Chris Cooper's Blog, page 118

The Guy Who Bought a Gym During the COVID Shutdown (Epic Comeback)

Mike (00:02):

You decide to buy a gym during the two-week COVID shutdown, which turns out to be way more than two weeks. Exactly this happened to Jordan Fink. He shut his doors in March of 2020 before he had even met all his staff members. By June, he was wondering, what have I done? Last month, Jordan was given Two-Brain’s comeback of the year award. His story is next.

Chris (00:22):

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Mike (00:58):

This is Two-Brain Radio. And I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Jordan Fink bought Clearlake CrossFit in March, but COVID didn’t even allow him to open his doors and build his new business. As the pandemic worsened, Jordan found his back against the wall, but instead of crumpling to the floor, he pushed off and took action. So Jordan, welcome to the show. Please tell me how you ended up buying an unprofitable gym during a pandemic.

Jordan (01:21):

Yeah, man. So, really our story kind of started in 2019, kind of in the fall. So we had just had our son in August and then bought a house and I think it was October, maybe September. And then I got the hot idea of, Hey, I should quit my job and buy a gym. So in December I was looking for a gym to buy.

Mike (01:44):

Huge changes. What was the job that you quit?

Jordan (01:47):

Yeah, so I was a student pastor for five years. So kind of the process was I just started Googling gyms for sale in Houston. And so I was looking and I found a gym that I wanted to buy. I had done, you know, I had dropped in on the gym a few times before they even knew that I was interested in buying it, just to kind of see what the culture was like and the place. 100% undercover went in to see if it was somewhere, you know, I wanted to be. And so in January, late January I kind of reached out and said, Hey, let’s do this. And so we started paperwork, all the good stuff, negotiations. And so anyway, you know, getting into March, we had moved pretty quickly and we were sitting down to sign papers, you know, kind of for the changing of the guard.

Jordan (02:40):

And, we already knew at that point, you know, that in two days the state was going under, you know, shutdown and, it was the two weeks to flatten the curve situation. Right. So, OK. Yeah, yeah, no problem. So I was like, OK, cool. Like let’s do it. Like I I’ll have time to get my stuff together and kind of get my ducks in a row before I really take hold of this thing. And so I honestly, I wasn’t sweating it. But it was one of those things where, you know, obviously it didn’t last two weeks. Right.

Mike (03:18):

So you know, and that was one of the tough things that we heard was there was that quote that you said two weeks to flatten the curve. We all heard that. And a lot of us shut down. Many of us were forced to shut down. And then all of a sudden two weeks stretched on. And I remember Chris, when Chris Cooper heard about this stuff happening in China and Australia with Two-Brain clients, he messaged me and he’s like, we got to figure out a way to help gym owners, because I don’t think this is going to be two weeks and no one has a plan, you know? And so we rushed to put that plan together, but so many gyms just didn’t have access to that. And so, you know, you’re not profitable at this point. The pandemic is full force. You haven’t even had a chance to meet all of your staff people. Like at what point did you get to the stage where you just said, like, what have I done?

Jordan (04:00):

Yeah. So it took me a while, honestly, and I don’t know if it was arrogance or I just didn’t have time to sit down and actually think about what was going on, but, you know, so this was all still pre Two-Brain for us. And my first team meeting was the team meeting where I was telling people, Hey, you know, we’re closing up because, you know, I don’t know how it was where you are or where everybody else is, but Texas is I do what I want. And so there was a lot of talks about businesses just staying open and completely defying the executive order. I mean, I guess so, I guess that’s how it goes around here, but that was a real thing, man. Like a lot of businesses were like, nah, we’re going to do what we want.

Jordan (04:44):

We’re just going to go ahead and say, executive orders don’t matter to us. And so my first team meeting, you know, I made the mistake of asking opinions of coaches on like, Hey, how are we going to handle this? What should we do? You know? Cause I wanted to give everybody a voice. I learned early on that sometimes everybody doesn’t need a voice. Because you know, at that time I had six part-time coaches and there was an even split of now we should stay open and absolutely not, like we’re scared for our lives. So, yeah, it was kind of a tense moment, stepping into that first first team meeting.

Mike (05:24):

Welcome to gym ownership. And you didn’t even know all these people personally, right? Like very well, correct.

Jordan (05:28):

No, I had, like, I was meeting them that day and as I was meeting them, we were having this conversation. And so for me, what it kinda came down to was like, you know, I was sitting there thinking, you know, these are moments that define people. And I didn’t want to be remembered for handling or responding to this moment poorly. And so I kind of just put that on my coaches and said, Hey look guys, like, you know, how do you want to be remembered in the way that you responded to this, specifically your kids? Cause they all had kids. Right. And so I was like, you know, we’re teaching our kids to respect authority and do all of these things, but we’re sitting here saying we’re going to defy authority. So it was just kind of that moment of like, Hey, we’re going to do this.

Jordan (06:12):

Like, we’re going to close down, we’re going to rent equipment to members. We’re going to jump on zoom calls, and do zoom classes. And you know, like I said, it was pre Two-Brain. So I know that wasn’t the go-to for Two-Brain gyms. But it also wasn’t the go-to for a lot of gyms in our area. They were waiting, they were waiting out the two weeks. They were like, OK, cool. We’ll shut down for two weeks. And so they did nothing. And so we were doing zoom calls from day one, jumping on, doing classes and it was kind of one of those things where, you know, membership kind of held steady. I didn’t have a bunch of people cancel in that time. So I think it stretched on through mid June. And so my, you know, what have I done moment didn’t happen until we actually went back to the gym from, you know, the shutdown, because I think people were playing this wait and see game.

Jordan (07:05):

Like what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen with COVID, what’s going to happen with the gym. What’s going to happen, you know, with all of this stuff, because you know, there was an announcement made during the shutdown that there was new ownership of the gym. And so nobody knew me. I had no rapport with anybody and we all know, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, by the way, you know, previous owner’s gone and here I am, you don’t know me. This is a complete relationship business, so yeah, please don’t quit. So anyway, we get back to the gym and, you know, we open up and we do the whole, you know, mark spaces out on floors. We’re sanitizing like crazy. We’ve got, I think, eight bay doors. And so we had all of those guys open, so it was pretty much open air. But people were no longer playing the wait and see game.

Jordan (07:51):

There was a lot more people uncomfortable with coming back or used it as an excuse to quit. One of the two, I’m not sure, but they were bailing in mass numbers. And so my moment of, you know, what have I done came probably in that first or second week being back from shutdown, when it seemed like, you know, every other text that I got was another member saying, Hey, I’m out, Hey, I’m out. Hey, I’m out.Aand I don’t know if it was, you know, just fatigue from getting up at 3:30, you know, to drive to the gym, to coach the 5:15 class and then coach through the evening classes and getting home at nine., you know, I don’t know what it was, but there was a moment whenever I was standing in between classes, I was in an empty gym.

Jordan (08:39):

I was kind of looking around like, what have I done? You know? And I couldn’t, like there was not another move for me other than, you know, kind of, I mentioned that I was a student pastor in my background, so I lean heavy on my faith and I just hit my knees, started praying. I was like, man, God you gotta do something. You gotta do something big. You gotta do something big and fast. Like this gotta happen. Otherwise this is going to go south really quickly. And man, I can’t even, you know, I know not everybody subscribes to a religion, to Christianity, to, you know, whatever it might be. But man, I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe in happenstance and some of the things that started just unfolding were so specific to what I was praying in that moment that, you know, I believe that God showed up in a really big way in that. And so, you know, that was kinda my, what have I done moment. OK.

Mike (09:29):

So that is like a very tough stretch of time. Like, you know, you changed jobs, you buy a business, you have a COVID shutdown. You have to introduce yourself to your staff who has no idea who you are. And then you have this, you know, hugely contentious issue. You have to sort out with them in the heart of Texas no less. And then after that, you’ve got to deal with trying to build relationships with people you’ve never met before and hold them into your business while you’re the new owner. That is just a load of stuff. So I gotta ask now, like what, you know, you pray, you do your thing, what happens? Like where do you go from there? Like why did mentorship figure into this? And what were some of those clear things that happened that made you say, OK, there is a plan here and things are moving.

Jordan (10:10):

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, once you sign papers to be a gym owner, people’s marketing on Facebook is so solid that they know when you write your name on that piece of paper. And so they start shooting you all kinds of ads for gym guru stuff.

Mike (10:27):

Who does that? We don’t do that.

Jordan (10:29):

Well, honestly, I didn’t get any Two-Brain stuff. I do now obviously, but I was getting all of these, like, you know, gym gurus, the guy with the mustache, like all the stuff. Right. And so I kept seeing how, , you know, oh, we took this gym from this to this and this to this, and here’s our pandemic plan. And if you want access, just sign up with the email here, it’s free, whatever. And so I kept seeing it, but I’m a skeptic at heart.

Jordan (11:01):

And so, you know, I knew there was a better way, to do what I was doing. I knew somebody out there had a plan and I believe in shortcuts. And so I wanted to find that shortcut. But I was super skeptical of these guys and primarily because they were revolved around one personality. Right. So, you know, again, going back to my background, you know, I’m always skeptical of something of an organization that revolves around one person, because if that person ever stepped out or stepped away, you know, would this thing actually keep going? Or was it just simply because they were this charismatic personality that kept people around and people enjoyed being around that person, right. Is that their systems and processes or is it that one specific person? And so I would just putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, but the more I saw it, the more I was like, OK, there’s obviously a market for this.

Jordan (11:55):

And so I jumped on Google and with some solid SEO marketing that’s whenever Two-Brain popped up.

Mike (12:00):

That’s good.

Jordan (12:00):

Yeah. So I did a quick Google search and found Two-Brain, and it was the one that wasn’t revolving around one singular person. Right. So like Chris is obviously, you know, on there and up front and as he should be, but it was more so this, you know, overarching like, Hey, here’s the business. I don’t do all of this mentoring. I don’t do all of this coaching. Like, it’s not about me. It’s about, you know, the extremities of the business, the mentors that step in and help you. And I was still skeptical, man. Like I jumped on. And I looked at the reviews and I started Facebook messaging to people that had left reviews to find out like one, are you a real person?

Jordan (12:48):

And two, did this actually work for you? You know, like talk to me about where your gym is right now, because I don’t, you know, I don’t want to spend this kind of money if you know, it was a, you know, a quick shot of adrenaline and then it kind of fell back off and it wasn’t long-term sustainable. So everybody I messaged that messaged me back was super high on onTwo-Brain obviously, cause they left a review and it was a good one. So that was kinda why I booked my first call. And then, I was kind of sitting in a mindset of this can’t get any worse, you know, like, whenever you’re sitting there thinking like, this is kind of my last week to live, you know, do something to try and extend your time. Even if it’s going to cut down, you know, if you have seven days to live and you only get four left if you do this one thing, you know, but if it works, you can extend it for however many years you want, hat was kind of the mindset I went into it with. So I was like, well, OK, let’s, let’s throw some cash at this and see if we can make it happen.

Mike (13:52):

I love that you decided to take action because after like a series of we’ll call them beat downs and like, you know, obviously it wasn’t a beat down necessarily, but just after this series of tough things, when you’re looking at disaster, quote, unquote, some people would just pack it in and kind of, you know, walk away or whatever. It takes a bit of courage more than a bit probably to just make a move, especially to spend more money at that point. Right? You’re you’re looking at what am I going to do here? OK. I’ll sign up for an expensive mentorship program and try and fix this thing. I mean, that’s not a move everyone would make, so congratulations for doing that. What happens now?

Chris (14:30):

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Mike (15:58):

So take me through the turnaround because this is the comeback of the year award for Two-Brain. Talk to me about the major things that you turned around. Like I know early on, I think you said your revenue streams were all group. Tell me about some of the things that happened to make this comeback happen.

Jordan (16:13):

Yeah. So whenever I’d jumped on with Matt and started jumping really into that, that mentoring—

Mike (16:17):

This is Matt VanShoyck, correct?

Jordan (16:17):

Correct. Yeah. That’s my mentor. He’s a stud. Does his thing, helps me do mine. And, so anyway, whenever I jumped on with him, you know, he started guiding me kind of through this process and the big one was, you know, kind of getting that staff playbook put together that, you know, Hey, here’s our standard operating procedures. Here’s what we need to do. Here’s how we bring new clients in. This is the step-by-step process of, you know, this is like bare minimum, bare bones. This is what it should look like. And obviously, , you know, we weren’t anywhere close to those things. We were still pulling the whole, Hey, come in for a free class. Did you like it? Great. You know, let’s sign up.

Jordan (16:59):

At that point I wasn’t offering discounts, but, you know, I still had a bunch of members on discounts. Anyway, so like, I guess I took, you know, action and just started trying to fly through the SLPs and just get that foundation that ramp up, built as fast as I possibly could, because like I said, you know, like I’m working with a really short timeframe of if we don’t make money, this gym closes. And more importantly for me, it was, I had a new baby at home. I had a house that I just mortgaged that I couldn’t pay for in the moment. And so there was just this kind of, you know, I don’t want to say chaos, I guess it was chaos, but it didn’t feel like chaos in the moment because you don’t have time to sit and think about the chaos.

