Profit Centers: How To Make More Money Per Client

As a smart gym owner, you already know the importance of maximizing your earnings per client. 

But it’s not always easy knowing what practical steps to take to set your gym up for success. 

This week we bust some common misconceptions and give you our recommendations for maximizing your earning potential. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Several ways to make more money per client
• If you should or shouldn’t be charging your clients for a bottle of water
• How to build higher earnings tiers into your service offerings

Plus so much more! 

Now that you’re a pro at maximizing your earnings per client, you’re probably looking for a way to make this easy for you and your team. That’s exactly what Naamly helps you do. It’s never been easier for gym owners to amplify their client experience, add new revenue streams, simply follow-ups, and so much more. Start your FREE trial today and see exactly how Naamly can help you achieve your business goals!

Watch The Full Episode Now!

Thomas Plummer: good morning. Good morning. Thanks again. We’re back. We are more nice comments. I’ve gotten more nice comments on those last couple than I’ve. We’ve probably done it a couple of years and we’re just like, I saw this weird interview you did with Sue it. Yeah. So I guess we’re getting around there.

We’re getting a little traction with those. So thank you. I’m very excited to be back. Yeah.

Sumit: It’s the other way around. I think it’s because I’m the weird one, right? So he’s like, what does the guy asked anyway? So I’m getting a lot of kick out of this. I enjoying it. I’m getting to learn. So, um, well and listeners who are tuning in.

So welcome to just one thing. Another episode of just one thing where training gym owners get actionable insights to build a dream business and I’m with the legendary. And over the next 12 odd minutes or so we will unpack just one thing to help you grow your business. So, Tom, as you said, we’ll get started and, um, talking about the weird thing, here’s the thing I was attending an event recently.

Thomas Plummer:And in that event,

Sumit: you know, the concept was great. It was like, how do you get more money out of your members? It’s all about that. Right? Increase revenue per member. And you’ve been a big proponent of that. Everyone’s been preaching that and I get it. I totally get. So there were a few elements that were thrown out about, here are some tactics that you can use.

Thomas Plummer: And, uh,

Sumit: I just wanted your take on before I reveal the tactics that I heard. What’s your take overall on just growing beyond the membership angle of pairs of contract, pay us the money. What else can a gym owner do to increase that revenue per person?

Thomas Plummer: That’s a good question. I, I, and over the years I’ve been preaching profit centers is what they’re called, you know, that’s we go beyond, but in all my books, they’ve all reached referred to this additional profit centers or revenue sources in the gym.

There, you have to look at the client in front of you. There’s there. If we look at the clients as the entry-level clients, the mainstream jams, even the team guys, perhaps that client is paying X number of dollars and they expect a basic level of service.

Anyway, the elite clients, the want, the small groups paying, you know, 2 50, 300, 400 a month up to one-on-ones paying a thousand dollars a month. The services, the amenities they’re expecting are much different. And so what happens is a young trainer just kind of tries to nickel and dime all of them. He just keeps them all out because he doesn’t understand the client, no respect the money, the, the.

The analogy is if I check into a different hotel and if there’s, if I’m at a holiday Inn, you know, I expect the room to be clean. A towel may be a little, really bad, no shampoo and a little bar of soap, but that’s about it. My expectations are not high because I didn’t pay much. But if I’m staying at, um, one of my favorite hotels used to be the W’s and they’ve sold and changed, but they were the quirkiest hotels, but you know, you check in and they just sort of surprised you.

what’s your expectation. Of service. What’s your expectation of support amenities. And that same theory should apply to a gym client. You know, you pay less, your expectations of additional services are lower, but if I pay a certain amount of money, my expectations are much higher and, and rightfully so because I’m paying you a lot of money.

Uh, so that’s, if we have, we start with that premise that the, what the. Pays should dictate the level of support that we give them and what costs we charge them at that point.

Sumit: Fair enough. But coming back to the profit center concept, so we understand if they’re paying a certain amount, they expect a certain amount and we can treat them a certain way, but how do I up the amount of money I can make overall from my population base?

What are the different profits enters it in your mind? Thom?

