Chris Cooper (00:02):
How much revenue did your gym do last month? Historically, the summer months are usually some of the lowest in the fitness industry, but today I’m going to share with you how Two-Brain gyms did between $63,000 and $90,000 U.S. last month alone in the summer months. I’m Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym, and every month I share one of our leaderboards that we publish internally. Two-Brain is built on data. We don’t guess; we don’t just copy what I did at my gym way back in the day. What we do is we track our best around the world, and we’ve got 1,000 gyms in the Two-Brain mentorship family now. We look at who’s doing the best for each different metric, and then we interview them, and we share their top lessons with you. This is how science works, and this is how Two-Brain keeps getting better and better and better, helping more and more and more gym owners create good careers for themselves and their families and their coaches and stick around and help people long-term.
Chris Cooper (01:00):
First, I want to talk about the revenue leaderboard because this is a summer month, and I can remember August 2008, it was the worst revenue month I’d ever had in my gym. It was the downside of the summer months. My clients were putting things on hold, going out to their cottages for the month, and I was at a low point in revenue. I couldn’t pay myself; I couldn’t even pay my rent. The idea of some of these numbers being possible in coaching gyms—mind you, these are not big global access gyms—the idea of some of these numbers being possible would’ve blown my mind. In fact, I would’ve been skeptical. But here’s the reality: We track these numbers, we’ve been sharing them with you now for years, and I’m going to do more than just tell you, “Here’s what the numbers are,” to try and impress you.
Chris Cooper (01:46):
I’m going to tell you exactly how they did it so that you can go out and do it too. So, let’s start at the bottom of our pyramid here first, and these are all in USD. We convert everything so that we’re comparing apples to apples. In 10th spot this month, from New Zealand, a gym did $63,114 U.S. in revenue. Pretty amazing. And what’s cool here is that usually we take a rolling three-month average because I don’t want you to just see these dips and spikes. This time, I chose to just report their one-month average. But the reality is that most of these gyms on a three-month average are actually a little bit higher. Very cool to note. In ninth place, a U.S.-based gym that did $63,232, so about 118 bucks more than the 10th place. But hey, every dollar counts In eighth place, $64,657 revenue.
Chris Cooper (02:40):
Now revenue means top line. That’s money coming into your business. That’s not the bottom line. It doesn’t tell you how many clients you have or the average value of those clients or how long those clients stick around. Those are all important things to note, but the reality is that it all starts with revenue. From there, you can decide a strategy for your expenses, you can decide a strategy for your clients, but our goal here is to start with a top line of high revenue, so there’s a bottom line available to pay you and your coaches later. In seventh place, a gym from Denmark, $65,580 U.S. In sixth place, another gym from the U.S., $66,333. Now that’s the top—that’s the place 6th to 10th. We’re going to go into the Top 5 here for revenue. What’s interesting is that the fifth-place gym is from Switzerland, and this gym did $67,993, U.S. in one month.
Chris Cooper (03:41):
And that’s really good, but their average is actually a little bit higher. And so, you’ll hear from them what they did this year and what they’ll make sure that they do again to keep their revenue growing. Hey, I’ve got a secret for you. You’re listening to this, you’re not on this leaderboard, but the people who are on the leaderboard are listening too because they’re always trying to get better. The top four gyms this month are all from the U.S. So, U-S-A, U-S-A. Fourth place, $72,235 in revenue. Congratulations. Third place, $81,800 in revenue. So good. Second place, $88,549 in revenue in one month. Incredible, and first place, $90,495 U.S. This is a summer month. This is for a gym owner who deserves it. This is their top-line revenue that they’re using to buy a beautiful facility, hire coaches, change more lives. These numbers were not reached by people who got into the industry for money.
Chris Cooper (04:43):
I’ve never met a person who’s done that in 12 years of mentoring gyms and 16 years of helping them. We’re all in it to help people. But to do that, we have to grow a good business, and revenue is one of the key indicators that show us whether we’re growing a good business or not. So, congratulations. This was a major personal best for the gym that took the top spot in the leaderboard. For other gyms, it wasn’t even a personal best because it’s the summer, but what they’re going to tell you will help you grow your gym to being a personal best month too. Let’s get into their lessons. Our top theme here is consistency. Nobody has these big spiky months and then drops back down again. Now that used to happen in the old ad agency days, you would see these ads for gyms who just had their first $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 month.
Chris Cooper (05:37):
And the ad made it seem like, “Oh, this is going to continue forever. We’ve found the secret solution, and we’re just going to keep doing this,” but the reality, and we all know this by now, is that most of those gyms had one or two good months. The clients who came in and bought a big high-ticket offer left, and two months later the gym was back to where they started, and then they wanted to run the ad again. And so, they did the same ad, six-week program, whatever, and new clients came in, but it didn’t work quite as well. And so, they tried it again and again and again, and they increased ad spend, and clients came in, and clients went out, and they had this big churn problem. And eventually after a year or so, maybe even two of trying this, the gym owner would look around and be like, “Whoa, where did all my regulars go?”
Chris Cooper (06:20):
“Where’s my culture? Where are my coaches?” And what they realized was that these big spiky months didn’t help them long term at all. The key to what I’m about to share with you is consistency. Every gym in Two-Brain is growing a little bit every month, a little bit more, a little bit more. They’re growing faster and faster as we learn more things. Gyms who are in our program today grow way faster than a gym that was in our program even two years ago because of what we’re learning and testing and proving. And so, these gyms are going to share their secrets with you, but what I want you to keep in mind is that they’re not just doing it once and then forgetting about it. They’re being consistent and doing it again and again and again. Alright, here’s their top lessons: First, the number one gym that I just reported had June revenue that was way above their average, but their rolling average of $62,000 a month is still a very strong number.
