Andrew (00:02):
Welcome to another episode of Two-Brain Radio with your host Chris Cooper. The COVID-19 crisis is a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity for gym owners. With their businesses on hold, they can change and improve anything they want. To help entrepreneurs find silver lining in the current storm, Chris led an online group for the second part of Your Gym 2.0 exercise on May 10th. The goal: help gym owners take actionable steps to create service packages that are perfect for their very best clients. What follows is the audio from the May 10th webinar. What follows is the audio from the May 10th webinar. To work along with Chris, download Two-Brain’s Your Gym 2.0 worksheet via the link in the show notes. And now here’s Chris Cooper Cooper.
Chris (00:41):
Hey everybody. Thanks for joining me and happy mother’s day. I’m glad to see people hop over to Zoom today instead of broadcasting to Facebook live, some of the streaming requirements changed on Facebook. So we’re going to do this here, but we’ll still record it for everybody and share later. First off, I want to say happy mother’s day. What I’m really proud of in the fitness industry is that while women are generally underrepresented in most business categories as entrepreneurs in the fitness industry, that’s not true. That more than 50% of fitness enterprises are owned by women. And that is especially true if you count microgyms and coaching platforms, you know, studios and things like that, more are owned by women than by men, which means that this is a fantastic opportunity for women both to succeed as entrepreneurs but also to lead and provide a great example for future women on what it can mean to be successful too.
Chris (01:35):
So moms, thank you for that. Thank you for doing it while being a mother and doing, you know, all of the hard work, which is another full-time job too. As we get into this and while people are joining here today, I want to talk about what the future model of the gym is going to look like and why we’re talking so much about online training. And one of the things that we’ve heard, we hear very, very, very few complaints from people, but sometimes people misunderstand what we’re saying. And so one of the things that we heard this week twice in fact was Two-Brain only cares about online training, Two-Brain only talks about online training now. That’s not actually the case. If you look at our Growth ToolKit, less than two and a half percent of the total space on that Growth ToolKit is actually taken out by online training.
Chris (02:22):
The truth and the reality of our situation right now, whether we like it or not, is that online training forms the majority of the fitness business. And we’re really thankful to be able to talk about that and pivot gyms in that direction to keep their coaching business. And we are hopeful that you’ll get back to in person coaching before too long. But the reality is that we are never going back a hundred percent to the way things were. And so if you’re going to succeed in the fitness industry now, you have to be using online tools and making the most of that platform as well as your in-person platform. Now today we’re going to talk about your vision, continued for your new gym and how we’re going to get there. So last time we talked about kind of setting that vision, removing the obstacles, taking the things away from your current business model that didn’t work, figuring out what’s left that you want to keep, that actually builds your Perfect Day.
Chris (03:15):
And I called those things cornerstones. Now there are basically four cornerstones to your fitness business now. And so just as a really quick review here, those cornerstones are nutrition coaching, group exercise coaching, personal exercise coaching and online coaching. So nutrition coaching, depending on where you live, you might not be able to write diet plans for your clients. That’s OK. You can help them with healthy choices and habits and self regulation. And in a worst case scenario, you can partner with a local dietician, but the prescription to include nutrition in the client’s overall fitness plan should come from you. And that’s why it’s a cornerstone of your fitness coaching business. The second is group exercise coaching. Most of your clients will prefer to exercise in a group, especially the clients that you had before this crisis began. So group coaching serves as a lower priced option for people who can’t afford one-on-one attention, but it also provides the measurable benefits of motivation and community.
Chris (04:16):
These clients follow general programming with customization in groups of four or more. This will—group coaching is not dead. The group fitness model is not dead. The the appetite for gathering together in a community will actually be heightened when this crisis is over. So if you can keep clients around longer or until you get back into the group physical location business, you’ll actually have an easier time recruiting new members later. What all these online classes like Peloton and P90X back in my day, what they’ve done for you is basically create a crop of interest. So there’s a lot of people out there who are aware now they’ve maybe taken the first steps, they feel a little bit better, they feel a little bit more confident, and now they’re going to look for the next level. And if you present yourself as the next level, you will succeed.
Chris (05:08):
The other thing that they’re looking for after a month or two months in captivity is probably some human interaction, and so for those people, group training solves a need that they probably didn’t know that they had back in February. The third cornerstone is personal exercise coaching. Now, this is one-on-one or personal training with personalized workouts created just for them tailored to the client’s needs on that particular day. 10 to 20% of your business will be personal exercise coaching long term, but every client should start one-on-one even if they plan to move to groups or online training later. This is the fastest path to progress for your clients. It’s your premium service. Group training again is your discount service for people who can’t afford one-on-one attention. And then the fourth cornerstone is online coaching where you’re providing accountability and daily customization of your general programming, fun activities and challenges you can’t provide in a gym like in the gym setting, in the constraints of the time that you have like trivia night or Zoom workout classes, online courses, mindfulness and habit training.
Chris (06:15):
This is the service that keeps your clients on track when they’re not right in front of you. Now, to date, most people have treated their online coaching business as like their curbside delivery. You know, as soon as my restaurant can open the doors, people are going to want to come to a restaurant instead of picking it up from the curb. And while that’s going to be true for a lot of people, it’s not going to be true in every case. People are going to be scared. People are going to take that convenient delivery just because it exists and it didn’t exist before. It’s more than a drive through. But McDonald’s has changed their entire model and they’re testing their new restaurants in Denmark right now. And the way that the McDonald’s model works is basically you can pick up and you can sit in the restaurant, but it’s going to be very different than it was before.
