“How can I stop working 70 hours a week?”
“What will I do if an unexpected expense comes up?”
“How am I ever going to retire?”
As a young gym owner, Two-Brain founder and CEO Chris Cooper asked all these questions, and at first he couldn’t find any answers.
This led him to search inside and outside the fitness industry for a path that led to freedom of money and freedom of time—aka, retirement.
He found that path, and it's the foundation of his latest book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” which he and host Mike Warkentin discuss today on “Run a Profitable Gym.”
In the book, Chris shares his personal journey to $1 million net worth and beyond. But there’s more than one way to reach this milestone, and that’s why the book also includes the step-by-step paths of a dozen other millionaire gym owners.
Two-Brain has certified over 40 millionaire gym owners who have created jobs, saved lives and improved their local communities. We’d like you to join the ranks!
Links
“Millionaire Gym Owner” by Chris Cooper
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:28 - Why did Chris write the book?
4:35 - A timeline for earning
7:47 - Struggling gym owner to millionaire
13:34 - Community around million-dollar gym owners
16:49 - Get your business into a good spot
“How can I stop working 70 hours a week?”
“What will I do if an unexpected expense comes up?”
“How am I ever going to retire?”
As a young gym owner, Two-Brain founder and CEO Chris Cooper asked all these questions, and at first he couldn’t find any answers.
This led him to search inside and outside the fitness industry for a path that led to freedom of money and freedom of time—aka, retirement.
He found that path, and it's the foundation of his latest book, “Millionaire Gym Owner,” which he and host Mike Warkentin discuss today on “Run a Profitable Gym.”
In the book, Chris shares his personal journey to $1 million net worth and beyond. But there’s more than one way to reach this milestone, and that’s why the book also includes the step-by-step paths of a dozen other millionaire gym owners.
Two-Brain has certified over 40 millionaire gym owners who have created jobs, saved lives and improved their local communities. We’d like you to join the ranks!
Links
“Millionaire Gym Owner” by Chris Cooper
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:28 - Why did Chris write the book?
4:35 - A timeline for earning
7:47 - Struggling gym owner to millionaire
13:34 - Community around million-dollar gym owners
16:49 - Get your business into a good spot
Millionaire gym owner. It's more common than you think. In fact, it's so common that Chris Cooper's eighth book is a profile of 14 gym owners who've achieved $1 million in net worth. The Kindle version is out now. Check the link in the show notes and the audio book is coming soon. We'll tell you how to get it. I'm Mike Boton . This is Run A Profitable Gym . Please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Now with me today, Chris Cooper, founder of Two Brain Business and author of Millionaire Gym Owner. Chris , I'm gonna dig right in. Why did you write this book and why should gym owners care, especially gym owners who right now aren't anywhere near Millionaire status? They're drowning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks Mike. Super good question because most of the gym owners that we work with, they didn't get in this for the money they got in this to serve. What I found though is that after battling through that rough state where you're just like trying to survive, you look up for a second and you think, okay, I'm doing okay, but like, how am I gonna last 20 years of this? My kids are getting older, they want to wear clothes <laugh> , you know, my family likes groceries and how am I gonna stop working 70 hours a week? Like, what's gonna happen when I'm 50? Or you know, for me, I got a power lifting injury and it was like, oh my goodness, what happens if I can't work anymore? Like, we're done. And so you start to think about what am I putting away? What, how am I planning to exit this thing? Like how am I gonna retire? Uh, a lot of our parents, you know, they had these career jobs where they had a pension or a 401k or you know, whatever set aside for them, their retirement was predetermined. An entrepreneur doesn't have that. You have to create your own options for retirement and you should start doing that right now. So this book exists to teach entrepreneurs how to do that, but more than anything else, it tells 'em how to create wealth. The the cool part about being an entrepreneur is that retirement doesn't have to mean the same thing for you that it did for your parents. You could retire right now. You could take many retirements throughout the year, or you could just be done at like age 45 or 50 if you want to. It's up to you. But if you don't start creating that wealth for yourself right now, it will never happen. And eventually you're gonna hit age 50, realize that you bought yourself a job for 30 years, you're burned out, you're broke, and you're gonna have to keep going for another 20. I don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1:A lot of gym owners are younger. I mean, I was younger when I started my gym. Same thing with you 20 years ago or whatever it was for you now. And you got a lot of energy and it seems really fun to do the grind. You get up at 5:00 AM close at 9:00 PM but then all of a sudden families start cropping up and life expenses start cropping up. And you do start to think, what am I going to do here? And like when you started your gym, was there a re a path to retirement? Or was it just like you run your gym till you burnout and then you quit and you sell real estate? Like what was that path? What did it look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I didn't even realize that I needed a path until about three and a half years in. And we had my daughter and I, you know, I took a morning off to go to the hospital to see her, and then I worked in the afternoon and I'm like, well, wait a minute. This isn't sustainable.
