We looked at 263 EES Centers and the Results are In!

One Year Since the Video

On May 27, 2022 Jason Shurka interviewed Sandra Rose Michael and introduced the EES technology to the general public for the first time. Within days over 70,000 emails were received inquiring about the technology.

In just one year. interest in EES has exploded. Hundreds of healers, business owners, and entrepreneurs have answered the call to open centers worldwide. Some were running existing wellness practices and others took a leap of faith to start dedicated EES wellness centers. We looked at 263 centers in North America (US and Canada) and the results surprised us.

Open Versus Coming Soon

As of May 25th, less than half of the centers surveyed are open. Many center owners are still in the process of building out facilities, waiting for equipment, and setting up their businesses.

Count of Centers by Number of Screens

The most popular center configuration is 24 screens. That represents one-third of known centers. The next most popular configuration is 12 screens at 22%. This is followed by 8 screens at 18% and 16 screens at 7%. About 5% have 4 screens. And just eight (8) centers or 3%, have 32 screens or more.

It is important to realize that from a business model standpoint “bigger is not necessarily better”. It is still too early to tell which center configurations and sizes will be most successful.

A story of three fitness chains

Each of these fitness companies have very different but successful business models. A 24 unit EES center may have a very different business model than a 12 unit center.

LifeTime Fitness is one of the largest with over 146 locations and $1.8 billion in sales (2022). Unlike a typical gym, the two-story centers average 307,000-square-foot and cover 17 acres. Locations do about $12.3 million per year.

On the other hand, Planet Fitness, with over 2300 locations, reported revenue of $936.8 million. They are averaging $401,716 per location.

Orangetheory Fitness franchises makes $805,251 in sales per year and has 1366 locations in the US. That puts chain sales over $1 billion.

To PMA or not to PMA?

To PMA or not to PMA? That is the question. Private Membership Associations and/or Private Ministerial Associations represent less than one-third of the centers surveyed. These organizations conduct their businesses in private and may be secular or faith based.

The reason for operating a PMA is because it claims to provide legal protections. Time will tell whether this is an effective way of doing or conducting business.

Theater Versus Multi-modality Model

Before we started researching, we envisioned that the majority of the centers would offer EES technology exclusively. We discovered that only 33 percent of centers surveyed were EES only. Thirty-seven percent offer other wellness modalities such as massage therapy, yoga, Reiki, nutrition and chiropractic. About 30% of center modalities are unknown.

From a business model standpoint this poses a challenge. Building a theater model is very different from being a wellness practitioner. They require different mindsets. For more information about this check out our E-Myth video.

Coming to a Cinema Near You?

An advantage to adding EES to an existing practice is that it diversifies risk. In other words, you are not putting all of your eggs in an EES basket. In some cases, people are subletting space to other healers with the idea that there will be cross-sales and synergies.

An advantage of the dedicated “movie theater” model is that it does not require one on one client attention. It is closer to a yoga classroom model where you can serve many people at one time. The critical issue becomes how many chairs can you fill. As in airlines, we call this capacity utilization. Getting more people to your center becomes much more important. And that is where marketing comes in.

Modalities Represented

We were amazed by the sheer diversity of health modalities represented. No one modality represented more than 5 percent of centers. Top modalities included:

Massage Therapy
Yoga
Reiki
Nutrition
Chiropractic
PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field) therapy
Sound Bath
BEMER ( Bio-Electro-Magnetic-Energy-Regulation)

Note that BEMER is a form of PEMF treatment.

Most Popular Name Components

Where to locate, what to name your business and domain name are three of the most important decisions that you as a center owner will need to make. Of 263 centers reviewed, only 187 had domain names at the time of this survey.

“Energy” and “Wellness” were the two most popular naming components included in just over half of all names. “Healing” was included in about 40% of names which is legally problematic because it makes a claim of healing. “Light”, “Quantum”, “Wave”, and “Scalar” were the next most popular components.

“Wellgizer” implies the top two most popular attributes of “Wellness” and “Energy”. At 9 characters, Wellgizer is one of the shortest center names. At 12 characters, wellgizer.com is one of the shortest domain names.

“Revival.energy”, “innergy.life” and “RadiantLight.center” are all companies that have worked with us to reduce the length of their domains.

What we all need to know!

Gross EES Revenue per month

Revenue is Price times Quantity. If an average 2-hour session costs $120, and you have 300 of those per month, your gross EES revenue should be $36,000 per month. On the other hand, let’s say you have 50 sessions, then your gross revenue would be $6000 per month.

Percent Utilization

Just like an airplane,your center has a certain number of seats. Let’s say that you have 5 sessions (flights) per day and a maximum of 20 seats per session. Your total capacity would be 100 seats per day. Assuming that you are open 26 days per month (30 days minus 4 Sundays) that gives you 2600 potential seats per month. Five hundred twenty seat hours (many will do 2 hour sessions) gives you 20% utilization.

Center Operating Costs

Sales & Marketing

The best sales and marketing is “word of mouth” but it is important to realize that this may need to be jump started or augmented with networking, social media, search and other advertising. If a staff member works in this area, it is important to estimate and allocate their time expense to this area.

Space Lease or Rental

Depending upon your center location, this can vary significantly. Some center owners are even providing sessions in their homes or in Bed & Breakfast locations.

For example, you might lease a 1500 square foot space at $2.2 per square foot. That would be a monthly lease cost of $3300 per month.

Staff Costs… Including You

Many centers are hiring center managers. And some are using staff to promote centers in their communities. These are costs and it is important to document them.

This survey is just a start!

What we really need to take us to the next level is the following:

Gross Center Revenue
Percent Utilization
Center Costs

These metrics will be vital to your success as we develop center financial models.