My new book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” will show you the path to wealth.
Not a theoretical path but the actual routes taken by over 30 gym owners in our Tinker program—gym owners who are real millionaires.
The book is really a catalogue of their journeys, with step-by-step breakdowns of every move they made. I share my journey, of course—but I wrote the book to give you proven paths to wealth. And there are several.
If this isn’t appealing to you, I invite you to read the previous two blog posts about wealth:
- In the first, I wrote about why I want to make gym owners wealthy (it’s not for the Lambo shots on Instagram).
- In the second, I wrote that $1 million in savings won’t be enough for you to retire.
Here, I’ll share two paths to wealth: buying assets and reinvesting. We teach people how to walk both paths—and others, if they choose—in our Tinker program for gym owners.
Real Estate
The first retirement strategy I learned comes from “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki.
In short: Buy a building once and rent it out forever.
This is not the “buy, fix and flip” strategy that makes for good TV. This is the “buy and hold” strategy that makes for wealth.
I started with buying a building for my gym. My mortgage payment was $3,600 a month (about what I was already paying in rent). After the purchase, my money went to the bank instead of a landlord. And when the mortgage was paid off, the money started flowing straight to me—and it will do so forever.
My plan was to pay off the mortgage quickly, bank the mortgage payments and then rent the building to someone else when it was time to retire. I figured that would earn me $3,600 a month (or $43,200 per year) for life. It’s not quite enough to retire, but it’s pretty good.
This is what Kiyosaki calls a “cash-flow asset”: You buy it once and it pays you forever.
This was before the days of Airbnb and Vrbo. Multifamily purchasing groups weren’t popular yet. But the strategy still works: I collect well over $100,000 per year in net rental income from my commercial properties now. I could retire solely on that if I wanted to.
Reinvesting
The next strategy is reinvesting your profit.
I personally love a “barbell strategy” for investments, and not just because of the name. This comes from Nassim Taleb, who recommends having a lot of really conservative investments, one or two higher-risk investments and nothing in between. Like a barbell, you’re heavily weighted on both ends instead of spreading your investments across 10 different things.
As a gym owner, my business is my high-risk investment. It’s my passion project. Luckily, it pays me a great yield—far more than I’d make in the market. But that doesn’t mean I should own five different types of businesses. Instead, I should maximize that business, take the profits out and put them in conservative investments that won’t take my attention away from my core business.
The last thing I need is something else that will wake me up at 4 a.m., have me obsessing over it and send me running around all day.
If I opened a coffee shop, for example, I’d scratch an entrepreneurial itch, but the coffee shop would probably fail, and it would hurt my gym. So I own a gym, make money and spend lots of time in other people’s coffee shops.
Where do I put the money? Into conservative investments.
The exact investments change over time, but as I’m writing this I’m looking for bonds or other high-security spots where time is on my side. I can play the long game with those because my short game is to be all-in on my gym.
Many Paths, One Goal
Of course, there are other ways to build wealth. The key is to grow your gym so it’s providing a good income now, as well as a little bit extra that you can invest into your future. In my book, you’ll read about few dozen ways people have done it.
The victory for me isn’t convincing you that one way is best; the victory is that over 30 gym owners in Two-Brain have found ways to build wealth and are willing to share their paths with you.
Fifteen years ago, there were no models of success in fitness. Now we certify two millionaires every month at Two-Brain. I can’t think of a more successful outcome.
That’s why I’m so excited to share this book with you: to give you the inspiration I wanted as a new gym owner!
Other Media in This Series
“What Is Wealth? (And Why Gym Owners Should Pursue It.)”
“Entrepreneurs: Why $1 Million Isn’t Enough to Retire”
