Increase Your Revenue Per Member by $100+ with Mike Bouranis

[00:00:00] Hello, my friends back on the podcast today is Mike Baranis. He’s a Unicorn Siding member and founder of Stoked Athletics, and he’s such a badass. He’s killing it. He’s had amazing success recently. His revenue is up at the gym. His revenue per member is up by over a hundred dollars per month. He’s doubled his leads over the last few months.

And in this episode, he shares all of the. Tips and tricks he’s used to have that amazing success. So if you want all those metrics to be the same for your gym, it’s a great episode for you. Get ready to take some notes and let’s dive in.

Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym, get ready to unlock your potential.

[00:01:00] I’ve become a real unicorn in the fitness industry. Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up. Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. I’m here back on the podcast again with Mr. Mike Brannis from Stoked Athletics. Welcome back to the podcast, my friend. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. I’m so excited to dive in before we get into our conversation, which I’m stoked about, pun intended.

I just want to remind you listeners that we have some really cool free tools on our website right now. And for many gym owners that I talked to, one of their biggest pain points is you just don’t know what to work on next. You’re just not sure which project to spend your time on and prioritize. And we have a tool that we use a lot for this purpose, which is called the ultimate gym owner report card.

So you can click the link down below to get that tool. It’s free. You can also go to our website or you can go to gym on a report card. Um, and just download that free tool to help you figure out which part of your business deserves your attention next and get that clarity that we all need and, and deserve.

So go get [00:02:00] it. It’s free. Jumping into the podcast. Welcome back again, Mike, and you’ve been on the podcast before we had, it was a very popular episode. Um, yeah, People loved hearing your stories about how you’ve been crushing it over at Stoked and today’s conversation is no different because your revenue has been up.

Your leads has been up. Your average revenue per member has been up. You’ve been crushing it on multiple levels. We were like, we have to get you back on the podcast just to share some of the things you’ve been doing that have really been working. So thanks again for taking the time to have this chat. Of course.

Yeah. So first things first, obviously you’ve been in Unicorn Society for a while now, a few years, and we’ve seen you been crushing it the whole time. But recently one of the things you’ve been doing that was really successful is you started selling a kind of a higher ticket item, an item for folks, which is basically double what your normal membership price was.

And it’s really been crushing it. So you can just talk a little bit about what that strategies looked like for you. Yeah, for sure. So we never really had a higher ticket item. It’s always just been training. And in terms of why we made this change, I felt that. [00:03:00] As a trainer and a coach, you try to help people as much as possible.

And you put yourself on the table and you lay it all out and they only pick up some of those pieces and run with it. And I felt like we were overextending ourselves with trying to get people doing all the best habits aside from training, but it wasn’t really sticking. And then seeing so many people in the unicorn society have these like higher ticket items where they do everything.

I was like, this is what we need. And it’s caused way more buy in with the clients, which is. Yeah. 100%. I think that’s a great way to think about it is that the need is that we have a lot of clients who want to be all in, who really want to make big transformation in their life in some way. And often you just can’t get them to get the level of buy in to do all the things that we know it takes to make that kind of change.

But when you create a program, require them to spend a little more for it because you’re going to get a lot more handholding, a lot more accountability. They’ll get, they’ll find the attention. They’ll find the time. You know, they will stick with it a little bit more because [00:04:00] there’s more skin in the game.

Can you just talk a little bit about how you structure that membership and how it compares to what you normally offer? Sure. So our normal membership is small group personal training, and I would say the average is three days a week. We charge 3. 32 right now with a 12 month commitment. For every four weeks.

And with that, they get access to resources and us checking in on them and having conversations and trying to help them out. But with this new program, we just call it the 12 week transformation program. they get that same training and they have an option for either the small group or there’s an even higher ticket one for one on one, which we have a few people in.

And with that, it is full accountability on training. We coach their nutrition. We work on other habits that just through their orientation, we figure out what they need to do. And then the real thing that I’ve seen make the most progress is the half hour meeting, just once a week, checking in, seeing how they’re doing.

