Chris Cooper's Blog, page 94

Marketing Opportunity: The New U.S. Army Fitness Test

The U.S. Army is likely about to get fitter—and that’s great news for American gym owners.

In 2022, the army is rolling out a new version of the Army Combat Fitness Test—and it’s no longer just push-ups, sit-ups and running.

The test now includes six elements:

3 rep-max deadlift (trap/hex bar).Standing power throw (essentially hip extension).Hand-release push-ups.Sprint-drag-carry (90-lb. sled, two 40-lb. kettlebells).Plank.2-mile run.

If you run a microgym, you can instantly see that you’re hyper equipped to prepare someone to ace this test.

While gym owners and some soldiers might view the new test as a better evaluation of combat fitness, GQ.com reported on May 25 that the revised Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) isn’t an overwhelming success. Among the concerns:

High failure rates for females (44 percent in March 2022).Struggles by reservists.Increased equipment is required for training.An advantage might be given to younger males who already work out.

I’ll let you form your own opinions about whether the test and its scoring are appropriate. (Click here for a downloadable scoring table.)

For my part, I know that a good coach can get a client through the test. Sure, some very deconditioned people might have to train longer and harder to pass, but I didn’t see any minimum numbers that looked way out of reach if a motivated client trained with a good coach.

Example: The minimum passing number for the 3RM deadlift is 140 lb. for men and 120 lb. for women. These numbers are warm-up weight for anyone who’s done any proper weight training, and they are very achievable by others if a trainer provides the correct plan for building strength.

And that’s the point for gym owners and fitness coaches: Some current and aspiring soldiers might need help passing the new test. You can provide it. That’s a marketing opportunity.

Offer to Help

As of Oct. 1 2022, the new test will be standard, so now’s the perfect time to help people prepare for it. You’ve got four months, and a person can accomplish a lot in that period with the right fitness and nutrition coach.

To get your marketing efforts started, here’s a simple plan:

1. Write a blog explaining how you can help people pass the ACFT.

2. Talk about your ACFT training plan in your newsletter and ask people to send it to military personnel they know or anyone who might be thinking about enlisting.

3. Post about services related to the ACFT on social media.

4. Ask any current soldiers in your membership if they need help or know anyone who does.

I’m sure you can think of all sorts of other things you could do, such as group training options, strength or running programs tailored to people who struggle in just one area of the test, dry runs of the ACFT with feedback and technique tips, nutrition plans for ACFT success and so on.

Whatever you do, don’t miss out on this opportunity to help people in uniform. While some soldiers will score a perfect 600 without much effort, others will wake up in a cold sweat worried about failing.

Make sure people know you can help, then get them ready to ace the ACFT.

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Your Questions Answered: Q&A With Coop

The post Your Questions Answered: Q&A With Coop appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Help First: How to Make Being Generous a Business Strategy

The post Help First: How to Make Being Generous a Business Strategy appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

A Social-Media Guide to the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago

Will you be in the Windy City on June 4 and 5 to hang with the top gym owners in the world?

Will you be at home wishing you could be there?

Or are you just curious about what happens when a bunch of microgym owners gather together to increase the impact they have on the world?

In all three cases, the answer is “social media.”

For Summit Attendees

If you’ll be in Chicago, we want to see you and hear from you—in person and online.

After two years of digital Summits due to the pandemic, we get to hang out in person again. It’s going to be amazing to see everyone and feel the momentum we generate together.

My request: Connect with each other and document it!

Your plan:

Follow Two-Brain Business on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.Meet other gym owners and follow all their social media accounts. Be sure to follow back the people who add you. I firmly believe every attendee should leave the Summit with at least 100 new followers.Send and respond to DMs so you can continue conversations once you’re back home.Take selfies, make Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts—and tag Two-Brain in all of them. Talk about what you’ve learned, who you’ve met and how you’re fired up to take action. Tell your clients how you’re working to become a better gym owner. Tell the people in your city that you’re connecting with the best gym owners in the world to make your service even better. Tell other gym owners how they can serve more clients and help us improve the health of the world.Follow the world-class presenters and leave questions or comments for them.Use the hashtag #twobrainsummit2022.Be prepared to chat with our media team—we want to tell the world about you and your success!
For Wish-I-Were-There Gym Owners

If you just can’t make it to Chicago. Be sure to follow all our social media accounts. We’ll use them to pass on great moments and key pieces of advice, and we’ll have some fun. Check in regularly for updates, and feel free to ask questions or leave comments.

Check the hashtag #twobrainsummit2022 and follow Two-Brain gym owners who are sharing their experiences. Message them and connect.

Social media is the next best thing to being there live.

For the Curious Crew

If you’re reading this and have been considering mentorship, the Two-Brain Summit will give you a look at what mentorship can do for your business. I’d encourage you to follow our accounts and review the content in #twobrainsummit2022. You’ll see what we’re all about.

But it might be even more important for you to check out what other gym owners are posting about the Summit. Of course we’re going to tell you how great we are. But if you want a ground-level picture of what mentorship can do for a gym, review the stuff posted by the people who attend the Summit.

Go even further: Follow Summit attendees and send them DMs. Ask them if mentorship is worth it. Are they getting ROI? Are they satisfied? Are they earning more? You’ll get a marketing-free, genuine response from a real gym owner who has the exact same goals you have.

If you’re skeptical about mentorship, this is your chance to do some real research so you can make smart decisions for your business.

Follow Us, Learn and Interact

Whether you’re in Chicago or at home, you can participate in the 2022 Two-Brain Summit online.

Here are those accounts one more time: Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

The post A Social-Media Guide to the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Content Marketing in Gyms: A 5-Step Framework

You might be the best gym around but no one will know about you unless you tell them.

In his mentorship practice, Chris Cooper stresses the need for his clients to produce meaningful, consistent content in order to get and maintain clients. But where to start?

In this podcast, Chris lays out a content model that will get you in the practice of regularly producing content. In this clear, step-by-step guide, you’ll learn what you must do each day to produce great content that resonates with your existing clients and attracts new ones.

Book a free call

2:50 – Publish 5x per week on a platform that you own

3:23 – Motivation Monday: Give people a reason to come to your gym

4:13 – Teaching Tuesday: Teach something helpful (meal prep, how to do a squat, etc)

5:00 – “Who” Wednesday: Who is coming to your gym? Tell their story

6:15 – Thank-you Thursday: Gratitude post

8:00 – Bright Spot Friday

The post Content Marketing in Gyms: A 5-Step Framework appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Gym Owner Profitable on Day 1 With 83 Members

Mike Warkentin: 0:02

83 clients on grand opening day? This is obviously a typo. Everyone knows that you can’t open with clients. That is a myth. You have to lose money for months. You have to max out your line of credit. You have to sleep at the gym. You’ve gotta fight with your partner over money—Jason Tebedo: 0:15

Mike , Mike, Mike, that is completely a myth. A hundred percent.Mike Warkentin: 0:18

You did this?Jason Tebedo: 0:20

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.Mike Warkentin: 0:23

Uh , OK. I need to hear the story. Are you ready to share your secrets with the rest of us?Jason Tebedo: 0:26

I would love to. Any way that I can help other people.Mike Warkentin: 0:32

All right . Well, to our listeners , welcome to Two-Brain Radio. This is Jason Tebedo of CrossFit Angier and he’s here to tell us how he opened with 83 members. Before we get into that story, I wanna ask you to hit like and subscribe or ring the notifications bell wherever you are watching or listening with my thanks. Now, Jason, I’m not gonna keep these people waiting. The big question: How’d you open with 83 members ? Tell me what’s up .Jason Tebedo: 0:54

