In early June, Jared Jordan sat on the balcony of his hotel room at the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago and wondered if it was time to close his gym.
Righteous Wellness in Alabama was losing about $8,000 a month. Jared had racked up more than $60,000 in credit card debt that year. He was coaching 30 hours a week, doing all the admin himself and scrambling to find enough leads to keep the lights on.
On the last day of Summit, he walked up to me and asked one question. I gave him one piece of advice.
Within 90 days, his gym went from about $14,000 a month in revenue to $24,000.
Below, I’ll walk you through what I told Jared, what he changed and how you can do the same thing if your gym is struggling.
A Great Coach Who Didn’t Want to Run a Business
Jared and his wife opened their first gym, CrossFit of Ithaca, in New York in 2013. Back then, you could make plenty of mistakes and still grow.
“I knew nothing about how to run a business,” Jared said. “I just knew that I wanted to be a really freaking good coach.”
He was. After a dirt bike accident ended his racing career, he poured everything into coaching and made it onto CrossFit’s Seminar Staff in 2018.
His wife ran the business. She joined Two-Brain that same year, built up personal training and grew the gym to 175 members with a staff of seven. Then COVID hit, New York shut down, and the family moved south.
After a rocky stint managing someone else’s gym, Jared and his wife opened Righteous Wellness in 2023. Jared did all the construction himself, volunteered with the local football team and grew the gym through word of mouth.
The business survived, but it never thrived. Jared opened his second gym with the same mindset he had in 2013, and the market had changed.
When the Safety Net Disappeared
For years, Jared traveled 35 weekends a year for Seminar Staff. That income kept the family afloat, and it hid how badly the gym was doing.
At the end of 2024, Jared stepped away from Seminar Staff to spend more time with his family. Then reality set in.
“2025 was rough,” he said. “We were paying for groceries and mortgage payments on credit cards. We were just robbing Peter to pay Paul everywhere.”
The stress hit his marriage. Jared and his wife decided to switch roles: She would step back from the business to focus on their kids, and he would step up to lead the gym.
In September 2025, Jared rejoined Two-Brain.
Year 1: Busy, Not Productive
Jared was fired up. He worked with his mentors, first Peter and then Tres, rebuilt his on-ramp and started building systems.
But he was working about 60 hours a week, with 30 of them on the coaching floor. His general manager was working full time while getting paid only for the hours she coached, because she believed in the vision.
He chased small wins. Each one made a little money, and then he went looking for the next one. He sold a $10,000 lifetime membership to keep the lights on. A surprise tax refund bought him a few more months.
He admitted his mentor calls had turned into venting sessions. “He didn’t get a chance to do much coaching,” Jared said.
Jared put the Summit ticket on a credit card. At the airport, he told his general manager that if they didn’t get what they needed that weekend, he was pulling the plug.
The One Question
Summit filled Jared’s cup. He heard story after story from gym owners who had started in situations like his own.
“This really ain’t that hard,” he said. “It’s hard, don’t get me wrong, but this ain’t impossible to do.”
As the event wrapped up, his general manager told him they weren’t leaving until he talked to me. So he paced, waited for his chance and finally asked:
“What do you say to the gym that’s struggling?”
I asked him if he was doing his Golden Hour every day.
He wasn’t. He did it sporadically, when he felt like he had time.
My advice was simple: Go home, block the time and treat it as the most important thing you do.
What the Golden Hour Is (and Why It Works)
The Golden Hour is Two-Brain’s productivity system for gym owners, laid out in Chris Cooper’s book of the same name. It’s one of the first things we recommend to owners who are struggling.
Everyone in this industry is busy. When you’re busy, it’s easy to forget to be productive. The Golden Hour sets aside protected time every day for the work that moves your business forward: marketing, sales systems, staff development and planning.
If you only do the work that keeps you stuck, you’ll stay stuck.
What Jared Did Next
Jared opened his calendar on the flight home and blocked his Golden Hour for every day.
For the first few weeks, he spent that time reading “The Golden Hour” and implementing what he learned. He doesn’t hit it perfectly. He follows Chris’s rule: It’s OK to miss a day, just don’t let one day turn into two.
Then he got to work on revenue.
He pushed personal training. Jared revamped his on-ramp again and started selling 30-minute PT sessions. He stopped rushing every new client into group classes.
He partnered with a local tumbling gym. He ran a six-week summer program for young gymnasts and cheerleaders, with two 50-minute sessions a week.
He built HYROX offerings. Jared had added HYROX training in May but had no real product to sell. So he created two:
- A $30 upsell for current members. Unlimited group cost $159 a month. For $189, members also got access to HYROX classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. About 44% of members took the upsell.
- A HYROX-only membership at $129 a month for people training specifically for races.
Revenue went from about $14,000 in May to roughly $24,000 by the end of June.
To be clear, that kind of jump is not normal. Jared is cut from a different cloth. But he got there by giving himself time to think and time to execute.
Then he kept doing what worked. July was a revenue record. So was August.
Leading the Team Instead of Doing Every Job
The other big shift was Jared’s role.
He stopped micromanaging and put the right people in the right seats. Today he coaches one group class a week and six to eight hours of personal training. He still starts every new client himself.
The rest of his time goes to marketing, lead nurture and leading his team.
If Your Gym Is Struggling
Start where Jared did. Block one hour on your calendar every day, protect it and spend it on the work that moves your business forward.
And if you want a mentor to help you figure out what to do with that hour, book a call with my team. Even if you don’t think you can afford mentorship right now, we’ll give you tools, resources and books that can help you get there.
