Episode 69: The Two-Brain Business Model of Wellness and Running a Successful Gym

18/09/2022 • Thorne

Two-Brain Business founder Chris Cooper and Thorne inside sales manager Katie Mead join the Performance Edition of the Thorne Podcast to discuss the evolving world of owning a gym and tips for client retention in the fitness industry.

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Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast, Performance Edition. The show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research on diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Throne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello, everybody. And welcome to The Throne Podcast: Performance Edition. Joining me today are Chris Cooper of Two Brain and Thorne's own Katie Mead.

Chris is the founder of Two Brain Business, the largest gym mentorship company in the world. He's the author of countless books and eBooks, including "Two Brain Business", the best-selling fitness book of all time. And one of his more recent books, "Founder Farmer, Tinker Thief", received best seller status on Amazon in six categories. So, very excited to have him on the podcast.

And Katie is our inside sales manager at Thorne Research, and she comes with Thorne from a career utilizing her Master's in Clinical Nutrition, in physical wellness and nutrition, both in the athletic and clinical world. She also sits on the board of the South Carolina Health and Fitness Association, where she helps educate local health and fitness professionals in various nutrition topics, and facilitate partnership with local nutritionists. So, just a wealth of information on two different sides of the coin here. Chris, Katie, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Cooper:

Thank you very much, Joel.

Katie Mead:

Thanks, Joel. Glad to be here.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we've got a lot to dive into today. I think it's really important. We talk a lot about this podcast about impacting performance and wellness, but today we're going to talk about the business side of it and kind of some of the communication sides of getting that message out there.

But Chris, we put a lot in your introduction, but I don't feel like that quite does your background justice. Can you take a few minutes to tell us about your path of founding Two Brain, and then eventually the Two Brain Summit?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, thanks Joel. So I'll be as succinct as I can. I opened a gym in 2005 to make more money than I can make as a personal trainer. And didn't realize that owning a gym was a different skillset than being a good coach, and struggled along for a few years. And finally, in 2008, realized like I wasn't growing. That my debt was growing, but my income wasn't, and found a mentor. And we had just opened a second location, which sounds like I was winning, but I wasn't. And so the mentor was giving me tips on how to improve my gym. And he was walking me through this really grueling process step by step. And because I was just so overwhelmed, I was worried that I wasn't going to remember everything. And so I just started publishing letters to myself on a blog called DontBuyAds.com.

That blog is still live. And I did it every day for about four years,.but the blog was also public, and a lot of other gym owners just started finding it, especially in the CrossFit space. And so after about three and a half years, somebody invited me to speak. I just copied like the top 20 blog posts from DontBuyAds.com, and put them in a book. And self-published it because it was cheaper than printing copies at Kinko's.

So it went on Amazon, because of that seminar, basically. And now it's sold 32,000 copies and it's the best selling fitness business book of all time. And for the first few years there was no table of contents. There was no page numbers or anything in this book. And then people started asking me for coaching and getting on calls with them. And in 2016, we founded twobrainbusiness.com, which is our mentorship practice. And we have about 40 mentors worldwide right now that work one on one with gym owners. So, we work at any given time with 700 to 800 gyms, one on one, and we've worked with a few thousand. We work with CrossFit gyms, but also we have a lot of boxing gyms, boot camps, yoga and Pilates gyms in the practice right now, too.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think what you're doing is so important. Everyone on this call is in the business of upgrading lives, right? But a lot of people have that passion and that drive to do it. But you know, like you said, you don't get taught that bridge to giving that education, and in such a confusing and overload of information. If you had to start the conversation with someone, how do you start getting them to learn how to, like you said, be a good coach, but be a great business owner and actually impact the lives you're trying to...

Chris Cooper:

Well, there's really six levers that you can pull to make a gym better for the owner, right? And so what we start to do is we say, "Here are the six things that you can do, and we want to start by taking you through each one of these things in turn." And in many cases, it really means fixing problems that they had.

So for example, the owner is just simply not paying themselves enough. They're leaving too much money in the business, or the business isn't profitable enough. And so, if that's the problem, then we start to increase client value. And a lot of owners don't understand what true client value actually means. And as a reflection of value, their price also increases, and they start making more money. And then we focus on how to keep clients longer. And unfortunately, many gyms just don't focus on this.

So the average micro gym in the world keeps a client for seven and two thirds of a month, which isn't long enough to change their lives. That number should really be around three years. And then from there, we talk to them about how to sell. So, how to coach people to sign up. And then from there we teach them marketing. And we do it in that order, because if you don't have a solid system of operations and a solid structure for your coaching and a consistently good product that serves high value, there's no sense even jumping into doing like Instagram ads, because people are just going to flow into your business and leave before you have a chance to change their lives.

Joel Totoro:

So, Katie, I think one of the things we see is this kind of, where do I start? And what are some of the learnings that Thorne's had from its legacy in the clinical space, moving over into the gym and consumer space, to kind of assist people in getting over that? There's a little bit of fear of, am I doing this right? Am I starting in the right place?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So, I think the fear comes in with... We're so used to when we're partnering with other even supplement companies in the fitness space of the fine print and what's involved in that. And having to worry about minimum order sizes. And you're really committing on a financial level to start. And so what we've learned at Thorne is first, we like to keep things simple. So when you sign up for a professional account, it's completely free. You don't have to stock inventory. So as a personal trainer that maybe is operating out of a gym and doesn't have any space to stock product, or a gym that just isn't big enough and doesn't have the space to stock product or just isn't ready yet, you don't have to do that.

You don't have to buy into anything. We offer a free online dispensing platform. That is great. It's basically a co-branded landing page where you can pop in form products. You can do our entire suite or just a handful, where members can then access our products at a discount. You can offer anywhere from 5% to 35% off to make it more affordable for the member. And you'll make that full margin between wholesale versus retail. Our average margin's about 47%, which is pretty high. I think one of the highest in our industry. And we'll ship the order directly to the member. They'll get free shipping, as well, on any order total. So, it's just really convenient. Really, the only work that's involved is setting up the dispensary, which you'll have a dedicated rep to help you with that. They're also there to help you in terms of product selection, product training, marketing support.

And from there, it's really just word of mouth and getting the information out to your members for them to go on and order their product. So, you can stock retail, and we'll help you with that. Again, even for retail, there's no order minimum. The only minimum we have is for free shipping, which is $99. And I think I do that just on my personal orders. So it's not a hard minimum to reach, especially if you're stocking for retail.

