September 8, 2025 • 25 mins
Overwhelmed by conflicting business advice? Cut through the noise with Chris Cooper’s proven system for building wealth as a gym owner.
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris explains how to move beyond the passion-first mentality that keeps most fitness entrepreneurs stuck and broke.
He breaks down his four-phase roadmap for gym-owner wealth: Founder, Farmer, Tinker and Chief. These phases show you what to focus on right now, what to ignore and how to move toward financial freedom.
Coop also shares candid stories from his early years of gym ownership, including mopping floors personally and trapping his business in Founder Phase. Everything changed when he focused on fixing the foundation first, stopped trying to market a broken gym, and started doing the right things as a CEO and business owner.
Now as the CEO of Two-Brain Business, Cooper has helped thousands of fellow gym owners fix their businesses, too. He’s minted more than 60 millionaire gym owners, and hundreds more are earning over $100,000 per year.
It’s time to break free from day-to-day operations and start building wealth. Tune in to get the full blueprint.
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1:28 - Why gym owners get stuck
7:44 - Founder Phase
10:51 - Farmer Phase
14:34 - Tinker Phase
19:36 - Chief Phase
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You didn't open a gym to get rich.
Neither did I.
We opened a gym to make adifference and not to make
money.
But if you don't learn how tomake money, you won't survive.
The truth is that we'repassionate about fitness and
that drives us to start a gym,but it doesn't keep a gym open.
(00:20):
I'd hate for your gym to go outof business because you're out
of money when you still got lotsof passion left over.
And I can remember the day whenI realized that just being the
best coach in town was not goingto be enough.
enough to keep the lights on.
Entrepreneurs go through fourphases of maturity on their
growth path.
And so that first phase we callthe founder phase when you're
starting up and you're grindingand you're hustling.
(00:42):
And the second phase we call thefarmer phase when you're
cultivating different ideas andgrowing your people.
The third phase we call thetinker phase when you've got
good systems in place in onelocation and you're looking to
reinvest or expand.
And the fourth phase is calledthe chief phase when you're
focused on growing other leaderswithin your tribe.
These four phases serve as aroadmap to show you what to
(01:04):
focus on right now, what you canignore or put aside for later,
and how to build towardfinancial freedom.
Today on this podcast, I'm goingto walk you through the four
phases and share some storiesfrom my own journey from the
Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thiefbook, which is now getting
updated for today's economy andbecoming the Founder, Farmer,
(01:25):
Tinker, Chief book in thefuture.
I want to talk about why mostGMOers get stuck first.
We're all subject to a lot ofadvice now.
You know, when I was startingout, it was hard to find
business advice.
And most of the stuff that I wasfinding was wrong.
It was just, you know, we're alla bunch of alphas out there and
nobody wants to admit whenthey're doing not very well.
(01:45):
And everybody kind of plays uphow well they're doing.
And it's really easy to thinkthat everybody's doing better
than you.
And the reality is that very fewpeople in the fitness industry
are actually doing well, nomatter how many you see claiming
it.
And so you get get stuck becauseyou get all this advice and you
get it on podcasts and you getit from books and you get it
from videos just like this one.
(02:07):
And you don't really know likewho's telling the truth, who
should you listen to, who iskind of overplaying their hand a
little bit and who's just tryingto take your money.
Let's face it.
How do you know that?
And the problem is that with allthis information coming in, you
get overwhelmed.
You get paralyzed.
Like, ah, maybe I should focuson TikTok.
(02:27):
Maybe I should be doingInstagram stuff.
I got to go clean the floor.
I got to run this class.
What about my own fitness?
And you find yourself at the endof every single day looking back
and going, man, my gym didn'treally grow anything today.
I hope it grows tomorrow.
I hope something differenthappens tomorrow.
But the difference that has tohappen is you.
You have to mature as anentrepreneur.
You have to move out of thefounder phase and into the
(02:49):
farmer phase.
I'm going to tell you how to dothat today.
The most important thing is thatyou can focus on the work that
you need to do right now and nottry and do everything, follow
every launch, read every book,because you're just going to get
more knowledge without actuallychanging your business.
When I found my first mentor,the best thing that he gave me
was focus.
And I went into this firstmeeting and I thought like,
(03:11):
okay, Dennis is going to teachme how to market.
And he said, Chris, I've heardstories about your gym.
You do not want people like mecoming to your gym right now
because we'll come in once, wemight be pulled light about it,
but we'll leave and we won'tcome back.
You need to fix your gym first.
You need to make it appealing tothe audience that you want to
attract.
You need it to be attractive topeople so that they stay once
(03:35):
you do start the marketing.
Don't buy any advertising likeyou're tempted to.
And that's actually whatlaunched me down this path.
I started a blog calleddon'tbuyads.com as a reminder to
myself that advertising a poorgym was just going to kill me in
the long run, that people wouldcome in and they would go out
too quickly.
So what did I actually need todo at that phase?
(03:56):
Well, that's what Dennis walkedme through, and I'm going to
share that with you now.
The problem was that I was aboutfour years into gym ownership at
that stage, at that time in mycareer, but I was still in the
founder phase.
I was still trying to doeverything myself.
I had hired staff, but I wasmicromanaging them.
Nothing was written down.
All the decisions were in myhead.
I thought everybody just knewwhat I knew because it was
(04:17):
common sense.
I was mopping.
I was coaching the classes.
I was working out.
I was answering the phone.
I was paying the bills.
I was running the payments.
I was doing the sales and in theleftover time I was doing the
marketing.
So of course I wasn't doing themarketing at all.
And I had this, um, I had thisopportunity to work on a
corporate partnership and Ithought, Oh boy, I got to jump
(04:39):
on this.
And I actually brought this tothe first meeting I ever had
with my mentor, Dennis.
I'm like, how do I lock thisdown?
It's going to go away.
I'm going to miss thisopportunity.
And he's like, Chris, if youbring these people into your gym
right now, they will hate it.
They'll tell their friends andthey'll never be back.
He gave me that tough love.
And, you know, he had me startby cleaning my bathrooms.
(04:59):
Okay, I get it that this is along play, but I was still very
impatient.
And then he had me hire acleaner with money I didn't
really have, but he had mereinvest that time into
marketing.