Jordan (17:45):

You just have time to simply do what you know you have do in order to make it work. So, those were the big ones was starting the NSI. I bumped my rates on incoming clients, you know, started that on ramp. And so my revenue started to go up because of those things, but then it kind of tapered off in like through December, you know, we were kind of up and down. We ran a nutrition kickstart at one point and boosted revenue there. You know, boosted revenue in January with an open prep course. So there was like little things that we did to boost revenue, but, you know, it was kind of getting frustrating because I knew I was doing the things correctly, but it just took time for my gym to like start actually running like a Two-Brain gym in the sense that, you know, my expenses don’t outweigh my revenue coming in. So December, you know, was a pretty tough month, going into that. But,that was my biggest action steps was just get the foundation for a solid business set up.

Mike (18:56):

In doing that, you kind of, you mentioned a lot of like challenging things, like you had to change rates on the incoming members you had to, did you have to eliminate discounts? I think you said you had some that were, that were old school there?

Jordan (19:07):

Yeah. So, you know, it’s funny, it turns out Two-Brain’s right on this, that the first people that are willing to bail on you are the people that are paying the least.

Mike (19:17):

Isn’t that weird?

Jordan (19:17):

Yeah. It’s kind of like one of those things where, you know, where your money is there, your heart is also type situations where I don’t have much money in this. I’m not have a whole lot of investment in it. It doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, so I’m going to bail out on that. And so I didn’t actually have to eliminate discounts.

Mike (19:40):

They eliminated themselves?

Jordan (19:40):

Yes. Those were all the people that were bailing out on me and like, and the people that still had discounts, they were within like $5 or so. Yeah. And so, honestly, it wasn’t worth the risk of losing three to five of those guys. Especially at this time, whenever everything mattered. So I never bumped the discounts off of those guys just because it wasn’t worth $200, you know, coming in extra a month to me. So, but at this point, you know, there is no discount. There is no, you know, friendship rate or whatever. Like there’s none of that.

Mike (20:22):

So you’ve got the structures, you’ve got like some gunshot wounds eliminated that could have caused problems down the line. You’ve got your rates in place at a sustainable, cause I’m sure you calculated those, knowing what you needed to make to keep this thing open and make it work and provide for your family. Are you diversifying revenue streams or at this point, because I knew he said it was all group. Now what happens?

Jordan (20:43):

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve got personal training going, got nutrition coaching. We’ve got hybrid packages going. So that was huge. Was getting those things going. And we actually really struggled to get, you know, those things didn’t start to happen until this year. Probably more like in April or so. That was kind of whenever people were really starting to buy into those packages and honestly, that was on me because I wasn’t selling them very well. What I would do is I’d open my pricing binder and say, Hey, here’s this really expensive thing. And if you said, Hey, let’s go for it. I’d be like, yes, if you know, you told me no on that first note, I would just drop. So you, cause I knew I could sell my on-ramp package to anybody. I knew I could sell group fitness to anybody. So I would just drop, sell you real fast because I was just trying to get members in as fast as I possibly could.

Mike (21:37):

To be fair, you kind of needed it at that point. So I understand why you would operate like that.

Jordan (21:40):

I absolutely needed it, but I also think that it slowed down my rate of growth pretty substantially. I think I would’ve had a much faster, you know, acceleration coming through January because December, I mean, I’m telling you December, there was this second mass exodus, the first one happened in June and then there’s a second mass Exodus in December. And you know, that was the one where we went in the hole big time. And I told my wife, I was like, Hey look like if this happens, you know, through the next couple of months, you know, I’m updating the resume and I’m getting a freaking job because—

Mike (22:19):

December, 2020?

Jordan (22:21):

Yes, December, 2020. And then we had this mass influx of people, you know, new year, new me type situation, people were pretending COVID didn’t exist anymore. It was awesome. Like we added like 23 or something like that in January. And then the trend just kind of continued through March, kept adding people like crazy. We were doing nutrition kickstart, we were doing open prep.So those things were revenue boosters that they can sell t-shirts at one point. And none of those things were like the thing, but it was helpful. Most of it was, you know, recurring revenue in gym memberships and stuff like that. So, yeah, that was kind of that turnaround, I guess, from December to March.

Mike (23:10):

So what you did was you laid the foundation for this explosion essentially by getting everything in place properly, you know, in the middle and toward the end of 2020, and then capitalizing in 2021. And what I mean by that is you got your rates adjusted. So you’re bringing in every new person at a rate that’s sustainable. And then you’ve also got, you know, your quote unquote discount package, which is group training and so forth, but you’ve also got these high value hybrid, much more involved programs. So then now how many of the new people were you selling on those we’ll call them, you know, gold packages, whatever the upper level stuff?

Jordan (23:46):

Yeah. Honestly, not very many man, like maybe maybe one a month.

Mike (23:52):

Like it’s a larger number than the group thing,

Jordan (23:56):

Yeah, no 100%. It was, you know, and so selling one of those was like selling two or three group packages. But it, you know, like I said, I just, wasn’t doing a great job of selling it. I was, you know, offering it and, you know, on the first, you know, pushback or, you know, objection, I was just like, OK, cool. Like, let’s go to onramp. Like, this is where we’ll start. And then we can come back to this later. And little, you know, did I know that it was much harder to sell somebody personal training coming out of on-ramp, you know, because the rate’s going back up. Right. So, I guess that, I mean, we did sell a few, but like we were selling them very little at this point, you know, starting last month I changed my pricing binder to you don’t have an option here.

Jordan (24:42):

You know, very few circstances will allow you to get into the gym without nutrition, group, on ramp or personal training. And on-ramp like, or excuse me, personal training and nutrition. So like at this point, 100% of my members that are coming in are now at those higher rates. And it’s, you know, we kinda, we hit 14 thousand dollars month in March coming from $6,000 in December. So that was, yeah, that was phenomenal. But then it kind of dropped back down, tapered off to about that 10k mark. And then June, I was talking with Matt and we kind of had this big, long conversation of, you know, like what do people really need? Because I was still struggling with this idea that, you know, man, I’m asking people to pay, you know, four to $700 for their fitness.

Jordan (25:41):

And that seems a little bit crazy, but the reality is if you’re actually, your heart’s in it to help people, you know, that’s what they need and this is what it’s worth, so freaking sell it. So that’s what I did. I just changed it to where, Hey, our front end offer is, like I said, nutrition, group, on-ramp or personal training and nutrition. You know, once we’re through the first 90 days where you’re going to see a ton of results, we’ll sit down, we’ll have a goal review and we’ll talk about, you know, if you’re happy with what’s going on and we’ll keep doing that thing, if you want to change it up and switch to personal training or switch to group or whatever that looks like, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about that. But, at this point, you know, so we were posted up at that 10-k mark and then in June, I switched rates and then bam, you know, back up to, you know, 13 on reoccurring revenue. And now it’s gone up again for July and now I’m really excited about what’s getting ready to happen. Cause you know, I can sell half the number of memberships and double my money.

Mike (26:49):

So you really sharpened your pencil there, like so to speak, and you like dialed in your market, figured out who you wanted to sell to, and then figured out like the product that was legitimately going to help these people accomplish their goals. So you narrowed your focus and dialed in your service offering. And now you’re bringing in people that are paying, you know, they see, obviously see value in your product. And it allows you to bring in people at these great rates, but also to give them the success that they want. Like that must feel like an amazing thing coming from like the dark days of, you know, June, of the pandemic and even December of this year.

Jordan (27:21):

Yeah, no, that’s 100% correct. And, you know, obviously none of this happens without somebody kind of in your ear telling you like, Hey, this is a good idea. This is a bad idea, you know, go for it and like bring in some, you know, reality to the situation because when you’re in, you know, when you’re covered up with just all the daily stuff and on top of that, you’re not profitable, you don’t think clearly. And so it was kind of, I say we had a conversation, it was more of a, you know, I’m not gonna say argument, but like, Hey man, like here’s what I’m worried about with Matt. And he’s like, well, then sell it. You know, like he just like, kind of does, you know, just pushing you to capitalize on what you’re good at. And for me, that’s sales, like that is the one thing that I love to do.

Jordan (28:11):

I didn’t expect that going in, to love to sit down and sell people. Like most people, I kind of felt like it was going to be slimy and grimy and whatever. But at this point, you know, that’s what gets my heart rate up. That’s what I get excited about is I get to go meet a new person and tell them exactly what they need for fitness, and then they’re going to do it. And they’re going to see massive change in the first 12 weeks because they’re going to adhere to our program because we’re going to hold them accountable to their own goals. Right. Like, so I just like, I get excited about that at this point, rather than jumping in and coach in a group class or, you know, all the other daily tasks that I’m doing.

Mike (28:49):

Chris Cooper, I think was the original comeback of the year gym, where he founded the company obviously, but before he did, he had a gym that was not sustaining his life. And he sat on a park bench and had this deep dark moment where he had to figure out what to do and what he did was he paid for mentorship and he turned his business around, started a bunch more businesses, and now has this great big mentorship, worldwide company, including hundreds of gyms. And for all those gyms, Chris and the staff selected you as the comeback of the year. And you told me a funny story about how your idea of this award changed from when you heard about it to now. Tell me a little about that.

Jordan (29:25):

One. Yeah. So yeah, I’m not going to get into the story that I told you, but yeah, so like, I guess I just didn’t realize, you know, that it was a big deal. You know, I’d only been with Two-Brain for about a year and for me, I’m the type of guy that’s looking forward. I don’t use my rear view mirror whenever I drive very well. And I also don’t do that in my life very well. And so some of these, you know, some of it, even some of these questions is hard for me to answer because I don’t look back very often. Right. So, you know, it also makes me terrible at celebrating wins. I’m just constantly looking forward at the next thing and thinking like, I’m not where I want to be right now.

Jordan (30:05):

That’s where I want to be and the second that I get there that changes again and, I’m, you know, shooting for the next thing. And I forget about what’s happened in the past. And so, you know, whenever I got it, I would just kind of ho-hum about it. You know, I was like, OK, that’s cool. You know. I kind of felt, you know, a little bit weird about it in general, just because I was like, man, you know, I wish I wouldn’t have qualified for the comeback of the year. I wish I wouldn’t have had anything to come back from. And you know, and I don’t know why I thought this, but just kind of in my brain, I was thinking, you know, everybody’s going to get some kind of award. I had no idea how many clients that Two-Brain had.

Jordan (30:48):

Like, I was just kind of operating in my own little bubble with Matt and doing our thing. And so I, you know, the outside world was kind of closed off to me. And so I guess whenever I got it, it was just kinda like, oh, OK, cool. Like that’s neat. And then it didn’t really dawn on me that this was a bigger deal than what I realized until Chris had, you know, recorded that video of announcing the Two-Brain award winners. And there was like eight. And I was like, oh, OK. This isn’t like a, you know, everybody gets a prize, here’s your blue ribbon type situation. This was a selected group of people. And so at that point I was super grateful. And it kind of forced me to look back a little bit and go, oh yeah, like we were going to close the gym in March, if something big didn’t happen.

Jordan (31:42):

And it did. So, you know, it was, I don’t know, it’s kind of one of those things where I think for a lot of us gym owners and really probably just business owners in general, you feel like at some level, I don’t deserve this. Like I don’t deserve this group of people that comes and pays to work out in my gym. I don’t deserve the money. Like, I don’t know. There’s just this weird, like, but do I really deserve it? And so, yeah, that was kind of my thought process around it. And it humbled, I guess is a word that you could use. But also also grateful, you know, even for Two-Brain at that point, because like I said, we were going to close the gym in March and had there not been somebody to speak into the decisions I was making, the, you know, the moves that needed to happen. These things wouldn’t have happened. This isn’t something that I would have probably figured out on my own.

Mike (32:37):

I’m here to tell you that it is, you know, exactly like you said, it actually, it is a huge award because we have awards for like metrics and community and coach opportunity, education, all these other things. But this one really showcases someone who fought through something crazy. I guess like if your not a rear view mirror kind of guy, I totally get it. Well, when I heard this story and when our mentors heard the story of what you went throug, it was like, whoa, that is like, it’s hard enough to run a gym in certain circstances, but you went through some above and beyond stuff that really highlighted, like again, the mentors and everyone was talking, this is a crazy story. And what an inspirational thing. So, you know, allow me to look in the rear view mirror for you and say that like overcoming that stuff is an amazing thing.

Mike (33:21):

And it’s definitely gonna inspire some people because there are people out there listening right now who are struggling and maybe they haven’t come through, you know, the COVID pandemic in certain areas, or maybe they’re experiencing what you did, where they’ve reopened and things are dropping off. The cool part about your story is that you went through the toughest circumstances that we heard about and you kept fighting through, you had your peaks and valleys, but overall you laid the groundwork and now you have success. So it is possible for others. And I’ll ask you this, if someone’s out there, will you do for them what someone did for you and can they message you and let you, you know, tell your story and your opinion?