And then you also have the online dispensing platform as well. So you can utilize both. Most of our most successful gyms will utilize a form of both, or you can just do the dispensary and start there, see what's selling really well and what your members are gravitating towards. And then use that as a metric to determine what you're going to offer a point of sale, if you want to go that route. So, it's really simple. There's no administration fees. We don't take a percentage of your earnings. We can even pay you through the dispensary via direct deposit. So, that's really easy as well. And we know that about 80% of Americans are already taking some type of supplement. Whether it's recommended from somebody or not, they're on it. And so, knowing not all supplements are created equal, this is a great way to really capture some of that and help them get on a more quality supplement.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And we were both kind of hitting at from different ways is you don't have to be the expert in everything as a business owner. It's building that confidence and I always say you need to be the CEO of you and build your cabinet, your board of directors. So having a trusted resource to really assist you and that have gained some learnings over the years. So I think that's super important to people that have a little bit of confidence to take that next step.

But speaking about trusted resources and trusted products, everything you partner with as a gym owner, that's your brand, right? So, Chris, how do you go about kind of deciding who to partner with, or what is a solution that your customers want? How do you do that kind of audit, and how do you kind of audit what your client needs, but also then what the best solution is?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, Joel, that is the million dollar question. And when I was just a single gym owner using supplements as just the easy and obvious example, it was tough for us to figure that out. And back then, you'd try to do some research yourself. And you would order a bottle of whey protein and taste it, right? And it was hard to see even what the ingredients actually were. And then you would have to tie up a thousand dollars in cash in inventory. You'd bring them in and eventually maybe you might change your supplier, or whatever. And so there was a certain time when I was even telling people, "It's not worth it. You don't have a thousand dollars in cash, or you could reinvest that somewhere else that's going to make you more money."

But the truth now is that, it is actually a lot easier. And so what we do is we collect data from about 15,000 gyms worldwide, and we track this data and we track the top performers every month. And we say, "Okay, what are you doing? How are you selling supplements? What percentage of your gross revenue is coming from supplements?" That kind of thing. And then we look at who the top performers are using, and we start there. And we say, "Okay, what do you like about this product? What do you dislike? What have you used in the past?" And what we don't want to do is just talk to people who have only ever used one brand or whatever. Because obviously they're going to lack some context. And so what we find is that people, especially in the micro gym space, they'll usually stick with one brand.

They might have two in their gym. They might make about up to 10% of their gross revenue from supplements. And that number goes up if they have a nutrition coach on staff, who's making these recommendations, we'll find that they need to keep about $500 to a $1000 worth of inventory, just so that they've got some on the shelf. And we also find that if they're doing special events, like Bring a Friend Friday and they have a taste test as part of that event, that they can do a pre-order from that that doesn't cost them anything in their inventory that gets their product into their client's hands pretty quickly. And there's zero risk to them. So yeah, that's basically what we've found. Our role in the market is to kind of not be the arbiter, but be the collector of information to say, "Here's the people that we recommend."

And so in a certain category like software, we might say, "Look, out of all the gym management platforms, here are the three that have the top recommendation." And then sometimes we have some buying power. So we can go to these platforms and say, "What can you do for Two Brain Business clients?" Or we might be the ones to post a guide that reviews all the top 10 gym management software platforms.

And, several years ago when I was working for CrossFit Inc, I told them that this was their responsibility to do for their gyms, collect this data, be the arbiter, make suggestions. And they said, "That's a great idea. We're never going to do it. You should do it." And so, we invested heavily in doing this, and now we have a lot of brand trust because when we recommend Thorne, for example, people know that, okay, we've done some homework on quality. We've done some homework on, does this actually benefit the gym owner? And you know, is it going to actually help their business? So, that's basically how we do it.

Joel Totoro:

That was a million dollar answer right there for sure. And...

Chris Cooper:

Just trying to match your value here, Joel.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, it's hard to love it.

So Katie, so a lot of people listening to this podcast may be new to Thorne. So we've kind of built our history and our mission around answering a lot of those questions that kind of Chris brought up. So can you kind of give our listeners a little bit of overview of kind of what makes Thorne different in the space?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So, what makes Thorne different, I would say, is our commitment to quality. For lack of a better term, I think we're a little obsessed when it comes to quality. We do extensive testing on our products. In fact, at our beautiful manufacturing facility in South Carolina, we have two state of the art labs where from the moment that we receive raw material from the second it ends up in the consumer's hands, we have full oversight over that entire manufacturing process, which not many other companies, if any, are able to say. We'll outsource for NSF certified for sport testing, which we do have the largest line of. So I think that attributes to a lot of our partnerships in the professional sports performance realm. Along with that, one thing that really attracted me to Thorne, is we will discontinue manufacturing a product if we cannot get a clean source of a raw ingredient.

And it doesn't matter if it's our most popular product or not. If it doesn't pass our testing requirements, then we will no longer manufacture that product. So, we're not going to compromise consumers just to make an extra buck. We attest to our partnerships. So we do partner with the Mayo Clinic for not only clinical research, but also education. So we have a ton of education on our site for consumers and for practitioners to learn more about supplementation and just what's going on within the industry and within the health industry as a whole.

Chris Cooper:

Can I suggest one thing to mention, Katie?

Katie Mead:

Yeah. Thank you. I don't know why I'm having a hard time-

Chris Cooper:

No problem.

Katie Mead:

Talking about my company.

Chris Cooper:

That's okay. So one thing that I know appeals to gym owners, a lot of gym owners feel reluctant to sell supplements because they don't want to ever sell anything, right? So they know their clients are going down to the GNC and buying crappy whey protein.

Katie Mead:

Right.

Chris Cooper:

But what Thorne brings is, Thorne can actually help the gym owner make a recommendation that feels scientific and good. And I think that's part of the testing protocol, too.

Katie Mead:

Yeah, our testing. Yeah, absolutely.

So, Thorne, we've been around for 38 years and we're primarily known as a supplement company. But we also have pretty extensive testing that we offer as well. So a lot of gyms owners may be fearful of recommending or suggesting a supplement. We know that majority of Americans are already on a supplement, so it's really just swapping out what they're taking already for a higher quality supplement in the Thorne product. But the testing can really help, not only the gym owner or the trainer that's recommending or suggesting a supplement with their knowledge and how to navigate supplementation, but also the consumer. So, with our test kits that can be completed at home, you'll get a full report of not only what the lab values means. So you go to a doctor, you get your blood work done, you come back and you just have a bunch of numbers on a sheet, but you don't really know what any of that means.