And it's a story that I'veshared a few times, but I paid
that cleaner$15 for the hour andI made$450 and the light bulb
started to go on.
Okay.
(05:20):
The thing is here, like a lot ofus think that the Because our
gym has been open for a whilethat we must know what we're
doing, right?
Like we've dodged the bullets.
But what we can't tell frominside is that maybe we've been
lucky.
Maybe we haven't really facedany hardship yet.
You know, it's really easy to bea good business owner when the
market is good.
It's really hard to be a goodbusiness owner when the market
(05:42):
isn't good.
A rising sea lifts all boats.
And then when the tide goes out,we see who's not wearing a
bathing suit.
And this is really like animportant thing to understand is
that you might be still in thefounder phase, even though
you've been doing this for along time.
There are a lot of gyms outthere who have been around for a
decade, 20 years even, andthey've survived, but they've
(06:03):
never really grown.
And the owner is burned out andthey're not making any money.
I do not call these peoplesuccessful entrepreneurs.
And so you can't skip steps.
You've got to solve the founderproblems, then the farmer
problems, then the tinkerproblems, and then worry about
the chief problems in stages.
I'll give you an example ofskipping steps.
steps.
(06:24):
When my gym was brand new, I wasgetting advice from CrossFit
discussion boards, from the NSCAdiscussion boards, from Yahoo
groups, everywhere I could findto get advice.
And the recurring advice thatseems to have been buried now is
like, you start really, reallysmall in the smallest space you
can find.
You sign the shortest term leaseyou can find.
You build your own equipment.
(06:45):
And only when people are doingburpees on the sidewalk outside
do you start thinking aboutexpansion.
That message has been kind oflost But a lot of those owners
were actually fine in theirfirst couple of years, the
people who started tiny, tinyand scaled up.
Now what you see is peoplesigning these big leases on
these micro gyms, 10,000 squarefeet that they don't even need.
(07:06):
They're signing up managers andcoaches in advance and paying
them salaries before they've gota dollar in revenue.
And so they're actually tryingto like build this mansion and
they have no foundation.
They're skipping steps.
They're trying to jump straightinto farmer phase instead of
building up slow and building asolid foundation.
And then of course, when anylittle thing doesn't go as
(07:28):
planned, the build out didn'tget done on time.
The tax man shows up.
I didn't have the rightguardrails in my bathroom and I
can't open.
Like any of these things willkill you.
You become super duper fragileif you try to skip steps.
Now that I've got all that outof the way, let's go through the
phases.
The first phase of gym ownershipis called the founder phase.
The purpose of the founder phaseor your goal is to get to break
(07:50):
even as quickly as you can.
We teach strategies for this inour Start a Gym program at
2Brain to help get you up abovethe water level so that you're
not losing money, okay?
Your job is like to prove yourconcept works before you start
bringing in staff.
So prove that the group model isgoing to work for you by
coaching groups.
Prove that personal training iseffective by doing some personal
(08:12):
training.
Later, you can leverage staff totake those things off your plate
and level yourself up to theCEO.
And you need to also do thenon-coaching roles.
You need to be cleaning.
You need to be doing thebookkeeping, but your job is to
document the process so that youcan get those things off your
plate quickly.
The first time you ever cleanyour gym, you should be writing
down exactly what you do.
(08:33):
Where did you put the soap?
Do you use hot water or coldwater, et cetera, so you can get
that off your plate eventuallyquickly.
But in the founder phase, you'regoing to be wearing every hat
until you document the process,and then you can hire somebody
else.
You also need to keep yourexpenses minimal.
You need to bootstrap whereveryou can so that you know where
the money is coming from andwhere the money is going.
(08:55):
You need to develop systems forfinancial tracking and watching
your cash flow instead of justchecking your bank account every
morning like I did for the firstfour years.
As soon as you develop thosethings, you can start to ascend
and hire other staff.
There are a lot of pitfalls herethough, right?
If you think like, oh, I'm thereal CEO, I'm going to hire
somebody to do the cleaning andsomebody to do the bookkeeping
(09:16):
and somebody, then you won'tunderstand how those jobs are
done and you won't be able tolead somebody else effectively.
You won't be able to coach themto do better or even evaluate
how well they're doing.
You'll be shooting from the hip,you know, making guesses from
your gut all the time instead ofactually being prepared to lead
these people to do better.
You know, rock climbers have ananalogy that the first person to
(09:38):
ascend the climb is the one thatnames it.
You need to be the first personto ascend every climb in your
business.
You need to be the first to runpayroll so that you can document
it.
You need to be the first toclean so that you can document
it.
You need to be the first to dothe social media posting so that
you can documented.
Until it's documented, you can'thand it off to anybody else.
This is part of how you get outof founder phase.
(09:59):
I was really lucky.
I was terrified and I had nomoney.
And so the money that I spent atstartup was very carefully
spent.
Yeah, I wasted some.
Definitely.
I bought a lat crossover machinethat I never, ever used.
But the reality is that in thatphase, I was okay.
I can grind.
I can work a 70-hour week and Ican be tight with money.
(10:21):
Eventually, though, you're goingto get burned out of the founder
phase and you need to evolve toget into the farmer phase.
You just can't skip that step ofwriting down your SOPs and your
processes and documentingexactly how you do things.
Because as soon as you hiresomebody, you're trying to move
into the farmer phase.
And if you haven't done thatstuff, you're going backward.
(10:41):
You're just going to wind upwasting a ton of money and time
trying to micromanage somebodywho doesn't know what to do
correctly or coach somebodywho's just not going to get any
better.
Okay, so now you're in farmerphase.
The goal here is to buildpredictable personal income.
This is how you know that yourbusiness works, is that you're
able to pay yourself what youdeserve to be paid.
(11:03):
Before you hire anybody elsefull-time, you have to prove
that your business is capable ofpaying somebody full-time.
That's you.
You're the crash test dummy forthe business.
You cannot ask somebody else toquit their full-time job or tie
their future to you until youknow that the business is
capable of paying somebodyfull-time.
That has to be you first.
Okay?
(11:24):
There's other reasons for this,too, for paying yourself first.
Let's face it.
Nobody goes out of businessbecause their staff quits.