Jordan (33:54):

Yeah, absolutely. And I would, I guess I would just say too, like, you know, it’s really easy to get advice and get an opinion, whether it’s through message or whether it’s through your mentor. But my big thing would be, what are you going to do with it? Like, you’ve got to do it. It’s worked for other people. You have to do it. You can’t just gather information, at some point, that, you know, you just become an encyclopedia and you’re sat on the shelf. Like you’re not doing anything with the information you have, right. So even if it’s, you know, OK, I’m going to implement this, I’m really not sure that the ins and outs of this and like how it’s going to work. And you’re probably not going to be good at it, you know, from day one, but implement it.

Jordan (34:40):

And over time, you’re going to see what works, what doesn’t and how you can adjust this specifically for your gym. And I think that’s the beauty of the advice that’s given kind of in our circle of business owners and mentors is, Hey, this is the framework. This isn’t exactly how it has to be done. There’s no mandatory, Hey, you have to do your NSIs this way. You have to do your goal reviews this way. You have to use this language. It’s this broad like, Hey, here’s what works now, make it fit your gym. And it just takes time.

Mike (35:15):

I’m going to just summarize that with action is everything. That is, you would not find a single person in Two-Brain on the mentorship side, and that includes Chris, who would not believe that that is true, because like you said, we can give you all the resources in the world, but if you don’t find that thing inside you, that makes you act and change, nothing’s going to happen. So, Jordan, thanks so much for highlighting that and telling me, you know, what is really an incredible story and congratulations again on the comeback of the year award.

Jordan (35:40):

I appreciate it, man.

Mike (35:43):

I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Two-Brain award winner Jordan Fink. Two-Brain can help you turn your business around too. Visit Two-Brain business.com to book a free call to find out more. And if you aren’t ready for that, be sure to join the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is in there all the time and he’ll give you enough free resources that you’ll be able to make the money you need to pay for mentorship. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook. Join it today.

 

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How to Avoid Taking It out on Your Family: The Buffer

At the Two-Brain Summit this year, I talked about our tendency to “swallow the shit”: to keep the stress bottled up inside. To protect our friends and family from the harder realities of entrepreneurship.

I shared a personal truth: that the hardest parts of my day are only eight steps away from my dinner table. That I often have to suppress my stress to shield my family from my frustration—and I have to do it fast, while I’m climbing the stairs from basement to kitchen.

On the day after the Summit, I was flying high. I got a couple of dozen emails telling me how much people loved the Summit and Two-Brain. I had a great, productive day. And then, at 4:55 p.m., I got a refund request.

Of course, it was super frustrating. But dinner was ready, so I pasted a fake smile on my face and tried to concentrate on what my kids were saying while I boiled over inside. But I was obviously distracted.

I should have had a buffer ready.

Building in Buffers

A mental buffer is a brief window between thinking about work and thinking about family or friends. For example, your buffer could be your drive home from work, it could be a nap, or it could be a five-minute meditation.

Entrepreneurs try to abruptly transition from “work time” to “home time” all too often. We bring our work problems to the dinner table, answer emails at our kids’ ball games and think about social media when we’re on dates.

The reverse also happens: You get up early to jump-start your day. You do some stretching, listen to a podcast and review your checklist. Coffee in hand, you head out the door in a focused, productive state—and you see dog crap on your lawn because no one walked the family pet the night before.

You’ll carry that distraction into every meeting all day. Your home problems will overshadow every text you send, every email you write.

You need a buffer or a brief recess between home and work. If you don’t have a buffer, your family becomes the buffer.

I suggest one of these:

Take a 30-minute car ride.Take a five-minute walk.Read five pages of a book.Stretch five body parts for one minute each.Perform a 10-minute meditation.Do a crossword puzzle.Phone a friend.Watch a funny video on YouTube.

These things seem simple—maybe obvious. But if you don’t give yourself permission to have a five- or 10-minute buffer between home and work, you’ll ruin hours of family time by thinking about work.

Your brain doesn’t know how to turn off, but it does know how to turn the channel.

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Sell by Chat for Gyms: Does It Work?

Sell by chat for gyms and fitness businesses: Will it bring in more clients?

Maybe.

The answer is important. Consumers are chatting all the time by text and on apps like SnapChat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messenger, TikTok, WeChat, Telegram, Slack, Signal and so on. Businesses use their media to connect with consumers on their platforms of choice, so sell by chat might be considered an extension of your sales and media plan.

But the tactic involves time and money—whether you do it personally or use a service to contact prospective clients. We believe every expense should generate a return.

We tested this new marketing tactic, and we’ll give you the complete results below so you know if sell by chat will work for your gym, fitness studio or nutrition business.

Sell by Chat for Gyms: What Is It Exactly?

For those who want a primer, sell by chat for gyms is part of a proactive multi-channel marketing strategy. In some cases, sell by chat is employed via a pop-up chat window that appears when someone visits your site. You’ve probably seen these widgets, which often double up as “customer service”: “Hi, I’m Sam. How can I help you today?”

We didn’t use that version of the strategy because people have to get to your site to see that chat box appear. Sell by chat is Step 2 if you’re doing it on your website. Step 1 would be getting people to the site, which is a completely different problem altogether. (Check out this Neil Patel article for more general insight into on-site live chat sales.)

We went further upstream to test with active engagement of prospective clients:

Sell by chat for gym owners is a direct conversion strategy to get leads from social media channels to book a free consultation at your gym or even sign up over a text discussion. You start a conversation with a prospect in a chat thread, ask some questions and then pivot toward a sale or—more commonly—a free consultation.

The strategy can work on any platform with messaging capability—but Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct Messenger are are the most common. Sell by chat is a bit like cold calling because the recipient isn’t expecting to hear from you, but that feeling is generally offset by the sense of “closeness” created on a social-media platform.

Read on to see what sets gyms up for success with sell by chat and when you can skip the strategy to focus on other ideas.

Why We Tested Sell by Chat for Gym Owners

“There is always somewhere else I can put my money,” Warren Buffett said.

The most important asset a gym owner or trainer has is time. And time is a finite resource. So when we test an idea for gym owners at Two-Brain, we don’t limit ourselves to the question “does it work?” Instead, we ask the more important question: “Does this work better than the alternatives?”

In other words, “If I had only one hour to build my business today, should I spend it on sell by chat?”

Our Sell by Chat Comparison for Fitness Businesses

Across all industries, sell by chat has a 3-5 percent close rate.

This means if you start 100 direct message—DM—chats with leads, numbers suggest three to five people will actually sign up for your service. If the chat strategy is to get people to book a free consultation, the number rises to around 12-15 percent. But not all of those consultations will result in closed sales. Booking is a two steps removed from buying: Prospective clients who book have to actually show up to appointments and then purchase before they become clients.

In order for us to recommend sell by chat for fitness entrepreneurs, we knew that gyms testing the strategy would have to close at least five clients per month. With a 5 percent cross-industry close rate for sell by chat, the average gym owner would have to start 100 chats per month and nurture each conversation toward a sale. That’s doable in some cases—but only if the gym owner has a place to collect a ton of leads for chatting.

Testing Sell by Chat for Fitness Entrepreneurs

Beginning in May, our Two-Brain marketing and sales experts employed two sell by chat teams to engage qualified leads. The teams initiated 40 chats per day with qualified leads, and we measured how many leads booked calls, then how many of those who booked calls converted into sales.

Our sell by chat goals:

Get new potential clients to book free consultations. As a backup plan, we wanted to get those clients on an email list as a bare minimum. Convert at least 5 percent of all chats started to sales.

Our strategy: We tested the strategy using a professional sell by chat team in a public Facebook group. This was a high-affinity group with thousands of potential clients. It was also a very high-affinity pool: Most people in the group had received something for free in the past, and many turned out to be super fans.

The result: Six new clients over three months (two per month) for a close rate of around 2 percent.

What does this mean for you? It depends on the stage of business you’re in.

Which Gym Owners Should Use Sell by Chat?
Stage 1: Founder Phase

This is the first stage of gym ownership: You’re making $18,000 per year or less and coaching most of your clients yourself.

No—We do not recommend gym owners at this stage use sell by chat. They could invest their time in other strategies with greater rates of return.

Stage 2: Farmer Phase

This is the second stage of gym ownership: You’re making $100,000 per year or less and managing your gym full time.

Maybe—Sell by chat might be a viable strategy, depending on your next business plan.

Stage 3: Tinker Phase

In the third phase of entrepreneurship in the fitness world, you’re making over $100,000 per year and your gym runs itself.

Yes—The sell by chat strategy will probably be an effective use of your time. But only if you have a solid lead-generation system that produces at least 30 leads per day (especially if they’re qualified leads).

Click here to find out what stage of entrepreneurship you’re in.

Sell by Chat for Gym Owners: The Summary

Sell by chat has some potential for pushing qualified leads to sign up for your coaching services. But you need a solid infrastructure first, including:

A public group (like a Facebook group).A solid lead magnet people can request via chat.A good local reputation.
Sell by Chat ProsIf you already have a public Facebook group and a decent bank of content, sell by chat can definitely get qualified leads to take action.Sell by chat works faster than an email nurture sequence. Selling by chat feels more natural than auto-text or bots.
Sell by Chat ConsIt’s getting harder and harder to start sell by chat. For example, if you start messaging people who aren’t your friends on Facebook, your account could get locked down. If you don’t have a way to generate a lot of daily leads (like a public Facebook group), you won’t get enough volume to make the strategy worthwhile. There’s a big up-front investment: You have to build a public group, create assets to give away and then invest a lot of time in the group by asking questions or individually messaging people.

Protip: Do not use a bot, and don’t use a virtual assistant (VA) until you’ve mastered the process yourself. Asking someone else to log in to your social media account and act as you is begging for trouble.

Side Benefits of Direct Message Selling

You’re going to unearth some fans.

Overall: Our Sell by Chat Recommendation

We only recommend sell by chat for gym owners who have extra time to spend on social media. If you’re great with emojis, have a fast response time and can follow a template (which we provide for Two-Brain Gyms in our Tinker program), you can get some new clients from sell by chat.

If that’s not you, other marketing strategies will work much better.

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The Indirect Ask: A Zero-Cost, Guilt-Free Way to Get More Business

By Colm O’Reilly, Certified Two-Brain Fitness Business Mentor

The “indirect ask” is a great way of generating business through people you know.

If your gym is reopening after post-pandemic restrictions, send this message to everyone in your town:

Hey [NAME], my gym is back open on [DATE]. Who do you know who’d benefit from what we do? 

If your gym is already open, you can re-word the message like this:

Hey [NAME], I’m able to take on [X] more members at my gym this month. Who do you know who’d benefit from what we do? 

Why does this approach work? You’re asking for a favor, and people like to do favors for others.

Second, because you’re not directly soliciting their business, they’re more open to considering your service themselves. Very often, you’ll get a response with a person saying he or she could benefit from your service personally. From there, guide the person to an intro and see what service is the best fit. 

It will cost a little time to personalize each message. And yes, this personalization is important—don’t just copy and paste the message!

Aside from this small time cost, this tactic is a zero-spend way to get the word out and acquire interested leads who already have a connection to your business.

For more effective, low-cost strategies, get our free guide “Affinity Marketing.”

The post The Indirect Ask: A Zero-Cost, Guilt-Free Way to Get More Business appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Raw and Real: Gym Owner’s Greatest Fears Revealed to Peers—and Staff!

Mike (00:02):

At the recent Two-Brain Summit, psychotherapist Bonnie Skinner asked attendees to talk about their greatest fears. Gym owner Justin Keane went first and said his biggest fear was that his staff members hated him. Justin’s courage in front of his peers opened up a deluge of similar comments from other entrepreneurs. Today we’re diving into imposter syndrome and the deepest, darkest fears of entrepreneurs.

Chris (00:25):

Chris Cooper here to talk about Incite Tax. The people at Incite Tax know you’re working long hours to improve health for the world, but it can still be hard to turn a profit. You just can’t focus on your mission without money in your account. So Incite founder John Briggs wrote “Profit First for Microgyms” and created a system that increases your cashflow so you can be home for dinner with a thriving fitness business. Bookkeeping, profit first, cash flow consulting, taxes, whatever your financial needs, Incite can help. Join their free five-day challenge at profitfirstformicrogyms/five days to get a snapshot of the financial health of your gym. That’s profitfirstformicrogyms/five days.

Mike (01:05):

This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m Mike Warkentin. I’ve been avoiding Fran for about five to seven years now. With that vulnerability out of the way, Justin Keane of Woodshed Strength and Conditioning is with me today. And we’re going to get personal and talk about our fears. Justin, at the summit, Chris Cooper told Todd Herman about your comment earlier in the day and Todd called you out as a leader for making a super honest comment in public. Tell me why you broke the ice and typed that comment into the chat at the summit, knowing that all the other gym owners there would see it.

Justin (01:35):

Well, Mike, how are you, first of all.

Mike (01:39):

I get so excited that I just jumped right in. I want to ask you questions.

