Run a Profitable Gym

How do you build an A+ staff? It's a critical question. Hire the wrong people and you'll have headaches. Put the right people in the wrong chairs and you'll have headaches.  But if you get the right people in the right roles, your business will grow quickly, and you'll be surrounded with happy, talented team members who make life better for you and your clients. In this episode...

How did gym owner Brian Bott reach $426 and earn a spot on this month's average revenue per member leaderboard? Semi-private training! Bott's impressive stats are primarily the result of personal training done in groups of no more than four. This isn't "small-group training" where each client does a variation of the same workout. Instead, a highly skilled coach delivers co...

Gym owner and Two-Brain Business Mentor Lisa Palmer earned a spot on the leaderboard this month with a $341 per month average revenue per member score. In this video, she shares the three simple strategies she employed to get there: 1. Athlete check-ins. 2. Transformation packages. 3. Choice. By truly getting to know her members' needs, Lisa calibrated her program to include specialty offerin...

Ashley Haun, Nyree Segui and Scott Romijn were recipients of this year's Two-Brain Awards in the Coach Education and Opportunity, Future Star and Owner Lifestyle categories. These intrepid leaders were laser focused on developing their teams, laying the groundwork for future success and enjoying the fruits of their labor.  We chat with them to find out about the obstacles they met along the w...

What sets the best gyms apart from the rest? In this episode, we talk to the recipients of this year's Two-Brain Awards for Gyms of the Year (Culture and Metrics) and Comebacks (Resilience). Kyle Cato, David Allen, Charlie Banfield and Rich Borgatti have weathered the past year with grace and fortitude, and they've come out even stronger. Cato and Allen were recognized as the top Two-Bra...

Developing your coaches won't grow your business. It can be hard to hear this, but simply investing in coach education might actually harm your gym instead. In this episode, Chris Cooper cites some examples of coach development gone wrong, but he also shows you the coach-development systems you can implement to benefit your coaches— and your gym and its members. When it comes to coach develop...

If you want to have a successful service-based business, you have to build around the needs of your clients. In this episode of Two-Brain Radio, Chris Cooper gives you a framework to build a "client-centric business" using your mission, model and method.  First you must clearly define your mission. Second, identify the strategy to achieve that mission—that's your model. Third, your...

Thinking about buying a gym? While it's easy to get distracted by all the bells and whistles, you really need to ask three major questions first: 1. Is the space the gym is in leased or owned? 2. What are the assets and debts of the current business? 3. What contracts are currently in play and what exactly do they say? Gym Lawyers founder Matthew Becker takes you through these questions and e...

Every business scales through four distinct stages. Chris Cooper talks a lot about the four phases of entrepreneurship: Founder, Farmer, Tinker and Thief. To move from one phase to the next, you need to do the following: systemize, optimize, grow and scale. If you do these things out of order, you can break your business or go bankrupt yourself. The best way to proceed is to seek guidance from som...

As a gym owner, you'll likely face some issues when it comes to your lease. Three of the most important elements: rent (including CAM expenses), use of premises, and additional costs you're responsible for through "triple net" leases (insurance, maintenance, etc.). How do you negotiate a better lease for your gym business? Is your rent increase justified? What happens when your...

Every successful entrepreneur needs to master four habits in order to make  $1 million, $10 million or more: discipline, respect, influence and behavior.   You need to do one thing each day to grow your business before you do anything else.  You need to respect others and teach everyone around you to behave the same way. You need to share your mission every single day with people inside and outsid...

As a gym owner, your method and your model will likely evolve over time. Your method should be "client centric": It should be based on what your clients need . Your model is there to give clients your service in the way they want to buy it.  At Chris Cooper's gym, Catalyst, the Prescriptive Model guides the business. The prescription changes over time to serve the exact needs of cli...

What's holding you back from reaching the next level with your gym business? Check your bias. In this episode, Chris Cooper goes over the common biases that interfere with our growth. In identifying these blind spots, you can make a plan to keep them in check and take positive action with the things that count.  3:14 - Confirmation bias and novelty bias 4:45 - Busy-ness bias 6:27 - Multi-task...