Everybody goes out of businesswhen they can't eat, when the
owner can't pay themselves.
That's what kills gyms.
There's 10,000 former CrossFitgyms that have gone out of
business.
If you find any of those ownersonline, they're not bragging
(11:44):
about it, but if you can findthem, they'll tell you, the
reason I went out of businesswas XYZ.
I was too stressed.
I was working too hard.
I got burned out.
Another gym opened up next door.
It's CrossFit's fault.
It's the other gym's fault.
It's my coach's fault.
It's my client's fault.
But the bottom line to all theseis money.
Money solves the stress problem.
(12:04):
Money solves the overworkproblem.
Money solves the competitionproblem.
If you have money, these thingsare not problems.
The reason that these gyms allgo out of business, eventually,
if you dig deep enough, is thatthe owner didn't make enough
money.
And so you need to pay yourselffirst.
The next core action in thefarmer phase is is to hire.
But you have to hire the lowestvalue roles first.
(12:27):
You have to hire the cleaner,the admin.
Before you hire a group coach ora personal trainer to replace
yourself, you start by investingin the lower value roles, buying
yourself back some time, andthen reinvesting that time into
high value roles like marketingand sales.
To successfully hire thesepeople, you have to have
playbooks, checklists, thingsfor them to follow so that they
(12:47):
know how to do their job.
And you need to avoid thetechnician's curse, which we we
all do of going out and hiringanother coach.
Because if you try to hire areplacement for yourself in your
primary delivery role, you willspend all your time thinking
about what they're doing wrongbecause they'll never live up to
your expectations.
Instead, hire a cleaner or anadmin, give them a checklist,
(13:10):
give them a playbook.
You do that.
I'm going over here to do this.
I'm going to learn marketing.
I'm going to do sales.
Okay.
You also need to keep an eye onthe money.
So you have to understand thatyou're building a platform on
which other people can buildcareers.
And so instead of paying yourstaff a salary right out of the
gate and jeopardizing your ownincome, which jeopardizes the
whole gym for everybody, youneed to adopt models of how
(13:33):
you're paying people for theirtime.
We teach this in Two Brain.
It's called entrepreneurialism.
You're giving people theopportunity to make a living
with your clients on yourplatform, with your systems, and
you can pay them up to 44% ofthe revenue collected by their
service.
This is amazing for them if youthink about it because it's so
much cheaper than them startingtheir own business.
(13:54):
And 44% is more than you'remaking on any of the other
services in your business too.
You also need to look at yourpricing, look at your marketing.
Like farmer phase is busy, it'schaotic, it's crazy.
But if you set yourself upproperly in the founder phase,
you'll get through it much moreeasily.
If you try to ascend too quicklyand just delegate or abdicate
responsibility for growth andrunning your gym, you're just
(14:19):
gonna go backward and you'regonna get pulled right back into
being a founder again.
in.
Once you've got this dialed, andyou're making the income that
you need to live on for yourgym, okay, not just a little bit
of income, not just enough, butlike the income that pays for
your perfect day.
Now you can ascend to the thirdphase, which is tinker.
And the purpose of the tinkerphase is to build your net worth
(14:40):
and secure your financialfreedom.
You have to protect the goldengoose, right?
The goose that lays the goldeneggs, that's your gym, you have
to protect that.
The best way to protect it is tohave cash flow and investments
that That will help you ward offall the stuff that's coming in
the future.
(15:22):
time off because you have tounderstand you are a mental
athlete.
And we know what happens whenathletes overtrain, right?
Burnout and injury.
If you're just working all thetime and not taking a five-day
vacation once in a while or nothiring a coach to do your
nutrition programming or not,you know, riding your bike,
taking care of yourself, youwill get injured and your
(15:43):
business will be the thing thatsuffers.
People in the tinker phase takethe extra time and extra money
that their business is nowgenerating and they reinvest it
in one of four places.
First, they scale theiroperations.
So they might open morelocations using the system that
they develop because it works.
Second, they might take themoney and invest it in stocks or
(16:03):
property or crypto.
Many of the gym owners in TwoBrain wind up buying the
building that their gym is in.
But if that's not affordable,they might buy a different
building or they might put themoney somewhere else.
They get the money out of theirbusiness and get it working for
them instead of leaving it thereto be taxed or sued away.
They also invest in themselves.
They invest in their leader Theyinvest in mentorship and they
(16:24):
invest in health, theirlifestyle.
They invest in their mentalstate.
They invest in their physicalstate.
They get coaches.
They take breaks.
Maybe they buy a really coolbicycle like I did.
The pitfalls in Tinker Stage area little bit of freedom.
You know, for the first time,you've got a little bit of extra
time, a little bit of extramoney, and you've been
(16:45):
ruminating on different ideas,maybe for a decade, you know,
maybe for five years, one year.
And you think like, now I've gottime to do this.
to open that coffee shop, right?
I've got a successful business.
Why don't I start over in abusiness that I know nothing
about and just totally destroymy life again?
And I have this story.
I ran into a good friend of minefrom my powerlifting days.
(17:05):
After, you know, 10, 15 years ofopening my gym, I ran into him
at this gas station.
And in the back of my truck wasmy bike.
And he's like, hey, man, that'sa cool bike.
What are you doing?
And I'm like, well, you know,I'm not training in the gym very
often anymore.
I'm training on the bike.
I just love being outside thegym.
And he's like, And he laughedand he said, yeah, you know, I
always wondered how you couldtrain in the business that you
(17:26):
own.
Like most entrepreneurs, theydon't want to go to their own
restaurant for lunch.
They don't want to work out intheir own gym.
It's just, it's too distracting.
And I said, yeah, well, youknow, I learned that lesson the
hard way.
And he's like, well, what's nextfor you?
And I said, oh, my wife and Iare going to open this little
cafe.
And he says, Coop, why would youruin the other thing that you
love in life?
And that hit me hard.
(17:47):
And he's right.
Like what I should do is makemoney from my gym and go to
cafes and drink their coffeeinstead of having to own it.
There's a process and we matureas entrepreneurs at each stage.
And one of the signs that you'rematuring in the Tinker stage is
that you're not tempted to tryand do everything.
Because as entrepreneurs, wehave so many ideas.