And so, what I love about our testing is that you'll get actionable insights and details around what each biomarker means, what it's testing for, what your levels are, and then what you can do from a dietary and lifestyle standpoint in order to improve those levels. And then there could be one or two supplement recommendations with that as well. So, it really helps take the guesswork out of what do I need to take? You can walk into any supermarket or a GNC and look at all the supplements and be like, "I need that. And I need that." But, the testing really helps get a more personalized approach to what you actually may need and what can help make improvements to your health.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, Katie, I think you brought up a really good point that a large majority of Americans are already taking a supplement. And to me, that brings up a big point. And, and Chris, I know you can expand on this, but I think a lot of people get it pretty narrow minded in the gym space about, okay, this is what I need, whey protein, maybe some hydration, but then take stepping back and thinking about, okay, but this person is a whole person, right? I would say in human performance, so much of the work is on the human. So Chris, is there a way to kind of change that mentality of, okay, this person's coming to me to upgrade this part of their lives, by having that intention, they're probably looking to upgrade. So kind of just opening your mind and the business potential and just, how do you learn to view the customer as not just that transaction when they're in your gym?

Chris Cooper:

Well, I think this is really where the industry is going. And if you look at how gyms had to pivot with COVID, suddenly they're not just trying to stream a class through zoom, but they're helping the client manage more areas of their life, like stress and anxiety. And they're producing media to calm their client's fears about, "Would I survive contracting a virus?" So to that end, I think a lot of gyms became more prescriptive, and they had to. Honestly, the prescriptive model is what delivers the most value to people. So coming in and talking to a coach and the coach saying, "Here is what you need to increase your lifespan, increase your health span increase your vitality." That's really our job. It's not our job to sell CrossFit or to sell Pilates or to sell boot camp classes. It's not even our job to sell nutrition program.

Our job is to solve the problem and having a correct analysis will let us make a correct prescription. And if we can make a correct prescription, then we'll get the client results and save their lives. So part of that is having the tools to make the right prescription for the client at the right time. And you can either learn those tools by taking a billion courses, or you can partner with people who've already developed the tools, like Thorne, to do that.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. So I think we could go on for hours and hours. And that kind actually leads me to, we're recording this podcast in advance of the Two Brain Summit. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and kind of what somebody that's going through that can expect to come out of that walking away with?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah. So I said that our job is not really to be the arbiter of what's good. It's to be the curator of what the gym community needs right now. And coming out of COVID, there's a lot of more optimism out there. Gyms are growing. Most gyms saw little surge.

And so this is our first live event back in two years. And asking myself, what do gym owners need to hear the most right now? That's what led us to our speaker panel. And so we do this big event where we bring in about 350 to 500 gym owners into Chicago for a weekend. The camaraderie, sitting at the table with eight other people who are going through the same stuff that you are, that's super powerful. And we invite about 15 brands to be there too, and to talk to people and to sit down and have conversations, and talk about their gym and talk about their fitness practice and how to help their clients more.

And so this year, our lead speaker is Sarah Robb O'Hagan. Sarah is currently CEO of EXOS, but she's the former chief marketing officer for Nike, a bunch of other amazing brands. She has a great book called "Stand Up, Standout, Kick Ass, Repeat." Just an amazing motivational speaker. She's absolutely in love with the fitness industry. And then we have a huge speaker roster, mostly of fitness business experts. A lot of them are from the Two Brain team. They'll come up and talk about leading your team and building marketing funnels and a lot of that stuff.

We have a second stage for coaches. So there's coaching experts in kids and coaching experts in mindfulness and fitness and group coaching and one on one. And so a lot of gym owners actually bring their coaches. The primary value of this is really connection. You're making connections with other gym owners. You're making connections with mentors and new friends and partners, like Thorne. More than anything else, everybody just kind of leaves invigorated. So we'll be in Rosemont again this year, it's the first weekend in June, anyway. And I can give you a link for the show notes.

Joel Totoro:

All right, we're going to have to take a quick short break here, and we get back, we're going to some questions from you, our listeners.

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And, we're back. We going to do some questions from our audience. This is great one that we see, a lot of conversations we have. So, and me being a sports scientist by trade, I was a food first guy forever. But opinions on supplements have definitely changed over time with the kind of state of science and the idea of even making them part of your business. Is this something, is this in my lane? Chris, can you talk about what you've seen in the industry? And then Katie, I know you'll have some input on that right after.

Chris Cooper:

Yeah. I think Katie's going to give us some great input here, but when I was starting as a trainer 20 years ago, if you wanted to sell supplements, you kind of had to weigh two options. You could sell something that had a good margin and was probably full of sugar or junky ingredients, or you could sell something really high end, but it might have a margin of 10%. And so which one did you want to do? And so most of us just wound up doing nothing. And in fact, for CrossFit affiliates who are listening to this, part of Greg's original recommendation was that a trainer trains at nothing else, or something. But the truth is that now, science has evolved so much that supplementation is kind of a key part of a coaching practice. And it's a key part of your business.

And Katie's going to talk about how that can work, where you've got good margins, but also a really good, clean product. The thing is that as science evolves, our diet is actually devolving. And so the stuff that your clients were eating 20 years ago is not what they're eating now. The food quality is lower, and they're going to go out and buy supplements to fix that anyway. And so I would much rather that they turn to you for good experience and advice and good quality stuff. And I think that's kind of our job as a coach now. Where before, it was kind of a bolt on add on thing, now it's a conversation that you can't avoid, just like wearables. You have to talk about supplements now.

Katie Mead:

Yeah. A hundred percent. So I'll touch on the quality and margin piece, because I think that's really important to address. Because like you said, you either had really high quality and not a great margin or a great margin, but not great quality.

So, you know, at Thorne, our legacy started primarily selling to practitioners. That was our model. We really grew word of mouth and be integrative and holistic space for a number of years. And we catered to practitioners being able to offer quality supplements to their patients to improve patient support. And now that we are catering more to, and have growing our partnerships in the sports performance realm, we're not going to go back on that model. And sure, we could hold a little more profit for ourselves, but honestly, a lot of the profit that we make, we put back into our quality assurance and R&D to ensure that we're continuing to put out the highest quality supplement out there. And also for our various test kits that we offer as well. So, it might sound too good to be true, but we really do. I mean, our average margin's 47%, which is the highest in the industry. And, you just really can't get a better quality supplement out there.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think that's important. And one thing, coming from the sports dietician and practitioner, having been on the practitioner side, Katie, I think one of the things we forget to mention at Thorne is, like you just mentioned, the test kits and the research side of our company. A lot of times our clients will be like, "Hey, I've taken this supplement. Is it working?" The fact that there's the testing and the research to kind of then come back and prove it, and also just be another source of revenue and offerings to your consumers. I think that's super important. And again, we've got podcast episodes diving into those tests and what they mean. So you can definitely learn more there.

