Run a Profitable Gym

Remember when you first started coaching and your whiteboard briefings were more like physiology lectures? You don't do that anymore now. Now, as a mature coach, you know your clients just need to focus on one cue at a time. Entrepreneurship has a path to maturity, too. Some lessons you can learn from books and experts. Others simply require time — and experience making a mistake or two. Chri...

CrossFit LLC recently released its new CrossFit Affiliate Playbook. What's inside? Who might benefit most from it? And is the advice any good? Coop shares his thoughts. Links: Drink O2 Beyond the Whiteboard How to Make $100,000 with 150 clients Gym Owners United Timeline: 3:07 – Why you need a playbook. 6:35 – The reason most gyms fail. 8:21 – Cracking open the CrossFit Affiliate Playbook. 9:...

The gym down the street is closing. Yours, however, is doing great. Should you buy the failing gym? Is it an opportunity to grow your business or will you be buying a whole new set of problems? Chris Cooper is notorious for advising against buying other gyms. But there are a few situations in which buying is a win-win for everyone — and even Coop would make an offer. Here's what they look lik...

When was the last time you taught your clients something new? We've all got our preferences: CrossFit, boot camp, yoga. But when you bring something new into your practice, your clients — and your business — will be better for it. It's what we do all the time at Two-Brain Business. Learn why in this episode of Two-Brain Radio, then take Coop up on his challenge to learn five new exercise...

In business, it can be tough to formulate a win-win-win scenario: The business wins, the client wins, and the client's client wins, too. But that's exactly what Dave Colina and his company, Drink O2, did when the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit gyms hard — and they've only continued to do bigger and better good since then, including bringing together a coalition of fitness brands to...

CrossFit, LLC recently announced its newest offering: CrossFit Precision Health Care, billed as "personalized healthcare from CrossFit-trained doctors and health professionals based on your unique goals and needs." But what exactly is it? Does it work? Will it help affiliate owners and their clients, or is it just another form of competition? Chris Cooper weighs in with his initial thoug...

When it comes to bank accounts, bigger is better, right? Chris Cooper says "no!" Don't misunderstand: He's not saying you should spend every dime you make. But if your go-to financial strategy is to squirrel away every dollar into your business' bank account, you're actually limiting your earning potential. Coop explains it all in this sprint episode of Two-Brain Radi...

What do you do when the gym down the street undercuts you on prices? Or opens a location a hop and skip from your front door? Or steals your best ideas? Celebrate, says Chris Cooper.  Competition is just an opportunity. An opportunity to be the A-plus service and get the clients who graduate up to your gym after stagnating with the B-minus service. An opportunity to get the best clients while the...

Eleven years ago, Billy Hofacker answered a knock at his door, only to find his brand-new, cherished Honda Accord being towed away by the repo man. When he faced the mountain of unpaid bills and did the math, the total came to a staggering $130,000 of consumer debt. Today, Hofacker — a personal trainer of 20 years — is the owner and CEO of Total Body Boot Camp and Performance Center, with two succ...

John Heringer owns Method3 Fitness in San Jose, California — a gym that does $86k in monthly revenue. What's the secret? The secret is that there's no singular secret. Retention tactics, sales strategies, systems to execute those things and a true service mindset — Heringer and his team weave it all together. The result? High-value clients who get results, stay longer and generate more r...

So you've got a successful gym business. You're paying the bills and making a nice profit, too. Time to start another business and double your money! — Hold on a sec. Chris Cooper is no stranger to starting businesses, and in his original book, "Two-Brain Business," he describes your first business as the cornerstone to a larger platform that you can build. But what he didn&apo...

A good coach starts and ends the class on time and teaches the air squat well. A great coach does those things and much more: They close sales through no-sweat intros. They follow your coaching principles but bring their own expertise and personalities to the floor. They create content and build authority as experts in their field. At least, the ones who complete the Two-Brain Coaching course do....

The unlimited membership is often pegged as the key to building revenue and retention. But if you're rolling all your services into one package — your core offerings plus extras like nutrition coaching or speciality classes — you're actually undercutting the value of those offerings and priming clients to get bored and look elsewhere. Chris Cooper explains it all here. Links: Chalk It Pr...