We need to learn that we coulddo anything, but we can't do
(18:10):
everything.
And we don't need to do anythingright now.
You know, there's so manystories from our Tinker program.
These are the top 100 gym ownersin the world.
And, you know, many of them willdabble a little bit bit.
They'll buy some crypto, they'llbuy some stocks, they'll do an
Airbnb or some buy a laundromator I bought a self-storage
business.
They'll dabble a bit.
(18:30):
They'll try a few things andthen they'll quickly learn like,
I'm not that interested inAirbnbs or actually the
self-storage business is not aspassive as I thought.
And they'll come back to one ortwo primary investments.
The thing that they have toremember is that you want to
have like one or two high-riskinvestments and one or two
conservative investments andthat's it.
(18:50):
Because every other investmenthas this learning curve, trial
and error.
It's distracting.
You also have to remember thatyour gym is a high-risk
investment, and you will alwaysneed to pay attention to that as
long as you own it.
So, so far, the founder phase isabout starting a business,
right?
Setting yourself up forlong-term wealth and leverage
and control of your destiny foryou and your family.
(19:12):
The farmer phase is about buyingback your time by hiring staff
or, you growing the businessuntil it's paying you as much as
you want to earn.
The tinker phase is when you'reearning as much as you want to,
and now you need to reinvest forthe future so you're not living
(19:33):
this grind life for the next 30years.
And finally, the chief phase isabout creating other leaders and
expanding your impact to yourcommunity.
So years ago when I wroteFounder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief,
I thought that the point oftinker phase especially was make
lots of money and give it away.
And so I envisioned the laststage of entrepreneurship as
(19:55):
more like a Robin Hood phase.
You know, the Bill Gates, I'mgoing to start a foundation and
I'm going to take money frommyself, from my friends, and I'm
going to give it to people whoneed money.
And I'm going to give it my timeto people who need mentorship.
And I'm going to give my time tocharities like the local food
bank that just need bodies onthe ground.
(20:16):
And to me, that seemed reallynoble.
But what I forgot was that asnoble as Robin Hood is, You
know, in the thief phase, and asgreat as it is to have lots of
money to give away, noentrepreneur has ever done.
The thief phase, in hindsight,kind of feels like, okay, I'm
done with business.
And the reality is that oursociety needs entrepreneurs to
(20:36):
continue with business.
You know, our entire society,our democracy, our economy, our
healthcare system, our roads,our policing, all of these
things rest on the free marketeconomy.
What builds that economy?
What pays for the policing andthe healthcare and the insurance
(20:57):
and the government even?
You know, it's theentrepreneurs.
The entrepreneurs are the onlyones that build the economy.
The entrepreneurs are the onesthat generate the taxes that pay
for all that other stuff.
The entrepreneurs are the oneswho create the jobs.
Governments don't create jobs.
Unions don't create tax revenue.
The markets don't create moneythat pays for our social
(21:19):
services or our way of life.
Entrepreneurs do.
Only entrepreneurs do.
All those other things followthe success of entrepreneurs.
We need more entrepreneursbuilding a bigger foundation if
we want to continually grow andimprove our society.
And that's what chief phase isall about.
And so in hindsight, while I dothink it's important to make
(21:39):
money and give it away becauselots of people need money who
are not good at making it,that's only one component of our
responsibility.
Thief phase is an opportunity.
Chief phase is a responsibilitylet's face it there are a lot of
things that are threatening ourway of life and our society
right now there's a lot ofupheaval you know and ai is part
(22:01):
of that and there's always otherthings that are part of it too
these things will never go awaythe buttress against totally
destroying our society goingbackward is wealth you know if
if our society has lots ofwealth then we don't really
worry about you know paying thetaxes because we like where the
(22:21):
money is going and it's going togood places and it's building
our society and making lifebetter for everybody.
And that is why we need thepeople like you, like me, who
started a business to helppeople.
We need those people to havemoney.
We need them to have influenceso that we can continue to build
our society and keep making itbetter.
(22:42):
And I think especially now,post-pandemic and going through
economic shifts and politicalchange around the world, it is
more important than ever thatentrepreneurs Get a seat at the
table and keep growing things inthe right direction.
How do we get a seat at thetable?
By growing our business to thepoint where we don't have to be
the one baking the cookies,running the classes anymore.
(23:04):
If we take the best people inthe world with the best
intentions and give them moneyand influence and leadership
training, wow, our world willcontinue to move forward.
If we keep waiting for thepoliticians to get it right or
the right union to go on strikeor the stock market to magically
fail, fix itself, we're justgoing to keep going backward.
(23:24):
And so more than ever, it iscrazy important that the best
leaders in the world with thebest intentions become the
leaders of the world and createother leaders to carry on the
legacy from them.
That might sound a littlegrandiose.
Maybe I'm being a littlehyperbolic here, but there's no
better person than you and me tohave money and influence and
(23:45):
control of our destiny.
That's why I want you to ascend.
Yes, I want you to besuccessful.
Yes, I want your gym to stickaround to change the health and
fitness of the people who comethere and ultimately your
community.
Yes, I want you to create greatjobs for other people.
Yes, I want your kids to getTaylor Swift tickets or whatever
they want.
Yes, I want your kids to go toschool.
(24:07):
Yes, I want you to be able toretire.
But more than anything, I wantyou to actually activate the
potential impact that you canhave on this world.
It is enormous and it is real.
We can do a lot of good in ourlives.
We can change the lives ofthousands of people through
something as simple as creatinga micro gym.
We can create meaningful careersthat people love.
(24:28):
We can change the lives of ourfamily and our neighbor and our
community.
Now it's time to change theworld.
That's not just rhetoric.
We can actually do it byempowering more entrepreneurs.
The key is you have to progressas an entrepreneur stage by
stage.
You have to start in the founderphase.
You have to hustle and grind,right?
(24:48):
That romantic notion thateverybody thinks entrepreneurs
entrepreneurs love, and we dolove for a little while, but
eventually kills us.
You have to go through thefarmer phase.
You need to learn how to leadyour staff.
You need to learn how toleverage people to get the
result that you want and build asuccessful gym.
You have to work through thetinker phase.
You have to plan for the future.