Chris Cooper (07:11):
That gym focuses on kids, so it’s not a surprise that there’s a revenue spike as summer starts, and the owner recognizes this, and many gym owners have revenue dips in the summer, so it’s very wise to plan for that. And kids programs can be a perfect option for you. I mentioned that in August 2008, I had the worst month ever, and I resolved that I was never going to do that again. And so, the following summer, we had kids camps for hockey every single day. Here’s what this gym owner had to say though. He said, “This number is extraordinary, and it’s an outlier. June is typically our best month of the year, but that being said, since February, we’ve had a pretty solid trajectory upward in our monthly revenue from the previous year.”
Chris Cooper (07:53):
“I expect this increase in revenue from our regular programs to continue based on a new program we put in outside of our normal camp revenue in the summer.” Now, his camp revenue he described as this, he said, “We focused on growing the number of speed camps that we run in the summer. In 2023, we had 135 kids, and we grossed about $27,000 in revenue. In 2024 though, we added three more camps servicing 227 kids and grossing 37k. Each of those camps runs for one hour twice a week for eight weeks, so they take place outside of our facility, and they do not even impact our space needs.” He continued, “Unlike most of the gyms in Two-Brain, we’re focused on the youth market versus adults, and we’re partnered with Parisi Speed School.” You’ve heard them on the podcast before. He said, “We don’t have an adult program yet, so we’re 99% athletes between the ages of eight and 21.”
Chris Cooper (08:48):
“And even within that demographic, we are one of the few that focus on running camps outdoors. Outside camps are easy to implement. They don’t interfere with your gym space needs. They’re a low barrier offer, and they create marketing awareness for parents, athletes, coaches, and siblings for the main sports performance program that we run at our gym.” Amazing. We can all learn from this. If you’re having a bad month right now, plan for next year, get with a mentor, build out an annual plan, and make sure that you have kids camps or even outdoor camps on your schedule next year. Here’s some quotes from the other gyms on our leaderboard. First, client focus. They said, “We create a welcoming community with workouts that meet beginners where they are, and I listen to my members.” Another said, “we are focused on good service and touch points with our clients.”
Chris Cooper (09:35):
A third said, “We focus strictly on our avatar. We only have an unlimited membership. We focus on providing a ton of value for the unlimited membership, and with everything that we provide, it doesn’t make sense for us to have low priced options. Part of this is choosing to focus more on a client avatar that’s comfortable with our rates rather than those looking for the cheapest deal in town.” Very important lesson for everybody. Another gym said, “Retention. We focus on retention, and we just keep focusing on that. It’s not how many we bring in; it’s how many we keep.” Another said annual rate increases were the key to revenue. They said, “Our membership rate increase just took effect, and this is our first year that we’ve announced to our members that this increase will be annual from here forward.” Interesting. Another one said they have a referrals funnel.
Chris Cooper (10:24):
“My most important marketing channel is Google reviews.” Pretty impressive. Another said their paid ads funnel is responsible for their revenue. “This number is consistent for us, and we’re projecting even greater revenue with some advertising initiatives that we’re putting in place starting this month.” Hey, when your ads are working, why not just put more money into them? Another one also mentioned their paid ads funnel. They said, “We started specific advertising initiatives for personal training by shooting high quality videos specifically for Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram.” Another Gym mentioned staffing. They said, “We have a full-time sales director who is literally knocking it out the park,” and staffing was mentioned by another gym. They said, “I’m making a big change today. I’m hiring a right-hand person for my CSM”—this is the person in charge of retention—“to help her with tasks that she’s weak on so she can focus on selling, which she’s very good at.”
Chris Cooper (11:18):
“Since delegating more and more of my work to others, I’ve seen a reduction in my hours for the same pace, so I’m really happy.” And finally, the common theme among all these gyms was using the prescriptive model to sell their service and keep people engaged and using mentorship to keep them on track and focused. One said, “We really do things the Two-Brain way. I think that this works really well in a group training setup as long as you’re able to follow up with people’s goals, update their prescriptions, and individualize. We have five gyms within 500 meters from us offering either just access to functional training equipment or just classes. But still, it feels like we have no competition at all,” because they’re running the prescriptive model. They’re getting the right clients, they’re charging what they’re worth, and they’re keeping those people. They don’t have the high churn problems and low-price pressure of people who just sell group training. By running the prescriptive model, having a mentor, they stand out even among five gyms within 500 meters.
Chris Cooper (12:20):
And finally, one more quote, another on the leaderboard said, “We stick to what Two-Brain shows us and what our mentor helps us with.” Good gyms have mentors. Great gyms have mentors from Two-Brain, and the best gyms stick to what they’re told from their mentors, and they don’t get distracted by all the noise and overwhelm they hear from other gym owners and other people outside the industry. I’m Chris Cooper. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Two-Brain Business is my mentorship practice. It’s built on science, and we do this science by tracking what actually gets results, and then interviewing the people doing those things and sharing those lessons with you and mentoring others to do them. If this is helpful for you, we have these kinds of discussions for free all the time at gymownersunited.com. That’s our free Facebook group. There are 9,500 gyms in that Facebook group from around the world. There’s no sarcasm, no name calling, no guilt. It’s just positive conversation and discussion to help you grow your gym. Thank you for growing your gym. Thank you for helping people. You deserve to be successful. Go out there and get it.