Well , I tell you , I couldn’t have done it without my mentor. You know, working with Joleen Bingham was absolutely just crucial to me being able to open up with 83 members. You know, she laid out kind OF a foundation as far as how my business plan should be structured, moving into a founder’s club, a pricing binder , no sweat intros. And I think the thing that really worked for me as being a former military guy is having a proven model that we know that works. And then being able to action that, you know, too many times, we think we’re the smartest person in the room and we try to invent these things, and ways of doing things. But, you know, I don’t know how many gyms Two-Brain has, but you guys have tried everything and seen what works and what doesn’t work. And I just think it was absolutely instrumental as far as us doing the right things to get people in here.Mike Warkentin: 1:43

OK . So you mentioned a couple things that I wanna really dig into. And one that I wanna know about is Founders Club. Talk to me a little bit about that, because I’ll tell you the quick story. When I started as a gym owner , I started a facility and I think we had, I wanna say maybe eight people , so few that I could keep track of it on an Excel spreadsheet and we were losing money and I was very nervous about the whole thing . So tell me about Founders Club and how that worked for you.Jason Tebedo: 2:06

Yeah , I think the greatest thing about founders club for us was kind of the psychological aspects of it. You know, people love to see their name, love to see it in action. So we really tried to promote that they were a part of this community and we were building it from the ground up . So we created Founders Club t-shirts, put everybody’s names on the back. I’m a little bit of a woodworker myself, engraved everybody’s names and put it up. And just having those aspects of that just really allowed us to really build those numbers. And not only that, you know, and I’m sure we’ll probably get into it a little bit, but affinity marketing, you know, once you get those, you know, grade-A type of clients coming in that you know that have a lot of influence in the ecosystem and having them help you leverage your founder’s club, it was just absolutely instrumental.Mike Warkentin: 2:50

So for those who don’t know , the Founders Club concept is the idea that before you even open, you start telling people here is the stuff that you can get and you start packaging things. And Chris has been always clear, Chris Cooper, Two-Brain founder, clear not to discount certain things, right? You don’t wanna cheapen your membership and attract people that are just there for that tourist package, but there are some things that you can package together and create these really cool packages. And even like, you know the t-shirts that you’ve got, you have to earn it, you can’t buy it, that kind of stuff, giving people a sense of, I was there first, I have the rock and roll t-shirt from when they were playing in the club, not the stadium, that kind of thing. So tell me about, like, what did you offer in your founder’s club and then how did you get this thing out in the community? So people could find out about you before- I’m guessing before you even had a building in a space, correct?Jason Tebedo: 3:32

Yeah. Well, we did have the building in the space, so we kind of -Mike Warkentin: 3:36

But not officially opened .Jason Tebedo: 3:37

Yeah, no, no, no, no. We didn’t officially open until I think, you know , a couple weeks ago, but you know, just advertising the ability of, “We’re a new gym in the area. We’re bringing something unique to the area”, providing a different value for them. But once I got in here specifically within the Founders package, we offered, you know , the shirt , obviously we offered free access to a bunch of different seminars that we’re gonna be having throughout the year. We offered a one-on-one nutrition counseling . Even my most advanced athletes that came in definitely took advantage of that to really nail down their nutrition. And sometimes, you know, coaches need coaches too, no matter how much you know, you just sometimes need that kick in the pants to get moving. So I mean that coupled with , you know, all the other things, the social media shout outs , and I’m sure we’ll probably get to the Two-Brain marketing course here sometime during our conversation, but, you know, using the power of social media to celebrate these people that were joining fueled the effort for other people to join also.Mike Warkentin: 4:35

So you mentioned some of the stuff that’s in that package and the idea there is like, you’re offering value, but you’re not giving away memberships, not saying, you know , get a free month and things like that. And like we’ve seen people do that where you give away free months. And all of a sudden, you know, the intro package runs out, you’ve still got members, still gotta serve them . The costs are piling up, it’s a bad play, but by doing things like access to some seminars, some things that don’t cost you a ton of money and that t-shirt, you know, really is a big deal. So you give people something that they want and you give them status almost more than anything else. And Two-Brain has a complete playbook for this Founders Club. You can take a look at some of this stuff if you get Chris Cooper’s book , “Start a Gym”, it’s also in there. But the idea is you are getting people to come and sign up for something and you’re giving them some extra value. And that keeps them. Tell me, where did the very first person come from? Or who was number one?Jason Tebedo: 5:22

Oh man, that’s a great question. I would have to think about that a little bit. Obviously, you know , some of my friends and, you know, family members, they were like the first kinda seed clients per se. You know, they helped build the gym and they really wanted to be part of that foundation. But once they were established, you know, a lot of other members came in from no beginning of Crossfit, you know, just as cheery as can be and using, you know, the social media type stuff that you guys recommend we’re able to get in a lot of people. You know, Two-Brain always talks about the client, avatar, the client avatar. Our client avatar is a woman over 35 years old , 45 years old, maybe two kids, the kids are just about eight or nine. They’re kinda independent. That’s that one time in a woman’s life where she’s getting back to focusing on herself. And we really tried to, you know , kind of gear towards that and really give back to, you know , the mothers that have given so much to us .Mike Warkentin: 6:15

So do you remember, you know, the first time- like friends and family are awesome, right? Like they’re still members, but at the same time, you’re like, “Oh, those are kinda freebies .” Right? Do you remember when you started finding people in that 83 that were like, you didn’t know who they were? Was that a big deal for you to see that this thing was actually working?Jason Tebedo: 6:29

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was just, it was a lot of trial and error. I felt on my part trial and error because I was implementing strategies that you guys had. So when it came to like unfamiliar situations, I could always rely on my mentor to really kind of help me out and navigate those type of situations.Mike Warkentin: 6:47

I love it. And I love hearing like- Chris Cooper always writes about this, about the records of how many people have signed up, like which gyms have signed up with the most people or started with the most people. And 83 is one of the top scores, which I think is super cool.Jason Tebedo: 7:00

Mike, if I can add one thing.Mike Warkentin: 7:03

Yeah. Please.Jason Tebedo: 7:04

Kaleda, she set that bar high for me, I’ve been with Two-Brain for years , I’ve read all of Chris’s books . And when I heard her podcast from humble beginnings and , you know, being in, I quote, I think she said a disenfranchised area, a rural area, you know , and being able to bring that many members in, it was just kinda proof for me.Mike Warkentin: 7:20

OK. Well, there you go. I shout out to Kaleda Connell, one of our mentors. I gotta ask you this now. So take me a little bit further back in time. Take me to the time you decided to open a gym and then to the point where you signed up for the Two-Brain Startup program, how did that whole thing come about?Jason Tebedo: 7:33

Yeah, so, you know, opening a gym has always been a dream of mine, you know, from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan to just serving in the military. It was just always kind of a long term goal for me, all the sacrifices I made were gonna be one day for me to open a gym . So when I got in the military, I worked for a couple tech companies. I worked for a company called Salesforce, who’s brilliant with the cost-relationship management, which kind of like started that kind of , that passion for not only opening a gym, but being able to open a gym that served its members. So time fast-forwards, you know, a couple years after the military, I’m working for a “global gym” that offers CrossFit classes. And we did a member survey and at that member survey and the members identified maybe two or three little changes that they wanted to implement, you know, maybe a couple grand worth of changes that would greatly enhance customer satisfaction and the gym failed to do that. So they started hemorrhaging people, hemorrhaging people left and right, and losing that long term engagement with them , and the revenue that they might have brought in just for a couple of small changes. And that was really the catalyst for my change. And I reached out to Two-Brain. I was immediately plugged in with your amazing business template. I don’t care if you’re a gym or anybody. You need to look at the free template you guys offer, it’s phenomenal. I started implementing that. And then I was paired- Yeah, yeah. To the T.Mike Warkentin: 8:52

