I am super fired up right now because I have been talking to gym owners almost non-stop and there are some consistent issues that keep coming up. So we are going to dive into three things that you as a gym owner absolutely must stop doing today if you’re doing any of them. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the cheer biz podcast.

 

I’m your host Dan Cotton and today we are talking about three things that you must stop doing if you are a cheer gym owner today in 2026. By the time you’re listening to this, hopefully you’ve stopped doing them. If you already were, you’ve maybe seen a post or something else and gotten away from doing these things.

 

But I really want to dive into these. I’m super fired up today because I’ve had some conversations with gym owners who have been struggling with each one of these things or it’s something that I’ve seen in the industry and we just need to change it right now. We need to fix it.

 

So before we get into the episode, please head on over to nextgenowners.com where you can learn more about the academy. You can also check out our cheer biz accelerator events. We have them coming up at the end of this year.

 

So we’ve got Reno, Canada, Missouri, and Oregon. We’re going to be doing four different events. You are not going to want to miss them so make sure you get signed up.

 

The Reno event is already starting to get close to selling out at the time that I’m recording this. We only have spots for 12 gym owners so they go very, very quick. We only allow 12 gyms in the room and we are super excited to have you if you’re interested in learning from my team and how to grow your business.

 

Also join cheer gym owners and all-star cheer coaches and owners on Facebook where some of these discussions are happening where I’m getting inspiration for episodes just like this. Although today’s episode didn’t come from that. It came from direct conversations.

 

So let’s get into the episode. So I told you I am fired up. I am spicy today.

 

I actually started one of my calls with one of my clients today saying, she’s like, how are you? And I’m like, I am spicy today. Like I just got off a call and I am just feeling fired up. And like, oh no, I’m worried about myself.

 

And I was like, not that kind of spicy. I’m just, I’m fired up because I care about this industry and I care about gym owners. And I know where many of you are coming from as gym owners.

 

If you’re a coach listening to this or a parent listening to this, 99.99% of the gym owners that I work with on a daily basis, they are all coming from a position of passion. They truly, truly care about what they are doing. In fact, the next gen tagline far before anyone started to borrow it in the industry was turning passion into profits, because we knew that almost every gym owner started with a passion focus and a profit was the last thing on their mind.

 

Although they may have thought, someday this could make money and be profitable. That was not the number one focus. And so I just really, really care about gym owners.

 

And the things that I’m going to tell you, you need to stop doing are so critical because they are going to negatively impact your business, potentially put you out of business if you’re doing one or all of these things. So this is not like a, I recommend you stop doing this. This is you need to stop doing this.

 

I am telling you what to do. I’m not suggesting. I am just telling you stop doing these things.

 

Number one, I’m going to do an entire other episode on this because I’m just kind of crashing out about it right now. But I have been one of the biggest champions of AI and using AI in your small business. However, you’ve got to stop people with the chat GPT graphics that are going on.

 

You need to stop using, first off, I would recommend generally speaking, using chat GPT in a limited functionality. I think it is the worst performing AI on the market right now at the time of this recording in May of 2026. They could make improvements.

 

It could change. There’s obviously an ebb and flow, but right now it is bottom of the barrel. I never use it.

 

I’ve canceled my subscription. This is just me personally. I’m not telling you what to do, but please, please, please look very carefully at what you’re using.

 

There are better options out there, in my opinion, that can be far more productive. But whatever AI you’re using, stop using it to be your business coach. Hey, give me business advice.

 

Stop using it to be your marketing director. And for God’s sake, stop using it to create graphics without any human involvement. You guys, there is endless AI slop flyers right now on the internet.

 

It is all my newsfeed is. It’s literally driving me nuts because I scroll and I just see the same flyer with different colors. It’s like the paintbrush style, maybe dripping text that’s kind of bold in a different color.

 

And then lots of words with all sorts of random little clip already things. And then maybe a picture from your program, although a lot of times not, maybe your logo, but overall, these things do not reflect your brand. And this is, I’m going to dive into what you should do instead, because I’m not saying don’t use AI, but stop just going to AI and saying, oh, I love this flyer.

 

Recreate this for me in my colors with this text, or create me a informational flyer promoting this, this, and this, and then just going and using that from the get-go. Have it create it in a canvas, have it created in Canva so you can edit it, so you can adjust it, so you can tweak it, so you can make it yours. Now there are certainly times where you should, you can go to AI and just say, make me a graphic.

 

I just need something quick and get it done. But I am seeing Jim’s that that is the bulk of what they’re posting. And the problem is this, you have spent a lot of time building a brand.