Justin (01:43):

Yeah, no, you just gave me like Fran shivers, right? It’s funny,you start with that question because, I did kind of have a moment as we were listening to presentations at the summit where the question was, what is your greatest fear as a gym owner? And immediately came to me that my greatest fear is that my staff and my members all hate me, and it felt very raw and it sort of felt like something that came to me that I hadn’t had a chance to edit mentally and make more palatable for discussion. And it just struck me that in the spirit of the weekend and the presentations we’d already had a chance to be exposed to that I should just type it in and see what happened. See if anyone else said, oh yeah, I worry about that too.

Mike (02:43):

Now, if I remember correctly, you were the first comment, is that right?

Justin (02:46):

I think I was first or second.

Mike (02:50):

Like, you just dropped a kettlebell into the pool, you know, in the deep end. And like a big one right off the bat. And the cool part about it was after you did that, so many people started commenting and it was like, someone kind of just needed to break the ice and you did it. And like I said, Todd Herman and people didn’t see this, but he and Chris were talking, in the waiting room before Todd went on and Chris was like, wow, this was just the coolest thing. We just had this incredible speech or presentation from Bonnie Skinner. And she asked this question and Justin just dped in with this super raw, honest answer that everyone just flooded out afterward. What did you feel like hearing Todd talk about you afterward in his presentation?

Justin (03:30):

Honored, humbled. It was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me on online or in a form like that. And I actually, I love Todd’s book, the alter ego effect. I read that read it a few times. The first time I read it was around the time that we were just about to do a rate increase and get rid of some grandfathered discounts a couple of years ago. And his book was immensely helpful to me. So it was kind of a really, it was a really cool serendipity to have tha moment where I felt like stepping out onto the ledge a little bit and typing in that comment and having Todd come back to it, it felt pretty nice, man.

Mike (04:19):

Thought it was really cool. And I didn’t know that part about that you were a fan and had read his book too, which makes it even even more cool. The interesting thing though, is like, you know, you talked about something that we’ve all thought about and imposter syndrome, every time we write about, or podcast about imposter syndrome, people react to it because as entrepreneurs, we’re all, you know, we’re leaders and we’re fearless and we lead large groups of people and all that, but we all have fears. So like how do you project confidence and authority to your staff and clients when every gym owner has fears and anxiety? Like how do you find that balance between being real and honest, but also, you know, showing a brave face and being a leader?

Justin (04:58):

Well, I think for me, and I suspect for many other many other gym owners during this during COVID, and as we’re kind of building our way back up, there is a very real confidence in just being honest. I think the more honestly that I was able to speak with my team and with our people, the more confidence I felt as a leader, and I will always always remembe being on a call with Coop and, you know, 60 or 70 other gym owners, and this would have been middle of March, 2020 before things were really starting to make their way, you know, make their way to the United States and Canada. I’ll never forget. Chris said, guys I’m terrified. But we’re going to push forward and we’re going to make it through together. And, and I cannot tell you, Mike, what a profound impact that admission from Chris had on me as a gym owner, as a person, as a leader.

Justin (06:07):

I think I probably said guys I’m scared, four or five different times to my team during the thick of it. And I think once you’re able to get real like that and be open and vulnerable in that way, everything else feels just a little bit easier, talking about your books with your team and talking about the challenges you’re facing oon a day-to-day basis. It feels like so much easier of a conversation to navigate once you’ve gotten that raw and shown yourself and brought your biggest fear out into the open, I’ll never forget that.

Mike (06:53):

I remember that call too, and it was interesting because you’ve got the fearless leader of gyms saying, you know, I’m scared, I’m scared too. I’m scared for all of us. And we all had to deal with that fear during the COVID pandemic, which is thankfully in a bit of a lull right now, at least in most places. So what happened to you? Like we have this idea and it’s usually this type A entrepreneurial kind of thing where we have to like, be these big people. And again, you do to some degree, like we always talk about in CrossFit, be the big you at the whiteboard and so forth. There is that pressure to do that. But what happened when you showed your, you know, your soft underbelly, so to speak, to your staff, like our greatest fear is usually that they’re going to not respect me or they’re gonna think I’m weak or something like that. So what happened when you showed them your soft side?

Justin (07:37):

You know, I think, nothing dramatic, which to me felt authentic. I feel like conversations between us all deepened a little bit. You know, some of our coaches were able to share that they were worried as well. They were worried about how the gym was gonna, you know, make it through. They were worried about first and foremost about us all staying healthy, and keep our members safe and sound. So I don’t think there was any one sort of aha moment, where I thought, oh, wow, his just changed the tenor of the conversation immediately. But I do, when I look back and I have to say that some of my fondest memories as a gym owner and as a leader are the conversations and the meetings and the talks that I had with my team during the thick of it, I felt a real warmth and a real connection, and a real sense that we were going to push through together.

Mike (08:39):

It almost made you, you know, brought you guys together. I’m guessing by that sort of the same way that a tough workout brings you together. Was it the same feeling that now that we’ve all kind of shared the we’re all scared, we kind of all go together or forward together.

Justin (08:51):

Sure. And I think it’s important to note, and for me, especially, it’s important to note that this isn’t kind of a, I don’t, I can’t look at this as an on/off switch. My job and being open and being vulnerable and honest with my team and with our members is never done ,that’s something I have to commit to do every day, because it is not in my instinct to be an open book. I’m very much the opposite. I like happily sit in the corner of a room at a party, if you could even drag me to the party to get me there and just keep to my own counsel, and sort of have been that way since I can remember. So it’s something I have to remind myself that I need to commit to do it every day. And I have to also forgive myself for the days that I don’t do as good of a job as I would like to, and understand that it’s just, it’s a process and it’s not something that’s ever going, I’m never going to look in a mirror and say, you know, you made it kid, you don’t have to do any more work. You can go back to the way you were, I have to really commit to doing every single day,

Mike (10:03):

How much of your self and your inner thoughts do you share with staff and clients? Like, do you share your books with your staff or how much do you, where do you put the limit?

Justin (10:11):

You know, Mike, t’s a great question. And I have to be honest here, thinking about that question and hearing you ask me that it occurs to me that I probably need to do a better job than I have been doing recently. I think that for us, we’re in Massachusetts, we’re in the Northeast. So for us, most of all the COVID restrictions were lifted a couple of months ago. So, it’s been kind of a real forward push into re-establishing some of the old ways like to call them, you know, people sharing equipment, folks not needing to distance during workouts. I mean, we have to encourage that, cause it doesn’t come naturally to anyone any longer. Right. But it occurs to me that when you asked me that, that this is something I need to recommit to, because I’ve been so focused on bringing everybody back together under that umbrella of kind of, Hey, we’re back at it. That it’s easy for me to kind of push vulnerability and push the inner inner thoughts underneath to the side. So, great question. And that’s going to help me be a better leader.

Mike (11:28):

It’s been a tough period. I mean, there’s so many of us that we’ve been deep in the bunker, you know, just like waiting for the shells to stop coming down so we can get back to business.

Justin (11:36):

Yeah, man, I read your posts on Facebook and I just, my heart goes out to you guys. It’s just a war.

Mike (11:45):

You know, in the early stages of the pandemic, I remember vividly, Chris messaged me and he’s like, I think this thing that’s going on in Australia and China right now is coming here. And I think we gotta move fast. And it was just, the next few months were just a blur, you know? And I don’t think, you know, a lot of us communicated a lot in that period where it was just so much so fast. And so going forward, especially there seems to be almost a renewed emphasis on kind of vulnerability. And we’ve got a video of, Jason Cohen from locomotion fitness talking about his vulnerability.

Justin (12:16):

I just watched that yesterday.

Chris (12:19):

Hey, it’s Chris Cooper here. Programming is the service that you deliver to your clients. So I partnered with Brooks DiFiore, who had one of the highest adherence rates for his group classes in the world to build TwoBrainprogramming.com. Now we built this for Two-Brain gyms and we give them free access in our mentorship program, but I’m now making this available to the public. Programming that’s proven to improve retention and cash flow in your gym. Visit TwoBrainprogramming.com to get it. Your gym’s programming won’t attract new clients, but it can help you keep your clients longer. Good programming includes the stuff you know, like your benchmarks, novelty, skills, progressions, leaderboards, but great programming contains something more. It’s a link between each client’s fitness goals and the workout of the day. Your coaches need to tell the clients more than what they’re going to do every day. They need to explain why they’re doing it and how it will help them achieve their specific goals. Gyms whose coaches could explain the why connection had a 25% better retention rate during lockdowns. Imagine how that translates into better retention when things get back to normal and a better bottom line at the end of every month. That’s TwoBrainprogramming.com. Take a look.

Mike (13:32):

Yeah. What’d you think of that? We’re going to put the link to YouTube in the comments, but what did you think of that?

Justin (13:37):

I mean, I love Jason. I’ve never met him. I’ve talked once or twice on messenger, but, I loved it, man. He’s showing us heart, super authentic. And as a gym owner and as a entrepreneur, it’s also great to see, of course, you know, you want to see that there’s connection between being vulnerable and the way that he’s adopted as a practice and how it applies to the growth of his business and his community.

Mike (14:08):

Guys, take a look to that video, if you want to see a former US Marine, a soldier, get open and honest as a successful gym owner, who’s really doing some work on himself. I think you’ll enjoy that. And we’ll put the link in the comments for sure. So Justin, tell me a little bit, what did you take away from Bonnie’s presentation on the shadow self and how it completely can derail you? Like I thought Bonnie at the summit was such a great speaker and she spoke to something that so many of us are prone to where there’s a part of us that can actually destroy us, you know, and just limit our success. What did you take from Bonnie’s presentation?

Justin (14:47):

Yeah, man. I mean, and before I answer, I want to back up and thank you for reminding me that her presentation had proceeded the question about your biggest fear. So I think part of what gave me the confidence to type in that fear was having just listened to her talk and share her heart. And, I thought her presentation was amazing.

Mike (15:13):

That she inspired you.

Justin (15:14):

She did, and it’s, you know, the broad concepts are ones that I’m fairly familiar with. Just from my own reading, my own work, but the precision to the degree,to which she brought precision to the notion of a shadow self and how we can sabotage our own selves and almost always in search of safety and comfort, huge light bulb for me. And that it’s one of those things that when you really sit down and you hear someone eloquent and passionate kind of get in the weeds and get in depth about it, like, yes. OK, this makes sense. This is the answer to the question. Why do you mess yourself up so much? Why you were so intent on sabotaging your good work?

Justin (16:10):

And for me that the concept of we all just want to feel safe, especially after this pandemic, is profound and it’s such a huge concept. And I actually remember a podcast with a couple of years ago, the guys from the StoryBrand guys who were talking about podcasts on leadership and talking about, you know, building your team. And one of the things they mentioned that you want everyone on your team wants to hear from you is you are safe here. Your position is safe here. We are not looking to find someone else to do what you do. You are taken care of here. And when I think about anything, I encounter as a gym owner, as a business owner, and as someone leading a team and someone at the head of the community of his members, if I kind of am able to take a step back and say, how is this person feeling?

Justin (17:09):

How may this person right now be feeling that their safety is jeopardized when we’re talking? It’s such a big step for me to be able to get into a real help first mentality, because I don’t want any of my team to feel unsafe and I don’t want any of our members to feel unsafe. And I think that when I’m able to take that step back and not react quickly, but to contextualize what’s coming at me and in terms of safety and security and comfort, it’s a huge deal. And when I remember to do that, it’s immensely helpful. I loved her presentation.

Mike (17:50):

It was so good and like you, so I think as a gym owner, if you ever get into these conflicts and we’ve talked about on this podcast many times, tough conversations, how to have them, and we’ve talked about, you know, negotiations and sort of deflating this giant ball of anger or balloon of anger between people, Chris Voss, presented on that last year. If we think about all those different things in your daily interactions, if you can step back and think, you know, how is this person feeling unsafe right now or threatened, and you can kind of set them at ease. Life’s going to be a whole lot easier. Like if you think about, just about anything, what you said was profound, you know, staff members want to feel like they’re part of something like they’re safe. When they don’t bad things generally happen.

Mike (18:31):

So as a leader, it’s so important to remember that and, you know, listeners, for those of you who haven’t seen Bonnie’s presentation, I can’t do it justice because she’s a far better speaker. But the shadow self is essentially you have this thing inside you that knows literally everything about you. And it can definitely find every single way, the most powerful ways in the world to derail you and take you off track to prevent you from feeling discomfort and anxiety. Even if some of those things are going to move you forward in life, it can still stop you. And it’s just like, she talked about how to get around that. And again, I really encourage you, we’ll put a link to Bonnie’s website in the show notes. So you can take a look at it. Because it was a presentation that really affected a ton of people, Justin and myself included. So offline. Cause there’s another interesting thing you mentioned. Offline, we talked a little bit about the desire to be your own boss, go your own way and how that can actually make you a bad communicator. And the interesting part is like almost all entrepreneurs have that, which means that they can really mess up the communication. So what did you mean by that exactly, and how do you avoid that in your business?

