Chris Cooper's Blog, page 145

Yes to Everything, No to Anything?

How do you decide what to DO today?

 

How do you know which projects to take? Which goals to set? Where to go? What to eat? Who to meet?

 

How do you know when to say “YES!” and when to say “Sorry, NO.”?

 

There are some big opinions out there:

Derek Sivers’ article, “Either HELL YEAH! or no” is probably the best perspective on saying “no” to almost everything.

Shonda Rhimes’ famous “Year of Saying Yes” was a huge hit on TED Talks.

James Altucher has written both “The Power of No” and “Choose Yourself” (in which he tells people how to say “NO” more often)

And Nicky Beusden’s “Week of Yes” article in UnStuck is pretty great.

 

I’ve personally seen great benefit from saying “YES!” to things that make me uncomfortable (like flying around to meet people in person instead of doing a remote interview, or cold-calling people I admire). But most of my calls with my mentor revolve around saying “NO!” to distracting projects, and staying focused on my key goals.

 

So which is right? Yes to everything or No to anything? Well, it depends where you are in your entrepreneurial journey.

 

In the Founder Phase, you probably should say “YES!” to almost everything. If a client invites you to speak at their staff lunch, and you’re terrified of public speaking–say yes anyway. If your mentor tells you to take coffee to six business owners this week, say “YES!” and go get some cups. If you’re invited to coffee by another entrepreneur, say “YES!” even if you aren’t sure how you’ll get more business out of it. You don’t have a lot of money in Founder Phase, but you can invest time. Spread it around!

 

In the Farmer Phase, your default should probably be “YES.” You’re trying to diversify revenue streams, add staff, and create opportunities for them. It’s hard to keep an abundant mindset, and VERY hard to accept that some people will do things better than you will. It’s hard to allow staff to make mistakes. But Farmer Phase really forces you to grow as a leader for the first time, and that means managing the process instead of micromanaging your people. You need to allow things to happen. Say “YES” to others. Say “YES, and…” when you feel they need more guidance. Say “YES, soon” when your plate is overfilled but you don’t want to discourage anyone.

 

As Sivers wrote in his book Anything You Want, “You can do anything you want, but you can’t do it all right now.” A frustrated, burned-out Farmer will find it easy to slip into the “NO” mindset. But it’s a trap: “NO” paints you into a corner. While you can’t do everything, and you need to prioritize your time based on your effective hourly rate, it’s easy to make yourself the bottleneck if you say no to everyone else.

 

In the Tinker Phase, your default should be “NO, thanks” with room for exceptions. This is where Sivers’ “HELL YEAH or no” philosophy fits best. Tinkers find so many opportunities that they can literally harm themselves by trying to tackle too many. While a great entrepreneur can juggle two–sometimes even three–big projects with help, they’ll have to say “NO” to a dozen others. And it will be hard, because they’ll be turning down good ideas to focus on the great ones. No one likes to turn down a good opportunity, especially after years where good opportunities didn’t come along often. But the Tinker Phase is all about personal growth, and that means choosing only the BEST uses of your time.

 

In Thief Phase, I recommend saying YES! to service and NO! to everything else. Ask yourself: Who will this serve? and then decide if the project or meeting is part of your mission.

 

Like many decisions in business, the right answer depends on where you are in your entrepreneurial journey. If you’re not sure where you sit, take the test here.

 

 

 

 

Episode 137: Charu Sharma

This weekend in San Francisco, TwoBrain held its first Tinker Meetup.

 

Entrepreneurs who have complete financial and time freedom, and are seeking their next project, are called “Tinkers”. You can take the test to find out where you are in your entrepreneurial journey here.

 

One of our speakers was Charu Sharma, CEO of NextPlay. Charu has had an amazing life:

In 2003, Charu and her brother fought two goons in a train robbery, saving the lives of women on the train. She later represented India in South Korea, fighting in Taekwondo. Chapters of textbooks are dedicated to her in India.

When she moved to the US for a four-year University program, she founded two startups out of her dorm room, lived at sea for a semester, and visited all 7 continents on internships.

Now she has 5 National Awards, expeditions to all 7 continents, over 600 stage shows, and three books published, Charu was enlisted as a “Power Woman alongside such notables as Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Gandhi, and Melinda Gates by Youth Incorporated magazine in March 2012.

 

Our mission at TwoBrain is to make 1,000,000 entrepreneurs wealthy. Charu has created Go Against the Flow to educate 1 million women to take risks and build their own businesses.