Thomas Plummer: [00:05:09] Yeah, well, first of all, again, you have to make a separation. There are support things like, um, Um, snack bar, a bottle of water. Um, something like that. Those are, those are survival needs. Those are the things where I command are impulse items. We pick them up and then the big profit centers beyond that, or are things that support my lifestyle.

And that would be, for example, would be nutrition. Um, the ability to do online training when I’m out of the gym, that’s something that’s developed, uh, pre you know, during COVID, but post COVID that’s something that we need to do support for that. Um, if I want gym equipment for my house, I should be able to get it through my gym, which means form better 99% of the cases.

Um, I there’s, there’s things that support my lifestyle. Nutrition is the centerpiece of those. But if I come in, if you think about today’s client, you know, they come in support things or like, you know, come in or things like I show up 20 minutes early, cause I’m working out at my house these days. So I go to the gym because there’s a pleasant person behind the front counter.

And I have a little shot of cappuccino or something to wire me up for my workout. I expect to pay for that, but I expect it to be quality and not free coffee. That’s been sitting there since five o’clock this morning and it’s, you know, I expect a good experience. And then afterwards, I don’t want to go back to my home office.

I want to sit and linger scroll and have a $7 shake. And, but I expect that shape to be there. I expect my supplements to be in stock. I expect things that support my lifestyle there. The other basic support things are, you know, all the lifestyle enhancements or just like water and things like that to come command and grab a bottle of water.

Well, even that’s controversial on, you know, what, what should happen with that bottle of water? Yup. Yup. So th that’s

Sumit: a great point. So, uh, I love how you broke it up by lifestyle-related and baseline. So like I was saying, when I went to this event, You know, I got into this conversation then on the concept of water itself, it was like, Hey, you better start charging money for water.

And I also know of a couple of gyms now who are having a water subscription for alkaline water or some other site, you know, aspect of that, or even snacks or shakes. You can have a subscription for shakes. Give me your thoughts on that? Like, like water? Yes, no shakes. As you were saying $7 shakes, would you pay for it?

Thomas Plummer: Like where do you stand? Um, it goes back to what did I pay for the room in the hotel? 

we, we try to lump clients altogether and that’s a bad business plan, just stupid business. But I, I, I, we have to respect the money that’s paid to us in some form or another. So if a guy is paying $39 a month or $99 a month, having a nice water is a convenience factor, but I expect him to pay and I’m going to make a little profit off the water.

If somebody is in small group paying me $300 a month, $3,600 a year, they trained eight times. Uh, a month. So for I, for $2 for a good bottle of water for $16, I can give this person that. So what I trained $16 for $300 a month. And the, the, the guy P in one-on-one paying me $800 a month, I’m going to drive by his house, cut his lawn.

I’m going to drive his kids to school. You know, I mean that guy, what am I going to charge him for a shake that costs me a dollar 67. She, in our head, it’s a $5 bottle of water. We forget that we paid 200. In our head that shake we sell for seven. I can’t give a guy a $7 shake. You can, because it’s a dollar 67 hard costs counting the strong the cup.

So we, we, we forget what we’re really trying to do is I’m rewarding. The guys that pay us more, there is an elite client, and then there’s the average everyday client. But it’s, if I, we. We, you can’t just give everybody everything, but once you, you get to a certain level of clientele, which most of our listeners are, these guys are chasing.

Most of them are chasing a moral elite clientele. Then it changes if I have a big group of thing. They have that type of thing. I can’t give 150 people a bottle of water, but if there’s anybody that rises above that level, that I’ve got to take care of those people.

That’s where we forget. We try to nickel and dime the people that pay us the most money, you know, and the guy, the money guy knows I’m paying you $400, $400 a month, and you’re charging me. You know, you want me to sign up for a subscription for a bottle of water. No, I should walk in. There’s a towel sitting there and a bottle of water sitting there for me.

Cause I’m a one-on-one client. I’m up at seven to nine. That should be sitting there. And maybe even a little tag that says Tom on it right on the counter. Tom, thank you for coming in tonight. Here’s your town. Here’s your bottle of water. You need anything else from us, sir? Don’t forget to get on that. Way out.

