How One Gym Owner Cut Attrition from 8% to Under 2% with Jeremy Ellis

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business unicorns team 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 and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:00:30]

Today’s episode is sponsored by InBody in body’s body composition analyzers help gym’s accurately measure fat, muscle, and overall body composition, not just weight. And BMI. By replacing guesswork with objective data, InBody helps gym owners and coaches make better decisions around assessments, retention, and member [00:01:00] progress.

To see how gyms use InBody to create clearer conversations and more predictable growth, visit InBody usa.com. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast, and I’m super excited to have for the first time on this podcast, a Unicorn society member, a gym owner who’s crushing it in Austin, Texas.

It’s Jeremy Ellis, founder of Goodly Coaching. Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

Speaker 2: Cool. Thank you, Michael. It’s good to be with you today.

Speaker: So excited to have you. You’ve, we’ve been really crushing [00:01:30] it now for last, I think year or two, since we’ve known you as a gym owner in Unicorn Society, and I’m so excited now is the moment we get to have you on the podcast and share some of the awesome shit you’ve been doing.

So thank you for taking the time to do this. I’m excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. Being with BFU for almost two years now, it’s definitely an honor to be here.

Speaker: Yeah. Let’s dive in. First, maybe just tell people a little bit about your background. How’d you come to be the founder of a place called Goodly Coaching in Austin, Texas?

Speaker 2: Yeah. It’s a long story of course, but I’ll keep it [00:02:00] short. I have been in the fitness industry for I would say almost seven years. 2018 I moved to Austin, Texas. I was with a, a career prior to that. For 17 years, I was with the same company.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker 2: Start of 2019, we decided to part ways and after so long in being within the same career, I took a little bit of time and thought about what do I want to do that, that I love?

I wanted to find a, a new direction, a new path, a new career, and a couple weeks after that, I was [00:02:30] studying for my CPT through NASM and decided that I was gonna be a personal trainer. Fast forward from there. That was 2019, got my certification, 2020. I went through the pandemic, navigated through that, and then in 2021, found myself with a great organization, a great team of coaches here in Austin, TE Austin, Texas, it’s athletic outcomes.

I was with them for more than three years, and that was essentially just my accelerator as a fitness professional and just had a great experience. There [00:03:00] was also doing my own thing on the side with. Personal training and at a couple different places, and also renting space. And then in 2024, I was making some transitions with my own stuff and decided that I was going to open up goodly coaching a brick and mortar space.

And with the intention of being able to help more people, I also wanted to build a team at that point. And I, yeah, opened up a space, just took the dive and almost three years later, here we are.

Speaker: It’s been going well [00:03:30] for you. It’s been going well for you. I always forgot that you have this as really a second career for you that I forgot that you were with someplace for that long.

That’s amazing. And there’s a lot of folks like you in Unicorn Society who had a whole career in something totally different at first, and this is like an a second, or in some cases a third chapter for people. And so that’s exciting. So I think the folks who come. To really entrepreneurship with some tools in their pocket from working in other companies, I find sometimes have not an easier time, but sometimes a faster climb, right?

When you have some work [00:04:00] experience working elsewhere, sometimes you get a little farther faster than the folks who maybe decide to open a gym right out of college, never worked anywhere else. I think sometimes they, they might have the youth and hustle on their side, but they often are missing some of the experience and knowledge that comes from.

Being in an industry for 17 years like you were. And so how do you feel like, this is not a question we had planned, but I’m just curious, how do you feel like that past career contributes to the work you do in your gym these days?

Speaker 2: It actually contributes a lot. Mm-hmm. Being a personal trainer, [00:04:30] it working solo, maybe not so much, but running a business a hundred percent.

My past career was. Operations, management, sales and marketing. Yeah. And so these are all experiences. Totally. And, and tools that I bring with me to goodly coaching. I’m managing people now. Even just working with spreadsheets. I have a lot of spreadsheet history and, and sales and marketing too. I do all my own sales and marketing and social media and using all the tools there.

So it’s just been a lot of fun to know that.

Speaker: That’s good.

Speaker 2: My, [00:05:00] my past history has definitely contributed to the success that I’ve been able to have in building a business for myself.

Speaker: Yeah, 100%. I always say that to people too, that I had a lot of jobs and careers before I opened a gym wasn’t, I didn’t open Mark Fisher Fitness with Mark until I was in my thirties and I had a lot of jobs before that, and all of them really gave me the, my own little toolbox for making that experience much better.

I can’t imagine having done it out of college, I would, I don’t know, it wouldn’t have been as fun for me without having some tools that I was bringing to the table. Sure. Good for you. [00:05:30] Anyone listening to the podcast right now? Is in the middle of a career that they don’t like and fitness is their side hustle.