And in order to do that check in, and I mentioned this. To you before, but it’s a, we took the framework sheet from unicorns and just built it into a tracking sheet for them. So they have to just update their sheet with all [00:05:00] their numbers each week. Uh, and we have that meeting ran exactly like the meetings that you guys have taught us to run.

And with that, I’ve just seen way higher levels of consistency and accountability with the clients. Yeah, that’s amazing. For those of you who don’t know the tool Mike’s talking about, we have something called Frameworks for Unicorns, which is basically an operating system for running your gym. And one of the, some of the tools on there are things like a dashboard to keep track of what’s happening in your business.

And that’s really what your clients need. They need a dashboard for their life, for their fitness and wellness habits. And so tracking things like steps or. calorie counting or sleep or number of workouts or any of those things are, is a really easy way to help them get more self awareness about where they’re crushing it and where they’re dropping some balls.

And so good for you. Can you talk a little bit about how do you sell a program that is twice as expensive as what you normally sell? I think during the consult, the main thing is just figuring out, is this fair for the person too? Because when somebody comes in and we’re talking and [00:06:00] we’re going over things, I’m always just poking and prodding and seeing like, where are the issues with trying to get to where you want to go?

And for some people that have the nutrition down already. So it’s like, I might mention the program, but it’s not really like I’m trying to sell it to them. And for others, they’re saying all these things where I’m just like, This is the program you need. Like you’re telling me that you’re lacking consistency on your nutrition.

You’re not getting the amount of steps that you should be getting. You’re not training consistently. And if you were to meet with me each week, I know you would hate to walk in and tell me that you’re not doing those things. So if you want that accountability and you want to see that progress, we got to get onto this program.

And that way we can just get everything in line. And. I think that the biggest part too is helping out with the issues and opportunities that we go through on those meetings as well. Most of our meeting is just like, what issue did you have this week? And then I have resources for them or homework for them to work on.

And then by next week, they’ve already figured that out. Yeah, I think that’s amazing. I think it just shows what, how important it is in those sales conversations to really do what we call peeling the onion, right? Because it’s like really asking lots of questions. What are their needs? [00:07:00] What are their pain points?

And when you find someone who’s real challenges, I haven’t been consistent. I need someone to hold me accountable. I actually don’t know what to do with my nutrition. Then selling the upselling them to a more expensive people. Program makes perfect sense. You also mentioned before we started recording that this has also helped you attract a slightly more mature, older clientele, maybe who has more financial resources.

Can you talk a little bit about how that pivot has looked like? Yeah. So starting out most people who trained with me, I started the gym in my hometown. So it was obviously just a lot of my friends and friends of friends. So a lot of people who were, when I started out my age, so anywhere in the 25 to 30 year old demographic, which is a hard demographic to nail down because like you said, they don’t.

They might not have as much financial security, their buying houses, getting pregnant, getting married. And they have so many other things that they need to spend money on that takes priority. So we really wanted to make this shift to the 40 and up age range. So just through our, our marketing and how we’re presenting ourselves online.

And then with more ads, you know, Facebook and Instagram, we’re [00:08:00] really trying to attract this older demographic who it just makes sense for because they have that financial stability that they can invest in themselves with. And they’re ready to make that change. Yeah. I think it’s just being in that demographic myself.

I can say it’s such a smart strategy because you’re right. I, I got married. I decided I’m not really having kids. Got a house. I got, you know, more money than the average 30 year old to do what I want with. And if I was going to go to a gym, I would absolutely want someone to do. like yours, that I would absolutely want someone to hold my hand, help me figure it out, help me stay accountable.

And I’m willing to pay extra for that. And I think often gym owners forget that if you really want to raise your rates and charge more for your services, you might need to change your avatar. You might need to target a different kind of person. Um, and age is one factor to consider for sure. Um, but I think it’s so smart to pair those two things together.

That makes a ton of sense. So what kind of impact has this had on the gym? You’ve been doing this for a while now. So what are the, what’s the impact had been on the gym in terms of number of members or [00:09:00] revenue, et cetera. So our number of members, we did notice some Sharon, our, our attrition rate is still hanging in like the three to 4 percent range.