Which leads me to the next question, Katie. You know, from a listener. "I don't know a lot of knowledge on supplements." Which I think is fair, and I think it's a very self-aware question. "Where can I get some training or education on supplementation so I can feel a little bit more comfortable recommending it?"

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. We get that question a lot. And I think that's part of the hesitation with offering supplements to begin with, as a trainer and even a practitioner, too. So we have not only extensive information on our website through our Take Five blogs and various podcasts, but you'll also have a dedicator rep that you can work with to help you get access to more in depth product trainings. We have amazing medical fair staff here, and we can get on training calls with them to whoever specific products, make sure that your staff and you as a trainer are comfortable with the supplements that you're offering.

But also, just to go back to clients already being on something. They're, most of them are already on a multivitamin or a fish oil, whether it was recommended from a practitioner that they're seeing, or they just thought it looked cool on the shelf at the store and purchased it, or just think they should be taking it. So what I start with with a lot of trainers and gym owners is it's really just that easy swap to get them on something like our Basic Nutrients 2-a-day, which is our most popular multivitamin. So, that's an easy place to start. But we have extensive training available to you, as well, to make sure that you are comfortable and your staff is comfortable when it comes to speaking to our products and making suggestions.

Joel Totoro:

All right, Chris, I've got a question for you. I think is a great one to kind of end this conversation on about, really engagement needs. It's a listener question, and I guarantee you've answered it a thousand times, but the question is, "I have decent initial engagement for my clients, but they always seem to fall off. What can I do to increase retention?"

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, thanks Joel. So we have a ton of data on this, and I actually published a free guide to increasing retention. We have a free public Facebook group for gym owners called Gym Owners United. And if you just go to gymownersunited.com, I'll give you this guide for free.

But here are the top things. Number one is you need to have a consultative process. So, instead of "Come in and try a free class," it should be "Come in and talk to a coach, and we'll talk about what's best for you." And that has a market effect on long-term retention. The second thing is you need to have some kind of onboarding or on-ramp process. Usually done one on one. But this is basically taking a client through the very beginner levels of whatever you're doing. If that's yoga, Pilates, boot camp, kickboxing, CrossFit, whatever, you need to have that one on one time.

And it even works in jujitsu. We've seen that in the data. The third thing is that you need to have what we call goal reviews, but it's basically a check in with that client. It's a 10 to 15 minute appointment where you track their progress and you adjust your recommendation for them, based on that score. Too many gyms just don't do that. They might talk to the client when they show up the first time, take their credit card, "How many times do you want to come in and do kickboxing?" Or "How many times in a week do you want to do CrossFit? Here's the price." And then they never review progress with the client. They never talk about their changing goals. And so the client's always left to guess is it working? Should I go do something different? And the fourth big thing that they should do is put one person in their gym in charge of retention.

And we call this person a client success manager. It's not a very expensive role, but it's a very valuable role. So this person's job is to call a client if they haven't been to class this week. It's to send them a birthday card. It's to thank them when they refer a friend. And there's a list of about 10 things that they do. And this role sounds kind of like fu-fu, like, "Ah, geez, I'd rather invest in more Facebook ads." But the reality is that if the gyms that we collect data from, so 15,000 gyms worldwide. If each of those gyms kept a client for three more months, the owner would make another $40,000 a year in take home pay. And that's just based on industry averages on price. If you charge more, that number goes up. If you keep them longer than three extra months, that number goes up. But retention is way more important than marketing. And those are the top four things that actually improve retention in a micro gym.

Joel Totoro:

It's amazing, putting a little bit in retention, how far that can go. It's excellent information. So, Katie, I want you to touch a little bit kind of to close this out. CrossFit Affiliate Partner Network. Can you just give a little overview of what that is? It's everything we've talked about here. It's trying to empower gym owners, but... And what the APN is and where Thorne fits in that.

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So the APN is a network through CrossFit that CrossFit developed to allow gym owners different ways to boost their business and boost retention and activity within their gyms. So Thorne is proud to be a part of that. And another way that gyms can not only provide support to their members, but also provide a healthy stream of income for their gym.

So we know that COVID had a pretty heavy toll on a lot of gyms when they had to close down. And this is a great way for them to not only be able to provide an additional revenue stream without worrying about any overhead inventory, any upfront costs or anything like that. But also continue to provide support in a more well rounded way for their members of the gym.

Joel Totoro:

You're right. And I think we've done a pretty good job of showcasing other reasons why you may or may not want to take a supplement. And Chris, I'm going to put you on the spot to kind of close out the show. Kind of what's in your supplement stack and how are you upgrading your life?

Chris Cooper:

Well, it's funny because when we hopped on, Joel caught me pouring the Thorne supplement Catalyte out of my bike water bottle into my coffee mug. So it looked like I was drinking coffee. But I'm drinking Catalyte as we talk right now, which I love for a lot of reasons. Lemon lime is my favorite flavor, but my gym is also named Catalyst. So, I mean, come on, can't beat it. I also take the Thorne amino acid complex here. And I like the berry flavor on that. And when I'm testing something, I test two things at a time, and that's it. And I check my performance. And so right now those are the two things that I take. And that's it. They're both from Thorne and I'm tracking performance on both.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I mean, that's great, man. I'd love to hear somebody who has informed and decision about what they're taking and why. That's kind of all the time we have today. Chris, I really appreciate it. And you are wildly generous with the amount of free content you put out there for people to learn. What's the best place for our listeners to kind keep engaging with you?

Chris Cooper:

The best place is probably, if you go to gymownersunited.com, that'll lead you to a free Facebook group. I'm in there. My mentoring team is in there asking questions for free. We share videos and free checklists and worksheets and guides all the time. If you want to see our past stuff, we've been publishing a free blog, YouTube videos for almost 10 years now. You can go to twobrandbusiness.com and see all of the back index. It's searchable, so if you have a specific problem, you can probably find the answer to that problem on our website.

Joel Totoro:

Perfect. And then Katie, where can people learn more about Thorne in general, but specifically the Affiliate Program?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So to access information on the APN, you'll just go to thorne.com/crossfitaffiliate.

Joel Totoro:

Too easy. And once you're on that site, there's a wealth of educational videos and articles and further episodes of this podcast. So if you're willing to learn more, we've got an unlimited supply for you. Really, really excited to have both of you on. I really appreciate your time. That was Two Brains', Chris Cooper and Thorne's Katie Mead. Thanks everybody for listening.

Chris Cooper:

Thanks, Joel.

