Elite Earnings: Why Top Gyms Prioritize Client Value Over Headcount

What if every client in your gym happily paid you $20 more per month? What about $50 more? Or even $100 more?

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper presents the Top 10 leaderboard for average revenue per member (ARM), with the No. 1 gym earning $724 per client per month.

He explains how these elite gyms have boosted their revenue by prioritizing client value over headcount.

In fact, one gym on the leaderboard increased its revenue by 38 percent while reducing its client base by 20 percent.

Chris also breaks down the Prescriptive Model, a client-centric strategy that aligns gym services with individual goals to produce better results.

Focusing on measurable results—instead of just workouts—builds trust, boosts retention and justifies premium pricing.

Tune in to hear why “more clients” isn’t always the answer and then start scaling your gym’s average revenue per member.

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The Prescriptive Model

Gym Owners United

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00:28 - Top 10 gyms for ARM

04:30 - Why you must be profitable

09:03 - Fewer members, more revenue

11:54 - Quotes from top gym owners

16:30 - Method versus model

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

What if every client in your gym was happy to pay you $20 more a month, what would that do for you? What if that number was $50 more a month? What if that number was a hundred dollars more a month? Some gyms are actually doing this and today we're gonna talk about that. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. This is our monthly leaderboard show. Every month I pull the top 10 gyms from two brain in one of six different metrics. This month we're talking about a RM average revenue per member. And I'm not just gonna share what the top gyms are earning per member per month. I'm also gonna share exactly how they're doing it so that you can stay on top of trends and help make decisions about the future of your gym. So if you wanna talk more about this or you've got questions, just go to gym owners united.com. That's our free group. We're gonna let you in for nothing and you can ask questions about this podcast. You can talk to other gym owners. There's 10,500 of us in there now. It's very upbeat, it's very productive, and it's the most helpful place you can find for free on the internet. The first thing I wanna do is walk you through what the top 10 Gs in two brain are earning for a RM and then we're gonna go step by step through how they're doing it. Now, there's a couple of things I'm gonna warn you of. Number one, some of these numbers are going to be so high that to you it seems unreachable, right? Like me watching the CrossFit games, I'm just not inspired by by it because it's this other world. However, what I should be doing is saying if I want to improve my CrossFit capacity, I should be watching the CrossFit games and then looking at what these people do and copying their programs and that will make me better. That's what you should be doing with your gym as a gym owner. Your duty to all the people who count on you, including your members, your staff, your family and yourself, is to keep growing this gym. And one of the ways that you do that is you look at the best in the world and you copy what they're doing. I make it really, really easy for you on these podcasts because I go interview these people, they tell me exactly what they're doing and then I tell you, let me just be your middleman for this. So the first , uh, let's talk about the top 10. Now for once all these gyms are from the us . If you listen to this show regularly, you're going to hear a lot of international flavor for net owner benefit for a number of clients. And you're going to hear about gyms in South America and gyms in Eastern Europe and gyms in Western Europe, in North America and Canada and Australia and New Zealand everywhere for once. And this might be the first time it's ever happened, we've got a clean sweep. All of the top a RM gyms are in the US . Now, there's a couple of reasons for this. It doesn't mean that gyms in the US are charging more than anywhere else in the world. There's a couple of , uh, things that could cause this. Number one, the US dollar is strong compared to a lot of other currencies. And so to compare apples to apples, when we compare what a gym in Canada is charging, we put that into US dollars so that we compare it against the gyms in the us . Now that said that, that's just one reason, but more and more what you're starting to see is this shift in the industry where gyms came into two Brain , they're just selling group training, they add one-on-one maybe, and quickly the lights go on like, oh, people actually want this and it's a great way for my coaches to build careers. And then over time they gradually say, Hey, we've got all the one-on-ones we can handle and our group classes are, you know, doing pretty well. What's in the middle? What's between them? And they start offering semi-private or small group. And that's gonna be reflected in the data that you see. It's not just that gyms come into two brain , as you'll hear, doing semi-private already and dominating everybody else on the A RM leaderboard. Most of these gyms came into two brain doing group coaching, running just CrossFit classes or just doing one-on-one personal training. And we help 'em evolve their model to a point where every client is worth a lot more. Alright, so top 10 in number 10 this month, $454 a month. A RM, every client in their gym on average is paying $454. Now, it doesn't mean that everybody's paying the same rate. You're gonna have some people paying 600 and some people paying 200 and where they meet is $454. An average ninth place was 464 eighth place, $469 a month. A RM seventh place, 472 sixth place. Now keep in mind that all of the top six are over $500 a month. A RM $510 in sixth place, fifth place, $554. Fourth place, $562. That's actually a tie. Third place is also $562 a RM . Second place, $613 and first place, $724 a RM per month. Now I want you to think, because