Go talk to Jeremy. Talk to Jeremy about how to take the leap because you did it my friend, and it’s really been working for you. We see a lot of unicorn signing members on a regular basis, struggling to get some traction and figure out how to get shit done. But you’ve seen, ever since we’ve worked with you, we’ve seen, we’ve always been so impressed with your ability to get shit done and move things forward.

So I wanted to have you on the podcast specifically to unpack what are some things you’re, you’ve been doing least lately that have been real wins. What are [00:06:00] lessons you’ve been learning over the last. Year. One of the things before we started recording you mentioned is a big turning point for you is really figure out how to get organized as a gym owner.

Can you just talk through what do you mean by that and how did you come to get more organized as a gym owner?

Speaker 2: Yeah. It was with, I was in my first year of opening Goodly Coaching and. Navigating it and figuring out along the way. I went to my first retreat almost a couple years ago here in Austin with Business for Unicorns.

Yeah. Here in, in April. And, and that was a big win in itself. I, [00:06:30] I knew immediately with the people that were there, and obviously with the experience that I knew from Brittany at Athletic outcomes, that this was, this was already working and I just needed to be part of it. So I think for me it was. I knew where I wanted to go.

I just needed to get organization and direction. Mm-hmm. And it’s the little things. It’s, it’s having my dashboard, tracking regular numbers and figuring out what numbers are important to me, tracking those metrics and getting out of a full, my first, full year of business and knowing where I stood at that point and where I wanted to go and making adjustments [00:07:00] accordingly.

And I think without that, it’s throwing things up in the air and, and moving along the way with real no direction. And so just as simply just being organized in all things and creating SOPs and policies, written procedures, yeah. Has just been super helpful and, and just getting things organized. A person that thrives in order, yeah, put me in a room of chaos, I’ll lose it.

But I feel like that’s been a huge success.

Speaker: I think there’s so much, there’s such a parallel between what makes people successful in the [00:07:30] gym and getting results that they want in the gym. A lot of what makes you successful as an entrepreneur and a business owner is that we wanna know, okay, where are we at right now?

Where are we going? What’s the plan to get there? And how are we gonna track to make sure that we’re still moving in the right direction? And I think that you, you mentioned doing all those things right? Getting really clear about what are our metrics, how we track what we’re doing moving forward. So when you think back to the last year or so, what are some of the most important metrics you’ve tracked?

And maybe also I’ll stack two questions on top of each other and what are some of the more important SOPs [00:08:00] you’ve created? Let’s start with the metrics. Mm-hmm. What are the most important metrics you track these days?

Speaker 2: Some of the most important metrics is, of course, sales, right? Where we add on a monthly basis that’s a given.

Utilization rate has been huge. We do run small group training classes. We have 22 classes across the week now, and knowing exactly where we stand and making sure that even if some classes feel like they’re not full, we know that if we’re maintaining a 70% utilization rate or above, we’re still good and making adjustments quickly off of that and not waiting too long before that.

[00:08:30] Our, our attrition has been massive. We went from 2024 to 2025 being nearly 8% attrition in 2024 to under 2% attrition

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker 2: In 2025, which was excellent. That’s huge. And, and knowing that, and really taking a dive into that and going, how did we do that and why did people stick around? And really capitalizing on those identifiers to, to know that, hey, we had a good thing going.

Let’s make it even better. Key people sticking with us long term.

Speaker: Yeah. And we’ll circle back to [00:09:00] that because I do wanna get to all the things you’ve added that have improved your attrition and

Speaker 2: mm-hmm.

Speaker: We’ll talk more about how you improve the client experience, but I think just listening to you talk about the numbers, it’s it, I think that another lesson emerges for our listeners, which is it’s not just enough to track these numbers.

You have to be looking at them on a regular basis and then taking action on them. I think all the successes you just named are not from just looking at a number, they’re from noticing a number is heading in the right or the wrong direction. Reflecting on what that means. Then doing something about it.

It’s the action taking from this information that makes the [00:09:30] biggest difference. And I think one of the actions we often take when our numbers are moving in the right or wrong direction, is we often tweak or create SOPs. So let’s go to question number two, which was, what are some of the most important SOPs you’ve created over the year, last year, or so?

Speaker 2: Yeah. SOPs, first and foremost, a couple of them that have been key is just our onboarding SOPs.

Speaker: Mm.

Speaker 2: What do we do from, uh, from like

Speaker: class onboarding or, I’m sorry, client onboarding or staff?

Speaker 2: Yeah, client onboarding.