Chris (07:07):
It’s going to be like right now, there are people going through the McDonald’s drive through, picking up their meals and then sitting in the parking lot and eating them. That’s what McDonald’s is going to feel like. That’s not what you want for your business probably. But if you think about how many people go through the McDonald’s drive through and choose that as an option instead of going to a restaurant because of the convenience, you’ll start to understand like why some people will still choose online training as an option over in person training. It’s convenient. It’s quick. I can take this, I can eat it whenever I want to. You know, it might be in my car, it might be right when I get home. It might be three hours from now. So I don’t want you to think about online training just as the curbside option to the restaurant that you own.
Chris (07:53):
You need to think about online training as the ability to offer services that you couldn’t necessarily offer in person. OK? So you know, maybe your old coaching business didn’t use all four pillars. Maybe you just had one or two and maybe you’re worried about change. So before I guide you through the next steps, I want you to understand what sunk costs means. These are different from fixed costs. Some costs are the expenses and the moves that you’ve made before now. And I want you to understand that sunk costs mean nothing. If you’ve spent the last 10 years going through medical school and you feel like, man, I hate this doctor business, but I have to be a doctor because I’ve invested all this time and money. That’s not true. You can change your mind. You can change whatever you want to do. This week I’ve been so motivated by people in the Two-Brain groups saying, screw it, this time I’m going to rebuild a business that pays me better.
Chris (08:51):
That makes me more profit. Instead of just running this break-even public service at your, you know, a charity business. That’s so awesome. And that’s what this chance is really all about here. So you might feel like you’ve worked years to get where you are, maybe even a decade. But I promise you, you haven’t come this far to only come this far. Your work to date has only set you up for this opportunity. Nothing more. You aren’t shackled to your past. You can change. So I want you to take out the worksheets. I put them in the file section. If you’re watching a recording of this video, you’ll find them in the recording notes. There are several sheets there. The very first one is called exercise one, seed clients. Your gym 2.0 worksheet, part two. So here’s what we’re going to do guys.
Chris (09:39):
We’re going to work together. If you have questions as we go through this, then I want you to just put up your hand and ask them. If you’re in the Two-Brain family, you already know who your seed clients are. So we’re going to go through this exercise quickly to get onto the next. If you haven’t done this exercise before and you’re watching this webinar or somewhere else, you’re listening to it on a podcast, then I want you to download the worksheet, press pause and work your way through this slowly. Do not skip this. It’s most important to understand what your best clients want. So the first exercise, we’re going to go through is seed clients.
Chris (10:14):
All right, so guys in the chat, I’d like you to list the initials of five of your seed clients right now. OK. Just type in the initials and that will give me a sense of how quickly we’re actually going through this. OK. Getting a couple of initials posted up here right now. Thanks. James. K A J H E F C P T P Justin CF. KK DLK, MMC. Got it. Yes. I love so much that you guys know who your seed clients are because they’re the focal point that we’re going to build the rest of your business around. Good. If you haven’t finished, guys, you can come back to this and move on to the next. So just to make sure that everybody, I just got a message saying somebody didn’t understand the worksheet. So I’m going to share a vision of my screen here. There we go.
Chris (11:01):
Hopefully you can see that better. So the first thing that we’re doing is going through the seed clients exercise. If you haven’t done this before, you’re listing out, you’re pulling out your client list. You’re looking at like top five clients who make you the happiest, top five clients who make you the most money. Maybe even do top 10 if you need to. And then the next thing that you’re going to do is compare the two lists. Circle the names that appear on both lists, and those are your seed clients. These are the people that we want to serve and we want to replicate through service. Now what we’re going to do is we’re gonna flip that paper open, OK? And we’re going to draw three columns. And the first column is going to be titled client name. So you could just put your initials if you want to, their initials, then client goal, and then client why.
Chris (11:53):
Now it’s going to be harder the further we move to the right these columns to fill them in. OK? So the first thing you’re going to do is write down your client’s initials under client name. OK? Write those initials down beside their initials in the next column. And I want you to write their goal, OK. What were they trying to achieve when they first came to your gym? And then beside that goal, if you know it, I want you to write their why. Now on the Two-Brain coaching platform, which is the coaching arm of Two-Brain Business, we write a lot about motivational interviewing. Precision Nutrition does this. They talk about the five why’s and really getting down to a person’s real reason for wanting to join your gym. If you haven’t done that, that’s OK. This is not something that most microgym owners have been doing in the past.
Chris (12:41):
All right? So we’re going to take a couple minutes. If you’re listening to this recording, you can press pause and you can actually work through this at your own timeline, right? So thanks guys who have posted their seed client initials in the comments here. We’re getting some really good stuff already. I’m going to give you two or three minutes to work through this and then we’re going to work on, move on to the next. And again, if you’re not sure what their why is, that’s fine. But as their coach, you should definitely know their goals at a minimum. OK? And of course we’ll find out their why later. Now if you find that you’re writing down their initials and you’re not sure what their goal is, or maybe you think like, Oh, their goal is just to exercise more. That’s not the case.
Chris (13:25):
That’s not the right answer. You have to dig a little bit deeper and you know you’re forgiven for not knowing that it’s not too late to figure that out. What you’re going to do is book a Zoom call with them because you still can’t do like a lot of one on one face to face and you’re going to say, what’s your goal right now? How has it changed since you started? How do you feel your progress is going? And then you’re going to say, why is that your goal now and what’s the reason why? You know, do you have that reason and why do you have that reason? You’re just going to keep asking why until you get down to the root of their behavior. OK, so you need to know their goals. Now we start getting into how we’re going to service their goals and I want you to keep an open mind about what your service is right now.
