Chris Cooper's Blog, page 119

The Ratchet Effect (the Secret to Constant Business Growth)

The biggest mistake gym owners can make is thinking their current strategy is going to be a winner forever.

The key to long-term success as an entrepreneur isn’t just constant forward motion.

The key is stopping backward motion.

Go forward. And don’t slip backward.

All business is cyclical. Sometimes you’ll grow. Sometimes you’ll shrink. The key is to grow as much as possible when you’re in a growth phase and minimize shrinkage when you aren’t.

Two steps forward, one step back. Then three steps forward, one step back. Then five forward … .

For example, it was pretty hard to grow during COVID shutdowns. So we had gym owners focus on minimizing shrinkage. They cut costs, they renegotiated rent, and they kept as many clients as possible by adjusting their services. When their gyms reopened, they were ready for growth, and the average gym saw an immediate surge of 8 percent or more.

Most entrepreneurs, especially in the fitness industry, can find a bit of success pretty easily. Every few years or so, a great idea emerges that can get you some new clients fast. We’ve reported on some of them on this blog:

The New You Challenge.Check-Ins for Charity.Six-week challenges (whole lifestyle challenges and the like).

And new ones always appear on the horizon, like “high-ticket” coaching.

Most of these ideas work for a while. The key is to take the progress you make and keep it instead of slipping backward.

But many gym owners started running one of these promotions, saw some quick wins and became overconfident in the long-term viability of their gyms. Some went all-in on one strategy, and it killed their gyms.

Dig in and Keep Pushing Uphill

Here’s how to stop sliding backward:

1. Reinvest your wins. Why do the most successful people in the world have mentors? Because they’re always looking for the next level. They want to talk with people who have been there already.

2. Watch your data. The first time you use a new marketing strategy, record everything you can: your set/show/close rates, your conversion rate and your length of engagement for new members. The second time you use the strategy, compare your numbers. Are you getting fewer leads? Are the leads getting colder? Are you paying more to acquire a client? Is your retention dropping? If any of these numbers are going down, you’re using a short-term strategy. Use it while it works, but be ready to replace it.

3. Press “save game.” Capture this moment in time: Record all your processes, SOPs, prices, etc. Get it all on paper. Replace yourself with an operations manual. Make your business turnkey. In times of crisis, we fall to the level of our preparation. Get your business out of your head and it’s like pressing “save game” on your gym.

4. Hire a manager. You need someone else to oversee daily gym operations so you’re free to build the next phase. You can’t open a second location if you’re still coaching classes at the first.

5. Don’t repeat mistakes. Your manager is going to make a few mistakes, and that’s OK—as long as the manager doesn’t repeat them. Audit your processes and plans at least every six months. Record what worked—and what didn’t. When someone screws up (including you!) document the error so it’s not repeated.

6. Mentor your staff. It took you years of mistakes, books and probably mentorship to grow as a leader. All that experience and knowledge doesn’t automatically pass to the next person in line. If you don’t mentor people, you’ll be pulled back into gym problems over and over again.

7. Make yourself antifragile. Adopt systems that will allow you to pivot in the event of another business closure. Keep your online programs ready, move to a prescriptive model, and make sure nutrition coaching is a big part of your service.

8. Finally, you need to keep your hands out of the machine. I’m a product guy, so I get it: It’s very tempting (and easy) to keep “tweaking” your training product, micromanaging your staff, and finding mistakes and fixing them. This is the “triage trap” of business, and it stops you from growing. You can’t drive the car with the hood open.

If you follow these steps, you’ll stop the two-steps-forward, two-steps-back dance that prevents most entrepreneurs from succeeding at a higher level.

Instead, you’ll create a ratchet effect of forward progress long term.

The post The Ratchet Effect (the Secret to Constant Business Growth) appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Five-Figure ROI on Mentorship: Charlie Lima Invests and Wins

Mike (00:03):

Here’s a better question. How much can you make with a mentor’s help? Today I talked to a gym owner who’se return on investment in mentorship will blow your mind. First here’s Chris Cooper,

Chris (00:13):

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Mike (00:47):

This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m your host Mike Warkentin. Charlie Lima, of BoomFit in College Station, Texas, is getting better ROI on mentorship than anyone else in Two-Brain: $10,000 per month. That’s his ROI. He’s literally spending money to make way more money. That’s not hyperbole. And Charlie is here to explain how he does it. All right, Charlie, I am told that you challenge yourself to justify all expenses to your operations manager every month. I love that. So what do you say when you get to the line for mentorship?

Charlie (01:16):

Yeah, no. I saw that you had sent that in an email prior to our call and this is something we started doing back in July, so about a year ago, and I just really felt like it was going to be—moving forward, I wanted to be a little more transparent with kind of expenses. And so not only my operations manager, but the whole staff kind of knows what our expenses are, what our staffing pay is and what our profit is. And so but with my operations manager, we kind of go a step further. We go item by item and you know, every bank statement, if there’s a credit card expense that we put on the business credit card. And a lot of that is helpful for me because it just, it really kind of just allows me accountability. And it just really says, Hey, here’s this expense, here’s this expense. Now for mentorship,

Charlie (02:04):

Here’s the way I justify expenses to me. The expenses operationally are things that if I was not the owner, would absolutely have to be an expense. So utilities, rent obviously, Zen planner, you know. Now to me, mentorship is not a mandatory expense. So I actually put that under profit, which is owner pay and kind of owner expenses. So when I meet with the operations manager, we go item by item. I don’t do that for my owner benefit expenses. I only do that for the operational expenses. Now he knows I get mentorship. So it’s not necessarily something that is hidden or secretive. I just don’t want to penalize what I’m going to say our numbers operationally me, you know, if I was the owner, I can’t necessarily guarantee that the business would pay that fee for mentorship. I don’t know if that answers your question or if you want to ask another question to help me elaborate on it.

Mike (03:09):

No, that definitely does. And what it shows is that you have a real tight grasp of your expenses, you know, what is absolutely essential and what is, you know, quote unquote discretionary, and in the terms of the mentorship angle of it, you could certainly choose not to make that expense, but the cool part about what we’ve kind of looked at here on our leaderboard is that the expense that you’re spending on mentorship is generating over $10,000 in return, which I think is just such a cool thing. I’ll ask you, I asked you this a little bit before the call started, but I’ll ask you to think about it again. Did you, when you heard that, that was your return on investment for mentorship, what did you think of that?

Charlie (03:46):

No, I didn’t hear that number until you just told me right before we jumped on or at the beginning of this call. So it, to me, everything’s changed since I started the Two-Brain mentorship plan and incubator. And so it is definitely not surprising. And if I’m completely honest, I think that number’s probably short, really if we started actually looking at the difference that this has been for my business.

Mike (04:17):

Tell me about some of the major differences. Like what are some of the greatest things? I’m going to add, we’re going to dig into a little bit, how about how you use mentorship, but what do you see right off the top, what is the greatest return on investment for you without having to run the numbers on it?

Charlie (04:35):

It just taught me how to be a business owner and how to run a business. So that’s like a very generic overarching theme to what it did and the actual mentor, right. Cause I’ve actually gone through three mentors and and that’s been great, you know, I love that, you know, I can grow with Two-Brain, right. So one time I heard a podcast that Chris did and he kinda mentioned like, Hey, it’s not bad to switch mentors. And I remember reaching out to Eden and just kind of saying, look, this is kind of a new focus that I have. Who’s the best person on y’all’s team that can help me accomplish it. And so, you know, in the beginning we’ll call it stage one. I went through the incubator with Jeff. He was amazing. He was like the perfect dude for me because, Burlingame. Yeah. And he just really helped me to, I mean I related to him really well, you know, he was easy to talk to, but you know,I’ll say this, the modules are really the meat and potatoes, right. So like the mentor comes in and he just helps you talk through some of the stuff that you’re doing. But I loved working through the modules and I loved getting all the information and then getting to talk through it with him was very beneficial because I could, you know, it just gave me somebody to actually like to bounce ideas off of, because you can’t do that with the modules. And so, but I had kind of gotten to that point where I felt like man, we’d gone through COVID. And he was, you know, he was helpful, but I think even the Facebook group was super helpful during that time.

Charlie (06:17):

Right. All the different things that were being posted in the group. And, then at some point I realized, OK, what I really want to do. And this was right after COVID for us, May of 2020 is I want to develop an operations manager and I need to really get a better handle on my numbers. And so I felt like Jeff was great for the period of time that, you know, he worked with me, which was really like December to May. So I reached out to Eden and she gave me a few different mentors names. And then I didn’t really know who they were, what they, she gave me kind of a general overview of what they specialize in. And then she ended up putting me in with Josh, who she said was over all the mentors. So I actually did a couple of calls with him.

Charlie (07:01):

And it’s interesting how, you know, for anyone who’s out there who has a mentor. I really think like a lot of it has to do with like, you have to be so open and so honest of what you need, because ultimately the mentor probably has access to all the tools to help you. But if you’re not completely open and vulnerable with what your needs are, it’s really hard. So me and Josh, I think had a little difficulty in the beginning connecting because I wanted a specific thing. But I don’t know if he just didn’t understand that. Well, finally he ended up saying, look, I know what you need, you need this sheet. And it was a big sheet. And he was like, let me show you how to use it. Well, I’ll tell you what, that was like, transformational. I have literally fallen in love with my big sheet.

Charlie (07:52):

So like, if I’m honest, like the biggest thing I got from those two months with him was that big sheet. And, you know, I think Chris Cooper says this, you know, if he pays whatever, $900 for mentorship or for seminar and you get one big idea, it’s totally worth it. And so for me, Josh was great because he essentially introduced me to the big sheet, which I had not used. And then I felt like, OK, I really now, and he kind of also helped me with the operations manager development a little bit, because he had a gym that he had completely been removed from, but it was running on its own and kind of explained to me some things. And our gym is pretty, I mean, we do a lot of revenue and we’re pretty big. And so it’s hard to find another person who understands dealing with those, that size numbers in this space.

Charlie (08:43):

And so I kind of still felt like, man, I still needed something different. Well then, Eden connected me with Anastasia, and that’s who I’ve been with for, I guess since maybe August or September. And here’s what I’ve learned and I’ll call it phase three of mentorship because here all along, I’m applying all the things that Jeff and I worked through in the incubator, all the things that you know, Josh kind of and I talked to her about developing the new operations manager and the big sheet, and now it’s with Anastasia. And what I learned with Anastasia was I’m only going to get as much value out of her as I come to that call prepared to share my biggest struggles in that season, which is, you know, we do a 30 minute, every two weeks. I kind of requested that because once a month, an hour, for me, I’m a relational person.

Charlie (09:36):

So I kind of need a little more, touchpoints. And so I asked her, I said, look, I’d rather do two 30 minute calls a month than one hour call and it works for her and we did it. And so we get to check in every two weeks and you know, I got to come to that call and, you know, every two weeks you’re, you know, as a business owner, entrepreneur, you’re struggling with something. And for me, I’m such an optimist that it really I have to really think about what am I struggling because I paint positive pictures to every struggle, right? So I could easily tell you, you know, how this thing that’s not good is good. And so, but that’s honestly not why the mentor’s there, the mentor’s there for me to say, Hey, this thing that’s really not good.

Charlie (10:20):

It’s really not good. And I need your help. And so, you know, that’s been really, kind of what I would say, development for me kind of in the being mentored space. And I’m also most of the time in my life, a mentor in everybody’s life, you know, I’ve got staff, I’ve got a lot of people that I disciple. I’ve got, you know, people that I lead and yes, I’m mentored by certain people in my life. But most of the time we’ll say like nine out of 10 people in my life I’m kind of pouring into. So it’s really hard for me to just receive that mentorship. And I think with your Two-Brain coach, like, you just have to receive it, but the only way they can help you is if you really are honest and you just open up and you say, man, this thing really sucks.

Charlie (11:09):

Like an example of that, an example of that was with Anastasia, it was so good. Like I was feeling really stretched in my schedule. Like I had very little margin and that can be stressful is when you go from thing to thing to thing, and you love it, you know, it’s not like I’m not coaching 13 classes or hours a day like I used to, I’m doing like really great things. Like, you know, I’m just meeting with people or doing these, but I’m just filling up my calendar. Like I’m just, you know, like white space in my calendar for me is like, yeah, I’m like, man, I got to put something in there. Well then finally she helped me to realize that, like, you know, you need to kind of like be OK with actually saying no, you know, I remember like how empowering it was.

Charlie (12:00):

Cause after that call, this was probably in April. I went for the next like four months and just like actually like marked certain days in my calendar, just out of office and like, you know, certain things like that. And I would say that prior to that, I had a lot of good boundaries. Like, you know, I’m off certain days at certain times I start certain days at certain times. So it’s not like I was just this kind of like, you know, 5:00 AM to 8:00 PM. No, it was, it was already what most people would say, like, man, you’re pretty disciplined, but at the same time, you know, if you get to the gym at eight o’clock in the morning and you leave at 4:00 PM, but you never had a moment to breathe or to sit down and, you know, just really kind of get caught up with different tasks.

Charlie (12:46):

Then you start feeling that stress because you get home. And you’re still thinking about the thing that you didn’t do when in reality you had all the time in the world from eight to four, you just filled it with stuff that you shouldn’t have. And so it was really empowering to kind of say, you know what, I’m just going to put a flag in the ground. You know, I remember a big thing was like, I would feel guilty if I was going to go out of town. And now I have some personal training clients and they couldn’t work out or maybe I had to put them with another trainer and that was still makes me feel bad. Well, then I remember my wife, we have four little kids, you know, if we’re going to leave on a Saturday, we go to Florida for a week.

