GymMaster Logo

GymMaster Blog

Top 5 Books Every Gym Owner Should Read

Dru Hill
Dru Hill
Published on Tue, Sep 27, 2022

If you look at the top CEOs and company executives, what’s one thing they all have in common? They read as many as 60 books annually, or five books a month.

Reading can be a form of motivation and knowledge and is a practice that many of the most successful people in the world use to stay up-to-date in the world of business.

In this article, we will give a detailed overview of five of the best gym owner books, making it easy for you to figure out which book is the best for your unique fitness business.

Must-Reads for Gym All Owners

Below, you’ll find five must-reads for any gym owners wanting to increase their member retention and maximize the profitability of their business.

Two Brain Business by Chris Cooper

The author of Two Brain Business, Chris Cooper, has been on the leading edge of gym ownership since becoming one of the first gym owners in North America to receive direct insurance funding for his facility.

His gym in Ontario, Canada, boasts a 93% member retention rate, which is unheard of in an industry that sees over 50% of members cancel their contracts in the first 90 days.

After his wild success as a gym owner, Cooper set the goal of helping 1 million entrepreneurs succeed and turned to authorship to help him do so. He then published Two Brain Business, the best-selling fitness book of all time.

Two Brain Business was designed to help business owners break the seemingly large and daunting processes involved in running their business down into smaller, more accomplishable goals.

This segmenting process helps gym owners see the areas of their business that are thriving and struggling, allowing them to implement much-needed changes to overcome long-standing, complicated plateaus in their business.

In his book, Cooper shares with his readers his one-of-a-kind road-mapping technique and creates a clear understanding of the difference between left and right-brain business activities.

A deeper understanding of these two techniques and principles can help business owners tackle their weak points and become more well-rounded business owners.

‘Two Brain Business’ is available on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle.

The Art of Selling Memberships by Erik Charles Russell

The author of The Art of Selling Memberships, Erik Charles Russell, started his career as a salesman at his father’s gym in New York. He was not an immediate success and instead found himself struggling to close a single sale.

Although this sort of failure is enough to send some salesmen packing, Russell’s struggles attempting to close sales early in his career prompted him to dive deeply into the world of selling and, more specifically, the psychology behind it.

After learning from some of the greatest salespeople of all time, including Tony Robbins, Tom Hopkins, and Brian Tracy, to name a few, he was soon the #1 salesman everywhere he went, and his success was no longer limited to only gyms.

Russell has since gone on to write the best-seller The Art of Selling Memberships which helps readers learn new ways to overcome objections and get a customer emotionally involved in the buying process.

In his book, Russell even gives readers tips on how exactly you can pinpoint a customer’s ‘why’ for purchasing your product, which is a game-changer in the sales process.

All of the selling strategies outlined in the 221 pages in The Art of Selling Memberships have helped Russell sell millions of dollars of memberships throughout his life and can help you do the same.

The Art of Selling Memberships is available on Amazon and Kindle.

The Fitness Entrepreneur’s Handbook by Pat Rigby

The author of ‘The Fitness Entrepreneur’s Handbook’, Pat Rigby, has built over 12 fitness-related businesses from the ground up, eventually turning them all into million or multi-million dollar ventures.

At this point, Rigby has years of experience selling franchises and boasts as many as 116 franchise sales in a single calendar year. He is also responsible for creating the website and ad copy for his and his clients’ businesses, which has led to over 10 million dollars in sales.

Rigby has accomplished all these big goals while also being a husband and fathering two children. His family is the reason why he chose to pursue a highly profitable business that leaves him with ample resources, including time, that he can spend as he chooses.

In his 312-page book, Rigby offers readers a way to simplify the steps of opening and scaling their business using his ‘connect the dots’ blueprint. He also greatly encourages anyone reading his book to follow their heart and open their dream business.

The Fitness Entrepreneur’s Handbook is available on Amazon and Kindle.

Gym Launch Secrets and 100M Offers, both books by Alex Hermozi

The author of Gym Launch Secrets and 100M Offers, Alex Hermozi’s career as an entrepreneur and investor, began with a complete inability for him to sell his skills, even when offering them for free.

Hermozi had experienced some success at opening gym locations, but at one point, all of the locations ceased to be profitable, and suddenly he found himself drowning in debt.

He realized that he needed to make a change and pivoted over the next four years, from launching and opening gyms to selling the materials he used to get gyms up and running.

Luckily, the switch was worth it, and the choice to sell both his IP and sales training material earned him and his team $500,000 in just a month, which allowed them to pay off all their outstanding debt.

Hermozi has since gone on the master the art of creating offers that people can’t refuse and has created a yearly income of over $85,000,000 across four different industries.

After experiencing so much success in the business world, it’s now his mission to help others find financial freedom. He does this through spending time educating folks in underprivileged communities and sharing his pitfalls with the general public through social media and authorship.

In his 164-page book 100M Offers and Gym Launch Secrets, which is available online, Alex Hermozi gives readers insight into the anatomy of a good offer and gives tips on creating a profitable gym business.

100M Offers is available on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle Gym Launch Secrets is available on Audible, and Kindle

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, had his first lesson on how powerful the repetition of small daily habits can be in producing big gains when he was only in high school.

During a baseball game, he was hit with a loose ball, resulting in dangerous brain swelling, a broken nose, and multiple fractures on his face.

All of these injuries took months to recover from, and it was only through maintaining small daily habits that he regained his strength and eventually became one of the only 33 players to make the All-American Academic team for baseball.

This life experience showed Clear the profound effect that our daily habits can have on our success and the overall quality of our lives and ultimately prompted him to write the book Atomic Habits.

In this 310-page book, you’ll find a combination of principles from psychology, biology, and neuroscience that give readers a proven method to change their bad habits once and for all, which can make all the difference when it comes to keeping members around for the long haul.

Atomic Habits is available on Amazon, Audible, Kindle, and CD.

Bottom Line

As a gym owner, the work doesn’t stop after opening the doors to your facility.

Instead, you then take on the ever-important task of keeping yourself up to date on the newest and most profitable business practices you can employ within your four walls.

Reading gym owner books written to help entrepreneurs like yourself simplify some of the more challenging aspects of owning a business can make this ongoing education easier.

Feel like you don’t have the time to read? Find new ways to free up more time for yourself, whether by implementing new gym software or hiring more employees.

Time to get cracking on those five books a month.