Need More Clients? Here's How Top Gyms Scale to 300+

The average big-group gym has 129 members—but some Two-Brain gyms are thriving with 300-700 clients.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper breaks down what the Top 10 gyms for client headcount are doing differently.

Coop explains how five critical systems allow these gyms to retain clients for over 24 months, deliver a consistently high-quality experience and attract new members month after month.

He also shares real insights from the leaders on how they reactivated former clients and found the perfect balance of class size and pricing to maximize value.

Key detail: These gyms don’t need 300+ members to be profitable; every single one would be way into the black with just 150. That's your first target: 150 high-value members who stay for two years or more. After you hit that, you'll have a world-class business and can scale up if you want to.

Tune in to hear how these elite gym owners grew their member counts with proven business fundamentals and mentorship—not gimmicks or discounts.

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0:01 - Industry average client count

1:36 - Gyms with the most clients

2:46 - 5 things the Top 10 share

5:42 - Quotes from the leaders

11:25 - What the leaders don’t do

Transcript

Chris: 0:02

The average big group gym has 129 clients. That includes CrossFit, Bootcamp, Kettlebell Clubs. 129 clients is the industry average. So how do the top two-brain gyms get over 300 clients? Well, I'll tell you today on Run a Profitable Gym. I'm TwoBrain Founder Chris Cooper, and this is our monthly leaderboard show. Make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss the next leaderboard, which will be monthly revenue coming next month. And the numbers are going to blow your mind. So I just said that the average gym has 129 clients. That's a sneak peek into our 2025 state of the industry report, which will be published in just over a month. In 2024, that number was 122 clients. We have more data than anybody else. And it's clear that most gyms don't have a ton of clients. That's absolutely okay. We can show you how to build a great profitable gym business with 150 clients or less. But once you've done that, you will already have the systems and probably the staff that will allow you to scale if you want to. Here's a leaderboard full of people who have learned how to retain and acquire lots of clients. Here's the key, though all of these gyms would be profitable and earning a great wage for their owner and their staff with just 150. They're not hanging everything on their ability to get 300 clients. All right. So the order of the advice that I give you is going to be critical. If you can't hold on to people, marketing won't save you. Let's look at the top gyms in Two Brain in order of number of clients. And then I'm going to give you my top tips for getting there yourself. So first, in 10th place is a gym in the US. US has a huge representation this month. Congrats. Uh 314 members there in 10th place. Ninth place, 344. Eighth place, 387. Seventh place, 395 members. Amazing. Sixth place, this is the first non-U.S. gym. This is a gym in Chile. A single location, 439 members. Fifth place, a gym in the UK with 443 members. Fourth place, a gym in Portugal with 453 members. Third place, a gym in the US with 540 members. Second place, a gym in Chile with exactly 600 members. Congratulations. And first place, a gym in Denmark with 698 members. Now these are all single location gyms. It's not some conglomerate of, you know, three different locations. But the way that they did it is all the same. There's like five things that you need to really get above 150 clients. I want to say this again, though. These gyms would all be profitable at 150. They didn't just shoot for the moon and say, I'm going to lose money until I get to 300. That's not a how to run a good coaching business. So here are five things that these gyms all have in common. You notice, you know, some are in Europe, some in South America, some in North America, and they're all very different gyms. They speak different languages, they have different cultures, some are CrossFit, some are strength and conditioning, whatever, but they all have the same five basic principles in common that they learn from TwoBrain. First, they all have great retention. They all have retention above 24 months. That means that every single person in your gym stays for at least two years. Now, there are gyms out there who tell me, like, I've got five years retention. These are usually gyms that aren't measuring correctly. Because if everybody in your gym stays five years, then you would not have any problems with your gym at all. 24 months is the gold standard. The actual average worldwide is just over a year, which is good. It's up from eight months two years ago. But right now, you want to be aiming for two years. And more importantly, because you got to keep the client two years to change their lives. Really, they don't build the habits that are necessary for long-term lifestyle change in a year. You need to keep them for two years. So the first thing they all have is 24 plus months retention on every single client, not just the best clients, not just the OGs, but the every client. Second, they have world-class business systems so that all clients get the exact same great service every day. Of course, people in their gym have their favorite coach, but if that coach doesn't show up today or, you know, there's a replacement or they go to a different group, they know that they're going to get the same quality level of service, whether it's the owner or it's the newest hire, they're going to get amazing service. Third, each one of these gyms has four marketing funnels operating constantly. It's not about the great marketing idea that you have once or that single marketing trick or the ad agency that you hired one time. It's about the things that you can repeat over and over and over again. That's how you grow your business. 95% of business growth is repeating what works, 5% is trying new things. The fourth thing that these gyms have in common is that they have somebody who knows how to sell and they use the prescriptive model to do that. So they do free consultations, they do NSIs, and they have somebody who knows how to make a prescription and then coach the person into buying it, signing up. And fifth, they have a fully mapped-out client journey with detailed onboarding, like an on-ramp program, fully documented touch points and goal reviews every 90 days. The people who are out there telling you that the only way to be profitable is to get to 300 clients and give discounts and have the lowest price in town and stuff. These people are not getting to 600 members. They're not getting to 700 members, and their gyms would not be profitable at 129 members the way yours should be, because that's the industry average. Two-Brain Gyms work with a mentor to create everything on this list that I've just given you, which are great retention, world-class business systems, four marketing funnels, somebody who knows how to sell, and a fully mapped-out client journey for retention. That plows plan allows them to earn and keep a lot