How To Make More Money at Your Gym (Vince's Perform Better Key Note)
This is my full talk from the Perform Better Summit. Six profit levers you can pull to make more money in your gym starting Monday.
Here's the number that bothers me. The average gym does $300,000 in gross revenue at about a 20% margin. That's $60,000 to the owner. For what you people do, that's not good enough. My goal for everyone I work with is $200,000 a year in personal income, and I don't think that's unreasonable.
I opened by telling the room how I got here. I was a 300 pound washed up offensive lineman who moved to San Diego, worked for Todd Durkin, and ground out 60 sessions a week making what an entry level teacher makes. Then I opened my own gym and went broke. I had to sit down with my dad and tell him I didn't think I could do this. He told me I'd proven I was a great trainer and hadn't proven anything about running a business. So I went and learned the business.
5 Key Takeaways:
- Price is the fastest lever and it's not close. Your value judgment does not matter. Only your customer's does. My wife bought a $474 birthday cake for our one year old and it made no sense to me, but she was the buyer. I raised prices $49 across the board on clients who have been with me for 19 years. A guy stuck at $13K was 12 months away from $20K based on his churn and acquisition. We raised prices $40 on every member and he got there in two months. One letter, one decision.
- Only 15% of your future buyers purchase in the first 100 days. The other 85% buy over the next 100 weeks. So the question isn't just what your 21 day follow up looks like. It's what you're doing for the next 100 weeks. Three emails a week, always with a call to action, always relevant, and no AI slop. Find your own voice and build a relationship.
- Referrals are free customers worth $7,234 each. That's my actual lifetime value: 19.5 months at $371 a month. So when someone sends me a client, what did that cost me? Nothing. The mindset shift changes how you treat the person who sent them. And make it easy to refer. HelloFresh sent my wife a text she could forward to a friend for a free box. Don't ask people to bring a friend. Hand them a free 30 day membership to give away so they show up as the hero.
- An ounce of personalization is worth a pound of automation. I wrote out the exact letter my jiu jitsu instructor would need to send to get me to come back after quitting twice. It takes responsibility for putting me in the wrong class, offers a new path, and connects it to my son training there. Compare that to "we miss you at the gym." Send 10 personal reach outs a month to past members. That's 120 attempts a year at almost zero cost.
- Fill the seats you already have. Four people per session at $50 is a $416,000 business. Add one more person per session and it's $520,000. That's $104,000 more with zero increase in cost. Pure profit. I took my kids to Medieval Times and Madison Square Garden and there wasn't an empty seat in either place. They're masters of capacity. Why aren't we? Also: an empty spot costs you more than someone using it for free, because free means opportunity.
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