Justin (19:33):

Yeah, man. I mean, when I reflect back on mistakes that I’ve made and ways that I may have made members of my team or members of our community feel unsafe, you know, like they weren’t secure in their position or they weren’t secure in a place. It’s almost always been due to very poor communication or really no communication. You know, I say, you know, I grew up, went to Catholic school. I was an altar boy. So if we need to go down the, you know, I heard a lot of don’t do it this way. Don’t do it this way. Don’t do it this way, do it this way. Don’t do it this way. Don’t do it this way, do it this way. You know, if I’m being honest with myself, you know, one of the most appealing things about running your own business is that you don’t have that.

Justin (20:25):

You don’t have that voice over your shoulder. You don’t, you’re not answering to anyone else except yourself. But that doesn’t permit you to project genuine communication from your team or from your people. And it can sort of cast that as nagging and intrusion and that’s, so for me, that’s something I have to, you know, I have to be conscious of, there are definitely times where I kind of lock into a groove and I’m working on a project or a new offering where it’s very easy for me to just plow through and not update folkss on what what I’m looking at and where we’re going, what we’re doing. And it’s goes back to I mentioned earlier that it’s something I need to commit to do every day. So I think the first step is just being conscious of it.

Justin (21:17):

Like, yeah, man, it’s in my nature to not like feeling as though I’m being overseen. And that, you know, there may be somebody with a ruler ready to rap me on the knuckles. If I do something, you know, if I don’t do the right thing. Something that’s helped us or has helped me, aand I hope has helped my team, we use Slack for team communication internally. And I don’t remember when I started doing this, I started doing this thing called the daily brief, where in our channel, our staff channel every weekday morning, or sometimes after noon, I’ll just write two or three things. Like, this is what’s going on. Here’s what we should do today. AndI have to fight the impulse to kind of look at it like a pass fail thing, like, oh, are these things significant enough to write? Should I just not write anything today? And to just realize that actually the important part is that I do write, it’s not necessarily sharing the perfect thing every day. It’s just kind of opening up my mouth and communicating and practicing, getting better and getting more comfortable with just saying, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what I’m doing. Hit me up if you have any questions. So that’s been really helpful. I don’t see any reason to stop doing it, so I’m going to keep doing it.

Mike (22:37):

So you, as you were explaining that, I thought of, you know, an example that really hit home for me, and I’ll just give it to you. And you tell me what you think you think about the, you know, the desire to be your own boss. And so sometimes we just want to move, right? We just are tired of like following procedures or whatever. We’re just doing stuff. We want to just get it out of our head and move, and don’t want to be dragged down by people. But an example is like, you know, hiring someone without telling the rest of your team that that person is coming in or that you’re doing it. And thinking about this, like your team looks on, all of a sudden, they just see on whatever board, they just see a position being hired at your gym and they don’t know about it. How much fear would that put into your staff and limit? Like, could you not see how all these bad behaviors could come from you just not communicating? Like that is just such an incredible, like, I think I’ve made this mistake personally. Does that hit home for you?

Justin (23:27):

Absolutely. For sure. A hundred percent.

Mike (23:32):

Who’s being replaced?

Justin (23:33):

Yeah, exactly. What’s going on? Why is this person, where’d this person come from?

Mike (23:41):

Is it gonna affect my income? Is it gonna affect my hours? Is it going to take my clients, do I have to like, try and carve up someone else, you know, to keep my position like, wow, all of a sudden you’ve got this, you know, this horrible situation where bad behaviors can be amplified by fear.

Justin (23:56):

I’ve made that exact mistake. You know, probably a couple of differences here or there, but definitely have made very, very similar, very similar mistakes a couple of times. And, you know, the flip side of that, as crappy as it, as crappy as it was, and as crappy as it felt, you know, I have to look back and also be incredibly grateful to, you know, the members of my team who approached, you know, when something like that has happened are courageous enough to say, Hey, what’s going on? You know, you said one thing and you’re doing another. And it’s never easy to hear, for me, but probably 10 times harder for, you know, someone on my team to say, and, you know, it’s ultimately, it’s a blessing, right? To have team members that will approach.

Mike (25:01):

The ones that will actually call you out on stuff and help you out when you need it, rather than just stay silent and get angry.

Justin (25:06):

Are you familiar with King Lear?

Mike (25:09):

Not as well as I should be, I read it a long time ago. So refresh, please refresh me.

Justin (25:13):

So it’s funny. I had a client who was going up to see, a production of King Lear this weekend. It’s kind of like the first big Shakespeare production locally since COVID and anyhow, so King Lear has three daughters. And, you know, he’s getting, if my memory serves me right, he started in the process of transferring his power. And two of his daughters are very willing to flatter him to no end. And his third daughter Delia, you know, essentially said, I love you. And that’s it, no more, no less. And to have someone who is willing to get past flattery and Hey, you know, of course this is the right decision. Of course, things are perfect here. And to actually say what what’s up. I think you can do better. I think is amazing. And then I always think of King Lear and Cordelia in that situation, and spoiler alert and she’s the good daughter. She’s the one that wins out in the end, sorry, I spoiled Shakespeare for anybody.

Mike (26:30):

That might be the most literary and perhaps insightful reference we’ve had on Two-Brain Radio in a long time.

Mike (26:39):

It’s just, it’s so important to have those people around you that will just say like, you know, call you out and help you improve as a leader, you know, because that shows obviously belief in you. And it also shows that they have communication skills and so forth. So listeners, if you’re out there, a step you can take is to like, identify your core Delia’s so to speak in your staff and thank them and then try and learn something from them. I think that would be a really cool thing. Justin, you’ve got the perfect analogy there. What are you going to do going forward? What’s your plan now that you’ve kind of had, like, I feel like over the summit and maybe even this conversation, we’ve talked a lot about Jason’s video vulnerability, what’s your plan going forward? How are you developing yourself as, you know, a vulnerable but strong leader? And is that gonna mean for Woodshed and your staff?

Justin (27:28):

Good question, man. If there was another lesson that I learned over the pandemic, it was to pause before you act. So I can’t tell you in this moment what our precise next step will be, because I have a lot to reflect on, I mean, just even in the course of this conversation, it occurs to me that there are people that I need to thank again. I would say probably that, you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier that in kind of the push forward over the last couple of months, I probably have neglected to share more of my own MO, you know, share more of my own vulnerability and to be more open and transparent with our people. So that would be step one. So that took us taking a pause and thinking, what have I been pushing past in the name of safety and security over the last couple of months, and then find a way to communicate that in there, across the right channels and at the right time. So, that’s kind of always step one for me at the beginning of every day. Like I said before, it’s something that some days are better than others, but it’s always one day at a time. Which is another thing I took from watching Jason’s video, I think he and I are both big one day at a time guys. So, great question, man.

Mike (29:02):

That’s a great answer. I do appreciate the thoughtfulness on it. I think listeners, if you’re listening out there and you’re thinking of another thing that you can do to take away from the show, I would tell you to go out and do this. Subscribe to the show, but then after you do that, make sure that you go out and get on your slack channel or get on your email thread, or however it is you communicate with your staff even better would be pick up the phone and maybe just say something to them, tell them something, give them a brief, tell them what you’re doing. And if you don’t have anything important to tell them, just thank them for something, just something, you know, randomly that they’ve done recently that’s good. And open up those lines of communication. I would encourage you to do that. I was, as a gym owner, was guilty of not doing this enough. I was very focused on external communication to the detriment of internal communication. And I think that if you guys do that right now, I think you’ll take a good step and then read King Lear, look for your Cordelias, I love that reference. It’s just such a sound one that, you know, I would not have known. I’m going to start, I’ve got the complete works of Shakespeare in my bookshelf, crack it open.

Justin (30:03):

This performance of King Lear that my client and his mom are going to, the guy playing King Lear? Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd. How cool is that?

Mike (30:21):

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. 21 gigawatts, the whole thing like, I love it.

Justin (30:33):

So good luck to Christopher Lloyd out there.

Mike (30:36):

I can’t beat that. We’re going to end on that one. And then the final takeaway from the show is, you know, post your favorite, Christopher Lloyd doc brown quotes in the comments or something like that. Justin, thank you so much for taking us through this. This was a super insightful conversation. We spent a lot of time hammering into business on this show. This is business from a very deeply personal angle and I appreciated, you know, your openness, your honesty and your thoughtfulness. Thank you so much.

Mike (31:01):

I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Justin Keanee. FOMO alert: You must be in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Other gym owners are helping each other solve problems in there, Two-Brain Mentors offer all kinds of free tips. Don’t miss out on peer support in the industry. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook. Join it today.

 

The post Raw and Real: Gym Owner’s Greatest Fears Revealed to Peers—and Staff! appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Next-Level Sales: I Love the iPad

The basics of marketing and sales haven’t changed in 50 years. But the tactics have changed a lot.

At Two-Brain, we constantly research, measure and test new ideas. When they work, we build them into our program. When they don’t, we tell you about them.

This week, I have three new sales strategies to share with you:

An iPad sales presentation.Selling by chat (DM, messenger, etc.).The “indirect ask” method.

One is very effective, one is effective but takes time, and one will only work in certain cases.

Very Effective: the iPad Sales Presentation

Upgrade your sales binder to an iPad presentation. At your next No Sweat Intro (NSI), use the presentation to highlight member success, deliver your options and sign up a new client without shuffling papers or scrambling to share information!

When a prospective client comes in for an NSI—or even just walks through your front door without an appointment—you can pull out your iPad, go through your questions, and then present the best option. Showing them the price is easier than saying “here is the price,” and combining client success stories with your prescription will boost your close rate.

Swipe: success stories. Swipe: “How committed are you to your goals?” Swipe: “Here’s the rate.” Swipe: “Sign here.”

If you’re in the Two-Brain Tinker Program, you already have the entire sales script, the presentation to copy and paste, an upgraded NSI questionnaire, and a video to show you how to put it all together. It’s on the Tinker Roadmap (current Tinkers click here.)

If you’re in the Two-Brain Growth Program, you already have your sales binder. We’ll make the new training and template available to you in the next month or so.

If you’re in the Two-Brain RampUp Program, you’re going to build your sales binder with our templates, practice using it and make alterations, and then upgrade to a more professional presentation in Growth Phase!

Not in Two-Brain? Start by getting your pricing and programs into one place.

When Gilbert Dougherty presented his sales process in our Tinker program, I had one of those “this is genius!” moments. It’s a simple improvement that seems obvious in hindsight—like, “Why didn’t I ever think of this?”

But that’s why we have the Tinker program. Two-Brain isn’t about “Coop’s best ideas.” It’s about collecting the best ideas from the best gym owners in the world and sharing the ones that are proven to work. Upgrading your intake process to a sales presentation on an iPad is a great example. In the next post in this series, I’ll talk about another great example: the “indirect ask” sales strategy.

The post Next-Level Sales: I Love the iPad appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

A Short History of Weird at the CrossFit Games

“When will we start doing CrossFit?”      

I won’t name the athlete who said that at a previous edition of the CrossFit Games, but the comment is somewhat legendary in behind-the-scenes lore.

The athlete, clearly displeased with the programming that year, hoped for more common fare: barbells, gymnastics, couplets and triplets, and chippers. Not monkey bars, wheelbarrows, sledgehammers, Pigs, logs or other odd objects.

But that’s not the deal at the big show, and I kind of enjoy seeing great “Semifinals athletes” get destroyed by the odd tests Dave Castro creates when he has the freedom to get creative. Conversely, I also love seeing some of the athletes who squeaked through qualification dominate when stuff gets weird.

Because let’s be real: CrossFit prepares you for “the unknown and unknowable,” so when CrossFit LLC is crowning the fittest in Earth, literally every physical task is fair game. (Noah Ohlsen agrees with me.)

“I went to college so I didn’t have to do manual labor,” Josh Everett quipped after after the row-sledgehammer event at the 2009 CrossFit Games at The Ranch in Aromas. Everett, who was expected to contend for the overall title, had not done well. He finished 57th in the event.

Others had also been tripped up when asked to drive a metal rod into packed ground with a sledgehammer. People were bleeding, and the pile of snapped sledges prompted event co-director Tony Budding to franticly tell a staff member to go to the hardware store and come back with every sledge available.

Tommy Hackenbruck, a former construction worker, won the event. I think he had the stake buried to the requisite distance in very short order. Firefighters, farm kids and people who had swung a lot of tools on the job site closely followed him.

The event was actually the brainchild of CrossFit founder Greg Glassman, who came up with the idea after having a miserable time driving a rod into the ground at his home. Those who know Greg will appreciate his philosophy that something physically miserably should be attempted with intensity by a much larger group of people.

In the barn at Aromas, I heard some grumbling about the sledgehammer event—it was dumb, the ground had rocks in it, the ground’s resistance varied from station to station. And so on. I seem to recall a geologist chimed in online at one point with expert analysis.

But all the complaining rang hollow. It was a physical test, and some people failed it simply because they were crap at swinging implements.