Katie Mead:

Thanks so much, Joel.

Joel Totoro:

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast, Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com, and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take Five Daily blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro, reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.

Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast, Performance Edition. The show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research on diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Throne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello, everybody. And welcome to The Throne Podcast: Performance Edition. Joining me today are Chris Cooper of Two Brain and Thorne's own Katie Mead.

Chris is the founder of Two Brain Business, the largest gym mentorship company in the world. He's the author of countless books and eBooks, including "Two Brain Business", the best-selling fitness book of all time. And one of his more recent books, "Founder Farmer, Tinker Thief", received best seller status on Amazon in six categories. So, very excited to have him on the podcast.

And Katie is our inside sales manager at Thorne Research, and she comes with Thorne from a career utilizing her Master's in Clinical Nutrition, in physical wellness and nutrition, both in the athletic and clinical world. She also sits on the board of the South Carolina Health and Fitness Association, where she helps educate local health and fitness professionals in various nutrition topics, and facilitate partnership with local nutritionists. So, just a wealth of information on two different sides of the coin here. Chris, Katie, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Cooper:

Thank you very much, Joel.

Katie Mead:

Thanks, Joel. Glad to be here.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we've got a lot to dive into today. I think it's really important. We talk a lot about this podcast about impacting performance and wellness, but today we're going to talk about the business side of it and kind of some of the communication sides of getting that message out there.

But Chris, we put a lot in your introduction, but I don't feel like that quite does your background justice. Can you take a few minutes to tell us about your path of founding Two Brain, and then eventually the Two Brain Summit?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, thanks Joel. So I'll be as succinct as I can. I opened a gym in 2005 to make more money than I can make as a personal trainer. And didn't realize that owning a gym was a different skillset than being a good coach, and struggled along for a few years. And finally, in 2008, realized like I wasn't growing. That my debt was growing, but my income wasn't, and found a mentor. And we had just opened a second location, which sounds like I was winning, but I wasn't. And so the mentor was giving me tips on how to improve my gym. And he was walking me through this really grueling process step by step. And because I was just so overwhelmed, I was worried that I wasn't going to remember everything. And so I just started publishing letters to myself on a blog called DontBuyAds.com.

That blog is still live. And I did it every day for about four years,.but the blog was also public, and a lot of other gym owners just started finding it, especially in the CrossFit space. And so after about three and a half years, somebody invited me to speak. I just copied like the top 20 blog posts from DontBuyAds.com, and put them in a book. And self-published it because it was cheaper than printing copies at Kinko's.

So it went on Amazon, because of that seminar, basically. And now it's sold 32,000 copies and it's the best selling fitness business book of all time. And for the first few years there was no table of contents. There was no page numbers or anything in this book. And then people started asking me for coaching and getting on calls with them. And in 2016, we founded twobrainbusiness.com, which is our mentorship practice. And we have about 40 mentors worldwide right now that work one on one with gym owners. So, we work at any given time with 700 to 800 gyms, one on one, and we've worked with a few thousand. We work with CrossFit gyms, but also we have a lot of boxing gyms, boot camps, yoga and Pilates gyms in the practice right now, too.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think what you're doing is so important. Everyone on this call is in the business of upgrading lives, right? But a lot of people have that passion and that drive to do it. But you know, like you said, you don't get taught that bridge to giving that education, and in such a confusing and overload of information. If you had to start the conversation with someone, how do you start getting them to learn how to, like you said, be a good coach, but be a great business owner and actually impact the lives you're trying to...

Chris Cooper:

Well, there's really six levers that you can pull to make a gym better for the owner, right? And so what we start to do is we say, "Here are the six things that you can do, and we want to start by taking you through each one of these things in turn." And in many cases, it really means fixing problems that they had.

So for example, the owner is just simply not paying themselves enough. They're leaving too much money in the business, or the business isn't profitable enough. And so, if that's the problem, then we start to increase client value. And a lot of owners don't understand what true client value actually means. And as a reflection of value, their price also increases, and they start making more money. And then we focus on how to keep clients longer. And unfortunately, many gyms just don't focus on this.

So the average micro gym in the world keeps a client for seven and two thirds of a month, which isn't long enough to change their lives. That number should really be around three years. And then from there, we talk to them about how to sell. So, how to coach people to sign up. And then from there we teach them marketing. And we do it in that order, because if you don't have a solid system of operations and a solid structure for your coaching and a consistently good product that serves high value, there's no sense even jumping into doing like Instagram ads, because people are just going to flow into your business and leave before you have a chance to change their lives.

Joel Totoro:

So, Katie, I think one of the things we see is this kind of, where do I start? And what are some of the learnings that Thorne's had from its legacy in the clinical space, moving over into the gym and consumer space, to kind of assist people in getting over that? There's a little bit of fear of, am I doing this right? Am I starting in the right place?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So, I think the fear comes in with... We're so used to when we're partnering with other even supplement companies in the fitness space of the fine print and what's involved in that. And having to worry about minimum order sizes. And you're really committing on a financial level to start. And so what we've learned at Thorne is first, we like to keep things simple. So when you sign up for a professional account, it's completely free. You don't have to stock inventory. So as a personal trainer that maybe is operating out of a gym and doesn't have any space to stock product, or a gym that just isn't big enough and doesn't have the space to stock product or just isn't ready yet, you don't have to do that.

You don't have to buy into anything. We offer a free online dispensing platform. That is great. It's basically a co-branded landing page where you can pop in form products. You can do our entire suite or just a handful, where members can then access our products at a discount. You can offer anywhere from 5% to 35% off to make it more affordable for the member. And you'll make that full margin between wholesale versus retail. Our average margin's about 47%, which is pretty high. I think one of the highest in our industry. And we'll ship the order directly to the member. They'll get free shipping, as well, on any order total. So, it's just really convenient. Really, the only work that's involved is setting up the dispensary, which you'll have a dedicated rep to help you with that. They're also there to help you in terms of product selection, product training, marketing support.

And from there, it's really just word of mouth and getting the information out to your members for them to go on and order their product. So, you can stock retail, and we'll help you with that. Again, even for retail, there's no order minimum. The only minimum we have is for free shipping, which is $99. And I think I do that just on my personal orders. So it's not a hard minimum to reach, especially if you're stocking for retail.

