Run a Profitable Gym
Run a Profitable Gym is packed with business tools for gym owners and CrossFit affiliates. This is actionable, data-backed business advice for all gym owners, including those who own personal training studios, fitness franchises, and strength and conditioning gyms. Broke gym owner Chris Cooper turned a struggling gym into an asset, then built a multi-million-dollar mentoring company to help other fitness entrepreneurs do the same thing. Every week, Chris presents the top tactics for building a profitable gym, as well as real success stories from gym owners who have found incredible success through Two-Brain Business mentorship. Chris’s goal is to create millionaire gym owners. Subscribe to Run a Profitable Gym and you could be one of them.
Run a Profitable Gym
How He Leveraged Free Tools and Mentorship to Become a Top Earner
After consuming free Two-Brain content for three years, gym owner Tyler Ouwendyk signed up for mentorship. Less than a year later, he earned a spot on the Top 10 leaderboard for net owner benefit (take-home pay), which ranges from US$17,000 to $45,000 per month.
Tyler runs three facilities in a town of 30,000 people: two 24/7 access gyms with memberships capped at 400-500, plus a group training studio that launched with 52 members on Day 1 and hit 130 clients in eight months.
In this episode, Tyler shares the Two-Brain strategies that contributed most to his gyms’ success:
- Eliminating all discounts and sales.
- Raising prices to reach the top of his market.
- Creating proper onboarding systems.
- Adding goal reviews to drive retention and upsells.
He also explains how mentorship accelerated his growth through expert guidance and accountability.
Now, as a Tinker-level gym owner, Tyler’s focus is on building wealth through real estate, life insurance and other investments.
His advice to gym owners who are considering mentorship?
“Just do it. It's not a cost; it's an investment. You're gonna see the ROI right away.”
Links
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
0:50 - Getting results from free content
3:54 - Goal reviews in an access gym
9:53 - Why go from free to paid help?
13:43 - How mentorship added speed
17:54 - Opening a profitable new gym
What's possible if a gym owner does all the right stuff? Well, my guest today started following Two Brain in 2022, and in 2025, he made a top 10 leaderboard for owner earnings. What happened in between and could it happen to you? Tyler Owen Dyke of Momentum Fitness is going to answer that question for you today on Run a Profitable Gym. I'm Mike Workenden. Please hit subscribe wherever you are right now so you don't miss another show. Two Brains' most recent net owner benefit leaderboard runs from$17,000 to$45,000 per month. That's what the owners are taking home each month, not what their gym is grossing. These are actual owner earnings. Tyler was thrilled to earn a spot on that leaderboard after following Two Brain content since 2022. Tyler, congrats. Welcome. Are you ready to share your secrets?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03:I am pumped to talk to you about this because this is one of my favorite leaderboards because it's a lifestyle thing that shows the reward for being an entrepreneur. So if you can tell me, what's the backstory of your gyms? What have you got going on? Staff members, business model, give me the whole thing here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So Momentum Fitness was founded about 12 years ago. That's when we opened our first location. We opened a second one about eight years ago. And both Momentum locations, they're small boutique gyms, about 3,500 square feet. They're 24-7 gym access. Because we're smaller, we do cap our total gym memberships. And then almost eight months ago, we opened the Vault Group Training, which is actually right across the road from one of my flagship Momentum locations. I can actually see it right out the window. Does
SPEAKER_03:it look full?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, it's doing great. We're almost eight months in and have about 130 members there now. So yeah, things are going really well.