. OK . That’s good to know.Jason Tebedo: 8:54

Yeah .Mike Warkentin: 8:54

Oh yeah . I Interrupted there. Keep going.Jason Tebedo: 8:57

No , all I was gonna say is that, you know, with that business template, it really was a forcing function for me to kind of do the next steps in order to really kind of prepare me to work with a mentor. Now I feel, I feel like Joleen could have really guided me. My mentor could have guided me through the business plan and stuff like that. But the fact that I used some free resources that you had up front that kinda really put me a step forward and we could start focusing on higher level things .Mike Warkentin: 9:22

So when you started with that free resource, that’s available on the internet , we’ll put that link in the show notes . You guys can check it out . What made you decide then to take the next step and actually sign up for Startup? And again, ’cause we’re talking about Startup there’s, you’re looking at balancing a ton of costs. So why invest in that?Jason Tebedo: 9:38

Yeah. So I’m a very skeptical person, you know, after being in sales, you know, I know that people can be a little shady and when you’re, you know, you hear all the stuff on Two-Brain’s podcast and other podcasts, this is the best, this is the greatest thing. But hearing continual people emphasizing the importance of working with you guys and going to multiple different CrossFit sites and seeing the No-Sweat Intro, which is, you know, that brand, that you know that they’re probably working with Two-Brain and seeing how successful some of these gyms are. That was really the catalyst that kind of brought me to Two-Brain and kinda got that started for me.Mike Warkentin: 10:13

So now when you get to the Startup program, what else did you learn in there? What did Joleen teach you that, that maybe you didn’t have a clue about or maybe something that you tweaked and did a little better and how did that stuff help you ?Jason Tebedo: 10:24

Well, I tell you , Startup is not just, you know, working with a Two-Brain mentor, but you also have your marketing team. Which was, you know, absolutely amazing, you know, working with them , given these true and proven social media posts that just people flock to or respond to was really kind of, you know, the big thing behind bringing clients in and then having Joleen there with me and taking me through Ramp-up or Startup and having me, you know, crossing my Ts and dotting my I’s administratively, developing SOPs, you know, getting a program for our Onramp program, developing all these different things. And you know, really holding me accountable was huge. You know, Joleen would give me , “Hey, I want you to work on these three things.” And next call, right away. “What’s the status of this? What’s the status of that?” And here I’m investing, you know, a significant portion of my revenue into this mentorship, but yet I felt like I was working for Two-Brain. And that just kind of got me going , you know?Mike Warkentin: 11:24

Did that process, did that link up with your mindset as a military guy? You know, you’ve got a task, you got a plan, you gotta report on it, you got accountability. Was that a part of it?Jason Tebedo: 11:32

Yeah , yeah, absolutely. You know, there’s a right and a left side of the brain, you know, military people tend to be very left sided. And we tend to focus on the task and we like to see what’s already been done and just emulate- model what has been proven. And I think that was the power of Two-Brain. And I mean, I’ll say this all the time and I hate to kind of go off the track here. But Anyone who’s listening- you know, sometimes you just gotta shut up and just listen to someone who’s done it before. Listen to someone who’s made mistakes . You know?Mike Warkentin: 12:02

I didn’t do that. You know, when I started the gym in 2011 I think we actually put in a building but it was around for a couple years before that- I just tried to figure it out myself and it didn’t go super well. Like, we managed to survive and get through it, but wow. Did I ever make some mistakes that I didn’t need to! And it’s kind of, I look back now and I think if I had had some resources or if I had been smart enough to use the resources that were available, there weren’t many, but there were some, I would’ve been in a different spot. So it wasn’t until I started connecting. The tweak for me was really when I sat into stanza regionals, and we’d always talk as gym owners, we’d talk about, Hey, do you have this problem, that problem, and so forth, and we’d solve some problems there. It never occurred to me that this could be a bigger thing. And then Chris Cooper figured it out and put it all together and solved the problems for everyone and replicated essentially those, you know, offhand, slightly drunken conversations after regionals ended oh , no , my marketing- Well, yeah, you wanna know what my marketing plan was?Jason Tebedo: 12:58

No.Mike Warkentin: 12:59

Nothing! People will come and it didn’t work. And you know , and that’s not true. They did come to a degree, but I didn’t have the success that other gym owners can have with an actual marketing plan because my marketing plan was, I’ll be a great coach. They’ll show up and it just didn’t happen. Right. Maybe I wasn’t as good a coach as I thought, but even if I was, they still didn’t show up in the numbers that I needed for it to make a difference. But then when we started marketing with a plan, it worked. So tell me about this. Did you set a marketing budget and hit the ground running with this thing? Because it took me like eight years to ever look at marketing. So did you just start with that?Jason Tebedo: 13:30

Well, I really k ind o f did a couple grassroots things on my own. One, Tik Tok i s a phenomenal platform f or j ust putting videos together. I t’ll put music behind it, i t’ll create a 20 m inute snippet of what’s going on, you k now, showing people the gym, d oing walkthroughs, talking about the Founders program, that was instrumental i n bringing a lot of people in and that’s a zero c ost, you know, effort right there. So-Mike Warkentin: 13:53

You can actually trace some of that to TikTok?Jason Tebedo: 13:55

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yep . Yeah. It’s been a great success for me and it allows you the ability to download the video and then post it to other platforms as you wish. So that’s been awesome and people, you know, going back to the Dale Carnegie, you know, people love to hear their names. People love to see themselves, you know? nobody watches the videos for any other person, but theirselves in it, and that kind of keeps them , you know, involved into it . In addition to , you know , working with the Two-Brain marketing team, we set a budget on the recommendation of Farrah. She said, you know, $15 , I believe it was like $ 15 a day, if I’m not mistaken. And we were just inundated in leads. I had so many leads. I had so many No Sweat Intros, that I had to start turning them away . I mean , it was just a phenomenal response. Yeah. Yeah , absolutely.Mike Warkentin: 14:42

So let me ask you this. Did you have the systems in place then? Because when I started getting leads, I didn’t have the systems in place to manage it. Were you able, and I know you had to turn some people away, but were you able to, you know, you had a plan for when people come in, this happens and this happens and this happens . Did that actually happen? Cause it didn’t happen for me.Jason Tebedo: 14:59

Well, absolutely. I think another thing great about Two-Brain is you have a lot of resources, you know, a lot of documents there. That No-Sweat Intro form completely printed off, a monkey can fill it out, ask the questions, really dig deep into what’s bringing a person in and kinda uncover what the psychological reason is behind it. And then cater to that. And then you have your pricing binder, which is available, which will show all your programs and is clearly outlined for people. And then a little , Robert Calvinney, the six principles and influence, he talks about reciprocity. I’d make sure I’d give a water bottle. Like you guys mentioned or a sticker, you know? And then that would build that trust with them . And I think that was just absolutely crucial to them .Mike Warkentin: 15:40

