December 1, 2025 • 42 mins
A year from now, your gym will be better or worse. That is a hard truth.
And “better” doesn’t happen by accident. It only happens if you, the CEO, choose a direction, set priorities and execute today.
To help you thrive next year, Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper shares the exact annual plan he's using at his gym, Catalyst. It's 12 months of simple, battle-tested activities that will:
✅ Improve retention.
✅ Produce leads and new clients.
✅ Generate revenue.
✅ Boost average revenue per member.
✅ Reduce stress.
✅ Inspire and retain staff.
✅ Put more cash in your personal bank account.
Customize Coop's plan or use it verbatim. But get something in place right now so you control your destiny in 2026.
To get Coop's "Essential 12-Month Gym-Building Plan for 2026"—including a customizable event calendar—use the link below to send him a DM through our Gym Owners United group.
Links
👉 Message Coop here: Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:01 - Intro
3:43 - January, February, March
14:32 - April, May, June
27:17 - July, August, September
35:09 - October, November, December
40:22 - Grow your gym in 2026
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:03):
It's almost the end of 2025, and hopefully it has been
a record-breaking year for you,like it has for me.
I can remember though when theyears were not that great.
And particularly, I canremember this one year where it
was August 2009 and I had therent coming due and I had it was
like a three-pay month and Ihad to pay my property taxes the
same weekend and I hadn't beenpaid.
(00:24):
It was just kind of thisperfect storm of expenses.
And I said to myself, man, if Ihave to live through this
August 2009 again, I'm nevergoing to do it.
I'm going to get out of thebusiness.
And then I quickly realizedthat the only way to not be
repeating this problem was tomake a plan for the next year to
make sure that I didn't havethese big dips in revenues and
all these, you know, trifecta ofERT happening to me.
(00:46):
That means ever since then,I've made an annual plan.
And for the last few years,I've been sharing my annual plan
for my gym with everybody.
And that's what I'm here to dotoday.
So I'm Chris Cooper.
I'm the founder of Two BrainBusiness.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And our mission is to help10,000 gyms become successful.
Part of being successful in thefuture, or even just changing
your future, is to plan for it.
(01:07):
And so I've got this brand newguide that you can get from me.
I'm going to show it to you.
You can just go togymownersunited.com.
That's a Facebook group.
You find me in that group.
You say, Coop, can I pleasehave the annual plan?
And I'm just going to give youthis guide.
Today I'm going to walk youthrough it and I'm going to show
you some of the tools that weuse within TubeBrain, our
mentorship practice, to help thegym owners who are inside the
Two Brain family too.
(01:28):
So, first off, here's theguide.
And you can use this a coupleof different ways.
You can use this as a template,you know, or you can use it
verbatim.
You can copy exactly what's inthere.
I was trying to be as specificas I possibly could when we were
creating this this year so thatyou could just use the default
setting on every single month.
If you follow this plan and youexecute well on it, your gym
(01:49):
will be better a year from nowthan it is today.
And that's the question wealways have to be asking
ourselves as gym owners.
Is our gym better today than itwas a year ago?
And if it's not, well, thatmeans unfortunately it's on us
as the CEO to change things for2026.
The good news is you can do it.
I'm going to show you thestep-by-step plan that I have
for my gym for 2026.
You can copy that.
(02:10):
I've left some gaps here thatyou can fill in.
You can scratch out what I'mdoing and put in something else.
What's most important though isthat you repeat the most
important things over and overand that you don't neglect
anything.
So you're never walking intoDecember 2026 with no plan, no
idea what to do.
You know, you're just likecombing the podcast archives for
(02:31):
some new ideas.
In fact, what I actually doevery year is I print this off
with exactly what I'm going tobe doing and I stick it on a
wall behind me in my gym.
That way I always know what'scoming up and what I need to be
thinking about to keep executingon this plan and keep growing
my gym.
You know, the most challengingpart of the year for most gym
owners is right now.
And according to our state ofthe industry metrics, which is
(02:54):
the biggest data set in theindustry, you know, right now,
November is when you've got thefewest leads coming in, which
translates into fewerappointments in December and
fewer sales in December.
You know, if you build thisplan today, you can actually add
December 2025 to this.
It's not too late, and generatesome revenue or pull some
revenue from January and collectit earlier to get you through
(03:14):
that cash flow slump.
But most importantly, you'renot going to even have that cash
flow slump next year if you dothis stuff.
Okay.
We do an annual plan witheverybody inside the two-brain
family, all thousand gyms.
They do this one-on-one everyyear because we want to make
sure that they're always growingand growing and growing, even
when they're no longer in ourmentorship program, that they
know and they have the skills tokeep doing this on their own
(03:36):
too.
So here's the guide.
And again, if you want to getit, I'm going to walk through
step by step.
I'm going to tell you what allof these different things mean.
I'm going to go month by month.
If you want to copy this guide,you just send me a DM on
Facebook or even on Instagram atthe TwoBrain Business account,
and I'll get it to you.
So let's start with January.
One of the really importantthings that we all need to do
every year is audit ourmarketing funnels.
(03:57):
And once a year is the bareminimum.
If you can do this quarterly,even better.
What you want to do is sketchout your funnel for referrals.
Then you want to sketch outyour funnel for organic social
media.
You want to sketch out yourfunnel for content.
You want to sketch out yourfunnel for paid ads.
And you want to go through eachstep in order and say, like,
okay, how am I generating leads?
(04:18):
How well am I converting thoseleads?
And then how often are thoseleads signing up?
Now, for clients in TwoBrain,this is very step by step, and
this is all broken down.
So if this already sounds likeit's overwhelming for you, don't
worry.
Once you're in the two brainmentorship program, we're going
to break this down into smallsteps.
My job is to demystify thatwhole murky magical web of
(04:39):
marketing and make it somethingthat you can do.
So, for example, you know, whentwo brain people start their
month, they're they go intotheir toolkit, okay, and they
look at all the tools that areavailable to them.
Okay.
So here's how to get moreclients, here's how to build out
your funnels, here's how tonurture your leads, here's how
to sell.
Okay.
And we've got this for likeevery metric that you could
(05:01):
possibly use.
There's dozens of these.
In fact, there's so manyhelpful courses and tools that
you need a mentor kind of tohelp you decide which one to do
at first.
And that's totally natural,right?
And a mentor gets you resultsfaster because they tell you
what to do and what to wait tilllater.
But when you get into thefunnel audit, what we want to do
(05:21):
here is we want to start withjust the worksheet.
Okay.
We want to say, do you actuallyhave four funnels built?
Okay.
We want to look at all of them.
If you don't, well, fortwo-brained clients, here they
are.
And these are separate coursesthat they can walk through one
step at a time.
Then you can audit your funnelsby saying, like, okay, here's
the targets you want to hit.
Then, you know, based on whatyour targets are and what your
(05:44):
reality is, you can do amarketing chain analysis.
Here's exactly how you get moreleads, get more of those leads
to book appointments, get moreof those appointments to show up
and buy.
And finally, a little challengeto get you to do this whole
thing within like 30 days.
Within 30 days, you couldeasily have four funnels set up.
And so we want you in Decemberjust to audit these funnels, go
(06:04):
through it step by step and say,where are the holes?
Now you can do this even ifyou're not in two brain, of
course, because I've given youthe basic instructions here.
But if this is completelyoverwhelming and you're like,
four funnels, what what do Ieven do?
Or hey, I have a referralprogram, but like, how is that a
funnel?
How does that work?
If you're terrified of paidads, or you know, worst case,
you're thinking about hiring anagency because this just feels
(06:27):
overwhelming and stressful toyou.
Get with a mentor, learn how todo it, put it into practice
until you're good at it, andyou'll never need an agency
again.
I also want you to do somethingelse.
I want you to do something tomake some easy cash and really
help your clients.
And that is a habits kickstartprogram.
Okay.
Or a high rocks training grouptoo, by the way.
I'm going to walk you throughwhat you do for a habits
(06:48):
training program, though,because this is very simple and
your clients really need it.
They need it right now,honestly, but they can really
use it in January too.
You can run this anytime, asmany times as you want during
the year.
So a habits challenge is a30-day challenge.
Okay.
So I can open this up if ifyou're in Subra and you have
access to this.
(07:09):
Um, first, here's how to buildyour own.
And what you want to do is youwant to pick like four different
habits that if people justrepeated over and over and over
again, it would get themresults.
Now, if you want a popularexample, think of like 75 hard,
but we don't want to be hard forour clients.
We want them be easy.
We want it to be something thatlike we know they can be
successful at and will improvetheir lives if they're
(07:29):
consistent.
So if you're in TubeBrain, justgo straight here in the
toolkit, healthy habits.
And you know, here's all thesteps.
Pick your four habits.
Should you make it easier orhard?
Okay.
What uh messages should yousend to people?
All that stuff.
It's right in here.
You can even like copy pasteall of my messages and stuff
too.
Healthy habits challenge or howyou get around all the
increasing diet andnutritionist, you know, problems
(07:52):
that are coming up in gyms.
We all know that our clientsneed nutritional help and
coaching, but it's gettingharder and harder to work around
being a registered dietitian.
And, you know, what can youcall nutrition?
You can't prescribe a meal plananymore, but habits are a great
solution because it helpspeople get the fundamentals
down.
It's not called nutrition, soyou're not like open to getting
(08:14):
sued or shut down by some kindof licensing agency, and it's
really profitable for both youand the coach who runs it.
So that's a great one to run inJanuary.
You can also include peoplefrom outside the gym, too.
So that makes it really,really, really fun.
February, what I want you to dofirst is to evaluate your
coaches and then second, do abring a friend event.
(08:34):
Now, something you'll notice asI go through here, I've always
got like one process improvementand then one thing that you're
going to do to make money.
Okay.
Always.
And those are the two brains ofbusiness, right?
It's like systemize and market.
Uh, help people better, getmore people in, retain people,
coach the people to buy.
Like those are the two brainsof two-brain business.
(08:56):
And so what I want you to do inFebruary first is evaluate your
coaches.
Now, the reason that I put itdown on February is because this
is something that we quiteoften just forget to do until
we're mad at them.
And then it's like, oh, I'mgonna sit this guy down and I'm
gonna give him these five thingsthat I'm he's doing wrong.
And you know, you know whathappens when you do that, right?
First, you get defensive,you're like full of anxiety the
(09:18):
night before, like, oh, I don'twant to have this confrontation.
They're defensive right off thejump.
It becomes this big emotionalfight.
And then when you want to do itagain next time, they know
they're in trouble, so theydon't want to do it.
