From $300k in Debt to Millionaire Gym Owner

Braeden Cordts bought a struggling gym with $300,000 in debt, no marketing knowledge and everyone telling him it wouldn’t work.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin sits down with Braeden, who was just certified as a net-worth millionaire.

They talk about Braeden’s five-year journey from a 28-member gym losing money to a 230-member gym generating over $55,000 every month.

Braden opens up about a rough stretch in college and how finding CrossFit—and eventually buying a gym—changed his trajectory.

He breaks down the order of operations that got his gym to where it is today:

- A year of consuming free content before he could afford mentorship
- Putting real systems in place
- Pouring into his team and promoting his first full-time coach
- Building out personal training and semi-private as major revenue streams

He also opens up about how mentorship gave him clarity on his finances outside the gym—turning two accidental rental properties into a real wealth-building strategy, diversifying into syndications and buying into another gym.

If you’re a gym owner in the thick of it right now wondering if any of this is actually possible, Braeden’s story is proof that it is.

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0:00 - They Told Him Not to Buy This Gym

1:09 - From Train Wreck to Gym Owner

5:37 - The Risk That Changed Everything

8:18 - The First Breakthrough

9:38 - The Difference a Mentor Made

11:31 - The Systems That Fueled Growth

13:21 - The Move That Changed the Business

17:39 - The Revenue Stream Most Gym Owners Miss

21:34 - How Gym Owners Build Real Wealth

24:05 - The Growth Formula Most Owners Ignore

27:26 - The Question Every Gym Owner Must Answer

29:28 - His Message to Struggling Gym Owners

Transcript

0:03

Every person who's ever opened a gym has heard it from their family to their friends the people they love the most they'll ask something along the lines of are you sure you want to open a gym can you support a family on a gym owner's income yet that deters few of us we wake up at 4 a.m and close the gym down at 11 after cleaning the floor and listening to all our member complaints but putting a smile on our face and pretending like nothing's wrong a lot of us know it's possible to make a good income as a gym owner. We just haven't seen the proof. We haven't heard the stories. We haven't seen the examples. And that's why I'm excited to share Braden. Quartz's story. He just won our Two Brain Business Millionaire Gym Owner Award. But when he bought his struggling gym, he had$300,000 in debt and a bunch of people telling him it wouldn't work. What he built from there is proof that the same stuff that makes us so hard to work for is the same thing that makes us impossible to stop. I'm John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain Business, the world's largest gym mentorship company, working with over 3,500 gym owners to earn over six figures in profit. Because yes, it's possible. This is Brayden's story. And if you're a gym owner who's still in the fight, this one's for you. Brayden Kortz, what is up, man? We are here to celebrate you for winning this award, our Millionaire Gym Owner Award. And the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you have an awesome story, man. So first of all, thank you for being here. And second, let's talk about how you found yourself owning a gym. Train wreck to gym owner or whatever we want to call it. I think, I don't know, just God's path, truly. I think if I want to go back to that route, it is everything he has put in front of me. I've just done enough hard work and enough things to get there. And now I get to sit here and talk to you about it. So let's go back to the beginning. Let's talk about your time at school. Yeah. So when I was at NDSU, I was coming up out of a rough time in high school, and I had no idea who I was. I was a good kid. I didn't do any drugs or alcohol when I was in high school. I wanted to play collegiate sports. So I stayed clean. And then I just didn't know who I was. And I went away from everyone. No, no one from my friend group or from high school was going to NDSU. So I went up there and I fell into everything that I had never done before. So I was doing all the drugs, all the drinking for three years at NDSU. And I was doing mechanical engineering. I wanted to win my dad's approval. He was a mechanical engineer, or sorry, he was a ceramic engineer. And I just wanted to follow in his footsteps. And I thought that's what I was supposed to do. And then I just fell into all this bad things. And, um, now, well, how'd you pull yourself out? So the biggest thing that I did to pull myself out was one, I found CrossFit and I will say CrossFit saved my life. I think that was step number one. Step number two, My mom is a theology major, and she gifted me a book. It was Chasing Lions by Mark Batterson. And when I read this book, it was, you're supposed to become something more. You're supposed to be able to chase your dreams. And if your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough. And I wanted to help people. So after I started CrossFit, I got my L1 because I couldn't afford a membership. And so I got my L1 so I could coach and. I got my membership for free, coach, and I didn't get paid as a coach. So