Darren Thornton, a Two-Brain alumnus, built a CrossFit gym doing more than a million dollars a year in revenue with seven full-time coaches on salary. He recently took a 10-week trip living in a van with almost no contact with the gym, and came back to find the business had grown while he was gone.
That kind of freedom came from two decisions Darren made years ago about how he hires and how he built his membership model.
Watch our full conversation below, or keep reading for the key points.
He Built a Hiring Process That Filters Itself
Darren didn’t start out good at hiring. He built a system to compensate for that, and now it runs almost on autopilot.
It starts before a job is even posted. Darren has his core values and expectations written down in detail. A coach coming from an unpolished CrossFit box and a coach who’s run their own business solo for 15 years need very different onboarding, so he plans for both up front. He posts openings on Indeed, Instagram, Facebook and his email list, since he’s hired successfully from each of them at different times.
The real filter kicks in after someone applies. Darren builds small tests into the process on purpose. The job posting asks applicants to send a follow-up email, and anyone who skips that step is out, since it tells him they didn’t read the instructions closely. Everyone who clears that bar has to complete three unpaid workouts at the gym as a participant. Darren isn’t evaluating their fitness during those workouts. He’s watching whether they introduce themselves to members, whether they wipe down equipment without being asked, and whether they go slightly above and beyond without being told to.
Out of roughly 100 applications, about 20 people send the follow-up email. Of those, around five make it through all three workouts. By the time a candidate reaches a formal interview, Darren knows they’re worth a real conversation.
Those interviews cover a candidate’s three-to-five-year plan, why they want to be in the fitness industry long term, and scenario questions tied to Defy’s core values—like how they’d react to a bad day or getting outperformed by a member.
From there, Darren has four possible outcomes: a hard no, an invitation to join as a paying member first if they show promise but lack experience, a guaranteed minimum-pay trial if he’s not fully sold or a direct offer: typically a $60,000 to $70,000 salary with a 90-day mutual trial built in.
Running a hiring process this selective takes a steady supply of guaranteed coaching hours. That’s exactly the problem Darren’s second decision solved.
He Stopped Selling Group Classes and Started Selling Coaching
When Darren joined Two-Brain, his gym was doing under $10,000 a month running the classic all-group-class CrossFit model. By the time he left, it was clearing $1 million a year.
The shift traced back to a gym Darren had coached at in the Middle East, where personal training was a mandatory add-on to every membership. At the time, he assumed it only worked because the clientele was wealthy. But the math stuck with him: With 200 members each doing a minimum of three personal training sessions a month, that’s 600 coaching hours a month, built into the membership itself and guaranteed regardless of how group class attendance fluctuated.
Coming out of the pandemic, Darren rebuilt his own gym around that model. Every new member now completes six personal training sessions before they’re allowed into a group class, regardless of prior experience. The ongoing membership includes three group classes a week plus one personal training session every four weeks as the baseline, with no group-only option available.
Group classes still matter. They’re about 40% of revenue today, and they’re where the gym’s community lives. But the personal training requirement opened up room for 40 personal training sessions a day inside a schedule that only ever had space for six or seven group classes, and that’s what funds seven full-time salaries.
Darren expected pushback and got very little. He lost a handful of prospective members early on who only wanted to join a friend’s group class. He held the line, repositioned the gym’s marketing around coaching rather than group fitness, and let referrals, who already understood the model from friends who’d been through it, carry the rest.
The Two Decisions Are Connected
Darren’s hiring process works because his membership model produces enough guaranteed hours to make full-time coaching jobs real. His membership model works because he has coaches skilled enough to deliver a genuinely personalized service at scale.
A gym’s revenue often depends entirely on group class capacity, which is capped by how many time slots fit in a day. Darren broke that ceiling by building a service that scales with staff instead of square footage.
If you want help building a hiring system or membership model like this in your own gym, a Two-Brain mentor can map it out with you. Book a call here to get started.