Charlie (13:24):

Well, Friday before we leave, I would like stack my schedule. In reality, I really needed Friday off. Cause I needed to kind of be home to help pack and help with the kids and kind of just support her right. And support our trip, but I’d feel guilty cause I’m going to be gone the whole next week to take that Friday off, you know? And then I was like, you know what, I’m just going to go in. And I’m going to take that Friday off in advance, like, you know, two months before I have to even make the decision so that I already know I’m going to communicate to those people I’m taking that day off. And you know, it was amazing when you go in advance and you actually kind of set these boundaries. And so I, again, that’s just one example of the value of mentorship. You know, another example would be like Fridays, you know, I like to end the day early, but I would end up having little things that I, you know, because I have kind of white space in my calendar and my cutoff time is technically two. And Anastasia’s like, why don’t you make it 10? And I was like, what do you mean? She’s like, well, just make it 10. And then I’m like, what do I do from 10 to two? She’s like, whatever you want. And I’m like, I can do that.

Mike (14:29):

Yeah. I mean, I’m just going to jump in and unpack a couple of things. You’ve covered a couple of really important things that I want listeners to jump on. You’ve talked about working with three different mentors and addressing three different aspects of the business, which is so cool where you’ve got like first you’ve got the foundation in place, then you’ve got a focus on metrics. And now with Anastasia, it sounds like you’re really focusing on like managing your time, finding some extra net owner benefit, which would be like more time off, more lifestyle stuff. And just all the things that make you a better, not just a gym owner, but a better person, a better father, a better husband and all the other things that come into that. And it’s really cool. The thing that you said that I really thought was interesting was about even as an eternal optimist, being honest about things that aren’t going well. So I want to use that to jump into this next question here. Some people don’t really understand how mentorship should work. So you’ve broken your calls out into two 30 minute sessions. How do you prepare for those? Like how do you decide what you’re going to bring to your mentor? And then how do you ensure that that half hour and the entire hour over the course of a month, how do you ensure that that generates measurable results?

Charlie (15:39):

Yeah, so I, you know, there’s certain things in my life that I have already, that I realized provide value. And what I’ve learned, exercise is one of those things is, you know, not every workout am I looking forward to it. You know, I mean, I can tell you there’s been way more workouts than I would like to admit as a gym owner and a person who loves working out that I am literally like dreading this thing in the first 10 minutes. Right. So it’s kinda like, and then it never fails by the end of it. It’s always like, man, I’m so glad I did that. Right. And if we measure that workout, like, I mean, I could have performed very poorly in the scope of all the workouts that I’ve ever done in my life. And so what I’ve realized with this experience in Two-Brain is, you know, I can’t judge one call and kind of be the end all be all.

Charlie (16:34):

And it’s like, you know, if the call necessarily wasn’t measurable in like return on investment, like at the end of the day, the next call will be, or maybe the fifth call after that. Right. So it’s like some of those calls, what I really think it has more to do with me and my honesty and my vulnerability and just my cry for help than it has to do with her. Cause you know, she’s just there to help me. And you know, I’ve had times where I’m like, Hey, you know, and I would say with Anastasia, it’s great because she also knows her role. Right. So she’s very much like she wants to help. And she kind of, I think now as at this stage is getting to understand me a little bit more and kinda knows, you know, it’s just like me and my personal training clients.

Charlie (17:26):

Right. Like when they show up, I know if they need what I’ll call a easy workout, a moderate workout or a hard workout. And I know that because I know them so well. Right. And so the mentor role is right now, I feel like in this season of mentorship, I need to open up about my challenges as they come with my mentor. And so, yeah. So in this season, like let’s just say, I mean, and I’ve always said this, like when things are good, which I’ve been there, it’s almost like you are laying back on the beach, you know, sunny skies, you know, you just gotta get ready. Cause that storm’s coming and you just, you know, you don’t know why and you don’t know what’s going to cause it, but it’s like when it comes OK. That’s, you know, just, and again, that’s when having a mentor would be be very helpful.

Charlie (18:21):

And for some people that was COVID, I think for all of us, that was COVID. And that, you know, is very valuable that whatever that storm is, maybe somebody quits, maybe somebody goes and starts a new gym or maybe, you know, you’re feeling discouraged or whatever it is, you know, those things are gonna happen. And so I’m in that season right now where like, I need to be aware every two weeks of OK. Or in the same light is like, OK, what do I need to do? What do I need to, you know, say out loud to Anastasia that I need her to hold me accountable to, you know, and that might be, you know, Hey, it’s kinda like a client that needs to stop drinking sodas. Well, if they’re drinking them in secret and not telling me, then I don’t even know

Charlie (19:06):

I need to tell them to stop drinking soda. Maybe I need to tell Anastasia like, Hey, I need to post this job ad, you know, and I need you to hold me accountable to that. So two weeks I got to get back to her and she does a good job of like taking notes of everything. And then she’ll email me like a summary of the tasks based on the conversation. And so that’s kind of helpful just because I’ll save those emails and I’ll refer back to them and, you know, make sure that I’m at least working towards that. Sometimes I’ll send her a random email and I’ll say, Hey, this is done. This is in progress. This’ll be done into June.

Chris (19:43):

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Mike (20:04):

I’m going to jump in here and I’ve got to point out something you said that was just genius. It’s an analogy that every gym owner should get. And it’s the one that you said about, it’s like a nutrition client that you’re working with, who maybe doesn’t tell you exactly what he or she is eating, and you can’t fully help that person if you don’t know what the intake is. And that’s just an incredible way to look at the mentorship thing because in the last month or so, we’ve talked a lot about it in our private Facebook group, about vulnerability as gym owners and how we’re in positions where we have to be leaders. We have to have mentors. We have to be strong for our staff and our clients, but inside there’s tons of fear in every entrepreneur. And unless we kind of address that stuff and talk about it and talk about our challenges and then be honest, even about some of the stuff that we aren’t doing, maybe it’s like, you know, everyone has excuses for why certain things didn’t get done.

Mike (20:54):

If, unless we’re honest about that as mentorship clients, we’re not going to get the results. So it’s really cool what you said, because I remember there’s so many, you know, I don’t work as a Two-Brain Business mentor, but I know that there are times when they have, when a client will say, everything’s great, but the client actually doesn’t want to say, oh, I’m struggling with this. Or I didn’t do that. Or I slid back because it’s embarrassing as leaders and as Type-A driven people who do hard workouts and lead huge groups of people, it’s hard to say I screwed up, but when you do that and when you take ownership and tell the mentor, that’s when you can actually fix stuff. Have you had any experiences like that?

Charlie (21:33):

Oh yeah. I mean that’s basically what I would say, crying out for help. You know, it’s like, I tell my wife and we’ve been married 12 years. We have four kids ages, 8, 6, 4, and two. And you know, we dated six years prior to marriage. So we’ve been together 18 years and long. It’s like, you know, I realized I can not read her mind, you know, I’ve yet to figure out how to do that. But I told her I’m so good at following instructions, right. So if you just tell me, I can help. And so, you know, it’s the same thing in mentorship, you know, they’re really there just to help you, but they can’t read your mind. And so when you get off your way, let’s say, you know, as a gym owner, you’re right. It’s ego, it’s pride.

Charlie (22:21):

It’s, embarrassed. I don’t wanna admit that I suck at leadership. I don’t wanna admit that I suck at, you know, training staff. I don’t want to admit that I suck at coaching. And so well, you know, if you can just admit what you suck at, then the mentor has access to so many resources, right. Through the roadmap, the modules, other mentors, or maybe their personal experience. And, you know, and I always find that it’s so cool to like talk to people who have sucked at stuff that have gotten better at, but, you know, remember what it was like to maybe I’m sucking at, you know? And so that’s how we grow and that’s how we challenge each other and encourage one another.

Mike (23:08):

Even the act of asking for mentorship takes a bit of ego diminishment, right? Like Chris Cooper’s written about this. It wasn’t until he finally decided I can’t figure this out on my own, I’m going to ask for help that his business and his career and his life took off. When he was, you know, running into the brick wall over and over again, he was getting the same results and he had to just dial back that ego a little bit, ask for help and when he did, everything changed. And that’s kind of the cool part about it. Listeners, if you take nothing else from this conversation, it would be to be vulnerable and open with your mentor because he or she can help you through your problems. And it’s the exact same thing as a nutrition client, who doesn’t tell a nutrition coach about the bucket of ice cream.

Mike (23:49):

Right? So Charlie, I want to thank you for that analogy because it’s brilliant. I’m going to steal it for all time with credit to you. Of course. I want to dig into one other thing that I thought was really cool that you do. Career roadmap sessions with staff members. We understand now, as you know, as a single person, you can only do so much to grow a huge, successful, very profitable business. You’re going to have to scale up your staff is the key to that staff in the right business setting should not be an expense. They should generate revenue beyond what they’re paid. So career roadmap sessions, key part of the Two-Brain plan. Not everyone holds these meetings, explain why you meet with staff, what you share with them and how you get return on investment in those meetings.

Charlie (24:31):

Yeah. And so I wouldn’t say that I look at it like return on investment. So this started several years ago, way before Two-Brain. I think what Two-Brain allowed me to do was implement a little bit more structure to it. So I called these quarterly reviews and I remember exactly when I started doing them. It was 2014 and I hated doing this prior to then, I mean, I really avoided it cause I’m like, I don’t like telling people they’re doing a good job or a bad job. That’s just not, I really just, I value people. Relationships. That’s like what I really care about. So when I would have to meet with somebody awkwardly with this survey evaluation scoring system, it would just, you know, so annual review, you know, all those things, I just hated it. So somebody had kind of given me some advice back in that time.

Charlie (25:22):

And said, well, just, you know, ask them kind of what their goals are in the next three to six months, ask them kind of, is there anything major going on in their life, ask them you know, where do they want to be in a year and just check in? I’m like, well, I can do that. Like that’s fun. And I’ll never forget, like actually meeting with, in the first round of those at the time I had a lot of part-time staff. So I was doing probably, you know, almost 10 or 12 per quarter, which turns out to be a really busy week, you know, cause I would allocate an hour per quarterly review and relationally, it connected me so much with my staff. It allowed me to kind of really understand where they were. It allowed me to kind of play a bigger mentorship role in their lives.

Charlie (26:04):

And that was great. And I pretty much would do that regularly, consistently. And then when I got to Two-Brain and they talked and they introduced the career roadmap, I thought, man, this is actually a way better way to do it because I think what I had been doing was it was too focused on connecting relationally. So it’s like my mentor in Two-Brain. I mean, I appreciate her, she appreciates me, you know, we appreciate each other, but also she’s here to help my business. Right. So it’s like, I understand that. And she understands that because if we get on the call and we just talk about, you know, my family, kids, my, you know, her personal life, my personal life, then it’s kinda like, well, why am I doing this? Not to say that in a rude way, but it’s, you know, cause I appreciate people, but I actually, I think it’s better in the Two-Brain that that is the way it is, that it’s focused on the business.

Charlie (27:04):

Right. And it’s focused on me as a business owner, her as a business mentor. Well, I kind of had turned that quarterly review into like a hundred percent relationship and zero business. Well, career roadmap on the other hand is really more career-focused quarterly review, which employees, they like that. And they want that. And so it gives me, gave me some structure. So actually, you know, that last May, 2020 is when I kind of had introduced this new role of operations manager going back to earlier in the call, which is kind of what I wanted some help developing this person. And he is the one that does those career roadmaps. And so, it’s based on the outline, given to us in the Two-Brain. And it is, you know, a great way. Cause it almost like here’s the problem with me.

Charlie (27:54):

I am so relationship focused, right? If I did those, we would end up going 95% how are you doing in your life? What’s going on? And then 5% career and focus on. And so I’m almost the problem, you know, it sounds so terrible, but that’s how I’m wired. I’m wired to just, you know, love people in relationship. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that like, if you don’t do that, you don’t love people because part of loving people is like really focused on the career side and talking about the things, how are they going to achieve their financial goals and how are they going to continue to develop in their role in the gym and you know, in the career. So, I just found out that I’m probably not the best person to do this. But having a little bit of a blueprint really helps in guiding my operations manager to do that.

Mike (28:49):

And when you’ve done that stuff, you’ve got a couple of things accomplished. So you’ve got relationship building, obviously just meeting with someone. I’ve heard this from other gym owners, regardless of what you talk about, just doing a one-on-one meeting regularly with a staff member, every quarter is going to build relationships, open lines of communication, all the stuff that you said you were excellent at. The second part of that now is the career roadmap where you actually have someone according to a plan, trying to figure out, is this person happy? Does he or she need and want more? What opportunities can you provide? How can this person make more money? What ideas do they have? The whole thing. And you map out this exact route to success and what that does. You’ve got the relationship part covered. What this does is ensures that that employee and staff member now has a path to a career as opposed to the dead end.

Mike (29:36):

You know, I’m not making enough, there’s no opportunities and I’m going to go into anothjer industry, which we’ve seen all too often in fitness. So I love that you’re doing these things that I love even more, that you’ve delegated them. Because again, that frees up like 12 hours of your schedule, but it also ensures that, like you said, if you’re just a relationship guy and that’s what you focus on, this ensures that the relationship is built through someone else, but the business end of it is also covered. So that’s really cool. The other thing related to that I want to ask about is your daily huddles. Meetings are notorious time-wasters. And like, I just used to cringe when I would have to, when I worked in an office and had to meet with people because it’s generally just nothing really gets done, but you do daily huddles. So tell me where they come from, what happens in them and how do you get a return on that investment? Because if you think about 50 minutes with your entire staff, that’s actually a lot of hours.