You have to set wealth aside sothat you can weather the storms
(25:09):
that are going to come andprovide for your kids in the
future and create a legacy.
And then eventually, I hope thatyou'll move up to chief phase
and produce other leaders whowill do as much good as you're
doing out there right now.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is run a profitable gym.
And look, I'm losing my voice.
I get very passionate about thistopic.
If you want to talk to me and myteam, just go to
gymownersunited.com.
(25:30):
You can send me a DM on Facebookto talk more about this stuff.
In the next episode, I'm goingto talk about leadership and how
our leadership has to evolve asour business evolves through
these four phases.
You didn't open a gym to get rich.
Neither did I.
We opened a gym to make adifference and not to make
money.
But if you don't learn how tomake money, you won't survive.
The truth is that we'repassionate about fitness and
that drives us to start a gym,but it doesn't keep a gym open.
(00:20):
I'd hate for your gym to go outof business because you're out
of money when you still got lotsof passion left over.
And I can remember the day whenI realized that just being the
best coach in town was not goingto be enough.
enough to keep the lights on.
Entrepreneurs go through fourphases of maturity on their
growth path.
And so that first phase we callthe founder phase when you're
starting up and you're grindingand you're hustling.
(00:42):
And the second phase we call thefarmer phase when you're
cultivating different ideas andgrowing your people.
The third phase we call thetinker phase when you've got
good systems in place in onelocation and you're looking to
reinvest or expand.
And the fourth phase is calledthe chief phase when you're
focused on growing other leaderswithin your tribe.
These four phases serve as aroadmap to show you what to
(01:04):
focus on right now, what you canignore or put aside for later,
and how to build towardfinancial freedom.
Today on this podcast, I'm goingto walk you through the four
phases and share some storiesfrom my own journey from the
Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thiefbook, which is now getting
updated for today's economy andbecoming the Founder, Farmer,
(01:25):
Tinker, Chief book in thefuture.
I want to talk about why mostGMOers get stuck first.
We're all subject to a lot ofadvice now.
You know, when I was startingout, it was hard to find
business advice.
And most of the stuff that I wasfinding was wrong.
It was just, you know, we're alla bunch of alphas out there and
nobody wants to admit whenthey're doing not very well.
(01:45):
And everybody kind of plays uphow well they're doing.
And it's really easy to thinkthat everybody's doing better
than you.
And the reality is that very fewpeople in the fitness industry
are actually doing well, nomatter how many you see claiming
it.
And so you get get stuck becauseyou get all this advice and you
get it on podcasts and you getit from books and you get it
from videos just like this one.
(02:07):
And you don't really know likewho's telling the truth, who
should you listen to, who iskind of overplaying their hand a
little bit and who's just tryingto take your money.
Let's face it.
How do you know that?
And the problem is that with allthis information coming in, you
get overwhelmed.
You get paralyzed.
Like, ah, maybe I should focuson TikTok.
(02:27):
Maybe I should be doingInstagram stuff.
I got to go clean the floor.
I got to run this class.
What about my own fitness?
And you find yourself at the endof every single day looking back
and going, man, my gym didn'treally grow anything today.
I hope it grows tomorrow.
I hope something differenthappens tomorrow.
But the difference that has tohappen is you.
You have to mature as anentrepreneur.
You have to move out of thefounder phase and into the
(02:49):
farmer phase.
I'm going to tell you how to dothat today.
The most important thing is thatyou can focus on the work that
you need to do right now and nottry and do everything, follow
every launch, read every book,because you're just going to get
more knowledge without actuallychanging your business.
When I found my first mentor,the best thing that he gave me
was focus.
And I went into this firstmeeting and I thought like,
(03:11):
okay, Dennis is going to teachme how to market.
And he said, Chris, I've heardstories about your gym.
You do not want people like mecoming to your gym right now
because we'll come in once, wemight be pulled light about it,
but we'll leave and we won'tcome back.
You need to fix your gym first.
You need to make it appealing tothe audience that you want to
attract.
You need it to be attractive topeople so that they stay once
(03:35):
you do start the marketing.
Don't buy any advertising likeyou're tempted to.
And that's actually whatlaunched me down this path.
I started a blog calleddon'tbuyads.com as a reminder to
myself that advertising a poorgym was just going to kill me in
the long run, that people wouldcome in and they would go out
too quickly.
So what did I actually need todo at that phase?
(03:56):
Well, that's what Dennis walkedme through, and I'm going to
share that with you now.
The problem was that I was aboutfour years into gym ownership at
that stage, at that time in mycareer, but I was still in the
founder phase.
I was still trying to doeverything myself.
I had hired staff, but I wasmicromanaging them.
Nothing was written down.
All the decisions were in myhead.
I thought everybody just knewwhat I knew because it was
(04:17):
common sense.
I was mopping.
I was coaching the classes.
I was working out.
I was answering the phone.
I was paying the bills.
I was running the payments.
I was doing the sales and in theleftover time I was doing the
marketing.
So of course I wasn't doing themarketing at all.
And I had this, um, I had thisopportunity to work on a
corporate partnership and Ithought, Oh boy, I got to jump
(04:39):
on this.
And I actually brought this tothe first meeting I ever had
with my mentor, Dennis.
I'm like, how do I lock thisdown?
It's going to go away.
I'm going to miss thisopportunity.
And he's like, Chris, if youbring these people into your gym
right now, they will hate it.
They'll tell their friends andthey'll never be back.
He gave me that tough love.
And, you know, he had me startby cleaning my bathrooms.
(04:59):
Okay, I get it that this is along play, but I was still very
impatient.
And then he had me hire acleaner with money I didn't
really have, but he had mereinvest that time into
marketing.
And it's a story that I'veshared a few times, but I paid
that cleaner$15 for the hour andI made$450 and the light bulb
started to go on.
Okay.
(05:20):
The thing is here, like a lot ofus think that the Because our
gym has been open for a whilethat we must know what we're
doing, right?
Like we've dodged the bullets.
But what we can't tell frominside is that maybe we've been
lucky.
Maybe we haven't really facedany hardship yet.
You know, it's really easy to bea good business owner when the
market is good.
It's really hard to be a goodbusiness owner when the market
(05:42):
isn't good.