SPEAKER_03:Excellent. So you've got three gyms, two more access and one is group training. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's correct. And then like company wide, we have about 12 coaches, three are full time, not including myself. And then the rest are all part time coaches.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. So that's an interesting, you got three, you got a three headed monster growing there and you're doing, people can come in, do their thing, or they can see you for group coaching. So you've got kind of both sides of the fitness realm covered. Super interesting model. Let's talk about what happened back in the day. So how did you find out about Two Brain first?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I first found out about Two Brain, I think it was like coming towards the tail end of COVID here in Canada. It was about 2022. I stumbled upon one of Chris Cooper's audio books, and then I fell in love. I started reading all the books and I found them really useful. And through the books, then I found out about the Gym Owners United group, the podcast. That's where I started learning about you, Mike. So I'm in good company. Yeah. And so from there, I just kept learning, learning, learning. Some things we were already doing, but not doing well. So two brain, um, through all the content that you guys provide, like I was able to really fine tune things, uh, make them better and make it a well lubricated machine. And I'm like very, like, I like to work quick, but I like to do one thing at a time. So every book that I read, it was like, Hey, what are my big three that I can take away? Uh, let's start with the first one. And I would start implementing it, refining it, testing it, all that. And then I'll move on to the second. I kind of slowly went work my way through that. So obviously, like most people, you find out you're like undercharging, not just for the gym access or the personal training, but programming and every other service we offer. So learn to increase the prices, learn about the importance of like the 90 day journey, making sure that that's like well systematized so that every new member gets onboarded properly, doing 90 day goal reviews, because even as a gym access club, even though we have more members, like it's still something that we can do. And yeah, one of the benefits of capping our total gym membership as a gym access club is it's not like we have thousands of members that we're trying to support. Right. So we can give a lot of like one-on-one attention still.
SPEAKER_03:So I got to ask a question about that just because it's so interesting. So you are as an access gym, you're actually doing goal reviews with your access members.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Now not everyone is always going to take you up on it. So what we do, we have automated emails that go out every month, just like a touch point, like, Hey, how's it going? How are your workouts going? Things like that and then every every like third month is an invitation to book a goal review we see the members all the time anyway so we're always interacting with them asking about their goals and their workouts and things like that so we're always able to still provide that support but yeah i i Our flagship location is at full capacity. We have 500 members. The second Momentum location is basically at capacity close to 400 members. With the layout, it's a bit smaller. So it's not like we're trying to do goal reviews with thousands of members, right?
SPEAKER_03:You know, you're not the first access gym owner that said this to me, but it was a concept that would have blown my mind back in like 2008 when I was handing out towels at an access gym. I mean, the only thing I cared about, and I wasn't the owner, obviously, but the only thing I cared about is if you wiped your machine off when you were done with it. I didn't care about what you accomplished, none of that, because that's not the business model for an access gym, at least back in the day. Too many gym owners now are starting to really think about this and say, how can I add value for people who are coming and doing their own thing on their own time? And goal review sessions, what a great thing, because we lost So many members at that access gym because they didn't get results, didn't know how to use machines, didn't know what program to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what a great way to say sell services or say, hey, you want to get some extra results? Head over to my group coaching studio, which you can literally see outside the window. So, I mean, you've got some amazing stuff going on there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The funny thing with the group training studio across the roads, they're different businesses, different entities, different memberships. But when we have a waiting list at this location for new members to join, we can just be like our friends across the road at the vault they're doing amazing things go check them out and so it's like a little bit of a referral engine from that but yeah when momentum was first created i don't know what the stat is now but only 18 of the canadian population had a gym membership or fitness club membership of some kind and we know how important it is for their health and fitness so it's like why is it only 18 but if you ask the other 82 a lot of them say like they've tried they failed they didn't know what to do at gyms they were intimidated uh they were too salesy too much contracts and fine print, all that kind of stuff. So when we built Momentum, we're like, let's do things different so we can cater to that 82% and try to make a real impact. And especially not having contracts, people can cancel whenever they want, right? So if they're not using the gym, they're gonna cancel. So it is in our best interest from a business perspective to have them come, get value out of it so they keep their memberships up, right? And then obviously with the goal reviews and everything else, it gives a good segue and opportunity to offer up like programming or personal training, depending on the type of support that they need to reach their goals.