Charlie (30:28):

Yeah, several years ago I had a guy who was kind of mentoring me. He owns a big law firm, and I remember saying to him, man meetings are just dreadful and they’re just I feel like I don’t have good meetings and he recommended Patrick Lencioni’s book called “Death by Meetings.” And this was probably eight years ago when I first read the book and I remember reading it and thought, man, this is awesome. And I think what I got the first time I read it was like conflict in your meetings is a good thing. You know? Cause I had come in and previous to that, my meetings was like basically a speech. I was giving a speech and there’s not a lot of interaction. And definitely when you’re giving a speech, there’s no debate and no conflict. And so that was probably the takeaway I got is a great, it’s an easy read.

Charlie (31:22):

It’s like four and a half hours on audible. And then I read it again about three years ago and I think what it did the second time, it just, it helped me to just really like better understand the agenda and having like a little more structure and don’t just wing it and, and, you know, come in with a plan and you know, actually have strategy. And so that was kinda what I got. Well here recently I read it again. There’s a guy that owns a gym that I kind of mentor and I had recommended it to him. And so I in recommending it to him, I re-read the book. Well, this last time, this was like December ish, this past year. So 2020 December, it was like light bulbs went off and I had already been having meetings. We would have a Wednesday leadership meeting.

Charlie (32:18):

We started having the daily huddle in like October, September, October, this past 2020. And then we I think that was it. We were doing Wednesday meetings with the leadership meetings, full staff. Every Wednesday we meet and the second Wednesday, our CSM would jump in with our full-time coaches, but every other, all the other Wednesdays were just leadership. And then the daily huddle we started because we were really trying to focus on sales. And I had heard and read books about daily huddles, but we actually, now we only have full-time coaches. And so it actually works for us to have a one o’clock meeting, it’s 15 minutes and we really just have a whiteboard and we go over person by person like, you know, who are you talking to? Who have you signed up?

Charlie (33:10):

You know, what package are they doing, who has dropped? And then reading the book again in December, just affirm the daily huddle. And I restructured it and kind of made it where there’s three of our coaches that are kind of more needing to focus on outreach and we’ll call it prospecting. So on Mondays they identify three old members and three new people who they’re going to reach out to that week. So that’s six people. That’s huge. And then all they’re responsible for throughout the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is kind of getting, giving the update on how those, and then my operations manager and my lead PT are kind of more so focused on just over bigger arching, you know my, my operations manager does a lot of the lead nurturing and sales. And so he gives a report kind of on how that’s going.

Charlie (34:02):

And then the lead PT gives a report on how any new clients that are coming in. And so it just creates this really neat daily kind of team-building, but very focused on numbers, very focused on sales, very focused on sign-ups and awareness amongst the team. So the death by meeting, I think just really gives you a good blueprint. And I structured based on that book, me and my operations manager kind of, we now do a different structure to our meetings based on that book, we do a weekly tactical meeting, which is kind of, what’s talked about in the book for an hour, which we were kind of meeting, in May, when he started operations manager to December, we met three times a week for an hour and a half. And that was me developing him into the role he’s in. In January.

Charlie (34:48):

We shifted to one hour once a week and then two hours once a month and then all day on every three months. And that’s kind of our strategic planning and that’s kind of the format. And then we still have our Wednesdays, Wednesdays we don’t meet at one for the huddle. We just meet at 1:30 to 2:30. And we have that where once a month we record a podcast as coaches. So that’s very laid back, right. It’s kind of fun. We’re just kinda more hanging out and talking. Another one of those meetings is that second Wednesday as a full staff, which is the CSM comes, that’s where we review the numbers. We kind of go off of the Two-Brain meeting agenda, right? And then we review the numbers from the previous month and how many members we lost, how many members we added, what was our expenses?

Charlie (35:37):

What was our revenue, what was our profit? And then, you know, anything specific like SOP wise, one or two that we want to talk about. Bright spots. And then the other two meetings are kind of more focused on development. So other coaches will research a subject or topic and then just kind of share with the group what they’re working on. And right now we’re reading the pumpkin plan. And so that’s a seven week, discussion. So today at one, at 1:30, we’re going to be discussing chapters three and four of the pumpkin plan.

Mike (36:12):

Charlie, I got to ask you this, I’m giddy to know the answer. When you have your staff members reach out to clients, do you get new members or do you get old members to return?

Charlie (36:22):

You know, I will say this. I’ve been doing this. I’m 39 years old. I started when I was 21. I feel like for 18 years, you know, I’ve been doing two things, prospecting and selling, and I’ve always said, like, I don’t consider myself a great salesman. I just 1000% believe in health and fitness and nutrition. And I want to share that with the world. Right? So that’s why I’m always prospecting. And that’s why I’m always selling, right. Well, when you get a new trainer who just started or who’s, I mean, three years into it, they do not understand that they have no way of actually understanding the importance of what I’m going to say, that skill or that muscle. Now here’s the thing that I’ve learned. If you take all the people that I’ve talked to, that I’ve prospect or that I’ve sold or tried to sell in the last 18 years, like my percentage is probably really low.

Charlie (37:29):

I mean, in the number of people that I’ve, I mean, I’ve gone to places and spoke to 200 people, right. At one time and I mean, maybe signed up zero, right? Maybe it was just there to share information and give a seminar and nobody was interested. Or maybe I’ve had a day where I’ve met with three clients like consultations and signed all three. So you can say that was a very successful day. Well, here’s the deal, what this is doing. Yes. It may bring new customers, but what I’ve loved that it, I know it’s doing 100% of the time is it is getting these trainers, these coaches who want to do this as a career to exercise that muscle, to develop that skill. Because what that skill requires is you can’t get your feelings hurt when somebody says no, you know, like that’s the thing that rejection is what kills people when it comes to this.

Charlie (38:21):

So it’s like, I mean, you might reach out to six people and you don’t even get anybody to call you back, but it doesn’t mean you’re not going to reach out six more people next week. And it doesn’t mean you’re not gonna reach out six more. So I need to kind of train you to get really good at taking rejection. Yeah. Every now and then you might catch a fish, right? I mean, that’s part of the game. And at the end of the day, you have to know that the person is not just a name. This is a person’s life who needs your help, who ultimately needs our help that won’t do, unless we’re helping them do it.

Mike (38:56):

By career development, right? Like this is staff development and a little bit of sales because you are going to get some of those people back. Either way, though, the return on investment of that is huge. Right? You get you know, a staff member, who’s now more comfortable with your business. Who’s learning to do the things that you did, which is that outreach and connection with the community. But they’re also potentially going to sell something. And so you can see huge return on investment in that. Charlie, I want to ask you one other thing. You’re the leader. I want to ask you what would be your first step and we’ll keep it short here because I want to make it super actionable for Two-Brain clients. How would you recommend that they get more out of the money they spend on mentorship? What is like the one or two things that you would advise them to do on their next call?

Charlie (39:40):

I feel like if you want to keep it short, I think it was already said is before that call, you need to be ready to admit your biggest struggle with your mentor and then just listen. And second part to that is do what they say.

Mike (39:57):

I love it. That’s sounds simple, but it’s not so obvious to everyone because we have all these emotional things going on. But the reality is exactly what you said is be honest. And then listen, and take action. Those three things. Again, if you take only two things from this episode, that’s the second one. It would be, be honest, listen to the mentor and then take action. And if you fail to take action, be honest about that too, then complete the cycle. You go back to the beginning. Charlie, I know you’re a super busy guy. You’ve probably got four kids that need your attention and a whole bunch of staff members. I’m going to let you go. But I really want to thank you for your time and sharing with us all the different stuff that you do to make return on investment in mentorship. Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie (40:37):

Thank you.

Mike (40:38):

I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Charlie Lima. FOMO alert. You need to be in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Other gym owners are helping each other solve problems in there and Two-Brain mentors offer all kinds of free tips. Don’t miss out on peer support and industry insight. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook. Join now.

 

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The Next Level: What Will You Build Now?

You’re making some money. Good.

You’re not scared of shutdowns anymore. Good.

You have decent retention or a solid client headcount. Good.

In fact, you used our diagnostic and scored 8 or above across the board. Congratulations—you’re out of Farmer Phase, the second stage of entrepreneurship. Or you’re close leaving!

What’s next?

When you have a successful gym business, it’s easy to look around and feel alone. Very few microgym owners make it to this point. Though the number is growing thanks to things such as our Growth program, few models exist to help gym owners to scale beyond their current gyms.

Do you open a second location?Do you buy out a competitor?Do you double the size of your gym?Do you sell a new service to your existing audience?Do you buy your building or another building?Do you buy Bitcoin or a rental property?

There are dozens of options. In this series, I’m going to talk to you about the next steps in your entrepreneurial journey.

Because if I know you, you’re not done yet.

You’re an entrepreneur now. And entrepreneurs build.

Let’s get started!

(Not sure what stage of entrepreneurship you’re in? Take our test here. My book “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” also has a lot of ideas for moving into the third phase of entrepreneurship: the Tinker phase.)

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Social-Media Blocking and Social Responsibility in the CrossFit Community

John Wooley versus Dave Castro and Sevan Matossian?

Get your protein bars ready.

If you don’t know:

Castro and Matossian apparently separately blocked Wooley on social media.Wooley is the person behind the satirical Instagram account @makewodsgreatagain.Details of the Castro block: Instagram.Details of the Matossian block: BOXROX.

TLDR summary: Perennial Games athlete Noah Ohlsen donated a portion of recent prize winnings at the West Coast Classic to Project Onyx and The Trevor Project. Matossian suggested CrossFit affiliates were the most deserving recipients. Wooley was critical. And so on.

I know better than to get into this battle royal. But it presents an opportunity to dig into a long-standing debate about profit and increased access to fitness.

John Wooley on Two-Brain Radio With Sean Woodland

Two Paths to Accessibility

The Trevor Project is “the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25.”

Project Onyx’s goal is to “eliminate the barriers that underrepresented and underserved people of color face by providing affordable and accessible health and fitness services, mentorship for our youth and future professionals, and empowering our communities to become more culturally proficient, healthy, and active.”

Both organizations obviously have worthy intentions.

As do CrossFit affiliate owners worldwide.

Nevertheless, you don’t have to look far to find those who suggest CrossFit and fitness should be cheaper and far more accessible. You can see a few of them in the comments posted below this article I wrote back in 2018: “Why CrossFit Is Free but CrossFit Gyms Are Not.” I’ve also heard some say gym owners are “greedy” when they charge premium rates for premium services.

More accessibility would be a good thing—I agree. I wish it were possible to make great fitness programs accessible to every single person in the world. And I wish everyone on Earth would work out daily. Doing so would improve health and happiness on an unprecedented scale. And perhaps governments will one day make that happen—though I won’t hold my breath longer than it takes to pull a single deadlift.

The reality is that private businesses can’t set a primary goal to make fitness accessible. We’ve seen some people try to make fitness free or very cheap, and, sadly, they usually disappear from the fitness industry. As the world currently turns, private businesses need to charge rates that reflect value or they’ll die. It’s just economics.

Soft Hearts and Hard Numbers

Here’s very simple math that might be used in an attempt to create a socially responsible gym that prioritizes free access and memberships well below market value:

Total members: 300Non-paying members on full “scholarships”: 150Paying members: 150Average revenue per paying member per month: $60 (well below market value)Total gross revenue per month: $9,0004/9ths devoted to staffing: $4,0002/9ths devoted to fixed costs: $2,0003/9ths devoted to owner/profit: $3,000 (or $36,000 annually)

This model is not sustainable, and the good intentions of the owner will be washed away by stress and debt in months. The plan just doesn’t work without a huge infusion of cash from some third party.

Two-Brain data shows the average recurring expenses to run a gym with 125-175 members is $11,000. This does not include staff costs.Two-Brain data suggests staff costs to serve 125-175 members will be $5,000-$11,000.The staffing costs to serve 300 members would almost certainly be far more than $4,000.The fixed costs required to serve 300 members would almost certainly be far more than $2,000.The owner’s share isn’t enough to sustain a long-term career and a family.

You can play with the numbers as you like, but I think you’ll see my point in short order.

Good People Doing Good Work

The math doesn’t mean for-profit gym owners can’t help others get fit and do good work for society. It just means they have to do that work within the current economic framework, then take action in the community.

If they run sound businesses and charge appropriate rates to people who see the value and can afford them, gym owners can profit and then use their surplus to help others.

Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper has spoken about this before, and we regularly see how successful Two-Brain clients work to improve the world after they aren’t worried about paying their own grocery bills.

Maybe the plan to help others by acquiring a surplus will take a bit of time to bear fruit, but I’d bet on that approach before I bet on some universal fitness tax credit that changes the world and carves abs into all its citizens.

So, in the end, the social-media debate will rage on. I’ll leave it to you to decide who’s right and wrong.

For my part, I’m very happy to see people like Patrick Ford, Elijah Muhammad, Noah Ohlsen and others investing in socially responsible endeavors they believe in.

I’m also very happy to see others investing in for-profit enterprises like CrossFit affiliates. That’s because I know the entrepreneurs who own the gyms are the kind of people who look at their profit and ask, “How can I help someone with this?”