A rising sea lifts all boats.
And then when the tide goes out,we see who's not wearing a
bathing suit.
And this is really like animportant thing to understand is
that you might be still in thefounder phase, even though
you've been doing this for along time.
There are a lot of gyms outthere who have been around for a
decade, 20 years even, andthey've survived, but they've
(06:03):
never really grown.
And the owner is burned out andthey're not making any money.
I do not call these peoplesuccessful entrepreneurs.
And so you can't skip steps.
You've got to solve the founderproblems, then the farmer
problems, then the tinkerproblems, and then worry about
the chief problems in stages.
I'll give you an example ofskipping steps.
steps.
(06:24):
When my gym was brand new, I wasgetting advice from CrossFit
discussion boards, from the NSCAdiscussion boards, from Yahoo
groups, everywhere I could findto get advice.
And the recurring advice thatseems to have been buried now is
like, you start really, reallysmall in the smallest space you
can find.
You sign the shortest term leaseyou can find.
You build your own equipment.
(06:45):
And only when people are doingburpees on the sidewalk outside
do you start thinking aboutexpansion.
That message has been kind oflost But a lot of those owners
were actually fine in theirfirst couple of years, the
people who started tiny, tinyand scaled up.
Now what you see is peoplesigning these big leases on
these micro gyms, 10,000 squarefeet that they don't even need.
(07:06):
They're signing up managers andcoaches in advance and paying
them salaries before they've gota dollar in revenue.
And so they're actually tryingto like build this mansion and
they have no foundation.
They're skipping steps.
They're trying to jump straightinto farmer phase instead of
building up slow and building asolid foundation.
And then of course, when anylittle thing doesn't go as
(07:28):
planned, the build out didn'tget done on time.
The tax man shows up.
I didn't have the rightguardrails in my bathroom and I
can't open.
Like any of these things willkill you.
You become super duper fragileif you try to skip steps.
Now that I've got all that outof the way, let's go through the
phases.
The first phase of gym ownershipis called the founder phase.
The purpose of the founder phaseor your goal is to get to break
(07:50):
even as quickly as you can.
We teach strategies for this inour Start a Gym program at
2Brain to help get you up abovethe water level so that you're
not losing money, okay?
Your job is like to prove yourconcept works before you start
bringing in staff.
So prove that the group model isgoing to work for you by
coaching groups.
Prove that personal training iseffective by doing some personal
(08:12):
training.
Later, you can leverage staff totake those things off your plate
and level yourself up to theCEO.
And you need to also do thenon-coaching roles.
You need to be cleaning.
You need to be doing thebookkeeping, but your job is to
document the process so that youcan get those things off your
plate quickly.
The first time you ever cleanyour gym, you should be writing
down exactly what you do.
(08:33):
Where did you put the soap?
Do you use hot water or coldwater, et cetera, so you can get
that off your plate eventuallyquickly.
But in the founder phase, you'regoing to be wearing every hat
until you document the process,and then you can hire somebody
else.
You also need to keep yourexpenses minimal.
You need to bootstrap whereveryou can so that you know where
the money is coming from andwhere the money is going.
(08:55):
You need to develop systems forfinancial tracking and watching
your cash flow instead of justchecking your bank account every
morning like I did for the firstfour years.
As soon as you develop thosethings, you can start to ascend
and hire other staff.
There are a lot of pitfalls herethough, right?
If you think like, oh, I'm thereal CEO, I'm going to hire
somebody to do the cleaning andsomebody to do the bookkeeping
(09:16):
and somebody, then you won'tunderstand how those jobs are
done and you won't be able tolead somebody else effectively.
You won't be able to coach themto do better or even evaluate
how well they're doing.
You'll be shooting from the hip,you know, making guesses from
your gut all the time instead ofactually being prepared to lead
these people to do better.
You know, rock climbers have ananalogy that the first person to
(09:38):
ascend the climb is the one thatnames it.
You need to be the first personto ascend every climb in your
business.
You need to be the first to runpayroll so that you can document
it.
You need to be the first toclean so that you can document
it.
You need to be the first to dothe social media posting so that
you can documented.
Until it's documented, you can'thand it off to anybody else.
This is part of how you get outof founder phase.
(09:59):
I was really lucky.
I was terrified and I had nomoney.
And so the money that I spent atstartup was very carefully
spent.
Yeah, I wasted some.
Definitely.
I bought a lat crossover machinethat I never, ever used.
But the reality is that in thatphase, I was okay.
I can grind.
I can work a 70-hour week and Ican be tight with money.
(10:21):
Eventually, though, you're goingto get burned out of the founder
phase and you need to evolve toget into the farmer phase.
You just can't skip that step ofwriting down your SOPs and your
processes and documentingexactly how you do things.
Because as soon as you hiresomebody, you're trying to move
into the farmer phase.
And if you haven't done thatstuff, you're going backward.
(10:41):
You're just going to wind upwasting a ton of money and time
trying to micromanage somebodywho doesn't know what to do
correctly or coach somebodywho's just not going to get any
better.
Okay, so now you're in farmerphase.
The goal here is to buildpredictable personal income.
This is how you know that yourbusiness works, is that you're
able to pay yourself what youdeserve to be paid.
(11:03):
Before you hire anybody elsefull-time, you have to prove
that your business is capable ofpaying somebody full-time.
That's you.
You're the crash test dummy forthe business.
You cannot ask somebody else toquit their full-time job or tie
their future to you until youknow that the business is
capable of paying somebodyfull-time.
That has to be you first.
Okay?
(11:24):
There's other reasons for this,too, for paying yourself first.
Let's face it.
Nobody goes out of businessbecause their staff quits.
Everybody goes out of businesswhen they can't eat, when the
owner can't pay themselves.
That's what kills gyms.
There's 10,000 former CrossFitgyms that have gone out of
business.
If you find any of those ownersonline, they're not bragging
(11:44):
about it, but if you can findthem, they'll tell you, the
reason I went out of businesswas XYZ.
I was too stressed.
I was working too hard.
I got burned out.
Another gym opened up next door.
It's CrossFit's fault.
It's the other gym's fault.
It's my coach's fault.
It's my client's fault.
But the bottom line to all theseis money.
Money solves the stress problem.