And then you also have the online dispensing platform as well. So you can utilize both. Most of our most successful gyms will utilize a form of both, or you can just do the dispensary and start there, see what's selling really well and what your members are gravitating towards. And then use that as a metric to determine what you're going to offer a point of sale, if you want to go that route. So, it's really simple. There's no administration fees. We don't take a percentage of your earnings. We can even pay you through the dispensary via direct deposit. So, that's really easy as well. And we know that about 80% of Americans are already taking some type of supplement. Whether it's recommended from somebody or not, they're on it. And so, knowing not all supplements are created equal, this is a great way to really capture some of that and help them get on a more quality supplement.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And we were both kind of hitting at from different ways is you don't have to be the expert in everything as a business owner. It's building that confidence and I always say you need to be the CEO of you and build your cabinet, your board of directors. So having a trusted resource to really assist you and that have gained some learnings over the years. So I think that's super important to people that have a little bit of confidence to take that next step.

But speaking about trusted resources and trusted products, everything you partner with as a gym owner, that's your brand, right? So, Chris, how do you go about kind of deciding who to partner with, or what is a solution that your customers want? How do you do that kind of audit, and how do you kind of audit what your client needs, but also then what the best solution is?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, Joel, that is the million dollar question. And when I was just a single gym owner using supplements as just the easy and obvious example, it was tough for us to figure that out. And back then, you'd try to do some research yourself. And you would order a bottle of whey protein and taste it, right? And it was hard to see even what the ingredients actually were. And then you would have to tie up a thousand dollars in cash in inventory. You'd bring them in and eventually maybe you might change your supplier, or whatever. And so there was a certain time when I was even telling people, "It's not worth it. You don't have a thousand dollars in cash, or you could reinvest that somewhere else that's going to make you more money."

But the truth now is that, it is actually a lot easier. And so what we do is we collect data from about 15,000 gyms worldwide, and we track this data and we track the top performers every month. And we say, "Okay, what are you doing? How are you selling supplements? What percentage of your gross revenue is coming from supplements?" That kind of thing. And then we look at who the top performers are using, and we start there. And we say, "Okay, what do you like about this product? What do you dislike? What have you used in the past?" And what we don't want to do is just talk to people who have only ever used one brand or whatever. Because obviously they're going to lack some context. And so what we find is that people, especially in the micro gym space, they'll usually stick with one brand.

They might have two in their gym. They might make about up to 10% of their gross revenue from supplements. And that number goes up if they have a nutrition coach on staff, who's making these recommendations, we'll find that they need to keep about $500 to a $1000 worth of inventory, just so that they've got some on the shelf. And we also find that if they're doing special events, like Bring a Friend Friday and they have a taste test as part of that event, that they can do a pre-order from that that doesn't cost them anything in their inventory that gets their product into their client's hands pretty quickly. And there's zero risk to them. So yeah, that's basically what we've found. Our role in the market is to kind of not be the arbiter, but be the collector of information to say, "Here's the people that we recommend."

And so in a certain category like software, we might say, "Look, out of all the gym management platforms, here are the three that have the top recommendation." And then sometimes we have some buying power. So we can go to these platforms and say, "What can you do for Two Brain Business clients?" Or we might be the ones to post a guide that reviews all the top 10 gym management software platforms.

And, several years ago when I was working for CrossFit Inc, I told them that this was their responsibility to do for their gyms, collect this data, be the arbiter, make suggestions. And they said, "That's a great idea. We're never going to do it. You should do it." And so, we invested heavily in doing this, and now we have a lot of brand trust because when we recommend Thorne, for example, people know that, okay, we've done some homework on quality. We've done some homework on, does this actually benefit the gym owner? And you know, is it going to actually help their business? So, that's basically how we do it.

Joel Totoro:

That was a million dollar answer right there for sure. And...

Chris Cooper:

Just trying to match your value here, Joel.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, it's hard to love it.

So Katie, so a lot of people listening to this podcast may be new to Thorne. So we've kind of built our history and our mission around answering a lot of those questions that kind of Chris brought up. So can you kind of give our listeners a little bit of overview of kind of what makes Thorne different in the space?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So, what makes Thorne different, I would say, is our commitment to quality. For lack of a better term, I think we're a little obsessed when it comes to quality. We do extensive testing on our products. In fact, at our beautiful manufacturing facility in South Carolina, we have two state of the art labs where from the moment that we receive raw material from the second it ends up in the consumer's hands, we have full oversight over that entire manufacturing process, which not many other companies, if any, are able to say. We'll outsource for NSF certified for sport testing, which we do have the largest line of. So I think that attributes to a lot of our partnerships in the professional sports performance realm. Along with that, one thing that really attracted me to Thorne, is we will discontinue manufacturing a product if we cannot get a clean source of a raw ingredient.

And it doesn't matter if it's our most popular product or not. If it doesn't pass our testing requirements, then we will no longer manufacture that product. So, we're not going to compromise consumers just to make an extra buck. We attest to our partnerships. So we do partner with the Mayo Clinic for not only clinical research, but also education. So we have a ton of education on our site for consumers and for practitioners to learn more about supplementation and just what's going on within the industry and within the health industry as a whole.

Chris Cooper:

Can I suggest one thing to mention, Katie?

Katie Mead:

Yeah. Thank you. I don't know why I'm having a hard time-

Chris Cooper:

No problem.

Katie Mead:

Talking about my company.

Chris Cooper:

That's okay. So one thing that I know appeals to gym owners, a lot of gym owners feel reluctant to sell supplements because they don't want to ever sell anything, right? So they know their clients are going down to the GNC and buying crappy whey protein.

Katie Mead:

Right.

Chris Cooper:

But what Thorne brings is, Thorne can actually help the gym owner make a recommendation that feels scientific and good. And I think that's part of the testing protocol, too.

Katie Mead:

Yeah, our testing. Yeah, absolutely.

So, Thorne, we've been around for 38 years and we're primarily known as a supplement company. But we also have pretty extensive testing that we offer as well. So a lot of gyms owners may be fearful of recommending or suggesting a supplement. We know that majority of Americans are already on a supplement, so it's really just swapping out what they're taking already for a higher quality supplement in the Thorne product. But the testing can really help, not only the gym owner or the trainer that's recommending or suggesting a supplement with their knowledge and how to navigate supplementation, but also the consumer. So, with our test kits that can be completed at home, you'll get a full report of not only what the lab values means. So you go to a doctor, you get your blood work done, you come back and you just have a bunch of numbers on a sheet, but you don't really know what any of that means.