SPEAKER_03:Retention and access, Jim, who would have thought usually we didn't care and you're actually doing something about it, which is an amazing thing for your business, but also for the health of population, which is obviously every gym owner's goal. So can you remember back in the day, some of the stuff that you did, you mentioned a few things, but I want to get a sense of this from what you actually did just from the content. Like, did you raise rates just from reading to Chris's stuff or was it with any other examples you have of things that you did just as a result of following chris's books or blogs
SPEAKER_01:yeah i'd say like the first like biggest thing is like we're always like middle of the line for pricing we didn't want to outprice ourselves but we also didn't want to be bottom of the barrel especially because we cap our total gym memberships right so um yeah we price ourselves in the middle and then twice a year we would do a big membership sale where if you bought 12 months in advance you got a discount at black friday we'd do a personal training sale like all that kind of stuff So I'm like, all right, you know what? No more sales. Like we're discounting a service. It doesn't work in volume when you're trying to discount a service. Like Chris Cooper always says, right? It sounds like
SPEAKER_03:you're quoting Cooper right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And like, literally we would see personal training clients that would wait to buy another package of sessions till we had another sale. And it's like, that's not what we're looking for. Right. And that's not how we're going to make a bigger impact on their health anyway. So yeah, those are some of the big things. So now we are out of all the boutique gyms in our area where the highest price Christ, but we have like really great Google reviews, referrals, and word of mouth are our biggest like referral source, our lead source, sorry. But yeah, like I'd say that would be like the big thing. And then number two, like when we first started our like version of an on-ramp was what we called an orientation where we would teach everyone all the equipment in the gym, try to make them feel comfortable. But what it turned into is like information overload for a lot of people, especially if you're new to gyms, here's like, what the heck did I just cover in the last hour and then when they show up for their first workout they're like what do i do like i've learned some of the machines i forgot but like what am i supposed to be doing so then uh the other part of what we learned through two brain is the on ramps right and getting people set up properly um so we do our own version of an on-ramp being an access gym it's more of a programming format than a personal training format but it's a good way for people to build rapport with coaches right at the get-go and at the end of their on-ramp it does provide a Wow. So it sounds like Cooper made some
SPEAKER_03:money for you just by giving you a free book.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. I didn't join Two Brain until mid-November of 2024, but I always said like even being a part of it when I went to my first meetup, I was like, I know I'm new. When I was introducing myself, I feel like I've been here forever.
SPEAKER_03:Long-time follower, first-time caller. Exactly. Let me ask you this then. So here's the big question. You were getting some value out of Chris's content. You were taking steps on your own. Why did you make the decision to purchase mentorship if you were already getting results?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think like one thing that was highlighted through some of the content was the tinker phase of mentorship, which is something that I was like really interested in, just like building more wealth, time freedom. I've always been big into that time freedom kind of thing just because of my past history. So yeah, I really want to try to take things to the next level. It was less about improving the gym, more about improving myself as a leader and all that kind of stuff. I mean, there's always ways to still improve your gym and I'll always work at that. But yeah, it was more about mentorship for me myself kind of thing. And And even doing the initial steps through Two Brain before I got to Tinker, there were some things that I was like, oh, you know what? I could be doing this way better. So there were still some takeaways, right?