We’re Just Getting Started

“Why is Tommy good at all the weird shit?”

Matt Chan said that in 2010 after Hackenbruck won an event that had competitors using a wheelbarrow to move sandbags across the floor of the tennis stadium at what was then called the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

Answer: Tommy is good at because he learned to use all kinds of implements to solve problems outside competition.

Having a Ball in 2011

Annie Thorisdottir and Jason Khalipa are both CrossFit Games champions.

Both were very poor at throwing a softball when asked to do so for distance.

As I watched them warm up for the skills event at the Games in 2011, Khalipa and Thorisdottir looked like they were performing some odd version of the shot put. It was surreal given their physical capabilities with just about every other movement.

Lindsey Smith, on the other hand, looked like she could throw a slider on the outside corner at 90 miles an hour if you asked her to. The contrast was striking.

And then we had the Killer Cage, which definitely highlighted those who didn’t spend much time messing around on the playground as kids. (I have no numbers to support it, but I think the cage was likely the Games’ most expensive piece of equipment that was used for the least amount of time.)

To the Water!

2011 also introduced competitors to swimming events, which are now considered standard fare at the Games.

Observation: Many competitors are terrible at swimming, which isn’t really a rare skill.

Others are pretty bad at cycling, which first appeared in 2012. Again, bikes are fairly common all over the world.

Also new in 2012: An obstacle course, which completely derailed some athletes who couldn’t seem to clear horizontal logs with any speed. Spencer Hendel, the son of a Miami Dolphins linebacker and an amazing all-around athlete, made the course look like child’s play.

And the sledgehammer returned to mess with athletes in the Double Banger event. Yes, some athletes employed a questionable “pushing” technique instead of pounding away, but again, the event highlighted people who were really bad at manipulating implements.

And, for good measure, GHD sit-ups and medicine balls were combined in a memorable one-off event that might be the weirdest thing ever seen at the Games:

Row Your Butt Off—Literally

In 2013, swimming returned—this time sprint style—and athletes were forced to grind their tailbones off in a half-marathon row. A great test of fitness, the event was a true suffer-fest, both for athletes and spectators. And it was a surprise.

I’d guess no competitor had ever rowed that far in training—which was probably the point.

2013 also featured the Burden Run, a cool event that included a giant hunk of metal for flipping and a heavy log for carrying.

What’s Next?

I’ll stop at that and leave the oddities of the latter years of the Games to you.

I’ll only make the point that weird is CrossFit and CrossFit is weird. That’s always been the case—at least starting in 2009 when the Games had a bit more cash to throw around.

Maybe 2021 will be different. Maybe Castro will go with a sea of Girl and Hero workouts and leave the strange stuff back at The Ranch.

And maybe Fran will get easier one day, too.

The post A Short History of Weird at the CrossFit Games appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Why “Do as I Do” Doesn’t Work (How to Actually Mentor Staff)

Mike Warkentin (00:02):

Ever had staff members fail to take the ball and run with it? Guess what? It’s your fault, because you didn’t show the staff members the right path. Mike Collette is here to tell you how to mentor your staff and be a leader right after this.

Chris (00:15):

Chris Cooper here to talk about Beyond the Whiteboard, the world’s premier workout tracking platform. Beyond the Whiteboard empowers gym owners with tools designed to retain and motivate members. We all know clients need to accomplish their goals if they’re going to stick around long term, and Beyond the Whiteboard will help your members chart their progress. They can earn badges view, leaderboards, track their macros, assess their fitness levels, and a lot more. Your job is to get great results for your members. Beyond the Whiteboard’s job is to make sure your members see those results and celebrate them. For a free 30-day trial, visit BTwb.com today.

Mike Warkentin (00:52):

This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m Mike Warkentin. Today’s guest is Mike Collette of Prototype Training Systems in Westborough, Massachusetts. Mike had a very good year bracketed by two wins of Two-Brain’s annual award for metrics. He took the trophy in 2020 and 2021 on the strength of huge numbers in the pandemic. Mike didn’t hit these numbers because he does everything himself and he didn’t hit them because he just drops projects on his staff and walks out. He does something a lot of gym owners don’t do. He mentors his staff. So Mike, staff mentorship is a huge win theory, but many of us don’t realize what it actually is. We kind of just think mentorship is leading by example and then letting our staff watch and absorb and follow. But it really isn’t that, it’s not passive at all. So what does staff mentorship mean to you and the crew of Prototype? What have you got going on over there?

Mike Collette (01:38):

Well, first off, thank you so much for having me Mike, and my plan, like I said, it’s grea to be able to be on Two-Brain Radio and talk a little bit about this, bu your question on staff mentorship. I think, you know, if I was to boil it down, it really just comes down to caring, right? So, I think a lot of the Two-Brain gyms or anyone else out there that has a gym that’s listening can probably agree with the fact that you have to care about your staff, but just like Two-Brain preaches, you know, it really starts with understanding what your team members and staff’s values are, what their personal vision or goals are for themselves. And then creating a plan that you’re also holding them accountable to to get them there.

Mike Collette (02:27):

Just like Two-Brain talks about with the career roadmap, meetings that you might have with your staff. That’s a huge component of what we do to set the stage for each quarter, for our team members and the alignment with their goals and the business goals creates a win-win. So, the accountability component, like you mentioned, Mike, a lot of folks might just, you know, do what I do and watch what I do and then go and do it. You can’t really do that. There has to be added layers of accountability and check-ins to keep people on track, just like you do with your clients and folks that you might be working with to help them achieve their goals.

Mike Warkentin (03:07):

See, and I think like I cared a lot as a gym owner and we don’t have staff now it’s just a one-person show. But when we had staff, I cared a lot, but I did not do a great job of teaching and providing accountability. And so I think, you know, your first comment is I had that part and I think a lot of gym owners do have that because almost no one gets in the fitness business without caring about staff and people. But I think a lot of us really struggled to lay out plans, put in operating systems and procedures and then provide accountability. Did you ever make that mistake or was this, did you always kind of have this leadership figured out? Or where did this come from for you?

Mike Collette (03:43):

That’s a funny question because, no, I think you need to fail a lot to learn. And so, you know, we’ve had.

Mike Warkentin (03:50):

I feel better now.

Mike Collette (03:51):

Yeah. We’ve had a lot of coaches and staff that have come and gone and things didn’t work out. It wasn’t the right alignment. You try to fit a, what is it? That’s the saying? I always get confused around it’s peg into a square hole or whatever. That kind of comes down to alignment, but it also comes down to the, like you mentioned, was the accountability component to it. And yeah, I agree with you. You don’t get into this business if you don’t care, but where that tends to go wrong is the things that you think that you’re doing, that you’re doing it out of like I care, could be detrimental to the development of your team members.

Mike Collette (04:27):

Right. So, so an easy example is when you start taking on the responsibilities that you could delegate, right. Or if you’re trying to make everything perfect and you’re not, you know, let’s say like the things where give someone something to do and they don’t do it well. And instead of, you know, it being a learning opportunity and allowing your staff to fail and learn, you take that responsibility away from them. Right. And that’s where things get kind of finicky, where you start to lose that, you know, you might not have the trust. It might be hard for you to let things go, right? And so you hold everything on yourself, you know, you know what, I’m better at doing this. I’ll just do it. Don’t worry about it. And you avoid those difficult conversations. You avoid that accountability, you avoid that development opportunity. And that’s where people start to feel undervalued. They start to feel like they can’t do things. And that’s where burnout happens. Right. If you’re not developing, you’re gonna burn out.

Mike Warkentin (05:19):

No, I think that really is. I think you hit on something there. I think sometimes that desire to just jump in and do it, do it yourself and you get upset. You’re like, oh, no one can do it like I can. I really think that that is a cover for what you pointed out and that’s that you’re just scared to make the correction, right. It’s easier to just stomp your feet, throw your hands in the air and start doing it yourself than it is to sit down with that staff member, make a correction, even if it’s in a kind way, because a lot of us aren’t comfortable with those conversations. How do you handle stuff like that? Like I’ve heard from a number of successful gym owners, they have to let their staff members fail and learn and then ascend. So how do you handle failure and how do you make it a growth thing and not a negative thing?

Mike Collette (05:57):

It’s such a great question. So someone a lot smarter than me said this, and he’s one of my mentors, his name’s Brent French, Colonel Brent. And he said, the human capacity for avoidance is almost limitless. It’s one of my favorite quotes . And what I mean by that is that we avoid the things that we are scared of, the things that we don’t want to do. And those things are typically the things that are going to get us closer to where we want to be and grow. And so when we avoid those difficult conversations, like, you know, holding someone accountable or, you know, help directing or leading, or having that difficult conversation with someone, and we avoid doing that, we’re avoiding growth in ourselves. So, but it has to start with, I hate saying this, but like, it has to start with like the culture that you have at your gym and with your staff and also the level of trust

Mike Collette (06:56):

And, I guess what I’m trying to say here is the culture that you have with your staff, that they feel safe in the space that they’re in and they feel it’s safe to make mistakes. You know, an example, you know, and someone mentioned this recently to me and I love it is this example of, you know, when you delegate things, you mentioned like it’s hard to let things go. Well, think of it like a glass ball and a rubber ball. You know, if someone drops a rubber ball, it’s going to bounce, not a big deal. They drop a glass ball, it breaks. It’s a big deal. So if you’re delegating things and let’s say you want to get stuff off your plate, and you’re afraid to do things, you got to start with things that are like rubber balls, things that if someone messes up, it’s not that big of a deal. You don’t like give them a glass ball, like something like really, really important that if they mess up, it’s going to cause a big issue.

Mike Warkentin (07:41):

It’s like when someone asks for your cell phone you give them your back-up, right?

Mike Collette (07:44):

Right. I think starts with that, is the culture that you have and it being OK to fail. And then furthermore, like I was mentioning before you have that trust in your staff and they trust in you as the leader, but in order to do that, and this is something that I’ve really put a lot of effort into over the last six to nine months is leading with vulnerability. And, you know, we all have, you know, people say that there’s no, like they don’t have an ego. You know, we have an ego-less culture, everyone has some level of ego, right. But if you can, you know, make that a habit and commit to being vulnerable and letting people know, listen, I don’t know all the answers or, Hey man, I stink at this and not putting up that fake persona per se, that, you know everything, have the answer to everything. If you lead with some vulnerability and your staff knows that you’re a regular person, you’re a human being. Like you make mistakes. Then you can create an environment where it’s OK to make mistakes. Now, like as long as we’re learning from those things as well.

Mike Warkentin (08:54):

You mentioned vulnerability. Listeners. If you want more on that head to our YouTube channel, Jay Cohen, locomotion fitness gym owner, talks about exactly that. And coming up on Two-Brain Radio in just a week or two, we have another gym owner, Justin Keen digging into that exact topic that Mike spoke about. Now, Mike, I want to ask you this one because it’s come up a number of times with successful gym owners that I’ve been speaking to lately, they talked about trust and you can’t, you have to allow people to fail. You have to have trust and you have to connect with your staff members and build relationships. Everyone that I’ve spoken to thus far has pointed to regular one-on-one career roadmap sessions. Do you think that’s a huge part of building that relationship and then setting up a mentorship plan?

Mike Collette (09:34):

Oh, a hundred percent. I don’t think if you’re having those conversations, at least quarterly with your staff, or with your team members one-on-one, then you’re doing them a disservice because sometimes we like to think things are going really well and it’s on autopilot, but you have to assess and reassess like what their goals are. But I also think in the interim there’s, like I mentioned before, there’s that accountability. It’s that check-in with them on how things are are going.

Mike Warkentin (10:04):

You know, when I was running the gym, we often would have big staff meetings and all we do is complain about stuff or go over the things that were problems. Right. I rarely sat down with people one-on-one and actually talked to them about, you know, are you happy? What do you need? All these different things? Like, are you looking for another job? Are you happy here? Do you want more or less responsibility? Are you having problems? And I’ve talked to number of gym owners just like you who have said that just that quarterly meeting, whether it’s 15 or 20 minutes, even structureless is sometimes a huge, huge thing that’s super insightful that builds a trusting relationship. And then other gym owners who are more structured actually go through the roadmap plan and they find ways to kind of supercharge their staff to growth. But it’s exactly kind of what you said there. How long have you been doing one-on-one meetings with staff?

Mike Collette (10:50):

Oh my gosh. So we’d have to literally think about it. I mean, for a while, but I wouldn’t say it was as structured as routine as it has been over the last like three years or three or four years, I would say.

Mike Warkentin (11:05):

So that’s huge. So let me ask you this. How did you know that you’re on the right track? Like you said, you had some failures with leadership and so forth and things where you were like learning and developing as a leader of a team. When did you know that you were really starting to make progress and getting some traction?

