Chris Cooper's Blog, page 7

The Dumb Tax: Confessions From a Real Gym Owner

I paid the dumb tax through the nose as a new gym owner.

In fact, I paid it in regular installments over a period of years.

The dumb tax is the penalty for making bad decisions.

It’s not the cost of bad luck or bad results.

It’s the price you pay when you do something dumb—something that could have been avoided if you simply did some math.

In the gym business, the dumb tax is almost always paid after an entrepreneur ignores numbers and data.

Sometimes, the tax bill comes due after a “business expert” offers horrible advice—but, again, the owner could have avoided the tax by asking more questions and evaluating numbers more carefully.

Never take recommendations from “experts” at face value; demand numbers.

Here are five times I messed up badly and paid the dumb tax:

1. Renting too Much Space and Wasting It

“CrossFit gyms should be in big warehouses,” I thought. So I rented 6,000 square feet even though I had 10 members, and I used 1,000 square feet as an athlete lounge and office area that was vacant most of the day.

Dumb Error: I rented space based on the idea that I would have—and need—hundreds of members. The is like a bachelor’s renting a huge house because he “might have kids down the line.”

What I Should Have Done: Created a business model that ensured profitability with just 150 members and rented a smaller space to serve those members.

2. Absorbing Staff Costs

My business plan literally said staff costs would be zero because the owner would coach all classes. This decision ensured I didn’t generate any personal income and couldn’t take a day off for a decade.

Dumb Error: Hiding expenses to create false profitability.

What I Should Have Done: Built staff costs into my business plan so I could set my rates to cover expenses, generate profit and take time off.

3. Basing Rates on Other Gyms

“What is that other gym charging for a similar service?” I asked in 2011.

What a horrible question. Asking it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

Dumb Error: Assuming another gym’s rates would create profitability for my gym.

What I Should Have Done: Calculated rates based on expenses, value and desired profit margin.

4. Not Raising Rates

About two years after I set my rates based on what other gyms were charging, I knew the numbers were flawed.

Dumb Error: Running the numbers and then failing to take action because I was scared.

What I Should Have Done: Raised rates immediately with the help of a mentor.

5. Not Selling High-Value Services

My focus on big groups blinded me to an obvious revenue source: I had more than enough space to offer high-value services and group classes. Instead of offering PT—high value—I offered more open gym slots to group clients—low value.

Dumb Error: Continually trying to find “more members” instead of high-value clients who wanted more attention and personalized programming.

What I Should Have Done: Turned underused space into a studio and sold one-on-one, small-group or semi-private services.

Numbers Over Feelings, Hunches and Anecdotes

All these mistakes are obvious on a spreadsheet.

They are hidden when you make decisions based on emotion, “should,” and unsupported advice from business gurus or well-meaning but misguided gym owners.

In my defence, solid microgym data was scarce in 2011. That’s no longer the case.

In 2025, Two-Brain has mountains of numbers, and a mentor can tell you exactly what to do to improve each key metric in your gym.

“This tactic will improve average revenue per member by $20 in 30 days. We’ve used it in 300 gyms, and it works.”

Don’t pay the dumb tax.

Run your gym with numbers.

To get access to an expert who can help you analyze your data and make the very best decisions for your business, book a call here.

The post The Dumb Tax: Confessions From a Real Gym Owner appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Million-Dollar Mistakes: The True Cost of Inaction for Gym Owners

To watch this episode on YouTube, click here.

The post Million-Dollar Mistakes: The True Cost of Inaction for Gym Owners appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Million-Dollar Mistakes: The True Cost of Inaction

No gym goes bankrupt from one colossal mistake.

Fitness businesses bleed out slowly—one small error at a time—until the owner is working harder for less, feeling completely exhausted and wondering where all the money went.

Keith Cunningham, author of “The Road Less Stupid,” calls this “paying the dumb tax”: It’s the cost of making decisions without knowing your numbers—or ignoring them altogether.

These small errors compound into million-dollar mistakes that drain your bank account and your energy and destroy your future.

Let me show you how it happens.

The Math Behind Million-Dollar Mistakes

Imagine offering a 15 percent discount on a $200 membership to just 10 clients.

That might seem harmless. But over two years, that one discount adds up to $7,200 left on the table.

Multiply that across more clients and more months and suddenly you’re staring at five figures—or more—in lost revenue.

Discounts delete dollars.

Three Kinds of Costly Mistakes

Let’s break down the kinds of mistakes that quietly snowball into million-dollar problems.

1. Compounding Problems

Some mistakes grow larger the longer you ignore them.