It’s interesting because as entrepreneurs, there’s a tendency to just wanna do your own thing. Right. And I realized that’s why a lot of us got into it, but there’s also a reality that if you do the research and accept some guidance, you can sure save yourself a lot of time and money, you know? And I find it interesting because a lot of the stuff that you’ve talked about here verbatim is stuff that we’ve recommended, like to the point of like giving a water bottle away, having the No-Sweat Intro forms, doing the marketing like this. Often when we see people make mistakes, it’s because they don’t stick to the plan. Right. Yeah. And it’s kind of funny because people say, well, my marketing’s not working and I’ll listen to the marketing mentors and they’ll say, well , did you use the exact thing that we’ve tested and tried and said worked? No, I changed it. Aha . Right? And it’s hard sometimes though, as an entrepreneur to give up that freedom, especially for me as a media guy, I’m like, I could take my own pictures. I don’t need to use the pictures that they supplied, but when I did, I got better results. So how did that mentality shift work for you? Like, did you have any parts where you’re like, man, I just wanna do my own thing or how did you get your head around the fact of taking guidance?Jason Tebedo: 16:36

Well, I think it’s always a challenge as you’re setting up a business, you feel like nobody understands, you know , the trials that you’re going through. And you know, fortunately Joleen was a little patient with me as I, you know, probably tried to work out some of my own kinks and made out some of my own mistakes, but you really have to trust the process. You have to sit back and say , you know, we talk about higher value positions, right? Don’t waste your time getting caught up in taking photos, the exact right photo for your website. There are things that have been proven that work , Two-Brain has vetted them . They have worked for other gyms and the things that haven’t worked got thrown out the window. So being able to step back and say, Hey, I trust you, mentor. I trust what you’re offering to me and I’m gonna implement this and Hey , if it doesn’t work, Hey , I won’t be back . But it works . It works, you know, and I’m sure we’re gonna get into it in the future, you know, with the , our conversation here. But the return on investment’s been huge, you know mentorship is not cheap, you know, but in comparison to the revenue that you’re gonna bring in with mentorship, it’s absolutely crucial. It should be like the number one thing on your list as far as gym owning.Mike Warkentin: 17:39

So let’s talk about it. Talk about , tell me some other metrics. What do you got for me? Anything interesting. I know that you managed to start with 83 members, which beat my total by, you know , 72 or something like that . What else do you got for me ?Jason Tebedo: 17:49

Yeah, so we typically bring in, I would say on average, probably five to six members a week right now. All levels. I would say probably 75% of them have never done CrossFit before, brand new to the ecosystem, you know, kind of fit that client avatar and then maybe 25% are either coming from another gym or they’ve done CrossFit before, and just kind of come in here to find out, Hey, why is everybody so interested? Why do I see this everywhere? Why is it completely in my face, all over social media? We bring in probably about 11- in revenue right now.Mike Warkentin: 18:22

Say that one more time? It cut out for a sec . Give me that number one more time.Jason Tebedo: 18:24

Yeah. 11,000 a month in revenue, our overhead is about $5,000 a month. So we’re looking at about $6,000 a month in profit, which has been great. You know, it helps pay the mortgage and kind of keep the lights on.Mike Warkentin: 18:37

Profitable from day one. Is that correct?Jason Tebedo: 18:39

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.Mike Warkentin: 18:41

Okay . So that’s, that’s- congratulations on that because that took me a while to get to too.Jason Tebedo: 18:45

yeah. You know, and I hate to kind of digress into some other avenue here, but you know, working with a mentor, you know, and Joleen and kind of talking about how much space I would need, we have this inkling as , you know, future CrossFit box owners that we want this 10,000 square foot space and it’s absolutely necessary. And we need brand new this and that stuff like that.Mike Warkentin: 19:06

Turf, and this , yeah ,Jason Tebedo: 19:08

Yeah . We have 2500 square feet , 2500 square feet and we’re almost at hundred members. That fits us perfectly fine . You know, the rent’s like $ 2500 a month and it allows you to be profitable right off the bat. And it allows you to provide something back to the members . So they see, Hey, this guy cares about me. He’s giving back for my effort of coming here every day .Mike Warkentin: 19:27

Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting ’cause Chris Cooper wrote about that in various places now. But one of the things he says is that bigger gyms aren’t necessarily more profitable. There are some very successful, large gyms. They are definitely out there, but buying large, in the micro gym industry, you know, the sweet spots are in that 2,500 to 4,000 square feet. And that’s not to say, you can’t go bigger or smaller. But the idea is like at the Startup phase, if you signed , you know, a 12,000 square foot lease and you’ve got this vacant thing and your six o’clock class is full and the rest of it’s dead, that’s gonna be a money losing proposition and to the point where you might sink , you know ? So to be able to hit the ground running and start with a smaller space, you can do all these different things. And then Chris’s advice is always move when you’re bursting at the seams. You don’t need as much space as you maybe think you do. Right. It looks nice. And it’s maybe a little bit of an ego thing where you’re like, ah , I have a gigantic gym, but bigger isn’t necessarily better. So I love that you’re in 2,500. Looking at what you’ve got there is this your No-Sweat Intro sales consultation room?Jason Tebedo: 20:18

Yeah. Yeah. This is the first thing that they see. One thing that we really tried to keep here is a Starbucks feel , you know, Starbucks puts a little bit of value behind, you know, their environment, you know, values every customer, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, whatever it may be. You know, I want everyone to feel extremely comfortable when they come in here and I don’t want them to be surrounded by dropping barbells, barking dogs and you know, the traditional bravado CrossFit.Mike Warkentin: 20:43

Did you do that woodwork yourself?Jason Tebedo: 20:45

I did. Yeah, I did.Mike Warkentin: 20:47

Very cool, looks great.Jason Tebedo: 20:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah . Thank you.Mike Warkentin: 20:50

And the reason I ask again is that one of the recommendations is to get a building with a space where you can do these consultations because again, a lot of us in the early days were like, you know , you come in, there’s the warehouse, there’s the toilet where you vomit. Do you wanna sign up? And it’s not the way to sell gym memberships anymore. We’ve kind of figured out, but these consultation processes, the No-Sweat Intro done in an office just like yours, that looks like a fitness professional has a great effect on people. It’s all about building that trust. So I love that you’ve brought that up for the spacing and so forth , other startup expenses. Did you, how did you pick out your equipment and so forth? Did Joleen give you any advice on that? Or was that something that you took care of?Jason Tebedo: 21:27

Well, her biggest piece of advice I think was a phenomenal message- This is something that you wouldn’t know as a new gym owner is it takes time for equipment to come in . You know, you need to start ordering equipment months out and especially with , you know, the COVID disruption, so supply chains and whatnot . You know, we got ahead of that really quick. And now I did opt for a little bit more expensive equipment. We did go for Rogue stuff, but I’m a strong believer in supporting American owned companies. That’s kinda an ethos that I had . That’s fair. And I wanted to , you know, yeah . And I know that they’re , you know , true and proven in the CrossFit community. So we kind of stuck with that and just kind of , just kept it with one vendor. So we knew everything that would fit together.Mike Warkentin: 22:05

It’s funny. I spoke to a guy , Mike Turnquist in central California a couple weeks ago and he was sitting in his second location of his gym and he had done the painting and laid the flooring and he was just literally looking out the windows to wait for the Rogue truck to roll up.Jason Tebedo: 22:18

When they roll up, they roll up.Mike Warkentin: 22:20

, it’s pretty exciting. Yeah. It’s pretty, it’s pretty exciting. It’s Bill Henneger over there and he , I know the American made things are important to a lot of people, and that was something that was important to him as well. So now, talk to me about the trajectory of this thing . Your official opening was what?Jason Tebedo: 22:32