What you need to do is set outevaluation periods in advance so
that they know that it'scoming.
You also need to give them acopy in their contract of like,
here's the evaluation form sothey know how they're being
(09:40):
measured in success for success.
So here we go.
If you're in two brain, you canjust go to the career roadmaps
and evaluation section.
You can download sample, youknow, evaluations for coaches,
for CSMs.
Here's a video of me deliveringthis evaluation.
Okay, here you go.
Everything is right there foryou.
But even if you don't do this,even if you're not in two brain,
(10:04):
what you should be doing hereis making up an evaluation form,
giving it to your coaches inadvance, and then setting dates
in 2026 when that evaluation isgonna happen.
Look, people actually like tobe evaluated because they want
to know how they're doing.
They want to have a scorecard,they want to know if they're a B
plus or an A, maybe a C minusin some places.
I'm gonna talk to you in aminute about a career roadmap
(10:24):
meeting, which is slightlydifferent, but the way that you
frame the evaluation reallymatters.
And that's where a coach canhelp you get into this
evaluation process and you know,continually build your staff
up.
Next is bring a friend event.
And the reason that I want youto do this, you know, once a
quarter or so is because the oldway of like having a free trial
(10:45):
every Saturday or freecommunity class, that does not
work for attracting new people,especially not the people you
know that you want in your gym.
What that works for is the gymowner who doesn't want to feel
salesy and like just hopes thatpeople will come into the gym,
try the program, throw theircredit card at you.
(11:05):
That doesn't happen, right?
Like in the product business,if you're Costco or Sam's Club,
giving away a couple of freesamples will help you sell some
more chicken nuggets.
There's no denying it.
In the service industry,though, especially in the high
value services like coaching,you can't just let people have
one little taste test and thinkthat they're gonna understand
the value.
You need to sit them down, havea conversation about their
(11:27):
goals, show them the plan to getthem to their goals, and then
coach them to sign up.
So a bring a friend event isreally orchestrated.
And what you're going to dohere is you're going to post
this once every quarter.
You're going to tell yourclients to bring somebody
specific or bring one person.
That person's going to sign upin advance.
You're going to book a no-sweatintro with that person before
(11:48):
or immediately after their bringa friend event.
The event itself is not atypical workout.
It's an achievement-basedworkout.
It's super duper fun.
You want to find ways that theycan win.
You're going to take lots ofpictures of them with the
whiteboard or flipping the bigtire or whatever that is,
swinging from the pull-up bars.
You're going to make them feellike they win.
And then you're going to askthem to sign up.
If you just run this as likethis free trial thing, you're
(12:11):
not going to get manyconversions from it.
If you run it as a consultativeprocess, you will get lots of
conversions from it.
And as usual, with all thesethings, like the details make
all the difference.
You can say, after listening towhat I just said, you can say,
Well, I know that.
I already knew that.
But if you're not actuallydoing it the right way with all
the right details, it probablywon't work for you.
(12:33):
And that is what business isall about.
And that's what coaching is allabout, helping you define and
do those little tiny details.
The triple D's of coaching.
Define, do the details.
Okay.
So the next thing we want to doafter February is we're going
to run an intramural open.
Now, this is a bigcommunity-building event.
Okay.
(12:53):
It's not enough just to run anevent and say, oh, I'm building
community.
Again, it's all in the details.
You have to set your event upthe right way.
Now, this is kind of acompetition, but it's really a
challenge.
And so you can do this with theCrossFit Open if you want to.
You can do this with a HIROXchallenge if you want to, or
something else.
Every year, I pick fourworkouts.
(13:14):
I build them out myself.
I test different domains offitness.
And the goal is that differentpeople are winning all the time.
The goal is not to have likeone overarching leaderboard
where one client gets to feelsuperior to everybody else.
The goal is to increaseparticipation, get people
interacting, meeting new peoplein the gym, forming new
friendships, and pushingthemselves a little bit harder
(13:35):
to hit new PRs.
That's what it's all about.
We've been running this since2012 in my gym.
We've been publishing a guideon the intramural open since
2013.
Other people have adopted it.
You'll see CrossFit talk aboutdoing the intramural open and
stuff every year.
That's cool.
The reason that they'readopting it is because it works.
And if you're not using this,what's going to happen if you're
(13:56):
just running the CrossFit openon your own is you get tired,
right?
It's extra work.
You get kind of burned out.
The money seems to be going tosomebody else.
I want you to do this in a waythat gives you energy, doesn't
exhaust you, and it pays youtoo.
And it actually gives youretention benefit in your gym.
So while you can use theintramural open guide and, you
know, use the CrossFit workoutsor high rock stuff on top, it's
(14:20):
actually best to make your ownand create an intramural event
in your gym.
It's up to you which way you doit.
It's fine.
Um, you know, the workouts arean important part, but it's
maybe like 30% of the entirepackage.
Okay.
Um, in April, I want you to do30 goal review sessions.
The biggest reason the gymsfail is poor retention.
It's not marketing.
And the biggest rock, thebiggest move, the biggest pillar
(14:42):
of retention is goal reviews.
If you're doing goal reviews, Imean, that's like 20% of the
work that you could be doing,but it's going to give you 80%
of the results.
So start there.
How do you do a goal review?
Well, what you're going to dois you're going to bring people
into your um, you know, youroffice where you did their sales
(15:02):
meeting, basically.
And you're going to say, okay,let's measure what you worked on
or you wanted to work on whenyou came in here.
So when you came in here, youhad a goal, right?
Lose weight, gain strength,gain flexibility, firm up, you
know, whatever they said, feelbetter, get more energy, sleep
better, de-stress, whatevertheir goal was.
Now let's measure yourprogress.
(15:23):
So you bring out your tool formeasuring their progress,
whether that's an in-body or aflexibility test or do some
strength tests or whatever.
Then you say, Congratulations.
I'm so proud of you.
Are you completely happy withyour results?
And when you ask that question,they're gonna answer one of
three ways.
First is yes, I'm thrilled withmy results.
(15:44):
I'm super pumped.
And you'll say,Congratulations, keep doing what
you're doing.
I'm so proud of you.
How can I get your husband,coworker, BFF into the gym?
Now you should know that personby name, and this is called
affinity marketing.
It's a process, but that's howyou grow your gym, and that's
how you support your clientsbest by changing the people
(16:06):
around them.
Look, if you've got a woman inyour gym and she's trying to
lose weight or just get fit orwhatever, right?
Get her energy levels back, andshe's going home at night, and
her husband is like, Well,you're home late again.
Uh, yeah, I had to make dinneragain.
Yeah, don't worry, I alreadytook the pets out.
And and on the weekend, it'slike, oh, well, how come you got
to go to the gym on the weekendtoo?
(16:27):
And how come you're alwaysgoing to bed at seven o'clock
before Jeopardy comes on?
And you know, this is prettyexpensive.
You know, that's all she'sgetting a lot of the time.
And she's getting that from hercoworkers, her friends,
probably too.
The way that you really changeher life is you get those people
into the gym because then theatmosphere at home, the
environment at work becomes oneof support instead of a drag on
(16:48):
her.
And so you want to go for thereferral.
The second uh thing that peoplecould tell you in a goal
review, back to the goalreviews, is yeah, you know, I do
feel like I'm making someprogress, but I kind of wish it
was going faster.
Okay.
Wonderful.
In your shoes, here is how Iwould get faster progress.
I would do a one-on-one stuffonce a week, or I would get a
nutrition program or whateveryou think.
(17:09):
Like you're the coach, right?
But the goal review gives youthe opportunity to talk to
people about their progress andtell them how to speed it up.
And the third answer that theymight give you is actually, I'm
not really happy with myresults.
You know, I don't know if thisis for me.
That's also a good answerbecause it means they're talking
to you about it instead of justghosting.
How many clients have you lostin your gym where you said, Man,
(17:31):
I thought things were goingwell.
I'm surprised they quit.
The reason you're surprised andthe reason that it feels like a
breakup is because you did nothave this conversation with
them.
So if they're sitting with youand they're telling you
honestly, it's not going well,they're inviting you to tell
them a better solution.
Okay.
Now, if you're in Tube Rain,this is all broken down for you
in our goal reviews module.
(17:52):
You just go to this, youdownload the goal review kit,
you do some role play with yourmentor to get practiced at it.
Here's how you get people tocome in the goal review chat
flow chart.
Here's the script that you usein your goal review.
Okay.
And then here's what you do.
You make a better prescription.
Here's how you break down theprescription.
All of this stuff is in therefor you.
If you've never done a goalreview, the best thing that you
(18:13):
can do is pick your fivefavorite clients, sit them down,
measure their progress, andsay, Are you completely
satisfied with your results?
That's it.
Okay.
This is so important that thisis your only task in May.
And I said earlier, like, Iwant to give you a systems task
and I want to give you amarketing task.
Goal reviews are both.
Goal reviews are the bestretention strategy out there,
they're the best ARM increasingstrategy out there.
And quite often they canactually lead to a referral,
(18:35):
too.
That's how important they are.
And that's all I'm giving youfor April because I want you to
get good at them.
Okay, so May, we're going toturn to um corporate marketing.
Now, this is an interestingmarketing strategy.
This is one of those, you know,it's not a Hail Mary, but it is
like a big long bomb.
You're you might do a bunch ofcorporate reach outs or
(18:57):
whatever.
And sometimes it feels like,well, if one of 10 of these pays
off, it's going to be worth it.
But the reality is you don'twant the corporation to sign up.
You want all of its employeesto sign up.
So this is a better way to doit.
So what you're going to do hereis you're going to talk to your
best clients and you're goingto say, you know, you're such a
great client.
As a thank you to you, what ifI came into your office at shift
(19:21):
change or at lunchtime or atafternoon break?
And I did a short littleseminar for people on, you know,
fill in the blanks, uh,nutrition, stretching, stress
reduction, whatever that is, youknow.
And again, what we're trying todo here is we're trying to
change the whole environment forour clients, but we'll probably
wind up getting more clientsout of it too.
And so if the client is like,yeah, that's awesome, you know,
(19:42):
wonderful.
Who should I talk to in yourorganization?
And they're going to give you amanager's name or the HR or
whatever.
If you've got an entrepreneurin your gym, this is just such a
slam dunk.
Congratulations.
You know, thank you for beingsuch a great client.
I love having you here as aspecial thank you.
What if I came into yourworkplace and just gave a talk
to your employees about healthand safety, stretching to do in
(20:05):
the morning, stress reduction,how to eat it at the job.
You know, it's a bonus to them.
And what you're gonna do isyou're going to go into the
session, you're gonna talk for20 minutes, you're mostly gonna
do a QA, right?