Chris (14:08):
I want you to go back to a blank slate, I want you to pretend that we’re 30 days before you actually open your business. Really deciding what should my business be? So you’ve got these four cornerstones, you’ve got nutrition, you’ve got group exercise, you’ve got personal training, and you’ve got online training. And looking at these four cornerstones, you know, these are the tools that I can use to help this client. These are the strategies. I want you to look at the seed clients on your list. So go back to that first list and then I want you to ask yourself a question, does this client need nutrition coaching to reach this goal? Now, if you’re looking at their goal and their goal is weight loss, then obviously yes, nutrition coaching is going to be the foundation, right? It’s going to be one of the key cornerstones. So you’re going to write a big N next to that client’s name.
Chris (14:58):
Then you’re going to ask yourself, does this client need group coaching to reach this goal? And if the answer is yes, then I want you to write a big G beside their name. Then I want you to ask, does this client need personal coaching to reach this goal? And if the answer is yes, then write a big P beside their name. And finally ask yourself, does this client need accountability, follow-up, habits training, mindset coaching in between our sessions to achieve this goal? And does the client need help doing enough workouts on their own? Would they be better off doing some workouts at home? And if so, write a big O for online beside their name. Now again, I don’t want you to think about your sunk costs. I don’t want you to think about, well, I sell group training and I have some personal training or I don’t have enough coaches to offer nutrition coaching.
Chris (15:52):
Don’t worry about that yet. We will get there. OK. So right now you’re writing an N, a G, a P and/or an O next to each client, depending on what their goals are and how you can best help them get to their goals. The exercise behind the exercise is this. We need to think about our clients as individuals instead of part of a larger group. A few weeks ago when I was coming on in our primary focus, our urgency was all around client retention. I mentioned that personal trainers had a much easier time retaining clients online than group coaches did, who didn’t have a personal training background. Because while group coaches think, you know, one person is missing out of 12, that’s pretty good personal trainers say, where is Mary? So in this case it is best to have this one on one relationship.
Chris (16:45):
In a group coaching, you’re going to have a smaller one on one relationship because you’ve scaled your business that way. But when we come back to the new normal, you’re going to have a different mix. There’s going to be a different relationship with your clients. So that’s the NGPO. Kev. Yeah, please do put more than one letter per client. Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a great question. And you are bang on. So guys, it’s not that you’re choosing one thing, you’re choosing a collection of things. The other exercise behind this exercise is to show you that most people need more than group fitness coaching. Almost everyone. OK. That will not solve every problem. And Kevin could give you a three hour lecture on this. He’s been around a long time and he shared a lot of his wisdom with me this week.
Chris (17:33):
So thanks for that Kevin. So we’re just doing this with our seed clients now. If you want to take some extra time, you can go through your entire client list and do the NGPO exercise on them. OK. And that’s, when I went through it as a test run about a week ago when I was kind of preparing this exercise and trying to figure out and prioritize which service comes first, is it based on like their method, you know, if they sell CrossFit, do they prioritize based on group coaching or do they prioritize based on the fitness pyramid from Greg Glassman or do we build up their business starting from principles instead of from methods? And I think that we do it from principles. So before we choose a method of delivery for your group classes or philosophy of training for your personal training or a diet for your nutrition coaching, we’re going to stick with the principles and those are our cornerstones.
Chris (18:30):
The next exercise we’re going to do after you finished the NGPO is rocks, pebbles, sand and water. OK? So you’re going to go back through each client and each of your seed clients now has a couple of letters after their name, maybe not all four, maybe two, maybe three. You know, maybe some do just have one. And that’s fine because people’s needs change over time. And so what you might find is like, well, this client is brand new. All they really need right now is my help building a fitness habit. Let me give you an example. A woman came in to Catalyst about a year and a half ago when I was still doing a few of the NSIs to kind of keep my hand in. And she announced that she had set a personal budget for herself of a hundred dollars a month. Now to her, this is a big investment in herself because she was starting from zero, but a hundred dollars won’t buy you very much coaching at Catalyst these days.
Chris (19:26):
So instead of saying, well, you can afford to come once or twice a week and we’ll try and you know, we’ll try and kill you every time you’re here. What I said was if that was my budget, I would start with nutrition, especially with your habits. And I would start a walking program. And so what we did was we sold her a nutrition coaching program and then I said, OK, now I just want you to walk three to four times a week, you know, of this distance, two kilometers, three kilometers, four kilometers, whatever that is. And I want to book another appointment with you to talk next month. And then the next month came and we tweaked her nutrition coaching plan a little bit. And then the following month came and she said, this exercise is getting easy. What do I do? And I said, OK, well here’s how we add exercise coaching into your program.
Chris (20:14):
Do you prefer to do this exercise coaching one on one with me or in a small group setting? She said one on one with you. And I said, great. I have a fantastic personal trainer who you’re absolutely going to love. Her name is Jessica and she has openings Mondays and Thursdays. I think that’s the right prescription for you to get started. And this client immediately went from a hundred dollars a month as her ceiling to take care of herself to 399 a month. And it’s just because we started with habits. So as you’re deciding, you know which one of these things takes priority for my clients, you’re going to say which thing is most important to them right now? Now I’m going to use the rocks in the glass analogy to illustrate how this exercise should go. You’ve probably all heard this story before, but you know, a science teacher pulls out a cup, he puts three rocks in the cup until the rocks are like even with the top.
