Earn More as a Gym Owner: Lessons From Industry Leaders

Most gym owners don’t start their businesses to get rich, but that doesn’t mean they should struggle to make a living.

In fact, the better a gym pays its owner, the more likely it is to stay in business and change more lives.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper reveals the Top 10 gym owners for net owner benefit (NOB)—take-home pay. More importantly, he breaks down exactly what the top earners are doing to bring home between $19k and $30k per month.

These gym owners have a few key things in common: They repeat simple, effective habits instead of constantly chasing new tactics; they raise rates annually to account for inflation; and they focus on retention and delivering exceptional value to clients.

Chris also explains why NOB is the best measure of a gym’s health and covers some of the biggest mistakes gym owners make—like adding more members without increasing NOB—and how to avoid them.

If you’re tired of just getting by, tune in to hear proven strategies for increasing your income.

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01:51 - Our Top 10 earners

04:23 - What they have in common

07:54 - Retention and service delivery

12:37 - Reputation and social media

16:36 - Smart financial planning

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey, when I ask you how your gym is doing, you probably say pretty good without even thinking about it, or you might say it's going along. Okay. Well , what picture is formed in your mind that you're using to measure how well your gym is doing? At Two Brain , we use a variety of metrics, but the key one is net owner benefit because a gym that's doing well is also paying you well, and that is the number one sign that your gym is healthy and strong, resilient, and it's gonna be around for a long time. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym, and today I wanna show you who's doing the best at the Metric Net Owner benefit from among our thousand gyms worldwide. I wanna talk about the top 10 gyms who paid themselves the most last month. Now, the reason that we're doing this is not because I wanna highlight who the greedy gym owners are. That's ridiculous. Nobody gets into this business because they're greedy or they think that they're going to be a millionaire. And what we have shown that that is possible. The reality is that most of us get the majority of a reward from coaching other people to live longer, healthier, happier lives. That said, a metric that we wanna look at for gym owners is going to be net owner benefit, because let's face it, the reason that people quit this industry is not because they lose their passion. They don't get bored with helping other people. They don't burn out on changing lives. They leave because of money. They might tell you it's another reason like, oh, I rekindled my passion for selling real estate, or, well, my wife's dad offered me this amazing job selling Corvettes. They might say that, but the reality is that it always comes back to money. They might say something like, well, you know, I just, I had after the third coach left and started their own gym. I was so mad. Well, they wouldn't have left if there was more money. I'm just tired of the stress and you know, fighting with my wife and working the long hours. All those problems are solved with money. Money doesn't solve every problem, but it sure solves the money problems. And today I'm gonna tell you about 10 gyms who have really solved that money problem. These are the top 10 net owner benefit owners from the two Brain family last month. And I'm gonna give you their top tips too. So the reason that you wanna stick around for this is not just to hear how much better everybody is doing than you are. The reason is that you want to learn from the best, just like you wanna learn from the fastest 5K runner in the world. First we gotta figure out who that is. Then, just like you wanna learn from the best dev lifter in the world, we gotta figure out who that is. Today I'm gonna tell you who the top net owner benefit gyms are in the world, and then I'm gonna share their top lessons with you. They have graciously , uh, given us their top tips and here they come. So first, the top 10 , uh, the 10th gym was in Ireland, and these are all in USD. We adjust, you know, for local currency to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples. Uh , gym number 10 is from Ireland. The owner made $19,603 last month. That was take home . That's one month. That's not their gross revenue from all of the money that's coming into the gym. That's what they took home with them. Congrats. Amazing. From there, everybody was above 20,000 and we had a few gyms in the us . One hit 20,790, congratulations. One hit 20,973. So they're 183 bucks ahead . Another hit 21,457 and number six hit 21,547 $90. Difference in Take home , sell some more T-shirts nor five was 21,817. Congratulations. Fourth place last month came from Norway, $23,923, take home one month, USD and the top three were all in the us . Now this is becoming more rare in our leaderboards. I'll share their numbers in a moment, but more and more we see more international diversity in our leaderboards. We see some gyms from Mexico, for example, last month