How to Get 300+ Gym Clients: Marketing & Retention That Works

How do the best gyms in the world scale to 300, 400 or even 450 clients without burning out or sacrificing quality?

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper presents the leaderboard for client headcount in coaching gyms and reveals what separates these businesses from the ones stuck at 100-150 clients.

The Top 10 gyms in Two-Brain have cracked the code: strong systems, outstanding coaching, community-first decisions and retention strategies that keep clients for years.

To provide more insight, Chris shares quotes directly from the mentors who work with these gym owners to maximize results.

Tune in to hear the exact tactics used by these world-class fitness entrepreneurs, such as adding high-value programs (Hyrox is a great one right now), running bring-a-friend events and asking for referrals during Goal Review Sessions. 

Links

Gym Owners United

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0:01 - Intro

3:04 - The Top 10

4:09 - The leaders’ strategies

6:40 - Exactly what to do

9:24 - Success vs. failure

Transcript

0:02

How many clients do the top coaching gyms in the world have? Well, I'm going to tell you, and then I'm going to tell you exactly how they got these clients so that you can do that exact same thing. I'm Two Brain Business founder, Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym, and I want to give you strategies that are proven, but also copyable so that you can do them yourself to make your gym more successful. Please hit subscribe so that you don't miss any of these shows because every single one is valuable. It's not just opinion or information, it's actual strategies that you can follow, copy-paste into your gym. Now, today we're going to talk about client headcount, and that is important. If you want to have a successful gym, you have to have enough clients, but it's not the only thing that's important. Every one of those clients has to be a high-value client, and these two things multiply each other. So, if your client value, if the price you're charging and what people pay is too low, you need way more clients. You have to become a marketing machine. Likewise, if your client headcount is too low, but your average revenue per member, your ARM is super duper high, you're very dependent. And if one of those clients goes, you're out of business. You need a good balance point. And in general, we want gyms to start with about 150 clients with an ARM of $205. Every month, we come on here and we share one of our leaderboards with you. We tell you like who is actually dominating at one of these metrics so that you can copy them yourself too. We filtered out two brain clients who just run an access only model. We have a gym that has 1100 clients and they're just paying access. They're paying to use the equipment. They come 24 hours a day, whatever. But these gyms that. I'm talking about today are not playing a volume game. They're multiplying client count by their. ARM to produce incredible monthly revenue. They're building strong relationships and they're keeping clients for years. For example, one of the gyms on this leaderboard has hundreds of clients and their ARM is $311. Another one has hundreds of clients and their ARM is $326. That's incredible. That is great balance. But my point is that you can't just have a ton of clients and that volume is somehow going to make up for client value because client headcount increases. And with it, coaching needs increase, space needs increase, equipment needs increase, insurance, et cetera, problems increase. You have to build the systems that support large client counts if you want to have a lot of clients. The best plan is to work with a mentor to build a business that supports about 150 high-value clients who stay for at least 24 months. And at that point, you'll be making a six-figure take-home income, and you can scale up from a position of strength if you want to. For example, there are a lot of gyms out there who, especially in the early CrossFit days when group training was getting really, really popular, they zoomed up to 300 members. Maybe they were the first in their market. Maybe they were the first to use Facebook ads. But now, these gyms are down to 100 again, or they're gone. And the reason is that they did not have the systems to sustain that level. These gyms do. You're going to learn so much from the show today. Let's get into the leaderboard in reverse order. In 10th spot this month, we have Italy, a gym in Italy with 311 coaching members. These are not access members. They're coaching members. In 9th spot, a gym with 318 members in the US. 8th spot, 321 members in the. Netherlands. 7th spot, 335 members in Canada. Go Canada. 6th spot, 347 members in Ireland. Fifth spot, 362 members in Switzerland, fourth spot, 404 members in the U.S., third spot, 423 members in the U.K., second spot, 434 members in Portugal, and first place, 450 members in the. U.S. Now, these again are not access clients. These are high value clients with ARMs above $250 per month. And you'll hear a lot of business coaches just talking about getting more clients, getting more clients, getting more clients, and their ARM is like 90 bucks. These gym owners are the true experts in our niche. These are the ones who are actually out there doing it and not just talking about it. I get to brag about them and I get to share their secrets. So what I did was I went to their mentors in 2Brand and said, how did they do it? And here's the quotes from their mentors on the different people in that top 10 list. First, Dan Pearington said, this gym runs a rock solid marketing funnel, they're great at lead nurture and sales process, almost to a T of what Two Brain recommends. They have professional coaches, which allows longer-term relationships with members. They have a full operator, director, and head coach positions with very specific job descriptions. Kenny Marquardt, a mentor at Two Brain, said, this person does a great job with keeping people around because their coaching is so outstanding. The next mentor I spoke to is Lisa Palmer, and she said that this gym has their onboarding and their systems dialed. Her retention is