That's easy.
And then you're gonna havepeople give you their email
addresses to enter them in adraw.
And that draw is going to befor a free whatever, in-body, no
(20:27):
sweat intro, jug of proteinpowder.
You're not gonna give them freepersonal training because you
don't give away your high-valueservice that you charge for.
You're gonna give them somekind of prize.
So maybe it's a t-shirt,whatever.
Afterward, you're gonna go backto your office, you're gonna
draw one of those namesrandomly.
You're gonna email all of them.
Okay.
Now they're on your email list,they're in the lead nurture
(20:47):
sequence, and you email themall.
Congratulations, the winner wasKathy.
So amazing.
Can't wait to see you.
Come on in, pick up yourskipping rope, whatever.
The rest of them stay on youremail address, right?
And again, of course, at theend of that email, you're like,
hey, you know, if you want to doa no-sweat intro, a catalyst,
click here.
That's it.
That's how you do corporatemarketing, right?
They've given you access tolike a dozen, two dozen new
(21:09):
possible clients who areprobably making a good living,
the same as your client is.
Then I want you to do a careerroadmap session.
Now, a career roadmap sessionis a little bit different from a
staff review.
So, in a career roadmapsession, it's it's like a goal
review for your staff.
So you're gonna sit down andyou're gonna start off with
like, hey, you know, where doyou want to go to?
(21:31):
What kind of career do youwant?
You know, what do you want fromworking at this gym?
And some of them will say, Hey,I'm good.
Yeah, love it.
Thank you so much.
Wonderful.
You go into an evaluation.
Some of them will say, though,like, I want more, I would like
some more hours.
I'd love to make this afull-time job.
And what you do in those casesis you say, Let's plot the path
(21:51):
from here to there.
So let's start with what youwant to do.
You want a job here.
How much do you want to make?
Okay, let's work backward fromthat.
Now we have tools for that inTubeRay.
Okay.
So we have this whole staffascension model.
And what we give you is like,here's a spreadsheet.
You can start with your targetearning, and we can fill it in.
Here's the opportunities in mygym.
(22:12):
Well, you can coach this manyclasses.
There's, you know, this muchpersonal training, or there's
these other roles that you mightwant to fit into short term and
long term.
And then you show them here'sthe steps that need to happen to
get there.
And then you say, now here'swhere we're starting from.
And that's when you give themtheir evaluation.
Okay, you know, you want tocoach more classes uh to get
there.
Here's what I need to seehappen.
(22:33):
Okay.
You want to take more personaltraining?
Wonderful.
Here's a certification that Ineed you to get, or here's you
know, the steps that I need youto do or the things that I need
you to improve to have thatopportunity.
Like that's it.
That's how you do a careerroadmap.
It's just like a goal reviewfor clients.
But here's the thing we're inan age now where staff retention
(22:53):
is almost as hard as clientretention.
Just like you've got to set upa marketing pipeline for funnels
for your clients, you need toset up a recruitment pipeline
for your staff.
You need to always be marketingto your staff.
And just like you need to haveretention systems like goal
reviews for your clients, youneed to have retention systems
like career roadmaps for yourstaff.
I'll be honest with you here.
If the owner of the studiowhere I was working in 2005 had
(23:17):
sat me down and done any kind ofexercise like this, even just
like Chris, you know, what doyou want from life?
Or Chris, like, here's how wecan help you make more money.
I would not own a gym today.
I would still be working forthat guy and still doing
probably one-on-one training.
If he had said something like,Well, let's try doing small
group, I probably would havestayed there for the next 20
years.
Instead, I left, built a gym,almost went bankrupt, saved it,
(23:41):
became the biggest gym in ourcity.
And now here I am, you know,talking to you.
So it turned out for the best.
But the reality is if you wantto keep your staff, like this is
the kind of conversation thatyou need to have.
Okay, back to the guide.
In June of 2026, I'd reallylike you to come to the Two
Brain Summit.
Now, this is going to soundlike a pitch, and it kind of is,
but the reality here is thatthe benefits of attending summit
(24:02):
far, far, far outweigh theinvestment.
Yes, you're gonna learn stuff.
Okay, like that's why we go tomost business seminars, but the
summit is so much more thanthat.
At the summit, you're going toactually work with coaches,
speakers, presenters.
So when Mike Mikalowitz gets onthe stage in 2026, he's not
just out there to talk about thepumpkin plan or his newest
(24:23):
book.
What he's there to do is guideyou through work.
So there's going to be anexercise that you're going to be
doing coached by Mike from thestage.
And then we'll have anotherdozen speakers get up there and
speak to you.
Yes, they're inspirational.
Yes, they're educational, butthey're there to coach you.
The next thing, and this isarguably even more important, is
that the gym owner business islonely.
(24:43):
Like there's very few people wecan talk to about this, right?
I know it, I know because I amone.
You don't want to talk to yourspouse about it at nine o'clock
at night when you're exhaustedbecause you don't want to dump
everything on them.
And you can't really talk toyour staff about it because it
feels like whining and they'regonna lose you know confidence
in the business to be able andstart looking around for other
things.
(25:03):
You definitely can't talk toyour clients about it.
Who can you talk to about?
Right?
Where's your support network?
Other professions have theseprofessional conferences where
you make friends and all thephysicians, you know, talk to
each other and learn from eachother.
And there's conferences forinsurance brokers and
dietitians.
This is the biggest conferencefor micro gym owners in the
(25:24):
world for a reason.
We do an amazing job.
The team does an amazing job.
I just kind of show up andshake hands.
And we're good at connectingyou with other gym owners in
your town, your state, or acrossthe world.
You can form a lasting network.
You can stay in touch withthese people for the next 30
years because I mean, you'regonna need it.
You're gonna need to not feellike you're on an island out
(25:44):
there.
There's definitely days whenyou're gonna need an ear, and
there's days when they're gonnaneed an ear too.
And you can really play ideasoff each other.
It's the connection that reallymatters.
It's the feeling that like I'mnot alone out there.
These people have me.
I mean, I come into the summitevery year, kind of beat down
from the year, and I leave firedup.
I mean, I generally leave thesummit with the next book in
(26:06):
mind, and I'm like writing onthe flight home the next day.
A lot of gym owners find thisto be so true that they bring
their staff to summit now.
So there's two stages there'sthe big stage for the business,
and then there's the smallerstage for the coaches.
Uh, this year, Bill Parisi isgoing to be running a three-hour
workshop on building speed.
So it's not a lecture.
Your coach is going to beworking out and doing speed
drills.
(26:26):
And then uh Metfix is coming inand they're doing stuff with
the coaches for three hours.
We've got a couple more guests,too, that I can't name yet.
But the coaches are doingstuff, they're learning, they
love it, they're going out todinner with you.
And, you know, the team istight, they're stoked, like
they're out there ready to buildyour business when they leave.
It's a great investment.
On the other hand, if you justwant time away and to be around
(26:48):
your peers, don't bring yourstaff, just come on your own.
I'm really harping on the sumbecause I think it's a really
important part of the mentorshipprogram.
And even if you're not in twobrain, you're welcome to come
and join us.
It's not going to be a bigsales pitch.
It's going to be reallyvaluable to you too.
I have never, ever, ever heardfrom a single person it wasn't
worth it.
It wasn't worth the trip.
(27:08):
It wasn't worth the ticket.
It's always worth it.
And the best part about this islike your business space for
it, but you get the benefit.
All right.
Now in July, we're back tobusiness again.
And you're going to be leavingthe summit with like 20 things
to do, five things you want totry, 10 people you got to talk
to.
So I'm not going to give youany more for June.
But in July, here's what we'regoing to do we're going to start
(27:31):
optimizing your Google SEOprogram.
Okay.
So in the last few months, Idon't know if you're following
AI or not, but in the last fewmonths, there's been a lot of
chatter about SEO and howrelevant it actually is.
And so go think back to theolden times, right?
Three years ago, the oldendays, when you would go on
Google and you would like tolook up, how do I find the right
(27:52):
diet?
What exercises should I do?
Right?
What's the best restaurant inmy town?
And Google would would listlike, here's number one, here's
number two, here's number three.
And your goal with SEO searchengine optimization was to land
in like the first three, or justto get on the first page of
Google.
And Google is just all theselinks.
And if you were on the firstpage, people would probably
click on you.
Well, now Google has changed.
(28:14):
So what Google does, if you askit a question now, is its AI
called Gemini just tells you theanswer.
It doesn't send you out to anexternal site.
Okay.
So the Google is doing thesearch for you and just telling
you the answer instead ofsaying, here's a site that might
have the answer.
What it does though, whenyou're doing that search, is it
does link its sources.
(28:34):
So people can click on thatlink still as part of the
broader answer.
Even more than that, though,all of the LLMs, the AI models,
okay, so ChatGPT and Claude, youname it, they're all doing a
lot of the searching now insteadof people going to Google.
Like 30% of all search trafficnow is bots.
So what does this mean?
Well, SEO is actually even moreimportant than ever.
(28:58):
You've got to really optimizeyour site now because it's not a
human coming there, it's a bot.
And if a bot doesn't find whatthey're looking for right away,
they are gone.
That's why we update our SEOcourse in Two Brain every single
year because SEO changes allthe time, right?
The algorithm used to beunpredictable.
Now it's unpredictable andautomatic and it's unknown.
(29:19):
It's, you know, you've got tohave certain things so that the
bots can find you quickly, findthe information that they're
looking for without confusion,without searching, link to you,
and then move on.
Like SEO is more important nowthan ever.
It's just different from whatit was before.
And so that's why I want you todo an SEO audit on yourself in
July.
Okay.
Now, yeah, Google still works,right?
(29:42):
But 30% of organic searchtraffic is down industry wide.
You have to be prepared forthis.
You have to set it up.
From this, too, you got to setup your Google My Business
profile.
And from there, we're going tochange our ad copy.
So you knew it was coming, butin August.
You got to update your ad copyfor the September surge.
So here's what happens.
(30:04):
We said from the state of theindustry guy, the biggest data
set in the fitness business, wesaid that August is when you're
going to get the most leads, butyou're also going to get the
fewest sales.
August is like the worst monthin the industry for revenue, but
it's also a great month forleads.
Why is that?
Well, think about who yourclients are and what they're
(30:25):
doing in their lives.
Probably in the summertime,they're at their cottage,
they're taking the kids on thelast vacation, they're trying to
get them ready for school.
Okay.
They're just enjoying theirsummer.
But in September, the kids areback to school.
They're back in their routine.
They have a predictableschedule again.