took the top , uh, spot for clients, signed up, and uh, I immediately got a call from the person in second place and he is like, he's from the uk, I gotta beat Mexico next month. Amazing. That's what we're after here. So the top three I hope inspire you the same way that you know, this gym owner from the UK last month was inspired by the gym owner in Mexico to do even better. Third place last month for net owner benefit was $24,740 us . That's one month. Second place was 28,919. Amazing and first place last month cracked the $30,000 take home , uh, net owner benefit score. Amazing. They were also from the us Uh , let's start with what these gyms have in common. So first off, they're all using very simple but incredibly effective tactics. Nobody talks about running new or huge ad campaigns or complicated strategies for getting people in or, you know, I'll give you a discount if you bring your friend. None of that, they're just doing the right stuff repeatedly. So for example, and you'll hear this in my specific , uh, tactics from these gyms , uh, generating referrals with regular bring a friend events , they're doing this right? They're not just having a free community workout on Saturday. Like that doesn't work. They're not running a bring a friend day once every three years. They're doing it quarterly. They're doing it by the book. They're following our exact template to get people to come in to come with their friend who's already in the gym to book straight into a no sweat intro and then convert into a membership. There's a strategy to this. It's not just something you throw against the wall and you know, doing it right makes all the difference. Next, all of these gyms are raising their rates annually. Now that is really important because in times of high inflation, it's very common for a gym owner to just kind of forget to raise their rates and you know, their, their clients are paying more for everything else, but they're not paying more from for the gym at a time when it seems like they naturally should be. And so the cost of rent goes up and the cost of heat and lights and power and insurance and everything else goes up. The , the loan cost go up as inflation increases the cost for the gym go up and if they forget to raise their rates to match it, they're gonna lose profit margin, they're gonna go backward. They might even start losing more money and it might mean the difference between breaking even and losing money. So these gyms were all raising their rates annually. Very interesting. All of them said that they focused on retention and service delivery. So not only are they offering a good product, which is like the minimum, right? We want everybody to do that, that's necessary but insufficient for this kind of success. They were all doing that, but more than that, they were focused on keeping people around long enough to get the benefit from their service. Another one, this is all common is uh , like all of these top 10 are moving beyond just running group classes to offering high value services like personal training, semi-private, or for example, corporate programs featured largely, okay, so eight outta the 10 gyms on our leaderboard are in the us There were a lot of people who repeated on this leaderboard over and over over the last, you know, four months, but the number one gym was higher than normal because of a December bonus. Now, typically we don't do this. What we do is we take a three months running average because we want people who have had like consistent success, but in this case, that number one gym would have been among the top three anyway, even without the bonus, the bonus just pushed them up above 30,000. And that's such a, a great high watermark. I wanted to share it with you. Okay, so of this top 10 also one gym splits, its total among three owners, but the overall amount is consistent. So if you're splitting $20,000 in take home across three owners, that's three people making a pretty good income. But if you're splitting 1000 a month or 2000 a month across three owners, that's three poor people. So it's really important, like when you start a gym and you, you take partners, you wanna make sure that everybody's contributing to the growth because it's sometimes not a lot of money to split three ways, okay? And sometimes the net owner benefit that might be sustainable for a single owner is not sustainable for two or three. And then you get into this buyout thing where people are going broke and losing their, their stake . When you're taking a partner, you really wanna ask yourself like, is this partner going to add to my growth or am I taking it because I feel scared and I I want a buddy along with me. Alright, let's talk quotes from these leaders. So first , uh, there was a common theme as always about retention and service delivery. So the first leader said, we are building better connections with each member. Retention is improved and our churn is better. Our NOB number took us 12 months to get there, but we built that by building better retention. We built toward it. Uh, the next one is attendance tracking. So these people take retention to a a deeper level. They said we reach out each week if a client doesn't attend and we reach out to every client every single month, I'm responsible