(12:04):
Money solves the overworkproblem.
Money solves the competitionproblem.
If you have money, these thingsare not problems.
The reason that these gyms allgo out of business, eventually,
if you dig deep enough, is thatthe owner didn't make enough
money.
And so you need to pay yourselffirst.
The next core action in thefarmer phase is is to hire.
But you have to hire the lowestvalue roles first.
(12:27):
You have to hire the cleaner,the admin.
Before you hire a group coach ora personal trainer to replace
yourself, you start by investingin the lower value roles, buying
yourself back some time, andthen reinvesting that time into
high value roles like marketingand sales.
To successfully hire thesepeople, you have to have
playbooks, checklists, thingsfor them to follow so that they
(12:47):
know how to do their job.
And you need to avoid thetechnician's curse, which we we
all do of going out and hiringanother coach.
Because if you try to hire areplacement for yourself in your
primary delivery role, you willspend all your time thinking
about what they're doing wrongbecause they'll never live up to
your expectations.
Instead, hire a cleaner or anadmin, give them a checklist,
(13:10):
give them a playbook.
You do that.
I'm going over here to do this.
I'm going to learn marketing.
I'm going to do sales.
Okay.
You also need to keep an eye onthe money.
So you have to understand thatyou're building a platform on
which other people can buildcareers.
And so instead of paying yourstaff a salary right out of the
gate and jeopardizing your ownincome, which jeopardizes the
whole gym for everybody, youneed to adopt models of how
(13:33):
you're paying people for theirtime.
We teach this in Two Brain.
It's called entrepreneurialism.
You're giving people theopportunity to make a living
with your clients on yourplatform, with your systems, and
you can pay them up to 44% ofthe revenue collected by their
service.
This is amazing for them if youthink about it because it's so
much cheaper than them startingtheir own business.
(13:54):
And 44% is more than you'remaking on any of the other
services in your business too.
You also need to look at yourpricing, look at your marketing.
Like farmer phase is busy, it'schaotic, it's crazy.
But if you set yourself upproperly in the founder phase,
you'll get through it much moreeasily.
If you try to ascend too quicklyand just delegate or abdicate
responsibility for growth andrunning your gym, you're just
(14:19):
gonna go backward and you'regonna get pulled right back into
being a founder again.
in.
Once you've got this dialed, andyou're making the income that
you need to live on for yourgym, okay, not just a little bit
of income, not just enough, butlike the income that pays for
your perfect day.
Now you can ascend to the thirdphase, which is tinker.
And the purpose of the tinkerphase is to build your net worth
(14:40):
and secure your financialfreedom.
You have to protect the goldengoose, right?
The goose that lays the goldeneggs, that's your gym, you have
to protect that.
The best way to protect it is tohave cash flow and investments
that That will help you ward offall the stuff that's coming in
the future.
(15:22):
time off because you have tounderstand you are a mental
athlete.
And we know what happens whenathletes overtrain, right?
Burnout and injury.
If you're just working all thetime and not taking a five-day
vacation once in a while or nothiring a coach to do your
nutrition programming or not,you know, riding your bike,
taking care of yourself, youwill get injured and your
(15:43):
business will be the thing thatsuffers.
People in the tinker phase takethe extra time and extra money
that their business is nowgenerating and they reinvest it
in one of four places.
First, they scale theiroperations.
So they might open morelocations using the system that
they develop because it works.
Second, they might take themoney and invest it in stocks or
(16:03):
property or crypto.
Many of the gym owners in TwoBrain wind up buying the
building that their gym is in.
But if that's not affordable,they might buy a different
building or they might put themoney somewhere else.
They get the money out of theirbusiness and get it working for
them instead of leaving it thereto be taxed or sued away.
They also invest in themselves.
They invest in their leader Theyinvest in mentorship and they
(16:24):
invest in health, theirlifestyle.
They invest in their mentalstate.
They invest in their physicalstate.
They get coaches.
They take breaks.
Maybe they buy a really coolbicycle like I did.
The pitfalls in Tinker Stage area little bit of freedom.
You know, for the first time,you've got a little bit of extra
time, a little bit of extramoney, and you've been
(16:45):
ruminating on different ideas,maybe for a decade, you know,
maybe for five years, one year.
And you think like, now I've gottime to do this.
to open that coffee shop, right?
I've got a successful business.
Why don't I start over in abusiness that I know nothing
about and just totally destroymy life again?
And I have this story.
I ran into a good friend of minefrom my powerlifting days.
(17:05):
After, you know, 10, 15 years ofopening my gym, I ran into him
at this gas station.
And in the back of my truck wasmy bike.
And he's like, hey, man, that'sa cool bike.
What are you doing?
And I'm like, well, you know,I'm not training in the gym very
often anymore.
I'm training on the bike.
I just love being outside thegym.
And he's like, And he laughedand he said, yeah, you know, I
always wondered how you couldtrain in the business that you
(17:26):
own.
Like most entrepreneurs, theydon't want to go to their own
restaurant for lunch.
They don't want to work out intheir own gym.
It's just, it's too distracting.
And I said, yeah, well, youknow, I learned that lesson the
hard way.
And he's like, well, what's nextfor you?
And I said, oh, my wife and Iare going to open this little
cafe.
And he says, Coop, why would youruin the other thing that you
love in life?
And that hit me hard.
(17:47):
And he's right.
Like what I should do is makemoney from my gym and go to
cafes and drink their coffeeinstead of having to own it.
There's a process and we matureas entrepreneurs at each stage.
And one of the signs that you'rematuring in the Tinker stage is
that you're not tempted to tryand do everything.
Because as entrepreneurs, wehave so many ideas.
We need to learn that we coulddo anything, but we can't do
(18:10):
everything.
And we don't need to do anythingright now.
You know, there's so manystories from our Tinker program.
These are the top 100 gym ownersin the world.
And, you know, many of them willdabble a little bit bit.
They'll buy some crypto, they'llbuy some stocks, they'll do an
Airbnb or some buy a laundromator I bought a self-storage
business.
They'll dabble a bit.
(18:30):
They'll try a few things andthen they'll quickly learn like,
I'm not that interested inAirbnbs or actually the
self-storage business is not aspassive as I thought.