This is really important.
People delay joining a gymuntil September because they
(30:47):
want to do it when theirschedule is really predictable.
And so that means they'researching websites, right?
They're making decisions,they're making choices, they're
opting in, they're finding outinformation in August for the
gym they plan to join inSeptember.
That means your advertising,your marketing has to be super
duper good in August if you wantto get them in September.
So that means you have to gothrough your ads funnel.
(31:08):
Okay.
So here's your paid ads funnelin Two Brain.
Okay.
There's two different courseshere.
The first is the digitalmarketing course.
This is for Facebook, uh,Instagram.
The second is the Google AdsMini course.
Okay.
So you set up this funnel,maybe you tweak your copy, you
do that with a marketing mentor,and you know, you capture more
(31:28):
leads.
And you know, maybe this feelscrazy and scary, and I don't
really want to do that stuff.
But the reality is that youdon't want to be the only one in
your town not doing it.
And I often use the analogy oflike, okay, maybe you don't want
to run your own ads, but youneed to know how to.
Just like you might not everchange your own tires on the
car, but you need to know how tobecause emergencies happen.
(31:51):
The thing is, though, with yourads, it's like blowing a tire
every single day.
Stuff changes.
You need to know how to be ableto fix it.
This is just part of the game.
If you get good at ads andyou're educated and you know
when something's going wrong,when something's working, then
you can hire an ad agency to runthem for you.
Most don't.
But the reason most people hiread agencies is the wrong
(32:14):
reason, the backward reason.
It's I don't know this, I don'twant to know this.
I would rather waste money onsomebody else and just stay in
the dark and never ever know andjust like trust them, even
though I've never met thembefore.
Ad agencies routinely go out ofbusiness.
Okay.
Let that sink in.
It's because they're not greatat marketing.
And when you're giving an adagency money without knowing
(32:37):
what they're spending on, yourinterests are not aligned.
Their goal is to spend all themoney, right?
And they're going to tell youthat it's working because they
quote unquote got a bunch ofleads.
But how will you know?
Well, how many leads did theyactually get?
I don't know.
How many of those leads becameclients?
I don't know.
You have to learn this stuff,or you're just going to keep
throwing money away on adagencies instead of knowing how
(32:59):
to do it yourself and knowinglike when something's actually
working.
So August is actually a greattime to do that because things
are quieter and you've got theadded pressure to actually learn
it and get it done because youhave to, right?
So August is like you shouldhave a little bit of free time,
a few, you know, fewer introscoming up, fewer leads coming
(33:19):
in.
But now you're kind of startingto worry, and that should be
enough of an incentive to go outand learn how to do Facebook
ads and fix this up.
Hey, you don't have to figurethis out.
There's no book on like how todo better Facebook ads.
You work with a mentor, okay?
We provide you with a mentorjust for this in TubeRay.
You work with them, you set upyour ad account, you learn how
(33:39):
to run it, you learn how totweak it, you learn how to test,
you learn how to fix stuff.
And then we just turn youloose.
And if you want to book anothercall with the mentor to change
things later, you can.
You could even hire an agencythat we work with to run those
ads for you.
But jumping straight to anagency is so backward and
potentially harmful to yourbusiness that I strongly
advocate that you don't do it.
(33:59):
In September, I want you toperform 30 more client goal
review sessions.
Now, the key to success is nothere's something different every
single month of the year.
I could easily give yousomething different to do every
single month of the year.
I mean, you saw our toolkit,right?
There's dozens of things thatyou could do.
The key is knowing what youshould do, what's going to
actually move the needle, andwhat you'll complete after that.
(34:20):
Like I'm so going here.
That's the key.
And the other key is like youhave to repeat what's working
over time.
So if you're just learning howto do goal reviews, you do 10,
and then you never do themagain, you are not going to get
the benefit of them.
The reason that you open abusiness is to get compounding
benefits from doing the samethings over and over and over
(34:41):
again, right?
That's why you're not anemployee.
The way that you getcompounding benefits is you get
the basics down and you repeatthem and repeat them and repeat
them.
One of those basics is goalreviews.
The more often you do goalreviews, the better you will be
at them and the more benefitthat you will get from them.
It's not a one and done, it'snot a try and see.
It's you repeat it as part ofyour coaching platform and watch
(35:04):
the results grow from it.
Okay.
So you're going to do more goalreview sessions in September.
In October, you're going tostart your end-of-the-year
promotions for packages andretail and gifts.
And the reason is that I don'tever want you to have another
bad November where you're kindof like, oh, geez, what am I
going to do?
And you're staring down thebarrel of December, which is
going to be worse.
I want you to have a plan.
(35:24):
So what you're going to do inOctober next year is set up your
retail presale.
Okay.
Here's how to do it.
If you're in Tubrain, all thematerials are right here.
How to sell supplements, how tosell uh, you know, swag retail,
uh, how to sell t-shirts andstuff.
And you want to get all thatstuff set up in October so that
(35:46):
there's cash coming in inNovember to bridge the gap of
people saying, Oh, I got to savemoney for Christmas, or I'm
gonna fall off track inNovember.
I'm just gonna put mymembership on hold while I pick
out.
That's how you plug that gap.
Okay.
You can set up your packagesthat people can buy for your
clients, like your Christmasgifts.
You can write the emailspromoting those things.
You can bolster your cash flowin November and especially
(36:09):
December by setting all that upin October.
This is how having a planworks.
I don't want anybody else inthe gym industry to have the
same August 2009 that I had,where I was ready to, you know,
give it all up, drive my truckoff a cliff to collect the
insurance money.
I don't want that for anybodyelse.
And the way that you avoid thatis you have a plan.
Next November, you're gonnahold career roadmap sessions
(36:32):
with your coaches and you'regonna go through the annual plan
for 2027.
And what you're gonna do isyou're gonna say, what worked
really well.
Let's keep that.
Let's duplicate that in 2027.
What could I tweak?
What new thing have I learned?
And where could I fit that inand add that to the plan for
2027?
See, this is really whatmentorship is all about.
Giving you the tactics isgreat, forgetting the quick
(36:54):
wins, right?
But teaching you these skillsof how to audit and how to
upgrade is what projectsbusinesses way up to the million
dollar mark.
It's repeating and makingslight improvements instead of
constantly replacing what you'redoing all the time and just
running this chaotic mess.
Okay.
In December next year, I wantyou to run a high rock
simulation and have an in-housecompetition and party.
(37:16):
Now, look, there's some stuffhere on high rocks.
You know, sneak peek if you'vemade it this far in the video.
Two brain is working with highrocks to build materials for
high rocks affiliates andincluding, you know, how to use
high rocks for marketing, how touse high rocks for retention,
how to pay your coaches to runhigh rocks, how to improve your
ARM with high rocks, all thatstuff.
It's exciting.
High ROX is growing really,really fast for a reason.
(37:38):
Like right now, gyms aregetting a great ROI on high ROX.
And I'm not saying that becauseI have an incentive to promote
HIROX.
I'm saying that because that'swhat the data shows.
And that's what I want for youis to follow the data.
Now, what we do at Catalyst iswe have something that's called
a super meet in December.
And a super meet is a funlittle powerlifting challenge.
Okay.
And there's a little video herein the guide.
(37:59):
Um, you can watch it if youwant to.
This is the second part of thesuper meet called the gift.
So the super meet they havefrom 9 a.m.
until about 1 p.m.
to get a max in six differentlifts.
So they come in, they warm up,boop, start the clock.
They got two hours to get a maxsnatch, clean and jerk,
deadlift, back squat, standingpress, and weighted pull-up.
(38:21):
And they add all that up.
They compare against last year,high five.
That night, they come back andwe do this thing called the
gift.
Now, the gift is where peoplein my gym donate to kids in
foster care.
We started doing this, I don'tknow, eight or nine years ago,
maybe even more.
And we've helped thousands oflocal kids.
What happens is the foster careworkers, they give us a list
(38:45):
every year, no names, but like,here's a family of three.
There's an eight-year-old, afive-year-old, and a
three-year-old.
Here are their sizes, you know,boy, boy, girl, whatever.
And people in my gym say, okay,I'll take family number three,
I'll take family number seven.
And they go out and they buygifts and we put a $50 limit,
but like nobody sticks to that.
And on the day of the supermeet, they pay their entrance by
bringing their gift and theyset their gift in front of the
(39:07):
door.
And then we at night, we comeback, we have a nice potlock,
and at six o'clock, the fostercare workers show up with vans
and we load up all the vans andthey go out and distribute all
the presents.
It chokes me up every year.
I have to like leave the roomand have a little cry.
But this is how you actuallyuse your community for the force
of good.
This is how you build thatthird place for your clients.
(39:28):
You know, fewer and fewer ofyour clients go to church or
belong to a club or a communitygroup anymore.
You can be that, you know,channel for them to give and for
them to unite in that givingand to feel good and to have
like that opportunity.
Gym owners are super duper, youknow, generous, like sometimes
(39:51):
to their to their own fault.
And they'll run fundraisers andGoFundMe's and special events,
and they'll give up theirweekends year round.
It's better off to pick one bigevent like this when you can
really do a great job, focusyour community on it once, and
you know, incorporate that intoyour annual plan a year in
advance.
Other people do things likethey have like a winter formal
(40:12):
for their clients, which is alot of fun, or you know, they'll
they'll run like a hope workoutor a fundraiser or something
else.
That's great.
This is the time of the year toreally do it.
People will love you for it.
Look, here's the thing you cantake my template here, okay?
You can use the blank one ifyou want to.
That's up on page one.
Here we go.
(40:32):
Page three.
You can fill in your ownblanks.
Okay.
You can scratch off the onesthat I've got.
I've got these basics downbecause these are the ones that
I'm always reminding people todo goal reviews, career
roadmaps, et cetera, funnelaudits.
And if you just follow thisplan, your gym will grow.
I guarantee it.
Okay.
Even better is to work with amentor and make a customized
(40:52):
plan just for you, based on yourgym, your goals, et cetera.
And you can get this free guidefrom me, as always.
Just go into the gym ownersUnited Facebook group.
Okay, I'm in here.
Just click on my littlepicture, send me a DM.
Coop, can I have a copy,please, of that 2026 annual plan
guide?
This is it again.
Okay.
It's the starting line picture.
And we update this every yearbecause the mission is to help
(41:14):
10,000 gym owners be successful.
And the way that you becomesuccessful is that you're
constantly building, notreplacing what you're doing with
new stuff and chasing novelty,but taking what you're currently
doing and improving it andimproving it and improving it,
repeating what you're doing 90%of the time and adding new stuff
10% of the time.