How come F45, Orangetheory and the fancy club downtown can charge sky-high prices for "total transformations" and you can't? Especially when you're just as good — if not better — at coaching? It's all about value — and the client gets to decide what yours is. Here, Chris Cooper shares five key ways to establish a higher value for your service — and charge more for it. Link...

CrossFit trainers: How familiar is this scenario? Tomorrow's workout has just been posted. It's a max deadlift followed by Diane, 21-15-9 reps of deadlifts and handstand push-ups. You know what to do; you've done that workout dozens of times. No need to prepare a lesson plan, right? Wrong — according to Railroad CrossFit owner Shawn McQueen. Here, Shawn joins Two-Brain Business ment...

Do you know what your Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) is? That is, your pay, divided by the number of hours it took to earn it? Joleen Bingham's is $290. But it wasn't always that high. Here's how she multiplied a $10 starting EHR by 29 — and how you can, too. Links: Two-Brain Programming Level Method Gym Owners United Level Up Your Staff (and Fire Them Up Instead of Firing Them) Timeli...

So you're ready to scale up and out. Maybe you want to open a second location; maybe you want to start a new business altogether. First, you're going to have to cross the Valley of Death. The Valley of Death is the gap that lies between your first successful business and your second. It's the money gap. The knowledge gap. The tools gap. Chris Cooper has crossed the Valley of Death m...

When Matthew Becker first opened Industrial Athletics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he already had another full-time job — so it didn't really matter if he never saw a dime from it. But when he went all in on gym ownership — and when he finally started acting on his mentor's advice — he realized he'd been throwing away serious money. Here's how Matthew increased his net owner be...

The first time Chris Cooper saw Sevan Matossian — who, unbeknownst to Coop, was the director of media for CrossFit Inc. at the time — he yelled at him to stop taking photos at the Canada East Regional. Now, almost a decade later, the pair sat down for some real talk about everything CrossFit. The award-winning filmmaker and former media director shares some deeply personal insight from his life, i...

On Aug. 12,  Chris Cooper spoke with Eric Roza, CrossFit's new owner and CEO. Among other things, the pair discussed CrossFit's new Affiliate Playbook and other plans to support CrossFit affiliate owners. But doesn't that sound like competition for Two-Brain Business? Here, Chris Cooper addresses that issue and more, including how knowledge isn't the problem, the difference bet...

Have you owned your gym for years but are still wearing all the hats and pulling 12-hour days? Maybe you're five, even 10 years in, but your business isn't any more profitable than it was the first two years. If that sounds like you, Chris Cooper has some tough news for you: You don't actually have 10 years of experience. You have one year of experience repeated 10 times. You'v...

Do you have trouble turning off your brain? Spend your precious relaxation time ruminating about that tough conversation or fretting about the future? There's a reason for that: Your amygdala's in hyperdrive.  So how do you get it to chill out? Try Chris Cooper's go-to exercise. Links: Level Method Two-Brain Programming Gym Owners United "Think Like a Monk" Notes: 1:23 – W...

Most gym owners know how to coach a good squat. But what about building a long-term platform of wealth that sustains you, your family and even your community for generations to come? Chris Cooper breaks down the most important financial objectives of each stage of entrepreneurship and how to meet them — so that your business gives you a legacy, not just a job. Links: "Founder, Farmer, Tinker,...

Adam Robbins owns DNA Fitness in Cutler Bay, Florida, and he was on not one — not two — but THREE of Two-Brain Business' leaderboards for sales and marketing in June. He's got both affinity marketing and cold-lead conversion down to a science with an 80% close rate. And it's not just him — Adam teaches his staff to sell by sharing resources, meeting one on one and role-playing. Here...

The CrossFit affiliate community has endured a lot of tumult over the last two years. Now, after surviving a global pandemic and watching leadership change hands at the CrossFit Home Office, affiliate owners want to know: What's next? In this episode, Chris Cooper goes straight to the source in an exclusive interview with Eric Roza, CrossFit's new owner and CEO. Tune in to learn about Er...