The post Social-Media Blocking and Social Responsibility in the CrossFit Community appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Building Staff Relationships to Create Careers—and Revenue

Mike (00:02):

Staff always leaving? Coaches not on board with your plan? Tired of trying to fire up your team? In this episode of Two-Brain Radio, I talk to a gym owner who can help you learn to lead.

Chris (00:11):

Chris Cooper here with a word about Arbox. This business management platform is designed to take you from a fitness expert to a successful gym owner. Arbox offers a full suite of tools, including a dashboard and report with the top metrics that we prioritize at Two-Brain Business. With a glance, you can see length of engagement, average monthly revenue, new versus lost members and more. Arbox will also help you drive engagement with a members app that allows clients to interact with their friends. So here’s the special deal for Two-Brain Radio listeners. Save up to 50% for the first year using Arbox. Visit arboxapp.com/tbb to register to a free 10 day trial and schedule a demo with one of Arbox’s experts.

Mike (00:56):

This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m Mike Warkentin, your host. Josh Nimmo of CrossFit MetroEast in Illinois recently won our annual award for coach education and opportunity. It’s given to the Two-Brain gym owner who is investing the most in growing a team. Today, we’ll dig in with Josh and give you ideas about how you can inspire your team and create careers for it. So, Josh, thanks for being here. I’m going to put you on the spot right off the bat. Why did you win this award? What are you doing that made our mentors recognize you among all the hundreds of Two-Brain clients?

Josh (01:25):

If I can be brutally honest, I don’t know.

Mike (01:28):

We’re going to find out today though. We’re going to dig in.

Josh (01:32):

And you know, I think if anything, you know, Jeff Larsh has been a fantastic mentor of mine and had recommended me for this award. And if anything, I don’t believe I’m doing anything, mind-blowingly different than a lot of other gym owners. We’re all passionate, we’re all committed. if anything, I think I’ve tried to just do my best to trust in the process of empowering staff and then maybe removing myself as much as possible. I’ve been a Jack of all trades for a really long time. And so I’m capable of coaching classes and running PT sessions and selling memberships and changing light bulbs and fixing toilets, and so doing less on my end, and then empowering staff more is really the best way I could describe it. And again, I’m so humbled by this award because I don’t think I’m done yet. Like I don’t even think, I think we’re in like this middle ground phase. So I’m so thankful that that someone would consider me for this award. But, yeah, the truth is, I don’t know.

Mike (02:44):

Well, my wife says that I’m annoying and I have OCD. So I’m going to dig right in. I’m going to figure out what you’re doing and we’re going to grind it out somehow here. So here’s the question. Talk to me about empowering staff. Has that always been something like as a Jack of all trades and I was much the same as you. I didn’t do a great job of empowering staff. I did what Chris Cooper said. I abdicated, I didn’t delegate and I didn’t mentor. So talk to me about kind of your evolution, like as a Jack of all trades, was it really hard to give stuff away? And when you did, how did you start teaching staff to do things properly and grow as people and employees versus just saying, here’s your checklist and I’m mad at you in two weeks because you didn’t follow it, like talk to me about your evolution.

Josh (03:26):

Yeah. So I knew I was gonna open a gym when I was 15 years old. At 36, I’m 21 years into this dream and nothing’s changing. So, I got into the fitness industry very early. I started training doing personal training at 19. And so I’ve been doing this for a really long time. And I worked for a company before that, more of a fitness staff and then moved into some management leadership and then, eventually ended up moving out and starting my own gig about nine years ago. And, when I started my own thing, I think the thing that probably hurt me the most is I thought everybody else’s work ethic or everybody else’s like path to being a fitness professional would be like mine. And I was one of those people that I’d trained as many sessions as I possibly could during the week.

Josh (04:18):

And I, you know, I might train 50 and 60 sessions per week. It was terrible. And the quality of care was not where it should have been, but the quantity was there and somebody showed me, Hey, like, you know, if you train this many sessions, you’re gonna make this much money. And that’s really what I did. When I got out on my own, and then I started to bring on other staff, first of all, nobody was paid. Everybody was trading a membership back then. And so one, I had expectations for them. They had expectations for themselves and really there was no monetary exchange. And so there’s no contracts, no nothing. So, expectations were very different for each person. And I just expected that Hey, I train this much, so you should want to train this much. And that just wasn’t always the case.

Josh (05:04):

So in the beginning it was, I did a poor job of even empowering staff because I just expected them to do things the way I did. I expected them to clean the way I cleaned. I expected them to coach a class the way I coached a class, but I didn’t show them how to. You should just watch me and know what to do. Right. And that’s not true at all.

Mike (05:25):

So it was not communicated.

Josh (05:27):

Right. Yeah. So, then when I got a little bit further down the road, you know, we were probably about four or five years in, and at that point we had multiple coaches doing things. I started to kind of follow some business mentorship sides of things, you know, started to look at at Cooper’s stuff and some other mentor companies out there.

Josh (05:51):

And so then we started to kind of figure out, all right, we need to start paying these guys. All right. So how are we going to do that? Back then it was a weird, you know, we didn’t even have a four ninths model. And so, we were paying them percentages of personal training based on what I had previously done. But really all we had was group classes and PT. I had a big PT following because that’s what I came from. And so it was easy for me to have PT, but I didn’t know how to get my other coaches to coach PT either. It probably wasn’t until about four or five years into the business that we kind of had a massive shift. And I had a massive shift personally. I realized that I needed to, not that I was treating my business like a hobby per se, but I wasn’t being the CEO I really needed to be.

Mike (06:41):

So that you’re working 60 hours a week at that point or 40 to 60 coaching sessions?

Josh (06:44):

Well, that was a little bit earlier, probably closer to the 40 to 50. And I was coaching a majority of the classes, running PT. So I was coaching probably well over 30 hours a week, and then having to do the business stuff.

Mike (06:58):

So you can’t be a CEO with that volume of like on the floor responsibility. And what year was this? Just for context.

Josh (07:04):

Oh man. Probably 2015 ish.

Mike (07:07):

Keep going with that. So what was the shift? How did this happen?

Josh (07:10):

Yeah, so, I started to, you know, really dive into improving the business side of things and so really trying to put the right people in the right seats. And so that meant that like we had to loosen staff, we had to hire the right people. We had to develop the people that we already had that we felt were the right people, but maybe not in the right roles and right positions. And then I really had to figure out how can I make careers for people other than me? How do I get past me just owning a job and the rest of these guys actually having a job, but still being able to provide for my family as well. And so I really had to, I really had to bring up our business on a professional level that I had never had to do before, because, you know, my life was changing. I was getting married. we were having, you know, we were having more kids and everything and I couldn’t be at the gym 10 hours a day, like that just wasn’t going to work for me. But I also knew that that couldn’t work for the rest of my staff either.

Mike (08:12):

I’m going to interrupt you, so this is great. So you’ve hit this point of evolution where you knew that something needed to change. I’m going to just go on a limb and say you were a great trainer because you had all these hours that you were filling so you must’ve had happy clients. Now you’ve got to become a CEO and you’re making the shift and you realize that you needed to empower your staff and you couldn’t give them like, you know, 60 hour week coaching schedules that would clearly burn them out because you were experiencing like you wanted more home life and so forth. So what was step one to doing that? And I’m going to—tell me the year that this kind of happened, was it, I guess it was after 2015, but what was step one to figuring out how to get your coaches to do what you needed them to do?

Josh (08:50):

I think step one was me developing myself into a role to figure out how to get these staff developed. So at that point we started to, I started to pay attention to, I didn’t start mentorship with Two-Brain until about 2019. but when I sat down for my one-on-one, I was doing a lot of the things that Two-Brain had already told me to do for free. So we started to adjust our pay scale. So we shifted to a four ninths model. We started to actually create more revenue streams, like nutrition challenges, and, specialty courses, like a barbell course. Started to get other staff involved in personal training and teaching them how to sell that personal training. Started to create specialty programming. So we have what we call personal accessory program, where a coach could actually make a little bit of extra money and keep a client happy by just providing additional personal programming, but still keep that client in the group classes.

Josh (09:47):

So we really started to diversify our model, started to also expand our retail, to be able to create more admin opportunities for coaches. And I started to just say, Hey, we’re going to pay you, and we’re going to pay you for everything that you do. If you send emails, we want to pay you for that. And if you coach classes, we’re gonna pay for that. If you do personal training, we want to pay you for that. So that was really like creating the model and creating that entrepreneurial model for those coaches. That was probably step one.

Mike (10:18):

You did this before you started with Two-Brain? Did you get it from all the resources that we’d put out ?

Josh (10:23):

Yeah. I got it from, you know, just listening to the podcast back then and reading emails and blogs and everything else.

Mike (10:31):

So that’s really cool because one of the things that Chris has always said is he wanted to put out those resources so that people could start doing things and then start making the money so that they could pay for mentorship, which is a really interesting context that was kind of counter-intuitive like, we kind of give away the, you know, the golden eggs here and then hope people like you show up and want to work further. So tell me a couple more steps in that process leading up to when you started with Two-Brain, what else happened with your staff?

Josh (10:55):

Yeah. So step one was obviously giving them the model. Step two, had to be actually developing them to be able to run the model.

Mike (11:03):

That’s mentorship that you’re giving your staff.

Josh (11:05):

You know, I can’t just say, Hey man, go create the specialty course. What we found is that they didn’t have any, they’re like, OK, well, what do I need to do? So really shifting their minds around, sitting down with staff and be like, Hey, what are you interested in doing? What do you really want to pursue here? And that’s how our barbell course created. And we said, OK, well, we’re going to do it as a course. We’re going to run it for eight weeks. And that staff member ran it for eight weeks. The second session we ran for 12 weeks and he ran it for two years straight every 12 weeks until he decided, Hey, I want to step away from this for a little while. And, but that was a way to offset his, he had no limit to the ability to sell it. And all we had to do was talk about it in our classes and promote it and sell it out every time. And he was able to make an revenue stream and make a revenue share.

Mike (11:55):

Now I heard earlier that you said you actually taught your staff to sell, is that correct?

Josh (11:58):

I think we on certain levels, yes. I think we had to get them out of this mindset that selling was difficult. So the whole idea is you’re already selling. All you’re doing is you’re having conversations with clients and you’re connecting them to the solution that you already have for them. They’re asking you a question, just provide them the solution. And they’ll happily pay for that. I think a lot of our staff and myself included, you know, years ago is a lot of us feel bad about asking people for money, for the services that they’re asking for like that. And that’s what we’ve tried to do is professionalize. Like I try to hone in with my staff you are worth every single dollar you make and every single dollar we charge. And so our clients more often than not are more than happy to pay for those services. Our staff just needs to get themselves out of the way and not be afraid to ask for that.

Chris (12:48):

Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper. Your members are buying supplements somewhere, so they should buy them from the person who cares about them the most: You. And you should work with my friends at Driven Nutrition. Jason Rule and the Driven team put customers first, every time they’ve got a ton of products with high margins and they’ll even train you so your retail program adds revenue to your business. Kirk Hendrickson from Iron Jungle CrossFit says Driven Nutrition has some of the best support I have seen from any company we’ve partnered with. To make more money with supplements and retail sales, visit drivennutrition.net.

Mike (13:21):

So here’s what I’m hearing. You decided to add some diversity to your revenue streams, not crazy diversity, like you weren’t doing 30 different things. It sounds like you were doing like five or six kind of thing, which is like manageable and allows you to stay focused. Talking like specialty programs and personal training and sort of add ons, which is like, I guess we’ll call it a hybrid program now. So you’re doing that kind of stuff. But the key step that I see that a lot of people miss, including me, was you decided to teach your staff how to do it, not just say do it. And that’s a really, really big step that so many people, you know, have missed. And Chris was talking about this a lot now, because he’s realized this in his own business, it’s not enough to just say, here’s the plan. You have to teach them to implement it and then kind of groom them. Is that accurate?

Josh (14:06):

Yeah, but it only happened after I told them just to do it and it didn’t work.

New Speaker (14:12):

But you made the realization.

Josh (14:13):

I did. And I think that part of that is, you know, I did do a lot of those things previously, so, but I couldn’t use my own past experience. I really had to connect what they needed, mentorship wise to the individual. And, you know, I couldn’t just say, well, this is how I did it. Well, yeah, but that may not work for that person. So really being able to listen to my staff and find out where do they actually need to be equipped? You know, one of them might not have any problem selling personal training, but they have a real big problem managing programming within their personal training clients and staying on top of getting everything done there. You know?

Mike (14:51):

So how did you formalize this education, like how did you figure out what each staff member needed and then deliver it? Did you do like career roadmap sessions, or did you meet with each person or did you put together a training plan? How did that go?

Josh (15:04):

Honestly just talking to them, trying to get better, trying to get better with one-on-ones. And that didn’t mean that we always did that as regularly as we would like. And it also didn’t mean that we did it well all the time. Sometimes those are hard conversations. Sometimes it was a conversation that had to be Hannibal. Other times we had to have a conversation and let a staff member step aside for a little bit, because that’s what they needed personally. But I think one of the things I’ve just tried to do is stay connected to the personal lives of them and know that like, Hey, if you’re not good personally, one of our core values is, is you got to take care of you. And if you’re not taking care of you, you can’t take care of everybody else. And so just knowing, you know, who they are as a person, and then being able to accept feedback myself and know that they could trust me enough to tell me, Hey, this is what isn’t working for me, or this is what I’m struggling with.