 

If you haven’t do that, but you have spent time building a brand, making people understand who you are. This is the same thing. You don’t stand out.

 

It doesn’t represent you. So while you might get a flyer that looks really clean the first time, you’re like, ooh, that’s awesome. Okay, one.

 

But now I’m literally just seeing the same flyer over and over and over and over again. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers. It is driving me nuts.

 

It is not necessarily great content and people are scrolling right past it. You’re not standing out. So a note to self, great opportunity to stand out from all the other people posting AI style, it’s kind of slop just, and when we say AI slop, it’s just information.

 

Like when you go to AI and you say, give me this thing. And then it gives it to you and you just immediately post it. That’s slop because it’s always going to put out a very similar output.

 

This is why you shouldn’t, the ultimate to this is don’t use your AI without training it. It is an employee. Yes, it has information from all across the internet.

 

It can research things, but it doesn’t have an endless database. It is AI. It’s lazy.

 

Its goal is to use the least amount of energy possible to give you the answer that makes you happy. So it’s just trying to get you the answer that you asked for in as little time as humanly possible. And you’ve probably experienced this.

 

If you’ve ever tried to do something, it just keeps iterating on something and changing it, but not changing what you asked it to do because it’s guessing. And it has these parameters that it kind of goes through. You have to train your AI.

 

You have to spend a lot of time on it. I use AI all the time. I use it to increase my productivity, not necessarily to replace me.

 

Generally speaking, when I’m using AI and I’m using AI agents, I’m looking at ways where, is this a task that I can develop a system for that is created consistently the same every single way? Is there something that is a repeated task that I do daily or needs to happen daily that I can build a framework around and it’s not going to have a lot of variance and the AI can basically be an automation for me? Those are situations where I’m using AI and I’m just using AI skills. When I’m talking about using an AI agent, I needed to start to think for itself. Those take a lot more time to build.

 

And even then they’re not perfect and they require you to be on top of them and supervise them and monitor them. It’s going to give you advice. It’s going to break things.

 

It’s going to do things wrong. And it’s going to tell you more convincingly than any employee you’ve ever had that you should do something and it can be completely wrong. If you give it bad instructions, it will drive your car into a tree as fast as it possibly can and believe it is right the entire time it is doing it because those are the instructions that you gave it.

 

So you need to make sure that you are using it the right way. And if you’re going to use it for creating a marketing plan, then you’ve got to train it. You’ve got to give it parameters.

 

You’ve got to give it people to emulate. And ultimately, I don’t find that its marketing work is super great. It can give really good ideas.

 

It can help you brainstorm and things like that. But stop just going to it and letting it autonomously run things. And for the love of Pete, stop using it to just create your graphics.

 

It drives me nuts. Let it create a base for you. Let it give you suggestions.

 

Create a graphic and ask it for what improvements it would make to it to make it more readable or more visual. And then it will be operating from a completely different framework. Train it on what your website looks like, what your uniforms look like, what your Instagram looks like.

 

Train it on what brand that you have built. Have it learn that. And then it can advise you from your brand perspective.

 

It can build an identity about you. And then it can advise from there as opposed to just giving you arbitrary advice. So this is just driving me crazy.

 

Stop doing it right now. It’s not the way to go. Someday, AI will be at a point where it can do all of these things.

 

I am not the doomsayer of AI. I’m not one of those people who’s like, AI is going to replace all of us. I don’t think that’s the case.

 

It’s going to replace repetitive tasks. And even then, it’s still not perfect. And it still needs a human on top of it.

 

Realize that when the industrial revolution happened, everyone was like, everyone’s going to lose their jobs. And now there’s more jobs and there’s more revenue and there’s more money flowing through the system. So yes, there will be certain areas that are disrupted, but that will create new opportunities.

 

And ultimately, the AI that we’re talking about, although it is smart, and although it can do some really, really cool things, it’s yet to be self-teaching and self-thinking and truly what we would call agentic, where it is like a living organism that can actively take upon self-learning and be truly, truly creative. It’s using formulaic approaches and a lot of its formula is guessing. And it’s still all primarily using a large language model, where it’s using language as its source of truth.

 

And there are some issues with that when it comes to when you’re starting to use this for your marketing advice. It doesn’t know your gym. And I will tell you, when we talk about business coaching, I’ve talked about this 100 different times, it doesn’t understand the cheer industry.

 

It will give you some of the worst advice. I have given this thing my books. I’ve given it Danielle’s books.