So I’m not worried about that. We’ve noticed, uh, I’ve heard the term burning the deadwood where there’s these people with one foot out the door and it did seem to be the people in that lower age demographic who probably couldn’t sustain training with us longterm. Uh, so when we’re seeing those people fall off, it’s almost like a sigh of relief that like, okay, they’re out, but the people now who are coming in and our numbers are going up, maybe we’re netting like four per month.

Not only do we have the numbers growing, but the average revenue per member has gone up over a hundred dollars. So. Even with this small portion of the gym doing this 12 week program, which is around 10 percent of our members, uh, doing it, we’ve seen an increase in that. And then when we look at that operationally, it’s like we’re making more without having to do more work, which is a great feeling as well.

Honestly, I think it’s so smart to look at the average revenue [00:10:00] per member because that’s one of the numbers that’s most important. Generators just don’t often pay as much attention to. They look at total gross revenue. They might look at profit and those things matter, but how much you’re getting each person to spend is really key for the exact reason you mentioned, which is you couldn’t be working with less people and make more.

That just means less complexity, less headache, less everything, less need to sell, less need to retain because you just have less people who are more committed paying more. Who doesn’t want that? And the fact that you’re still growing, right? You’re still netting more clients at the end of each month than before, but your average revenue per member is up over a hundred dollars is wild.

Most people have to work a very long time to get their average revenue per member up that much. And the fact that a program like this can do it pretty quickly is a great takeaway. Yeah. All right. So you got this program. You’re doing this high ticket program, which is doing great average per member way up.

What else has been going on that has helped really boost the gym over the last few months? What else? What are the [00:11:00] strategies? Can you share with our listeners? That is, this has really been working. Yeah. I would say the biggest thing is finally taking the leap into marketing ad spend. So we signed up for an agency that does it on Facebook and Instagram through the CRM that we use.

So I was always scared because. I didn’t even want to spend 500 on Facebook ads. And now I’m so comfortable spending, you know, over 2, 000 because of what we’re netting from it. I would say that’s a huge one. Cause now our leads went from someone’s, we would have great lead intake from the events that we do, but our average was still around like 20 to 30 leads per month.

And now we’re, which is what most Jim’s goal is, right? It’s 20 to 30. It’s like a good steady flow, but now I’m sorry I cut you off. Now you’re okay. Where are you now? We’re around like 50 to 60, uh, leads per month, which has had to cause some changes in how we take in people. And with our offers that we’re doing, but I’ve seen it still work out where we had to make a couple of changes and now the people are still coming in the door.

And my lead to consult to booked rate is still [00:12:00] within 60 to 70%. Wow. That’s amazing. You know, I think let’s dive into this because I think a lot of people one have given up on Facebook and Instagram ads and in part because they’re, I say this with love, they’re just not good at it and they haven’t found the right people to do it for them, but you can find a company that was what they’re doing and it’s reliable and good communicators.

They can drive leads. You can still drive leads at your gym and Facebook and Instagram ads. You absolutely can. And. One of the challenges that they have when they do like yourself is that it means you get a lot more traffic. It means a lot more leads to follow up. It’s a lot more work. And people often think when they get ads leads from Facebook and Instagram, that they’re bad leads that because the conversion maybe goes down a little bit, that it’s not worth it.

And I know it’s not the case for you. So you just talk a little bit about how have you had to change your processes, both lead, follow up and sales processes to accommodate doubling your leads every month. Yeah. So it started with everybody would come in. After they already purchased a trial from our website, that’s what it used to be.

So that was just through word of mouth or events. And we were [00:13:00] talking to people and they were a bit warmer with the Facebook and Instagram ads. You’re getting a lot colder bleeds. So we had to drop that friction of asking somebody to pay before they came in, which has its ups and downs. So now we offer through the ads, a free consultation, which people can book.

And when I first started, I was getting a lot of tire kickers. Like it was happening where I would have maybe 10 consoles for the week and only five showed up. So we. Changed our workflow to have an automated text go out and just asking them to confirm that they were coming. And it’s so simple because now it’s once people confirm, then they’re a lot more likely to come in.

