The fitness industry is full of BS—you know this already.
But the BS doesn’t stop when you move from fitness to the business of fitness.
In the business world, we have far too many equivalents of stomach wraps, miracle supplements and fat-melting creams.
Some people are deliberately misleading you by providing advice without any solid metrics. They want you to believe they have “the answer” because they make money from that. It’s really hard to figure out who these people are because they’re loud, charismatic and convincing (until you ask for data).
In other cases, well-meaning people offer advice without context. This is the “it worked for me!” crowd, whose members often say stuff like this: “I’ve always done it like this, and I’ve never had any problems.”
They’re not bad people, but what if the tactic they recommend only works in one place? Or maybe it only worked in 2023. Or maybe it only works in Peru.
If you base your decisions on one-shot wonders and echo chambers, your business will be at risk.
That’s why I always provide data whenever I present our leaders. I want you to know that these numbers come from gym owners just like you, people who started off with nothing and built to this level because they set goals, took action and worked with a mentor to reach their goals fast.
The best part for you: These gym owners share our values, and they’re willing to disclose the secrets of their success. Every month, our top gym owners tell you exactly what they did to generate the industry-leading numbers we present. They do that so you can move your numbers up, too.
It’s data and advice—the perfect combo.
Here are the Top 10 Two-Brain gyms for revenue (all figures are presented in U.S. dollars):
Now I’ll give you a secret: When you’re on social media and you see ads talking about “million-dollar gyms,” you’re usually hearing about a gym that ran a giant campaign and hit an unsustainable revenue record. Like it grossed $85,000 in one month, so the marketing agency just hit “times 12” and came up with “million-dollar gym.”
In reality, the record month is usually an outlier, and the gym’s revenue drops back to normal the next month. The gym hasn’t earned a million dollars. It might be on pace to do that if it can sustain the monthly record gross for a year—which is very hard to do.
Our stats aren’t like that. The gyms I listed above are posting large, consistent revenue totals every month of the year, and they’re profitable. (We’ll dig into profit in another leaderboard.) These owners know their numbers and can “predict the future” because they have years of solid metrics and growth activities on the calendar. They can say with confidence where their revenue stats are going.
Example: The No. 1 gym on this leaderboard was No. 2 on the leaderboard released in September 2024. Monthly revenue then was $88,549. Now it’s $99,905—and I wish I had purchased a hoodie from this gym just to push it over $100,000.
Another gym posted $76,400 in early 2024, then $81,000 in the middle of 2024. On today’s leaderboard, it scored $72,554.
These are stable, consistent, strong numbers, not flashes in the pan.
Here’s what these top-earning gym owners had to say when we asked them about consistency:
“We have experienced a fairly predictable and steady climb in revenue, and this was the highest month of 2024. As we move into 2025, we anticipate that these numbers will start to become the norm.”
“Yes, I expect (revenue) to grow. Our target is to get to $83k months.” (This target isn’t far away: The owner logged $81,000 in the current month.)
“I am expecting on average $83k for the coming year.”
“We’ve seen this (level of monthly revenue) and even more over the last year. We’ve seen an increase of $135k in 2024 overall!”
Now, here’s how these owners generated the revenue. You’ll note most are talking about very specific high-level tactics.
Customer Service
“We focus on consistent over-delivery of our services to our clients. We have developed an incredible environment and community.”
High-Value Services
“Our primary focus was on selling higher-ticket items, such as personal training, nutrition and lifestyle coaching, and our kickstart program.”
“We tinker with the offerings to maximize the revenue per square foot.”
“We changed our memberships to a minimum of three months and did more focused advertising for personal training.”
“We developed a program tailored specifically for beginners, incorporating accountability as a core element. The program is priced at $289 per month and serves as a great alternative in the No Sweat Intro when personal training exceeds an individual’s budget. To enhance its appeal, we ‘repackaged’ it as a six-week challenge, using language familiar to the market. This program is offered at $599 for six weeks and includes additional value-added components. This approach significantly increases the initial revenue collected. Once the six weeks are completed, we transition participants into a monthly membership at $289.”
Increased Focus
“I’m an aircraft engineer, but over the last 3.5 years I’ve turned my attention to the gym. It’s paid off because we were around $350K annually and now up to $750 grand a year. We appreciate the ‘State of the Industry’ report and all that Coop publishes—all valuable.”
Sales Excellence
“We do a prequalifying call. We get about 100 Facebook leads, and we used to schedule consults—and only about 30 percent would come in the door. To improve that, we looked at marketing. We’ve ID’d a better lead source using the ads and geography. As the leads come in, we’re calling them within the hour. On the phone, we use a very refined sales script, building on our established reputation and that ‘know, like and trust.’ We get people saying ‘yes’ a lot, and they sign up on the phone. We put through the initial payment right there.”
New Revenue Stream: Hyrox
“We are using Hyrox as a revenue stream. Coop says to ‘figure out the niche and mine the hell out of it.’ So I wondered, ‘What can we do that others can’t do?’ What we have is a huge open space that no one can really offer in New York City. We saw an opportunity to offer the Hyrox training, and we’ll be the leader in Hyrox training. Two days a week—our slowest days—are now low-skill days to satisfy the clientele training for Hyrox races. We are pure CrossFit—we capitalized on the CrossFit name and on the low-tech Hyrox, with its growing brand recognition.”
Communications/Marketing
“We are 16 years in business, and we consistently bombard the market with our marketing. New people will start at the gym and say, ‘I feel like I know you already.’ The GM, Mike, is like a local celebrity because of all the content we put out.”
“We are really effectively using GLM to send upcoming training sessions, as well as newsletters twice a month with a 60 percent open rate to an email distribution list of 2,000.”
Mentorship
“All that we’ve put in place is from what we’ve learned in the Two-Brain modules or at the Two-Brain Summit—and recently in the Two-Brain Tinker group that we just became a part of.”
Be a CEO
To increase your revenue, you must do the right thing at the right time, not every random thing all the time.
When you understand your metrics and you work on your business with a mentor, you build systems that make it easy to produce repeat wins. You’re not completely blowing up your business every few months. You’re making small adjustments based on data and expert guidance from a mentor—that’s what gives you control.
Example: You build a sales system that can be improved to fix a lagging metric, such as close rate. If you close more sales, your revenue goes up.
That’s the beauty of systems and metrics.
Another example that applies to a gym owner who aspires to own a true million-dollar gym one day: If your revenue is $20,000 a month and you want to get to $85,000, start with $22,000 or $24,000. A mentor can provide an exact plan to get there. Then you can set a new interim goal and start executing on the next plan. You’ll audit and improve your systems regularly, double-down on things that work and move on from things that don’t.
It’s never a wish-and-hope situation where you set a big, hairy, audacious goal and pray it will come true. You won’t manifest any success unless you manually do the work to earn it.
You simply cannot get to $85,000 a month in revenue without being a good CEO in the gym business. And you become a better CEO by understanding your numbers, drilling down into them and having a mentor who can help you move the numbers with clear, repeatable tactics.