And the way that you make thatwork even faster is to work with
(41:36):
a mentor.
That's why we have the biggestand best team of mentors in the
world at TubeBrain.
These are all highly qualified,paid people who can walk
through this plan with you, putthe right things in the right
buckets, show you exactly whatto do to execute, and then hold
you accountable for doing it.
So this doesn't just wind up onthe bottom of a pile on your
desk somewhere.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And if you want to be a bettergym in 2026 than you were in 25,
(42:00):
you just got to make a plan.
It's almost the end of 2025, and hopefully it has been
a record-breaking year for you,like it has for me.
I can remember though when theyears were not that great.
And particularly, I canremember this one year where it
was August 2009 and I had therent coming due and I had it was
like a three-pay month and Ihad to pay my property taxes the
same weekend and I hadn't beenpaid.
(00:24):
It was just kind of thisperfect storm of expenses.
And I said to myself, man, if Ihave to live through this
August 2009 again, I'm nevergoing to do it.
I'm going to get out of thebusiness.
And then I quickly realizedthat the only way to not be
repeating this problem was tomake a plan for the next year to
make sure that I didn't havethese big dips in revenues and
all these, you know, trifecta ofERT happening to me.
(00:46):
That means ever since then,I've made an annual plan.
And for the last few years,I've been sharing my annual plan
for my gym with everybody.
And that's what I'm here to dotoday.
So I'm Chris Cooper.
I'm the founder of Two BrainBusiness.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And our mission is to help10,000 gyms become successful.
Part of being successful in thefuture, or even just changing
your future, is to plan for it.
(01:07):
And so I've got this brand newguide that you can get from me.
I'm going to show it to you.
You can just go togymownersunited.com.
That's a Facebook group.
You find me in that group.
You say, Coop, can I pleasehave the annual plan?
And I'm just going to give youthis guide.
Today I'm going to walk youthrough it and I'm going to show
you some of the tools that weuse within TubeBrain, our
mentorship practice, to help thegym owners who are inside the
Two Brain family too.
(01:28):
So, first off, here's theguide.
And you can use this a coupleof different ways.
You can use this as a template,you know, or you can use it
verbatim.
You can copy exactly what's inthere.
I was trying to be as specificas I possibly could when we were
creating this this year so thatyou could just use the default
setting on every single month.
If you follow this plan and youexecute well on it, your gym
(01:49):
will be better a year from nowthan it is today.
And that's the question wealways have to be asking
ourselves as gym owners.
Is our gym better today than itwas a year ago?
And if it's not, well, thatmeans unfortunately it's on us
as the CEO to change things for2026.
The good news is you can do it.
I'm going to show you thestep-by-step plan that I have
for my gym for 2026.
You can copy that.
(02:10):
I've left some gaps here thatyou can fill in.
You can scratch out what I'mdoing and put in something else.
What's most important though isthat you repeat the most
important things over and overand that you don't neglect
anything.
So you're never walking intoDecember 2026 with no plan, no
idea what to do.
You know, you're just likecombing the podcast archives for
(02:31):
some new ideas.
In fact, what I actually doevery year is I print this off
with exactly what I'm going tobe doing and I stick it on a
wall behind me in my gym.
That way I always know what'scoming up and what I need to be
thinking about to keep executingon this plan and keep growing
my gym.
You know, the most challengingpart of the year for most gym
owners is right now.
And according to our state ofthe industry metrics, which is
(02:54):
the biggest data set in theindustry, you know, right now,
November is when you've got thefewest leads coming in, which
translates into fewerappointments in December and
fewer sales in December.
You know, if you build thisplan today, you can actually add
December 2025 to this.
It's not too late, and generatesome revenue or pull some
revenue from January and collectit earlier to get you through
(03:14):
that cash flow slump.
But most importantly, you'renot going to even have that cash
flow slump next year if you dothis stuff.
Okay.
We do an annual plan witheverybody inside the two-brain
family, all thousand gyms.
They do this one-on-one everyyear because we want to make
sure that they're always growingand growing and growing, even
when they're no longer in ourmentorship program, that they
know and they have the skills tokeep doing this on their own
(03:36):
too.
So here's the guide.
And again, if you want to getit, I'm going to walk through
step by step.
I'm going to tell you what allof these different things mean.
I'm going to go month by month.
If you want to copy this guide,you just send me a DM on
Facebook or even on Instagram atthe TwoBrain Business account,
and I'll get it to you.
So let's start with January.
One of the really importantthings that we all need to do
every year is audit ourmarketing funnels.
(03:57):
And once a year is the bareminimum.
If you can do this quarterly,even better.
What you want to do is sketchout your funnel for referrals.
Then you want to sketch outyour funnel for organic social
media.
You want to sketch out yourfunnel for content.
You want to sketch out yourfunnel for paid ads.
And you want to go through eachstep in order and say, like,
okay, how am I generating leads?
(04:18):
How well am I converting thoseleads?
And then how often are thoseleads signing up?
Now, for clients in TwoBrain,this is very step by step, and
this is all broken down.
So if this already sounds likeit's overwhelming for you, don't
worry.
Once you're in the two brainmentorship program, we're going
to break this down into smallsteps.
My job is to demystify thatwhole murky magical web of
(04:39):
marketing and make it somethingthat you can do.
So, for example, you know, whentwo brain people start their
month, they're they go intotheir toolkit, okay, and they
look at all the tools that areavailable to them.
Okay.
So here's how to get moreclients, here's how to build out
your funnels, here's how tonurture your leads, here's how
to sell.
Okay.
And we've got this for likeevery metric that you could
(05:01):
possibly use.
There's dozens of these.
In fact, there's so manyhelpful courses and tools that
you need a mentor kind of tohelp you decide which one to do
at first.
And that's totally natural,right?
And a mentor gets you resultsfaster because they tell you
what to do and what to wait tilllater.
But when you get into thefunnel audit, what we want to do
(05:21):
here is we want to start withjust the worksheet.
Okay.
We want to say, do you actuallyhave four funnels built?
Okay.
We want to look at all of them.
If you don't, well, fortwo-brained clients, here they
are.
And these are separate coursesthat they can walk through one
step at a time.
Then you can audit your funnelsby saying, like, okay, here's
the targets you want to hit.
Then, you know, based on whatyour targets are and what your
(05:44):
reality is, you can do amarketing chain analysis.
Here's exactly how you get moreleads, get more of those leads
to book appointments, get moreof those appointments to show up
and buy.
And finally, a little challengeto get you to do this whole
thing within like 30 days.
Within 30 days, you couldeasily have four funnels set up.
And so we want you in Decemberjust to audit these funnels, go
(06:04):
through it step by step and say,where are the holes?
Now you can do this even ifyou're not in two brain, of
course, because I've given youthe basic instructions here.
But if this is completelyoverwhelming and you're like,
four funnels, what what do Ieven do?
Or hey, I have a referralprogram, but like, how is that a
funnel?
How does that work?
If you're terrified of paidads, or you know, worst case,
you're thinking about hiring anagency because this just feels
(06:27):
overwhelming and stressful toyou.
Get with a mentor, learn how todo it, put it into practice
until you're good at it, andyou'll never need an agency
again.
I also want you to do somethingelse.
I want you to do something tomake some easy cash and really
help your clients.
And that is a habits kickstartprogram.
Okay.
Or a high rocks training grouptoo, by the way.
I'm going to walk you throughwhat you do for a habits
(06:48):
training program, though,because this is very simple and
your clients really need it.
They need it right now,honestly, but they can really
use it in January too.
You can run this anytime, asmany times as you want during
the year.
So a habits challenge is a30-day challenge.
Okay.
So I can open this up if ifyou're in Subra and you have
access to this.
(07:09):
Um, first, here's how to buildyour own.
And what you want to do is youwant to pick like four different
habits that if people justrepeated over and over and over
again, it would get themresults.
Now, if you want a popularexample, think of like 75 hard,
but we don't want to be hard forour clients.
We want them be easy.
We want it to be something thatlike we know they can be
successful at and will improvetheir lives if they're
(07:29):
consistent.
So if you're in TubeBrain, justgo straight here in the
toolkit, healthy habits.
And you know, here's all thesteps.
Pick your four habits.
Should you make it easier orhard?
Okay.
What uh messages should yousend to people?
All that stuff.
It's right in here.
You can even like copy pasteall of my messages and stuff
too.
Healthy habits challenge or howyou get around all the
increasing diet andnutritionist, you know, problems
(07:52):
that are coming up in gyms.
We all know that our clientsneed nutritional help and
coaching, but it's gettingharder and harder to work around
being a registered dietitian.
And, you know, what can youcall nutrition?
You can't prescribe a meal plananymore, but habits are a great
solution because it helpspeople get the fundamentals
down.
It's not called nutrition, soyou're not like open to getting
(08:14):
sued or shut down by some kindof licensing agency, and it's
really profitable for both youand the coach who runs it.
So that's a great one to run inJanuary.
You can also include peoplefrom outside the gym, too.
So that makes it really,really, really fun.
February, what I want you to dofirst is to evaluate your
coaches and then second, do abring a friend event.
(08:34):
Now, something you'll notice asI go through here, I've always
got like one process improvementand then one thing that you're
going to do to make money.
Okay.
Always.
And those are the two brains ofbusiness, right?
It's like systemize and market.
Uh, help people better, getmore people in, retain people,
coach the people to buy.
Like those are the two brainsof two-brain business.
(08:56):
And so what I want you to do inFebruary first is evaluate your
coaches.
Now, the reason that I put itdown on February is because this
is something that we quiteoften just forget to do until
we're mad at them.
And then it's like, oh, I'mgonna sit this guy down and I'm
gonna give him these five thingsthat I'm he's doing wrong.
And you know, you know whathappens when you do that, right?
First, you get defensive,you're like full of anxiety the
(09:18):
night before, like, oh, I don'twant to have this confrontation.
They're defensive right off thejump.
It becomes this big emotionalfight.
And then when you want to do itagain next time, they know
they're in trouble, so theydon't want to do it.
What you need to do is set outevaluation periods in advance so
that they know that it'scoming.
You also need to give them acopy in their contract of like,
here's the evaluation form sothey know how they're being
(09:40):
measured in success for success.
So here we go.
If you're in two brain, you canjust go to the career roadmaps
and evaluation section.
You can download sample, youknow, evaluations for coaches,
for CSMs.
Here's a video of me deliveringthis evaluation.
Okay, here you go.
Everything is right there foryou.