Charu has contributed to Huffington Post, Venture Beat, Business Insider, The Times of India and Youth Incorporated among various publications. She organized TEDxRiverNorth in Chicago, and she has spoken at two TEDx conferences on risk-taking and entrepreneurship respectively.

Yeah, she’s kind of a big deal. And she’s still a few years away from turning 30.

 

In this episode, Charu is interviewed live by Jay Williams, a Bay Area TwoBrain Mentor. Her responses are both brilliant and sincere: no canned answers, lots of laughter, and some poignant quotes. Like these:

 

“I don’t want to just look good on paper.” Charu’s resume is amazing, but she actually goes out and DOES things. As an entrepreneur, that’s got to make your toes tingle.

 

“Instead of complaining about the rules, I want to get to the top and change the rules.”

 

“The best thing I can do for my company is to get lots of coffees with other entrepreneurs.”

 

“Mentors play a huge role for entrepreneurs, but also for your staff.”

 

“You need to create equal access to institutional knowledge.” – Meaning you can’t just project that your staff knows what you know.

 

On facing a tough challenge: “It made me test how much I wanted to do it.”

 

(I won’t give you more details – you’ll have to listen to the full story. WOW.)

 

 

Marketing Monday: 3 Critical Questions Every Advertiser Must Answer Before Campaign Selection

 

Reach, Awareness, Conversions Oh My!  Choosing the right ad campaign type in the Facebook ad manager platform can be tricky.

But here in the Two-Brain Marketing lab, we’ve created an easy 3-step process that you can follow to determine which campaign type is the right one for you.

Click to Watch the video! (Can’t see it in your email? Click here.)

If you need help choosing the right type of ad campaign for your business, book a call with a mentor!

Two-Brain Clients Click HERE

If You’re New to Two-Brain Click HERE

From Evaluations to Excellence

Sharing responsibility with your staff is tough.

 

Your ego gets in the way (“No one can do this as well as I can!”) Your budget gets in the way (“I can just do this myself and keep the money!”) And even your watch gets in the way (“It takes them twice as long to do the job!”)

 

You know you need to leverage your time to achieve your EHR goal. But it’s hard to keep your fingers out of the machine, isn’t it? Here’s how to guide your staff to deliver the gold standards in their role so you can work on growing your business:

 

Founder Phase: take your roles and tasks sheet, and apply a scale of 1 to 10 to each task. Every three months, book a staff evaluation with each person, and review the tasks on their sheet. Score them from 1 to 10, and then highlight their bright spots and opportunities for growth. Use the “sandwich method”:

 

Farmer Phase: Sit with each of your staff every quarter. Ask them to redo their ‘perfect day’ exercise, then review their goals using our Career Roadmap tool. Then get into the nitty gritty parts: ask them to review themselves at each task using the evaluation scale above. Compare their answers to your own. Ask them how you can help them improve.

 

Tinker Phase: At this stage, it’s no longer enough to have people check boxes like cogs in a machine; your process problems have been resolved, and your role now is to lead people. This means putting the right people in the right seats. You also have five reports or fewer, but someone has to measure and manage the quality of your service. Start by delivering a clear vision of your mission to your staff. Then use personality assessments to make sure your key staff are sitting in the right seats. Next, measure the effect of your service through client surveys and discussions, and deliver that feedback to your leadership team. Have them carry your mission to your staff and evaluate their progress, as above. But adding a layer of external Quality Control is absolutely essential; otherwise, you’ll walk around your business looking for problems instead of going outside and looking for opportunities.

 

Need a Quality Control expert to measure your excellence for you? We have that. Email dani@twobrainbusiness.com for help.

 

Thief Phase: Sit with your CEO and ask, “What problems do you have, and how can I help you solve them?” Your purpose is simply to build the renown of your brand (both business and personal.) The CEO should have reports created by an independent source, like a Quality Control company.

 

Your goals don’t change as your business grows; but your leverage does. Your ability to impact more people depends on your growth as a leader. You must share your mission with your team; you must evolve your brand strategy; and you must also evolve your evaluation process.

 

Every Millionaire Has A Mentor

“If my business was making money, I wouldn’t be calling you!”

 

I hear this message every single week. We do dozens of free calls with entrepreneurs, and many of them are in trouble. They wait until they NEED help before they look for it. And I can’t blame them.

 

I did the same thing.

 

I thought, “I’ll figure this out myself! I’m smart!” What I should have thought was, “Let me burn my cognitive candles on new problems, and find the people who have already figured this stuff out.”

