are like livable wages where you can
actually support a family andbuy a home on that kind of
thing, whereas$25 a class Asmany coaches know, that runs
into a wall pretty soon.
SPEAKER_02 (07:47):
Yeah, it's been game-changing.
I mean, we have two coaches thatare probably going to break or
be right around$100,000 thisyear.
One that's going to smashthrough that.
But it's cool to have that pieceand know that our members are
getting exactly what they need.
We've never had more PRs in ourgym.
It is working across the board.
It is aces.
SPEAKER_01 (08:06):
Yeah, and that's what I said.
It's a win for the gym owner.
You're taking in more revenue.
The coaches, some of them makingsix figures.
You're not the firstsemi-private gym owner who's
told me that their coaches aremaking six figures now, which is
like a good wage for a coachwhereas you know 40 classes a
week at$25 a class you run intothat wall and you can't do more
and you burn out and then youbecome a firefighter real estate
(08:26):
agent that's a problem you knowso this is like and it's also a
win for the clients becausethey're getting personalized
program tons of attention butexactly like you said I did
personal training and I standthere after, you know, okay, we
did the set.
We did the tip.
We are going to kill the time inbetween by talking about the
baseball game and some otherstuff.
And there's nothing wrong withbuilding that client
relationship.
And some clients want to pay forthat one-on-one time.
(08:48):
However, I could also give you,Eric, you know what?
I just need to pull yourshoulders back in that next
lift.
And we're going to hit that inthree minutes.
I'm going to move to the nextclient, talk about her deadlift
and move to the next client,talk about his running form.
And you circle around andeveryone gets the exact amount
of attention without some of thefluff in between.
And clients get great resultsbecause personal attention is
better than group attention.
Group classes still get results,but it is your discount option.
(09:09):
Let's talk about that.
You talked about why did youcreate this revenue stream?
You covered a little bit ofthat, but hit me with just
again, the reason why you didthis and what were the greatest
challenges to getting it inplace?
SPEAKER_02 (09:20):
Yeah.
So we were kind of back andforth with like profitable, not
profitable, profitable, notprofitable.
And we were crushing PT.
And like, we were a little bitupside down in our numbers where
we were overpaying our coaches.
We weren't charging enough.
The coach was getting morecommission.
I'm like, Meanwhile, like we'retrying to cover 140 hours of PT.
I'm like, we just don't haveenough staff.
So like the payroll has gone up.
(09:40):
The commissions have gone up.
The members are getting betterresults, but the business wasn't
where it was supposed to be.
So we had to really look at thisthing in terms of why we did
that.
Like, we knew that it was a winfor the client.
It was a win for the coach andit was a win for the business.
Like very, very few things inbusiness.
And I've owned my affiliate for11 years and I've been doing,
(10:02):
I've owned my own business foralmost 25 at this point.
Like it is very unlikely you seea win, win, win across the
board.
And as soon as we saw thatmodel, I was like, man, like
this is, this is where we needto go to.
We've also used it.
And this is a little bitdifferent too.
Like we've also used it as partof like our on-ramp program.
So like we've built it up withinour gym members where our gym
(10:23):
members do it we actually havein terms of stats we do pretty
well in the open we have apretty high participation rate
like we still do it eight of ourtop ten males did semi-privates
nine of our top ten females didsemi-privates so this is
performance yeah so it'sperformance based too and it's
not that we're like a hugecompetitive gym but like the
(10:44):
reason why people are doingfitness is they want to see
improvement they want to getbetter and we need to lay out
that path for them but when youshow the statistics and I go
through with my members and say,hey, by the way, if you want to
be a big dog in the gym, thesepeople are getting results the
fastest.
Top 9 out of 10 are doing semis.
People go, oh.
That's a part of it.
And to go into on-ramp, wenoticed that going from
(11:08):
one-on-one training intoclasses, not always the best.
And some people can't afford thePT side of things.
So we've literally streamlinedit so it goes one-on-one and
then they go into training twosemis a week and a class.
And then they've at least hadenough exposure after six weeks
of like, hey, do I like semis?
Do I want to stay with semis?
Do I also want to do classes?
(11:29):
Where do I fit with this thing?
But it also kind ofpre-qualifies in terms of how
we're looking to grow thebusiness with average revenue
per member.
So it kind of hits all of thosepieces of what we want while
still getting people exactlywhat they need and keeping it in
a reasonable budget.