SPEAKER_03:Okay. So you're an established gym owner. You've got everything going on. You've done some stuff on your own. And you're obviously motivated enough and focused enough that you can do that because some people can't. They see all Chris's stuff and they're like, where do I start? And they need someone to put them in line and say this, this, this, this. With the checklist, you were able to make some significant changes to your business like not having discounts and sales and things like that just from the content but then you want it to go further and improve yourself and something that chris often says now is fix the owner fix the business because what happens is gym owners we and all entrepreneurs rise to the level of our own competence and then at some point we can't grow the business unless we become better leaders and owners so that's kind of what you're getting at with the tinker program which is our our you know it's a stage for our upper level gym owners so this is you get to there when you've got like a gym that's running well by itself more or less you're making about 100 grand a year maybe a little more or less but you're at a stage where you can start thinking what else and for some like you said Tyler it's I want to work a little bit less to make a little bit more for other people it's I want to replicate this gym which you also did other people like I want to open a distillery or start a sports beverage company or get into real estate whatever else it is there's all these different options at that stage so when you saw did you start right into the tanker program or did you go through the earlier stages
SPEAKER_01:no I had to go through the earlier stages but what did you learn in
SPEAKER_03:there what did you was there anything there that you were like whoa I should have backfilled this thing
SPEAKER_01:I think like a lot of it was more so refining some things, like just making sure you're like your pricing binder is like, I like kind of rebranded it, made it look nicer, set up like some better systems, especially with opening the group training studio right at the same time of joining Tinker. That's probably where I got the most value because my other gyms are more gym access. So I'm learning a new gym model now. So yeah, just being able to leverage like a lot of the modules and things like that. I feel like we got set up really well because of that. So yeah, it worked out well. I joined mid-November 2024. And then I think I moved to Tinker right before the Nashville meetup. I think that was in February. So yeah, it was good. It was fast and furious, but I'm very focused when I work. I have a bit of OCD sometimes. So yeah, I'd like to have that quiet time. I know Chris Cooper calls it the golden hour. I can't do my own version of golden hour, but I started every day at 5 a.m. till about 6.30 a.m. Then I do my workout. Then I go to the gym. the gym. And then I do another mini golden hour, another hour and a half. So I spend about three hours each day like working on the business versus working in the business. I still get to coach some clients and whatnot, but the three full-time staff that I mentioned, each of them are managers at the location. So they take care of like all the day to day and everything. So when I'm at the gym, if I'm not doing like personal training, I'm just like literally chatting with clients and members and just, yeah, just kind of interacting. I'm meeting with staff and helping them with whatever their goals are. Yeah. So I feel like that's, That's going really well.
SPEAKER_03:So what happened like when you started working with a mentor, what did you notice right away as opposed to doing it on your own? What did that mentor provide for you?
SPEAKER_01:I think like a more accountability for one, like especially in those initial stages, like they assign you homework and when you're meeting so frequently, so then I'm trying to like work faster. So not only is it helping with the accountability, but it's helping with speed. And yeah, so you start going through those things a lot quicker and more efficiently. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And then take your stage. What's happening now? What is your mentor giving you? Because that's a bit of a different bird. It's not so much as like grinding in systems and procedures. It's about some big picture stuff, wealth building, like big, heavy topics. What's happening now?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I mentioned one of my goals is wealth, right? So I do have a long-term rental property. So I've had that for a couple of years now. And now I have whole life insurance policies for me, my wife and both kids. We have a plot of land up north. that we've been thinking, like, do we turn it into a short-term rental? And it's just like, I feel kind of like I never had much growing up. So now that you have access to more cash and more investments and things like that, it's like, what avenue do you take? What options do you have? So like through Tinker, I've learned a lot about like syndications and other investment vehicles and things like that. So right now I'm going to be more focused on like learning about more passive income. So yeah, from the wealth side, it's mostly that. From the leadership side it's how can i continue to be a good leader for all the staff but especially the managers for context like at the group training studio i work about half an hour a month there because the manager is just crushing it so and then at the other location i'm there maybe about half an hour a week so yeah it's great they're running things well it's a lot of good systems in place and i want to just continue to let them lead and run the business and treat it like their own kind of give them that like ownership mentality when it comes to just decision-making and all that.
SPEAKER_03:So someone out there is like you and they're, they're looking at two brain content, maybe the show right now, and they followed it for a while. Why would you encourage them to take the next step? What's the point if they're just getting value out of the free stuff?