Josh (15:57):

And them to know that, like, that doesn’t mean you’re outta here. It just means that maybe we need to put you in a different role or a different seat. I’m a big believer now that it’s not that we don’t have the right people on the bus. It means it, sometimes it just means that we don’t have the right person in the right seat on the bus. And so I would much rather work to develop that person around what they want and what they believe this dream for them is, rather than try to mold them into my dream.

Mike (16:25):

So it’s interesting because a lot of gym owners struggle just to have staff meetings, right? Like, just to find time for that once a month staff meeting that three people show up late too, and two can’t make it because of childcare commitments or whatever. And you found a way to actually do some and again, not formalized necessarily on a schedule, but you talked to your coaches one-on-one, figured out what they needed and then gave that to them. So that’s a really insightful thing that you figured out because I certainly didn’t figure that out. I can probably count on one hand, the number of times I had one-on-one conversations with staff, and then we, like, how long has it been since we had a group staff meeting, you know, so. You know, it was really an interesting thing to figure it out. Did you start seeing results as soon as you started talking to your staff one-on-one?

Josh (17:02):

I think so. I think where I saw the results was the relationship. I don’t know that I saw the results on the books or something specifically. I think I just saw the results through our relationship and it built more trust and value in our relationship, which then led them to just feel better about where they were with the organization. And then in turn, when I could make a suggestion or what I could provide some training or some feed on something, they knew it was out of love because they knew it wasn’t a matter of like, oh, this is just my boss. Like, it was a matter of like, Hey, I care about you. And this is what we talked about in our last one-on-one. So to do that, here’s what we need to do. And to help hold them accountable, maybe when it wasn’t meeting up. And then also for them to hold me accountable, when maybe I said, Hey, I’m going to do this for you. And I got right tied back into the day to day and missed something, you know?

Mike (17:56):

Interesting. So it’s relationship building first and that’s part of mentorship, but then the other thing that you mentioned earlier, and I should’ve pulled out sooner is, you know, you really, I sense that you had a real confidence in the value of your product. And that was a mentality thing where you’re saying like, you know, people need to pay for extra and extra is extra. Whereas a lot of us were like, nah, I’m going to give you 40 minutes of free coaching for no reason. You, and maybe like, did that come from your background in personal training where you kind of learned what value is?

Josh (18:22):

No, when I was a personal trainer, I had to charge what the gym made me charge. It was, I charged $25 an hour for personal training, 35 for a non-member. When I moved to my own, my own place, I still have clients that have been with me for like 13 years. And so, those clients though started paying me $25 an hour, 13 years ago. And so I’ve had to like steadily increase. I just felt so bad. I’m like, gosh, I read they’re paying way more than double than they ever started with me when I was some young buck kid, you know.

Mike (18:55):

Well, you’re twice as good now.

Josh (18:56):

Well, that’s the hope, right? But so it didn’t come from that because actually where I was before we didn’t sell a value in personal training. And so that was kind of hard.

Josh (19:08):

I think where it came from was honestly being willing to go against the grain and say, if we don’t survive financially, I can’t keep this place open. And I can’t provide for my staff. So therefore, what good are we when we have to close down because we can’t pay the bills. And so I had to be willing to be the most expensive gym in town to also charge for everything and to take all discounts away. And now like I’m still probably that gym and people may not agree with that, but I had to be willing to step out and say, listen, we might lose people who are looking for that, but I’m so confident in what we provide and who we are. And I’m so confident that I want to put food on my staff’s table that I need to, like, I need to know that my head coach, isn’t going to go somewhere else because he can’t make enough money. I need him to know he can come to me and say, Hey, I’m not making enough money. I need some help. OK, man, let’s sit down and figure out how we can help you do that. And then sit down and do a career roadmap with them. So it was probably just being willing to go out on a limb and take a risk to be more expensive than everybody else and hope it all works out.

Mike (20:17):

So 2019, when you sync up with Two-Brain and Jeff Larsh, what kind of stuff changed? I think you mentioned a couple of things probably, but tell me about some of the main things that helped you with staff development and empowerment after you started with Two-Brain. Cause it sounds like you had a pretty good head start. What happened next?

Josh (20:33):

Yeah. So the reason I got into Two-Brain is I could no longer, I felt like I had taken my business as far as I possibly could alone, right. Where I needed answers and I’m looking around and I don’t have anybody to talk to. Like there was no one that I could even bounce these ideas off of because at that point, you know, I’m in a leadership role, even in my area and community. So even other gym owners, you know, most of us either, there’s a few of us that maybe on an upper echelon that are leaders to other gym owners and then the other ones were having the same problems and none of us have the solutions. And so I really I had some problems in the business, that I just didn’t feel like I could solve by myself anymore.

Josh (21:17):

And so when I got with Two-Brain, one, I feel like I was kind of faking it before I made it for a while. And so I was running what most people would say, man, you’re running a great business here. And I realized, I knew that there were a lot of holes on the back end, like, you know, operating procedures and contracts and systems. Getting those things in place helped to take that last step of getting me out of the way and being, not to add everything up in my head, but to put more on paper for those staff. And then also just kind of cleaning up some loose ends. We were running profit first, but honestly I felt like our system was a little bit broken and so our cashflow is a little tough.

Josh (22:02):

And so working through that and being doing a better job of figuring out our cashflow appropriately. So not only we to have the money for staff, but we also have the money to run the operating expenses and obviously pay ownership. So those were the things, it was kind of like the, and then Jeff really came in and helped me focus and really say like, Josh, I know your list is a mile long, but what are these three things that really need to be at the top of the list right now, before we move to the next?

Mike (22:30):

So in terms of staff, what was the staff issue, I mean, was there a staff issue in that top three kind of things, or you guys hit that right away? Like where did the formalization of kind of the contracts and all the other things start happening in that system?

Josh (22:44):

Yeah, I think almost right away, you know, I wanted to implement it. I wanted to implement contracts, I think that was something that coaches were somewhat like, what do you mean, I’ve been here for five years, why do I need something on paper? And I tried to explain to them like, Hey, all we’re trying to do is actually, this is just as much to protect you and what you’re doing as it is to protect the business. And what I want to do is I believe we run a professional program here and I want to make this professional. And so therefore I want all your expectations to be on paper so that you know exactly what’s expected of you. And I do. And I also want you to know because of these expectations, this is how you’re going to be paid, and this is what we have here.

Josh (23:21):

And the reason I want this to expire is not because you’re going to leave or you’re going to get fired. It’s because in a year I’m going to sit down and look at that contract and say, does all this still make sense? Is this all the stuff that you still value? Do we need to add something to your plate? Do we need to take something off? Are you doing the job that you’re actually not getting paid for? That kind of just came into fruition throughout the year that we didn’t know about? COVID a perfect example. Like our business has kind of changed since COVID. So how do we make sure that that coach’s, you know, contract is also still up-to-date and current? So that was kind of an initial, like question there with staff. And then I think when they realized like, and it was almost like they were kind of taking information from a fire hose a little bit, you know, cause I’m getting all this stuff and I’m like, Hey, this is what we’re going to do.

Josh (24:08):

And Hey, this is what we’re gonna do and Hey, this is what we’re gonna do. And they’re like, whoa, man, what’s going on? Like we thought this was fine. Right. And for me, I had to do a better job of kind of maybe siphoning some of that stuff in one. And two also just explain to them like we’re moving from a good gym to hopefully a great gym, that’s going to help sustain long-term. And I know some of you might be seeing the day-to-day things happening and you’re a little confused. My job here is to tell you, like, I’m looking at the next 10 years, 15 years and 20 years and what this looks like. And so if you have questions, please ask, like, I’m happy to explain those things to you. And you know, so there wasn’t really a lot of major issues, more like just kind of really honing in on our specific staff process and then really helping them create if they were doing a job that we didn’t have a process for sitting down and going, Hey, what is this process that we’re doing?

Josh (25:03):

We need this. If you’re on vacation for two weeks, I need you to be able to hand that process off to somebody and them be able to do it without thinking, how do we do that.

Mike (25:11):

So you systematized a lot of the things that you were doing before and made them, you know, put the procedures in place, put the contracts in place and put the structures in place to ensure the good things you were doing before kept happening. Was, is that accurate?

Josh (25:23):

Yes. Yeah, for sure. And by doing that, we found gaps we were able to fill.

Mike (25:30):

So talk to me a little bit about some of the ways, you know, the gaps that you found and then, you know, with, particularly with relation to empowering staff to do stuff and grow and generate more income, like what gaps did you find in there and what did you fill in?

Josh (25:43):

I would say one gap that we had is, we would have staff that would have no problem running a service or offering a service, but then all of a sudden, somebody wasn’t getting charged for the service, and getting them to note like they almost like, oh, all of a sudden somebody would sell their membership. Cause this is, we had multiple staff may be doing consults. And so they might sell a package for an on-ramp and then all of a sudden someone’s going to do their on-ramp and they go through their first session. I ended up getting that person’s unpaid. Hey, why wasn’t this charge? Well, you know, they had this, so really getting staff and be like, Hey, at the time of sale, you have to charge this and I want you to be paid, so therefore charge the money so you can be paid.

Josh (26:26):

That was one thing that just making sure they knew that they could do that. And then the other gap I think was because I had done so much and maybe micromanaged too much early. I am very involved in my business. I don’t really have a hands-off approach, is allowing staff to feel OK to screw up. And so the thing, I kinda have a saying that I use with some of our staff members, like, Hey, one of our core values is, you know, full effort, you know? And so I want you to, if you’re going to fail, fail at 110 miles an hour and you know what, the other thing I tell my staff is like, nothing you do is going to bankrupt us because to be honest with you, if anything was going to bankrupt us, it was the first five years of mistakes I’ve already made.

Josh (27:16):

So it’s not going to end our business. And so if you mess up, I’d rather you mess up trying to do something productive and then us fix it later. And all within our core values, obviously, you know, don’t go tell somebody off on the Facebook page and then try to fix it later. But, I think just being OK with, you know, number one, charge for the service, and don’t be uncomfortable about people paying you money, they show up here to pay money. But the other thing was just being OK with, you know, having a failure that we got to fix because it’s not going to ruin our business.

Mike (27:52):

So this is interesting. So Chris is writing about some of this, and you’ve hit on a couple of points that mirror exactly what he’s talking about, where you’ve created these standard operating procedures and systems and all this other stuff, and you foundd some gaps and so forth, but from that basis, we’ll call that point A, from that basis, you then pointed them toward point B, which is your mission and your values, right? So they know what you’re all about. And you’ve given them the freedom to kind of play with that a little bit. Like basically I like to use a baseball diamond analogy where it’s like, you set up the foul lines and said, don’t go outside these lines. Hit the ball anywhere you want inside there. And if they come up against those foul lines, that’s where you come in with, you know, the contracts and the procedures and so forth, but anything else in that field of play.

Mike (28:30):

So what happens when a staff member fails at 110 miles an hour? What is the process there for, you know, analyzing the action, you know, figuring out how to not fail the next time or, you know, and mentoring them to succeed. Like, do you have a system in place for that? Like when you track your metrics and say, OK, this was a failure, how do we re do it? How do you do that without messing the staff member up and make, you know, making them feel like they failed, essentially? How it a learning experience?

Josh (28:55):

I think if I’ve given them the authority to, and I’ve given them the jurisdiction to take on something, then it would be counterproductive for me to then come in and slap a wrist because, well, you did this wrong and the next time you’re not going to do this. I think it allows for, you know, in those one-on-one conversations. And we have a fairly tight knit, you know, staff group. So even if we’re not having set one-on-ones on a quarterly basis, like I’ve talked to staff on a regular basis, you know, I’m in here with my nutrition coach three or four times a week. We’re on a weekly staff call every Monday. We have our monthly staff meetings. And so I think it’s OK to, not that there’s like a system in place, but we can go and look, and especially on the quarterly and annual level, to sit down with my nutrition coach and say, Hey, listen, this is where my goals are for our nutrition program.

Josh (29:50):

And not because this is where the money needs to be, but this is how many clients we are affecting with nutrition right now. And I’d like to just affect more people in our population with nutrition. I believe that at least half our clients should be doing some sort of nutrition coaching program right now it’s only about 20%. And so if we can move the needle forward on that this year, that’s my goal for you. And then being able to, after a challenge, say, OK, you know, this is how, yes, the revenue generated this. And maybe that was good. Maybe that wasn’t so good. But what were the positives out of the challenge? And then what were the things that we might change or improve upon on the challenge? So allowing that staff member to be self-reflective as well, and then obviously getting feedback from clients on, you know, surveys and especially after challenges or specialty courses.

Josh (30:37):

I think that it’s just having an open dialogue, and then being able to allow them to, you know, we had one that, you know, they ended up having a client that was supposed to stick with personal training. They kind of canceled some personal training and I felt like we could’ve probably kept them longer had we, you know, maybe transferred service to another, you know, something else or whatnot. And, you know, I kind of encourage that, but they made their decision and then we had to just be responsible for that decision. And in the grand scheme, if that loses us five or $600 in revenue to allow a staff member to learn, probably a $10,000 lesson, that’s OK. Like, I think that that’s, you know, I’m willing for that. And part of that is too is as a business, I think that we can afford those mistakes. If you will.

Mike (31:33):

How often do you do career roadmap meetings with your staff?