yeah, back in OG CrossFit days. And I became a coach. I fell in love with helping people in the world of fitness. And that book inspired me to do something more, chase something more. I have the story of that book, which is Ben and I chased a lion on a snowy day into a cave to impress. King David to become one of his mighty men. That is tattooed on my left arm. And that's how I live my life now, and one of the things was my mom, I still remember this, and I get to laugh at it now, especially on this podcast, is she was like, well, you can't make money in the gym industry, so you should do something health-related that will make you money. I was like, well, I enjoyed going to the chiropractor growing up, and I was like, all right, we'll go to chiropractic school. Somehow, someway, I got in, and I was coaching and going to chiro school, and then COVID rolled around, and at this time, I was coaching at multiple gyms just to be able to get through chiro school, and it fell. You're getting paid at this point? Yes, I finally, so I moved from North Dakota, and then I moved back down to Minnesota, and in Minnesota, I was going to Northwestern Health Science. I was coaching at two gyms. One was called Made to Live, which I bought, and the other one was 952 right next to school, so I was coaching at these two gyms to try to get through school and support my wife as well. Well, who, if the biggest catalyst for this all, for me to be where I'm at, is my wife. If I did not meet my wife, I don't think I would be sitting here, right? I don't think I would be as successful as I am, so I think the biggest thing is she, I was starting to put things in motion, but she was the catalyst that came into my life, but because I did CrossFit, we met at a competition up in Fargo, and that's where we went to middle school and high school together, but apparently, I was too skinny of a kid. So, if she didn't want to date me, then I found, you know, CrossFit and got a little bit fitter, and she was like, oh, he's finally cute now, so now I'll talk to him. Pack some pounds on. Yeah, so I put some weight on, and then she's like, oh, wow, I'll talk to him, but she was the biggest catalyst for me to get right and to have something else versus just me to support, And, um, so during COVID, uh, COVID hit the gym I was at made to live. The owner got burnt out. Uh, we had 28 members or 28, 28 when I bought it. Um, technically there was 50 something, but only 28 were paying and not all 28 were actually paying full price. The other 30 were coaches. Exactly. So, uh, there was a lot of free memberships, a lot of 50% off memberships, but so the paying members, it was 28. And my wife and I were like, this is our next thing. This is our next lion to chase. We feel called to do this. I literally was told no by, uh, everyone around me. Um, and it was again, that thing that, uh, gym owners don't make money. Uh, you're, there's no career in this. We've seen all these gym owners around us get burnt out. Uh, why are you doing this? You're in chiro school. You're about to be a doctor, like you shouldn't go and chase this thing. And we rebranded to core fitness and performance. And we scaled it. And I know we'll dive into this a little bit more. But in that time, we're coming up on our five year anniversary, we've gone from 28 to 230 members in that time. And we went from 5k, I think it was just under 5k in revenue the day I took over to now we're doing every single month is 55 or better. So we got a lot to unpack there. So yes, we let you graduated. Did you graduate from engineering school? No. Okay. Yeah. Disappointed my dad in that one. And you found your wife in college? Yes. Okay. And then the time you were kind of finding CrossFit and into chiropractic school, that was like a year or two? Yeah. Okay. And then while you were in... In chiropractic school, you were going to the gym. And during COVID, you had the opportunity to buy it. Correct. Chiropractic school isn't cheap. How'd you buy the gym? So I've disappointed my dad plenty with all the decisions I've made. And luckily, I was able to convince him to help me purchase the gym because I had no money. And he, I still don't know why he trusted me. And but it was one of those things that he was like the only one that backed me at that moment, besides my wife, obviously. And he's like, I trust you. You have obviously a burning passion for this to help others and make an impact. And now we... So he gave me the seed I needed to grow the gym and have that opportunity. And so he got you off. You're in chiropractic school at the time, and you're hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Yes. And the gym at the time is doing... Nothing. Is it losing money or making... It was losing money. Losing money. So the first month, I was just trying to get a cream or gray. So not like just out of red. And I think it took me three months to get it out of red. But I was calling, emailing, doing everything I possibly could to get people in the door. And I had no idea what to do in terms of marketing or anything. It was like, okay, I have an email list. And I have phone numbers. We're going to go after all of them and try to build this community back up. At what point in the journey did you find 2Brain? So I found 2Brain at the start in consuming content. So I couldn't afford, at the