And so, what I love about our testing is that you'll get actionable insights and details around what each biomarker means, what it's testing for, what your levels are, and then what you can do from a dietary and lifestyle standpoint in order to improve those levels. And then there could be one or two supplement recommendations with that as well. So, it really helps take the guesswork out of what do I need to take? You can walk into any supermarket or a GNC and look at all the supplements and be like, "I need that. And I need that." But, the testing really helps get a more personalized approach to what you actually may need and what can help make improvements to your health.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, Katie, I think you brought up a really good point that a large majority of Americans are already taking a supplement. And to me, that brings up a big point. And, and Chris, I know you can expand on this, but I think a lot of people get it pretty narrow minded in the gym space about, okay, this is what I need, whey protein, maybe some hydration, but then take stepping back and thinking about, okay, but this person is a whole person, right? I would say in human performance, so much of the work is on the human. So Chris, is there a way to kind of change that mentality of, okay, this person's coming to me to upgrade this part of their lives, by having that intention, they're probably looking to upgrade. So kind of just opening your mind and the business potential and just, how do you learn to view the customer as not just that transaction when they're in your gym?

Chris Cooper:

Well, I think this is really where the industry is going. And if you look at how gyms had to pivot with COVID, suddenly they're not just trying to stream a class through zoom, but they're helping the client manage more areas of their life, like stress and anxiety. And they're producing media to calm their client's fears about, "Would I survive contracting a virus?" So to that end, I think a lot of gyms became more prescriptive, and they had to. Honestly, the prescriptive model is what delivers the most value to people. So coming in and talking to a coach and the coach saying, "Here is what you need to increase your lifespan, increase your health span increase your vitality." That's really our job. It's not our job to sell CrossFit or to sell Pilates or to sell boot camp classes. It's not even our job to sell nutrition program.

Our job is to solve the problem and having a correct analysis will let us make a correct prescription. And if we can make a correct prescription, then we'll get the client results and save their lives. So part of that is having the tools to make the right prescription for the client at the right time. And you can either learn those tools by taking a billion courses, or you can partner with people who've already developed the tools, like Thorne, to do that.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. So I think we could go on for hours and hours. And that kind actually leads me to, we're recording this podcast in advance of the Two Brain Summit. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and kind of what somebody that's going through that can expect to come out of that walking away with?

Chris Cooper:

Yeah. So I said that our job is not really to be the arbiter of what's good. It's to be the curator of what the gym community needs right now. And coming out of COVID, there's a lot of more optimism out there. Gyms are growing. Most gyms saw little surge.

And so this is our first live event back in two years. And asking myself, what do gym owners need to hear the most right now? That's what led us to our speaker panel. And so we do this big event where we bring in about 350 to 500 gym owners into Chicago for a weekend. The camaraderie, sitting at the table with eight other people who are going through the same stuff that you are, that's super powerful. And we invite about 15 brands to be there too, and to talk to people and to sit down and have conversations, and talk about their gym and talk about their fitness practice and how to help their clients more.

And so this year, our lead speaker is Sarah Robb O'Hagan. Sarah is currently CEO of EXOS, but she's the former chief marketing officer for Nike, a bunch of other amazing brands. She has a great book called "Stand Up, Standout, Kick Ass, Repeat." Just an amazing motivational speaker. She's absolutely in love with the fitness industry. And then we have a huge speaker roster, mostly of fitness business experts. A lot of them are from the Two Brain team. They'll come up and talk about leading your team and building marketing funnels and a lot of that stuff.

We have a second stage for coaches. So there's coaching experts in kids and coaching experts in mindfulness and fitness and group coaching and one on one. And so a lot of gym owners actually bring their coaches. The primary value of this is really connection. You're making connections with other gym owners. You're making connections with mentors and new friends and partners, like Thorne. More than anything else, everybody just kind of leaves invigorated. So we'll be in Rosemont again this year, it's the first weekend in June, anyway. And I can give you a link for the show notes.

Joel Totoro:

All right, we're going to have to take a quick short break here, and we get back, we're going to some questions from you, our listeners.

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And, we're back. We going to do some questions from our audience. This is great one that we see, a lot of conversations we have. So, and me being a sports scientist by trade, I was a food first guy forever. But opinions on supplements have definitely changed over time with the kind of state of science and the idea of even making them part of your business. Is this something, is this in my lane? Chris, can you talk about what you've seen in the industry? And then Katie, I know you'll have some input on that right after.

Chris Cooper:

Yeah. I think Katie's going to give us some great input here, but when I was starting as a trainer 20 years ago, if you wanted to sell supplements, you kind of had to weigh two options. You could sell something that had a good margin and was probably full of sugar or junky ingredients, or you could sell something really high end, but it might have a margin of 10%. And so which one did you want to do? And so most of us just wound up doing nothing. And in fact, for CrossFit affiliates who are listening to this, part of Greg's original recommendation was that a trainer trains at nothing else, or something. But the truth is that now, science has evolved so much that supplementation is kind of a key part of a coaching practice. And it's a key part of your business.

And Katie's going to talk about how that can work, where you've got good margins, but also a really good, clean product. The thing is that as science evolves, our diet is actually devolving. And so the stuff that your clients were eating 20 years ago is not what they're eating now. The food quality is lower, and they're going to go out and buy supplements to fix that anyway. And so I would much rather that they turn to you for good experience and advice and good quality stuff. And I think that's kind of our job as a coach now. Where before, it was kind of a bolt on add on thing, now it's a conversation that you can't avoid, just like wearables. You have to talk about supplements now.

Katie Mead:

Yeah. A hundred percent. So I'll touch on the quality and margin piece, because I think that's really important to address. Because like you said, you either had really high quality and not a great margin or a great margin, but not great quality.

So, you know, at Thorne, our legacy started primarily selling to practitioners. That was our model. We really grew word of mouth and be integrative and holistic space for a number of years. And we catered to practitioners being able to offer quality supplements to their patients to improve patient support. And now that we are catering more to, and have growing our partnerships in the sports performance realm, we're not going to go back on that model. And sure, we could hold a little more profit for ourselves, but honestly, a lot of the profit that we make, we put back into our quality assurance and R&D to ensure that we're continuing to put out the highest quality supplement out there. And also for our various test kits that we offer as well. So, it might sound too good to be true, but we really do. I mean, our average margin's 47%, which is the highest in the industry. And, you just really can't get a better quality supplement out there.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think that's important. And one thing, coming from the sports dietician and practitioner, having been on the practitioner side, Katie, I think one of the things we forget to mention at Thorne is, like you just mentioned, the test kits and the research side of our company. A lot of times our clients will be like, "Hey, I've taken this supplement. Is it working?" The fact that there's the testing and the research to kind of then come back and prove it, and also just be another source of revenue and offerings to your consumers. I think that's super important. And again, we've got podcast episodes diving into those tests and what they mean. So you can definitely learn more there.