when you're hearing that, you're like, wow, none of my current clients would pay that. These PE I just wanna serve more people. I wanna serve the average Joe. This is how you do that. You are a coaching business. That means that you are an elite service and you make money off people who want to pay for your value charging, you know, a RM of $700 a month. And then once you're profitable and you're making more money, now you're in a good position to actually reach out your hand and help other people. This is my mantra, make lots of money and give it away, because that is how you help the people who really need it . You don't help those people by undercharging and eventually going broke yourself. You don't charge those PE help those people by starving yourself and foregoing your family's paycheck and then eventually going out of business. You help the people in need by making lots of money on the people who can afford it and then turning around and helping those people. This is how, if you're a CrossFit gym, this is, you know, really the conversation. I didn't get in this to make money, but if you don't make money, you'll be out of it quickly. And I, I just talked to Greg Glassman on the podcast last week. You know, Greg was able to build something like 30 schools in Kenya. I was there for one of 'em . He built wells in Kenya. He donated millions to CrossFit for hope through CrossFit for hope to, you know, St . Jude Children's Hospital, that kind of thing. He was able to do that because he had a very profitable business, which he deserved and was able to give the access away. This is how you do it. You don't do it by barely breaking even every month because then the first time a tidal wave comes in, you're done. The first time a coach leaves and takes five members, you're done. Like any little thing can put you on a business. You succeed by being profitable, feeding your family, then making good careers for your coaches, then providing the best possible opportunity that you can for your clients and then helping the people who don't know how to make money in your community. Alright , let's get back to a RM here. I got off on a rant. So first off, only three gyms from our last A RM leaderboard four months ago are on this leaderboard. That's interesting. What it does not mean is that there , these gyms are going up and down in a RM , they're staying consistent. What's happening is that the best gyms are growing faster and faster and faster. So if they were on the leaderboard four months ago back in November, and it was because they had just introduced semi-private or small group training or personal training for the first time, now what's happened is that other people are introducing it and getting better. I'm sure you remember this, you opened up the first CrossFit or the first yoga gym in your town right away you had 300 members. Boom. And that's because you were the first to introduce it. Well , when you're also the first in two brain to go to semi-private or one-on-one or whatever, you're gonna zip up to the top of the leaderboard. But quickly we're gonna learn from you and we're gonna keep getting better. And this is how the snowball keeps going up. If you looked at our A RM leaderboard from two years ago, the winner would probably have been around three to $400 a month. Now the winner is $724 a month. These are the people who are teaching everybody else and pulling the industry up. The other thing that's interesting here is that number one on this leaderboard, $724 a month was the same on the last two leaderboards for a RM that we publish. So for six months they've been at the top. That means that the best can still keep getting better. If you've got an A RM that you think is really good, it's the best in your market, you can still improve it with mentorship also. Number two was number three last time. Not because the person ahead of them got worse, but because they kept getting better. And so what you're seeing is this massive effect where the best gyms for a RM are getting better and better and better and they're pulling everybody else along with them. These really are the tip of the spear. Alright , so first, you know, I mentioned why there's such a great sweep by the US for a RM . A lot of that is the strength of the US dollar over the last quarter. Last time we published this, about 80% of the gyms were from the us but you know, this year or this time, the US is really dominating these metrics. That's not an excuse, okay? Like I quite often hear, oh, we can't charge that. The U Australian dollar sucks. Nope , that's not valid. You hear the same thing in the states. I can't charge that. I am in the poorest county in the poorest state of like, I've heard that a thousand times over the last decade. It's not valid because you're not selling your coaching business to the average family income. You're selling it to the top 10 or 20% of earners. Again, making a profit and turning around and helping the people who need it the most. Alright ? Two of the gyms on the leaderboard , uh, brand themselves as physical therapy or medical exercise, interesting. Two brand themselves as personal training, but the rest are general fitness or athletic brands, including a couple of CrossFits. We took four of these owners and we interviewed them in depth. So we sent a questionnaire to all 10, but four of them were so incredible that we did a deep dive with them. You'll hear those full interviews on this podcast over the next month. But I wanna highlight their keys. All of them mentioned semi-private and personal training and all of them said that their a RM numbers are very consistent and will only go up from here. The cool thing about a RM is it never really goes down unless you make a big mistake as CEO of your gym and you start to offer like an access only membership, right? And I'm saying this because when you enter a time of economic uncertainty, like we're about to, especially in the western hemisphere, you need to move up the value ladder, okay? You , you wanna work more with clients who are the least affected by economic uncertainty. It's always tempting to say, oh man, people can't afford this. I