And they'll come back to one ortwo primary investments.
The thing that they have toremember is that you want to
have like one or two high-riskinvestments and one or two
conservative investments andthat's it.
(18:50):
Because every other investmenthas this learning curve, trial
and error.
It's distracting.
You also have to remember thatyour gym is a high-risk
investment, and you will alwaysneed to pay attention to that as
long as you own it.
So, so far, the founder phase isabout starting a business,
right?
Setting yourself up forlong-term wealth and leverage
and control of your destiny foryou and your family.
(19:12):
The farmer phase is about buyingback your time by hiring staff
or, you growing the businessuntil it's paying you as much as
you want to earn.
The tinker phase is when you'reearning as much as you want to,
and now you need to reinvest forthe future so you're not living
(19:33):
this grind life for the next 30years.
And finally, the chief phase isabout creating other leaders and
expanding your impact to yourcommunity.
So years ago when I wroteFounder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief,
I thought that the point oftinker phase especially was make
lots of money and give it away.
And so I envisioned the laststage of entrepreneurship as
(19:55):
more like a Robin Hood phase.
You know, the Bill Gates, I'mgoing to start a foundation and
I'm going to take money frommyself, from my friends, and I'm
going to give it to people whoneed money.
And I'm going to give it my timeto people who need mentorship.
And I'm going to give my time tocharities like the local food
bank that just need bodies onthe ground.
(20:16):
And to me, that seemed reallynoble.
But what I forgot was that asnoble as Robin Hood is, You
know, in the thief phase, and asgreat as it is to have lots of
money to give away, noentrepreneur has ever done.
The thief phase, in hindsight,kind of feels like, okay, I'm
done with business.
And the reality is that oursociety needs entrepreneurs to
(20:36):
continue with business.
You know, our entire society,our democracy, our economy, our
healthcare system, our roads,our policing, all of these
things rest on the free marketeconomy.
What builds that economy?
What pays for the policing andthe healthcare and the insurance
(20:57):
and the government even?
You know, it's theentrepreneurs.
The entrepreneurs are the onlyones that build the economy.
The entrepreneurs are the onesthat generate the taxes that pay
for all that other stuff.
The entrepreneurs are the oneswho create the jobs.
Governments don't create jobs.
Unions don't create tax revenue.
The markets don't create moneythat pays for our social
(21:19):
services or our way of life.
Entrepreneurs do.
Only entrepreneurs do.
All those other things followthe success of entrepreneurs.
We need more entrepreneursbuilding a bigger foundation if
we want to continually grow andimprove our society.
And that's what chief phase isall about.
And so in hindsight, while I dothink it's important to make
(21:39):
money and give it away becauselots of people need money who
are not good at making it,that's only one component of our
responsibility.
Thief phase is an opportunity.
Chief phase is a responsibilitylet's face it there are a lot of
things that are threatening ourway of life and our society
right now there's a lot ofupheaval you know and ai is part
(22:01):
of that and there's always otherthings that are part of it too
these things will never go awaythe buttress against totally
destroying our society goingbackward is wealth you know if
if our society has lots ofwealth then we don't really
worry about you know paying thetaxes because we like where the
(22:21):
money is going and it's going togood places and it's building
our society and making lifebetter for everybody.
And that is why we need thepeople like you, like me, who
started a business to helppeople.
We need those people to havemoney.
We need them to have influenceso that we can continue to build
our society and keep making itbetter.
(22:42):
And I think especially now,post-pandemic and going through
economic shifts and politicalchange around the world, it is
more important than ever thatentrepreneurs Get a seat at the
table and keep growing things inthe right direction.
How do we get a seat at thetable?
By growing our business to thepoint where we don't have to be
the one baking the cookies,running the classes anymore.
(23:04):
If we take the best people inthe world with the best
intentions and give them moneyand influence and leadership
training, wow, our world willcontinue to move forward.
If we keep waiting for thepoliticians to get it right or
the right union to go on strikeor the stock market to magically
fail, fix itself, we're justgoing to keep going backward.
(23:24):
And so more than ever, it iscrazy important that the best
leaders in the world with thebest intentions become the
leaders of the world and createother leaders to carry on the
legacy from them.
That might sound a littlegrandiose.
Maybe I'm being a littlehyperbolic here, but there's no
better person than you and me tohave money and influence and
(23:45):
control of our destiny.
That's why I want you to ascend.
Yes, I want you to besuccessful.
Yes, I want your gym to stickaround to change the health and
fitness of the people who comethere and ultimately your
community.
Yes, I want you to create greatjobs for other people.
Yes, I want your kids to getTaylor Swift tickets or whatever
they want.
Yes, I want your kids to go toschool.
(24:07):
Yes, I want you to be able toretire.
But more than anything, I wantyou to actually activate the
potential impact that you canhave on this world.
It is enormous and it is real.
We can do a lot of good in ourlives.
We can change the lives ofthousands of people through
something as simple as creatinga micro gym.
We can create meaningful careersthat people love.
(24:28):
We can change the lives of ourfamily and our neighbor and our
community.
Now it's time to change theworld.
That's not just rhetoric.
We can actually do it byempowering more entrepreneurs.
The key is you have to progressas an entrepreneur stage by
stage.
You have to start in the founderphase.
You have to hustle and grind,right?
(24:48):
That romantic notion thateverybody thinks entrepreneurs
entrepreneurs love, and we dolove for a little while, but
eventually kills us.
You have to go through thefarmer phase.
You need to learn how to leadyour staff.
You need to learn how toleverage people to get the
result that you want and build asuccessful gym.
You have to work through thetinker phase.
You have to plan for the future.
You have to set wealth aside sothat you can weather the storms
(25:09):
that are going to come andprovide for your kids in the
future and create a legacy.
And then eventually, I hope thatyou'll move up to chief phase
and produce other leaders whowill do as much good as you're
doing out there right now.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is run a profitable gym.
And look, I'm losing my voice.
I get very passionate about thistopic.
If you want to talk to me and myteam, just go to
gymownersunited.com.
(25:30):
You can send me a DM on Facebookto talk more about this stuff.
In the next episode, I'm goingto talk about leadership and how
our leadership has to evolve asour business evolves through
these four phases.
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