SPEAKER_01 (11:43):
Yeah, and you hit on a couple of things.
Like I tried to solve thecompetitive athlete problem with
low-priced open gym that was anunmitigated disaster.
It almost sank my business.
if you have special interestgroups people who want to do
their own thing or get a specialattention or do certain things
semi-private training is a greatway to supply it to them it's
way better than$20 to add onopen gym in which they take up
(12:04):
all your barbell spread chalkeverywhere and have 16 different
things going on at once take allthe space that's a huge problem
another two brain gym I believeit's in the Bay Area I think
they were running something like30 PT sessions one-on-one the
coach was max had no time or theowner was max had no time to run
his or to build his businessbecause he's working in it he's
now gone down to 10 10 or 11 or12 three-on-one sessions.
(12:26):
So, instead of serving 30clients in 30 hours, he's
serving 30 clients in 10 hours.
He's taking Wednesdays off,hanging out with his kids and
he's making I think the numberis 84% more revenue in this
model.
SPEAKER_02 (12:38):
So, that's a really interesting thing.
UNKNOWN (12:40):
Talk to me about the biggest challenge.
What was the biggest hiccup forthis thing?
SPEAKER_02 (12:43):
Yeah, I think the biggest hiccup came actually
like from that like eight to 14where like we started we had to
like figure out kind of like theBecause we had a bunch of
sessions open so like we onlyallow one switch every six weeks
in terms of scheduling becauseif you have Let's just say
there's four people, there's 32people, and you have 50% of them
(13:05):
changing every other week.
You have to reschedule 16people.
It slows down the coaches.
It messes up the schedule.
And then you have two and one,five and another, and we try to
keep it at four.
So us kind of like honing in onthe communication on the front
end of what's expected.
So we rewrote that whole kind oflike onboarding process.
Hey, when you sign up for thesemis and we assign people a
(13:26):
specific time, I know there'ssome gyms that kind of like let
people jump around with that.
We try to keep it in a specifictime because we know that when
people are accountable to time,they get the better result.
They also are onboard longer.
And if they need to make thatadjustment, it's once every six
weeks.
SPEAKER_01 (13:40):
So they sign up for a block of six weeks.
I'm coming at Tuesday at 10 a.m.
and I can make one adjustment insix weeks.
SPEAKER_02 (13:47):
Yep.
And if they do one adjustment,totally cool.
If they do two, they end upsitting down with a goal review
for us if it's three they mostlikely need to be in a different
program doesn't fit with whatwe're doing but the biggest
bottleneck was like it was acombination of like the
scheduling the communication onthe front end even like the
cancellation because some peoplelike we didn't really set a
clear expectation of hey likewhen if you don't want to do
(14:08):
this thing again how long do youneed to give us right so like we
had a few people like two daysbefore like hey I'm not going to
renew this thing but they
SPEAKER_01 (14:15):
were
SPEAKER_02 (14:15):
already members of the gym so we're not going to
hold them to like the same 28day cancellation policy because
the thing is six weeks long.
So we came up with, they have togive us 14 days notification
because our coaches startprogramming 10 days out for the
next session.
So basically what that lookslike is the member says, no, I'm
not doing it.
(14:36):
And then we don't have to worryabout programming.
If they don't, 10 days out, thecoach starts programming.
Programming gets reviewed andapproved.
And then this way, the week of,everything gets printed up.
They still get it on a sheet.
We don't do the onlineprogramming.
I'm not a huge fan of it becausethen people feel like they can
kind of just do it wherever theywant with access to it.
I like the physical piece of itwhere they write down and take
(14:56):
notes on it.
But refining that process togrow from eight hours to 14
hours, it wasn't just merefining it.
It was like me creating thebuy-in with my staff we sat down
for six to eight weeks everyweek for about an hour and like
they thought I was nuts likejust hammering like beating a
fucking horse to death and theywere they got it after the point
(15:17):
I'm like the reason why you guysare growing now is because we
did the work 12 months ago whichis again two brain has allowed
me to see those things withworking with Anastasia and with
Dan so I can understand likewhat that path looks like and
help me get through thosebottlenecks that I wouldn't have
seen on my own
SPEAKER_01 (15:33):
and that's exactly it a mentor will show you the
short path that involves nomistakes or one very small
mistake that you just oh okaywe'll change that and upgrade
that it whereas you figure itout on your own you hit all
those potholes hard and you arein major trouble i know it
because i did it but a mentorcan show you this easy way so
book a call to talk to a mentorvia the link in the show notes
if you want to get the easybutton uh when someone misses a
(15:56):
class how do you handle thatbecause i know what happens in
some of these things wherepeople say they paid for the
session they got the block iwant to reschedule and like do
you carry things over how do youhandle a cancellation or missed
SPEAKER_02 (16:04):
Yeah.