Speaker 1:What did your wife say to that? I gotta ask, what did your wife say when you're like, I gotta go coach.
Speaker 2:She is incredibly patient. Yeah, she under, she understands that like this is part of the trade off , but also she was like, when's it gonna get better? And I think that was the key. And so I started at that point realizing like, holy crap, you know , I can work really hard and I think I'm pretty smart, but I'm not just figuring this out. And so , okay, well I'll tell you, I'm gonna look for somebody else in the industry who's done what I want to do and just do what they, I'll copy them.
Speaker 1:Did you find anybody? Nobody.
Speaker 2:No , nobody. Like , I looked around locally and it's like, okay, well there's a 60-year-old guy, he's doing personal training, but he's still working like a 50 hour week, huh? How is that guy ever gonna stop this? And then I was like, okay, well let's look around the broader industry. I was writing for Tation at the time, and even the writers there who were giving business advice, they were like 50 years old and grinding every single day, right? Like, look what happened to Paul Quin. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> . And so then I was like, man, the , the only way this happens is if I create it, and I mean even even Greg Glassman, you know, I found CrossFit in like 2007 and here's this 60-year-old dude and it looks like he's still grinding pretty hard. Like, okay, so if , if I'm ever gonna be able to have freedom of time and freedom of money, which is what retirement is, I need to set that up. But if it's up to me to set it up, why can't I set it up so that it happens at age 50 instead of 60 or 45 or whatever?
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna ask you about the people in the book and some of the strategies they they've used, but give me right now, if a gym owner's listening at any stage, whether they're doing well or not well at all, how long would it take them to get to a hundred thousand dollars annual income and then about $1 million in net worth? Do you have a timeline for that? Yeah,
Speaker 2:I mean, when we start with a gym, so they start with mentorship right before they even open their doors. I mean, they're making a hundred KA year in less than two years. What delays that process and takes some gyms longer is that we have to undo a bunch of the mistakes that they made. This was certainly me. Like it , that was me too . It took me, I don't know , like five years to get there. 'cause I had to fix everything that I'd done wrong. But then once I got to a hundred k, the path to a million , uh, in net worth was actually pretty fast, like two to three years. And that's because now I was open to just taking other people's advice instead of making a bunch of bad guesses. So what we see typically is like if a gym perfect scenario, they start with us before they even open their doors within about two years. It's actually two years, one month, nine days, they're making about a hundred k like in, in annualized revenue , uh, income. And then two , 2.5 years after that, they can get to a million. And the the key though is like they do it in steps. So first you make your income, then you're making a little bit more than you need and you start making investments. And then after your investments create wealth, then you start thinking about impact in your community and, and creating a legacy and creating a business that's not gonna fold, like when you decide it's it's enough or you're gonna retire.