for 160 CrossFit class members each month I will come up with a prompt I'll use to text or call about 40 people a week. So that's interesting. They're, they're texting about eight people every single day. They've split up their membership across all of their coaches and they're each responsible for about 150 each, right? That number just keeps coming up in the most successful gyms and they make sure that they've got that one-on-one connection going. What is the ROI on this massive NOB? You know, what's the investment? It's your time. You have to do it, your staff has to do it, they have to be trained to do it well and you know, you have to use like a prompt. You have to have a reason to start this conversation. Now that's a lot of work. It's true, but here's the reality. While the people at the top of the NLB leaderboard haven't changed a lot in the last four months, what's interesting is that there are CrossFit gyms up there. And if you look historically over the last couple of years you've seen that the gyms that are usually at the top of the NOB leaderboard are more semi-private. You know, their , their costs are low, their revenues are high, their profit margin is big. It's rare that you see this kind of NOB going to a CrossFit gym because the problem, the challenge with CrossFits that only run group classes is that every time they grow they add more expenses. So they, you know, they get to 150 clients, well now we need a bigger space. They get a bigger space. Now they're not making as much income anymore. Well let's get up to 200 clients. Okay, now we're back to even with income. Let's get a bigger space. We need more equipment. They just keep kicking profitability down the road. But when they apply the T brand model where they're adding some higher value services just for the clients who want it, number one, they boost their net owner benefit. But number two, they actually keep these clients around longer. And you can see here it is in action. This person is running CrossFit gym with a lot of members. They're talking to each person one-on-one every single month. And if somebody hasn't attended for a week, they're talking to them every single day until they get back. You can't do that if you are hustling and grinding and not making any money, you have to be profitable and then reinvest that profit into staff who can do this. And then that just helps you get bigger and bigger and more profitable. Alright, so the next one said, we simplified our areas of focus sticking to making our class experience better. Hey , great. Another one said in the last 12 months we've been seeing a lot of results with double coaching. That helps with training and the members get more coaching. Steady attendance tells us that they like this. So what's interesting here and and your top takeaway is not like I need to double coach everybody even though I'm losing money. It's do the basics really well get profitable. Then reinvest that profit into things like staff hours to call your clients into things like doubling up your coaching at your busy classes and that's how you take it to the next level. You don't start by impoverishing yourself double coaching everybody when you can't afford it. You know, and like hoping that's gonna fix your problems. It's not if you're lost on which step to take first, talk to a mentor. The next one said that they credit their referral funnel with bringing in most of their new clients. 80% of their new clients come from referrals. So they said we ran our fourth or or fifth bring a friend event, which gives us more qualified leads. Absolutely true, but you have to do it right. Another one said, we ran our first bring a friend Friday whether to put a damper on the event, but we still had half our people turn out and we booked some no sweat intros. And this one, so huge 80% of our growth comes from referrals. Listen, that doesn't happen by accident. You don't just sit around waiting for referrals and get 80% of your leads coming for referrals. If your gym has 80% of your leads coming from referrals and you're not doing anything to, to make that happen faster, then you're just waiting and hoping you have to have a system for this. And that's what these gyms are talking about. There are gyms listening to this right now who are not profitable or not very profitable and they say , well we're doing the same thing like we ran and bring a friend event . We , uh, you know, 80% of our leads come from referrals. Yes, but these gyms are doing it better. They're doing it on purpose, they're doing it with intent, they're tracking the results from it and they're saying, how can we do this even better next time? That is the difference. It's not like you're gonna hear a secret tactic on this podcast, but I want you to take away is that the secret is doing it better. And if you're not sure how to do it better than what you're currently doing, that's what you need to talk to a mentor about. The next gym on the top 10 NLB leaderboard said that they focused on reviews in their content funnel for the first time. So this person said, Hey, a local gym closed down in that helped us. But the boost came because we have a great reputation and social media presence. We're the only gym in town that has 150 reviews and five stars. We got those