Chris (21:12):
And he says, is the cup full? And the students say, yeah, it’s full, you can’t fit any more rocks. And then he pulls out a bag of pebbles, like the ones you find in a fish tank, he dumps them in and it fills all the space between the rocks. Until the pebbles now come up to the top of the glass and he says, now is the glass full? And the students say, OK, yeah, you got us, the pebbles filled in the space between the rocks, it’s full. And then he pulls out a bag of sand and he pours the sand into the company, you know, swirls it around a little bit. So the sand fills in all the little spaces between the pebbles. And he says, now is the cup full? And the students say, Oh, OK, yeah, you fit in sand, but there’s nothing smaller than sand.
Chris (21:51):
It’s full. And then he pulls out a glass of water and he fills the rest of the cup. And the water flows between all the little granules of sand. And finally he’s got rocks and then pebbles and then sand and then water. And it’s brimming right to the top. And he says, now it’s full. So what I want you to do with this exercise is look at your clients and consider NFPO, nutrition, group, personal training, online as the rocks, the pebbles, the sand and water in the glass. You have to ask yourself for each client individually, which of these things will make the greatest difference right now. And I want you to circle the letter, that corresponds. So if nutrition will make the biggest difference right now, circle the N. If personal training will make the biggest difference right now, circle the P. If group training will make the biggest difference, circle the G. If habits, coaching, online training, remote coaching will make the biggest difference, circle the O.
Chris (22:54):
And we’re going to do that for each of your seed clients.
Chris (22:58):
And Kevin, this is exactly why it’s OK to put more than one letter per client because now we’re choosing priorities. And now you know where to start from. So when we’re pricing our services and selling our services and showing our pricing binder to clients, now we know which page to start with, OK? And we’ll get to that in one moment. All right, the next exercise, and I don’t expect you to do this live. I expect you to do this afterward. If you’re looking at the worksheet, you’re probably like, Oh no, this next exercise is going to take me an hour. And it’s true. You’ve got an hour to basically build up your new business plan. So the fifth exercise we’re going to do today is called NGPO for all. And what you’re going to do is pull up your client list of active clients.
Chris (23:44):
Don’t worry about people who have put memberships on hold or canceled during this crisis.They’re probably going to come back. That’s fine, but maybe they’re not your seed clients in the new world. That’s OK. You can still be friendly. You don’t have to be their best friend anyway. What I want you to do is go through every client on your list. Now you can do this as quickly as you can. The math will still work. You’re going to write NGP and/or O beside each client name on your client list, and then what you’re going to do is you’re gonna sum up all of those different Ns, all of the Gs, all the Ps, all the Os. You’re gonna write them on the worksheet here. And what I’m trying to do here is give you an objective view of your client’s priorities so that when you’re reshaping your business based on these four cornerstones, you can say, Holy moly, nutrition should have been my priority all along.
Chris (24:36):
Or, wow, I should move online and just keep the bricks and mortar. You know, when I started working with nutrition, started providing nutrition coaching to people started considering again the fitness pyramid from Greg Glassman and looking at nutrition at the bottom, started reading again, first hundred words of fitness. You know, and the first 23 words are about nutrition, you know, it occurred to me that maybe I should open a nutrition coaching business and just keep a squat rack in the back parking lot. You know, I said that in a couple of my books, too. The reason that I didn’t was to first I had sunk costs in the facility. I had signed a lease, I had bought this equipment. And the second one was, I don’t get thrilled about being a nutrition coach. So what that meant was I spent some time trying to find a nutrition coach.
Chris (25:26):
I eventually built a great nutrition coach with Miranda using the HSN model and you know, now we have a nutrition coaching business and that’s the first step for a lot of clients. So the key here is you’re identifying what your primary service might be for the majority of your clients. If that’s not the service that you’re really passionate about delivering, it just means that your big priority is finding somebody who can deliver that under your coaching umbrella because that’s what most of your clients need. The alternative is that you fire all those clients and rebuild with clients who don’t need that service. You know, because as long as the primary service that your clients need is not the primary service that you’re selling, you’re going to have a very high churn rate and you probably should. So we’re going to go back to questions here because I do see a few. Fergus says this exercise has a spreadsheet written all over it.
Chris (26:21):
Yes. Fergus spreadsheets are definitely important here, and if you enjoy spreadsheets, then you’re going to love this. To the rest of you, I apologize, you can’t open a business without operating a spreadsheet. All right, so this is obviously not something that you’re going to do while we’re on this call. I want you to go through and eliminate as many sunk costs as you can. Here I just talked like what happens if you’re not passionate about the service that most of your clients need? The second thing is like, what if I’m not qualified to deliver the thing that most people need? What if I’m not qualified to coach nutrition or qualified to coach group or qualified to do personal training or qualified to give people online coaching. What if I don’t know what to do? And this is a situation that I found myself in after a four year degree, I found myself credentialed but unqualified.
Chris (27:12):
I walked into my first personal training client and I said, what do I do? I have no idea. You know, I had this bachelor of science in exercise science. I could describe the physiology and anatomy of all the body parts we’d be using that day. I could tell them the benefits of like the three energy cycles, but I couldn’t actually relate to the client. And so this is where Two-Brain Coaching comes in. And we’re working really, really, really hard and fast to make sure that you get all the coaching that you need for online personal training, group and nutrition coaching too, so that you’re qualified and confident and effective when you’re dealing with your clients.