of clients. Now, we interviewed the leaders as we always do to get really specific info. So here's what they had to say about their client accounts. One said, we launched the no sip sweat intro about three weeks ago. We know it's going to evolve over time into better retention, which is what we're counting on to help us build to the next level. Another said, or two of them said, affinity marketing that are really, really good at referrals and not just like, here's 20 bucks off if you give me a referral, because that doesn't incentivize high value people. But instead of saying, I know your wife's name, I know what you do for a living, here's how I can help those people and bringing them in that way. So one person said, We're about, we are event and community driven. We've been doing events for a while, mostly events, uh, about eight between our two different gyms. Another one said, we do a bring a friend day once a month. Reactivation and special programs is big. I know, you know, as an in the first decade probably of gym ownership, it felt like every client cancellation was a breakup to me. But these gyms have a more evolved uh view of the long term of the client. And so this person said, we went hard at reactivating people on holds over the last two weeks, and at the same time, brought back a Spartan race class that was suspended for the summer because the coach was buying and renovating a house. So what they did was they went back to former clients and they brought them back in the gym. The people who are most likely to be your clients next month are the people who are your clients this month. But close to them are the people who used to be your clients last month. And quite often, in my experience, when a client leaves your gym and they go try something else, if you can bring them back in, they will be the best client ever because they've seen that the grass isn't greener anywhere else and they appreciate your value more. Uh, this client on the leaderboard said onboarding and client journey are key. We have a big focus on the onboarding phase from zero to six months of our client journey. Another said we spend three one-on-one sessions learning the movements and the equipment, and then we take a class with them and they're supported in their first group sessions too. This was a really common theme. And sometimes when we're talking about clients, we don't hear this theme or it doesn't stand out as much as I'm highlighting it now. But I really wanted to call this out, and this is product market fit. This is really important to gym owners because most of us are first-time entrepreneurs and we just assume that we're selling the thing that we would want to buy. The reality is the way that you build a long-standing, profitable, high-value audience that sticks around is you sell them what they want to buy. Because as gym owners, we're kind of freaks. We like things that nobody else likes. And so product market fit means is the thing that you're selling equal to the thing that people want to buy. So this person on the leaderboard said, we have a very specific product. We blend yoga plus functional training into a class format. We have a great niche. Athletes age 27 to 37, 65% female. That is knowing your product market fit. It's knowing your market extremely well and building a product to match that market. You know, Seth Godin once wrote, don't find people to buy your product, find products for your audience. Uh, this person said, we are unapologetically beginner friendly. The reality is that CrossFit isn't perceived as super welcoming near us. It is not known as a brand that is beginner first. We don't emphasize the leaderboard and we don't prescribe the weights. We write the modifications out on the board for each movement, easiest to hardest. For example, we don't have male or female categories on the row. We use ranges instead. We don't say all women have to do this and all men have to do that. We let people comfortably choose their own adventure. The feedback from clients is that they really feel welcome and they fit in. Look, the way that you onboard people is the biggest determinant of how long they're going to stay. Having people come in and do like a free trial class is a great way to make sure that either you don't sign that client up or you sign them up and they're gone in six months. This person said other gyms don't do much, oh, do much more personal training than we do. I focus on very high quality delivery with groups. The max is 14 people in a group with about nine on average. We can deliver a better group product. So we have a personalized experience in our classes. Twice a week, group at 209 is my bread and butter. We stay focused on group as a high quality thing. There are two things I want to point out with this comment. Number one, their ARM is 209. To beat the industry average and to really make a successful gym with 150 clients, you need an ARM of about $205 a month. It doesn't mean that every client pays $205. It means that that's the average across all of your products and clients. This person is saying that at $209 a month, the twice a week class is their bread and butter. That's bang on. Next, uh earlier, this person also said that 14 people is the cap of their class. Years ago, when we started publishing Save the Industry, what we found is that retention dips with fewer than seven people in your class, and then it rises until you have 13 and then it drops off again. There's a point where the class, there's just not enough people to really feel like a community and get the value. And then there's also this point where they feel like a number. So seven to 13 is perfect. And this gym is saying that they're capping their gym, they're capping their classes at 14 with nine on average. Keep in mind that this gym is on a leaderboard with between 300 and and 700 clients. Now, of course, all of these gyms are going to recommend mentorship because it's working for them. And so this one said we started in Minnesota and we had five studios, and then we opened four in Colorado, and then the pandemic happened and we ended up shutting down all but two. We started with two-brained business because we shrunk the business and we needed to reboot with less of a corporate lens and more of a client journey focus. We needed somebody idea-driven and outside the day-to-day. So, what did you not hear from these owners? You know, I think conspicuous in its absence is the advice to slash your rates in a crazy sale, sell paid in full long-term memberships at a discount, do a Black Friday special deal. Um, nobody said I use this sketchy bait and switch six-week challenge to get people in the door. They don't need to. You've heard it from real gym owners. I was quoting them throughout this episode. Huge client counts don't come from great marketing campaigns. They come from sound business systems and models and retention. And that's where we come in. A mentor can help you build a better business really fast, way faster than you trying to figure it out with trial and error yourself. To talk about what that looks like for your unique gym, book a call via the link in the show notes. I'm Chris Cooper. Thanks for checking out this episode of Run a Profitable Gym.