So it was , let me think here now, when was it? It was last month. I wanna say April 23rd .Mike Warkentin: 22:41

OK. So call it April 23rd . Started with 83 members. You’re adding five or six a month. Where are you going from here? And the question I wanna ask is how did you set your rates and how will they support that journey?Jason Tebedo: 22:52

Well, I obviously, you know, another thing that we talk about in Two-Brain is value your time and value what you’re giving to everybody else. So there was an initial inkling with me that I’m gonna undercut everybody in the area and just be best rates , but you know, like within a CrossFit community or any micro gym type of community, it’s all about community and people don’t move because they’re gonna save $5 or whatnot . They go where the value is, whether that be, you know, their friends or the facility or what you’re offering, you know, you talked about quality coaching , you know, that really kind of helped us dictate our prices. And once I kind of determined what our value was, my time as a CEO and what I could offer here and I cash flowed a lot of things around my gym. So I just kind of took that all and backwards planned. And it really kind of came in line with what people were offering in the area. And another great Two-Brain thing is figuring out what your best day is and how much money you wanna make and then working backwards off of that . And that was a phenomenal exercise that Joleen did.Mike Warkentin: 23:48

So give me an idea if you don’t mind, what’s an average rate for you? What’s an average package for you? Or if you wanna share it on your website? That’s cool too.Jason Tebedo: 23:56

No, I would love to talk about it. We offer 145 a month. And then we do , that’s unlimited. And then we have a hybrid AF package, which is 24-7 access, which is great. People love it in the area, which is $15 more a month. And then we do 12 times a month for 125 and nine times a month for 105. And I really- you know, a lot of people come in and say, Hey, I’m not so sure about this. We usually sign ’em up for 12 times and you know, the bug hits and then they go to unlimited nearly immediately . So it’s kinda that kinda low cost entry point with an upgrade right around the corner .Mike Warkentin: 24:28

OK . And you started by thinking, like , what do I need to make to be happy, what do I need to make to support this place , this family , all this other stuff . And then you set your rates based on those calculations.Jason Tebedo: 24:39

Absolutely . Yeah . oAnd my mentor had a lot of input to , you know, what I should do .Mike Warkentin: 24:44

OK . This is good. And from here, talk to me about the revenue streams that you’ve got. Is it mostly group classes in a traditional CrossFit model, o r d o you h ave personal training a nd o ther things? I k now Joleen’s b ig o n personal training. W hat e lse h ave y ou g ot g oing o n t here?Jason Tebedo: 24:56

Well , right now , I’m the only full time coach . So I , yeah . You know how that goes? I coach six classes a day, but I absolutely love it. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of stress upon me. So my mentor suggested when you start feeling burnt out, that’s the time that you really need to start hammering down to find new coaches, but you know what, within the coaching sphere , building this awesome environment, a lot of people come to me, so starting next month, we’re gonna have almost seven coaches on staff and training them up and getting them to fulfill those positions. And then that’s gonna take me out of the group class role, and we’re gonna start offering more personal training, more nutrition, coaching , more higher level type of things. You know, you know , where I can focus on marketing the business, growing the business at large, you know, and just, it’s gonna be great to kind of elevate myself within the ecosystem of CrossFit .Mike Warkentin: 25:44

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. So you’re starting with that group model, which is what a lot of us did, but then the idea is as soon as you free yourself up and climb the value ladder, as we like to say, you’ll be able to offer personal training and nutrition. These are all add-on services, hybrid packages or high value services all on their own, which starts creeping that average revenue per member up, you know, on the 200, 250, 300. I know Joleen has some pretty high numbers that she’s, I can’t even believe she did that. And how much personal training she’s able to do at her gyms. But that’s, it’s neat that you have that perspective because I, again, going back to my history, I didn’t realize ignorantly that you could do personal training in a CrossFit style workout . Like one on one . I thought it was just group classes. Right? Wow. Did I ever miss out a lot of revenue that I could have helped people get double unders, right. you know?Jason Tebedo: 26:27

Yeah, absolutelyMike Warkentin: 26:28

Could have helped my clients, could have helped my gym, the whole thing, but I didn’t even realize it . So I love that you have that idea in place. Third leg is nutrition programs, which is a great, great one because it scales very quickly . Any plans for like a kids program eventually or anything specialty like that?Jason Tebedo: 26:41

Yeah. Absolutely. One of the coaches that’s coming on board next month, she’s coming from another gym. Offers kids programming, she’s bringing all of her, you know, her methodology over. It’s a great market here, a lot of working parents. So I think it’s gonna be great to get a lot of, you know, youth in this place. And you know, it’s really the legacy, you know , that we leave behind is how do we keep this business going? How do we keep this fitness trend going? You know, people talk , CrossFit is dead or CrossFit is dying. That is not true. We just need to put in the effort to keep what drew us in, you know, drawing other people in.Mike Warkentin: 27:13

The program works. You know, it gets results. Like I don’t think anyone can argue with that. It certainly 100% gets results. In the world, you see what people can do when they stick with that program. And Greg Glassman, Crossfit founder back in the day, he said like, eat what we tell you to eat, work out how we tell you to work out and you’ll be fine. And for a lot of people, that is exactly the prescription. And then in your case where you’ve got all these different ideas of person training and nutrition and so forth, you can certainly alter the prescription as the need for the individual. And you’ve got the best of all worlds at your fingertips.Jason Tebedo: 27:41

Absolutely.Mike Warkentin: 27:43

OK . So let’s close this out. There are people that are listening to this that are probably thinking about starting gyms and they are , you know, maybe like you were back in- a little skeptical saying, ah , Mike’s full of crap, Jason, I dunno . What do you say to those guys that are thinking about starting a gym and they’re thinking about mentorship or going on their own. What’s your message for them?Jason Tebedo: 27:59

You know , going back to my sales background, you know, if you wanna make money, you need to trust the process. You know, if you wanna have a successful gym, if you wanna be open for two to three years and survive the long haul , you know, you have to trust what’s already been done. Don’t make the same mistakes that other people have made. I mean, there’s a playbook. You guys have the playbook, you know, step one, do this, step two, do that. And before you know it , you open your doors with , you know , 90-some members. So , I mean , just really kind of put all your woes to the side , just kind shut off your brain and just really trust the process . And I guarantee you people will have success.Mike Warkentin: 28:33

Jason, thank you so much for sharing your time with us . I know you’re busy. You probably got a class to coach in a couple minutes. I’ll let you go, but I really appreciate it. I really wish you all the best. I wanna see where you guys are at in a year or two. I think it’s gonna be incredible.Jason Tebedo: 28:46

I think it’d be great. Thank you, Mike.Mike Warkentin: 28:47

That was Jason Tebedo on Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, I’m all about telling the stories of amazing gym owners all around the world. Please subscribe for more episodes. And if you’re on YouTube hammer that like button and ring the notifications bell for me too. Now here’s Two-Brain founder, Chris Cooper with a final word. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe for more great shows just like this. Now here’s Chris with a final note.Speaker 3: 29:13

If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. This is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in and I’m in there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Jim owners United on Facebook.

The post Gym Owner Profitable on Day 1 With 83 Members appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

By the Numbers: Who Has the Most Clients?

“Every time our membership reaches 150 people, we drop back to 130!”

“We hover between 110 and 125 members. We never drop lower, but we never seem to reach higher, either.”

“We’ve been at the same membership for 2.5 years even though we get new people almost every month!”

