When your gym is stable and the fires are out, what's next?

Two-Brain’s Tinker Mastermind provides an elite level of mentorship for gym owners who are ready to build wealth, scale their businesses, learn to lead and create lasting legacies.

This is the fun part of entrepreneurship—the part where you have choices: build investment portfolios, acquire real estate, franchise your concept, create new businesses or simply pick your kids up from school every day. The possibilities are endless.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Mike Warkentin sits down with Tinker leaders Joleen Bingham and Lisa Palmer to find out exactly what the program is and who it’s for.

Tinker-level gym owners have reliable cash flow, available time and a growth mindset. They focus on four main pillars to build their Perfect Day: lifestyle, wealth, scaling and leadership.

Tinkers join weekly breakout calls with elite entrepreneurs from around the world and attend quarterly in-person meetups in places such as Florida, Arizona, Portugal and Ireland.

The results speak for themselves: Two-Brain has certified over 70 millionaire gym owners through Tinker, with 17 certified in the last year alone.

One Canadian Tinker took home $300,000 in net owner benefit, became a certified millionaire, invested in three syndications and opened a second gym that's hitting $30,000-$35,000 months. A U.K. Tinker spent three months in South Africa with his family while his gym ran without him.

Are you Tinker ready? Email Joleen (North America) or Lisa (Europe) to find out: joleen.bingham@twobrainbusiness.com or lisa.palmer@twobrainbusiness.com

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Gym Owners United

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0:44 - Who is Tinker for?

5:10 - Problems Tinker solves

11:59 - Tinker program structure

21:40 - Tinker Toolkit preview

23:47 - 70+ millionaire gym owners

Stop trying to clone yourself when you hire coaches.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper explains why hiring for personality and training for skill is the smartest path to building a team that lasts.

Most gym owners hire based on certifications and technical knowledge. Then they micromanage every rep, correct every cue and watch their coaches burn out within two years.

But clients don’t care about perfect squat mechanics; they care about how they feel when they walk through the door.

Coop explains where to find coaches with great personalities and also provides a 10-question personality assessment you can use on potential hires.

Before you start looking for coaches, take the assessment yourself. If your score reveals you’re burned out, use the strategies from this episode to deal with that first.

The key takeaway: Hire people who light up when they’re around others. Then teach them the technical stuff.

DM Coop through Gym Owners United to get his free Energy and Attitude Assessment—link below.

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Gym Owners United

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0:01 - Intro

2:52 - Where to find potential coaches

8:06 - The personality assessment

12:02 - Dealing with burnout

17:08 - The problem with bad personalities

Feb. 13, 2026, is Two-Brain’s 10th anniversary—a full decade of solving every problem in the gym business.

In this special episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper tells the complete story of how Two-Brain Business became the biggest mentorship practice in the fitness industry.

The journey started long before 2016. In 2005, Chris opened his first gym, and by 2008, he was broke, running two struggling locations and looking for part-time jobs in the newspaper. He couldn’t find a single example of someone making a real living as a gym owner.

Then he found a mentor outside the fitness industry and started translating business lessons into gym-specific tactics. He published his first blog post on June 9, 2009, as a “love letter to future Chris”—sharing exactly what worked and what didn’t.

By 2012, gym owners were flying him to Fort Lauderdale to speak. He self-published his first book, “Two-Brain Business,” which went on to sell 26,000 copies, becoming the bestselling fitness business book of all time.

On Feb. 13, 2016, Chris officially launched Two-Brain Business with 52 gym owners who believed in the vision: make a difference, make a profit and make it home for dinner.

Today, Two-Brain works with thousands of gyms worldwide, publishes the industry’s largest data set every year and runs the biggest gym business summit in the world.

Tune in to hear the full origin story—and find out what’s ahead.

Join Coop at the 10th annual Two-Brain Summit, June 6-7, 2026, in Chicago; get your tickets with the link below.

Links

Two-Brain Summit Tickets

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1:05 - 2005-2015: Prehistory

1:12 - Opening a gym

6:28 - Hiring a mentor

18:09 - Publishing book No. 1

20:24 - Becoming a mentor

28:32 - 2016-2018: Early days

29:23 - The first Two-Brain Summit

35:57 - Building the “State of the Industry” report

39:43 - 2019-2021: Growth & lockdowns

43:39 - Certifying professional mentors

44:41 - 2022-2025: Additions and refinements

49:18 - 2026: 10th anniversary

49:33 - Leaving the CEO role

53:11 - The 10th annual Two-Brain Summit