 

When I finally DID get it mostly figured out, I didn’t stop receiving mentorship. No way: I doubled down. And you know what I found? There’s no ceiling to it.

 

Now I travel and learn with millionaires. They ALL have mentors. Every single one. Most of them aren’t in the fitness industry, but the millionaires WILL appear in our industry soon.

 

As soon as we all stop confusing “profitable” with “successful”, as soon as we stop accepting the minimum viability of our business and start thinking, “How can I actually get wealthy?” we’ll all find mentors.

 

I guarantee it.

 

This weekend, I’m meeting with two groups: first, with a dozen entrepreneurs who are working through the “valley of death” between $2M and $5M in earnings. I’m a student in that group. Second, with 30 entrepreneurs who have entered the “Tinker Phase” of entrepreneurship and want to talk about what real success in our industry can mean. I’m lucky enough to lead that group with Jay Williams and Jeff Smith, two other TwoBrain mentors.

 

Success doesn’t mean a high gross revenue projection, or a pocketful of buzzwords like “run rate”. It doesn’t mean simply “being excellent” at coaching–though that is a prerequisite. Success means being excellent at business. And no one achieves excellence without a coach. I hope you teach that lesson to your clients, and live that example yourself.

 

You can use a mentor for triage. You can wait until you’re in trouble, like I did. Or you can be smart, and follow in the footsteps of the most successful. Success leaves clues. Follow them.

 

 

Why We’re Going To Europe, Brazil and New Zealand

Germany. France. England. Brazil. Italy. Sweden. New Zealand.

 

The TwoBrain Tour Bus will stop in each over the next four months.

 

Our mission is to serve 1,000,000 entrepreneurs.

 

Every business–in Alaska or Alabama, Australia or Austria–has unique problems and opportunities. But we have more in common than we have differences: an abundance of care for our clients, and the need for a model that allows for a profitable business!

 

We serve entrepreneurs on every continent, and we KNOW we can help.

 

Just last night, we welcomed business owners from Holland, the UK, and good ol’ Ohio to the TwoBrain Family.

 

Who’s footing the bill? Me. I’ve committed to helping gym owners. Entrepreneurs asked, so we’re going.

 

I’ve also had my book, Two-Brain Business 2.0, translated into German, Italian, French and Portuguese.

 

We’ve added subtitles to our Incubator modules in German, French, Italian and Portuguese (you can even see the FREE “help first” videos with subtitles in each language here.)

 

None of this stuff comes cheap. In fact, it costs tens of thousands to do it! So WHY are we doing it?

 

Because we believe in THE MISSION.

 

We believe in THE MOVEMENT.

 

And we’re ALL IN.

 

THIS IS HOW WE CHANGE THE WORLD. Tour dates coming soon!

 

You, my friend, are the lever that moves the world. Entrepreneurship is that fulcrum. You’ve taken a huge leap in life to open a business. The least I can do is jump to help you, and show you the step-by-step process to success. Thank you for jumping, thank you for inviting us, and thank you for being worth it!

Episode 136: How to Embrace Fear and Lean Into Stress

Whether you are starting a brand new business or you are having to go back and make difficult changes, you are going to have to embrace stress and lean into challenging events. Today I want to talk about my experiences working through struggles and some tips for how to handle difficult situations.

 

First, your body doesn’t know the difference between fear and excitement. The body’s default response when it comes to surging adrenaline is to be scared. A lot of times all that is needed is to recognize that you are just excited and take control.

 

Second, I want you to know that anticipation is often worse than the actual event. Many times your mind will go to the worst case scenario and then when a tough situation actually happens, it’s not so bad. If you can choose when to do the hard thing, choose to do it right now. The hard part is the anticipation.

 

Third, put the event into perspective. Will you remember this event in a year? There was a time when I was extremely susceptible to online feedback and it would absolutely tear me up. In reality this was extremely ridiculous and the fact that if got under my skin is just silly. Keeping things in perspective in all aspects of your life is extremely important.

 

Timeline:

0:30 – Changes to the Two Brain Incubator Program

2:43 – How to handle struggles in your business

4:50 – Lean into the scary stuff and embracing stress

6:41 – The anticipation of a tough situation is often times much worse than the event itself

7:38 – Putting important life and business events into perspective

11:38 – The secret to why Two Brain has become so successful

13:09 – Two Brain Stories with Kalle Solberg

 

The End of Ego

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man isn’t a king. He’s a slave.