Many gyms hit a “glass ceiling” and their growth just stops. Sure, they gain a few clients, but then they drop back again. They’ll have a little surge and then an exodus.

The reason? They’re using the wrong plan. Or they’re using a good plan at the wrong time.

Every month, we track key metrics for hundreds of gyms around the world. We look at the top 10 in each category to determine who has the most clients, who has the most revenue, who has the highest average revenue per member, etc.

Then we interview those gyms to see what they’re doing, and we teach their lessons back to gyms in the Two-Brain mentorship program.

I also share the data and stories from one of these categories publicly. Here’s the leaderboard for Most Clients in April 2022:

Why You Can’t Bust Through Your Client Ceiling

Pop quiz: What’s a client’s partner’s name?

You can maintain a certain number of personal relationships really well. If you’re an empathetic extrovert, that number might be higher.

But if you’re running a business, the number gets lower all the time because your brain is just too full. Think about your shrinking circle of friends, your less-frequent calls to your mom, your last-minute shopping trips for the kids’ birthdays. When you have five clients, you remember their kids’ names, their dogs’ names and even where they went to college. But at 50, you won’t remember some of those details. And at 150, you probably won’t remember most of them.

It’s not critical to recall the names of pets. But this degree of knowledge is a sign of the strength of your relationship. If you know a pet’s name, you’re close. And for introverts (like me), the number of personal relationships I can maintain is probably a lot lower than 150.

Other things lower your client ceiling, too:

1. Lack of systems—If every client receives a different experience, you’ll lose many of them. Signal: Clients preferentially choose classes based on one coach over another.

2. Lack of proper onboarding—When a client is thrown into a group class—even for a “free trial” —the person is less likely to sign up and more likely to quit early. Signal: You don’t have a consultative process.

3. Poor retention—When clients leave, they sometimes take other clients with them.

4. Inconvenience—If your clients have to juggle their schedules to match yours, they’ll leave.

5. Staff turnover—Your best coaches leave and take clients with them.

6. The wrong model—At the 150-member mark, your model changes. You need different staff, different systems and maybe even a different name.

The Big Reason: Your Target Is too Far Away

Gyms that start small can scale a little at a time. The owners find a little space, fill it, get profitable and then grow.

Every time they grow, they experience a little “dip”: Their expenses are higher and their profit is lower. That’s normal for businesses that scale.

But if the “dip” is too big, it turns into the Valley of Death. And this is killing many microgyms: They open a 10,000 square foot facility with $50,000 in debt, and they’re instantly desperate to cover their monthly bills. So they offer discounts, try to force long-term contracts and just generally try to sell anything they possibly can to make money. Over time, as desperation increases, some might even run bait-and-switch ads on Facebook to survive.

You need a different plan at each stage of business.

Fewer than 50 clients? We want you to earn over $50,000 per year serving those clients.

50-150? That’s our RampUp program. We want you to earn $100,000 per year with 150 clients.

Over 150? You need a different plan. That’s our Tinker program, where you’ll level up as a leader, learn to build a management layer, optimize for profit and duplicate your gym without killing yourself.

The post By the Numbers: Who Has the Most Clients? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Don’t Sleep on Spring: The Origins of the Summer Slump in Microgyms

If your gym has a slow summer in 2022, it will be because of what you’re doing right now.

Or, perhaps, because of what you aren’t doing right now.

You don’t have to be a business expert to know that people want to get outside and enjoy summer when it finally rolls around. They take vacations, they head to cottages and cabins, and they sit on patios lifting beers instead of weights. Many work out much less or cancel gym memberships entirely. Some will ask the dreaded question: “Can I put my membership on hold?”

Summer is generally a slower time in the gym business. A quick Google search confirms this: You’ll see lots of entrepreneurial articles on how to “beat the summer slump.” And a quick survey of gym owners will also reveal that many struggle badly in summer.

When my business had a physical location, I dreaded the summer months. Our fiscal year end was June, and we’d usually start the new year in the hole after a disastrous July and August. Then we’d spend the rest of the year trying to claw back to profitability.

I was astounded when I heard some gyms actually generate more revenue in summer than they do in other months. Gyms that surge in summer make it happen in many different ways. One obvious tactic: creating programs for kids who aren’t in school. With that in mind, here’s something that might help you today: “Kids Programs: Pricing and Scheduling.”

Many other tactics exist, including competitions, seminars, in-house leagues, specialty programs, challenges, day camps, ad campaigns, etc.

The point today isn’t to lay out all the various strategies but to remind you that it’s time to take action now if you want to have a strong summer. If you do nothing, it’s likely you’ll be looking at red in the ledger come September.

Do Something Now to Prevent a Slow Summer!

If you’re reading this and don’t have an annual calendar for your gym. You need to make one immediately.

It’s easy: Draw a circle and then cut it into 12 pie slices (Two-Brain provides a recommended calendar to clients, along with plug-and-play assets to help gym owners take action fast).

I’d strongly advise you add stuff to each of the 12 segments, including quarterly Goal Review Sessions, regular staff evaluations and other essential elements of a microgym. Your free space on the bingo card: the Intramural Open in February or March. Slot that in now to get momentum (we’ll have an updated Intramural Open playbook for you in 2023).

You don’t have to make a complete annual plan today. In fact, avoid it if you find it overwhelming. Today is really about summer. If you do nothing else, just add a revenue generator to June or July right now.  

Fact: It’s not too late to put something in place to drive up revenue this summer. You can absolutely plan, promote and sell out a program or event in the next two to four weeks. But only if you take action very soon.

So get moving!

In business, successful summers are made in spring. And spring has sprung.

If you’re a Two-Brain client, you’ll soon receive an event guide that contains all sorts of assets you can use to get a revenue generator in place fast. Stay tuned for Chris Cooper’s announcement.

The post Don’t Sleep on Spring: The Origins of the Summer Slump in Microgyms appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Metacognitive Programming: Psychotherapy Meets Life Coaching

Mike Warkentin: 0:00

It’s another edition of Two-Brain Radio. Here’s your host, Chris Cooper.

Chris Cooper: 0:04

Hey, it’s Chris Cooper. And my guest today is Mikhail Saidov- Misha to his friends. Misha is the creator and originator of metacognitive programming, a discipline that combines psychotherapy with life coaching. And it’s a very interesting discipline because it’s more than just digging into your past and finding out what’s limiting you, but it’s also the ability to prescribe methods to actually improve someone’s life. Now, if you’re listening to this, like me, you’re probably pretty skeptical of the term “life coach”. and the term life coach is getting used by a lot of people right now. Some of those people should probably not be giving you financial or life advice, let’s face it. But what a lot of listeners might not remember is that 20 years ago, the term personal trainer was viewed with a lot of the same skepticism. We saw somebody wearing a personal trainer shirt in a gym, and we thought, “What gives that person the right to tell me what to do?” Or “Who gave that person permission to be the expert?” And when I became a personal trainer, this era was still just kind of waning. There were a couple of personal trainers in my town who had been through that, that skepticism. Even people saying to them, like, “You? You’re not the biggest fittest dude in the gym. Why are you telling anybody else how to work out ?” And the same is true for life coaching and what has to happen when you’ve got a brand new school of thought, or a new process is that you start it up and you get a whole bunch of people jump on board . And some of those people are not qualified. And over time, one of two things can happen. The best people in the new field can kind of band together, professionalize the field and create something that is worth following, paying attention to or considering as even a career choice. The other thing that can happen is that they get laughed out of the building. Mikhail is one of these first in the first category. He is legitimizing the field of life coaching, and he is teaching metacognitive programming. And after chatting with him, I was kind of blown away by, like, what this could do. But even if you’re only interested in ever being a fitness coach, there are elements of metacognitive programming that will help you get better adherence, results, accountability for your clients. And so I think this is a very valid listen, even if only because this is where our field came from, this thing created out of the ether to help people better legitimize through trial and error, and finally built on the backs of thousands of personal trainers who didn’t get it right so that we could. Without any further ado, here’s Misha on Two-Brain Radio. Misha , welcome to Two-Brain Radio.