Josh (31:36):

Not enough. And here’s the thing we were kind of getting to that point with career roadmap stuff right before COVID hit. And I felt like, I feel like we are 10 months behind and not just in the career roadmaps with a lot of things in our business and more or less, just because we’ve just felt like we treaded water for a year and a half. And so, yeah. And although we would do one-on-ones, we haven’t done enough of the career roadmap things, and that’s something that we are really trying to hone in on. We just added about four more additional staff members, and that’s something that we’re starting out right away with them, because now we have staff, you know, that might be a part-time person right now that might be interested in leaving their job in another two or three years when it’s financially sound for them to do so. I want to be able to provide them that map of what that looks like.

Mike (32:24):

Listeners, if you don’t know what the current roadmap is, it’s an actual session that, you know, you sit down with a staff member and you show them using a spreadsheet that we have, the exact path to the money that they want to make. And then you help them figure out how to put those things in place so that you are creating a map to a career, not just a job where it’s like, personal training, personal training, I’m not making enough money and I’ll see you later, right. You’re trying to create a career. And, you know, you’ve talked about that Josh, many times careers for staff. So last question I’m gonna ask you is a big one. You know, what does investment in your team and creation of opportunities for staff, what does that do to your business in terms of staff retention and the quality of training that they deliver to your clients and just the, you know, the metrics of the business itself?

Josh (33:06):

Well, I think that, for me, although I was a Jack of all trades, you can then say a master of none, right? But there are certain things that I do really well and there are certain unique skills that I maintain. And I think it’s easy to get, you know, to just do all this, all of that stuff. But all that really does is it never really gives a staff member a leadership role. And so what I think is most important is as our staff has developed, one of the things that I think has maintained retention levels in our staff is by continuing to elevate them into more responsibility or more leadership. Sometimes it’s not even the responsibility changes that much, but to put them into an elevated level that they see progression, whether that’s even that may not be progression in the amount of hours that they work, it may not be progression in the amount of money that they make, but realizing, oh, I can do this new thing.

Josh (34:07):

And I’m actually moving up in the ranks, getting paid maybe the same amount of money I was for less hours than I was doing on the floor, and taking a coach and elevating them to a higher level role, within the organization. I think that that’s helped eons with retention. The other thing then that has had to come is that means that I’ve had to step down in some roles. And I think as an owner and all of us are on different paths and we have different desires for our career, I have never believed that I wasn’t gonna own a gym. I’ve never thought that I wasn’t going to train people like, you know, I joke a lot about, you know, how we’ll be doing this for a really long time. My dad still works at a gym and trains people in his sixties.

Josh (34:52):

Now I’m hoping, I keep trying to get him to retire, and come work for me to be honest. But, but the thing for me is being OK with actually taking me down on a level. I have a saying, like, I’m not trying to be anybody’s favorite. And the goal is literally I want my staff to be everybody’s favorite. And that way, you know, my clients, cause I truly, I attract a certain level of client, but we have nine coaches on staff. So all nine of those people should be able to attract another level of client. And it creates this melting pot and really expands our reach. It expands our reach, which then expands our programs, which then also expands our revenue model. And so it doesn’t have be just group CrossFit. It doesn’t have to be just PT and just nutrition coaching.

Josh (35:40):

We might have a program that we don’t even know about yet because we have someone on staff that’s going to grow and expand their knowledge or their reach and hit a niche that I could never hit. And so being OK with not being the master of everything and allowing our staff to actually be, and what I found is some of them are just better at some things than I am. They’re better at organization. They’re better at posting on social media. They’re better at caring for a client that might, you know, not align with where I’m at in a training level. And so just being OK with me step taking a step back and being also OK with elevating staff, which gets a little scary sometimes because when you elevate, you have to provide more responsibility and you have to let go of some things. And then also you have to extend how much revenue or your costs of taking care of that staff.

Mike (36:25):

So I’m gonna go back to the original question that I asked you about why you won this award. And I’m going to tell you what I think the answer is, and you can feel free to jump in and punt me out here if you disagree. But I think part of it is that you’re looking, you wanted to do this for a really long time. You’ve looked at it as a career. Your dad is still doing personal training, which I think is such a cool story. I think you should hire him. I hope you get him, but you’ve done this as a career. And so you had a very clear concept that this was a career, not just a job or a hobby necessarily, and that can’t help but influence the way you bring staff people on, especially if you’re passionate about creating careers in the fitness industry, in doing that, it’s clear that you’ve created relationships with staff all along the way, whether you did it with formalized sessions or with just having at least one-on-one conversations which so many gym owners miss, and then in doing that, you look for ways to scale up your model, create revenue opportunities, teach your staff.

Mike (37:20):

And that’s a huge one that we all miss, teach your staff how to take advantage of those opportunities, allow them to fail, systematize things, and then keep improving things and help them to keep succeeding. So you’ve done a lot of really interesting stuff here that so many of us miss, like I missed almost all of that. Many other gym owners missed a few points here and there and everything in between, and you’ve done a really cool job. And then finally, the big part is working with a mentor now to formalize things, figure things out post COVID, you’ll get the career roadmap sessions in place, train these new staff members, according to systems. Like it sounds like a lot, but the coolest part about it is that you had someone step by step you through it. So it wasn’t overwhelming. Now I just throw a lot at you. Is that more or less accurate?

Josh (38:03):

I think you’ll give me way more credit than I’m due.

Mike (38:05):

That’s why I have to say it, because I think you’d be too humble.

Josh (38:05):

I appreciate that. And again, I would say that, you know, my staff and myself, we’re not done yet and we’re going to continue to grow and develop. And it’s pretty amazing that somebody would recognize, you know, and I say us for this, it’s not my award. It’s our staff award, because if I don’t have a staff that’s bought in to the vision and to the mission and is commited to not only me, but our community, none of this works. And so it’s kudos to them for even just being a part of this and allowing me to lead them.

Mike (38:45):

Thank you so much for sharing Josh. And again, congratulations on leading your staff and being recognized by Two-Brain.

Josh (38:50):

Hey, my pleasure, Mike, thank you so much.

Mike (38:52):

I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Two-Brain award winner Josh Nimm., Before you go be sure to join the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Two-Brain founder, Chris Cooper is in there all the time, dropping data and sharing strategies for success. You won’t see him posting in any other public Facebook group. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook. Join it today and be sure to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio for more episodes.

 

The post Building Staff Relationships to Create Careers—and Revenue appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Stress-Test Your Systems and Procedures

Are your standard operating procedures untested?

Then you have to assume they don’t work.

And if your processes don’t make your business run without you, they’re incomplete.

Most of us have holes in our processes. There are things our staff members can’t do. And we won’t find those gaps unless we put our business under pressure.

Below, you’ll find the exact steps to find—and fix—the gaps in your processes.

The SOP Stress Test

1. Write out your staff playbook (on the Two-Brain Roadmap: Playbook, Milestone 1).

2. Deliver your playbook to your staff at a meeting (Playbook, Milestone 2). Have them sign off.

3. Run your processes for three months.

4. Take four consecutive days away from the business. Plan this time in advance. Let your staff know you’ll be away. Tell them you won’t be responding to email, but they can call you in an emergency.

5. Record any calls you get from them. Remember the topics.

6. When you return to the gym, write processes to solve all problems that came up while you were away.

7. Provide training to avoid the same problems in the future.

8. Book a seven-day break from the gym—but this time have no communication with the team whatsoever. Have your staff document any questions or problems they have while you’re gone.

9. When you return, debrief with each staff person (or the one in charge). Write SOPs to cover the problems and record the answers to all questions in your staff playbook.

10. After a year, take two weeks away from the gym without contact.

11. Debrief when you return. Write SOPs to cover the problems and record the answers to all questions in your staff Playbook.

You Can’t Build With a Weak Foundation

Why is this procedure so important?

In Tinker Phase, you’re focused on larger opportunities, not the day-to-day operation of your gym. Maybe you’re thinking about scaling over 150 members and you’re attending seminars or receiving mentorship on those bigger issues. Or maybe you’re scouting a second location or opening a different business. Regardless of your reason, you need to be able to focus on higher-level opportunities.

The biggest problem new Tinkers face? They keep getting pulled back into daily problems instead of working on the much larger opportunities before them.

Solve gym problems in advance. If you can’t solve them in advance, solve them when they happen—but only once. Then document the “right” answers, build SOPs and keep your hands out of the machinery.

You can’t drive the car if the hood is always up!

The post How to Stress-Test Your Systems and Procedures appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Get Your Business Out of Your Head: The SOP Secret

In this series, I’ve been telling you that “discipline equals freedom.”

You give your business discipline by writing down exactly how you want everything done.

In his book “Extreme Ownership,” Jocko Willink says he had standard operating procedures for how his SEAL teams entered their vehicles, exited their vehicles, breached a doorway, penetrated a house, searched for evidence, collected evidence, dropped off evidence and presented evidence. They had an SOP for everything.

This commitment to consistency created freedom. When things changed on the battlefield, operators could change strategies without making guesses.

The best businesses in the world have SOPs for every tiny detail.

Think about the best hotel you’ve ever visited: The room was spotless. There was a welcome note from the manager. Maybe there was a little chocolate on your pillow or some towel art on the bed.

None of those things happened by accident. None happened because a staff person took initiative or had an amazing work ethic. Your experience wasn’t unique; it was repeated thousands of times for thousands of guests. All those things happened because of SOPs.

But where do you start?

The SOP for Creating SOPs

Put a pen and a blank piece of paper in your car.

Drive to the gym.

Before you get out of the car, record where you parked and why.

Walk to the entrance of the gym. If you use a back door, write that down.

Turn on the lights. Write that down.

Flip on the “open” sign. Write that down.

Turn on the stereo. Write that down. Select the correct station. Write down the one you chose.

Continue until your first class begins. You’ve just created your Opening Checklist.

Does this seem like overkill? After all, your staff aren’t dummies. So why write the checklist and SOPs as if they are?

Because you don’t want gaps. Gaps are bridged by guesses. And no one guesses right more than half the time.

You’re better to be too thorough than to leave any room for guesses. Guessing means mistakes, and mistakes mean correction—uncomfortable conversations with people on your team. Do you really want to have to tell them they forgot to take the garbage out? Or would you rather tell them to take the garbage out in advance?

When You Make Staff Guess

Here’s an extreme example:

I once had a client in California with constant staff turnover. He lost all his coaches in his first year, replaced them all and then lost the second crew, too. He had a great location and some really good clients. He was a nice guy. At first, I couldn’t figure out why he had such high turnover.

One night, his staff closed the gym and went home without taking the garbage bags outside to the dumpster.

When he opened the gym in the morning, it stunk of rotting banana peels. He couldn’t get the smell out of the air before his first clients arrived, even with all the doors open and generous application of air freshener. He was driven to distraction by the smell, so he sent an email to everyone on his team. The email was a 200-word rant about how bad the gym smelled, how careless it was to leave garbage in the warm building overnight and how banana peels were especially heinous.

Maybe you’re laughing because you’ve received an email like that from an overstressed boss. Or maybe you’re wincing because you’ve sent one almost as bad (I’m totally guilty).

Of course, the staff didn’t quit over one email. But the owner wore them down as these little breaches of “common sense” stacked up and he stopped calling staff meetings to address the problems. Instead, he berated his coaches in front of others or sent them texts at 10 p.m. to complain. The problem wasn’t that his staff members were lazy or dumb; it’s that they weren’t mind readers. There’s no such thing as “common sense.” There’s just guessing.

So, of course, his third wave of staff left and opened another gym down the street. The owner started over with new staff. But this time, we helped him tell them what he wanted in advance.

Lo and behold, his gym became a comfortable, happy place. His clients no longer saw awkward exchanges between the owner and staff, they enjoyed the cleanliness and on-time schedule, and they stuck around longer. The owner got some traction and his business began to grow.

No one knows what’s in your head. Get it out.

Writing a staff playbook and SOPs takes a lot of time. But we have a shortcut: We give you a full template to edit in our RampUp program.

The post How to Get Your Business Out of Your Head: The SOP Secret appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How Discipline Makes You (and Your Staff!) More Money

The secret to making more money in your gym isn’t raising your rates or getting more clients.

It’s discipline.

When I hired my first trainer at Catalyst in 2005, I was a bit worried about having the “money talk” with him. He had a few clients of his own. He was also coaching a few sports teams on their fields of play. I was worried that he wouldn’t want to share the revenues for these clients with the gym.

But I told him, “You have to charge everyone $135 per hour off site. You can’t train anyone for free anymore. And I’ll give you 44 percent of the proceeds for all clients, including the ones I give you and the ones you already have.”

He said, “Deal.” No hesitation.

Only later did I realize that my rules had solved some huge problems for him:

He hated asking people for money, so he often wound up “volunteering” his time.When he did get paid, it was far less than the 44 percent he’d make under my pricing.He no longer had to say, “I need to get paid”; he could now say, “Here’s the price.”He wasn’t tempted to find his own side clients because it wasn’t allowed.

Under my rules—my imposed discipline—he’d make way more money with much less stress and frustration.

6 Reasons You Aren’t Making Bank

There are six reasons gym owners don’t make more money. When you fix these issues with discipline, your gym will be more successful.

Reason 1

They don’t pay themselves first. Have the discipline to write yourself a check. You can hack this process by using a system like Profit First.

Reason 2

They don’t make enough money per client. Have the discipline to set your rates appropriately and stick to them. Everyone knows that discounts don’t attract clients. But most of us have offered discounts because we don’t have the discipline to stick to our rates. Usually, this is a mental problem, not a demographic one.