And it’s all included in his membership because I have to build that in because he has, he’s a $2,000 a night hotel. He’s got base expectations of what he’s paying us. And so I have to rise to it. All the spoiled, this rent comes down to this respect, the money. Respect the money of the clients that pay you the most money.

And there’s a point of no return. And that is the lower members. If I had to draw the trading world, it would be the team member. And then above the team member, I can’t hit them all for free water, but I can’t do free events once in a while. I think I should have at least once a month, a party where I give them free beer and wine, I have to reinvest in my clients.

I have to show them care. A lot of clients are horrible about that. They just, they, they, they, we want, we want, we want, we get very little back to the clients in many cases.

Sumit: Fair enough. That makes perfect sense. So I get the point about water snack bar lifestyle. We talked about nutrition, online training, gym equipment.

You gave me five very tangible things. There. Anything else as a gym owner I could do. What are my other profit centers?

Thomas Plummer: If any. Um, well, the big loss, the big loss for most gyms is nutrition. They either, they make, that’s probably the, one of the biggest mistakes they make. And when they get to a certain level of maturity is they want either embed it.

So supplementation meal, replacement, bars, snack bars, all those are the basics.

And then the basic we get down to the elementary stuff. Yeah. Okay, I’m hungry. I don’t want to go to seven 11 and buy crap bar. I should be able to get a meal replacement bar for the ride back to the house. I should be able to get a decent bottle of water. Um, a sports drink. If you recommend those a even, you know, like a diet Coke, if that’s, you know, cause people do drink them, should you sell them?

That’s up to you, but people I still need to cool. That’s convenient. I can grab, set it on the counter and pay now the subscription service, if that type of thing, where that guy just grabs and it’s automatically billed or something. I’m okay with that. As long as that’s not a one-on-one client or a small group, client pay me two, $300 a month.

I’m not charging the guy for the damn water. It doesn’t make sense. So when you start the ad, your profit centers, look at the big ones. Those are the, some of the anchors up there. You also can get into. If you’re a bigger massage. You’ll hire the massage person. Um, if you’re big enough to do that, Durkin does that well, or you create an independent place where you have a couple of trusted massage people and this, you just rent them space.

So there’s a lot of stuff to explore of that. I mean, we could talk about this for another 20 minutes, but you know, Linda segment there, but there’s, there’s certainly a basis here of where to go.

But final thought is respect. The client is paying you real money, charge them one additional

Sumit: thing that came to me as you were talking about TD, uh, what about apparel? Like that’s something that we missed out. Um, T-shirts selling. Do we do that? Not do that. Uh,

Thomas Plummer: where does that? I wouldn’t touch that, uh, ever again.

I’d the only thing I’m gonna do is buy a high quality t-shirt to give away my one-on-one clients are going to get one or two really high quality. T-shirts not with a big, giant logo on it, but something fun, something they would wear, um, like Westside, barbell. I was just reading a story about Louis and west side barbell.

Right? Collectible is that shirt, you know, so if I have east side gym or something on here, not, not a giant, you know, big something I never would wear, but something. So once a year, I’m going to get my one-on-ones and small groups, a nice t-shirt maybe twice a year for that. Every new client should get a t-shirt.

But when I try to sell them, if I buy 10 shirts and I mark and I pay $20 for a t-shirt and try to sell them for 30 by self service. I’ve got four hanging there. Just take a $20 bill. Take a Thumbtack and stick it to the wall and just leave it there for about six months. You can’t touch it. You can’t use it.

And it probably burned down all the profitability of the other ones. So I don’t like to sell apparel because we don’t turn it over fast. And any wastes like that we normally have, if you’re really sophisticated and you can then discount that, sell it, take it on down, you manage the sizes and you can clean up the inventory without $20 bills stuck all over your wall.

So to speak, it’s worth it. But besides that, I think they’re good props. They’re good retention tools. They’re good rewards for, I respect your money, but to try to make a lot of money selling clothes. 

Sumit: fact. I think what we should do is I was looking at the time as you were going through that, maybe we should end this with care.

Are those different profit centers and then have another episode on just the nutrition side of things. And maybe that’s our next episode where we unpack that and say, what does that 12 week accountability wraparound looks like? And how much can I try? Does that sound good to you?

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