But even if you don't do this,even if you're not in two brain,
(10:04):
what you should be doing hereis making up an evaluation form,
giving it to your coaches inadvance, and then setting dates
in 2026 when that evaluation isgonna happen.
Look, people actually like tobe evaluated because they want
to know how they're doing.
They want to have a scorecard,they want to know if they're a B
plus or an A, maybe a C minusin some places.
I'm gonna talk to you in aminute about a career roadmap
(10:24):
meeting, which is slightlydifferent, but the way that you
frame the evaluation reallymatters.
And that's where a coach canhelp you get into this
evaluation process and you know,continually build your staff
up.
Next is bring a friend event.
And the reason that I want youto do this, you know, once a
quarter or so is because the oldway of like having a free trial
(10:45):
every Saturday or freecommunity class, that does not
work for attracting new people,especially not the people you
know that you want in your gym.
What that works for is the gymowner who doesn't want to feel
salesy and like just hopes thatpeople will come into the gym,
try the program, throw theircredit card at you.
(11:05):
That doesn't happen, right?
Like in the product business,if you're Costco or Sam's Club,
giving away a couple of freesamples will help you sell some
more chicken nuggets.
There's no denying it.
In the service industry,though, especially in the high
value services like coaching,you can't just let people have
one little taste test and thinkthat they're gonna understand
the value.
You need to sit them down, havea conversation about their
(11:27):
goals, show them the plan to getthem to their goals, and then
coach them to sign up.
So a bring a friend event isreally orchestrated.
And what you're going to dohere is you're going to post
this once every quarter.
You're going to tell yourclients to bring somebody
specific or bring one person.
That person's going to sign upin advance.
You're going to book a no-sweatintro with that person before
(11:48):
or immediately after their bringa friend event.
The event itself is not atypical workout.
It's an achievement-basedworkout.
It's super duper fun.
You want to find ways that theycan win.
You're going to take lots ofpictures of them with the
whiteboard or flipping the bigtire or whatever that is,
swinging from the pull-up bars.
You're going to make them feellike they win.
And then you're going to askthem to sign up.
If you just run this as likethis free trial thing, you're
(12:11):
not going to get manyconversions from it.
If you run it as a consultativeprocess, you will get lots of
conversions from it.
And as usual, with all thesethings, like the details make
all the difference.
You can say, after listening towhat I just said, you can say,
Well, I know that.
I already knew that.
But if you're not actuallydoing it the right way with all
the right details, it probablywon't work for you.
(12:33):
And that is what business isall about.
And that's what coaching is allabout, helping you define and
do those little tiny details.
The triple D's of coaching.
Define, do the details.
Okay.
So the next thing we want to doafter February is we're going
to run an intramural open.
Now, this is a bigcommunity-building event.
Okay.
(12:53):
It's not enough just to run anevent and say, oh, I'm building
community.
Again, it's all in the details.
You have to set your event upthe right way.
Now, this is kind of acompetition, but it's really a
challenge.
And so you can do this with theCrossFit Open if you want to.
You can do this with a HIROXchallenge if you want to, or
something else.
Every year, I pick fourworkouts.
(13:14):
I build them out myself.
I test different domains offitness.
And the goal is that differentpeople are winning all the time.
The goal is not to have likeone overarching leaderboard
where one client gets to feelsuperior to everybody else.
The goal is to increaseparticipation, get people
interacting, meeting new peoplein the gym, forming new
friendships, and pushingthemselves a little bit harder
(13:35):
to hit new PRs.
That's what it's all about.
We've been running this since2012 in my gym.
We've been publishing a guideon the intramural open since
2013.
Other people have adopted it.
You'll see CrossFit talk aboutdoing the intramural open and
stuff every year.
That's cool.
The reason that they'readopting it is because it works.
And if you're not using this,what's going to happen if you're
(13:56):
just running the CrossFit openon your own is you get tired,
right?
It's extra work.
You get kind of burned out.
The money seems to be going tosomebody else.
I want you to do this in a waythat gives you energy, doesn't
exhaust you, and it pays youtoo.
And it actually gives youretention benefit in your gym.
So while you can use theintramural open guide and, you
know, use the CrossFit workoutsor high rock stuff on top, it's
(14:20):
actually best to make your ownand create an intramural event
in your gym.
It's up to you which way you doit.
It's fine.
Um, you know, the workouts arean important part, but it's
maybe like 30% of the entirepackage.
Okay.
Um, in April, I want you to do30 goal review sessions.
The biggest reason the gymsfail is poor retention.
It's not marketing.
And the biggest rock, thebiggest move, the biggest pillar
(14:42):
of retention is goal reviews.
If you're doing goal reviews, Imean, that's like 20% of the
work that you could be doing,but it's going to give you 80%
of the results.
So start there.
How do you do a goal review?
Well, what you're going to dois you're going to bring people
into your um, you know, youroffice where you did their sales
(15:02):
meeting, basically.
And you're going to say, okay,let's measure what you worked on
or you wanted to work on whenyou came in here.
So when you came in here, youhad a goal, right?
Lose weight, gain strength,gain flexibility, firm up, you
know, whatever they said, feelbetter, get more energy, sleep
better, de-stress, whatevertheir goal was.
Now let's measure yourprogress.
(15:23):
So you bring out your tool formeasuring their progress,
whether that's an in-body or aflexibility test or do some
strength tests or whatever.
Then you say, Congratulations.
I'm so proud of you.
Are you completely happy withyour results?
And when you ask that question,they're gonna answer one of
three ways.
First is yes, I'm thrilled withmy results.
(15:44):
I'm super pumped.
And you'll say,Congratulations, keep doing what
you're doing.
I'm so proud of you.
How can I get your husband,coworker, BFF into the gym?
Now you should know that personby name, and this is called
affinity marketing.
It's a process, but that's howyou grow your gym, and that's
how you support your clientsbest by changing the people
(16:06):
around them.
Look, if you've got a woman inyour gym and she's trying to
lose weight or just get fit orwhatever, right?
Get her energy levels back, andshe's going home at night, and
her husband is like, Well,you're home late again.
Uh, yeah, I had to make dinneragain.
Yeah, don't worry, I alreadytook the pets out.
And and on the weekend, it'slike, oh, well, how come you got
to go to the gym on the weekendtoo?
(16:27):
And how come you're alwaysgoing to bed at seven o'clock
before Jeopardy comes on?
And you know, this is prettyexpensive.
You know, that's all she'sgetting a lot of the time.
And she's getting that from hercoworkers, her friends,
probably too.
The way that you really changeher life is you get those people
into the gym because then theatmosphere at home, the
environment at work becomes oneof support instead of a drag on
(16:48):
her.
And so you want to go for thereferral.
The second uh thing that peoplecould tell you in a goal
review, back to the goalreviews, is yeah, you know, I do
feel like I'm making someprogress, but I kind of wish it
was going faster.
Okay.
Wonderful.
In your shoes, here is how Iwould get faster progress.
I would do a one-on-one stuffonce a week, or I would get a
nutrition program or whateveryou think.
(17:09):
Like you're the coach, right?
But the goal review gives youthe opportunity to talk to
people about their progress andtell them how to speed it up.
And the third answer that theymight give you is actually, I'm
not really happy with myresults.
You know, I don't know if thisis for me.
That's also a good answerbecause it means they're talking
to you about it instead of justghosting.
How many clients have you lostin your gym where you said, Man,
(17:31):
I thought things were goingwell.
I'm surprised they quit.
The reason you're surprised andthe reason that it feels like a
breakup is because you did nothave this conversation with
them.
So if they're sitting with youand they're telling you
honestly, it's not going well,they're inviting you to tell
them a better solution.
Okay.
Now, if you're in Tube Rain,this is all broken down for you
in our goal reviews module.
(17:52):
You just go to this, youdownload the goal review kit,
you do some role play with yourmentor to get practiced at it.
Here's how you get people tocome in the goal review chat
flow chart.
Here's the script that you usein your goal review.
Okay.
And then here's what you do.
You make a better prescription.
Here's how you break down theprescription.
All of this stuff is in therefor you.
If you've never done a goalreview, the best thing that you
(18:13):
can do is pick your fivefavorite clients, sit them down,
measure their progress, andsay, Are you completely
satisfied with your results?
That's it.
Okay.
This is so important that thisis your only task in May.
And I said earlier, like, Iwant to give you a systems task
and I want to give you amarketing task.
Goal reviews are both.
Goal reviews are the bestretention strategy out there,
they're the best ARM increasingstrategy out there.
And quite often they canactually lead to a referral,
(18:35):
too.
That's how important they are.
And that's all I'm giving youfor April because I want you to
get good at them.
Okay, so May, we're going toturn to um corporate marketing.
Now, this is an interestingmarketing strategy.
This is one of those, you know,it's not a Hail Mary, but it is
like a big long bomb.
You're you might do a bunch ofcorporate reach outs or
(18:57):
whatever.
And sometimes it feels like,well, if one of 10 of these pays
off, it's going to be worth it.
But the reality is you don'twant the corporation to sign up.
You want all of its employeesto sign up.
So this is a better way to doit.
So what you're going to do hereis you're going to talk to your
best clients and you're goingto say, you know, you're such a
great client.
As a thank you to you, what ifI came into your office at shift
(19:21):
change or at lunchtime or atafternoon break?
And I did a short littleseminar for people on, you know,
fill in the blanks, uh,nutrition, stretching, stress
reduction, whatever that is, youknow.
And again, what we're trying todo here is we're trying to
change the whole environment forour clients, but we'll probably
wind up getting more clientsout of it too.
And so if the client is like,yeah, that's awesome, you know,
(19:42):
wonderful.
Who should I talk to in yourorganization?
And they're going to give you amanager's name or the HR or
whatever.
If you've got an entrepreneurin your gym, this is just such a
slam dunk.
Congratulations.
You know, thank you for beingsuch a great client.
I love having you here as aspecial thank you.
What if I came into yourworkplace and just gave a talk
to your employees about healthand safety, stretching to do in
(20:05):
the morning, stress reduction,how to eat it at the job.
You know, it's a bonus to them.
And what you're gonna do isyou're going to go into the
session, you're gonna talk for20 minutes, you're mostly gonna
do a QA, right?
That's easy.
And then you're gonna havepeople give you their email
addresses to enter them in adraw.
And that draw is going to befor a free whatever, in-body, no
(20:27):
sweat intro, jug of proteinpowder.
You're not gonna give them freepersonal training because you
don't give away your high-valueservice that you charge for.
You're gonna give them somekind of prize.
So maybe it's a t-shirt,whatever.
Afterward, you're gonna go backto your office, you're gonna
draw one of those namesrandomly.