time, anything. So I knew I had all the free stuff. I had the books. I had the articles. I had the YouTube videos. So I literally, I would be going, I would coach the morning classes to make more money to support myself going through the gym. I TA'd. So I helped people learn how to adjust. And on the way there, I was listening to old 2Brain's free content. So I've been a consumer since day one. And then once I was able to actually get into the position to not just break even on the gym, but invest back into the gym is when I got mentorship. And how much time was that? That was about a year, year and a half. So basically you were implementing the free materials and got to the point where you had enough house money that you could actually afford having a real mentor. Talk to me about the difference from consuming the free materials versus actually working with a mentor. Well, there's so much free material. And it's almost like there's no clarity of what your best next step is. And my first mentor was. Brian Strump. He's also a chiropractor and owns his gym. So naturally I got paired with them and he's the post-it note man. So he was always very clear on like, this is the one thing that you need to focus on for the next month. And that clarity, that person, like a third party also saying like, Hey, this is what you need to be doing. Like, don't worry about these other tiny things yet. Those are things we can get to, but this is the biggest lever to pull on and let's pull. And that's what he did for me. I always say that, um, you can have a plan, right? And there's three ways you can go about it, right? You can figure it out on your own and it's ultimately how everybody starts. You can copy someone who's already accomplished what you were trying to accomplish. And the third is you can get a coach. And the two things that a coach provides are drive. And that wasn't really a good forcing function, but the second piece is honest feedback on your plan. So my mentor was Chris and I don't know if you know this. Um, and so he has, he has this saying that it's a lot easier to read the label on the jar. Once you're outside of the jar, right? Sometimes we're just so wrapped up in our own stuff that it's unclear what the next step is, where it may be obvious for somebody else. So having that perspective, like what was the next step for you? What was the big change from doing the stuff, uh, from the guides and the videos versus, you know, actually when somebody else got their eyes on it, what, what, what did you change that really got you going? The systems is going to be the biggest thing, but I think also it, it enabled me to have more speed. I think from implementing the systems, but also having speed to systems, speed, delete speed to all these other things that increased our opportunities. And, and at that same time, I think it was three months later, we moved from 2000 square feet to 6,000 square feet is which we're currently in, which was a massive leap for us, uh, in terms of rent and everything. But I don't think I would have had that opportunity if I didn't implement the systems that I got from mentorship and pulled on the right levers at the right time and also had the speed to be able to grow. And in that year, I think the statistic was we grew 80% in my first year of mentorship. It was something ridiculous. I, I would have to pull up those numbers, but the, the growth that we had in that first year with the move, with mentorship, with the speed and the systems was, I, I, today I would just call it immeasurable. And you kept cooking, right? Like it just kept accelerating. So yeah. Every, every year we've grown over 40%. So systems is always a good starting point. Like most gym owners think they have systems until they actually see what good systems look like. And so we got that implemented and I call that like the, the foundation. Of the house. Right. And that was what attracted me to two brain personally as a client, as a gym owner. Right. I had done all the other programs and they all kind of focused on here's how you get 10 leads fast. Right. But nobody else was saying like, here's how you make a career as a gym owner. Here's how you become a millionaire gym owner. Here's how you do the things that can, can make you last for 10, 20, 30 years. So once those systems were in place, I think we can move to some of the shinier stuff, but you know, like what, what was the next phase after that? For me, especially, I think when you get those systems in place, it allowed you to really dive into the members more and the help first. And I think one of the things that we really did that helped was the goal reviews, the NSIs. I promoted one of my coaches. I promised her when we opened the gym, she was at a gym down the road. She wanted to make a career out of this. And we actually just celebrated her. Uh, it was that two months ago. Um, that she quit her job and she is now was my, is my first time, first full-time employee, which is absolutely amazing. And it's enabled me to give careers and give jobs. And now I have two full-timers and, but we put her in the CSM role and we poured into our people and we try to focus and make sure that we were helping people first. And then I was able to now promote her to the ops manager. But again, there was a lot of those things that shiny or systems that we were able