Every cheer gym owner hits the wall at some point — the moment you look at your spouse or your business partner and ask, "Is this actually worth it?" Dan's been there more times than he can count, and this episode is a look at exactly what he does when he gets there. Dan walks through the early years with his wife Tori, when enrollments were slow, revenue was tight, and teams weren't competing the way they wanted — and the three things he now relies on any time he feels like walking away: getting advice from the right people (not just the people closest to you), running a worst-case/best-case mental exercise before making any big call, and a lesson from a drill sergeant in basic training that reframed what "quitting" even means. If you're a cheer gym owner or all-star coach in one of your own hard seasons right now, join Dan and the community over in the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups, or check out the Cheer Gym AI Lab on Skool for more content like this. And if you want to learn directly from Dan in person, the Cheer Biz Accelerator has two spots left for the November 2026 event (October is sold out).

You've heard it everywhere — as a busy gym owner, you need to delegate. So you think it's time to hire a manager. But according to Dan, it might not be. In this episode, Dan breaks down what a manager actually is (versus just a fancy title), the five things a real manager needs — supervision, delegation authority, communication, administration, and hiring authority — and why promoting your best instructor into that role doesn't always work out. He also shares his own 150-athlete rule of thumb for knowing when you genuinely need a manager, plus the honest story of hiring his first director just three years into owning his gym, before he actually needed one. Before you dive in, head over to the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups to join the conversation. And if you want to work with Dan and Danielle directly, spots are still open for the November Cheer Biz Accelerator event at Oregon Dream Teams — with January and February 2027 dates now booking too.

If Dan wanted to guarantee his gym stopped growing — or put it out of business entirely — these are the five things he'd do. Unfortunately, he sees gym owners doing all five on a regular basis across the industry. In this episode, Dan breaks down the real growth killers: airing your "dirty laundry" online, refusing to embrace social media and AI, marketing without a strong product to back it up, treating customers like they're replaceable, and skipping stair-step enrollment options. He gets personal too, sharing how his gym's $5 drop-in tumbling classes (and the total lack of anything between that and elite travel cheer) held his own business back in the early days. Before you dive in, head over to the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups to join the conversation. And if you're ready to actually accelerate your gym's growth instead of stalling it, check out an upcoming Cheer Biz Accelerator event — new dates are launching in January and February 2027.

Dan's a self-described AI super fan — but this episode is him making the case for why the average cheer gym owner should not be spending their time building a custom app with AI, no matter how easy tools like Replit make it look. He walks through his own experience building an app for Dream Camps: the first version broke mid-camp after 100+ hours of work, and even the full rebuild this year still cost him roughly 80 hours over the summer. From there he breaks down the real math — time, token costs, hosting, security — and the two questions you need to answer honestly before you ever open a builder: do you actually know your business numbers, and is this really the best use of your time. If you want to learn how to use AI in your gym without building anything from scratch, Dan and Danielle run the AI for Cheer Gym Owners Lab on Skool. And Cheer Biz Accelerator dates are open now for Warrensburg (October) and Portland (November), with two more coming in January and February.

A bad hire made in a moment of desperation doesn't just cost you today — it costs you all season, and sometimes for years after. Dan shares the story of the worst hiring year he ever had at Oregon Dream Teams, and breaks down exactly why "desperation hires" almost always backfire. In this episode, Dan walks through the trickle-down disaster that started with one panicked hire after a business partner left, the celebrity-status instructor who refused to coach at Dream Camps, and Emily's story — the hire nobody had a position for who's now NGGO's operations director. He gets specific on the real dollar cost of a bad hire, the onboarding gaps that set new coaches up to fail, and why a single negative team member can tank your staff's productivity. If you want to learn this stuff in person, Dan's got one more Cheer Biz Accelerator event with availability in 2026 (November, at Oregon Dream Teams in Portland) plus events booking into 2027. He's also launching a new Skool learning community focused on using AI as a cheer gym owner — join Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners on Facebook to hear when it drops.

When Dan Cotton and his wife Tori took over their gym back in 2011, they didn't know the first thing about running a business — they just knew how to coach. In this episode, Dan breaks down the five things he'd change if he were opening his gym today, and why getting these wrong cost him years of growth he could've had sooner. He covers why a great front desk hire matters more than your next coach (including the costly lesson of a front desk employee who embezzled thousands from the business), how to price your programs off your own numbers instead of copying the last owner, why investing in a real website and CRM drove a 45% jump in class enrollment, and why your class program — not All-Star — should be the backbone of your business. If you want to learn this stuff in person, Dan's got one more Cheer Biz Accelerator event with availability in 2026 (November, at Oregon Dream Teams in Portland) plus events booking into 2027. He's also launching a new Skool learning community focused on using AI as a cheer gym owner — join Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners on Facebook to hear when it drops.

Brooke’s cheerleading career started because some friends at recess told her she couldn’t do a back walkover. Years later, she would go on to compete at Worlds, spend three years at Trinity Valley, transfer to Weber State, and experience some of the highest levels of competitive college cheer. In this episode of The Cheer Biz Podcast, Dan Cotton sits down with Brooke, a member of the Dream Camps staff, to talk about the journey that got her there. Brooke shares how going back to the basics completely changed her tumbling, what it was like walking into Trinity Valley without ever visiting the school, and the hours athletes spent training outside of scheduled practices. She also opens up about one of the biggest challenges of her career: discovering she had a bilateral break in her back during her first year at Trinity Valley. After months away from tumbling and a carefully planned return, Brooke unexpectedly earned a spot in the Daytona routine — and her team went on to win. Later, at Weber State, she faced another challenge when she found herself physically capable of competing but without a spot on the mat. Instead of checking out, she kept learning, conditioning, and preparing until an opportunity came just days before showoffs. Dan and Brooke also talk about mental blocks, pressure, the differences between Trinity Valley and Weber State, her plans after college cheer, and why coaches should never let competition take away the part of cheer that made athletes fall in love with it in the first place.

Dan calls himself an AI super fan — he uses it every single day, in multiple parts of his business, at the same time he's recording this episode. But he's also telling you flat out: AI is not your business coach, and treating it like one is going to cost you. He walks through exactly why, using two real examples. First, when a frustrated parent kept sending him emails, he fed the situation to AI and asked what to do — it told him to cut the family loose completely and stop responding. He didn't listen, called the parent instead, had a real conversation, and kept the family in the gym. Second, a client used AI to build her tuition budget off last season's pricing instead of the actual pricing calculator — the numbers looked great, but she would have lost money running her teams if she'd used them. Dan breaks down why AI is limited to whatever narrow data you feed it, why it still doesn't understand human beings well enough to make judgment calls, and where it's actually incredibly useful in a gym (just not as your coach). Before you dive in, make sure you're in the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups. And if you want real coaching instead of an AI's best guess, get signed up for a Cheer Biz Accelerator event — the last 2026 date is in November at Oregon Dream Teams (it may be sold out depending on when you're listening), with more events coming in 2027.