You're gonna email all of them.
Okay.
Now they're on your email list,they're in the lead nurture
(20:47):
sequence, and you email themall.
Congratulations, the winner wasKathy.
So amazing.
Can't wait to see you.
Come on in, pick up yourskipping rope, whatever.
The rest of them stay on youremail address, right?
And again, of course, at theend of that email, you're like,
hey, you know, if you want to doa no-sweat intro, a catalyst,
click here.
That's it.
That's how you do corporatemarketing, right?
They've given you access tolike a dozen, two dozen new
(21:09):
possible clients who areprobably making a good living,
the same as your client is.
Then I want you to do a careerroadmap session.
Now, a career roadmap sessionis a little bit different from a
staff review.
So, in a career roadmapsession, it's it's like a goal
review for your staff.
So you're gonna sit down andyou're gonna start off with
like, hey, you know, where doyou want to go to?
(21:31):
What kind of career do youwant?
You know, what do you want fromworking at this gym?
And some of them will say, Hey,I'm good.
Yeah, love it.
Thank you so much.
Wonderful.
You go into an evaluation.
Some of them will say, though,like, I want more, I would like
some more hours.
I'd love to make this afull-time job.
And what you do in those casesis you say, Let's plot the path
(21:51):
from here to there.
So let's start with what youwant to do.
You want a job here.
How much do you want to make?
Okay, let's work backward fromthat.
Now we have tools for that inTubeRay.
Okay.
So we have this whole staffascension model.
And what we give you is like,here's a spreadsheet.
You can start with your targetearning, and we can fill it in.
Here's the opportunities in mygym.
(22:12):
Well, you can coach this manyclasses.
There's, you know, this muchpersonal training, or there's
these other roles that you mightwant to fit into short term and
long term.
And then you show them here'sthe steps that need to happen to
get there.
And then you say, now here'swhere we're starting from.
And that's when you give themtheir evaluation.
Okay, you know, you want tocoach more classes uh to get
there.
Here's what I need to seehappen.
(22:33):
Okay.
You want to take more personaltraining?
Wonderful.
Here's a certification that Ineed you to get, or here's you
know, the steps that I need youto do or the things that I need
you to improve to have thatopportunity.
Like that's it.
That's how you do a careerroadmap.
It's just like a goal reviewfor clients.
But here's the thing we're inan age now where staff retention
(22:53):
is almost as hard as clientretention.
Just like you've got to set upa marketing pipeline for funnels
for your clients, you need toset up a recruitment pipeline
for your staff.
You need to always be marketingto your staff.
And just like you need to haveretention systems like goal
reviews for your clients, youneed to have retention systems
like career roadmaps for yourstaff.
I'll be honest with you here.
If the owner of the studiowhere I was working in 2005 had
(23:17):
sat me down and done any kind ofexercise like this, even just
like Chris, you know, what doyou want from life?
Or Chris, like, here's how wecan help you make more money.
I would not own a gym today.
I would still be working forthat guy and still doing
probably one-on-one training.
If he had said something like,Well, let's try doing small
group, I probably would havestayed there for the next 20
years.
Instead, I left, built a gym,almost went bankrupt, saved it,
(23:41):
became the biggest gym in ourcity.
And now here I am, you know,talking to you.
So it turned out for the best.
But the reality is if you wantto keep your staff, like this is
the kind of conversation thatyou need to have.
Okay, back to the guide.
In June of 2026, I'd reallylike you to come to the Two
Brain Summit.
Now, this is going to soundlike a pitch, and it kind of is,
but the reality here is thatthe benefits of attending summit
(24:02):
far, far, far outweigh theinvestment.
Yes, you're gonna learn stuff.
Okay, like that's why we go tomost business seminars, but the
summit is so much more thanthat.
At the summit, you're going toactually work with coaches,
speakers, presenters.
So when Mike Mikalowitz gets onthe stage in 2026, he's not
just out there to talk about thepumpkin plan or his newest
(24:23):
book.
What he's there to do is guideyou through work.
So there's going to be anexercise that you're going to be
doing coached by Mike from thestage.
And then we'll have anotherdozen speakers get up there and
speak to you.
Yes, they're inspirational.
Yes, they're educational, butthey're there to coach you.
The next thing, and this isarguably even more important, is
that the gym owner business islonely.
(24:43):
Like there's very few people wecan talk to about this, right?
I know it, I know because I amone.
You don't want to talk to yourspouse about it at nine o'clock
at night when you're exhaustedbecause you don't want to dump
everything on them.
And you can't really talk toyour staff about it because it
feels like whining and they'regonna lose you know confidence
in the business to be able andstart looking around for other
things.
(25:03):
You definitely can't talk toyour clients about it.
Who can you talk to about?
Right?
Where's your support network?
Other professions have theseprofessional conferences where
you make friends and all thephysicians, you know, talk to
each other and learn from eachother.
And there's conferences forinsurance brokers and
dietitians.
This is the biggest conferencefor micro gym owners in the
(25:24):
world for a reason.
We do an amazing job.
The team does an amazing job.
I just kind of show up andshake hands.
And we're good at connectingyou with other gym owners in
your town, your state, or acrossthe world.
You can form a lasting network.
You can stay in touch withthese people for the next 30
years because I mean, you'regonna need it.
You're gonna need to not feellike you're on an island out
(25:44):
there.
There's definitely days whenyou're gonna need an ear, and
there's days when they're gonnaneed an ear too.
And you can really play ideasoff each other.
It's the connection that reallymatters.
It's the feeling that like I'mnot alone out there.
These people have me.
I mean, I come into the summitevery year, kind of beat down
from the year, and I leave firedup.
I mean, I generally leave thesummit with the next book in
(26:06):
mind, and I'm like writing onthe flight home the next day.
A lot of gym owners find thisto be so true that they bring
their staff to summit now.
So there's two stages there'sthe big stage for the business,
and then there's the smallerstage for the coaches.
Uh, this year, Bill Parisi isgoing to be running a three-hour
workshop on building speed.
So it's not a lecture.
Your coach is going to beworking out and doing speed
drills.
(26:26):
And then uh Metfix is coming inand they're doing stuff with
the coaches for three hours.
We've got a couple more guests,too, that I can't name yet.
But the coaches are doingstuff, they're learning, they
love it, they're going out todinner with you.
And, you know, the team istight, they're stoked, like
they're out there ready to buildyour business when they leave.
It's a great investment.
On the other hand, if you justwant time away and to be around
(26:48):
your peers, don't bring yourstaff, just come on your own.
I'm really harping on the sumbecause I think it's a really
important part of the mentorshipprogram.
And even if you're not in twobrain, you're welcome to come
and join us.
It's not going to be a bigsales pitch.
It's going to be reallyvaluable to you too.
I have never, ever, ever heardfrom a single person it wasn't
worth it.
It wasn't worth the trip.
(27:08):
It wasn't worth the ticket.
It's always worth it.
And the best part about this islike your business space for
it, but you get the benefit.
All right.
Now in July, we're back tobusiness again.
And you're going to be leavingthe summit with like 20 things
to do, five things you want totry, 10 people you got to talk
to.
So I'm not going to give youany more for June.
But in July, here's what we'regoing to do we're going to start
(27:31):
optimizing your Google SEOprogram.
Okay.
So in the last few months, Idon't know if you're following
AI or not, but in the last fewmonths, there's been a lot of
chatter about SEO and howrelevant it actually is.
And so go think back to theolden times, right?
Three years ago, the oldendays, when you would go on
Google and you would like tolook up, how do I find the right
(27:52):
diet?
What exercises should I do?
Right?
What's the best restaurant inmy town?
And Google would would listlike, here's number one, here's
number two, here's number three.
And your goal with SEO searchengine optimization was to land
in like the first three, or justto get on the first page of
Google.
And Google is just all theselinks.
And if you were on the firstpage, people would probably
click on you.
Well, now Google has changed.
(28:14):
So what Google does, if you askit a question now, is its AI
called Gemini just tells you theanswer.
It doesn't send you out to anexternal site.
Okay.
So the Google is doing thesearch for you and just telling
you the answer instead ofsaying, here's a site that might
have the answer.
What it does though, whenyou're doing that search, is it
does link its sources.
(28:34):
So people can click on thatlink still as part of the
broader answer.
Even more than that, though,all of the LLMs, the AI models,
okay, so ChatGPT and Claude, youname it, they're all doing a
lot of the searching now insteadof people going to Google.
Like 30% of all search trafficnow is bots.
So what does this mean?
Well, SEO is actually even moreimportant than ever.
(28:58):
You've got to really optimizeyour site now because it's not a
human coming there, it's a bot.
And if a bot doesn't find whatthey're looking for right away,
they are gone.
That's why we update our SEOcourse in Two Brain every single
year because SEO changes allthe time, right?
The algorithm used to beunpredictable.
Now it's unpredictable andautomatic and it's unknown.
(29:19):
It's, you know, you've got tohave certain things so that the
bots can find you quickly, findthe information that they're
looking for without confusion,without searching, link to you,
and then move on.
Like SEO is more important nowthan ever.
It's just different from whatit was before.
And so that's why I want you todo an SEO audit on yourself in
July.
Okay.
Now, yeah, Google still works,right?
(29:42):
But 30% of organic searchtraffic is down industry wide.
You have to be prepared forthis.
You have to set it up.
From this, too, you got to setup your Google My Business
profile.
And from there, we're going tochange our ad copy.
So you knew it was coming, butin August.
You got to update your ad copyfor the September surge.
So here's what happens.
(30:04):
We said from the state of theindustry guy, the biggest data
set in the fitness business, wesaid that August is when you're
going to get the most leads, butyou're also going to get the
fewest sales.
August is like the worst monthin the industry for revenue, but
it's also a great month forleads.
Why is that?
Well, think about who yourclients are and what they're
(30:25):
doing in their lives.
Probably in the summertime,they're at their cottage,
they're taking the kids on thelast vacation, they're trying to
get them ready for school.
Okay.
They're just enjoying theirsummer.
But in September, the kids areback to school.
They're back in their routine.
They have a predictableschedule again.
This is really important.
People delay joining a gymuntil September because they
(30:47):
want to do it when theirschedule is really predictable.
And so that means they'researching websites, right?
They're making decisions,they're making choices, they're
opting in, they're finding outinformation in August for the
gym they plan to join inSeptember.
That means your advertising,your marketing has to be super
duper good in August if you wantto get them in September.
So that means you have to gothrough your ads funnel.
(31:08):
Okay.
So here's your paid ads funnelin Two Brain.
Okay.
There's two different courseshere.