to put in place to be able to get to these pieces. Well, that's it. That's another great one. So you had the systems in place and then the next year you were able to really pour into the people and the members are the members. Yeah. So that's not a shiny thing. That's a, Yeah. I think I just do the boring things really well. The most successful gym owners do. And so, you know, I think that's where a lot of people get surprised that there isn't that one magic marketing tactic or content piece that's going to change your business. It's the stuff that you already know you should be doing. It's just doing it at a much higher level. Correct. I mean, the things that we're doing on a day-to-day basis or a monthly basis is when I started the gym, I would, I would say that's stupid what we're doing right now. Like I would not be able to believe the amount of things that we do in a day or in a week. Like I would, there's no way I would imagine what we're doing right now. And those things to me would be really shiny actually, I think, because right now, like I think they're boring or they're just mundane, but Braden, when he started this super shiny, because how many more people am I helping? I think that is like, the amount of impact, because we just naturally, we were group fitness. Now we have personal training. Now we have semi-private. Now we have these specialty programs, but it all started because we did one thing really, really well. And it was, we created a special experience for people in our gym. And I wouldn't have had the bandwidth to do that if I didn't put the systems or the boring things in place to be able to feed into the people. A burnt out gym owner is not a good gym owner, right? You can't feed into your people. You can't feed into your staff. So I think doing those boring things, doing the systems is super fricking shiny looking back on it now because of the amount of impact it's had on my community, my coaches and my members. Like we're changing generations. And I think that is the coolest piece. And just talking with people today, cause they didn't hear the story about where I started. Like I was a fucking train wreck. And I'm now impacting generations in my community. And now I have the privilege to mentor other gym owners to have that much greater of an impact. So I think when you boil it down, those boring things are super shiny because of all that. You said you went hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to go to chiropractic school. How much are you using that chiropractic degree right now? Zero. And do you regret going? It's like asking if I regret going to NDSU. Like, I don't. Because even though all the drugs I did, all the alcohol, like, just numbing out the feelings I was having. I mean, I wouldn't be sitting here with you if I didn't have those life experiences. I probably would never have bought my gym. Right? So I don't regret anything. I think I'm on a path God has put in front of me. I'm just working my ass off to follow in those steps. And now I get to sit here with you and have this conversation. So I don't regret anything. I've made bad decisions. I've done things that I'm not proud of, but also I'm very proud of the person I am today to be able to sit here with you. And a big part of what makes your business unique, you actually just expanded, right? You knocked down a wall because you're growing. You're bursting at the seams. It was an expensive project. It always is. Two walls, 120K. So about 30% of your revenue comes from personal training, right? So at what point did you develop that revenue stream? Realizing that group fitness was not for everyone. And how long in the journey was it until personal training became a big part of the business? I would say in the past year is when it became a really big part. I was the only one that was doing personal training and I knew just like all the things I just went through, I could not focus on the other areas in the business if I was doing personal training. My other full-time person, Megan, who was here this weekend. She's really dove into that role. She took over all my clients and she's doing a fantastic job building up our personal training and semi-private now. Most gym owners that derive the majority of their revenue from group training struggle to go on and add personal training, semi-private training, and have the focus to build that into a large portion of the business. Did you struggle with that? When you get done with a personal training session and someone's elated by the service that you provided them, you get immediate feedback and you get that dopamine kick, a little endorphin rush. But when you're behind your office door and you're doing all these other things, you don't get that as much. So was that a little bit harder? Was that something? Yeah. But I also think of she quit teaching because she didn't like it. And now I just did a podcast with her on this from teacher to full-time coach, and she's so much more fulfilled in her life. So I'm proud of what I've been able to enable her and the actions that she's taken to develop that. And so sometimes it's a little harder to give up clients and give up those personal relationships, but I know she's going to give her or those individuals a better service because that's her job, right? Versus me trying to run the business, trying to