Mikhail Saidov: 2:56

Hey, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Chris Cooper: 2:58

Yeah. I’m really excited about this and we’re gonna dive right in. I gave a little bit of your bio already, so I wanted to start by asking you as a life coach. What do you think everybody wants from life?

Mikhail Saidov: 3:11

I think this is the most interesting and popular question I get from my clients and from everyone else. And I prefer to give a long answer and , um, you know, the answer is what I call the new FERMI paradox . So, you know, the old FERMI paradox probably, right? So the FERMI, he’s a scientist and this idea, he was discussing with his buddies. And at some point they started discussing aliens and the FERMI asked, okay, you know, if aliens exist, where are they ? Basically life exists beyond our planet. Where is it? Why don’t we see it? The new FERMI paradox is similar in its paradoxical ways , but it’s not similar in obviously, any scientific approach, of course. So the FERMI is an abbreviation. And when my clients come to me, they say, “Look, I want to have more money in my life. I want to have a better or new partner. I want to, to create something really meaningful in my life.” So when everyone comes to me, they come for five things and I call them FERMI. F- they come for the flow. And flow is an experience of optimal feeling of engagement in the moment. For example, if you surf , or if you play any game, I’m pretty sure you experienced flow in your life. But to be exact, the way we prefer to describe the experience of being in the flow is when you stop feeling yourself, when you cannot, or when you don’t think about time, so senseless or egoless and timeless, we think about flow when whatever you do is not taking too much effort, so effortless. And finally, it’s when you are in this experience, you are actually overwhelmed by data and you cannot process this data. If you will be in controlled focus attention. So first when my clients come, they say, “Look, I wanna do something that creates this experience of flow. So this is F. E is engagement. They want to be socially engaged. We know that there is a huge correlation between feeling depressed and feeling lonely. So for everyone to have a full life, you need to have enough people around you, enough people that you love , enough people that you care about and enough people that care about you. So that’s the E from FERMI. R is relaxation or being relaxed . And life does not make sense. If there is not enough positive experience in your life , if you don’t have, or you do not live, and your family doesn’t live in comfort, in safety, if your stomach is empty, and if every day you feel afraid, like the life doesn’t make sense. And in order to be relaxed, you know, you;ve gotta be full, rested, and you got to have enough pleasure in your life. So that’s the R. The M is meaning. You need to have meaning in your life. You need to work on something that is bigger than you. You need to have a bigger purpose. So that’s M and the final letter is I, and I, you would want to have an ideal picture life, meaning that you need some level of material success in your life. So that’s the FERMI. Now, where the paradox is coming from. In fact, people do not want FERMI. They just want to feel better. You don’t want to have a better partner. You want to feel better. You don’t want to have more money. You want to feel better. You don’t want to be successful in your life. You want to feel better. You don’t need safety. You want to feel better . So the paradox comes not from attaining the FERMI in your life, but actually from your emotional state. And the great illusion is that we think that by attaining all those things, suddenly we’ll start feeling better. And partially this is true. Circumstances for sure can influence your life. But it’s your mind that creates your human experience. And you can think about the same circumstances from two different angles, and you will feel differently. So this is about perception. So answering your question, everyone wants FERMI, but what I give people as a life coach, I give them experience and I elevate the quality of their human experience. So when they change their perception, suddenly all things become easier in their life. And I think it’s also important here to explain how , um, like my background and how I got into life coaching in the first place, I think. So I got into psychology when I was around 12 years old and I was dealing with constant anxiety and feelings of fear. And at that time, psychology and, and psychotherapists, they were not very popular, especially in my country. I’m coming from Eastern Europe. I’m Jewish, Ukrainian. I live in Canada now. Like many Europeans, I speak many languages, but I work in three languages. So, and I was self helping . I was studying a lot. I was reading many, many books and eventually I got so interested in the field of psychology/psychotherapy that I got my first license as a psychotherapist by the age of 15. And , um, I wrote my first book about correlation between assertiveness and status when I was 18. And by the age of 35, I have created my own modality, psychotherapeutic, and life coach , and modality that is called meta cognitive programming, you know, all that. Yeah. So coming back to FERMI paradox, the most interesting question about FERMI paradox is, “Okay, but how do you know that you can actually achieve FERMI in your life? You can achieve flow engagement, meaning, you know, relaxation and ideal picture life . How do you know that you have what it takes? How do you know that this is the moment for you to hire a life coach? And we discussed that before, and I , I want to share that with your audience as well, the way you know, that is when you feel what I call emergence, present-future gap. So this is a mouthful. Let’s take it one by one, right? So what is emergence? Emergence is the term that comes from the fields of biology and physics. And if I can explain emergence in a simpler or, you know, common language, so emergence is the idea of how stupid things become smart. For example, if you think about a honeybee or an ant, you know , if , if you look at , at the ant, you know, this creature is very, very simple. It doesn’t have a lot of brains. Its life on its own is pretty meaningless. Okay . However, together with hundreds of thousands of other ants, they create what is called mega colonies and mega colony of ants is one of the most complex and sophisticated things in the world. And this is emergence: when simple things create together, something very, very sophisticated. As human beings, we are, you know, examples of emergence as well, because we all consist of millions of cells and, you know, cells separately, they are very simple, easy to understand. But together, wow. This is really, really hard. And then , and you know, the same goes to energy and thermodynamics and this universe, and pretty much we can see emergence everywhere. So now I was studying emergence for many years in different fields, and I extrapolated the idea of emergence into psychology. So what is present future gap as emergence in psychology? Normally, or generally I work with clients who, when they come, they say, “Look, I feel utterly unrealized in my life.” And they say, “You know, sometimes I’m looking at myself in the mirror and I think, wow, I thought that by this time you should have been way ahead.” And that’s pretty much the story of every client I have. So what is actually happening is that everyone, at some point in their lives , they feel that they are created- they’re meant for more. And this is the moment of emergence. This is how incredibly sophisticated, you know, DNA tells them that, Hey, you know what? It seems, we have power and energy to get what we want. We have enough resources to get you to FERMI. So that’s the idea that in present, you are not fully satisfied and happy with your life. And somewhere from within, there is a voice, let’s call it a melody of life or a melody of your soul or your DNA that tells you, “It seems we have a resource to achieve more. Let’s do it . You need to find help. You need to find resources. You need to find connections. You need to find actions to make it happen.” And when there is a gap, I know that I can take the client from the present to FERMI.

Chris Cooper: 15:10

So what exactly is that gap? Is it the feeling that I can do more, but I don’t know how?

Mikhail Saidov: 15:18

Yes. It’s a feeling of being unrealized. It is a feeling of your life being meaningless and useless, but at the same time, there is a fire of interest in you. And it’s not that you think that life is useless and you feel depressed and you want to commit suicide. It’s a different story. This story is about, “I wanna find a way. I’m pretty sure there is a way it’s just not available to me now. And I think I can do it once I’m clear about what to do.”