Reason 3

They don’t keep clients long enough. Have the discipline to maintain an excellent experience. You build excellence on a foundation of consistency. The rules must apply to everyone equally.

For example, we used to sell open gym between classes. One day, a client was doing a half-marathon row during open gym. With 5 minutes to go before class started, he was still cranking away in the middle of the gym floor. The coach warned him that his workout would finish in 5 minutes whether he achieved his goal or not. Maybe he didn’t believe her or maybe he thought he could row another 3,000 meters in 5 minutes, but he didn’t reach the 13.1-mile mark.

“Sorry,” she said, “But class is starting. You’re done.”

Of course, the client got mad and quit the gym. But the coaching clients—much higher-value clients in our target audience—were impressed. Their experience didn’t come second to anyone else’s experience; they didn’t have to wait around unfairly while someone else finished a poorly planned workout.

Reason 4

Their expenses are too high. Have the discipline to rent only the space you need and buy only the equipment you need. Have the discipline to do the math and make a plan instead of buying the biggest toy box and trying to fill it.

Reason 5

They don’t have enough clients. Have the discipline to make a marketing plan, track your marketing metrics and determine what’s actually working instead of just firing random shots at your market.

Reason 6

They wear the wrong hats. Have the discipline to learn how to grow your business instead of just punching the clock and hoping for the best.

The Fix: Discipline

It isn’t easy to fix any of these problems—but everything gets easier with practice. We’re in the habit-formation game, right? We coach discipline and habits and routine for a living. Maybe it’s time to take our own advice.

Enforcing discipline in yourself is hard. Having a coach or mentor makes it easier. Want some precise instructions? Get our free guide to solving each of the problems I described above.

Enforcing discipline in your staff is really hard. But you usually only have to do it once. When others see that you’re going to stick by your published rules instead of running your business on your fluctuating emotions, they’ll come in line—and you’ll have the freedom to help them instead of just cleaning up their messes.

The post How Discipline Makes You (and Your Staff!) More Money appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

400 Percent Revenue Increase: Star Owner’s Secrets

Mike (00:02):

Gym owner increases revenue by 400% in one year? How is this possible? Bryan McDowell will tell you right after this.

Chris (00:10):

Chris Cooper here with a word about O2. Your gym members will love O2’s hydrating, non-carbonated beverages after a tough workout. Even better, O2 is a community-based brand that wants to give back to gyms. If you sell O2 at your gym, you get a free sponsored event every year. Gym owners who wholesale O2 also get their first order for a dollar. Visit wholesale.drinko2.com to apply for an account today.

Mike (00:36):

It’s Two-Brain Radio and I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Real quick. Here’s a reminder: subscribe for more episodes. We’ve got a ton of great stuff coming. So don’t miss an episode. Now at the recent Two-Brain summit, Bryan McDowell of CrossFit HSE earned our future star award. It’s given out annually to a gym owner whose stratospheric trajectory is obvious to all. In only eight months of mentorship, Bryan made it into our exclusive tinker program designed to help very successful gym owners grow their wealth, expand their businesses, plan for retirement and create legacies. He did that by increasing his revenue 400% from April 2020 to March 2021. That is incredible. And Bryan is here to talk to us about it. All right, Bryan, I have lots of questions, but I’m going to ask you for a one sentence summary right off the bat and put you on the spot. How did you manage to do all this stuff so fast?

Bryan (01:26):

Honestly, I thought about this for a while. I followed directions, and I had a really great mentor, Mat. I always, I always butcher his last name, VanSchoyck. He’s really talented at creating a clear path, asking the right questions to say, Hey, this is what I think you need to do next. And I followed the roadmap, you know, as simple as that sounds, it worked. I doubted it, but I did what I was told to do. And I, you know, I followed the marketing plan, follow the funnels, follow the ad copy. I followed the process and the process worked.

Mike (02:13):

It’s interesting because one of our other mentors, Kaleda Connell, a lot of people asked her about her quick rise through business. And she said the same thing. She says she followed the plan and it’s hard as an entrepreneur because we’re kind of going our own way. It’s kind of hard to follow the plan. I want to know a little bit. What were you hesitant about or what kind of made you a little bit squidgy when you started looking at something and then did it anyway?

Bryan (02:35):

Qell, so I opened my first gyms in 2013, I own two CrossFit gyms, sold those in 2016. And so my wife and I were on our own 2016 through 2019. And, throughout that kind of hovered around the same membership mark and same gross revenue each year never really saw, we get a little bit of growth and we’d fall back down, you kind of knew something was broken, didn’t know how to fix it. So I started kind of looking around at different programs to help us out. And I came across two guys that were kind of like, throwing stuff out there on the affiliate owners page on crossfit.com or that, you know, on the Facebook affiliate owners page. And was a little hesitant, but I went that direction. I ended up getting burned for three grand one month, the next month, started to kind of seeing stuff wasn’t right.

Bryan (03:27):

Ending up getting my other three grand back, but, you know, got burned, took a little bit of a risk. And you know, obviously that didn’t pan out. And then I had been getting emails from Chris for quite a while. Hadn’t really known too much about Two-Brain. I knew another gym, in downtown Indiana, had used them. So I started kind of looking through his emails and actually reading through them and clicking on stuff. And I was, he looked like a lot different from what I had seen. Like he actually cared, and like genuine, definitely genuine and like loved what he did. So I ended up reaching out and I was like, we had, a little over six grand or somewhere around there in our bank account, our business bank account, end up finding out how much it was after doing like an exploratory call or whatever it’s called.

Bryan (04:15):

And, you know, it was a little bit less than what we had in the bank, but we kind of knew after, backtracking a little bit on the way on the way to the CrossFit Games 2019 August, we were listening to a podcast by Ben Bergeron. And it was on the business side of things. And he’s speaking about wearing all the hats in your business. Started going out to all these different roles and so forth. And I was just like, I stopped it. And I was like, that’s us, that’s us. And my wife was like, it is like, what do we do? Like, I don’t know. Like I know how to coach people to get better at CrossFit. I know how to sell a membership pretty easily, all that stuff, but all the other crap that comes along with it, I didn’t really know how to do it very well. I ended up reaching out, you know what I mean? I think that’s pretty common. The more and more I’ve talked to gym owners, but that’s kind of how we landed with Two-Brain. It was like, I am reaching out for help because we realized that we were doing everything and something wasn’t working. We didn’t know how to fix it.

Mike (05:18):

So you told me that, you know, your revenue in those previous gyms that you had kind of stayed the same and then, you know, it was kind of at a similar level when you started and then all of a sudden things exploded. Take me through that explosion once you got going with Two-Brain.

Bryan (05:32):

Yeah. I mean, the two gyms we had, one was doing better than the other 2013 through 2016. It’s kind of like the same process too. It’s like, it wasn’t a lot of retention, pretty decent at sales, but there wasn’t all of development of the roles and the tasks, there weren’t all these processes put in place, it was just two guys that were trying to run a CrossFit gym and make money. And then kind of the same thing when it, that’s how we entered into our new space. We love fitness, we love nutrition. We wanted to stay in the industry. Not have much training doing much else besides this. So we did that and, you know, stuff never really took off we hovered right around, I think maybe one of our best months might’ve been in the $16,000 range, but we usually hovered right around 11,000 to 13,000 a month.

Bryan (06:21):

And we moved from Fishers in Indiana to Noblesville. We lost a good chunk of members, but we automatically right when we opened in June 2020. our membership started to take off, I think we gained like 25 the first month, and then COVID hit. So we were close to the open up for not even two months. And those, we went from like low hundreds down to like right around 66 members and that’s including coaches. So that was like seven coaches. So we were under 60 members and our gross revenue, I think we were right around 6,700. Which is like, you know, at, at one point it was kind of like, you can’t get much worse than this. Like pretty much lost all of our income.

Bryan (07:09):

So we were, you know, at home couldn’t really do much, the online stuff wasn’t really taking off, but our core group of members that were with us had been with us for years stuck around. And then when we kind of, when we heard that, we live 0.7 miles away from our gym, just super convenient. And when I knew that there was going to kind of be when we can reopen date, I went on to my gym lead machine funnel and mounted the ads. And I started blasting ads about two weeks before I was technically able to get into the gym and start doing it. Then I was going over there and I was selling memberships before we opened. And I continue that process and yeah, we took off, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but we just, like, it was just like a continual rise.

Bryan (07:56):

Like we’re 60, now we’re at right around from that year, I think we went from 66 members of the ballpark, 190, 200, went from, you know, from this year, from that year of March to, I was like April or May of this year where we did 45,000 bucks had our best month ever. We made in 2019 last I looked was like, right around $164,000. This year, we’re on track, probably do half a million is my goal. We’re on track to do that, which has been insane. And our income too. I think our income was like, I think 2019, we might’ve made $27,000. We did 120,000 last year. So it’s been insane. And back then, it was one of those things when you’re like in it and it’s not working and you see other people that are successful, you’re like, there’s no way I can ever do that. I don’t know how they’re doing it.

Mike (08:53):

Got to dig into that. And I got to figure out, you know, how you did it now. So like you, like I said earlier in the intro, you blazed through our ramp up and growth phases and you got incredible, incredible results that launched you into you know, our tinker program, which is the third phase of entrepreneurship. So what were some of the major changes that had the greatest effect on the business? Like I’m looking for, I know every little thing did something, but what were some of the game changers?

Bryan (09:17):

You know what, Matt, well obviously following the roadmap and doing all that stuff, it’s funny how that works. It’s like, it’s like, here it is, do it here. It is. Do it. Here, click and go click and go. That was pretty neat. But Matt really, he was a really good question asker, don’t know if that sounds right. He asks a lot of good questions and he challenged me to stop doing, you know, he’s like, do you want to coach classes? I was like, no, he’s like, let’s get you off classes so you can work on some more high value rules. How about personal training? I was like, be honest with you. I could care less if I do another personal training session for the rest of my life. OK, well, let’s get you off the personal training and that right there for me, it was like, I did a lot of personal training, made a lot of money.

Bryan (10:02):

But he was like, you know what, there’s some higher value roles that you can work on and we can get some of your personal training clients onto your other staff members. And I was like, it took me like two months to actually do it. Cause I was scared that I was going to lose my clients that I’ve had for years. And I didn’t. And so I started to have more free time to start working on marketing and start helping mentor my staff. And really the biggest thing for us really, I think was, you know, when I talked about wearing all the hats in the business, all those different categories, you know, cleaning, coaching classes, social media, all these different roles, and then assigning the tasks and then delegating them was was really difficult to do.

Bryan (10:49):

Cause I’m, you know, now I look back and see how controlling I am and I like to have control all that stuff, but developing those roles and tasks and giving them to coaches who are able, really was the game changer for us. Because when you’re doing absolutely everything in the business, you’re not really doing that much extremely well. It’s just like, you’re multitasking your business and can’t really work on those high value roles to actually make the wheel turn. So I think that was the biggest thing for us, and my wife too, is getting her off coaching the classes, getting her off personal training and having her focus on nutrition. And now she’s got a nutrition business she’s doing outside of the gym.

Mike (11:30):

And listeners, if you want to learn more about this process, we call it climbing the value ladder, and there is an exact process for it. And it’s like down to the dollar where you start looking at how much time you’re spending in certain roles, you put dollar values on it. All your different tasks, and then you figure out what can you replace yourself in? And it usually starts with a cleaner, right? Because it’s a role that doesn’t cost that to fill. So you hire a cleaner for 12 or 15 bucks, and you get your four hours a week back or whatever you use those four hours to do something better, which is maybe take some sales calls, maybe take some coffees down the street, do affinity marketing, this plan exists. And so that’s what Bryan’s talking about.

Mike (12:06):

The roadmap, and Bryan, Chris, this will be music to Chris Cooper’s ears. We tell you what to do. And you look at the tactic, you implement it and you move on. And if you do that, you generally find success. Because one of the things that Chris has always said that he can’t stand is when people say don’t do this, that sucks. But then they don’t tell you what to actually do. So our roadmap is designed to take you through these processes step-by-step with data, with testing, with analysis, with backups, so that you always know what’s working and you keep doing that. And then pivot, if you need to.

Chris (12:37):

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Mike (13:04):

Bryan, this is kind of classic. I love the value ladder thing, because I did the same thing. I had so many things that I was doing. Just classic, wasting my time on building maintenance and stuff that I’m completely useless at. And it happened for me too, when you start getting out of those roles and assigning things, things grow, and really, the price of control is your time, right? Because you’re just micromanaging everything. So once you started climbing this ladder and you got some free time, where did you invest yourself initially to like really start growing the business, and where are you at now? Like, what is your role now?

Bryan (13:38):

So now I’ve really been focusing on the marketing aspect, observing our Facebook funnels and tweaking those on a weekly basis. Sometimes daily checking that stuff. Mentoring my staff, like, this past summit. Yeah. This summit, this past summit was like, we talked about leadership was eyeopening. I kinda knew that I had failed in coaching our coaches on their roles and how to correct some stuff that they weren’t doing. They were, you know, not excelling at. Andit’s easy when you own the business and you’re controlling to micromanage and nitpick at stuff that they’re not doing the way you want it done, but when they’re not doing the way you want it done, it’s your fault. You know what I mean?