So if they cancel it 24 hoursahead of time, we will move that
within that one session, right?
So like, let's say like they'rescheduled for Wednesday at 5 PM.
They messaged us at Tuesday atnoon saying, Hey, I need to push
it.
We kind of have like, at thispoint, because we have so many
sessions have like a flexsession on Saturday or Friday.
We're like, we can kind of havea little bit of leeway with
that.
And the coaches know becausewe've seen the data, what's
(16:26):
going to happen with this stuff.
So In terms of if it's in that24-hour window, they lose that
piece.
We have to hold that level ofaccountability for our members
and for our staff because theycan't be running around chasing
their tail, trying to hunt downpeople at last minute.
Obviously, there are exceptions.
Someone's kid is sick.
Someone's in the hospital.
There are exceptions to thisrule.
(16:48):
I'm not saying we roll with aniron fist, but we do hold
people's feet to the fire tomake sure that they show up
because then you're taking theslot away from somebody else.
An emergency on your end doesn'tconstitute an emergency on our
end
SPEAKER_01 (17:01):
and that's the reality of business because if
you don't do that all of asudden people you know
legitimate stuff happens andthat's cool but sometimes other
stuff happens where it's likei'm running a little late i'll
just cancel the session i'llmake it up later and all of a
sudden your coach has two peoplein a slot that should have six
and then the business hasfinancial problems we've seen
that all over the place sopolicies and procedures and
communication thereof isessential to running any type of
(17:23):
business but especially afitness business and a program
like this well and then can ishare one more thing yeah yeah
go
SPEAKER_02 (17:28):
ahead I'll tell you one of the issues.
We had a coach, again, she'sgreat, trying to help a member
out and accommodating thoselast-minute changes.
A member would be like, hey, Iknow I'm at 4 today.
Can we do 4.30?
And the coach had theavailability.
Down the road, when she wentfrom PTs to semi-privates, that
flexibility wasn't thereanymore.
And because that courtesy wasalways extended, she got upset.
(17:51):
She actually canceled on us.
Because it was expected.
That was what she always did.
And it wasn't that the coach wasdoing anything wrong.
It was just that it wasn'tconsistent with what we were
able to deliver over the longterm and then we had to actually
backtrack with that client andbe like hey just so you know we
we apologize but this is whatthe procedure of what should be
happening she's back on boardnow but it definitely like took
(18:11):
a little bit of saving andfinessing on the back end and
that's why part of that is soimportant we don't realize it
till afterwards
SPEAKER_01 (18:17):
yeah if you make an exception for one then you're
probably going to make anexception for a dozen and then
also everybody and then at somepoint the expectation is there
that this is the way things runand your exception has now
become policy by default andit's not a good thing and then
any cases so again listeners getyour ducks in a row here and
roll this thing out properlydaniel purrington is our expert
who can help you do that settingyour slots and managing your
(18:37):
space so this is an interestingone daniel purrington at his gym
i think it's 650 square feet hewill run i believe it's 10
clients and two coaches in thatspace which is gnarly but you
can imagine the revenue persquare foot there is insane so
what have you got
SPEAKER_02 (18:52):
so we we have 8600 square feet in our whole gym so
it's massive it's a big gym werun class on around 3,000 square
feet of it.
We have the other 3,000 for PTs,semis, kids classes, legends
classes.
And sometimes like the legends,the kids class and the semis are
all going on at the same time inthose 3,000 square feet.
So what we have set up for oursemis is basically four squat
(19:15):
racks.
Two of them are connected with asix foot bar and then there's
about 10 feet in between.
And then two of them areconnected again by a six foot
bar.
So they all have their own likehalf rack on the back.
Everyone has kind of like theirown slot.
We liked to run the one to four.
We will run a one to five.
We don't do more than a one tofive with our space.