run all the coaches and the members. It's hard. So you're growing year after year after year. Your first went to the systems, you almost doubled, and then you really poured into the team. You grew another 40% and then you dialed in on adding personal training and the supplemental services. How did that impact the business? In terms of the business, it's giving more options to a bigger variety of people. So it's increasing our bandwidth and our reach on who we can help. Because for group fitness, we're at about 200 members. And that is a pretty good point for us in terms of service to be able to provide quality group fitness for 200 people. And then for the other realms, right, it's just increasing our bandwidth to help more people. And in terms of scalability and being able to buy better equipment or fix things in the gym regularly, it's increased our profitability. So I can bring my coaches to summit so I can be in tinker so I can go and pour into more people so I can go and do all these other things, right? It's it's really helped us reach and also develop the business more. And what was the impact on revenue? Oh, significant. I mean, we were sitting around 30k months. And as group continued to grow, it just, I mean, we went from 30 to 55 pretty steadily. I think last year, we were still having 30 and 40k months pretty regularly. And now we're right around 55 regularly. So you were essentially able to bolt on and another quarter million dollars plus onto the business. Yeah. So the gym is doing well, it's been growing, you've been taking home more and more month after month after month. You're in our tinker program right now. And that program is all about building wealth. The goal of that program is to help gym owners get to a million dollar net worth. A lot of people have wins outside of just their gym, they're able to take the money they're making their gym, turn that into more money elsewhere. Did you have any other financial wins outside of just the gym itself? Yeah. So before I got into two brain, I was pretty lost in terms of where the wealth is. And I don't have a traditional retirement accounts or things like that. That's not how I've built up our investment strategy or our wealth. So when I met my wife, she was already been working. And I was diving into all these different books. So I was looking into real estate, I was looking into financial planning, all these different things. And we were able to buy our first townhome together. And then when we moved on from that, we house hacked, we didn't realize it at the time that we were house hacked, but we have before it was called house hacking. So we went from living in that rented it out, and then we moved. And then we moved and then rented that out. And now we're living where we currently are. So we have two rental properties because of house hacking. So we built up assets there. And I had no idea what I was doing with them. I was like, Okay, this is just kind of cool. We have two rental properties, no idea how they work for us or what they can do. And then. I got into Tinker and Tinker gave me a lot more clarity on like, oh, this is what you could be doing with your rental properties. Oh, this is how it should be cash flowing. This is how we should be moving the money to different places and diversifying because I literally had everything in the gym and two rental properties. So Tinker has the amount of connections that I've gotten inside that group. I'm now doing syndications. I was able to buy into another gym and diversify my wealth out of just my gym as much as it is my baby and it's everything to me. I also know that for my wife and I to be financially safe, we do have to diversify into different areas. So we stumbled into rental properties, have those. And now my wife and I, we own three acres of land that we plan on building our kids childhood home on. And so we've kind of stumbled into these things. But Tinker really gave me the clarity on where to go with my wealth and how to build it even more. So just because the gym is growing, I now have that ability to use that money smartly and not just go buy more equipment in the gym. And it's a great point, right? Because a lot of people will hear some of these stories, and they'll read the headline of a podcast like this and think it's like an overnight thing. But it's like, you struggled for a year just using the free material. And then it took you a year just to put the systems in and then you had to do the people. And then you were able to really hone in on the supplemental services, then there was enough money to have the money start making money. And it was a you know, it sounds like your journey was a five year one. And you're fast, like, you know, you're you're moving. Right. And, and so I do think it's great to hear the order of operations and really helpful for some of the people listening. Now, because you've done so good in the program, you've been such a leader, you know, you were invited to become a two brain mentor. And I'm so proud you're on the team. And I'm so proud to be working with you. Tell me some of the things that you see some of your clients, some of the gym owners you work with struggling with. First one off the bat is just clarity. I feel like there's so many gym owners that are trying to do they're trying to work so hard. But they're not