Mike Collette (11:21):

I honestly, I feel like it’s, you know, it depends on the day, like I said, I don’t have the answers to everything, or anything for that matter. Sometimes I feel like things are going really well. Just like everyone else out there. And sometimes you feel like things are just so far out of your reach that you’re not in control. And that’s, you know, I think like if there was, if I was to say anything over the last, like, you know, year plus or whatever with COVID, I think being deliberate in building, you know, really strong habits and focusing on small change and try not to put an overemphasis on the goals, and that might sound like counterintuitive, but, you know, I think you’ve probably all read the book or if you haven’t, I would recommend is, “Atomic Habits.”

Mike Collette (12:09):

And the idea that like doing these small things over time is what’s going to drive change. It’s not one big, giant thing that you’re going to do that’s going to make the world of difference. Maybe, but for the most part, it’s making these small deliberate changes. My focus over the last several months is putting a lot of deliberate routine focus into the small habits of self-development, getting uncomfortable, having difficult conversations, you know, being like being vulnerable. Like I said, putting myself out there, and those things have continued to pay off and it’s been awesome. But it hasn’t been easy. And, you know, I think self recognition and not self recognition, but awareness, I should say of like where your biggest areas of growth and development are or need to be. That is by far and away the first thing you need to do if you want to be a better leader, because there’s no way that you can be a good leader, if you don’t know where your areas of or your flaws are.

Mike Warkentin (13:12):

Tell me a little bit now about the leadership program that you’ve got in place. I’m really curious to hear some of the details.

Mike Collette (13:18):

So yeah, so, well, I wouldn’t call it a leadership program. It’s more of I guess it would be called like a think tank cause we’re kind of learning as we go. So I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into learning from, I think one of the just innovators and smartest people and two people that I’ve ever come across as it relates to leadership. And that’s Charlie and Megan who are the co CEOs of a company called Next Jump. So they offer these classes. So I, you know, I don’t want to spend all the time going into the whole backstory of how this all got started, but long story short, they started this thing called the community online academy. And this is like a free thing that anyone can do. So like every Thursday at 11:00 AM, Eastern time they offer this class called leadership in the practice.

Mike Collette (14:11):

So like I mentioned before, one of my mentors, his name’s Brent, he has been involved in Next Jump and has been he’s good friends with Charlie and Megan and he teaches leadership at the graduate level. So he’s been like studying this like whole idea of deliberately developmental organizations and next jump is one of those. And so, he said, this was like, I want to say it was December of 2020, because I mentioned to him, I was like, I need to get better. I want to learn more. I need to put energy into my development. He said, Hey, check out this class. I started going to this class and it’s amazing. And it’s like an hour, hour and a half of just knowledge and like actual applied information and there’s homework and all this sort of stuff.

Mike Collette (14:57):

And there’s, yeah. At one point there was like 200 plus people that are on these like classes and seminars. And they’ve been doing this for, I think they’re on like they’re 60-something like week, over a year. The reason I tell you that is from there, I got involved in this small group program as well. It’s just kind of like , stem off of the leadership and practice. And it’s called the pre resiliency training. So get into a small group with eight to 10 people from different companies all over the world that want to improve their ability to manage difficult conversations, give and get feedback. And so I started learning some stuff in that small group. And then from there, they invited me to the next level, small group workshops.

Mike Collette (15:46):

Now it’s called their leadership think tanks, which is just another level of accountability and difficult conversations. So in any event, so the challenge was, Hey, listen, like take what you’ve learned here and apply that to your staff. Now, some of the folks that are in these groups don’t own businesses, you know, they might be, you know, managers at big fortune 500 companies, or they might be, you know, working in a small business or whatever, and I don’t know how they evolved, kind of found out about this or whatnot, but everyone comes from a different, you know, background or area. And like I said, they’re all over the world. So I, you know, I have the fortune, I’m fortunate enough to have my own business where I was able to take some of my staff members and start putting them into this and going through the same process that I went through.

Mike Collette (16:36):

And so what I did was I sent out a note to all of our staff members, at one of our weekly staff meetings. I said, Hey, listen, I’m going to be doing this for anyone that wants to do it. You can apply. It’s not mandatory. You’re not going to get paid for it. But if you want to get better, if you want to improve, if you want to improve your leadership, you want to improve your ability to give and get feedback. If you want to grow. I recommend doing this, it’s once a week.

Mike Warkentin (17:04):

How many people jumped in?

Mike Collette (17:06):

Yeah. So it’s supposed to be a small group. So I think I offered like five spots, I think, seven or so applied. And I just took five people.

Mike Warkentin (17:14):

That’s out of a staff of how many?

Mike Collette (17:14):

Well have like a, I think like 10 to 11 staff members. But, it was more for the full-time folks that come to our staff meeting. So we have eight or nine full-timers yeah.

Mike Warkentin (17:30):

I needed to know that to see like who decided to like, not get paid, but to improve themselves. I love that idea.

Chris (17:36):

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Mike Collette (18:17):

Yeah. It’s just an hour a week. And so I started taking them through the exact same journey that I went on. And like I mentioned, you know, the stuff that they’re doing with these leadership practice classes and, Charlie and Megan are putting together is like next level of leadership. And they work with, you know, some of the biggest companies out there, to help them lead. And their company is not, their business is not leadership. This is just something that they do because they’re really good at it. It’s kind of crazy. So like you have, if you haven’t like looked into this company, it’s just unbelievable. It’s free. And I told Chris Cooper about it too and he went to one session with me last week and he really enjoyed it.

Mike Warkentin (18:57):

What’s the name of the website again, where people can find this.

Mike Collette (19:00):

It’s community online academy. Edu.perksatwork.com like perks at work is like, their business. It’s again, it’s hard to kind of like explain, because it’s leadership that they’re teaching and coaching, but it’s not their business. Their main business is like, it’s like an e-commerce sort of business and they’re an extremely successful company. And they basically give this all away for free and they give away. So every Thursday is like their co Thursday and they do tons of classes. So leadership and practice, they host, but there’s a ton of other people that host things, fitness classes, they have, like I said, these leadership classes, they have, you know, special guests that come on and just give away free information. It’s a free platform for anyone to do.

Mike Warkentin (19:52):

They don’t come after you for a credit card out for like three seconds.

Mike Collette (19:55):

No, no, it’s all free. It’s all there. It’s all about giving. Their whole model is on giving, in their last live session that Chris was on, they were talking about their marketing strategy and they never paid a dime for any marketing. Their marketing strategy has been about just giving, giving, giving, just like you guys do too, Two-Brain just giving away content.

Mike Warkentin (20:15):

Check out our free tools if you’re listening and you want to know what Mike’s talking about.

Mike Collette (20:17):

It’s so true. It’s so it’s so funny how the best in the business think the same. So there’s something to be said about that. So, OK. So where was I? So, I’ve started to take those and apply that to my staff. And like I said, the first step in terms of like being a better leader is about like, I talked about like awareness. So identifying like, what are the things that like you’re not doing well, we refer to them as red arrow behavior. So what are the things that prevent others from giving you the truth, right? What are the things that you do that prevent someone from being honest with you? Because if people aren’t being honest with you and there’s no awareness, or you’re not able to get that awareness of what’s actually going on, what are the things that you’re doing, it’s really hard for you to kind of take the next step and work on those things and take action, which would be like the second step.

Mike Warkentin (21:07):

I’m thinking about my you’re asking, I’m getting squidgy, Mike, you’re asking me questions. I’m thinking about my marriage here. You know.

Mike Collette (21:14):

To be honest with you, that’s the first thing that I thought of too. The biggest things that they kind of communicated in these leadership and practice sessions is, you know, if you were to boil down leadership, it’s really two simple things. It’s like, it’s defined by your judgment and your ability to make great decisions. And so that’s how they’ve kind of like, if you think about that, like everything in life is the decision. You might make the wrong decision, or you might have habits that you haven’t really put a good enough job or emphasis on in improving. But those are ultimately decisions whether they’re automatic or not. So as a leader, if you can improve your judgment and your decision-making, you’re going to improve your ability to lead. So all these things kind of tie back to that concept.

Mike Collette (22:02):

And so, like you mentioned before, like, you know, about like practicing what you preach. That’s certainly a part of this too. And if we can help people, you know, let’s say our staff and help them to be better decision makers, then you’re creating leaders within your organization. And that takes a lot of deliberate practice and a lot of difficult conversations. And you also have to build that resiliency, not only in yourself, but also in the people that you’re going to be leading and mentoring. And, you know, inevitably if you can help people be better leaders, then you can create autonomy. And that’s when you have a successful business.

Mike Warkentin (22:41):

So this is not a conversation that I could have had with a gym owner five or eight years ago, right back at that stage. I think we were at the height of maybe the floor wiper debate or something like that. Like this is different stuff. Cause it’s been a real evolution from what gym owners are talking about. And this is like, this is like growing your business in general, to say nothing of being a gym owner in the fitness industry. Like it’s incredible the way that sort of our industry and the leading lights in that industry have evolved. I need to know. So what are you seeing in your business now that you yourself are investing time in becoming a better leader. You’re actively working on this, and this is, again, it’s not coaching classes or worrying about floor wipers and, you know, rowing machines and so forth. This is you investing in leadership, and now you’ve got your staff investing in leadership. What are you seeing inside your facility as a result of all this?

Mike Collette (23:31):

And it’s like, it’s one of those things. Cause one of the first questions that I asked when going onto these sessions is how do you measure your development? How do you measure like the improvements? Because we, you know, I think something that I’ve learned and taken away from Two-Brain is like, metrics, right? And measuring these things and you guys do an amazing job taking concepts and taking, you know, all this data. And then, and then applying it and giving like, Hey, this is what’s working. The answer to that question was it’s not as not black and white, you know, people are going to see a deliberate change in you, they’re going to say stuff like, wow, you’re a little bit, have you been doing something like you’ve changed. Or yeah. Right. Or like, there’s something different about you?

Mike Collette (24:16):

Like, what’s different about you? Like, that’s the change that you tend to see, people start to notice there’s something different about you, the way you carry yourself and that sort of thing. But back to your question about how it has changed things. I mean, the people that are like the coaches that are in your gym, I mean, I’m just so proud of them. I mean, an easy example is one of those coaches have now spun off and created another business. Right. And so like, if I can give you like, in terms of how you’re measuring it and, you know, the improvements in their ability to be more productive, be more goal oriented and make better decisions like we discussed. But this is still like really new. This is like, we’re, like I said, at eight or nine plus weeks into doing this, but the feedback that I’ve gotten from them on it has been overwhelmingly positive. And I think bringing the team together though that small group is specifically, has been really, really good for them. And just the ability for them to be more honest with each other and be more honest and communicate better has been incredible because, you know, communication is such an integral part of any sort of successful business or a relationship for that matter.

Mike Warkentin (25:31):

You talked a little bit about this whole thing coming with some, you know, increasingly tough conversations. What are some examples of that in the gym setting of what’s happening?

Mike Collette (25:40):

Oh man. Imagine if your client doesn’t show up, right. Like, yeah. How do you manage that? How do you have that stern, honest conversation with them, unfiltered communication? You have, you have a staff member that doesn’t doesn’t show up to work. Right. And I think, you know, in the Two-Brain, the summit, Jocko talked about that you refer to as like escalation of counseling, right? So it’s like how to have those tough conversations. Having the resiliency to say, OK, I’m going to have this conversation. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not gonna to avoid it. Right. Which we were talking about before, but there’s so many different, you know, you can think from staff or from a client perspective, those tough conversations that might arise, let’s say like, I dunno, your landlord, some issue with your landlord. And it’s like a difficult conversation that you have to have with them. Let’s say you want to break your lease, right? Like there’s, you know, you can think of a million different scenarios that it’s going to be a tough conversation that you have to, you might have to have with someone.

Mike Warkentin (26:38):

My heart rate’s spiking just now that you’ve mentioned like three of them. Do the tough conversations get easier, the more that you have them or do you just get quote unquote worse at avoiding them?

Mike Collette (26:52):

I think it depends on the person that you’re asking that to, but I think for the most part, no one looks forward to having difficult conversations, no matter how many difficult conversations they have, they just build the resiliency, like I mentioned to have them, they have better, it becomes more of an automatic response. And they know how to manage those conversations and have them better. Just like, we didn’t know how to navigate, you know, COVID situations at the gym, right. Someone comes in with that test positive for COVID the first time that happened. It was like, oh my God, what do we do? And you kind of freak out like, oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God. And then, you know, happens a bunch more times and then you have protocols in place and then things go a little bit easier. So I think for the most part, you just become better at having them and you understand, you know, the different scenarios that might pop up and how to navigate through those difficult conversations.

Mike Warkentin (27:46):

Yeah. I’ve heard from other people that the tough conversations are always tough, but you still, you go into them with more confidence and you’re less likely to avoid them when you have them regularly, because it’s like, it’s kind of like doing hard workouts. If you keep doing hard workouts and CrossFit workouts, and you do them every day, it just becomes something you do and you address them and you get through it and everything’s, you know, everything’s better. But if you avoid things, then you start avoiding more and more and more. And all of a sudden, it’s five years. You don’t want to do Fran. I’m not speaking from experience or anything, but right. So tell me this one, like how can gym owners, there’s some out there for sure that like, we’re hitting some nerves with and they’re listening and they want to be better leaders, or they know that maybe their leadership skills aren’t up to par or they’re just like sole proprietors looking to upgrade their teams soon and want to do it properly. What would you say to someone out there, how do they learn to lead better? What are the steps, and I’m talking like the first baby steps. Maybe it’s not the level you’re at where you’re at, where you’re like, kind of that tinker level upper-level entrepreneur, where you’re really digging in with a staff of like 10 or whatever. What would you say to someone who’s just coming out of that, you know, that first phase and wants to start growing as a leader.