Like hiring the wrong person and then failing to train them. They keep making mistakes and underperforming. The costs of the errors mount, and you, the CEO, work increasingly inefficiently because you’re constantly cleaning up messes or walking off anger.

Another one: Signing a lease on a space that’s too big and refusing to sublet or downsize because your ego’s attached to the square footage. That’s money down the drain month after month.

Offering discounts on paid-in-full annual memberships is truly brutal. I’ve actually seen business coaches recommend doing this to pay for their coaching fees. But that strategy robs your business of cash flow and bleeds out profits you’ll never get back. (I wrote about this “discount death spiral” in detail here.)

Compounding problems come with massive price tags. In this example, combined losses from 15 percent discounts and rates that are too low by $10 can hit $86,400 over four years—even in a small gym:

2. Delaying Problems

Sometimes the real cost is in waiting too long to fix an obvious issue, like ignoring a sliver that eventually causes an infection.

In the gym world, delaying can look like this:

Keeping a bad staff member because you’re afraid of confrontation.Putting off a price increase because you’re worried clients will leave.Waiting until your business is in flames before hiring a mentor.

In each case, the consequences of inaction become greater as the clock ticks. The longer you wait, the more expensive the problem becomes. Delaying action is one of the most expensive mistakes a business owner can make.

When you identify a problem, fix it immediately.

3. Mounting Problems

Some mistakes multiply because your “solution” is essentially throwing gas on a small fire.

Here are four examples:

Hiring more staff instead of fixing your systems.Adding new members with a broken pricing model riddled with discounts.Spending money on ads even though your retention is getting worse.Paying higher salaries without a plan to generate additional revenue.

One chart we created shows that avoiding a simple $10 rate increase for 150 members costs $36,000 in just two years. Imagine how that number grows exponentially if you ignore multiple problems at once.

The Cost of Inaction

Here’s the hard truth: If you don’t change, you’ll keep paying the dumb tax forever.

Discounts won’t magically disappear. Bad staff members rarely transform into stars on their own. Legacy rates will erode your margins year after year.

And if you don’t fix these issues, your business will eventually fail. The numbers don’t lie. The cost of mistakes adds up to hundreds of thousands—or even millions—over a career.

No one is coming to save you. Only you can save your business.

But change costs money, time and effort.

Yes, hiring a mentor has a cost—but it’s far cheaper than losing $86,400 over four years because you didn’t know how to implement a $10 rate increase and stop offering discounts.

The faster you take action, the faster you stop the financial bleeding.

Stop paying the dumb tax. Raise your rates. Eliminate unnecessary discounts. Know your numbers.

And if you’re stuck, get a mentor.

Your business—and your future—are worth it.

The post Million-Dollar Mistakes: The True Cost of Inaction appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Owners, Stop Paying the Dumb Tax

Gyms don’t fail because of one big mistake.

They fail because lots of small mistakes are repeated over and over.

Each mistake costs time, money, energy or people—or some combination thereof. I’m sure you can think of a few “grand slams” where you paid the price in all four areas.

As these mistakes add up over time, gym owners find themselves working harder and harder—but earning less—until they run out of time, money or energy.

Passionate, hardworking but mistake-prone gym owners end up broke, burned out or both.

Keith Cunningham, in his book “The Road Less Stupid,” calls making repeated mistakes “paying the dumb tax.”

It’s a term we use a lot at Two-Brain because most gym owners are quietly paying this tax without even realizing it.

It’s time to stop.

What’s the Dumb Tax?

Definition: The dumb tax is the price you pay when you make decisions without understanding the math—or, worse, when you ignore the math because a decision “feels right.”

You pay the dumb tax when you guess, hope or follow the crowd without asking, “What’s the actual impact of this decision?”

You also pay the dumb tax when a supposed “business expert” presents “wisdom” and you don’t ask for data and proof.

Example: “I want 300 members!”

Sounds great. But have you done the math?

Can you actually serve that many people with your current staff?Do you have enough space and equipment?Do you know what each client should pay to support the business?Do you have a clear plan to acquire and retain these clients?Have you reviewed the business models of gym owners who have done this successfully?

If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” you are paying the dumb tax.

I’ve Paid the Dumb Tax (You Don’t Have To)

Error: I gave discounts to military personnel, police officers, nurses, firefighters, teachers and others. (The list was very long.)

Dumb Assumptions:

I believed discounts would build goodwill.I thought clients with discounts would refer more clients.I believed I could cover the discount by selling in volume (this never works in service businesses).

Result:

Discounts didn’t build loyalty.Discounts didn’t increase referrals.Discounts gutted my margins.Discounts taught my clients that I didn’t believe my service was worth full price.

Keith Cunningham’s Analysis: Dumb.