Speaker: Got it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. From the moment that somebody shows [00:10:00] interest, where do they go from there?

Whether they’re going into personal training or they’re going into small group training, and then not only from. LBO to member. Mm-hmm. But then what do we do with them after that? Mm-hmm. And how do we track them from 50 workouts to 100 workouts and what happens? Everything in between. Yeah, definitely SOPs, re, in regards to onboarding and then membership and then having SOPs for one person in particular on our team.

She’s our membership specialist, Barash, and she’s just been great and we’ve essentially built her role in really being on top [00:10:30] of our members in all aspects. And we continue as we continue to build her role. Put s continue to build her SOP, right? Make changes, make adjustments. If this is working, this needs to be better.

That’s not working. And, and yeah, this, those SOPs alone have just been huge for us.

Speaker: That’s amazing. Good for you. I think it just goes to show that when you invest in focusing on an area of the business operationally like that, it makes a big difference. The fact that you focused on your client experience, your client onboarding experience, and it had a real tangible benefit [00:11:00] of moving your attrition numbers dramatically in the right direction, from 8% to 2% is a crazy leap.

And just goes to show what gets your time and attention in the business improves, right? And you create systems to be really consistent about how you treat clients during the onboarding process. They’re going to have a better experience, which gets them to stay longer. And so I That’s so exciting and good for you that you’ve been able to do that.

I know another area where I know we’ve talked before about you getting more organized was around finances, specifically trying to have some [00:11:30] processes in place for spending. So you just talk a little bit about that part of the business.

Speaker 2: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. You, I think early on it’s, it is real easy to just spend a lot of money.

Mm-hmm. Because we need this and we need that and we don’t feel like we’re, we’re making any money anyway. Um, but I think as we started to find ourselves in a position where profit actually was a thing, it was, okay, let’s take a look at what our expenses are. And rent and utilities is one thing. How much are we spending every single [00:12:00] month on on our clients?

What does the swag look like? Or are we just buying stuff to buy stuff? And more so just tracking that and having numbers consistently across the board to know that we weren’t overspending one month and underspending one month, but really trying to stay consistent in that. And that’s just helped us too.

Just keep that consistent and and play off of that. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. So I think one of the things that people struggle with sometimes, and I dunno if this is true for you, Jeremy, but when they first start to try and put some sort of budget [00:12:30] in place, they have a hard time creating some sort of like habit for like, how often do I look at it?

Is this like daily thing, a weekly thing, a monthly thing? Do I need an app for this? So when it comes to putting like a budget in place for you, what are the habits that have been most helpful?

Speaker 2: Putting a budget in place, first and foremost is having an accountant. I didn’t have an accountant whenever I initially started, and she’s been super helpful in really just getting things organized.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 2: But having a budget in place has just been really helpful, even in [00:13:00] just marketing spending, making sure that, uh, we, again, we weren’t overspending in one area versus the next, and we really were allocating enough accordingly to make sure that we were working within our needs.

Speaker: Yeah, 100%. And I think the kind of cornerstone habits that I’ve seen both you take on and other folks in unicorn society is really all it takes is really a monthly review of your expenses.

You don’t need to be looking at your expenses every day or every week necessarily if you’re really in a tough spot, right? Maybe once a week is good, but if you’re looking [00:13:30] once a month when you’re a bookkeeper or accountant’s helping you close your books once a month, maybe they send you your p and l.

Even if you’re just looking once a month, that moment saying, how do we do? How close did we get to spending? What we thought we would spend? How much over how much under, hopefully under right are we, and what adjustments can we make in the following month? But I think even that 10, 15 minutes it takes to go read your p and l every month, maybe have that chat with your bookkeeper or accountant.

That’s all it takes to really make sure that your expense, your spending is within the [00:14:00] ranges you want it. I think the other thing is obviously you need to know what the ranges should be. So I think that’s also a helpful piece of the equation. Yeah. But good for you. I’m glad you’ve been able to reign it in a way that feels good to you, because runaway expenses are really just such a thorn in your side as you continue to try and grow.

Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And again, the dashboard has just been super helpful for that in, in tracking that on a regular basis and seeing it over time and, and adjusting accordingly.

Speaker: Yeah. I’ll just say this as a little mini commercial for Unicorn Society for any listeners, is that when you join Unicorn Society, we give you a dashboard to [00:14:30] use.

We give you two options to choose from, and so you don’t have to think about what to track each week or each month. The financial metrics that are, we’ll just tell you what we think you should track and people can make it their own and they often do, we’ll add or take things away, but we try to make it as easy as possible to know not only what to track, but what the benchmark should be for those numbers.