Speaker 1:So I'll just round it up , listeners, if you're out there and no matter where you are and you're, you know, whether you haven't started a gym, you're thinking about it or whether you're running a gym, it's not doing well, or whether you're running a great gym in about three years, you could earn or achieve $1 million net worth status if you follow the right path. And that's, that's Chris said, that's the average. Some, some clients of ours do it faster, some do it slower, but that's the average. That's pretty great. So again, think about it in what other career could you do that? Yeah,
Speaker 2:I think maybe we better define what net worth means. So yeah , go for it. Income is like what your gym pays you every year. We call that net owner benefit because not everybody takes dollars outta their gym. Like maybe the gym pays for their cell phone or whatever, right? But like the net benefit that you get from the gym net worth is looking at you as an entrepreneur and saying , if you sold everything that you own for cash, including your business, your building, whatever, and you paid off all your debts out of that cash and you still had a million dollars left over , you're a millionaire. And we actually had to define that because we're in the age of like Instagram millionaires, where somebody makes $80,000 one time, takes a picture leading up against the Lambo, and like they're calling themselves a millionaire. So we, we say that a a million dollars net worth is what makes you a millionaire. We audit people on this. We don't let them just say it. And then when they actually achieve that status, we send them a big plaque. Congratulations, this is, you've done it like you're a successful entrepreneur. We interview them and uh, we put them in books like this one. And so this book is really about like 14 out of the 52 brain gyms who have produced millionaires and their paths.
Speaker 1:Let's dig into that a little bit. So tell me who are these people that are in the book and then give me some of the strategies like tease, tease a little bit what, without giving the whole book away, but like what have these people done to achieve this, this , you know, $1 million net worth, which is such, such an impressive thing considering that I know that some of them in the book were struggling badly, you know, even a few years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's more than one story in the book of a gym owner who wasn't breaking even three and a half years ago and now they're a millionaire. And like, while we don't say that's the typical path, that is what can happen. And we include it in the book as like an aspirational path to inspire you. So the first thing they did was fix their business. They started making an income, they reinvested the excess, and now here they are. But there's a lot of different ways that you can do it. And entrepreneurship gets pretty fun when you have options like this. So I didn't just want to tell the story of how I did it. What we did was we interviewed these people extensively. Like for hours, what exactly did you do? How much money did you put into your first Airbnb? Uh, how much money did you put into this? What did it mean that you bought overfunded whole life insurance? How, how exactly does that work? And like how did that open up these other avenues and what did you do with that money? You know, so for example, I'll talk about Taryn Dub Bri , four years. She went from kind of broke gym owner, two millionaire, and she built her gym up to the place where it was paying her a little bit more than she needed. Her family always used to vacation in Arizona. And so her first investment was an Airbnb property in Arizona. Took her, I don't know, nine or 10 months to put that deal together because she had to learn about Airbnbs and she had to learn about buying property in another country and she had to find the right people. And then through our Tinker program, she made those connections and got that education and then bought her first Airbnb and then it started paying for itself right away. And she bought another one, you know, down the street in the same town. And so that's part of her wealth strategy that got her there. Other people, they just put money into like other businesses, you know. So Tommy Elto , uh, he took money from the gym, his gym was crushing it, making more than he needed , uh, to earn. And he opened up a whiskey distillery, right? Super awesome, but I'm not gonna do that. <laugh> , like I, I buy buildings and bonds, boring businesses. It's like our, our three B strategy, right? Buildings, bonds and boring stuff. But again, it's because I'm like 48 years old and I just don't have the passion to go start a distillery anymore. I just want my money to be working for me while I sleep. And then you've got people who are super duper aggressive with this stuff, like Sean Rider and he's gonna talk in the book about the barbell investment strategy. He's gonna talk about overfunded whole life. He's gonna talk about like his building strategy, which is different again from mine. So what I wanted to do is not just say, here's a bunch of options, but like literally step by step , here's how this person did it, here's the steps they took. And then, you know, one of the greatest points in the book, and my favorite is Kenny Marquardt . And you know what , what he's saying is like, at this level, you're probably gonna have to try a few things before you figure out what you really like. So for example , um, some people in the book said, I'm gonna open a second gym. And then they discovered that wasn't their passion after all, and they consolidated back to one gym. Or the opposite could happen too. I'm gonna go buy