Cost: The dumb tax was so costly here that I almost went bankrupt.

Data-Backed Lesson: Coaching is not a high-volume game, and gyms should not offer discounts. Other business models can be used to build a stable, profitable business.

Paying the Dumb Tax in 2025

Here are six common ways gym owners still pay the dumb tax—even though we know with certainty what they should do instead to avoid the penalty.

Mistake 1: Selling Discounted Paid-in-Full Memberships

This one comes from the world of access gyms, where most owners don’t care if people show up. It doesn’t work in a coaching business.

Why would you give a discount to your most loyal clients—the ones who would stick around anyway? It’s not strategy. It’s desperation.

I listed this one first because some business coaches will push this stupidity to “help you get cash in the door.” They’ll even suggest using the money to pay for their coaching. This is a horrible idea.

Mistake 2: Chasing Headcount

The best gyms don’t chase volume. They focus on value.

You don’t need 300 clients to earn a great living. Two-Brain gym owners routinely earn over $100,000 per year with 150 clients or fewer. The best gyms in the world focus on value, not volume.

You run a coaching business, not a membership warehouse.

Mistake 3: Competing on Price

“The gym down the street charges less!”

Yes. And it’s going out of business.

Provide value instead and set yourself apart as “the best steakhouse in town.”

You don’t want to win the race to the bottom. If another owner wants to run the cheapest gym in town, let them pay the dumb tax.

Mistake 4: Offering Big Discounts to Bring in Business

“Twenty percent off to get people in the door!”

You might as well tape a “low value” sign to your front window. Do you really want to be seen as “cheap”?

Discounts attract the wrong people. They don’t stick around. They don’t refer. They don’t value the service.

You’re not in a price war—you’re in an outcome war.

Mistake 5: Deep Discounts for Referrals

I’ve seen this one pop up lately: You give a current client 40 percent off for a referral, and you give the referred client 40 percent off, too.

This is dumb. Big discounts tell clients your service isn’t worth the full price. They also kill your margin and your momentum.

Your existing clients see your value and pay your full rates. Why slash them and sow the seeds of doubt?

The referred client? Why start the relationship with a bargain-basement play that weaves “cheap” into the relationship? The referring client obviously sees value in your services. So why tell the referred client, “Our services aren’t really that valuable”?

Here’s math on this brutal tactic:

You charge $200 a month for a group membership.Your profit margin is 33 percent, but you go underwater to offer a 40 percent discount to a full-price client who provides a referral.You lose money on the referred client, too.With a 40 percent discount, each client pays $120 per month.You are losing money while telling your clients “this service is worth just $120 a month.”

Solution: Be an adult. Just ask clients for referrals. When they refer someone, say “thank you so much” and treat their friend like gold.

Mistake 6: Not Knowing Your Numbers

This one’s a certified gym killer—but it’s not always an insta-kill.

If you’re a young owner/operator who’s wearing all the hats and happy to work 60-hour weeks on a “hobby” without staff, you can get away with a few things for a short period. But this plan is unsustainable long term.

At some point, the dumb tax will come due, and it will be very painful. It will probably sink the business and have you sending applications to the fire department.

Here’s the reality: Even if you don’t have staff or a family to feed, your gym supports your clients’ health. If you go under, they quit training. Not knowing your numbers is therefore completely irresponsible.

This is doubly true if you have staff who rely on you for income.

It is triply true if you have a family who relies on you to pay the bills.

If you don’t know your numbers, you’ll believe lies, myths and stories other people are telling. You will make bad decisions regularly, and you will pass the bill for the dumb tax on to your clients, your staff and your family.

Don’t do that. Learn how to understand your numbers and key performance indicators (a mentor can teach you).

Whenever you hear, read or see any advice, you should ask tough questions and demand answers before taking action: “Which metric will this improve? By how much? In how long? How do you know this?”

Hard data: The average gym owner who joins Two-Brain can reach income of $100,000 a year in two years, one month and nine days, regardless of starting point. 
What to Do Instead

Avoid the dumb tax by learning what really matters:

Know your key metrics—average revenue per member (ARM), length of engagement (LEG), effective hourly rate (EHR) and net owner benefit (NOB).Build a high-value, low-churn model.Get mentorship to skip the trial-and-error phase. Go right to the correct, data-backed answer.

Or as Cunningham puts it: “Avoid the dumb tax by learning from people who’ve already paid it.”

You will make mistakes. That’s part of the process.

But you don’t have to make all of them.

With a coach and a clear plan, you can avoid huge mistakes and reach success sooner.

Stop paying the dumb tax. Start building the gym you actually want. To talk about metrics, data and proven tactics for gym growth, book a call here.