And if they don’t confirm, I know that they’re not probably not showing up. I would say that. And then, Oh my God, sorry. I just had. What I was going to say, that’s okay. I just want to, I want to just plus one, like, that’s such a great point, right? Because yeah, you’re going to get colder leads, which means there’s conversion right off the top of the funnel is going to be a little bit less than it was when you were dealing with very warm leads.

And those people are less likely to show up if they don’t have any skin in the game and they just saw one ad from [00:14:00] you. But if you can follow up with them a lot and get them to commit. They’ll want to appear consistent, right? That’s one of the book influence, Cialdini’s Principles of Influence, was when people say something that they want, they’ll want to appear, or about themselves, they’ll want to appear consistent.

So if they say they’re coming, they’re going to want to come because they said they would. There’ll be a tension there. So I think a simple, a simple additional follow up there makes a big difference. I do want to add because I just remembered the other thing was I was keeping my schedule way too open where people could book three weeks out, four weeks out in advance.

And by the time it came around, they were over it already. So I switched it to only being able to book within five days. And that alone has increased our show rate by at first, like I said, it was like 50%. Now we’re at like 80 to 90 percent show rate. Wow. That’s huge. What a great tip. That is. You’re absolutely right.

Because we have to take advantage of that. Seize that moment where they’re like, yeah, I want to talk to you. Yeah. I want some help. Yeah. I’m interested. Give me more information. And if they book that for a week away, two weeks away, the [00:15:00] energy just fizzles and fizzles and fizzles. So that just won’t even show up the big, I forget who the hell did I book this call with?

Who’s this Mike guy? Yeah, absolutely. That’s amazing. Yeah. And so then talk a little bit about, so that you do a free consultation and then talk me through the rest of your funnel. Sure. So like I said, during the console, I am trying to, like I said, peel the onion and see where they’re at, what their needs are.

If they’re interested in not doing the 12 week, if they just want to do the regular training and we do feel like that’s the best course of action, we offer the two weeks for 49 for a trial to see if they, you know, fit in, if they like it, if it works for all of us and our conversion on that is ridiculous.

It’s 95%. Once somebody does a trial there, they’re basically locked in. Yeah. Yeah. And then if not, it is the conversation of you’re probably, you probably need all these other things. Uh, if you really want that kickstart, if you want to make this year off. The way that you really want to see the progress, uh, let’s start with this 12 weeks and then convert it into the normal training afterwards.

Um, and that one, there’s no trial, obviously it’s too much work upfront. So it’s just right into [00:16:00] it from there. That’s amazing. Yeah. Good for you. I think that’s such a great example of a really solid funnel and it just shows how that immediate attention to the lead, getting them to commit to showing up, having a great initial conversation is really the catalyst that builds momentum.

That’s really the moment where if you can get them to commit to showing up and get into a conversation that’s well structured, and I know you have a well structured sales script, that, that you get all the information that really gets them excited about moving forward and then getting them into a trial.

It’s a no brainer in that conversation. Yeah. Good for you. Anything else you’ve been doing lately that we didn’t talk about yet that is meaningful? I can also ask, I have a million questions, but we didn’t talk about your team at all. I often know that when leads are up and, and there’s a lot more traffic coming through with low bear offers and you have a new demographic of slightly more mature folks in the gym that your team has to negotiate that, right?

There’s the change. And I know teams often struggle when there’s a lot of new people in the door for how to give them the best possible service. [00:17:00] Can you just talk a little bit about what’s the team strategy been in reacting to this new growth? Thanks. Bye. Bye. Yeah, the team has been amazing and, and I do believe they’ve, they’ve loved the new demographic because they just love working with people who are ready to work, who want to train, who get excited walking in the door and who are consistent.

And so the new leads and the new people signing up, they are super excited about the big change for me was with selling this program. I had to be the one to run through it and execute on it so that I knew all the SOPs that had to be written and I knew exactly who was the best fit for it. So I’m in that position now where I’ve had, uh, four to six months basically of running these meetings and selling these, uh, transformation packages.