strong because she places her community at the center of every decision she makes, what's best for the people who are already in my gym. Everything is intentional, from recruiting outstanding staff to creating a member forum that gives members a voice. She evolves with the needs and trends of her community, such as introducing high rocks and specialty classes, because that's what the community wants. Liam O'Toole said his primary role is working with the Welsh rugby team. The fact that his client count was achieved during the busiest time of the season with the Six Nations Tournament is testament to the team he's built and the leadership skills that he possesses and continues to work on every day. Next, Courtney Brownlow said his client count is a direct result of prioritizing retention as a strategy for gym and revenue growth. Often we think we need to get more members, but keeping members longer really is what moves the needle on business growth over time. Brian Strump talked about this gym and he said his goal in 2025 was to grow to 280 members and he's now at 311. In addition to continuing his strong retention strategies, we focus on three specific actions to increase new members. One, create a clearer intro offer to present at the no sweat intro. Second, use the two brand guide for more successful bring a friend events. And third, asking for referrals more frequently and regularly in general discussions with members and during goal reviews. Then we turn to the client and said, what are you doing? And this one said, we focus on retention systems that ensure clients are seen and understand that they're progressing. We also have a very strong lead flow and sales pipeline, which we audit regularly. Another client said, we run three distinct offerings, which allows us to leverage a stronger headcount and maintain a strong ARM. We have great systems and a fantastic help first culture, which allows us to scale our gym. Look, the stuff that. I've said here is tactical and applicable. You add a no sweat intro first. You get good at that. That's commonly called sales. I call it coaching. You get people to sign up and you onboard them properly with an on-ramp program. Then you focus hard on retention. You get good at retention before you turn to marketing. Then when you do turn to marketing, you start from the inside out. Make your sales process good. Make your lead nurture process good. Make your marketing good on top of that. When you've built all those things, you have a functional gym. Without any one of those pieces, you have a dysfunctional gym that will have you on this rabbit wheel of always chasing more leads. In fact, when people tell me, I just need more leads. My gym community is great. That tells me that they're just looking at their gym at the surface level and they're not diving deep underneath to find the actual problems of why their gym is not growing and why they're not getting numbers like these. That's where mentorship comes in. That's where reading articles is not enough because, reading articles and even listening to podcasts like this will give you a surface level understanding of what you need to do. If you're not getting enough referrals, it's not because you've never thought to ask for referrals. It's because you're not doing it. If you're not getting enough leads, it's not because you're asking the wrong questions. It's because you're not actually applying lead generation strategies that you get from Two Brain. The key to all of this is action. You need to be doing this stuff. The people who are at the top of our leaderboard are not learning things that are different from the people who are at the bottom in two brain. What they're doing is applying it and they're applying it again and again until they get good at it, good at it. Let me give you an analogy for the fitness business. Imagine that you have somebody who watches a squat video, okay? They're watching all the videos about how to do an air squat on YouTube. Does that make them an expert? Should they be coaching squats? Probably not, right? They should probably do some squats. They should probably get some feedback. They should probably apply that feedback and get better at it and get better and get better. And then of course, they're better at air squats. They've done it. They've screwed it up so many ways that they can help other people overcome their barriers too, and then get better at it. The way that entrepreneurs eventually get better at owning their businesses is that they become curious and then they become scientists. And so they become curious, like, what do I need to do to get more referrals? Oh, I can look at this Two Brain material. I can work through this guide from Two Brain. Oh, what I need to do is set up goal reviews. And then I need to say, how are your results? Then I need to make a new prescription. Or if they're happy, that's when I need to ask for a referral. And the script that I need to do it is here. And then you need to practice that. It's not enough to have the knowledge. It's important to actually go out and do. That's what separates the top gyms in the world from you right now. I guarantee it. You are as smart as they are. You are as hardworking as they are, but you're not applying with consistency and curiosity and a scientific approach the things that we're teaching you right now. I don't mean to berate you or beat you over the head with this, but here's the reality. After working with well over 3,000 gym owners around the world, the difference is not knowledge. The difference in success versus failure comes down to application. We have the answers for you right now. We've proven the answers so many times in our state of the industry guides. But what has to happen is you need to apply. That's what the best gyms in the world do. And if you listen to the tips from the mentors, the feedback from the clients all through this episode or any other episode, you will hear over and over again, I just did what my two-brain mentor told me. Did is the operative word there. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a. Profitable Gym. And if you want to run a profitable gym, you have to do the work and do it again and again and again. Thanks for doing it.