 

He’s a slave because he has something that no one else has, and he’s going to spend all his energy protecting it. Every decision he makes will start with the question, “Will this endanger my one good eye?” He’ll anchor his power on that single point of difference. He’ll take a position of fragile authority–“Well, as someone who has an eye in his head, it looks like this“–but he’ll lose it all if he walks into a pointy stick. So everything he does, every rule he makes, every decision will be made to avoid walking into pointed sticks. And eventually, he’ll lose it anyway.

 

The real king, in the land of the blind, isn’t the almost-blind. It’s the person who embraced their blindness first and most fully. THAT person will lead, because they’ll have the most to teach.

 

Two-Brain Business is the largest gym mentorship agency in the world. We’re translating our materials into six languages. We have 20 mentors scattered across Europe, Canada, the US and New Zealand. We have our own Quality Control Department and Mentor Training Academy. Other “competitors” in the space aren’t within a hundred miles of our service. My first book, Two-Brain Business, didn’t have page numbers or even good editing, but it’s sold over 20,000 copies in English alone.

 

When I write a blog post for entrepreneurs, it’s usually valuable. I get letters back telling me so. And the reason is NOT because I pretend to have sight that I don’t have, but because I’m honest about my mistakes, and what I’ve learned from them.

 

“Well, I used to bang my shins off the coffee table a LOT. Then I learned to count my steps from the kitchen to the fireplace.”

“I predicted that my sense of smell would become super-strong, but that didn’t actually happen.”

“I tried the telescoping cane, and I found that holding it my palm dampened the little vibrations too much…”

 

 

Why? Because I embraced blindness. I discovered my blindness early, and turned myself over to it, and explored it completely.

 

If you own a CrossFit gym, you know what I mean: we’re surrounded by experts who have NEVER made a mistake.  The rest of us are all blind, but they have one little eye, and it tells them: you need a wine bar in your gym! You need to take the vowels out of your name, and run your gym under four different brands because…branding! You need to de-affiliate! Re-affiliate! Cross-affiliate! Everything they do must be right, because it’s THEM doing it!

 

If you’re not a gym owner, but follow popular superpreneurs on social media, you’ve seen it too: they say so much, and get you so motivated, but never: “Ooooh, boy, I really screwed THAT one up.”

 

Who do people like and trust? People like themselves. And because we’ve all screwed up, we’re drawn to others who aren’t perfect, and suspicious of those who hide their mistakes.

 

No matter who your audience, your authority will be enhanced if you share your mistakes.

 

If you’re a personal trainer who struggled to lose weight in the past, tell everyone. If you’re an accountant who used to have a huge problem with organization, tell that story. If you’re a dentist who was born with bad teeth, write about it. Show people you were just like them, before taking the journey that you can now guide them through.

 

I’m nowhere near perfect. You don’t have to be perfect either. Perfect is the enemy of great.

 

Let people see the gritty parts; they’ll grab on tighter.

 

 

 

How Much Should You Pay Yourself?

Your business exists to serve you.

 

But your own pay usually comes LAST, right? And if you’re in the Founder Phase–sometimes even in the Farmer Phase–your pay might just be a combination of pocket lint and warm wishes.

 

Paying yourself is more than a math problem: it’s a habit problem. Your expenses will always expand to fill your budget. You’ll get pretty creative to pay the rent if you don’t have the money, but you won’t work as hard to pay yourself. You’ll opt for martyrdom instead. You need to develop the habit of paying yourself first, or you’ll never pay yourself enough.

 

Here’s how to start.

 

In the Founder Phase, your goal is “breakeven plus”. That means your business is cash-flow-positive, and you’re paying yourself something. Some of us have the benefit of a family who depends on our income, and we’re forced to cut that check on the first Friday. But others are willing to wait…and wait…and tell themselves they’re “reinvesting”, when they’re really just spending. If you’re in the Founder Phase, don’t wait to for your cash flow to match your expenses before you pay yourself. Pay yourself SOMETHING from day one. In other words, pay yourself a wage instead of waiting for profit.

Exercise: write yourself a check for $100 per week, payable every Friday. Date them in advance, sign them, and take them to the bank for deposit. Now the money is coming out without a conscious decision from you every week.

If you’re still tempted to cancel the payments on the checks, write them to your wife instead.

Every three months, give yourself a mandatory raise.

 

In the Farmer Phase, your goal is to reach a 33% profit margin in your business. This is different from paying yourself a wage; you’ll switch to taking profit PLUS a wage.

