The Two-Brain gyms with the most clients aren’t using secret ad campaigns to flood their gyms with leads and push people into cheap memberships.
In fact, they’re doing the opposite.
Our top 10 gyms all have more than 370 members, and they’re focusing on business fundamentals rather than one-time-wonder marketing tricks. Here’s what our leaders are working on:
- Lead nurture and sales with the Prescriptive Model.
- Retention and A+ business systems.
- Sustainable growth (one gym actually reduced ad spend to focus on staffing so new clients don’t overwhelm their systems).
- Average revenue per member (ARM).
- Impeccable service delivery and solid staffing.
And here are the client totals that plan can produce:
These are incredible numbers, and they’re all from single locations (the No. 2 and No. 3 gyms are owned by the same person, but we ranked them separately).
These gyms also all sell coaching. We don’t include access-only gyms on this board. We see a clear line in our metrics: Gyms that sell access only have ARM scores of about $40 or $50, while gyms that sell access and coaching have three-figure ARM scores.
For example, one gym on our leaderboard sells everything from 24/7 access to PT with a consultative process. People don’t just buy an access membership and hit the leg press at 3 a.m. They have a conversation, and the salesperson recommends the best path—which might be a basic access membership or a high-value PT package.
This gym is a great example of how fitness facilities can boost ARM with high-value services: Its ARM is two to three times that of an access-only gym.
Take a look at your ARM: What would happen to your business if every single client paid another $10 a month? What about $20?
How about $80?
I’m serious here, not just asking you to daydream. High-value service can make those numbers a reality. (Proof: Our most recent ARM leaderboard.)
To help you acquire and retain more high-value clients, I’ll give you the top tips from our leaders for client count.
Tips From Gym Owners With 370+ Members
Nurturing and Sales Skills
“Over the past month, we’ve cut our ad spend by more than 50 percent and shifted our focus toward sales training and lead nurturing instead. We maintained the same intake rate and even saw a slight increase in front-end revenue—all while spending half as much on ads. So that’s been amazing.”
Retention
“We doubled down on reaching out to at-risk clients. Normally, we track members who haven’t visited the gym in 14 days. We’ve now lowered that threshold to just eight days. Naturally, that increased the number of people on the list significantly, but we committed to calling through it four days a week. Out of 472 members, only eight haven’t shown up in the past eight days, so the effort is definitely paying off.”
“The first thing we worked on when we bought the gym in 2023 was the systems. The churn rate was high, so we started on retention and systems. We saw a lot of change and progress.”
Hybrid: Group, Small Group, Hyrox
“The main service is group classes: 400 students, with lots of scheduled classes—all CrossFit, Hyrox or simpler metabolic classes. Plus, we added small-group training, with 28 members so far. … After six months of running the business, we realized we wanted higher revenues and added small-group training. We are using our metrics to make decisions.”
“We added Hyrox in December 2024. Conditioning classes are similar to Hyrox, so this was easy to add. The Hyrox brand is getting a lot of exposure. It’s been a good experience. We added the classes when we didn’t have anything else scheduled and have 26 people in a class.”
Calculated, Sustainable Growth
“Last month, we turned on ads and needed to turn those down because we don’t have enough staff now. Adding to the team is the new focus.”
Metrics-Based Decisions
“We are trying to reduce the total members because we are trying to increase ARM. We started at 500 Kroner 7.5 years ago when we opened up, and now we’re 649. The increase has come across the last three years.” Note: This is an increase of about $76 to $100 USD, but in Denmark, this is a very big deal. Fitness in Denmark is undervalued, and our gyms are working to change that.
Staffing
“I hired a CSM for a three-month internship. We measured the No Sweat Intros and goal reviews. Her goal is to double the goal reviews and NSIs. She is also doing three months of internship with the marketing agency we use. She is tasked with uncovering what is our top 10 percent of content and seeing how that’s doing so we can produce less media overall and focus only on the high-performing stuff.”
“Two years ago, I hired a box manager. … If I see there are improvements we need, the GM comes up with the solution as an operator.”
Mentorship After Starting With Free Resources
“We’ve been growing since starting with Two-Brain in February 2025. This is a box with 13 years of history, and we’ve owned it since 2023. We were mainly growing from the Two-Brain methods laid out in free content, and we went from 289 clients with the old owners to 400+. We decided to invest in the business—with Two-Brain. We focused on adding on-ramp, and we usually have 10-15 new clients per month. Cancelations are down.”
Business Virtuosity
I hope these quotes from real gym owners convince you that solid fundamentals are the secret to huge client counts.
Not ads or discounts or low prices.
If you focus on fundamentals—if you pursue business virtuosity—your gym will grow on the strength of high-value members who stay for years, not months.
Here’s something simple you can do today to add to your client count: Send a message to five of your former members and ask them how they’re doing. Then message five leads and ask them if they want to talk about their fitness goals today.
And if you want help creating a wide foundation of systems for a fitness business that will last for 30 years, book a call to talk about mentorship.