The post Gym Owners, Stop Paying the Dumb Tax appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Paying the Dumb Tax: How to Stop Wasting Time and Money in Your Gym

To watch this episode on YouTube, click here.

The post Paying the Dumb Tax: How to Stop Wasting Time and Money in Your Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

She Started Her Gym With 54 Members. You Can, Too.

What can a year of mentorship do for a gym?

I’ll let Tori and Scott Jablonka tell you.

We first interviewed Tori in June 2024 at the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago, when her gym was still under construction.

She had signed up for mentorship in February/March 2024, well before opening Immortal Athletics in Cramerton, North Carolina.

She worked with a mentor to set up the business properly, with a special focus on policies, procedures and the founders club program.

Here’s what she had to say then:

At the 2025 summit, I caught Tori and her partner at the very end of the event. I tossed a cell phone on her for an update.

Here it is:

This is a great story.

If you scroll back through Immortal Athletics’ social media, you’ll see Tori and Scott building momentum and executing the founders club program to a tee.

Here are a few highlights:

Founders Club PostHard Hat TourCountdown to Kickoff

The Jablonkas used this plan to open with 54 paying members—and that’s not even the record for the Two-Brain founders club plan.

Scott Jablonka at the Two-Brain Summit

Can you imagine opening your doors with 50-80 paying members on Day 1? Or with a solid pricing structure and business systems?

In 2011, I opened with about 10 members, an Excel spreadsheet, a pencil case for cash and cheques, and a dream. It turned into a nightmare, but a mentor helped me recover.

Had I gotten help earlier, I could have avoided that, as Tori and Scott did.

Here’s what’s going on at Immortal Athletics today—you can feel the momentum:

Founders Club (They’re Still Around!)5-Star ReviewSpecialty Program

If you’re thinking about opening a gym, or if you’re already in the process of doing so, talk to a Two-Brain mentor. If you do, you’ll avoid a ton of mistakes and reach success faster. And you’ll get to sleep at night because you’ll have paying members on Day 1.

To hit the easy button on opening a gym, book a call here.

The post She Started Her Gym With 54 Members. You Can, Too. appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Need a Vacation? Here’s How a CrossFit Games Athlete Earns Time Off

To watch this episode on YouTube, click here.

The post Need a Vacation? Here’s How a CrossFit Games Athlete Earns Time Off appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Activate Your Staff (Not Just Delegate)

When you opened a gym, someone might have told you to “just be a good coach” and the rest would take care of itself.

Right?

Well, bad news: “The rest” is your business. And that’s 90 percent of your job now.

Being a good coach is necessary but insufficient for running a good business.

And (possibly) the worst part? None of us realized that we’d have to manage other people. But we do.

Here’s how to do it successfully.

Step 1

Tell them exactly what they have to do.

In the previous post in this series, I said that you must set up and document your systems in such a way that a 12-year-old could understand the instructions. Not because your staff is uneducated or dumb but because this will force you to think through the gaps in understanding.

If you don’t tell someone how to mix the soap in the mop bucket, they’ll do it differently. They might do it wrong. If you don’t tell them exactly what time to start class, they might start it late or early.

Write your systems (sometimes called standard operating procedures or SOPs) as if you’re writing them for your preteen nephew. Skip no steps. No one can read your mind.

Step 2

Coach them through it at least once.

You know how you coach clients through their workouts? You must coach your staff through their jobs.

They need more coaching in the beginning but will still need regular evaluations and correction over time.

This isn’t “hand holding”—it’s coaching. And it’s your job.

Step 3

Have them schedule the time to do the job.

This is easy for simple jobs such as cleaning: “Show up at 9, heat up the water,” and so on. It’s less easy for jobs such as lead nurture, where staff can be “kinda on, kinda off” 24 hours a day.

I teach my staff to make appointments with themselves to do the work. My higher-level staff members (like a GM) have a Golden Hour practice, just like I do. My GM starts every single day by doing one thing to grow the gym.

We determine his list at the start of each month, he executes daily, and I know someone is working to actually grow my gym every day instead of scrolling Instagram and just clocking his hours.

Step 4

Evaluate quarterly.

Everything degrades over time. A quarterly Career Roadmap meeting can realign each staff person and clarify what they want, how to get it and how they’re doing so far.

These are coaching meetings. Just as you do Goal Review Sessions for your clients, you need to do Career Roadmap meetings for your coaches.

The Basics—on Repeat

You can read all the leadership books about eating the frogs and doing the hard things and starting with why, but repeating these basics over and over will get you 90 percent of the way to a well-run gym with minimal frustration.