tactically we knew that was very important. We ask our members, would you leave us a five star review? It's usually after we've given them something or they've hit a PR or they're at like a peak moment, we're so excited that we've been able to help you. Would you be able to give us a review? Now here's the thing, did they get lucky when the other gym closed down? I wouldn't call them lucky. You know, lucky is where preparation meets opportunity and they've spent years preparing for this so that when opportunity arose, they were there to capture it. You know, it's like the the right, the train comes into the station and it's carrying the person with the million dollar ticket. Well, if you're not at the station, that million dollar ticket's gonna go to somebody else. You have to be at the station every day . And that's what it means to get 155 star reviews. That's what it means to have great content, great social media presence. When this gym closed, probably because they didn't have those things, its members went to Google and said, where should I go next? And they all joined this gym because it was ready and waiting at the station for them . Next, another gym said, we pay a social media manager to highlight the members, showcase the diversity of the members, celebrate milestones, make the clients famous post videos of coaches, just posting whatever comes naturally. We have no set schedule for the posting, but we do a lot. Now that's really important. You're telling your client stories and you're telling a compelling sticky story that other people want to watch. So again, when they're thinking about joining a gym, leaving their gym, upgrading from their current gym to a new gym, that's the one they're gonna go to. You know, Ascension is a thing, just like retention is a thing. People might start out at another gym, but the best clients will seek the best gym. That's what best finds best means in two Brain . If you are the best and you show that you're the best by publishing, you know, storytelling, good media, good ads, the best will find you eventually they should step up to you. Next, this person said that they started with just doing group classes before Two Brain , then they started a fundamentals program. They put 60 people through it in the last three months and that's been a massive boost to their NLB . The next said, the three owners all have personal training loads, but we now give that to our coaches. So we're moving our personal training to our coaches. We have two full-time coaches. One of 'em does some nutrition and another does some specific seminars. Hey, they're growing their NOB by increasing the, the salary of their coaches. That's awesome. Another said, we average between six and 12 PT sessions for every PT client. Okay, so that's like per month. Um, another one said that corporate training is $600,000 a year. It started with just one client and then 10 to 20 people joined with that corporation. And then we expanded to five corporate clients. So we have about 70 people doing corporate training right now. We go to them, we have three coaches delivering it. It's very easy. There's no attendance checking or check-ins on these people. And the programming is all the same. We've had many of them come into the gym. We're expanding that to include habits and nutrition coaching. Here's another great example. Corporate opportunities don't just fall in your lap. You have to be looking for 'em and you have to be ready to scale when they do. So I guarantee you at every gym there is somebody right now a client who could invite you into their place of business to do a seminar. But if you're not asking, they're not going to. And here's what that can turn into, right? You just have to be ready and looking for these opportunities. This person said we still do group classes but are slowly adding more semi-private. This one said for quarter two we're more focused on our semi-private. This one said we're getting smarter with special programs and getting strategic. In November, we did a really , uh, awesome healthy nutrition kickstart and this last one said we're 50 50 PT in group. Okay, I wanna talk about a couple of other tactics that I briefly touched on earlier. One is annual rate increases. So this one said we raise rates every year. We say thank you for this amazing year. This is what we've done this year, this is what we're doing next year. And they're not talking about which equipment they're gonna add or which coaches they're gonna hire. They're talking about their programming, their plans, the things that they're doing that the clients will love. That's what they're talking about. It's not like a you are paying $5 more and we will spend that money on new barbells. It's, here's the exciting thing that we're planning in 2025. Can't wait to see you be part of it. Here's our 2025 rate. Here's another great one. This is a rule that I think I've touched on every time we've done an NLB leaderboard show. And that is pay yourself first. So this gym owner said in 2022, we started paying ourselves first. And now I know how much money I'll be bringing home before anything else happens. I think this is very important. It's a lot of work to run a gym and you should be compensated or you'll start to dislike it. There's cash, but the