The first is the digitalmarketing course.
This is for Facebook, uh,Instagram.
The second is the Google AdsMini course.
Okay.
So you set up this funnel,maybe you tweak your copy, you
do that with a marketing mentor,and you know, you capture more
(31:28):
leads.
And you know, maybe this feelscrazy and scary, and I don't
really want to do that stuff.
But the reality is that youdon't want to be the only one in
your town not doing it.
And I often use the analogy oflike, okay, maybe you don't want
to run your own ads, but youneed to know how to.
Just like you might not everchange your own tires on the
car, but you need to know how tobecause emergencies happen.
(31:51):
The thing is, though, with yourads, it's like blowing a tire
every single day.
Stuff changes.
You need to know how to be ableto fix it.
This is just part of the game.
If you get good at ads andyou're educated and you know
when something's going wrong,when something's working, then
you can hire an ad agency to runthem for you.
Most don't.
But the reason most people hiread agencies is the wrong
(32:14):
reason, the backward reason.
It's I don't know this, I don'twant to know this.
I would rather waste money onsomebody else and just stay in
the dark and never ever know andjust like trust them, even
though I've never met thembefore.
Ad agencies routinely go out ofbusiness.
Okay.
Let that sink in.
It's because they're not greatat marketing.
And when you're giving an adagency money without knowing
(32:37):
what they're spending on, yourinterests are not aligned.
Their goal is to spend all themoney, right?
And they're going to tell youthat it's working because they
quote unquote got a bunch ofleads.
But how will you know?
Well, how many leads did theyactually get?
I don't know.
How many of those leads becameclients?
I don't know.
You have to learn this stuff,or you're just going to keep
throwing money away on adagencies instead of knowing how
(32:59):
to do it yourself and knowinglike when something's actually
working.
So August is actually a greattime to do that because things
are quieter and you've got theadded pressure to actually learn
it and get it done because youhave to, right?
So August is like you shouldhave a little bit of free time,
a few, you know, fewer introscoming up, fewer leads coming
(33:19):
in.
But now you're kind of startingto worry, and that should be
enough of an incentive to go outand learn how to do Facebook
ads and fix this up.
Hey, you don't have to figurethis out.
There's no book on like how todo better Facebook ads.
You work with a mentor, okay?
We provide you with a mentorjust for this in TubeRay.
You work with them, you set upyour ad account, you learn how
(33:39):
to run it, you learn how totweak it, you learn how to test,
you learn how to fix stuff.
And then we just turn youloose.
And if you want to book anothercall with the mentor to change
things later, you can.
You could even hire an agencythat we work with to run those
ads for you.
But jumping straight to anagency is so backward and
potentially harmful to yourbusiness that I strongly
advocate that you don't do it.
(33:59):
In September, I want you toperform 30 more client goal
review sessions.
Now, the key to success is nothere's something different every
single month of the year.
I could easily give yousomething different to do every
single month of the year.
I mean, you saw our toolkit,right?
There's dozens of things thatyou could do.
The key is knowing what youshould do, what's going to
actually move the needle, andwhat you'll complete after that.
(34:20):
Like I'm so going here.
That's the key.
And the other key is like youhave to repeat what's working
over time.
So if you're just learning howto do goal reviews, you do 10,
and then you never do themagain, you are not going to get
the benefit of them.
The reason that you open abusiness is to get compounding
benefits from doing the samethings over and over and over
(34:41):
again, right?
That's why you're not anemployee.
The way that you getcompounding benefits is you get
the basics down and you repeatthem and repeat them and repeat
them.
One of those basics is goalreviews.
The more often you do goalreviews, the better you will be
at them and the more benefitthat you will get from them.
It's not a one and done, it'snot a try and see.
It's you repeat it as part ofyour coaching platform and watch
(35:04):
the results grow from it.
Okay.
So you're going to do more goalreview sessions in September.
In October, you're going tostart your end-of-the-year
promotions for packages andretail and gifts.
And the reason is that I don'tever want you to have another
bad November where you're kindof like, oh, geez, what am I
going to do?
And you're staring down thebarrel of December, which is
going to be worse.
I want you to have a plan.
(35:24):
So what you're going to do inOctober next year is set up your
retail presale.
Okay.
Here's how to do it.
If you're in Tubrain, all thematerials are right here.
How to sell supplements, how tosell uh, you know, swag retail,
uh, how to sell t-shirts andstuff.
And you want to get all thatstuff set up in October so that
(35:46):
there's cash coming in inNovember to bridge the gap of
people saying, Oh, I got to savemoney for Christmas, or I'm
gonna fall off track inNovember.
I'm just gonna put mymembership on hold while I pick
out.
That's how you plug that gap.
Okay.
You can set up your packagesthat people can buy for your
clients, like your Christmasgifts.
You can write the emailspromoting those things.
You can bolster your cash flowin November and especially
(36:09):
December by setting all that upin October.
This is how having a planworks.
I don't want anybody else inthe gym industry to have the
same August 2009 that I had,where I was ready to, you know,
give it all up, drive my truckoff a cliff to collect the
insurance money.
I don't want that for anybodyelse.
And the way that you avoid thatis you have a plan.
Next November, you're gonnahold career roadmap sessions
(36:32):
with your coaches and you'regonna go through the annual plan
for 2027.
And what you're gonna do isyou're gonna say, what worked
really well.
Let's keep that.
Let's duplicate that in 2027.
What could I tweak?
What new thing have I learned?
And where could I fit that inand add that to the plan for
2027?
See, this is really whatmentorship is all about.
Giving you the tactics isgreat, forgetting the quick
(36:54):
wins, right?
But teaching you these skillsof how to audit and how to
upgrade is what projectsbusinesses way up to the million
dollar mark.
It's repeating and makingslight improvements instead of
constantly replacing what you'redoing all the time and just
running this chaotic mess.
Okay.
In December next year, I wantyou to run a high rock
simulation and have an in-housecompetition and party.
(37:16):
Now, look, there's some stuffhere on high rocks.
You know, sneak peek if you'vemade it this far in the video.
Two brain is working with highrocks to build materials for
high rocks affiliates andincluding, you know, how to use
high rocks for marketing, how touse high rocks for retention,
how to pay your coaches to runhigh rocks, how to improve your
ARM with high rocks, all thatstuff.
It's exciting.
High ROX is growing really,really fast for a reason.
(37:38):
Like right now, gyms aregetting a great ROI on high ROX.
And I'm not saying that becauseI have an incentive to promote
HIROX.
I'm saying that because that'swhat the data shows.
And that's what I want for youis to follow the data.
Now, what we do at Catalyst iswe have something that's called
a super meet in December.
And a super meet is a funlittle powerlifting challenge.
Okay.
And there's a little video herein the guide.
(37:59):
Um, you can watch it if youwant to.
This is the second part of thesuper meet called the gift.
So the super meet they havefrom 9 a.m.
until about 1 p.m.
to get a max in six differentlifts.
So they come in, they warm up,boop, start the clock.
They got two hours to get a maxsnatch, clean and jerk,
deadlift, back squat, standingpress, and weighted pull-up.
(38:21):
And they add all that up.
They compare against last year,high five.
That night, they come back andwe do this thing called the
gift.
Now, the gift is where peoplein my gym donate to kids in
foster care.
We started doing this, I don'tknow, eight or nine years ago,
maybe even more.
And we've helped thousands oflocal kids.
What happens is the foster careworkers, they give us a list
(38:45):
every year, no names, but like,here's a family of three.
There's an eight-year-old, afive-year-old, and a
three-year-old.
Here are their sizes, you know,boy, boy, girl, whatever.
And people in my gym say, okay,I'll take family number three,
I'll take family number seven.
And they go out and they buygifts and we put a $50 limit,
but like nobody sticks to that.
And on the day of the supermeet, they pay their entrance by
bringing their gift and theyset their gift in front of the
(39:07):
door.
And then we at night, we comeback, we have a nice potlock,
and at six o'clock, the fostercare workers show up with vans
and we load up all the vans andthey go out and distribute all
the presents.
It chokes me up every year.
I have to like leave the roomand have a little cry.
But this is how you actuallyuse your community for the force
of good.
This is how you build thatthird place for your clients.
(39:28):
You know, fewer and fewer ofyour clients go to church or
belong to a club or a communitygroup anymore.
You can be that, you know,channel for them to give and for
them to unite in that givingand to feel good and to have
like that opportunity.
Gym owners are super duper, youknow, generous, like sometimes
(39:51):
to their to their own fault.
And they'll run fundraisers andGoFundMe's and special events,
and they'll give up theirweekends year round.
It's better off to pick one bigevent like this when you can
really do a great job, focusyour community on it once, and
you know, incorporate that intoyour annual plan a year in
advance.
Other people do things likethey have like a winter formal
(40:12):
for their clients, which is alot of fun, or you know, they'll
they'll run like a hope workoutor a fundraiser or something
else.
That's great.
This is the time of the year toreally do it.
People will love you for it.
Look, here's the thing you cantake my template here, okay?
You can use the blank one ifyou want to.
That's up on page one.
Here we go.
(40:32):
Page three.
You can fill in your ownblanks.
Okay.
You can scratch off the onesthat I've got.
I've got these basics downbecause these are the ones that
I'm always reminding people todo goal reviews, career
roadmaps, et cetera, funnelaudits.
And if you just follow thisplan, your gym will grow.
I guarantee it.
Okay.
Even better is to work with amentor and make a customized
(40:52):
plan just for you, based on yourgym, your goals, et cetera.
And you can get this free guidefrom me, as always.
Just go into the gym ownersUnited Facebook group.
Okay, I'm in here.
Just click on my littlepicture, send me a DM.
Coop, can I have a copy,please, of that 2026 annual plan
guide?
This is it again.
Okay.
It's the starting line picture.
And we update this every yearbecause the mission is to help
(41:14):
10,000 gym owners be successful.
And the way that you becomesuccessful is that you're
constantly building, notreplacing what you're doing with
new stuff and chasing novelty,but taking what you're currently
doing and improving it andimproving it and improving it,
repeating what you're doing 90%of the time and adding new stuff
10% of the time.
And the way that you make thatwork even faster is to work with
(41:36):
a mentor.
That's why we have the biggestand best team of mentors in the
world at TubeBrain.
These are all highly qualified,paid people who can walk
through this plan with you, putthe right things in the right
buckets, show you exactly whatto do to execute, and then hold
you accountable for doing it.
So this doesn't just wind up onthe bottom of a pile on your
desk somewhere.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And if you want to be a bettergym in 2026 than you were in 25,
(42:00):
you just got to make a plan.
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