need to offer a lower price option. I need to lower my rates, I need to give a discount. I need to offer access only because people are hurting. That's not actually true. What you need to do is serve the top of the market who are unaffected by this, make money and give it away to people who really need help in times of uncertainty, okay? But you don't do that by sacrificing your service. So here's a great note. One of the gyms has been only open since October 24 and started by selling group only at that time. Then she added semi-private after she was in one of the two brain office hours presentations. She was in this office hours presentation, we were talking about semi-private. She booked a one-on-one call with Nick Hait , who's our sales coach, and started implementing it. She started executing on it right away, and now she's in the top 10. So she went from, you know, an a RM of under $200 up to an a RM of well over $400 just by coming to one office hour session in two brain , booking a one-on-one session with our sales coach. And executing execution is the key to all this. It's not like I need to be in Midtown Manhattan, it's just getting the work done. Alright , here's a second amazing story. This gym ditched group training, and they put in semi-private training in February, 2024. So about a year ago when they did that, their a RM was $269. Now that's a high a RM if you're only doing group training now though, their a RM is $464 monthly revenue is up 40, 38%, and they've actually gone backward in clients because they're working with fewer members on purpose. So they're down 20% in clients and their monthly revenue is up 38%. Anybody who tells you that getting more clients is the way to get more profitable is not telling you the full story at best and probably lying to you at worst. Here's some quotes from our leaderboard members. First, this first Jim said they really focus on client results. We focus on results driven transformation. This focus has fundamentally transformed our studio culture. We've become much more results oriented across all aspects of our business. Our trainers are more invested in client outcomes. Our marketing highlights, tangible successes, and our entire team celebrates measurable achievements. That's the end of the quote. I want to tell you that like focusing on results is different than focusing on your method. You are not selling yoga, you are not selling CrossFit, you are not selling kettlebell training, you are not selling movement screens, you are not selling mobility. You are selling outcomes. This is the theme of our new book Help Best, which comes out just before Summit in June. How do you get clients' actual results? How do you measure those results and make sure that the client understands them and gets there and sees them and celebrates them ? That is what success in the gym industry is all about. It's not about making somebody a better dead lifter. It's not about making them better at yoga or more flexible. It's about getting them results that they care about. That means you have to start by asking what results do you care about measuring their starting point and then getting them to their end point as fast as you can. So when this gym says that it's focused on client results, it's not focused on, you know, being a black belt sensei of weightlifting or being the best running coach we can be. They are focused on the client came in and said they wanted to lose 20 pounds. How do we help 'em lose 20 pounds as quickly as they can? They kept the client results at the center of their coaching. They're a client-centric business. The next quote is about the retention of high value clients. They said, we are being intentional with the members that we have now, and we're focused on keeping churn low by making them feel unique. We've recently started offering our goal reviews through an online form with the option to also meet in person. We're hoping this continues to help with client and, and , uh, satisfaction and retention. So here's a gym . They didn't say, oh, we don't have time for goal reviews, or, oh man, I , I just, I can't meet all these people in person, or where do I start? Or, nobody wants goal reviews. They said, how can we apply this lesson of goal reviews in our gym? That's why we're a one-on-one mentorship practice. The mentor's job is to help you apply the two brand system in your particular gym without making you feel like you're doing a franchise. And so they modified how they do the goal review. They still use our scripts, they still use our process. They still do the goal review. And guess what? They retain their high value clients. It works with a couple of little tweaks for their business, okay? They don't do it differently. They don't avoid doing the work. They do the work in a way that matches their business. Okay? Third quote, they said that they are spending time working on the business instead of in the business. They said, literally, I've taken myself outta the business in terms of coaching. I'm passionate about the business and the people. I put people in place to be successful and I empower them to take action without my direction. That is leadership. You know, that's real leadership. You can read all the Simon Sinek books you want about leaders Eat Last and all that stuff. But the reality here is like, if you don't empower people to do things the way you would have , have them done yourself without you being there, it doesn't matter about reading. You can read 50 books about leadership and doing hard things and all that stuff. If people don't do it the way that you want it done without you being there, all of your leadership books don't matter. This person is successful because they are free to work on the business, adding semi-private, adding pt, marketing, sales, whatever, because they've put people in the other roles. Now, for you, this might look like, you know what I, I just want to coach, right? And you know, maybe you, maybe you open a gym because you couldn't make enough money coaching at another gym. That was me, and you're not passionate about owning the business part. Then you need to build the business to the point