(19:36):
Our coaches, feel like theyreally not that they struggle
with it but like it could be abetter service with that there's
still some skills to refine umand like keep in mind like i my
staff that does this is levelthree and level two full time
like very very good at what theydo like they are world class at
it so like if you're new at thisthing and you're thrown in one
(19:56):
to four like your coaches areprobably going to drown a little
bit and by a little bit i meanprobably a lot and we also like
built out that space over timeoriginally where it was you know
three squat racks we We builtthe fourth one.
We bought the fourth one.
We put in all the racks.
We connect to the rig up top.
We've tried to develop the spaceso it looks like a premium
space.
We bought Concept2 bike ergs forthese things.
(20:18):
So we're trying to reinvest someof that money back in the
program.
So it actually stands out alittle bit from what the rest of
the gym gets with Assault bikes,Concept2 or Echo bikes,
different barbells, differentplates, newer rig setup.
It looks a lot cleaner.
And overall, if you can imaginewhat does four rig spaces look
like, maybe 40 feet and it'smaybe 10 to 15 feet out.
(20:41):
So it's not much bigger thanwhat Dan's working with in terms
of 650 square feet andgenerating$220,000 in revenue,
210, somewhere in thatneighborhood.
So again, if you're in thetighter space and you manage it
right, the other part is we alsodon't program ring muscle-ups
normally in the semis becausethat can be a specialty piece.
(21:03):
We also try to avoid sled pushesand double unders just because
they're space out.
No GHDs in there probablyeither, right?
Yeah.
I mean, we have, again, we havea little bit of play space on
the side, but we try to keep it,and this is one of the problems
we first ran into, is like theprogramming was all over the
place.
So I got some people and all theequipment wasn't there.
So I have some people going tothe other side of the gym.
I'm like, coach, you can't seewhat is going on when your
(21:27):
member is 40 feet away in thegym.
Then you have to go over thereto coach that piece, then walk
back.
I get it, but it wasn't ideal.
So that was part of the growingpants.
I'm like, man, we need to solvethis thing quick.
So we had to fix the programmingwe had to fix the space of it
and just set it up so like itwas what we needed to to
reinvest that back in there butwe did that with the profits
from what we pulled off of fromthe semi-private programming
SPEAKER_01 (21:47):
yeah so key things here you can do this in a small
space or slightly larger spacelike 3 000 like eric's got the
key though is making this spaceeither with curtains or even
just some racks or just the wayyou arrange it making it feel a
little bit different and specialand kind of elite you just can
do that you know you can do itwith just like plate trees if
you want make it feel differentyou're going to program for that
space you're not going to dowith 80-foot sled pushes, ring
(22:09):
muscle-ups over there, deadliftsover there, and some other stuff
over there.
You're keeping it clustered.
You're going to make people fitin a smaller space.
That totally works just fine.
Here is an important one.
When did you set your slots forthis?
Because Daniel has said thatmany people will say, this could
be an awesome way to fill my10-30 Thursday slot where no one
is.
SPEAKER_02 (22:27):
No, no.
That's not wise, but it seemsright.
We looked at the busiest PTtimes.
Yeah, there you go.
A lot of back-end conversationswhere I was like, hey, I have
this program.
We're launching semis.
I think you would be a reallygood fit.
what time would work best foryou.
The client, yes.
Yeah, and again, we started toget some data, like, hey, I
(22:48):
could do 4.30, I could do 5, andwe started to play with some of
these times a little bit.
Then when we launched, I knew,hey, 5 o'clock, I'm going to get
three to four people, like,right off the bat, like home
run.
So we looked at the times thatwere busiest, and then from
there, kind of were able to movesome people around.
Because even as we opened moreslots up, some people would go,
oh my gosh, I didn't know youwere going to do a Thursday at 5
(23:08):
p.m.
I'm in Monday at 4 p.m., can weswitch me over?
like totally cool, then we justhave to backfill that one.
So there's a little bit of likecheckers just being played on
the back end in terms ofscheduling.
And my two full time coacheshandle all of that.
SPEAKER_01 (23:23):
Listeners do not put these slots in God forsaken
hours that solve your problems,but not clients problems.
If you want this program towork, put it in prime time when
clients would want it.
I won't beat that to death, butthat is hard rules to start this
thing.
Do not put it at bad times.
It is not a solution for thoseproblems.
Let me ask you this.
Now you sold me how you got yourfirst clients internally, 45
(23:45):
minutes.
You filled this thing just bytalking to your current clients.