Chris (27:55):
But right now, you know, if you feel like you’re unqualified, then, you know, if you say like, well, most of my clients need nutrition coaching, I’m unqualified, I’d like to do it, but I don’t know what to do, then that’s your priority, right? You’re still in captivity for the next month. Get qualified to coach nutrition, get qualified to coach online coaching. You know, the Two-Brain Coaching first degree program is built to get people qualified to train one on one. The second degree program is built to get people qualified to coach groups, even online groups, you know, and the online coaching course which is free to people in Two-Brain Business is there to help you and your coaches get qualified to lead people online. You know? All right, so now let’s talk about pricing. There’s a lot of questions about this and while it’s—the questions are amazing, I think what would really, really help here is building a model.
Chris (28:53):
So a few weeks ago we talked about what it takes to build a model and you have to start with a vision and then you come up with your strategy and then you make your tactics. So I’m going to give you even like all three levels here today. I’m going to give you sample pricing sheets, but I want to talk you through the process of building your own pricing and how to look at it. OK. Online coaching, I said is a separate cornerstone because it’s more than like your curbside delivery of your group training product. It’s more than your curbside delivery or the drive-through version of your personal training product. It’s just a completely different platform that gives you a lot of options around habits coaching, mindset coaching, things that you really can’t do in person. OK. These things are, you know, greatly leveraged online.
Chris (29:41):
When I used to train a lot of goalies, a parent would want to come in and they’d want to watch the session. And a lot of the goalie training we would be doing is visualization. So the kid would be sitting still for about 10 minutes getting into, you know, kind of a meditative state and then just visualizing and moving. And so they’d leave the session and they hadn’t really broken a sweat, but the kid felt great and their performance improved. Unfortunately, the coaches would say, or the parents would say, you’re a personal trainer. Why isn’t my kid sweating? I need you to kill them. And sometimes they’d pull them out of the program. So sometimes like online delivery of these things is far more palatable to people instead of while I’m paying you for your time, why do I have to sit still? Why aren’t I working out?
Chris (30:25):
OK, so we’re going to give you a sample price list on the following page. But the very first thing that has to happen here is you need to insert a new qualifying question into your no sweat intro or into your introductory interview, whatever you want to call it. Here’s where that fits on the prescriptive model. Somebody comes in for a no sweat intro and you go through a short version of motivational interviewing. What brings you here? What’s your goal? Why do you want to achieve that goal? What are the steps that you’ve already taken to help you? You know, what are your bright spots? OK. Then you take an objective measurement of their progress toward that goal. So if you’re in Two-Brain, you understand this. If somebody is coming to you for weight loss, they don’t care what the functional movement screen score tells them. All they care about is like their body fat percentage. So you have to measure that, measure the thing that the client cares about. Then you’re going to make a prescription and you’re going to say to your clients to achieve your goal in the timeline that you’ve laid out, I recommend you, you’re going to need a nutrition coaching program and you’re going to need an exercise program. Would you prefer to do the exercise program at the gym or would you prefer to do some or all of it at home? And that’s the qualifying pivot that we need to make here. That doesn’t change your prices, as you’re about to see. What it doe. change is the method of delivery. And so you’re going to ask this question before you actually say, here’s the nutrition plan you need or here’s how often you have to exercise. OK, I see a few questions here. So we’re going to take a second. Yeah. So Andrew, instead of guessing, could we ask our clients what they need in a survey? Kevin, you can, the tricky part there is, there’s a perception of your client that you should have probably known their goal all along and I know that you do. So I would rather you say, as a coach, here’s what you need. And that’s the really, really the key to cornerstone or the key to the prescriptive model is you saying, here’s what you need.
Chris (32:36):
That’s what they’re coming to you for is the answer. They’re not coming to you for you to say, what do you want? Does that make sense? Prescriptive model is really about you saying do this thing, this is why people go to the doctor. Instead of the doctor saying, which one of these five pills do you feel like taking? Here’s the risks and benefits and the white paper on each one of them. The doctor says, this is the one for you right now. And that feeling of, OK, I know what to do, is a big part of people getting better. And I feel like that’s, or we know that that is a big part of the prescriptive model too. So Andrew does online coaching need to be a separate cornerstone. Why can’t we do fitness, nutrition and habits coaching either online or in person? Andrew, you’re absolutely right.
Chris (33:20):
And this is the question that I went through because originally I said, online is just, it’s your curbside. It’s not a separate cornerstone, but the truth is that it’s more than just a platform. Online coaching gives you the opportunity to talk to a person in very small doses throughout the day. It’s a different service. While people coming to your bricks and mortar space is really time-based. They are renting out your time. Either they’re renting your time, you know, an hour at a time, one-on-one at a premium rate, or they are renting your shared time, one on 12 in a group rate. Online it doesn’t work like that. There’s no schedule. They have access to you so they can, you know, hear back from you. But also you’re holding them accountable. So when you break all these things down, it’s not just what you’re delivering, but it’s actually the method of delivery.
Chris (34:16):
The cool part about online is that when you learn how to manage this properly, it’ll scale a lot easier than in person will, because no matter what happens, you know, you’re limited by the hours of operation of your gym and the hours that you can work and how many coaching staff that you have. You don’t have those limits online. Now, you don’t have to without these limits, without these barriers online is like Steven has said, he feels like he’s responding to clients 24 hours a day. So you have to create these barricades by setting expectations and giving your clients guidelines and teaching them when you will respond to their texts or else it could get overwhelming too. But you know, the freedom that’s online means that it’s actually a different service. OK? But you’re right, you know, you can deliver all the same things online as you can in person, but you can’t do it the same way.