There’s no second guessing and hopefully that’s been useful to you. Jeremy, I think has a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I think so maybe let’s circle back. So now we talked before about the fact that you made some big investments in your member [00:15:00] experience, both the onboarding experience and other things that have really improved your retention.

And I’m sure our listeners are dying to hear, what did you do to go from such, such 8% loss every single month to under two? What did you change about the member experience that’s been so useful?

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a good question. I had a conversation with another BFU member not too long ago about this, and it was cool that he reached out and wanted to know what we were doing as, yeah, as he saw those numbers going into the new year.

But again, first and foremost is having our prospect to [00:15:30] L-B-O-S-O-P, and then from our LBO to member SOP, and then moving on some of the things that I think we do really well. For our members that really help with our attrition rate is first and foremost a lot of communication. Mm-hmm. I think it’s so easy in, in, in any kind of group setting to just feel like you’re finding your way.

And we just know that when up to at least for their first 10 workouts, we’re talking to them and hitting ’em with a lot of touch points and then, and then. Up to 25 workouts. And then we have regular check-ins. We have a, [00:16:00] a check-in with every single member at their 10th workout. And this is just a check-in to go, how are things going?

We go over other things like our policies and procedures and, Hey, if you need to pause your membership, this is what you do. Here’s how you work our app. Just make sure that they’ve got it down because now they’re 10 workouts in, they’ve been able to touch some things.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: And then every 25 workouts after that from 25.

25, 50, 75 to 100. We celebrate their milestones and we celebrate them in, in, in the gym. We post them on our social, [00:16:30] we post them in a group chat within the app and, and really recognize people and celebrate them. And that’s been huge. And we also use. Another big tool for us is our coaching app that we use within our coaching app.

They can track their workouts, track their progress, track their milestones. There’s also a group chat feature in there. That’s great. So time complete, a workout. We get to they, they get seen.

Speaker: Yeah. And what app are you using? Is it off the shelf app?

Speaker 2: It’s trainer eyes.

Speaker: Trainer eyes. Great. Yeah. I know a lot of folks who use and like trainer eyes for that this exact purpose.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:17:00] Which has been great. And every milestone they get a gift too. We give them some sort of goodly swag and celebrate them. And we have a board, and I think this is a key feature, a couple key features for us in the gym and our communities. We have a member board and everybody gets a Polaroid whenever they first sign up.

And our newer members are at the top. And then there’s categories 25, 50, 75, a hundred, 150, 200 plus. And it’s so much fun watching people look at the board and then also move themselves across the board mm-hmm. To hit certain milestones. [00:17:30] Yeah. And, and then we had on our mirrors in the front of the gym, as we all face the front every month when somebody hits a milestone and our mirror, chalk mirror marker, their name goes up there with their milestones.

So it’s constantly just keeping. People seen, acknowledged, celebrated, and, and that’s just, it’s been a lot of fun. And I think those things alone definitely are supporting our attrition.

Speaker: Yeah. Good for you. That’s such a huge list of things that you do on a regular basis that are not complicated. Right.

They’re pretty simple, but they make a big difference ’cause people [00:18:00] feel seen, they feel appreciated. And in many ways you’ve gamified the experience. Right? If PE you’re celebrating people after every 25 visits, I imagine that breaks down to, for people coming twice a week, let’s write, what about quarterly?

So about once a quarter, I imagine for most of your members, they’re getting some sort of celebration that says, good job. Keep on going. We see you. Now let’s hit the next milestone, which means that people are getting that kick in the pants or that hug or that high five on a pretty regular basis up to probably what, four times per [00:18:30] year.

I’m guessing from any of your clients. They’re hitting some milestone that helps them be recognized by their community. That’s huge for attrition, right? And retention. That’s huge for keeping people around and giving them like. The next thing to work on. Mm-hmm. I think people often leave gyms, and we know this from the research, but people often leave not because they dislike you, but they leave because they’re just bored.

They’re a little bit like me, I’ve been doing this for a while. I need something fresh. And the fact that you’re keeping it fresh, but giving them like the next challenge [00:19:00] to work on. Mm-hmm. And I’m sure in a few years you’re gonna need to find something to do with those 200 plus people. Right. You’re gonna collect a bunch of 200 plus people and you know they’re gonna be like, now what Jeremy?

Yeah. You celebrate us to here and now what? Now we’re just old news. Like you’re need to fight. ’cause that’s what happened at MFF. We were like, oh, we’ll never have someone that gets to a thousand visits. And then we’re like, oh shit. We got there pretty quickly actually.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: And then suddenly we’re like, now do we, how do we celebrate people who’ve been around for this many years doing this much epic work?