crypto, actually I hate this. I'm good at op owning a gym. I'm gonna open a second location, or I'm gonna buy out a neighbor. And the book like walks you through those steps too . So it's, it's tactical like my other books for gym owners, but I also want to make those strategies stick by like telling stories from people who've actually done it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because I know the people that are in the book and they're scattered all over the place. So there are different strategies will work in different places. And there's also just different types of entrepreneurs. Like for me, I would , I would not want to run a second location in a gym. It's just not something I'd wanna do. I kind of gravitate more to what you would do. I'd wanna put money into like safe things where I don't have to think about it, Tommy, who we've had on the show, I'm gonna start a completely new business in a completely new market and I'm gonna make whiskey. Like how incredible is that? But the point that I'm seeing here is that these entrepreneurs now have options and they can choose what they want to do because they've got the time and the money. Talk to me a little bit about the time because it's not just like 1 million net worth isn't just about the money. There's gotta be a time element in there too, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it , I know , uh, a few gym owners who have gotten to a point where their gym is doing well, like maybe the gym is even doing a million a year in revenue. That's amazing. But they're grinding 67 hours a week still. Like it's just not sustainable. And they sell out close down and like they're out of the industry now. Or there are other people too who like, they got their gym too barely breaking even and now they're gonna go start a software company or something. And now that , like the software company is making the money, but the gym is dragging their time down and there's, you know, freedom of time is, it's awesome. It's the best part of entrepreneurship. But it can also be a bit of a barrier too, because, you know, you grind for seven or eight years, you've got this business, yes, I've got a little bit more money than I need and I've got a little bit of free time. What am I gonna do now? You know, my first instinct was like, I'm opening a coffee shop, I love coffee. And luckily a friend of mine , uh, said, why would you wanna ruin the other thing that you care about? You know, so, you know, but I'm super guilty. Like I've started probably seven or eight companies since Catalyst became successful and closed them all except for, for Two Brain , because my time is my greatest investment. Some people though too, like, they'll say, okay, now I've bought back 10 hours a week, I don't have to go in on Fridays. I'm not spending Sundays programming anymore. I'm actually gonna put that into time with my family. And um, you know, David Allen tells his story in the book where he's like, I'm smart, I'm good at business now I know what to do, but my kids are only gonna be three and five once. And so in this season of my life, like that's where my time is going. Uh , so there's a lot of that too.
Speaker 1:Now, the , the whole wealth thing is becoming, you know, a bit of a political issue and so forth. Tell me why it's important for a gym owner to want to be a millionaire. Like what happens to a community and the people around that gym owner when the gym owner achieves 1 million net worth or more and freedom of time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, so the reason that wealth now, you know, gets crapped on is because we were all brought up in this culture where , uh, wealthy people were bad. Like they only got their money by taking it from other people. And even if you look at like Disney movies, all the villains are, are wealthy and all the wealthy people are villains, right? Like, there are very few positive role models. And when somebody is successful to the point of inspiration, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, the media is gonna try and find something wrong with them. Like Elon Musk can't keep a girlfriend and Bill, bill Gates , uh, I , I don't know what the problem with Bill Gates is these days, but like
Speaker 1:Something, they find something. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and we learned from an early age that like you, you trash the people who are ahead of you because they must have cheated to get there. It's jealousy that's not, it's jealous. Yeah, sure. But that's not the reality. The reality is that like the, the people who became wealthy most of the time are very generous with that wealth, you know? And , um, there's nobody more generous than gym owners who opened up their gym to serve, not even expecting to ever reach this point. Like, you wanna put money into the hands of those people. You don't want to put money into the hands of the shysters and the tricksters. And so making gym owners wealthy, it benefits the community because they create jobs. They pay more taxes than anybody else. Like, I've paid over a million in taxes this year. They employ people in careers that these people are passionate about and they save lives. Like that's what they're doing with this money. They're not buying private jets, they're not like investing in oil spills, <laugh> . They are saving more and more lives and like, you know, they're reinvesting in their gym, making it bigger. They're reinvesting in their staff, giving them better careers, they're paying more taxes. You know, like they're, they're making their local communities better. And that's why gym owners need to become wealthy so they can push all these other hucksters and shysters to the side.