Chris (35:09):
So for example, let’s take an example here. Through online coaching right now I get a daily text with my coach. Then at 8:00 AM, I tune in to do the mindfulness meditation with Colm. And we provide that in the Two-Brain group at 8:00 AM Eastern every single day. You guys can do it too. Then I get my programming from my coach separately. I don’t have to be at the gym at a certain time. You know, after he sees my program, after my workout results get posted, he gives me some feedback on it. Now, if you take those parts individually and you say, I can do this in person. If you’re requiring, if you know you have to do this in person, then that means I have to show up at my gym at 6:00 AM to get my mindfulness homework, then I have to come back to the gym at 8:00 AM.
Chris (35:56):
You know what I’m saying? Then I have to get my workout, do my workout, and then review with my coach. Online is different because it does those things. Justin says, Chris, group is one of our cornerstones and for many, most of our clients the why is the group class, clears their head and makes them feel better. Does it make sense to have options like two times a week, three times a week, and ask how many times a week do you want to get in here? Yeah, it does still make sense to have those options. But I’ll tell you, Justin, like very few of your clients, I’m going to guess zero came to your gym because they wanted to clear their head and feel better in a group. OK. That was not their why when they started. And so if you get a little bit deeper with them and find like their original motivation, then that’s what we’re going to tailor the service to.
Chris (36:45):
Now, in a happy coincidence, all of us after joining the gym for our own personal reasons, all of us found, wait, this does clear my head. This does make me feel better. I do like being around people. I enjoy the community and the support. But you know, nobody signs up to your gym to make friends. You know, maybe people join churches to make friends, maybe people join social groups or sports leagues or whatever to make friends. But not many people join a gym to make friends. And so, you know, while maybe clearing your head is viable, I bet if you went back to those people and ask why, why, why and just got deeper with them, you’d find like their core motivation. And that’s where the cornerstone of your programming has to be. Those other benefits, I know that you can deliver them to them.
Chris (37:32):
You know, whether that’s why they originally signed up or not. So yeah, your approach here, Justin, is probably this, people who’ve been in the gym for a while, they do still need that group support and that group motivation. New clients coming in now maybe they don’t think that they do. So you can introduce that group support and motivation maybe a little bit later on. Yeah. So guys, you can build your cornerstones around whatever you want to. Absolutely. Don’t get hung up on like sunk costs, previous investments and the things that have gotten you to this point. Don’t get hung up on, am I qualified to do this thing? You can always get qualified. And what we’re going to do here is ask about delivery earlier in the prescriptive model. OK. So Kevin’s question really touched on something that’s important here.
Chris (38:22):
You’re asking this person, would you prefer to exercise with me in person? Would you prefer to do some or all of this online? And their feedback is really, really important. But your perspective as the coach is even more important because why they’re coming to you is because they want you to tell them the answer. They don’t want to figure it out themselves. And that’s really important as we move along here. So the next step in the prescriptive model is you are going to say to achieve your goals, you need this and this. You’re going to roll their preference into that prescription of course. But you’re also going to say this is really important. So for example, let’s say that a person says, I don’t want to train online. I only want to work with you directly in the gym. Great. We’re going to form the core of your program around us working together in the gym.
Chris (39:19):
I really believe that some extra habits, coaching, a little bit of knowledge in between your sessions will help you get to your goals faster. Are you open to that? If you want to. And again it comes back to this is coaching. Making this prescription really comes down to what you believe to be best for the client as a coach. So from there you’re going to say, OK, here’s your nutrition plan. Here’s your exercise plan. You have said you prefer to do things remotely. I still want to see you. We’re going to check in once a month in person. Is that OK? And we’re going to do our personal training sessions remotely. And then you start asking about technology. If the person says in person, you say that’s absolutely wonderful. Let’s book our sessions out. If they say group, you say, fantastic to make sure that your entrance into the group is safe and as quickly as possible to bring you up to the level of the others in the group we’re going to go through our online or our, sorry, our on-ramp program. Now I’m used to saying online. If they say, OK, nutrition, I know what to do, I just can’t do it. OK, we’ve got an accountability program for that. What I want you to keep in mind though when you’re setting your prices because this is what we’re pivoting, this is where the conversation goes next is that group in person coaching and online coaching in group should be the same price. OK. If that’s all they’re getting is Zoom classes and group coaching, the price should be the same. The benefit of doing group classes online is that they can do it whenever they want. You know, in the comfort and security of their own home. They don’t have to drive to the gym. OK. If anything, group classes online should cost more than group classes in person for that reason.
Chris (41:04):
Now next week or next time we’re going to talk about the concept of being expensive or being free, never being cheap, never being discounted. And when this whole crisis started and we started talking about Zoom classes, we said, make sure that you’re not anchoring your price point for online classes to be lower than your in person classes because the value is higher and this, if you made that move, this is where it comes back to reward you because now you can say, well, you know, the price for online is the same as the price for in-person. Now let’s look at personal training online. Your online personal training rate is going to be the same as your in-person personal training rate. It’s the same per hour. You’re actually delivering the same service. Now what about if somebody just wants to buy the programming and the accountability and like the mindset stuff?