Mike Collette (28:52):

Awesome question. And I think that’s really hard for a lot of people is to kind of figure out what to do. Where do I start? Yeah. Where do I start? So the first thing that I would say would be, like I mentioned, is recognizing or starting to bring awareness to what are your biggest issues? What are the things that you’re doing that you need to change? Like what’s the awareness, right? So taking some time and thinking through, OK, what are all these things that like you aren’t good at? Or what are these things that you tend to avoid more often or might make you anxious? Or what are those things that, those little habits and things that you might do routinely that you don’t really realize. But if you think about it, might cause people to not want to be truthful with you, or you might not be truthful with others. So bringing awareness to yourself. OK. So that self kind of recognition component, that’s that’s number one.

Mike Warkentin (29:50):

Basically observe yourself and like kind of step outside yourself and look in the mirror and don’t be afraid if you see a few warts.

Mike Collette (29:56):

Yeah, exactly. And like, we talked about it, like, you know, Charlie and Megan of next jump, and they refer to it as the red arrow behaviors. What are those red arrow behaviors? So that’s one and that has been extremely important. And then the second thing is taking action on creating better habits around improving those things. Right? So focus on those small changes, one to 2% change per day. So you’re not going to go from wherever you are now in a week, you’re a completely changed different person. It doesn’t work like that. But what are the small habits that you can do? That could be something like every, you know, and Charlie gives us a perfect example is like set up your Monday mornings where like, if you have the ability and you’re not in there coaching classes on Monday, on Monday, have a very structured routine of wake up, you do this, you do that.

Mike Collette (30:47):

And map out that schedule, then put deliberate time into like thought and to thinking. And that would be like, the first step is like building—the second step is taking that action and starting to think through what are those things that you want to do and building those habits? And this could be one of those habits is like taking deliberate time from the beginning of the week to map out your entire entire week and to actually think on what do you need to do? What do you need to grow? Who do you need to work on, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Creating that like plan and just making those small, small changes, but doing it consistently, doing it every single week. Right.

Mike Warkentin (31:18):

Would you ask someone, like you can observe yourself and do some digging inside, but would you ask someone, what are some of the habits that I have that would be my red flags?

Mike Collette (31:27):

Oh, so like, what if you were to ask me like—

Mike Warkentin (31:34):

You know, you could, you know, observe your behaviors, dig into yourself, see what kind of things you’re doing, but could you also take the approach or would you personally, Mike, would you like say to someone, what are some of the leadership flaws that I have? Or what are some of the things that I do that de-motivates you or things like that, like, those are some hard and I think it was Per Mattson, one of our mentors spoke about that, asking some, really some questions here. You might not want to hear the answers to, but the answers might give you more insight than anything else. Like, would you ever take that approach?

Mike Collette (32:02):

100%, but the counter to that is, are those people going to be honest with you?

Mike Warkentin (32:07):

Woo. There’s a good one.

Mike Collette (32:08):

So, yeah. So, but at the same time, it’s like, you have to identify those things and identify those red arrow behaviors. So we talked about leading with vulnerability, so working in small groups and having these conversations, creating an environment where people feel comfortable about being truthful. Right. There’s all that set up. So you can go up to anyone and Hey, can you give me feedback? And they might be your closest friends. And they might be like, oh no, you’re doing a great job. You smell great. Yeah. Yeah. You smell awesome. You’re good. And like that doesn’t help you. Right. And you know, especially as like gym owners or entrepreneurs, you know, we might, and this is one of the things that I’ve been like for sure working on is like crave that feedback. But like, do you give off like the wrong impression when someone actually is honest with you? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, do you give off that feeling or that vibe and like, I don’t really want to tell them like what I’m really feeling, because I know it’s going to really upset him and that’s not, you know what I mean? Those are things you have to work on yourself.

Mike Warkentin (33:10):

That’s a huge point because yeah, if you’ve set up this whole thing where, you know, you want to be surrounded by yes people and everyone knows it, and then you start to like, try and make this change to ask for honest feedback. No one’s going to give it to you, you’re just going to be sitting in your 10 year old, dry fit shirt that smells like hell.

Mike Collette (33:27):

So it’s so interesting. This whole process has been so eye-opening. So think about like the times where, like, let’s say you are, you created this like environment where you’re like, yes. Peopl, yes you, yes, yes, yes. And then like stuff doesn’t get done. And it’s like, you sit down and be like, why is that person doing their job? Or why like, why is that happening? Why is it happening? You have to look at yourself and like that self-reflection like, so, you know, you’ve created an environment. I’ve certainly been been one of those people that have done this is you create this environment where you think people are on board, you communicate, you think you’re doing all the right things and they don’t do those things. And you blame them, it’s their fault. But you got to look at yourself too, and that’s important.

Mike Warkentin (34:08):

So I’m not going to take this any further because you’ve hit on something people can take away right now. And that’s self-reflection. Figuring out what some of your red flags are and then incremental change. And it’s two simple things that people can do gym owners can do right now. So Mike, all I’m going to do is I’m going to tell gym owners to do those two things and I’m going to say congratulations to you. We didn’t talk much about your award and the metrics and so forth. But I think if people listen to the show, they’re going to have some understanding of why that award was given you, because you do a lot of interesting things that sets you up for pretty significant metrics success. So congratulations, Mike, and thank you for being here.

Mike Collette (34:44):

Thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate you. And I have some more additional resources on this stuff and worksheets that I’ve worked through. So I can happy to send those out. If you’re interested in looking at them.

Mike Warkentin (34:53):

Would you like people to contact you directly? Or do you want me to send them to me and we’ll put it in the show notes what’s best for you?

Mike Collette (34:59):

Sure, sure. They can contact me directly. You can send me an email. It’s mike@prototypetraining.com. I’m happy to, I’m an open book. So I’m happy to give all the information that I’ve been been learning. I’m not, you know, I’m not hoarding it. So it’s been extremely helpful for me. And I think it’d be something really amazing for more folks to learn about and implement.

Mike Warkentin (35:24):

That’s a huge deal listeners. If you want to talk to Mr. Collette here about some of the stuff that he spoke about, send him an email. Thanks, Mike. That is an awesome resource. I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Two-Brain award winner Mike Collette with his deep thoughts on leadership. Before you go, hit the subscribe button, make sure you don’t miss an episode. Then go over to the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is in there all the time, dropping data and sharing strategies, all free. You won’t see him posting in any other public Facebook group. That’s Gym Uwners United on Facebook.

 

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Level Up Your Staff (and Fire Them Up Instead of Firing Them)

If you want to climb higher, you have to assemble a team.

You’ve done the hard labor of leadership. You’ve taken big risks. You’ve missed your paycheck. You’ve read a book every two weeks for the last five years. You’ve been at work before the sun rose and after the sun set too many times to count.

But they haven’t.

You’ve fired clients. You’ve fired friends. You’ve interviewed people and said “no” to opportunities. You’ve set your rates and stuck by them. You wrote a playbook and made rules for a reason, then enforced them.

But they haven’t.

When you hire people to replace you in any roles, you have to remember that they’re beginners. They’ll learn faster than you did—because you’ll teach them!—but they still have to learn.

It’s a hard lesson to remember. But if you fail to leave deep tracks for your staff to follow, you’ll always be their supervisor. They won’t like it and neither will you.

Mentor and Grow

Here’s how to mentor your staff to grow your business without you there:

A. Give them a paint-by-numbers picture, not a blank canvas. It’s not their job to reinvent everything. Give them a staff playbook, a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs), a sales binder, a dress code, etc. In other words, give them guidelines.

B. Give them a North Star. Write out your vision for the gym. When staff encounter a new challenge for which there is no SOP, they can look to this document and say, “Here’s what the owner would do.”

Now you have Point A (your SOPs) and Point B (your vision). Your job is to mentor them to get from Point A to Point B.

Here are the steps to mentorship:

1. Teach. “Here’s why we do it this way.”

2. Isolate problems. Dig deep and get to the root of each barrier to growth.

3. Ask your staff how they’d solve the problem. Ask for three alternatives. If all three are different from your way, gently steer them toward the “right answer”—but make sure you’re encouraging them enough to make suggestions next time.

4. Role-play the solution if it’s a people problem (it’s almost always a people problem).

5. Give them a deadline and ask for a report.

6. Run through an after-action report. If the problem was solved well, record the solution in your playbook for next time. If it wasn’t, ask how it could have been approached better.

Now, mentorship isn’t all about solving problems. It’s really about growth. But it almost always starts with solving some current problems. Eventually, every good mentor moves clients from fighting fires to feeling on fire. Here’s how to light the match:

1. Issue one growth challenge. For example, “Get five new clients in August.”

2. Isolate solutions. Ask your staff for three ways they could get five clients in August.

3. Role-play the solution if it’s a people solution (it’s almost always a people solution).

4. Give them the tools they need to be successful, and a deadline, as well as a clear metric for success. “Five clients” is a great metric. “Grow the gym” is not.

5. Create an after-action report. If the strategy worked, celebrate. Then record the solution in your playbook and plan to repeat it monthly, quarterly or annually. Put it on the calendar to start slowly building a plan for growth.

Lead and Ascend

Mentoring your staff is a lot like mentoring gym owners: You have to start with triage. But as they gain confidence, move quickly to growth strategies. Gather little wins together, set clear targets, and hold them accountable. Celebrate wins every time you meet, and record lessons, too. Watch your metrics improve.

Reaching the Tinker Phase requires delegation. It doesn’t mean abdication. Your gym still exists. Someone else can run it autonomously, but only with mentorship. The GM of my gym has a Two-Brain mentor (not me). My staff is in the Two-Brain Team Training Program—they all have mentors! Because when they grow, so does my gym.

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Building the Next Level: All About That Leverage

In the previous post in this series, I told you that the first key to climbing the mountain was to minimize slipping backward. Rock climbers use the “three points of contact” rule: They put their left hand and both feet on stable ground before they reach out with their right.

Now let’s talk about moving up.

Your Assets: Audience, Cash and Time

First, you want to look for activities that generate cash with the least possible effort.

You don’t want to start from scratch with a brand new idea. Leverage the audience you already have or the cash currently at your disposal.

Audience

To leverage your existing audience (your greatest asset):

1. Help people solve a larger problem or a different problem. If everyone at your gym also needs nutrition help, launch a nutrition business. This is a tiny example. A larger one might be child care. Or health insurance. Or coffee. Solve the problem that the greatest number of people in your gym people have.

2. Look for the option that requires the least amount of your time. For example, adding a rentable asset like a float tank or infrared sauna requires investment but no time—you just set it up and charge for its use. Conversely, a coffee bar requires a lot of time for a very, very small return.

3. Help someone from your team open a second location. Create an investor, license your brand, and mentor the person.

4. Invest in a client who wants to open a business. Be very careful with this one: The client probably doesn’t see the hard parts of entrepreneurship, and if the venture fails, you’ll lose a friend. I’ve had to learn this lesson many times, and each time it’s been very painful.

Cash

To leverage your cash (your second-greatest asset):

1. Invest in long-term cash flow (like buying buildings and renting them to others instead of flipping them). This could be commercial buildings for your business or other businesses or it could be rental properties like Airbnbs.

2. Invest in other people’s businesses (through the stock market or other funds).

Time

Your third-greatest asset is your time. To maximally leverage it:

1. Do the effective hourly rate calculation: Divide the hours you work in a month into your net owner benefit (NOB, or what you’re paid). Two-Brain clients: You can work through this exercise step by step in the Value Ladder workbook on the Roadmap.

2. Buy yourself time: Hire someone to replace you in your lowest-value role.

3. Set up a 90-day sprint to work solely in a higher-value role. How many new clients can you gain in 90 days if you only work on marketing?

4. Stay focused on that new project until it can run without you.

5. Leave deep tracks so a staff person can take over.

The Two-Brain Tinker Program

Our Tinker Program is for entrepreneurs who have made their first business successful and are starting to think about the next phase of their ascension.

We bring in speakers to help you optimize your time, teach you to lead better, help you mentor your team, build cash-flow assets, duplicate your first business and serve more people.

We work in groups with other high-level entrepreneurs who are at the same stage (and, sometimes, already at the multi-million-dollar mark). We meet in person and online, and we travel to do interesting things.

You have levers that can produce growth. They are your audience, your money and your time. But the fulcrum on which all levers pivot is people: You have to be around the right people. And you have to follow the right people—I mean receiving mentorship, not just reading their books.

In the Tinker Phase, knowledge is not enough. You must immerse yourself in success to get further.

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