 

I’ve given it other business people’s books that I really respect and I think have really good advice. And I’ve said, learn these and advise me from this perspective. And it will still give horrible advice.

 

I’ve literally said, never recommend this to me again. And then it will still recommend that 10 minutes later because it forgets. So it’s not perfect.

 

Please, please, please use AI strategically. Use it to increase your output. I think it is absolutely the wave of the future.

 

You need to know how to use it, but it is not the be all end all and it doesn’t replace good quality work. You still need human beings involved. So that’s my two cents on that.

 

So number one, stop doing that. Please stop posting the AI nonsense. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers.

 

Your flyers all look the same. They’re not standing out and people are going to start just scrolling past. And that brand that you’ve spent so much time and effort building is going to start to fizzle.

 

So let people know who you are. I think that’s the opportunity is build your personal brand organically, not necessarily just with AI, with things that you know that other people can’t recreate. Number two, this is the one that got me so fired up today.

 

Y’all stop overpaying coaches. So coaches, if you’re listening to this, you’re like, whoa, Dan, how dare you say something like that? Look, coaches are great. They’re really awesome.

 

And you may have some really, really good coaches, but coaches like you may be great, but you’re not a doctor. You’re not a psychiatrist. You’re not a surgeon.

 

You’re not a lawyer. You didn’t go to school for nine years and get a doctorate. You may be really, really amazing.

 

That doesn’t mean you’re entitled to 50, 60, $90 an hour to coach a team or to coach a class. It’s not that. And it’s impossible to be profitable at that point as a business.

 

And a lot of the businesses that I’m seeing that are struggling are struggling because they’re overpaying their coaches and they failed to price things accordingly. They failed to use the pricing calculator when they built their tuition pricing. And so they’ve got coaches that are getting overpaid.

 

Now, I don’t think that overpaying is actually the standard in the industry. I actually would say that underpaying is more the standard in the industry. And more often than not, it’s because gym owners don’t have the money to pay.

 

But I talk to gym owners frequently that are overpaying. The one I talked to today, I’m not even going to talk about what she was paying this coach, but I literally looked at her and I said, you’re paying double, actually more than double what I pay my head coaches for this coach. And if you were to go to ASGA today and post 50% of that salary and say, who wants to come and take this position, you would be flooded with people ready to move to your state and work for you because they were way overpaying.

 

And they were like, we actually did the math on this. And we were like, you could literally let this coach leave if they walked away and you could lose 40 kids tuition and you would be even in terms of revenue actually that stays within the business. So if you just didn’t replace this person and lost 40 kids, you’d still be flat because that’s the amount of money that you’re just flowing out that goes towards just paying this person’s salary and nothing else.

 

That is crazy. So gym owners, if you’ve never done that calculation, if you’ve never looked at how many of my kids full tuition goes towards paying for this coach or these coaches, I think that’s an important thing to look at. There are some different formulas for it in terms of what you should be at.

 

Danielle will tell you it’s really normal to be in the service industry between 40 and 50% of revenue goes towards payroll. I try to be below that. I shoot for 30%.

 

Now that’s partially because of my rent. So my building is really, really expensive. So I need to stay below that 30% threshold because my other overhead to deliver services is so, so, so, so high.

 

When I factor in my insurance and my rent and my electric and my heat and my AC and all of those other things, payroll just can’t be 50%. If it was 50% of revenue, then I’d be in the black and I’d be upside down and I wouldn’t be able to sustain. So I have to be really, really strategic when I make that approach.

 

And you need to be too, which means you need to know your numbers. Stop overpaying your coaches. And the two ways that you do this are one is make sure that you’re paying coaches the right amount that is going to keep them.

 

Two, making sure you understand what is a reasonable wage and actually do the calculations because what may seem reasonable in the moment when someone pitches it to you and then you actually look at, okay, well, what does that equal per hour may suddenly become unreasonable. Once you’re starting to get more than $35 to $40 an hour is pretty solid for cheer coaching. That’s really, really, really good.

 

You’d have to be a really amazing coach, in my mind, to kind of warrant getting paid $40 an hour to coach a team, especially when there’s multiple coaches on it. You’re not doing it necessarily by yourself. That would be a really good coach.

 

The analogy I always use and I’ve talked about on the podcast before is I used to put on a bulletproof vest and a gun, and I’ve literally had people shoot at me to try and kill me in my previous job, and I didn’t make that much money. Now, by the end, I was making about $50 an hour with 15 years experience and an advanced level certification and a college degree and all of those other things. I think that’s kind of where I was at.