Chris (41:57):
Do I discount that? Because the software makes it easy, the software makes it automated, blah, blah, blah. It takes me less time. The answer is no, that is not cheaper. The value to the client is the same or greater as the time that you spend with them in person. The way that you scale a service-based business is not by selling more of your time; it’s by selling the value at the same price or more and requiring less time. Your technology is a leverage point for you to save time. It’s not a leverage point for your client to save money because that’s not what they’re paying for. They’re paying for coaching, not software. Also, keep that in mind when you’re selling your service that you’re not saying, look how awesome true coach is, you’re going to love it. They don’t care about that. They’re paying for your coaching.
Chris (42:48):
And this is why we say like, don’t just sell your programming. I’ll give you guys a sneak peek. So the people who are on this call right now, you guys are really kind of at the cutting edge here. And so you’re looking at tools, you’re constantly reevaluating your process, you’re upgrading your systems, and that’s awesome. There are things that we’re working on that will make that really, really easy for you. So let’s say that for example, you know, one person has a 21 day mindset program. It’s amazing. He’s, you know, I’m saying he, because I’m thinking about Colm as I say this. He’s got videos, he’s got instructions, he’s got daily challenges, he’s got social media posts that you can make to encourage people. He’s got Facebook group prompts. When we see something amazing like that in the Two-Brain community, now we can acquire that and immediately share it with everybody else.
Chris (43:38):
And we did that with the online coaching course ready. But we’re gonna do that in a much easier way in the future where when you onboard a client, all you have to do to give them the full value of that program and charge the full price for that program is just like click and drag it into their profile and away they go. So again, the software is not what you’re selling. The software does make your job easier. That doesn’t mean that it decreases the value to the client. So the next thing we’re going to do is update your pricing binder. Now, I guess before we do that, we’re going to get back to a couple of questions here. So I want you to pull out your pricing binder. OK. And if you’re not sure where to get the templates, you can look at the sales process row on the Growth ToolKit and that’ll give you templates to start your pricing binder with. It’ll give you like samples and it’ll give you like, everything that you need to build out your pricing binder. What you’re going to do is create one new sheet in that pricing binder for online delivery of your coaching.
Chris (44:40):
Yeah, I’m going to give you a sample here.
Chris (44:45):
The thing is this pricing binder. OK, here we go. Here’s your sample. Thanks to Brian for sharing his with ours. As we work toward building a model for including this online pricing into your new services or delivering your currency services online, we started with the concept and there have been some great discussions in our private group about that. So that’s the vision. Then we started talking about the strategy, which is what this call is really all about. You know, how to group these things together and make a good prescription for people. And then we moved to tactical. Now when we’re working on delivering tactical information, like how much do you charge, how to put them all together, the best thing that we can do is to grab several examples of this model.
Chris (45:35):
Let people sell for a month or two, ask them what’s working and then refine the model. And so a lot of the things in the Two-Brain mentorship program have been through this process for about 10 years. It’s been refined, refined, refined, until it’s down to one template. Do exactly this. This is new. We’re kind of in the iterative stage here where we’re going to say, let’s help you build your pricing sheet. Then let’s collect your feedback on how well it’s working. Beautiful part here is that some on the mentoring team are already doing it. And so we can provide their templates as examples of what’s actually worked. Instead of here’s a bunch of ideas, let’s throw them on the wall, everybody go out and try this and see what happens. OK. This is one of those examples. So if during the prescriptive intake process, your no sweat intro or your motivational interviewing, your intake screening, whatever you want to call it, the person says, I would like the convenience of training online and you as the coach decide this is going to be the core of their program mostly online, then here’s how you build it. Here’s a sample pricing page. So we’ve still got three different levels. OK.
Chris (46:48):
There’s individually tailored workouts sent weekly at all levels. OK. So once a week the client gets all their workouts. If we look at like what differentiates the program, virtual personal training session through Zoom, individualized nutrition plan that’s what make the difference. You should decide what goes in the plans based on your cornerstones. OK. Is nutrition going to be in there is habits tracking, is, you know, online, personal training, is online group going to be in there and then you build your prices based on like what your actual core service is. So when you’re doing the NGPO, whatever one you circled, that’s the sheet your going to turn to in your pricing binder because that will form your core service. And then that’s the key to what they get. Other things are ad-ons. Now you can list their ad-ons as silver, gold, platinum, OK.
Chris (47:44):
Or you can sell them a la carte. So Brian gave an example of a 30 minute or 60 minute personal training sessions. They can do those virtually or in the gym. He gave the example of add on group classes. You know, with the caveat that CrossFit classes might require prior on-ramp sessions, but he gave them prices for that in the gym too. OK. And those prices should be the same as like, you know what he’s charging. The reason that you’re not discounting these is because nobody is going to take the highest level of everything. They can’t do everything. So let’s say that somebody signed up for his platinum online coaching program at 290 per month. OK? They get this whole list of benefits including one 60 minute virtual personal training session. He built these prices by combining these sessions and seeing what the total was.
Chris (48:35):
He didn’t discount them. But if somebody is doing that program, they’re not going to also do 12 CrossFit classes per month. They might do four, they might come in every Saturday and work out with the group because that’s part of your prescription, but that price should go on top of what they’re currently doing. So here’s the process. You get people into an NSI, you do NGPO, what do they need most? You as the coach say this will be the core of your training program. Let’s discuss what else you need that might help you. You flip to this page in your pricing binder. Here’s the options. I think you should also do a group class every Saturday. So that brings the total to this. OK, and you could fill this in on your worksheet too. You should have a sheet that looks like this for nutrition coaching, group coaching and personal training.