yourself where you can hand off pieces of it to other people. That means you gotta dig in, but it doesn't mean you have to just be the CEO forever. You can be whatever you wanna be. Once the business is sustainable, you're a good leader and it's profitable. This next person talked really specifically about semi-private training. This person and I, I mentioned them earlier. They said we've been open since October and we didn't know what the value would be. All I was selling was group training. I didn't even ask people to sign up for semi-private. I did some office hours in two brainin and then an additional one-on-one call with a mentor, Nick Haage . I gained confidence on selling semi-private training and then the results boosted my confidence too. Another person said, we switched our memberships from group classes to semi-private training in February, 2024. We offered both for a little while just to transition, but we now offer only semi-private training memberships. We received help from the two Brain toolkit and several mentors when switching to the semi-private model. It was a huge change for us, but one that we're incredibly happy with. It's allowed us to deliver a better product, create a culture that both our members and coaches enjoy and help our clients get what they want and need. It was a tough transition, but we're very happy with how things are going. Now look, I've heard this from CrossFit gyms. You can do CrossFit one-on-one, you can do CrossFit, semi-private CrossFit's. The method you want to use to get people results, wonderful. If yoga Pilates is the method you want to use to get people results, wonderful. But CrossFit is not a model. Neither is yoga, neither is Pilates, neither is bootcamp. The model is how you deliver your method. You can do it one-on-one, you can do it semi-private, you can do it group. I just wanna make that point because a lot of people confuse the two things, the method that you use to get results and the model in which you deliver that method. This next person was talking about personal training and they said a significant factor in our A RM is our emphasis on high ticket personal training offerings. By allocating substantial resources and attention to developing these premium services, we've been able to create more personalized fitness experiences, deliver more measurable results for our clients, justify a higher price point through enhanced value, and improve client retention through stronger relationships. Couldn't have said it better. Uh, the next person also talking about personal training said we focus on small group and one-on-one training because that is what's truly best for most people. We accepted the few who want the energy of large group workouts. We'll have to find that some other place and they have many options for that. This is a great point because the reality here is that sometimes we offer discounts to people who don't really need the discounts and they don't even really need our help. You know, if they're coming to your gym for the community or the programming or whatever, they're eventually gonna leave and go find that somewhere else. That's because they don't really need you. The people that we can save that we really have the biggest opportunity to save are the people who really need you, who really need value, and that means they need one-on-one high accountability or small group or semi-private. Next person talked about the prescriptive model. They said, our commitment to integrity has been fundamental to our growth. By consistently putting our clients' needs first and focusing on delivering genuine value, we've strengthened our conviction during the sales process. Our client-centric approach has built trust and allowed us to confidently recommend solutions that truly benefit our members. Listen, what they're talking about when they talk about a client-centric approach is asking the client what they want to achieve and then building a plan to achieve it . Achieve commitment to value means putting the client at the center and solving the client's problems. It does not mean getting your level five certification in your method. It does not mean asking a better question of the day. At the whiteboard, it does not mean, you know, practicing and doing better as an athlete in your own method. What it means is asking the client what they want and then getting them that result. That is value. The other stuff is stuff that you value, but you know, if you want to have an ego-centric business, just get better and better at the stuff that you care about. If you wanna have a client-centric business that actually solves problems and helps people, put them at the center and do whatever it takes to help them. Even if that means taking lessons in another method, even if it means learning about nutrition, even if it means changing your model or your method, do what the client needs done. Finally, the last quotes are about mentorship. They said, I haven't done anything outside of Two Brain . I couldn't do this without y'all. I love it when people say y'all and the last person said, all we're doing is exactly what Two Brain told us. That's what mentorship is all about. It's clarity. I mean, you're listening to this and you're hearing, gee, I need to start offering pt or I need to do semi-private. And then you go in Gym Owners United and you say, what do you guys charge for semi-private? You're gonna get a lot of opinions. You're not gonna get clarity. Clarity is what fixes your business fast. We build a client centric approach to brain . When you come in, you say, here's what I wanna do, and then we say, here's how we're gonna get there. That's what mentorship is. That's what coaching is. That's what you sell. That's what I sell. If you wanna continue this conversation in a free private group called Gym Owners United, just go to gym owners united.com. Ask questions there. You'll see me posting about this. You'll see lots of tips. You can search that group for a RM on tips to improve it, and when you're ready to make changes fast, that's when you book a call with my team. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Jim , and I hope you do.