 

But when I first started, I started as a police officer at $21 an hour. That’s what I was making, $21 an hour as a certified police officer making life and death decisions. Now, there was overtime and other things, but you’re a cheer coach.

 

I love you, and you’re great, and you may be really, really talented, but you’re not curing cancer. You don’t have an advanced medical degree. Even some of the best coaches out there I know are very reasonably priced.

 

People who are way smarter than me, really amazing tumbling coaches, they are very reasonably priced when you actually look at what they deliver. I think the one nuance to that would be if you are the coach who truly has the magic wand, you can walk into a gym, you can wave a magic wand, and you can say, you shall win the end of season, or you can cure bibbidi-bobbidi-boop, cure every single kid who has a mental block, just tap them on the head, and they now are fixed. Yeah, you can charge a whole lot of money to do that.

 

You would be very, very wealthy if you figured that one out, but unfortunately, no one’s got that magic wand. Number three, I’ll be a little bit shorter on this one because I’ve talked about it before, but please, please stop taking horrible financial advice from TikTok and YouTube, and stop taking horrible financing positions to get out of tough spots. I’ve talked to a couple different gym owners over the last couple months who have been in really bad financial positions because they were desperate and they took predatory financing, so I want to dive into what you should do instead.

 

I’ve talked about this on other episodes, but please, please, please don’t engage in those predatory financing deals. Anything that asks you for a weekly payment on financing, I just say no. I would just generally say no because the weekly payment is going to be really high, and it’s likely going to be way more than whatever it is you’re trying to fix.

 

If you are in a position where you need to, it depends on the circumstance you’re in. One of the people I know was in the position because they really needed financing quickly. They needed money right now because they had some bills that they had to cover.

 

The most common one I see this for is payroll. We didn’t do our budgeting correctly at the beginning of the season, and now we’re at the end of the season, and we’ve got to make payroll. We’ve got to pay our employees, and so we need to get money right now.

 

What I would do with that one is do just about anything possible before I take one of those predatory loans to include going to my parents and my friends and my people who I know have some money and saying, would you be willing to give me a loan? I’ll pay you $1,000 on top of it or whatever. I’d try to work out some sort of a deal to see if I could get a loan from someone that I know that I could pay back over a period of time. I’d write up a contract, and I’d do it that way because they’re a lot less likely to rake me over the coals and get me into some really, really shady deal.

 

One of the people I was speaking with about this, she was paying three times the amount she was loaned by the time she paid it off, and it was not a massive amount. If you are needing under $10,000 and some sort of an emergency, if you’re needing under $10,000, I know that may feel like a lot of money in the moment. I’ve been there, but it’s really not.

 

You can find someone who probably has that and would be willing to loan it to you to include, go to the very rich families in the gym. You know who they are, go and ask them and say, hey, I need to get some money, I’d be willing to pay you back, and we can count it towards prepayment for next season, and then I’ll give you the money back so you’ll make $2,000 on it or whatever the case may be. You can work out some sort of a deal.

 

I’d rather do that than see you get some sort of bad position with these predatory things. They are awful. When you do the math, they’re literally asking you for a 2x multiplier on the money that they’re going to give you.

 

Another option in that circumstance aside from asking people would be look at what you own that you can potentially refinance, get some credit on. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes as a business owner, you’ve got to take that leap and you’ve got to reinvest a little money in the business because you made a mistake.

 

Maybe you have an asset, whether it be in the gym or that you own personally that you can sell or refinance or do something. There’s a lot of different strategies. Way, way, way back in the day when I first… This was within my first four years of owning the gym before we started to figure anything out.

 

I was in a bad position and we refinanced one of our cars that was paid off. We refinanced it to get the money we needed to make a final payment on a competition because we weren’t going to be able to compete otherwise because we did our budget incorrectly. I almost took one of those bad deals.

 

I almost took one of those bad financing deals. Luckily, I got heebie-jeebie about it. I didn’t know nearly as much about finance as I do now.

 

I’m not a financial advisor at all, but I’ve gotten better at it. I didn’t know nearly what I know now and I almost got into a really bad position. Take any route you can.

 

Now, the other one is I talked to someone who was looking at one of these deals to try and pay down credit because they had a line of credit and some credit cards and they were trying to pay those things down. I get it. Credit card interest fees can be brutal.

 

Many times you have interest of 20% plus on a credit card. If you’ve been using it regularly and not engaging in good credit habits, you probably haven’t paid it off. That adds up really quickly.