Which leads me to the next question, Katie. You know, from a listener. "I don't know a lot of knowledge on supplements." Which I think is fair, and I think it's a very self-aware question. "Where can I get some training or education on supplementation so I can feel a little bit more comfortable recommending it?"

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. We get that question a lot. And I think that's part of the hesitation with offering supplements to begin with, as a trainer and even a practitioner, too. So we have not only extensive information on our website through our Take Five blogs and various podcasts, but you'll also have a dedicator rep that you can work with to help you get access to more in depth product trainings. We have amazing medical fair staff here, and we can get on training calls with them to whoever specific products, make sure that your staff and you as a trainer are comfortable with the supplements that you're offering.

But also, just to go back to clients already being on something. They're, most of them are already on a multivitamin or a fish oil, whether it was recommended from a practitioner that they're seeing, or they just thought it looked cool on the shelf at the store and purchased it, or just think they should be taking it. So what I start with with a lot of trainers and gym owners is it's really just that easy swap to get them on something like our Basic Nutrients 2-a-day, which is our most popular multivitamin. So, that's an easy place to start. But we have extensive training available to you, as well, to make sure that you are comfortable and your staff is comfortable when it comes to speaking to our products and making suggestions.

Joel Totoro:

All right, Chris, I've got a question for you. I think is a great one to kind of end this conversation on about, really engagement needs. It's a listener question, and I guarantee you've answered it a thousand times, but the question is, "I have decent initial engagement for my clients, but they always seem to fall off. What can I do to increase retention?"

Chris Cooper:

Yeah, thanks Joel. So we have a ton of data on this, and I actually published a free guide to increasing retention. We have a free public Facebook group for gym owners called Gym Owners United. And if you just go to gymownersunited.com, I'll give you this guide for free.

But here are the top things. Number one is you need to have a consultative process. So, instead of "Come in and try a free class," it should be "Come in and talk to a coach, and we'll talk about what's best for you." And that has a market effect on long-term retention. The second thing is you need to have some kind of onboarding or on-ramp process. Usually done one on one. But this is basically taking a client through the very beginner levels of whatever you're doing. If that's yoga, Pilates, boot camp, kickboxing, CrossFit, whatever, you need to have that one on one time.

And it even works in jujitsu. We've seen that in the data. The third thing is that you need to have what we call goal reviews, but it's basically a check in with that client. It's a 10 to 15 minute appointment where you track their progress and you adjust your recommendation for them, based on that score. Too many gyms just don't do that. They might talk to the client when they show up the first time, take their credit card, "How many times do you want to come in and do kickboxing?" Or "How many times in a week do you want to do CrossFit? Here's the price." And then they never review progress with the client. They never talk about their changing goals. And so the client's always left to guess is it working? Should I go do something different? And the fourth big thing that they should do is put one person in their gym in charge of retention.

And we call this person a client success manager. It's not a very expensive role, but it's a very valuable role. So this person's job is to call a client if they haven't been to class this week. It's to send them a birthday card. It's to thank them when they refer a friend. And there's a list of about 10 things that they do. And this role sounds kind of like fu-fu, like, "Ah, geez, I'd rather invest in more Facebook ads." But the reality is that if the gyms that we collect data from, so 15,000 gyms worldwide. If each of those gyms kept a client for three more months, the owner would make another $40,000 a year in take home pay. And that's just based on industry averages on price. If you charge more, that number goes up. If you keep them longer than three extra months, that number goes up. But retention is way more important than marketing. And those are the top four things that actually improve retention in a micro gym.

Joel Totoro:

It's amazing, putting a little bit in retention, how far that can go. It's excellent information. So, Katie, I want you to touch a little bit kind of to close this out. CrossFit Affiliate Partner Network. Can you just give a little overview of what that is? It's everything we've talked about here. It's trying to empower gym owners, but... And what the APN is and where Thorne fits in that.

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So the APN is a network through CrossFit that CrossFit developed to allow gym owners different ways to boost their business and boost retention and activity within their gyms. So Thorne is proud to be a part of that. And another way that gyms can not only provide support to their members, but also provide a healthy stream of income for their gym.

So we know that COVID had a pretty heavy toll on a lot of gyms when they had to close down. And this is a great way for them to not only be able to provide an additional revenue stream without worrying about any overhead inventory, any upfront costs or anything like that. But also continue to provide support in a more well rounded way for their members of the gym.

Joel Totoro:

You're right. And I think we've done a pretty good job of showcasing other reasons why you may or may not want to take a supplement. And Chris, I'm going to put you on the spot to kind of close out the show. Kind of what's in your supplement stack and how are you upgrading your life?

Chris Cooper:

Well, it's funny because when we hopped on, Joel caught me pouring the Thorne supplement Catalyte out of my bike water bottle into my coffee mug. So it looked like I was drinking coffee. But I'm drinking Catalyte as we talk right now, which I love for a lot of reasons. Lemon lime is my favorite flavor, but my gym is also named Catalyst. So, I mean, come on, can't beat it. I also take the Thorne amino acid complex here. And I like the berry flavor on that. And when I'm testing something, I test two things at a time, and that's it. And I check my performance. And so right now those are the two things that I take. And that's it. They're both from Thorne and I'm tracking performance on both.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I mean, that's great, man. I'd love to hear somebody who has informed and decision about what they're taking and why. That's kind of all the time we have today. Chris, I really appreciate it. And you are wildly generous with the amount of free content you put out there for people to learn. What's the best place for our listeners to kind keep engaging with you?

Chris Cooper:

The best place is probably, if you go to gymownersunited.com, that'll lead you to a free Facebook group. I'm in there. My mentoring team is in there asking questions for free. We share videos and free checklists and worksheets and guides all the time. If you want to see our past stuff, we've been publishing a free blog, YouTube videos for almost 10 years now. You can go to twobrandbusiness.com and see all of the back index. It's searchable, so if you have a specific problem, you can probably find the answer to that problem on our website.

Joel Totoro:

Perfect. And then Katie, where can people learn more about Thorne in general, but specifically the Affiliate Program?

Katie Mead:

Yeah, absolutely. So to access information on the APN, you'll just go to thorne.com/crossfitaffiliate.

Joel Totoro:

Too easy. And once you're on that site, there's a wealth of educational videos and articles and further episodes of this podcast. So if you're willing to learn more, we've got an unlimited supply for you. Really, really excited to have both of you on. I really appreciate your time. That was Two Brains', Chris Cooper and Thorne's Katie Mead. Thanks everybody for listening.

Chris Cooper:

Thanks, Joel.

Katie Mead:

Thanks so much, Joel.

Joel Totoro:

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast, Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com, and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take Five Daily blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro, reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.