SPEAKER_01:I think like anything, having a coach, like even if you look at any professional athlete or anyone, like they all have coaches, they all, some of them have multiple coaches, right? The coach again is going to make you more accountable. They're going to help give you guidance. Even with two brain, like it's so cool. Once you join, you have like your, metrics dashboard and wherever and it can kind of evaluate like where your business is at where you're strong where you're weak and then you can look at where you're weak and then do modules based on that to help improve your business and improve those weak points right so i just feel like there's a ton of value and then being able to like connect with other people who are in the same position as you is really valuable too especially at the tinker stage if you're like struggling with this issue being able to bring it forward to other people and get their thoughts or their experience i think it's like invaluable and so worth it
SPEAKER_03:yeah and that dashboard is really really cool and i look at some of them sometimes when i'm validating metric leaderboards and things like that and i look and it's really cool because you can see like okay your arm is here your length of engagement is here your net owner benefit is here your client count is here and your retention is really good wait a second they could work on their client count because everything else is good and then obviously the mentor would say this is the metric that's lagging This is the exact toolbox and this is the exact tool from that toolbox that I want you to use. Do this today. Do it by, you know, five o'clock. Send me a message and we'll do this next week. And it's like just pouring gas on a fire, right? Because it's like you start fixing these things and then it's cyclical where that's no longer the lagging metric. Here's the next one. Oh, maybe we could bump up our retention and hold these new clients longer. Okay, now we're going to do this and now we're going to do this. And it's such a cool thing to watch the mentors use that tool. and gym owners to look at themselves as well and then say this is the thing these are my resources this is the one this is the deadline boom and if you do that over and over again linked up with chris cooper's golden hour which you mentioned all of a sudden you've got these gyms that are growing at like i think it's like 20 24 x the industry rate or something like that like it's just incredible i need to ask you this related to that yeah your your new gym uh the group training facility starting that off with the help of mentor and friends and family in the tinker group was that just like pressing a rocket launch button and getting that thing up and going way faster than you could have done by yourself?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, for sure. Even like, like I was like, how do you do a founding membership? And like, before you even open up, like what, what are the ins and outs of that? So being able to like leverage some of those resources. So when we opened on opening day, I think we had 52 members. My goal is, my goal is 25 members. I didn't really know. Right. So leveraging more than, yeah. So I was like really happy with that. And so we had like enough revenue coming in from day one that could cover all of our expenses and everything. So yeah, it was great. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a like higher margin business, I think than the gym access clubs, right? Like less overhead, less space, less equipment, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, so just got really lucky and yeah, I guess good marketing and being like a gym owner, like in town, our population is only about 30,000 in this town. So having Momentum, I Everyone kind of knows the brand and using Momentum to also help promote the vault was helpful. So before we opened the vault, we said it was powered by Momentum. So that got some people going. The biggest reason why people didn't join Momentum is because we didn't have group training. So it's like now we're solving this problem in the community and there really are no group training options per se in Dundas. So yeah, it worked out really well. So the founding membership was a huge hit. And then yeah, working with my mentor just to help improve ARM. It's still like, could be improved for sure. But our arm is about, I think 225 right now per member, but I want to throw that more. We're in such like a growth stage right now. So we're just trying to like, once we get, we're at about 130 members. So once we, once we stabilize that, then we're going to look at offering more small group training, more one-on-one trainings. We do offer a little bit of that, but most of it's just like the group training model.
SPEAKER_03:And you opened the doors on that when?
SPEAKER_01:It was November 1st, 2024. Okay, so
SPEAKER_03:November 1st, we're talking less than a year here. You hit the ground running in a brand new business with 50 some members that you said. And you've already pushed the ARM to$220. And you've got about 130 clients. Now, the cool things about the numbers you just said is that Chris Cooper has put out spreadsheets and breakdowns saying that you can make$100,000 a year as a gym owner if you have 150 members at about$205 ARM. And Tyler, you were able to launch into some very similar numbers in less than a year. That's just incredible.
SPEAKER_01:That's thanks to Two Brain, though.