 

20% of $20,000 is going to start to add up really, really fast. You want to be strategic about paying those things off as quickly as you can. There’s two different approaches I would take with this.

 

This is just me personally. Again, I’m not a financial advisor. This is just what I would do.

 

Number one would be go to traditional financing. Go to your bank. Go to some other financial, true financial institution and say, I want to get a debt consolidation loan.

 

Ask them to go through a debt consolidation loan through an accredited financing organization, a bank, a credit union, something like that. Not someone who calls you on the phone and says they can approve you for certain financing. None of those people, those are all bad in my opinion.

 

I’m making a blanket statement, but they generally try and wheel and deal you into bad deals. Go to a certified financial institution and get an interest rate that is reasonable and well below what it is that you’re currently paying. If you’re swapping debt for new debt and the interest rates are the same, then you’re not changing anything.

 

So make sure you’re looking at those interest rates, you’re looking at those things and not just doing it based off of the monthly payment, not just going, okay, well, I need to get my monthly payment down to $200 a month and right now I’m paying $500 a month. So yes, I’m just going to extend the terms. I’m going to make this be a five-year loan or a 10-year loan to pay that off, to pay off my credit card.

 

That’s not a good deal because you’re going to pay way more in interest. So that would be number one, try a traditional financing debt consolidation loan. Those things do exist.

 

Go to your bank, see what you can get. They’ll give you different options and if they tell you they don’t have anything for you, then no skin off your back. It doesn’t hurt to ask those things, but again, go to a bank.

 

Number two is, if you get a quote on some sort of financing deal that has a weekly payment, one, I would look at those things and say, okay, how much more is this than I pay monthly? And then look at that and follow the Dave Ramsey style approach. First, start with your smallest debt to pay off, pay that off as fast as you possibly can. And then whatever you were paying monthly for that debt, use the snowball method and put it towards the other debt, okay, immediately.

 

So keep the monthly payment going on that and then do the additional as a principal only payment. Okay, when you’re paying principal, you’re not paying principal in interest. So do your principal in interest in your monthly installment and then if you can add on a principal payment on top of that, you’re going to decrease the amount owed on the financing and you’re going to actually decrease what the interest is being taken out of.

 

So you’re going to lower the overall balance rather than always paying off that interest. Most credit agencies have the ability to do that. So most lines of credit, some credit cards have the ability to make payment that is like principal and interest or a principal only payment, but you generally have to pay your monthly payment first.

 

You got to pay your interest and then you can pay an additional principal only payment. That’s typically how they work, but that’s going to pay down your debt a lot faster and it’s not going to add a bunch of debt. So you’re going to pay it down quicker and it’s going to cost you less money to do it.

 

So please, please avoid these things. Like stop it, just stop. I want you to hear my voice in your head when you’re in these positions, when you’re like, oh, I’m going to just go to chat GPT and have them make a flyer.

 

I want you to hear my voice saying don’t do it. And then if you are out in that position, you have a coach in your office and you’re feeling desperate and you’re like, I can’t lose them. And they’re like, I need all of this money to stay, or I’m going to walk.

 

Don’t do it. Listen to my voice. Okay.

 

Hear that in your head. Don’t do it. Stick to your guns.

 

You can hold the line. Okay. You are also in a negotiating position.

 

Employment is a consensual relationship between two parties, the business and the employee. Either one of you can walk away at any time. And then last, when you are looking and you’re feeling desperate and you’re like, oh my gosh, I need financing now so I can pay these bills.

 

I need to get money in my pocket right now. And you can’t find something that you can sell in your business to get that money in to pay whatever it is you need to pay. Then when you are getting some sort of a phone call and they’re like, hey, we can approve you up to $150,000 credit right now, blah, blah, blah, blah.

 

Don’t do it. It’s not a good idea. Find these other routes, get financing some other way, and make sure you’re setting yourself and your business up for long-term growth, health, and success.

 

All right, everyone. Like I said, I’m fired up today. I’m feeling it.

 

I hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, share it with people. Get the word out.

 

This is one of those ones that I hope every gym owner hears because I really, really want to see us make a change and I don’t want to see any other gym owners be in these positions. It breaks my heart to talk to gym owners who are stuck in these positions because I’ve literally been in every single one of them with the exception of the AI images. I don’t really do that because I have a really great social media team that does it in my gym and they just leverage AI.

 

They don’t just use AI only. But I really appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening.

 

And with that, we will catch you on the next episode.