 

Start by finding your replacement value: what are others in your industry paid to do the work you’re doing? If you were to replace yourself in the primary deliverable of your business, what would it cost? We use PayScale.com for these estimates, but you can use any anchor you like.

 

For example, if you own a pizza business and not paying yourself, take a look at what pizza makers are paid. Compare that to your own income. If you’re not paying yourself at least that much, start writing yourself checks in advance for that amount, and commit to giving yourself a raise in six months.

 

Finally, if you’re already paying yourself a LITTLE, but not enough (or worse, “covering your bills” with the business profits but not actually giving yourself a paycheck) take the next step:

 

Calculate your Effective Hourly Rate (EHR). Divide your total income, including all benefits from the business, into the total time you spend working at, in or on your business.

 

For example, if you’re paying yourself $500 per week and working 40 hours at the pizza shop, 12 hours on bookkeeping and 3 hours cleaning on the weekends, your EHR is $9.09 ($500 / 55 hours.)

 

Then tell your boss what a jerk he is, and that he can take his lousy job and…wait, that’s you.

 

If you’re in the Founder Phase, commit to paying yourself the industry minimum. Then commit to bringing your EHR up by working slightly less or paying yourself slightly more. 15% raises are usually the starting point, because they’re hard to notice.

 

If you’re in the Farmer Phase, work up to the industry average over time. Give yourself pre-written “raises” until you reach that point. Write checks for the next year if you have to, moving each amount up by a few dollars at a time.

For example, week 1: $500 check

Week 3: $540 check

Week 5: $580 check

…until you hit the average pay for the average worker doing your job. Of course, we won’t stop there; we’ll continue to take profits above and beyond that pay (which is the reason we opened the business!) But we’ll no longer starve ourself to build up a bank of profit and then blow it on unnecessary necessities.

 

Your goal, in the Farmer Phase, is a minimum EHR of $50 per hour. Boost your EHR by cutting your hours down to 45 or less per week, and increase your pay incrementally at the same time.

 

In Tinker…well, we’ll get there. For now, start paying yourself!

 

 

 

 

Episode 135: How Excellence Makes You Money

The Pursuit of Excellence is a CrossFit hallmark, but it is not unique to the fitness industry.

 

From the start, we’ve written that excellence in coaching means great results for your clients. Excellence in business means great results for your family, your clients and your staff.

 

Excellence in coaching does NOT make you excellent in business. They’re completely different skillsets. And if you own a gym, excellence in business is your job.

 

This doesn’t mean being excellent once, or having peak moments of excellence, but being consistently excellent. Today we talk with Danielle Brown, manager of quality control at Two-Brain Business, on how to achieve operational excellence and consistency.

 

Dani will give us step-by-step instructions to build a framework for excellence in your business. She’ll also tell you exactly how we do it at TwoBrain: from hiring future mentors; giving mentors feedback; continuing staff education and ensuring excellence for OUR clients. Then we’ll be discussing the “Queen Bee Role”  that we mentioned in last week’s episode.

 

Call her Dani or Danielle; call her coach or use Her Excellency: Dani is a favorite at TwoBrain.

 

Danielle Brown has been with Two Brain from the start, first as a client and now as a mentor.

 

She opened her CrossFit gym in 2011, where she dove into learning anything and everything about business that she possibly could. Since then she has experienced it all and knows what it takes to run a successful gym and helps other entrepreneurs achieve success in their gyms.

 

Join us today and take good notes as this episode will truly be invaluable. After listening, be sure to head over to twobrain.com/test and see where you are at in your entrepreneurial journey!

 

About Danielle:

https://twobrainbusiness.com/mentor-item/danielle-brown/

 

Timeline:

3:03 – Introduction to Quality Control

4:35 – Danielle Brown’s journey from Two Brain Mentor to manager of Quality Control

7:18 – The truth about coaching and business success in CrossFit

9:22 – How important is it to be awesome a the service that you provide?

11:11 – Where to find the best practices for your industry?

14:10 – Setting an example within your business for staff

16:08 – How are mentors at Two Brain selected and trained?

19:41 – The Two Brain Mentoring quality control process

23:52 – How to know whether your staff is running at a gold standard?

25:32 – How to gain comfortability with reviewing the performance of your staff?

26:45 – The importance of conveying what the gold standard is in your business

28:28 – The effects of implementing a quality control system on gym retention

30:16 – Why Quality Control might be the Queen Bee role in your business

31:51 – Two Brain Stories with Brian Strump