And now the work is delegating it off. So we brought on a new coach to start just training sessions. We brought up one of our old coaches to become the head coach, and eventually she’s going to take some of those. Coaching sessions as well as the orientations we do with new members because I’m finding my schedule is just it’s [00:18:00] a double edged sword.

It’s beautiful that we’re selling as much as we are, but my schedule is getting packed with all the residual work that needs to be done. So I’m working with wheels a lot to just every week. What’s the SOP I’m writing this week? Who am I handing it off to? And how am I getting this off my plate so I can just keep crushing consoles and work on the marketing?

Yeah, that’s amazing. I think that’s such a great example for our listeners, Mike, of what it looks like to, to build systems in the business as you grow and those systems, the things that really solidify the changes you’re making, right? It’s like you can sell a new thing, but if you don’t have all these systems in place to help deliver that new thing consistently over time, then it’s not going to work out a lot where you’ll, you’ll have to do the work with twice as much effort as you would if you just made some standards and followed some.

Some playbooks. That’s great. You may just want to give us a few examples of the kinds of SOPs you’ve had to make, to make this work. Like what are the kinds of standards you’re putting in place? So number one is we went back and we just went over what is our typical on the floor coaching SOP? Like [00:19:00] what are the things you need to do as simple as when somebody walks in, their name needs to be said within the first like three to five seconds because.

Again, with this demographic and with people paying a higher price, we need to present ourselves as a higher end option and we need to be able to give them that attention and make them feel like we, we want them to know that we care about them. Um, make them feel special. Yeah, that’s, yeah, that was an easy one right off the bat.

And then the next one that I’m really working hard on is how am I performing these 30 minute coaching meetings every week with the member, everything down from just the agenda of that meeting. So that we’re on track with it and then even how to respond to the, like the crucial conversation when somebody is having an issue, how do we validate that?

How do we move on to the next step? How do we give them actions and takeaways that they actually need to do? So right now, I’m working on that longer one so I can pass off those coaching sessions. Good for you. Good for you. So you’re working as first SOP was just to really get clear on what is the performance look like of a training session?

How do we create people? What [00:20:00] happens in those sessions? Making sure those standards are very clear. And then I love that you’re working on like how to conduct this 30 minute weekly session with your 12 week program folks, because those conversations, a lot of folks will be tempted just to wing it. A lot of folks with a lot of experience and I’m doing this for years.

I don’t need it. I don’t need an outline. I don’t need a script. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah, you do because it’ll help you get better. You’ll learn what works. You’ll learn what doesn’t work. You’ll solidify that learning into a video or a document or a flow charter, some sort of SOP that helps you be more consistent and get better and better.

And then to the point you made at first, Mike, that you get to delegate it. Once you’ve written down how this thing goes, it’s easier to hand off to someone else. So maybe you’re not the one who has to do it forever. That’s amazing. I have a million more questions. We keep going, but I’m going to pull up there because we could keep going.

So listen, I just want to say congrats. Your revenue is up. Your average revenue per member is up over a hundred bucks. Your leads have doubled. You’re building SLPs and systems in your business to help accommodate all [00:21:00] this new growth and the new programs you’re offering. Like, you’re firing on all cylinders, my friend.

So, congratulations and thanks for coming to share your experience and growing wisdom with this audience. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. And honestly, thank you for all that you guys do, because I feel like it’s not only just like what you tell us, but I like to watch you during our calls, during our meetings, see how like you guys run it.

And it starts to click more in that way too, where I’m like, Oh, this is how I should be running these meetings, or this is what this document I’ve been reading sounds like in action. And it’s also helpful. So thank you. Yeah. I’m so glad. I’m so glad. Our listeners. I hope you found this useful. There’s so many great takeaways.

So thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please leave us a five star review everywhere you listen. And if you’re not sure what to do next in your business, go get that free report. It’s Jim and a report card. com or click the link down below. And thanks again, Mike. I’ll see you all on the next one.

Bye. Have a good one.