SPEAKER_03:Is that ever neat, though? Those are almost the exact numbers of Chris Cooper. talks about. And it's such a cool thing when you look at it and you mentioned some of the other things about margin and size and so forth and equipment. You don't need a ton over there, right? Like it's a group training stuff. It can be a much, you know, you don't need a$20,000 lat pull down machine and all the attachments and stuff like that. You
SPEAKER_00:can do it much simpler.
SPEAKER_03:These business models that you're exploring, and Chris has laid these out now, you've got these, you've got access, you've got all these different things with groups, semi-private, personal training, all these small group is another one. These are all things that are available to gym owners. And if you said, hey, I want to do this part, we have this plan. I want to try this thing, semi-private, we have this plan and we have an expert for you. It's cool. It's cool to see how that goes and like, The Founders Club is amazing to me. My story is I opened a gym. I had about 10 people come with me from a bootcamp that I was running. I had them on a spreadsheet. I had a 6,000 square feet and two people in a class. I was terrified I was not going to make rent the whole thing. Now I'm hearing about gym owners who use this plug and play Founders Club program and they're starting with 50, 60, 70, 80. I forget what the record is, but it's up in that range. Members on day one. It's crazy. Yeah. Like what, how much less stress is that when you thought like, obviously you're an established business owner, but how much less stress did you have when you're like i have 50 members and i just opened my door
SPEAKER_01:for sure and if i didn't have two brain you know what i would have did for a founders club i would have been like oh if you join before x date save 25 on your members you know what i mean yeah exactly so thanks to two brain i did not do that and that was super helpful
SPEAKER_03:and i'm gonna say another thing that you said this is really cool you said you're living in an area with about 30 000 people and you've got about a thousand people in your gyms is that right
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah yeah a thousand between momentum locations and then uh Yeah, about 130 at the group training studio.
SPEAKER_03:That is spectacular. Like what an effect that you can have with your business on your entire community, like a thousand or 1200 people out of 30,000. It's pretty cool. Do you ever think about that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It's definitely really cool for sure. And it's nice if you do travel to different locations. It's like, well, the vault's like 10 steps away, but then the other location is about a 10 minute drive. So yeah, it's pretty close and convenient. We're actually doing a member social for the vault just to celebrate, successful eight months tonight at a brewery. So we're going to have a bunch of people out there for some beers and pizza. And then we get to make them work it off at 6 a.m. the next day.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I love that. And you're literally at the stage now where if you're driving from gym to gym and someone cuts you off, you can't give them the finger because it's probably a member.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. My wife won't let me live in town. So we are actually moving next week, but we're living in the town over because she says I know too many people in town.
SPEAKER_03:Obviously. Honestly, like that's what an incredible story. I've heard of, Tyler and I have never touched base personally before, but I've heard from the mentors that I got to talk to this guy. So having him on the show is a big deal for me. I want to ask you one final thing. Someone's listening right now. They're thinking about mentorship. What do you say to that person?
SPEAKER_01:Just do it, don't think about it, do it. I know like, depending on where you're at, you might have some sticker shock with like the monthly price, but it is such an investment. It's not a cost, it's an investment. You're gonna see the ROI right away. And the great thing about how Two Brain starts all new mentees is you're gonna get the return right away through some of the modules that you're gonna work on with your coach. And as I said multiple times, it's not just accountability, it's speed, it's direction. And everyone needs a coach, right?
SPEAKER_03:You said it exactly right. We set the mentorship up for quick wins right off the bat to pay for the thing and then start getting ROI as fast as possible. If you're on the fence, I'd encourage you to book a call and talk about it. Tyler, congrats on building an incredible empire out there. I'm so fired up for you. I can't wait to see what you do next year.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Mike. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for being on the show. We'll talk to you very soon because I think Tyler will probably be back on the leaderboards. Thanks for listening to Run a Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Morgan. Please subscribe for more shows like this wherever you're watching or listening. And now here's two-way founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
SPEAKER_02:Do it today. Hey!