necessarily working on one thing, getting it done and moving on to the next, or doing it with the utmost quality. They're doing so much working so hard, but they just don't have that one thing that's going to get them to that next point. And they're, yeah, so that's the biggest thing that they're struggling with that I get to see right off the bat. And for gym owners who are maybe you know, like yourself when you're struggling, and they're not in a position to be able to hire a mentor yet. How do they work through that clarity? What can they do to get to a position where they can where they can scrape together the first payment to work with you? Yeah, no, that's fair. So, um, I've developed this over the time because, uh, as you said, I work pretty fast and I will come up with 10 different ideas I can do myself. So I will write down those 10 different ideas and I will circle the three that I think is going to be the best. And then between those three, I see, okay, what is struggling the most in my business and which one of these three is going to help that. So that's my system that I use when I had the free material and I've gotten a little bit better with it over the time and it's gotten smoother. You're not going to be perfect off the first go, but it's almost like when I read an article or I read a book, there's a golden nugget in everything. You just have to find the one thing in that and don't go on to the next article. Don't go on to the next video or book until that one thing is done. Otherwise, you're just consuming to consume and you're not going to get anywhere. You're just going to spin in circles. So do one thing and then you can go on. I remember when I was in that part of the journey, it was also difficult because I found it helpful to just like commit to one camp, right? Because if you're consuming a little bit from everybody and everybody talks about doing things a little differently, that list of 10 can turn into 30, can turn into 60. And then this idea conflicts with what this other person says. And so being able to really focus and hone in on that one thing and do it to completion. Do you have any tips on how to, you know, there's honing in on the one thing. It's figuring out what you want to do, but then there's actually doing it before you choose the next thing to go run off and do. For people who maybe struggle to get things done, you know, do you have advice for them? Just do the work. I mean, I think for those individuals that struggle in getting things done, I think it's a, they, what's your why? Why are you doing it? I think it can come back to that in terms of why they can't get things done. It truly, in my honest opinion, I think it's something that they have to look in the mirror of why they can't complete what they're starting. So we're at the Two Brain Summit. A lot of these talks focus on what it is that moves you, that why. And so you're burning the candle from both ends. You're working hard, right? So what is your why? What is driving you right now? It's my girls back home it's i got a two and a half year old i got a five month old and my wife back home and then we have our chocolate lab as well and i mean i mean i get up at 4 a.m every single day and there's some nights that i go to bed at 10 11 i just i i work i enjoy this because i was able to retire my wife she gets to be stay at home with our girls like that fires me up and i think people need to find that and if you truly have your why those really days or the days that you would sell your gym for a chipotle burrito that's going to make it worth it because you get to go home or at least for me i get to go home and i get to see those girls and i'm like yeah today could have been really but i it's it's for them it's not necessarily for me on those days. So being able to look at them, that's my why and give them the best life that they can have. And for my girls, when they maybe hit a struggling point or they want to go on a business adventure, I can do what my dad gave me and I can give them that little seed to grow into where I'm at now. Because if my dad didn't believe in me in that moment, none of this would have been possible. I know I put in a lot of hard work, but he had belief in me. So my why is being able to do that for my girls one day when they come to me and they want to change the world, they want to make an impact. And so to a gym owner who might be struggling right now, what would you tell them? I feel it. I hear you. It's part of the journey. I think you're going to be better off because of this. It may suck right now, and I'm sorry it does. But reach out, get help, find a mentor, consume things, focus on one thing, and then move on. The biggest thing I will tell you is I hear you and I feel you. And it sucks, but you'll get through it and you'll be better for it. Brayden, thanks for sharing your story. This is definitely one of the more powerful ones I've heard. I've been over here on the other side of the table trying not to tear up the entire time. If you're a gym owner who's struggling, know that you don't have to do it alone. If you want to talk to someone from the Two Brain Team, click the link below to book a call. At the very minimum, we'll give you a free book, a free resource. No matter the problem you're struggling with, we have a guide. We have something that can help you.