Review These 5 Year-End Metrics For A More Profitable 2025

The year-end is an important time to look back at the health of your business. Many gym owners skip this valuable and just keep operating without understanding what works and what doesn’t.

You should be reviewing your numbers weekly, with a month-end review every 30 days, but a year-end review tells a more complete story of your business.

Looking back at the year allows you to account for the seasonality and natural cycles of your industry, but also to project and prepare for the year ahead.

There are many key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be tracking in your business, but the five listed below will give a broad understanding of your whole business.

Use these numbers to make data-driven decisions going forward in 2025.

Leads

If current members are the lifeblood of your business, leads are the oxygen that keeps it growing. You can get new leads a variety of ways, including free or paid, but you should aim for a minimum of 30 leads per month.

I’ve worked with all different types of gyms, in all types of locations - small towns, major metro areas, and everything in between - and it’s possible to 30 leads in almost any market. 

If you’re not averaging 30 leads per month, it will be hard to grow. This is because on average, gyms close 25% of new leads, meaning just 7.5 new members per month.

That’s 90 new members per year if you have zero turnover, which just doesn’t happen.

So make averaging 30 or more leads every month a priority in 2025.

Here are some free ways to do that.

Conversions

While there are 2 other important lead metrics to analyze including booking rate and show rate, the most important is the conversion rate, or how many leads become members.

As mentioned, 25% of total leads is the average, but if you dial in your lead generation and lead nurture processes you can lift this much higher.

With the right outreach and sales practices you can increase all of the lead metrics, including booking and show rates, which will give you more chances of closing new members.

For example, you get 30 leads and 15 show and close 7. This is roughly a 25% conversion rate. But if you can get 20 to show with better follow up, you’ll close 10 with the same 25% close rate, changing nothing in your sales process.

The first step is to track and know your conversion rate in the first place. Then testing new tactics, like this, to increase your “at bats” and ultimately, your conversions.

Track and manage your conversion rate closely.

Churn

Many gym owners obsess over new leads and closing new members, but the truth is, keeping your current members is far more valuable and important. 

Every member you can keep means less money spent to acquire new leads and new members.

It’s the old “hole in the bucket” problem. If you’re leaking members every month, you’ll never have the chance to grow.

And remember, churn rate becomes more significant as you grow. If you have 10% churn every month with only 50 members, that’s only 5 members per month.

The same 10% rate with 250 members is 25 lost every month.

Aim to keep your churn below 5%. If it’s greater than that, you may have a problem with your product. People are not receiving the value they thought they would get when signing up.

Or, the community isn’t strong enough to keep people engaged.

Here's a simple way to keep more members.

Churn is one of the the most important metrics in your business.

CAC or Customer Acquisition Cost

CAC tells you how much is costs to acquire a new member each month. Knowing your CAC is important because it helps set your marketing costs and it also relates to other key metrics.

CAC is determined by dividing your total marketing costs by the total number of new members. For example, if you spend $1000 per month on marketing and get 10 new members, your CAC is $100 per member.

Once you know your CAC (which can be averaged at the end of the year), this will help you set your marketing budget for the next year. You should know how much you're willing to spend up to in order to acquire a new member.

So, if you spend double your spend, or $2000, you should get 20 members per month.

Understanding the next metric, Lifetime Value, will help understand the value of CAC even more.

LTV of Lifetime Value 

Each member in your gym spends an average amount of money over the course of their time with your business. 

Ideally, you want to keep members for as long as possible to increase the LTV, however, the average in most gyms is about 18 months.

You can determine the average length in your school by dividing 1 by your monthly churn. This is another important to track churn.

Then, multiply the average length by the average revenue per member for your LTV. (Average revenue per member is your total revenue divided by the number of members.)

For example, if you know your average length of membership is 18 months and your average revenue per member is $150, then your LTV per member is $2700.

This tells you a lot because if you can keep your churn lower, and raise your average revenue per member, you can make much more money per every new student over time.

If you have a high LTV, then you should spend more to acquire new members, aka increase your CAC.

Final Thoughts

These KPIs or metrics only scratch the surface of what’s happening within your business.

But they all work together to give an understanding of where your business is strong or needs improvement.

The first step is to start tracking each of these metrics every month, then do a year-end review to find a final average of all of these metrics.

Then, you can plan accordingly in 2025.

If your churn rate is high, that’s where you’ll want to give attention to first. Plan more community events in 2025, or survey your members more frequently to improve your product.

If your CAC is low, spend more money on paid ads or events to get more members.

Knowing these metrics will allow you to make smarter decisions in your business in the new year.

If you need help with any of these, book a call.