Bryan (14:33):

Cause you haven’t actually told them down to the detail how you want stuff done. It’s not always going to be done perfectly, but that was pretty eyeopening both to my wife and I just like the areas where we kind of just said, oh, well, here’s your role, here’s your task, train them a little bit. And then they go do it. It was like, no, there’s more to that. There’s more of a process. So we’re refining that process quite a bit right now. And also just kind of trying to help empower them a little bit in the roles. Yeah, hopefully that tracks a little bit there. That’s where I’m honing my time in right now, as well as trying to my wife just opened a nutrition business called eat well nutrition. She loves nutrition. She doesn’t want to be in our gym much anymore. So we rented a year lease up front for a nearby office space for her. And she’s just launching that this past week. So I’m helping her with her marketing with that and, kinda trying to help her get the ball rolling, sooner rather than later.

Mike (15:30):

And that’s kind of that tinker stage. So you’re branching out into other stuff. So like you’re not grinding in the gym doing personal training sessions. You’re now the guy who’s in charge of marketing and, you know, obviously other things, but marketing is a huge high value role because you’re literally generating business for the gym and you’ve got your wife branching out into something else, diversifying, you know, the family revenue stream a little bit. It’s really cool what happens when talented people learn about business and free up their time and then do other stuff, you know, and one of the things you mentioned that I’m hearing more and more regularly from sort of I’ll call them upper level gym owners. And the Two-Brain term is tinkers. These are the people that have successful gyms that are moving into other stuff.

Mike (16:10):

The thing that I’m hearing from these guys and girls of course, is that mentoring staff is a key part of it. And that’s something that few of us did. Like I didn’t do it either. I just said, coach the class, you know, you have your level one, do this. And that’d be mad that it wasn’t coached the way I wanted to. Actually bring people and teaching them how to succeed is a key part of offloading tasks. It’s also a key part of success for the staff members. I’ll ask you this. And I think I know the answer, but now that you’re doing all this stuff, are your staff members making more money too?

Bryan (16:39):

Oh yeah. My head coach when he came on, like, I won’t say what he was making in his previous job. I kind of brought him in back in, right when I was kind of getting out of, really from growth into tinker. I brought him on and I said, Hey, you know, like I don’t have anyone else right now, currently at that time to give personal training to, so if you’re here and you’re available, I’m going to give you these personal training clients. He was coaching a lot of our classes too, helping me with some sales, doing some cleaning. And I was like, Hey man, the sky’s the limit. If you’re here, nobody else can take this. So I said, here’s the numbers now, here’s where I think, I was showing him the leads we were having coming in, the sales statistics. And I was like, look, if you leave your job, I think you’re going to do really well.

Bryan (17:23):

This is what I could pay you. He did. And it was like, we, I think four times what he was making at his previous job. He’s on track to make 60 grand, his first year as a trainer. And I said, Hey, you know what? I’ve trained since 2011, 2019. I’ve made half of that every year. It was kind of embarrassing, but he’s doing fantastic. I brought another girl on full-time who was part time here and there. Was in and out of our gym for two years and brought her back on full-time to be our GM. And she’s absolutely, she had a little bumpy road there for a little while and I take responsibility probably for 80 to 90% of that. But she’s really taking the bull by the horns this past month and just taking the initiative, doing stuff and her revenue’s grown as well. And we got, I think we’ve hired three or four more staff members the past three months, brought new coaches on. So yeah, everybody’s making more money. Yeah.

Mike (18:18):

You’re creating careers that are satisfying for the people who are in them and they’re generating revenue for you and retention and good feelings. And it’s kind of a win-win for everybody. So talk to me now that, you know, you’re out of the day-to-day, you’re not doing PT, you’re not doing coaching, you’re doing these other things. Talk to me about your mindset as a tinker. So, you know, what’s next for you and your business. And I don’t necessarily mean the gym, but you know, your business as a whole, as an entrepreneur, what’s next for, you know, for Bryan.

Bryan (18:44):

What’s next for Bryan? Well it is within the business. We have a class that’s called Burns, our 30 minute class. There’s a gaping hole in retention with that. So I have been this past 10 days or so reworking that membership offer. And I’ve talked to a few mentors as well. It’s a lower price point and it tends to be the thing that the eyes go to where people come in during no sweat intro. See the high ticket stuff. What else do you have? It’s the low ticket stuff. OK. OK. I’ll take that. And for me, it’s this like I have feared in years past that, you know what, 129 bucks is better than nothing, even though if it’s not the best fit for the individual, I’d rather have 129 bucks than zero bucks.

Bryan (19:37):

You know, and my wife and I started,this past Sunday, we sat outside, Chris Cooper had sent my wife the, I forget maybe the affinity ladder exercise. So she redid it for nutrition business. I redid it for our seed plant. Redid our avatar, kind of narrowing that down again. We’re trying to attract. And it’s a been a little eyeopening because I have, I think he said in that activity, it’s like, you know, you don’t want to take, I’m probably butchering what he said, but everybody’s not the greatest fit for our business. And I have fallen into the trap over the years that I’ll take anybody, even if they’re not a great fit, because I want to make money. So what I’m going to see here and I’m anticipating, and I think that’s part of the thing about being a tinker is I’m able, I now have the finances and the freedom to restructure our business model a little bit, as far as this class is concerned and test out some new pricing.

Bryan (20:41):

So I’m going to turn our month to month Burn to year only option. And then with some hybrid options that are going to be higher priced options, 129 to 379 and 279. So I’m going there to try to increase retention in that avenue, because if I can increase retention with that, we should make more than $500,000 this year. That’s kind of where my focus is this next 90 days. So we do our sprint is that, and helping my wife fully in her first year, making a hundred thousand dollars in her nutrition business.

Mike (21:14):

I like it. So you’re really investing hard in the gym business and optimizing stuff that’s not going the way you want so that it can be even more successful. And you’re going to try and help your wife make six figures in the first year of starting a new business. So those are two amazing projects that you now have the time to do, and listeners, that affinity marketing guide, if you want it, go to Two-Brain business.com, free tools at the top, you’re gonna enter your email address. You’ll get access to that and a ton of other stuff. That guide has step-by-step worksheets that will lead you to the process Bryan just described that will help you figure out how to grow your business. It’s a great guide. Go get it. So, Bryan, I’ll ask you this. So our mentorship team was just amazed at what you’ve done.

Mike (21:55):

You’re might be the most, the guy who’s gone through this thing fastest and had the most spectacular results. And it’s been so cool for our mentors to talk about you and watch. And that’s why I want to get you on the show so much. And that’s why you got the, you know, the future star award. So imagine this. You know, and you’ve been there. So this is why I want to ask you this, the gym owners out there right now, feeling disheartened about where the business is at, you know, they’re stuck in a rut, losing ground, not making progress, whatever the case is, what advice would you give that gym owner as a person who’s been in that spot and is now, you know, so far 400% above it, what would you tell that person?

Bryan (22:27):

Good question. Humbling as well. Hopefully I explain this well, like we, and I’ve examined this as well, too, like, and I told our members recently on a video, I told them about the tinker program, tell them how much it was. I won’t say it over this. And I said, you know what, two years ago, if somebody asked me to pay that much money, I’d have said, you’re crazy. And the same thing back when I decided to go with Two-Brain, at that time, it was a lot of money, but, you know, I realized what I was doing wasn’t working. And I needed help, and we preach to people when they come into the gym that they need a coach. And that our service is valuable and that what they’re doing isn’t working and then they need to be coached.

Bryan (23:19):

And I’ve never really had a business mentor in the past, but you know, it makes sense to have someone that has walked the walk and has been successful. And they’re where you want to be. And then they can guide you to get there. Like, it makes logical sense that if your business isn’t working and stuff is broken, you realize that you need a coach. And we tell everybody in our gym, we have coaches. We’re not doing stuff that we’re not telling you to do. We’re practicing it as well. So, I think that everybody needs a coach. It’s so helpful to when you feel like you’re stuck and be able to reach out to somebody and say, Hey, like, this is what I’m struggling with. What have you experienced in the past? What do you think I need to do next versus trying to do it on your own.

Bryan (24:09):

Like, that’s really tough. It’s tough to walk that out. Especially if you haven’t had success and when you have a multitude of counsel there’s wisdom in that, right. Especially when you’ve got a group of people, you can go on to like the Facebook group and say, Hey, what are you guys doing for retention? What are you guys doing for marketing? What are you guys doing for your athlete check-ins? What are you doing for your consults? I’ve tried this, this isn’t working. Why isn’t it working? And the group has all tested stuff out. It’s been tested. It’s been proven, there is extreme value in that. And if you’re not going to invest in yourself, who else is going to do it? Nobody. Nobody’s going to say, Hey, here’s some money, go invest in yourself.

Bryan (24:51):

You’ve got to take the action and do that. So, yeah, hopefully that speaks to somebody, that’s where I’m at with it. And that’s where my wife’s at with it too. I mean, she’s having trouble with sales right now. So we’re paying $5,000 to get her some sales training over the next 14 weeks. So she can be successful. Cause she’s recognized that she’s not good at sales. So guess what? We’re going to invest in some sales training so she can make more money in sales. She doesn’t have sales, she doesn’t have a nutrition business.

Mike (25:18):

The thing that you’re bringing up here and it’s so interesting is, you know, you just, and you said it is like, you’re not spending money, you’re spending money to make money. And again, that can sometimes be a snake oil pitch from some people. But the reality, I got a dog too. So don’t worry about that.

Bryan (25:34):

Yeah. My son’s in the background.

Mike (25:35):

The reality though, is that the Two-Brain business mentorship program and any good mentorship program, like a sales training, whatever it is that you do, should be designed to help you get return on investment. Meaning if you spend X, you should get, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 X or whatever it is. And that’s how Chris has set this thing up where he, you know, we want to be an expensive mentorship program because we provide the value. But the idea is that you’re going to make that money back by following the plan.

Mike (26:04):

And we want you honestly, to make that money back as fast as possible. And again, listeners out there, if you’re not in the program yet, you can certainly contact Two-Brain business, get a free call with one of our mentors to talk about this, go to our website and book that call. Or if you’re not, if you just don’t have the money right now, we’ve literally set up the free tool section to give you everything you need to make enough money to pay for mentorship. So go again to that free tools section on Two-Brain business.com. And Bryan has it, I’ll ask you maybe the dumb question here, but I’ll do it anyways. Have you made the money back that you invested in Two-Brain?

Bryan (26:36):

Yeah. Easily. From 6,700 a month to 45,000 a month. I’d say so.

Mike (26:45):

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Bryan, I’ll let you get back to building your and your wife’s business. And, we want to see where you’re at next year, will you come back and talk to us again?

Bryan (26:55):

Definitely.

Mike (26:55):

Thank you, sir. I’m Mike Warkentin and that was future star award winner, Bryan McDowell. He’s probably a star already, not a future star. And if you join our mentorship program, you might be the next future star. Go to Two-Brain business.com to find out more. Now, before you go, be sure to join the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is in there all the time, dropping data and sharing strategies. You won’t see him posting in any other public Facebook group. That’s the only place you can get access to Coop. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook. Join it today.

 

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Discipline Equals Freedom: Why You Need Systems

“Your business is imaginary. It’s all in your head. You’re making it up as you go. And worst of all, you’re starting from a blank page every day!”

The strength of your business can be measured with this question:

“How successful can it be without you there?”

Your business is not your marketing. Your business is your systems: the processes your staff members use to deliver excellent service. These are the standard operating procedures everyone follows to be consistent, predictable and excellent.

No Systems, No Standards

I once walked into my gym at noon to this sight:

Chalky handprints all over the floor.Two “open gym” clients finishing their workout while the noon class waited and watched.A potential new client leaning against the wall by the front door.A coach’s half-finished lunch on the desk.Both bathrooms full, with people waiting to change clothes outside.Loud, uncensored rap music that I’d never play in front of my kids.

I started my day being the bad guy (“Your workout time is over”), cleaning up other people’s messes, smoothing over a poor first impression and yelling at a coach to get a class going. I spent the rest of the day angry, hating my business but too distracted to do anything about it.

Worst of all: I knew it would be exactly the same tomorrow.

The problem wasn’t that my staff was lazy or that my clients were taking advantage of me. I sure felt that way, but the truth was that my entire business was in my head: People were breaking rules they didn’t know existed. They were following checklists that didn’t exist outside my mind. They were rising to their standards, which were different from mine. And they were trying to guess what I wanted them to do, even though they weren’t mind readers.

The problem was that I had no systems. And without systems, I had no discipline in my business.

Clarity and Consistency for the Win

As Jocko WIllink says, “Discipline equals freedom.”

When your staff knows to start classes precisely on time, they will.

When your clients know to be ready for noon, they will be.

When your future clients know to book a No Sweat Intro instead of just showing up to watch a class, they’ll book intros.

When you have a cleaning process, you’ll have a clean gym.

When you have a coaching process, your classes will be excellent.

When you have an intake process, your clients will be onboarded more smoothly, stick around longer and get greater results.

When these things happen automatically, you’ll have the freedom to build your business.

But if it’s all in your head, you’ll have none of these things. Your internal goals, your standards and your processes are just daydreams.

In this series, I’m going to tell you how discipline and rules make you—and your staff—more money. Then I’m going to tell you how to start getting your business out of your head and into a system.

We walk through this process step by step in RampUp because if you dig deep enough into any problem faced by a gym owner, a lack of systems is usually at the root.

The post Discipline Equals Freedom: Why You Need Systems appeared first on Two-Brain Business.