Chris (49:25):
It’s OK if there are 50 options in your pricing binder. The prescriptive model means that you, the coach, are choosing the best option for that client based on all possible options. You are the mentor, you are the filter. You’re not the idea generator. And so, as the client sees you flipping pages in your book to get to the right answer, they don’t need to know what all the pages are. They don’t need to see all the options out there. That’s your job to know it and find the right one for them. OK. So let’s work through a couple of other examples here. Let’s say that your group coaching program is what we’re working on here. OK. And let’s say that, you know, you can break this down by number of visits if you want to. So let’s change this. Let’s go group.
Chris (50:13):
Let’s spell it right in our pricing binder. Silver. So maybe this is eight visits per month, you know, and maybe you do sell four visits per month. I don’t. There was a couple of reasons why. Number one, we found that my weed clients all fell into the lowest visit category. And so we just eliminated that category. Most of them moved out to eight visits a month. Secondly, we’re a coaching business. I just don’t feel like I can get you results if you’re not working out, you know, at least eight times in a month. Now the online version will actually help me deliver that more. OK. So eight visits a month. That could be either in person, but oh, you said you live out of town, you’re 30 minutes from the gym. Sometimes you have to come to the evening class. You know, sometimes you’re just overwhelmed or you know, maybe the last two months you didn’t use all of your classes because your schedule got crazy.
Chris (51:13):
I’ll tell you what, we’re going to live stream these classes at the same time. You can just do those from the comfort of your own home or even in your office. OK. If you want something that’s customized so that you can do it at home, it’s not just our group programming, then we can talk about gold membership or we can add on habits coaching at the end of this. OK. So maybe eight visits per month is your silver package at 165 a month. Let’s say that 13 visits per month is the next level and that’s like your gold package. Let’s say that like, 13 classes plus nutrition coaching, maybe that’s your platinum level at 290 a month and you come to that price by knowing what your group rates should be, knowing what your personal training rate should be, knowing what your nutrition coaching rate should be and adding those things together.
Chris (52:04):
Remember that your clients are not buying that combination because they get a discount, they’re buying that combination because they get results. OK? Right now you can include a lot of these other things in there. So, weekly video instructions with movement demos for group in person training. You don’t have to include that because you’re doing the movement downloads and instruction online. Access to digital app for tracking progress. Yeah, you should list that out. Email communication with your coach. Uncheck that for people who are just paying for group training, that’s not what they’re paying for. They’re paying for your general programming, your discount option. OK? But maybe your silver level of group training has that. Then you say weekly check ins with your coach uncheck uncheck, you know, check on only your platinum level or maybe that’s monthly, one 60 minute virtual personal training session at the gym or at home.
Chris (52:57):
Add that on as an a la carte individualized nutrition plan included in your top tier. What are you going to do to determine, you know, what should form up silver, gold, platinum is you go back to the NGPO exercise and you count up how many people need this thing. OK? You create one sheet in your pricing binder for each of those cornerstones, nutrition group, personal training online. Then you create customizations for each of those depending on what the second most common thing that people need are. So if you do your NGPO for your entire client list, when you build this price sheet for each one of those and you find like, OK, you know, most people need nutrition, then your platinum level on each of the NGPO price sheets should include that option that most people need. All right, so down here, if I find that most people at my gym need nutrition coaching, then that’s going to form my platinum level of group coaching.
Chris (53:59):
It’s group coaching with nutrition. If I find that most people at my gym need online or could benefit from online, then that’s going to be my platinum level. OK. And then the things that fewer people need, I’m going to make those additional add ons for the few people who actually do need them. This way I’m not forcing people to like try to buy what they don’t need, which means that I have to like upsell them on the value. What I’m doing is I’m starting with the thing they need the most. Then I’m offering a combination, a standardized combination of what they need and what most people need the most of. And then the things that most people need less of. I’m offering a la carte. OK. I’m not discounting anything, I’m just combining them and I’m making that prescription with confidence so that they know what they’re buying.
Chris (54:47):
Other questions guys? I know that I ran right up to 59 minutes. This is like very close to an accuracy PR, but if you have other questions, please post them now. If you don’t, here’s your homework. You are going to share your new pricing sheets in the Facebook group, in the private Facebook group for growth clients. Put those pricing sheets in the files section. If you’re in the Two-Brain ramp up Facebook group, place your pricing sheets in the file section, but not until you’ve started and built your entire pricing binder. OK? This week I’m going to break these steps down for you again in blog posts so that you can go through them at your own pace. But the steps in general are determine what your seed clients need, the cornerstones of your service should be based on what your seed clients need.
Chris (55:37):
Determine your prices based on you know, the right way that we teach you to determine your prices for personal training, group coaching, nutrition coaching. Then build one pricing page in your binder for each of those NGPO, whatever service most of your clients actually need should be included at your platinum level for those core products. Then include the other two services as possible a la carte add ons on each pricing sheet. Change your no sweat intro process to include would you prefer to do this online or in person or a combination? When a client comes in, you flip to the right sheet in your pricing binder and you say this is the best option for you. And that’s it. So while I’m not saying charge $200 a month for your group training classes, you have to go through the math on your own, but this is how you decide and this is how you deliver. All right, so guys, thanks for tuning in. We’re done and I’ll answer more questions in the group. Happy mother’s day.
Andrew (56:31):
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