Any time I meet a gym owner who blames “the millennials” or their “uninvested staff,” I ask if they’re doing these four things. Nine times out of 10, they have a “process problem” that will be solved with these four steps.

The other 10 percent of the time, they actually have a “people problem”—but they’ll never know until they fix their processes.

At the start of this post, I said that being a good coach is necessary but insufficient for running a good business. You probably didn’t want to hear that—I sure didn’t.

We all wish that just being “the best” at our jobs would make us financially stable.

But when you open a gym, your job is no longer “coach.” It’s “owner.” If you want to be financially stable, you have to be good at the owner job.

Want proof? Close to 9,000 gyms go out of business every year. Most are owned by good coaches. Some are owned by great coaches.

All those people opened gyms out of passion, prayed every night, listened to every podcast and read every book. They’re not dumber than you are; they weren’t lazy.

They simply believed the story that being a good coach would somehow make their businesses successful.

My mission is to save you from that lie.

The post How to Activate Your Staff (Not Just Delegate) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Permission—and a Plan—to Take a Vacation

“So, how much vacation time do you get every year?”

I was manning the barbecue at a family birthday party last weekend, and my nephew asked this question.

My relationship with time off can only be described as “it’s complicated.”

Every entrepreneur can relate: In theory, you have unlimited time off, right? You work for yourself. You’re the boss!

In practice, you have the toughest boss in the world—and you probably don’t take any vacations or time off.

As the owner, no one gives us time off, and no one enforces a break when we’re burned out.

Here, I’ll show you how we approach it at Two-Brain.

Time Off: The Step-by-Step Plan

First, we break down the roles in your business. Think of it as listing all the “hats” you wear, such as cleaner, billing, group coach, personal trainer, sales, marketing, etc. Write them all on a blank sheet of paper.

Beside each role, write the replacement value—how much you’d have to pay someone to take each job off your hands.

For example, a cleaner should make around minimum wage, so write $15-$20 or so. If you’re not sure what minimum wage is in your area, check.

Someone who does the billing should be slightly higher, like $21-$25 per hour.

Now rank those roles from low to high replacement value.

Replace yourself in the least-expensive role first.

For example, hire a cleaner. While they’re cleaning, use that time to do marketing (or reinvest it in a higher-value role on your chart).

If you’re paying someone $20 to clean while you earn $70 for a personal-training appointment, that’s a win. You might have heard this called “buying back your time.” We call it the Value Ladder because you have to implement the plan one step at a time.

In a few months, replace yourself in the second-least-expensive role, and so on.

As you do this, your time becomes more valuable—but you’re still working just as much. You get time off after the next step.

Delegate and Test

Every time you delegate one of these roles, you have to clearly map out a set of instructions for your replacement. They should be so simple that a 12-year-old could follow them and so complete that no gaps exist.

When you hire a cleaner, you give them a cleaning checklist. When you hire someone to do billing, you give them step-by-step instructions so simple that a child could follow them, complete with pictures and video.

This process ensures you don’t skip steps. Every time you generate a set of instructions, you are creating a system—and your business is the sum of the systems you create.

How do you know when your systems are good and your business is legit? You test the systems. You take time off.

We tell Two-Brain gym owners to take four days off to test their new systems—no texting, no email communication with the gym, cell to be used by staff for emergencies only.

After four days, they return to the gym and check up on things. They find the gaps in their systems (“Whoops, I forgot to tell the cleaner where to buy soap!”), fix the gaps, update their systems, and improve their businesses.

After another couple of months, they take a week off. Eventually, they schedule a week off every quarter to recharge and fall in love with the gym again.

You Have Permission to Take Time Off

If you’re the boss, that means you don’t have a boss.

No one is giving you permission or forcing you to take time off. You know you should, but there’s always something that seems urgent. Right?

If you view time away from your gym as a test, though, you’re more likely to do it. At least that’s my secret.

(I also like to tell my team I’m taking a “think week” because that’s what Steve Jobs did, but I’m riding my bike, reading and thinking. I’m not checking Slack or answering emails or taking meetings. That, to me, is a great vacation.)

So when my nephew asked the vacation question this year, I said “I’m taking a week off at the start of every month!” and was happy to say it.

Three years ago, I’d have made a joke like, “Ah, my boss is a jerk. I never get time off!”

In case you need me to say it:

You need time away from your gym.

Your gym needs time away from you.

You have permission.

Go away.

The post Permission—and a Plan—to Take a Vacation appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Reclaim Your Time: The Exact System to Move From Coach to Owner

To watch this episode on YouTube, click here.

The post Reclaim Your Time: The Exact System to Move From Coach to Owner appeared first on Two-Brain Business.