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This channel (presented by Two-Brain Business) is packed with business tools for gym owners and CrossFit affiliates. We provide actionable, data-backed business advice for all gym owners, including those who own personal training studios, fitness franchises, and strength and conditioning gyms.
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 revenue.
John and Two-Brain Radio host Mike Warkentin dive into the details here.
Links:
Method3 Fitness
Level Method
Two-Brain Programming
Gym Owners United
Timeline:
1:28 – Getting to know Method3 Fitness.
10:08 – Going from $100k per year to $86k per month.
13:55 – Personal training vs. group fitness: Method3’s breakdown.
16:12 – Tactics for stellar length of engagement and retention.
25:38 – Saving — and even upgrading — would-be cancelers.
29:37 – The other arm of revenue: Sales.
33:53 – A prescriptive approach to the free trial.
37:56 – The results roadmap meeting.
40:27 – It’s a lot of work. How does Method3 manage?
44:46 – Systemize it, staff it, streamline it.
45:40 – One powerful thing you can do today to improve retention.
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't mean was to go open a coffee shop, pizza joint or even a yoga studio.
Here, Coop offers guidance on when to start a second business — and what that second business should be.
Links:
Gym Lead Machine
Forever Fierce
Gym Owners United
"Two-Brain Business"
"Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief"
"Gym Owners Handbook"
Two-Brain Coaching
Two-Brain Programming
Timeline:
0:36 – Why Coop is rewriting “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.”
2:11 – Why most gym owners should not start a brand-new business.
4:54 – The key middle ground.
6:03 – Why Chris started Two-Brain Coaching.
8:37 – Why Chris started Two-Brain Programming.
13:29 – The question you need to ask yourself before you start another business.
15:48 – What Chris is working on now.
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.
Here, course creator and mentor Mike Watson joins Two-Brain mentor and Two-Brain Coaching co-founder Josh Martin to talk about how the course benefits coaches and gym owners alike.
Links:
Two-Brain Coaching
Incite Tax
Gym Owners United
Contact:
mike@twobraincoaching.com
Timeline:
3:05 – Rockstars of the Two-Brain Coaching course.
7:55 – What is a Module 1 coach?
10:45 – Preparing coaches to handle No-Sweat Intros.
18:57 – Helping coaches find and hone their niches.
22:44 – Coaches’ homework: content creation.
25:07 – How to get coaches to create content.
30:11 – Getting third-party insight.
32:14 – Bringing the benefits back to the gym — and making other coaches better, too.
36:28 – Developing a cohesive approach among your staff.
41:00 – Building confidence.
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 Pro
Driven Nutrition
Gym Owners United
Timeline:
0:59 – If clients should only pay for what they want, why does Two-Brain offer more resources than any one gym owner could use?
2:11 – Value vs. perceived value.
4:23 – Recency bias.
6:41 – Two-Brain Business vs. recency bias and the biz-coaching biz.
10:17 – Balancing core offerings with novelty.
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.
Links:
AGuard
Arbox
Two-Brain Coaching
Gym Owners United
"The Go-Giver"
Timeline:
1:59 – You don’t determine your value. Your clients do.
3:44 – The five laws of value.
4:22 – Excellence.
5:11 – You have to get people results.
7:15 – You also need to be a communicator.
9:02 – Consistency.
11:22 – Attention.
14:09 – Empathy.
16:02 – Appreciation.
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 mentor Josh Martin for a candid discussion about what separates the average coaches from the greats.
Links:
Railroad CrossFit
Drink O2
Beyond the Whiteboard
Gym Owners United
Timeline:
2:49 – The struggles of group-fitness coaching.
5:19 – Preparation is key.
8:25 – What happens when you don’t prepare.
13:30 – Why lesson planning is worth the time.
16:42 – Why every coach should make their own lesson plan.
18:55 – Failing to plan is planning to fail.
26:11 – Remember your why.
29:04 – Body language and feedback.
33:32 – Building rapport.
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)
Timeline:
2:26 – Joleen’s starting EHR: $10
4:22 – What happened when Joleen started listening to her mentor.
6:58 – Climbing the value ladder.
9:24 – Offloading tasks and becoming a tinker.
11:13 – Taking the first step toward higher EHR.
14:34 – Lessons learned post-COVID.
17:32 – Narrowing the client avatar.
23:37 – The top three things to focus on right now to increase EHR.
28:29 – The three things to focus on to go from a $50 to $100 EHR.
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 more than once. Here, he'll tell you how to get safely to the other side.
Links:
Two-Brain Coaching
Incite Tax
Gym Owners United
"Simple Numbers"
"Traction"
"Get a Grip"
Timeline:
1:30 – The Valley of Death.
3:19 – Gaps that kill.
6:13 – The gaps that almost got Coop.
8:27 – Operational skills vs. management skills.
11:36 – Change is inevitable.
12:36 – Upgrading to expert-level knowledge.
15:39 – To cross the Valley, start with a big buffer.
20:01 – Trade where you can.
21:57 – Join a mastermind.
22:31 – Partner with caution.
26:37 – Set up commercial agreements in advance.
28:41 – Simplicity scales faster.
29:17 – Maintain financial guidelines.
30:27 – Mentor your team.
30:57 – Layer your marketing.
32:48 – Think about your impact.
33:17 – Be patient.
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 benefit — all the ways in which a gym benefits the gym owner financially — from $250 a month to a whopping 12 grand.
Links:
Industrial Athletics
Drink O2
Beyond the Whiteboard
The Gear You (Don't) Need to Start a Gym
Gym Owners United
Timeline:
3:08 – Starting with $250.
9:14 – The game-changer that led to increased Net Owner Benefit.
14:44 – Pulling the trigger on high-ticket sales.
18:19 – Increasing revenue with hybrid programs.
22:56 – Avoiding unnecessary expenses.
27:02 – Another take on climbing the value ladder.
32:46 – Make a plan to distinguish your business.
37:08 – Invest in website and social-media expertise.
40:03 – Standardize and systematize.
44:17 – Calculate when to work in your business and when to work on it.
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, including how homelessness freed him to experience true happiness, how he became a filmmaker, and how his life and identity have changed since being let go from CrossFit Inc.
Please note that this episode involves an open discussion about media and context, and we've left the language intact. It is not suitable for all audiences and listener discretion is advised.
Links:
The Sevan Podcast
Gym Lead Machine
Forever Fierce
Gym Owners United
Timeline:
1:21 – The time Chris Cooper told Sevan Matossian to “get the hell outta here!”
4:41 – How Sevan found freedom in homelessness.
9:51 – Finding purpose working at a home for disabled adults.
11:38 – Falling into filmmaking.
15:05 – Sevan’s first award-winning film: “Our House.”
18:39 – Finding CrossFit via a braggart bodyguard.
21:32 – Becoming CrossFit’s first filmmaker.
24:43 – What CrossFit HQ used to be.
26:07 – How media made CrossFit what it is today.
28:26 – Coop and Sevan come full circle.
33:49 – On speaking off the cuff — and paying for it.
39:35 – The experiment and the biker gang.
47:06 – Where Sevan thinks CrossFit went wrong.
49:05 – Brand-building in the CrossFit world.
51:29 – Taking money but speaking truth.
55:30 – What happened with Make WODs Great Again?
1:03:16 – How to deal with being canceled.
1:07:06 – Sevan Matossian today: (mostly) free and (mostly) happy.
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