And I think if you keep your finger on that pulse, you’re gonna keep great retention [00:19:30] over time. That’s huge. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. We look forward to that.

Speaker: Yeah. What a great problem to have, right? Yeah, that’s huge. What I mean, of all the things you listed there, what are the things you get the most positive feedback on from the clients?

What do they say the most about? About, of all those things you listed, what do they give you the most positive feedback on?

Speaker 2: Most positive feedback. Everybody loves some swag. Yeah. It’s nice to get something. We actually, we spent, we spend a little bit of money on that of course, but it is, it’s so worth it.

And then we get people running around town with our [00:20:00] shirts on and hats on. Yeah. Especially

Speaker: if it’s stuff they could only get from doing a milestone. Totally. It feels earned in a really special way. It becomes more than just a t-shirt becomes that symbol of their effort and their success.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and, and the community group chat has been, that allows not only our members to see other members, and every time somebody completes a workout, they, they, even if they’re in class with just a couple people, they know that there’s 50 other people that are actually in the gym and doing the same thing as them, but [00:20:30] recognizing them in the, in, in the group chat and taking their picture and having them hold up a sign that says a hundred workouts.

It’s just been, it’s been really cool and we get a lot of good feedback on that.

Speaker: That’s amazing. Good for you. Maybe one more last question here, which is for all of our folks listening who are like, you know what, my retention’s been a little bit high. It’s been maybe in that 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 range, and I really wanna bring it down.

Where do they start? Of all the things you’ve implemented, what’s the first one you’d recommend people taking a look at to improve their client experience [00:21:00] And the retention?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Tracking the amount of work that they’re putting in. Yeah. Whether even that’s one month or one year. Two years tracking workouts.

We love those milestones. That’s been a lot of fun. I think that’s one place to start. ’cause in a lot of cases, I think it’s like you do need tools, I think to track that. And maybe it can get a little bit challenging, but find the tools to track milestones and anniversaries and make that a priority. I think that’s,

Speaker: I think you’ve really found the [00:21:30] sweet spot too, Jeremy, of the fact that you’re doing it by every 25 visits, I think is a kind of sweet spot for a lot of folks.

That means for at least once or twice a year, if not up to four times a year, depending on how often they’re coming or more, they’re getting some regular praise. That’s a decent amount of touch points throughout the year to say, you’re doing a great job. We see you we’re celebrating you. Your picture moves on the board, you get up on the mirror, you’re on our social media, right?

That’s a few times per year to really elevate them and put them on that pedestal. So I think for anyone listening, [00:22:00] you really want to think about whatever your milestone system is. How frequently is that touching people? How frequently is that creating an impact? And we know from research about incentive programs in workplaces that after people are lifted up.

Buy a program like, like this. They have a whole, they have a period about two to two to four weeks afterwards where they’re a little puffed up or they’re a little, they’re a little more proud or they come to your case, the gym and other cases like work feeling a little bit more, I’m gonna give an extra effort.

A little bit more seen. Right? I think so the more you [00:22:30] can think about how these milestones touch people throughout the year and then make sure they’re spread out enough, they’re not on top of each other, but they’re not so infrequent that it’s only. Once every three years, you’ve really done a great job of finding that sweet spot of recognizing people at a regular pace.

So I just wanna give that to our listeners as well to think about.

Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks. I’ll add this too, is

Speaker: yeah,

Speaker 2: by track, by tracking them and knowing how, where they’re at on those milestones or their, those total number of workouts, we also know when they’re not there. Yeah, [00:23:00] hundred percent. It’s uh, we keep a list and I meet with our membership specialist weekly, and part of that.

Part of that list that we go over is our member watch list. Yeah. If somebody’s not showing up or kind of MIA, it’s, we’re messaging them. We’re calling them, we’re texting them, where are you? Yep. And each milestone, they have a, a 15 to 20 minute check-in call with our membership specialist where they, we go over all their goals again and now start looking ahead and looking and review and yeah.

It’s just, it’s been really fun to, to be part of that.

Speaker: Yeah. Amazing. I think that’s such a great example. Good for you. [00:23:30] Thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast, Jeremy, and we could keep talking probably all day of all the great things you and your team are doing, but I think sharing this information about getting organized, tracking your metrics, having clear process for managing your spending, really investing in your client experience, keep that retention low.

All these have been such great tips. So I hope our listeners have been taking notes. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m sure we’ll have you back again another year or so and tell us all the next great things you’ve been doing. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.

Thank you, Michael. It’s been a lot of fun.

Speaker: [00:24:00] Yeah, and dear listeners, have a great rest of your week and I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

Get up, get up.