Speaker 1:I've talked to a lot of wealthy gym owners on this show, and inevitably when I speak to them, one of the first things they mentioned as important is careers for staff members. They're all to a fault, passionate about creating great jobs for other people. We're not talking like $35,000, you know, grinded out gym, personal trainer jobs. They're talking about like $80,000 a year gym jobs with benefits and satisfaction. And that's really cool for me because it's really difficult to do that. And they're actually, you know, doing incredible work to create these opportunities for people to thrive and expand the fitness, fitness industry and reach more people and improve health. And there's a whole trickle down effect that's fairly obvious to everyone in the fitness industry and somehow not obvious to people who aren't in the fitness industry. And then in addition to that, I've heard so many things from these gym owners about the things that they do in their community and whether it's like sponsorship of events or , uh, scholarships or, you know, donations of things or investment in other things, once they have this money, they never do something good with it. So these are good people doing good things with money, not hiding it away and buying, you know, private islands that they fly to and so forth. It's, it's , it's an interesting thing when good people get a little bit of extra money. So let's look at this as we close this show out. Gym owner is out there listening to the show, maybe a little bit overwhelmed by the thought of like achieving a million dollar net worth status in three years or less. Step one is, is gonna be that current business. How do they do that, Chris? Like how do they, they're right now the fires are raging. How do they put out a few fires and start moving forward to get that first business into a good spot?
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to do by yourself. I mean, we're all kind of out there in our own heads. You need somebody that's objective, that is number one, gonna tell you what you have to fix. Number two, have fixed it themselves so that they can say, here is how you fix this. And number three, like holds you accountable for doing it. So we say that every gym owner needs a goal of a plan and somebody to hold 'em to that plan, just like the your clients do in your gym. Like if your client has a clear goal, a good plan to get there, and you're coaching them to get there, you're gonna keep them around. That's gonna solve your problem. And they're going to actually hit their goal. And that's what we do with mentorship. It's the gym owner has a goal, they have a plan, and they have somebody holding them to the plan who's actually done it. I mean, in the, in the fitness industry, there are so many people out there saying , giving you advice who have never actually done it in their gym. And so that's really, really important to me. So the first thing is like, you fix those fires, but that's not it. Like, it's not enough to just break even. And that's kind of the point of the book. You have to have a strategy for growth and maybe your goal for growth is, I just wanna provide better income for my trainers. Wonderful. The first step is let's prove that your gym can provide a good income for you, right? Like you are the one that's the first test of your model. So if your gym can't give you a good income, it cannot give somebody else a good income either. There, there are a lot of gym owners out there who are, as you said, like generous to a fault, right? They'll, they'll commit to paying somebody a $50,000 a year salary before they're making any money themselves. And that it, it seems like generosity, but it's actually like risking that other person's career because you haven't proven that your business can pay anybody 50,000 a year. You are the crash test dummy. It has to pay you first so that it can prove it can do it. And then the other thing that they, they try to do is they try to make investments too soon or they're generous with money they don't have. So, hey, my business is breaking even. I'm gonna go buy a building. Okay? But when like the roof of that building leaks, not only is it going to bankrupt like your mortgage, but it's also gonna put your business in jeopardy. 'cause now you gotta suck the money from somewhere. So it's really important that gym owners take this path of like making income, then make investments and then worry about like your long-term impact in the community.
Speaker 1:The path is laid out in the book and you can read the book and check out who these people are. And honestly you can work with some of them as a mentor. And if you wanna talk about how to do that , uh, link in the show notes. You can book a call, find out exactly how this path would work for you and your unique business. Uh, Chris Con congrats on book eight. I see a bunch of 'em behind you. This is , uh, do you ever think you'd get to eight?
Speaker 2:I didn't think I'd get to what <laugh> . So , so eight's great.
Speaker 1:That's cool guys. And this book, millionaire Gym Owner is now out on Kindle. There's a link in the show notes you can get at the audio book is coming soon, and we will tell you exactly where you can get that if that is your jam. But for now, get that link in the show notes and then take your steps today to start moving from wherever you are to a hundred K net owner benefit, and then to $1 million net worth. Chris, thanks so much for being here. Thanks
Speaker 2:Buddy .
Speaker 1:This is Run a Profitable Gym . I'm Mike Kinan , that was Chris Cooper. If you want to continue this conversation, please head to gym owners united.com and we'll see you there . Thanks .