NOB number also includes our car and other things that the gym pays for. So that NOB number should include all of the benefit that you receive from the business. Look, there are tax benefits to the gym owning your vehicle, right? My gym owns my truck. There are tax benefits to the gym paying for your cell phone . Like why not pay that with before tax money instead of paying yourself getting tax on it and you know, just giving an extra 40% to the government before you pay your cell phone bill. Like this is just smart financial planning, but it is in included in the net owner benefit because if their business wasn't there, they'd be paying for those things themselves. Okay? Another person said last quarter, a lot of extra cash was left over from a , a special event. So we finally just pulled it out and paid it to ourselves. They realized that it doesn't really make much sense to leave money in your business. Leaving money in your business is like just putting it on a platter and serving it up to the government, the bank and your own temptation. I mean, if the money is sitting there, you're probably gonna spend it. I've been in business for 20 years. I'm a pretty disciplined person when it comes to finances, but the reality is, if there's an extra thousand bucks in my account, I start browsing the Rogue website. And you probably do too. You wanna get that money out of your business for a couple reasons. Number one, if it's sitting there and you're ever sued, there's a good chance like people are gonna take that money. Uh, number two is you're gonna pay taxes on it, get it out of your business and invest it somewhere else so that you're paying a lower tax bracket. If you're in the states, your personal income taxes are lower than your corporate taxes are, you know, and this is only different in two or three states. So why not move the money to where you're gonna be taxed less? Like take it out, take it as personal income in Canada, you know, and in a lot of commonwealth countries, what you wanna do is take that money out and invest it through your corporation so that you're not tax on it and it can grow tax free until you're ready to actually start drawing it down. We talk about this stuff in, in the meta program , so I'm not gonna belabor the point. Alright ? The basics. These gym owners all agree that focusing on a RM is more important than focusing on client headcount. Like get your value per client up and then every new client that you get will be worth more than the the clients that you've been getting. And finally, this is my favorite quote. Every time we focus on the basics and doing them better, everything that two brains taught us, we've doubled in size since last year. We didn't do any paid ads. This is all organic congratulations. You know, whether you do paid ads or not. I'm glad that the two brain model is working for you and actually doing the things that improve your life. Because you know, as a gym owner, and this goes for everybody listening, you deserve it. You know, you're, you're sacrificing time from your family, you're sacrificing a stable career. You're taking risks, you are serving other people. You're giving them all your energy. No matter what's happening in your own life, no matter how bad a day you're having, you are forcing a smile and giving people like the best time that they're ever gonna have. You're changing their lives long term , even when they don't feel like it. You feel like it for them. You're calling them when they're not showing up. Like you're really taking charge of their health on their behalf. You deserve to be successful with this. And my selfish reason is that if you're successful, you'll stay in the business and help more people longer. But the reality is here that nobody deserves to be more successful than gym owners. It's not just like something that you learn and you're done with it, like getting a medical degree. You know, once you've learned the basics, like you can be a doctor and pay off your loans for the next 40 years, coaches have to keep learning. Coaches have to keep putting up. We, we can't have bad bedside manner for one day. Like you have to work hard every day. You should be compensated for it. And not only are we dragging, you know, individual gym owners income up to what they actually deserve, we're pulling the whole industry along with us. And it's this, these podcasts, these leaderboards, these YouTube videos that are doing that. We've taken the industry net owner benefit average from under $32,000 a year to in two brand gyms over 50,000. And these leaders show you like that number can be over 200 or even $300,000 a year. So thank you to our leaders for leading the way, being the model for the rest of us to copy. Thank you to the listeners and everybody that subscribes to this podcast. Thank you to everybody in gym owners united.com, the 10,000 gym owners who are in there contributing and sharing and caring about each other all the time. And thank you to the mentors at Two Brain who are really, you know, holding up the torches that are leading people along the path to this level of success. This is unprecedented in the fitness industry. It's taken a lot of work by everybody, but I'm so grateful that the entire industry is changing now because of this work .