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The Four Numbers Every Cheer Gym Owner Must Track
In this solo episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast, host Dan Cotton walks through the core financial numbers gym owners need to track — revenue, outstanding billables, expenses, and average revenue per member — so decisions are made on real data instead of gut instinct.
Stop Guessing, Start Tracking
Dan Cotton opens this episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast with a warning many gym owners will recognize themselves in: business owners across the country routinely make decisions based on bad information because they’re going with their gut instead of their numbers. Before getting into the numbers themselves, he points listeners to two active communities worth joining, Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners on Facebook, and flags the Cheer Biz Accelerator events, where his team does a deep dive on individual gyms and offers advice grounded in exactly the kind of data he covers in this episode.
Dan explains that he talks to gym owners constantly who are pivoting, trying new programs, or making major changes, and when he asks why, the answer is usually “because I think we need to.” When he presses further and asks for the actual metrics behind the decision, most owners don’t have an answer. That, he says, is the real problem. Good decisions require good data, and this episode is his rundown of the numbers every gym owner needs to be watching closely.
Revenue: Know Every Dollar’s Source
The first and most essential number, according to Dan, is revenue — and not just a lump sum, but revenue broken out by source and category. Gyms typically run payments through a mix of systems: Square, iClass, Jackrabbit, Fullout, Stripe, and others, and owners need to know exactly how much is coming in from each one. Ideally, that revenue is also broken down by category: how much comes from All-Star tuition, how much from tumbling classes, how much from birthday parties, and how much from pro shop sales. That level of detail lets an owner identify which products are actually driving the business.
Dan says the easiest starting point is a bank account’s “money in” column, though he strongly recommends working with an accountant or a system like QuickBooks to categorize revenue properly, both for daily decision-making and for tax season. A profit and loss statement, or P&L, is another key resource, even though he acknowledges most gym owners find it intimidating at first. Learning to read one, he says, is one of the fastest ways to become a better business owner.
The Money You Haven’t Collected Yet
After revenue, Dan says most people assume expenses come next, but he disagrees. The second number to track is what should have come in but hasn’t: outstanding billables, aged accounts, past-due invoices, and unpaid checks. Systems like iClass can generate an aged accounts report showing exactly who owes what.
This matters because budgets are built on assumptions. An owner might plan for an All-Star team of 13 tuition-paying athletes and budget payroll and expenses accordingly, only to discover that a few of those athletes are cross-rostered or behind on payments, meaning only nine are actually paying. Tracking aged billables is what allows an owner to close that gap between expected revenue and actual revenue, and to actively collect on what’s owed.
Expenses Are a Money-Eating Machine
Only after revenue and outstanding billables does Dan turn to expenses. He’s clear that cutting costs alone won’t build wealth, but expenses still need to be watched closely and trimmed where it makes sense. He describes a business, especially a service-based one like a cheer gym, as a “money-eating machine” that tends to consume more as it grows, unlike businesses with more scalable products, such as an online course that costs roughly the same to deliver whether it sells 100 or 1,000 copies.
To illustrate the stakes, he offers a simple example: a company that brings in fifty million dollars a year but spends sixty million is still ten million dollars in the hole, no matter how impressive the top-line number looks. The same math applies at gym scale. Bringing in $10,000 in a first year while spending $13,000 is a red flag, even if the revenue number alone feels like a win.
Why One Month Rarely Tells the Story
Dan cautions against reading too much into a single month’s numbers, especially in an industry like cheer where prepayment is common. He points to his own gym, ODT, where June is typically a standout month because families prepay for the season’s assessments, uniforms, and choreography, even though much of that money then goes right back out the door in July and August to cover uniform orders.
Because of that rhythm, he recommends evaluating performance over a full fiscal year rather than any single month. Still, he notes that even rough monthly tracking puts an owner ahead of a large share of the industry. By his estimate, roughly half of gym owners can’t accurately state their monthly revenue, aged billables, or expenses, and instead rely on rounded, guessed figures.
Enrollment and Your Average Revenue Per Member
The fourth number Dan highlights is enrollment, ideally broken out by category, because it’s the input needed to calculate average revenue per member per month, or ARM. Once an owner knows revenue, aged billables, expenses, and ARM, Dan says they’re in a strong position to make smart decisions. If ARM is $250, then adding one member adds $250 to monthly top-line revenue, which means spending $22 to acquire that customer through a Facebook ad is a strong return.
He pushes the concept further with length of engagement: using a more conservative ARM of $199 and an average engagement of six months, a single new member is worth roughly $1,200 in lifetime top-line revenue. Once an owner also understands their gross and net profit margins, they can calculate what that same customer is worth in pure profit after every expense is paid — in Dan’s example, $30 a month in net profit per customer. That kind of clarity, he says, is what makes an owner comfortable investing further in advertising and growth, because the return is grounded in real numbers rather than a guess.
Turning Numbers Into Smart Decisions
Dan closes with a pointed caution: don’t outsource this analysis blindly to AI. He warns against dumping bank statements into a tool like ChatGPT and asking it to do the math, sharing that when he tried this himself, the tool completely misread the documents. Budgeting and billing decisions, he says, need human verification even when AI is part of the process.
Ultimately, the message of the episode is simple: track revenue, outstanding billables, expenses, and enrollment or ARM, and use that data to guide decisions like where to invest in marketing or which program to grow, such as treating All-Star cheer as the primary attraction and building a recreational program specifically to funnel new athletes upward. Making decisions off real information, rather than gut feeling, is what separates gyms that grow intentionally from those that are just guessing.
Keep the Conversation Going
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast. If you found this breakdown useful, head over to the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners groups on Facebook to keep the conversation going, and check out an upcoming Cheer Biz Accelerator event for a deeper, personalized dive into your gym’s numbers. Catch the next episode soon.
If you enjoyed this episode, you. may also like “Increasing Your ARM with Devon Bobe”