Acquiring more knowledge is not going to solve your problems; it's actually a trap that stops you from taking action. Knowledge is not the solution; getting a mentor is. As a gym owner, you might be furiously studying as much as you can when it comes to business. But how much of the information are you actually acting on?  A great mentor works because they give you a clear focus: Do this one...

In this episode, Two-Brain Business founder Chris Cooper breaks down the tweaks you can make to your gym business today to improve your ROI tomorrow.  From staffing audits to maximizing your use of space to analyzing your software, you need to take a clear-eyed approach to assess your expenses and implement the measures that will bring the most bang for your buck in your gym business. You can&apos...

How much content should I be creating? Is Facebook advertising dead? Should I hire a GM? What about supplements? In this podcast, Two-Brain Business founder and CEO Chris Cooper answers your burning questions on a slew of topics. Got a question for Chris? Email him at chris@twobrainbusiness.com or post it in the Gym Owners United Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gymownersonly 0:58 -...

"Help First" is the title of one of Chris Cooper's most quoted books—but what does "help first" really mean? Does this mean "help (for free) always"? In this episode, Chris shares what a meaningful approach to Help First looks like. You want to get the client to a point where they're ready to purchase your service, not just to benefit from your free advice a...

You might be the best gym around but no one will know about you unless you tell them. In his mentorship practice, Chris Cooper stresses the need for his clients to produce meaningful, consistent content in order to get and maintain clients. But where to start? In this podcast, Chris lays out a content model that will get you in the practice of regularly producing content. In this clear, step-by-st...

New gym owner Jason Tebedo was able to open his doors at CrossFit Angier on launch day with a whopping 83 members. In this episode, he dishes the secrets to his opening-day success. Working with his Two-Brain Mentor as part of the StartUp program, Jason laid out his foundation in advance and got the right plan in place to acquire and keep members from the get-go. Jason breaks down what exactly he...

What do we want from life? Misha Saidov has pared it down to an acronym - FERMI: Flow (the experience of optimal feeling of engagement in the moment), Engagement, Relaxation, Meaning and Ideal. Ultimately, people want to feel better. As a life coach, he offers experience which serves to help alter their perspective, and therefore how they feel in their lives. In this episode, Misha and Chris Coope...

Entrepreneurial confidence is key to sustaining success - but it's something many gym owners overlook. In this episode, psychotherapist and executive coach Bonnie Skinner breaks down exactly what entrepreneurial confidence is, how a lack of it shows up in your life, and what reps you should be doing to build that muscle. Making a concerted effort to boost your entrepreneurial confidence can r...

For decades, CrossFit gyms have programmed workouts according to a prescription: the Rx. With this style of programming, each workout has a singular goal. How athletes execute the workout might vary, but the goal is the same. But what if not all your athletes have the same goal? That's why Brooks DiFiore created Beyond RXD, a programming system that provides workouts and briefs customized acc...

When Ameet Shah first introduced Wodify to the CrossFit community, he had his work cut out for him. Convincing a bunch of gritty, low-tech fitness die-hards to ditch the whiteboard and put up a TV screen was a tall order. But he did it — and today Wodify serves more than 5,000 gyms around the world. Ameet joined Chris Cooper to talk about his journey from crab-sales website designer (yes, you read...

When the entrepreneurship bug hits, it hits hard — and some gym owners find that owning a gym isn't enough. There's so much else to explore: retail, supplements, gear — even coffee. But is it possible to run multiple profitable businesses? And if so, how do you pull it off? For the answers to those questions and more, Chris Cooper turned to Danny Lehr, owner and founder of CrossFit Excel...

Brendon Collins has always had the itch to help people change their lives. At one time, he did it as a pastor. Then, he did it as a fitness coach and gym owner. Now, he's helping people find their way as a life coach touching on all of the above. How'd he get there, and what, exactly, does being a life coach look like? Here, he chats with Coop about all that and more. Links: Chat with Br...