How did you, how are you gettingclients now?
Or how did you scale that up?
When did you move from internalto outside or have you?
SPEAKER_02 (23:53):
I'd probably say that when we recognized how good
the results were from theprogram, we're like, oh my gosh,
we're missing the on-ramp sideof this thing.
And that was probably prettyrecently, like this year.
SPEAKER_01 (24:05):
Yeah, so it's taken you a while to get to this
point.
SPEAKER_02 (24:07):
Yeah, it's taken us over a year and three, four
months to get to that pointwhere we're like, hey, we're
going to start doing this withexternal people.
And even the internal people, alot of them were kind of curious
about it.
And you guys recommend Bring aFriend.
So not only did we do Bring aFriend, we did Bring a Friend
Semis.
And rather than do it for justlike one slot, we do it for the
week and let them bring afriend.
They're like, well, I'm alreadya member of the gym.
(24:29):
Can we come for the bring afriend for a seminar?
Like, yeah, like we want youguys to get more fitness in.
Like, that's the point.
So a lot of people test it outand they're like, hey, this is
actually what I needed.
And we also gave a referral giftto our members that brought
friends along with them.
So we printed up like customwarlock socks and wrist wraps.
Because again, the revenue wasthere.
I would much rather reinvest itinto our members and marketing
(24:51):
dollars with them than pay payit to Zuckerberg and like the
endless pit of mediocre leadsthat we've all wanted to bash
our head in the window for.
So like it's been a reallyawesome piece where it solves
both of those problems.
SPEAKER_01 (25:05):
Eric said referral gift, not referral discount.
There is a huge difference.
Do not discount your services.
I will never tell you todiscount your services and no
one at Two Brain will tell youto do that either.
Discounts are a bad idea in allformats and gyms, but a gift,
everybody loves that and it'sbranding as Eric said.
So thank you.
of clever ways to make thesethings happen you do not have to
(25:26):
discount your services to getclients in here Now, starting
this thing off small is a greatidea.
Like I love what you said, Eric,there are demands on coaches in
this thing.
If you toss your coaches in andthey don't have one-on-one
experience and you give them sixone-on-one clients and they got
to program this and manage thesepeople and whatever, this is
much more difficult than runningone CrossFit group class where
everyone's doing variations ofthe same thing.
(25:47):
Much more difficult because youcould have a marathon runner
training over there, apowerlifter over here, a gymnast
in the middle, a general fitnessperson here.
You've got four completelydifferent things.
You have to remember theirprograms.
You've probably got fourclipboarders at least you've got
different sets and reps you'vegot different goals you've got
different personalities you havedifferent coaching styles you
cannot just toss a coach in hereand hope that they swim because
they will sink but you could dosomething like this I have a PT
(26:11):
client I have another PT clientthey kind of have some similar
goals and they kind of mightwork well together do you guys
want to try a semi-privatesession together where you're
still doing your individualprograms but you're meeting at
the same time there's a smallprice break because of this do
you want to try that for sixweeks that is a very interesting
way to start a program like thisthat allows your coaches to spin
out allows the clients to feelit out and all those other
(26:31):
things that would getoverwhelmed if you just say, I
have a six slot semi-privatetraining program for all you
people.
Coach is going into the fire andwe're coming out wounded.
Like that's not a good plan.
Eric, what do you think aboutthat?
SPEAKER_02 (26:42):
Yeah, I think that that's, I mean, that's a home
run way to do it.
Even like, even if they don'tmatch, right?
Like it's totally cool becauseeveryone's going to have their
own programming anyway.
Yep.
I'm such a fan of this thing andit's been such a game changer
for our business.
Rolling it out consistently isway more to get it right.
I looked at this as a long-termplay.
(27:03):
We weren't hurting for money.
It was one of those things wherewe need to build it right
because it's such a strongrevenue piece or it can be if we
create the buy-in.
If you open up 10 differentsessions and tell everybody that
there's all these openings now,you've opened up the floodgates
and it's no longer a premiumservice and people then just
have the Well, I know thatthere's opening at 5 p.m.
(27:24):
on Thursday.
Let me switch over to that day.
And they jump around.
But when you actually createthis thing and roll it out over
time in the demands that youneed, it's way more effective.
It's kind of like a red ropetheory, right?
We're like the things that areless available, people want more
of.
Yeah.
Guys, I'm sorry.
This thing filled up in 45minutes.
We opened up another threeslots.
Those filled up in 48 hours.
(27:45):
I want that.
So like this thing, yeah, thisthing is a hot topic.
They go, when's the next onegoing to open?
I'm like, I don't know.
When we figure it out, I got to,when would work for you?
So it allowed me to have a lotof conversations for us to go,
cool.
This next slot isn't going toopen.
We have Jojo and Sally.
They're both on board with thisone.
We just need to hunt down twomore people.
So we would open it up with twopeople in there knowing that we
(28:05):
were going to fill it over time.
But again, a lot of this camefrom internal members.
I'd probably say it's like 80%internal members, 20% external
at this point.
And most people that comeexternally, believe it or not,
do semis two to three days aweek.
SPEAKER_01 (28:23):
Whoa.
Yeah.
So I mean like, so their
SPEAKER_02 (28:24):
ARM is like 700, 800 plus bucks where they're the
ones that they know that theyreally need that.
And they come from like the PTmodel.
They're cool with the semistuff, but they're definitely
not prepared or any way readyfor group classes.
Like they will drown.
UNKNOWN (28:38):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (28:39):
It is borderline impossible to put a program like
this.
This program is a hit, but it'simpossible to put it in place if
you don't talk to your membersin introductory consultations
when they come into the gym andgoal review sessions throughout
the year.
Those things are essential.
So a link in the show notes willbe to the prescriptive model.
I would encourage you to take alook at that.
If you're not using it, get thisthing in place.
(28:59):
It is a home run.
Before even semi-private stuffcan even be considered, you get
this thing in place.
It increases revenue andretention and average revenue
per member.
It is, again, a huge home runfor gyms use that model if
you're using it you willobviously see some people who
could use more special attentionat 10 a.m on Tuesday or 5 p.m on
Wednesday and you're going tomatch them up in a group that
(29:21):
works and you're going to haveindividual programming this
thing can be sold in that formatit is a mistake to go outside
and say Hey guys, here's thisthing.
You start internally first.
And Daniel has been clear aboutthat.
So again, that's the other linkin the show notes is to the
prerequisites for this program.
So Eric, I'm going to ask you afinal question here.
I think we know the answer, butI'm going to ask you to
summarize it.
Is this program a no brainer forgym owners?
(29:42):
Why or why not?
SPEAKER_02 (29:43):
Yes, it's a, it's a no brainer for gym owners.
The, the, again, it's a triplewin, right?
Like you have a better productand result for the members.
You have more revenue and lesshours for the coaches and you
have more revenue or profit forthe business.
So like there are very few timesin my career two decades of
entrepreneurial experience thatwe see all of those things hit.
(30:04):
So it's awesome for it all tocome together and something
that's scalable.
You can grow with this thing andrun it and have people.
We've had people in semis forover 18 months.
They love this program.
The retention is longer thangroup classes.
SPEAKER_01 (30:17):
And you've gone from one class at$264 to$15,000 in
monthly revenue and over$2K inannual revenue.
SPEAKER_02 (30:25):
Yeah, I mean, we've gone up 200K in annual revenue.
We do between 15 to 22K a monthin semis.
And again, like the quality oflife that it's then provided for
our coaches, like massive.
It results for the gym members,massive.
Business for us allowed us toreinvest in stuff and do what we
need to do in order to grow thebusiness because that's what
we're passionate about.
SPEAKER_01 (30:45):
Listeners, this thing is a home run, but there
are steps to get it done right,and there are steps that can
lead you into the muck.
Definitely do it the right way.
If you want to talk about abusiness model that's perfect
for your gym that might includesemi-private training, book a
call with a mentor through thelink in the show notes.
Eric, you've opened your entirebooks and told us exactly how
your program works.
I can't thank you enough fordoing that, and our listeners
thank you also.
SPEAKER_02 (31:06):
Yeah, Mike, thanks for being on board.
I always love chatting with you.
SPEAKER_01 (31:09):
Always a pleasure.
And I always am very gratefulfor gym owners who selflessly
share their exact metrics tohelp other gym owners find the
same success.
That was Eric Zierer.
I'm Mike Workman.
And this is Run a ProfitableGym.
Thanks for watching andlistening.
Please subscribe on your way outso you don't miss a single show
just like this.
And now here's to green founderChris Cooper with a final note.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
We'll be right back.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.