Chris Cooper: 16:01

Okay . So when you’re in this gap, are you, do you have dreams about what you could become? Or are you thinking more of these, you know, FERMI goals as concrete goals?

Mikhail Saidov: 16:13

Yes. Okay , awesome. So let’s talk about dreams versus goals. So again , when I work with clients , I specify for them . And I explain what is the difference between dreams and goals. Dream is something that is pretty much impossible for you. And someone needs to wave a magic wand to make it happen. So when you are dreaming, it’s not about you, it’s about cooperation and collaboration from the universe to make it possible for you. So, and here we are in the field of esoterics, but basically dreaming is a good exercise because when you truly believe in something for yourself, it’s not a dream anymore. It’s a goal. But when you think, “Okay, I wish that to happen to me, but I’m not gonna do anything for that to happen. And I hope that one day maybe it happens.” That’s a dream. And the criteria of any dream is that there is no resistance for you for the dream to happen. It means that you do not actively wish for that dream to come true , because you truly believe it is impossible. So you don’t think that it’s important to think about the dream every day . Now, if you think about a goal and you believe that this is something you need to do, suddenly it’s not a dream anymore, but it is an outline of steps for yourself, right? So when clients come to me I say, “We are not gonna dream here, we want to come closer to goals.” And then I explain to them that there is a difference between desired goals and non desired goals.

Chris Cooper: 18:23

Maybe you should tell us the difference there then.

Mikhail Saidov: 18:25

Yeah. Okay . So when there is something you desire, let’s say, you know , you are in , in a fitness space. And , let’s say I desire- By the way, it’s true. For many years, I want to put probably 10 kilos of muscle. Okay. Never worked for me, but I’m still dreaming about it. Okay? So I want that to happen. Now, for me, it is a non desired goal. And here is why. When I think about myself having this muscular chiseled body, of course, I’m excited. Of course, I want to look at myself in the mirror. Of course, probably my wife will be seriously impressed. Might be. Not sure about that, but she might be very impressed. I will be impressed by myself for sure, but I don’t want to do anything to make it happen. I actually hate training. I don’t want to exercise. It’s the worst experience of my life. Okay. If every day I need to go to gym or if every day I need to do something like resistance training or any other type of training. Oh, geez . It’s so hard. So a desired goal is a goal where you do not like the process. And it means that you need a power of will to get to this goal. Now, for things like lose 50 pounds of fat, let’s say, and if the goal is non desired , it’s a dream. Okay . So it’s pretty much impossible. There are very few people who can do it. And you do need a lot of mental power to make it happen. Now let’s take another example. I need to exercise. I understand it. I’m dumb enough, but not that dumb, right? So I’m thinking, “Okay, what can I do to introduce an exercise to my life?” So it becomes a desirable goal. And one of the things that I love is playing tennis. Now my goal is to become one day, sort of like semi-pro in, in tennis. Now, I’m not even close. It’ll take me probably, like, 20 years to get to semipro level. Now I enjoy at the same time playing tennis every day . You know, time goes really fast. I am in the flow. I love it. I enjoy it. I can do it every day . Suddenly this is a goal because I enjoy the everyday process. So one of the things that every good life coach has to do for her clients or his clients is to turn dreams into goals and non desired goals into desired outcomes.

Chris Cooper: 21:37

That is very interesting. And I don’t wanna take us off track here, but you know, you’re talking to fitness coaches and most of our clients have these dreams of losing 20 or 30 pounds, but they don’t really want to do the exercise. You know, is there a way that we can help them overcome it?

Mikhail Saidov: 21:56

Yeah, they, they don’t want to do the exercise. They don’t want to fast, right. Or, you know, to reduce the amount of calories they’re taking , all of that. They don’t want to work with emotional overeating. They just want to wake up one day in a better shape. That’s pretty much it. So I will share an example from my practice, actually. And in this practice, I was a client, not a coach. So basically if you believe in life coaching and psychotherapy, you do hire life coaches and psychotherapists for yourself. Otherwise it is not fair. Otherwise you are not taking your own product. You are not using the product you’re selling to other people. Right? So I have a fitness coach and his name is Jersey Gregorick. And it is Naval Ravikant who introduced me to Jersey. And , uh , Jersey is an incredible human being. He’s a poet, and he’s also a fitness coach. He’s also , I think he’s in the Guinness book of records for Olympic weightlifting. I don’t exactly remember what exactly he has done there, but I know that he’s a powerhouse. So when he started working with me and what Jersey requires you to do is actually to follow a set regimen for every day . Now, for someone like myself, this is incredibly hard. And I’m telling him, “Look, I don’t want to exercise. It sucks.” And he asked me, “So what do you do? Like, every morning, what do you do?” And I was like, “I meditate.” “How do you meditate? Do you like meditation?” I’m like, “Yeah. You know, I sit still. And I focus, and this is how I meditate. He’s like, “Have you heard of dynamic meditation?” I’m like, “Of course I’ve heard of dynamic meditation. I’ve I’ve done many, many of them.” “Do you like dynamic meditations?” “Yes, I do.” He’s like, “You know what? My set of exercises is a dynamic meditation.” So in this moment, what he’s doing to me, and this is what we do in meta cognitive programing all the time, he changed my thinking. He moved me from current thinking to intentional thinking or to future thinking. And when he changed this mental paradigm, suddenly it has become easy. I don’t exercise. I meditate. Now when I meditate, it happens so that my body gets stronger. And it seems that at some point of my life, I will be an Olympic weightlifter. So this is an example of someone moving you from non desired outcome to a desired outcome.

Chris Cooper: 25:04

Yeah. That’s such a great example, Misha. Thank you. Okay, good. So I pulled you off track there, please continue.

Mikhail Saidov: 25:12

Yeah. So once you understand the difference between goals, you also understand what life coaching is about. Life coaching is about helping someone creating a life that is worth living. This is what is life coaching is about. We work with functional clients who on the scale of FERMI, maybe they have flow sometimes. Maybe they have meaning sometimes, but obviously in those letters, they’re not performing really well. And we help them get there. But at the same time, MCP meta cognitive programming is not only for life coaches. It is also for psychotherapists. So the way we differentiate between therapy and life coaching, and this is how we explain that to our clients. And we train therapists and life coaches, and the training is the same. It is just the stage of life that is different. So you need a therapist, you need a psychotherapist. And we train MCP therapists or MCP life coaches- And MCP life coaches. So the way of understanding the therapist is when your life is in crumbles. So you need to stabilize first because there is no life worth living if you’re not stabilized. Now, what does it mean to stabilize? If you’re completely lonely and you don’t have any relationships, even, like, not one, it means that you’re not stable. If you don’t have any way to support yourself financially, it means that you’re not stable. If you are low, or if your everyday experience is negative emotions only. You’re depressed. You’re anxious. You are grieving. You are trying to survive. You need to stabilize. And for stabilization, you need a psychotherapist. Okay? Now, once you’re stabilized, before you can start creating big things in your life, before you will hire a life coach, you still need to make one more step. And this step we call clarity. So for clarity, what it means to be clear. You see, everyone has big baggage from our previous lives. Someone was victimized. Someone experienced a lot of traumas. Someone had a good life, but still has a lot of limiting beliefs about the world. And, you know , whatever this person sees is distorted by those beliefs. And we need a psychotherapist to clear it for you to help you clear it for yourself until you’re completely clear and completely present in the moment. Now, once that happens , this is like, and this feels so big in life. This moment of clarity is unbelievable. It’s like being born again. Now, once that happened to you, okay, suddenly you need a life coach. Because the next step is creating a new identity. When we say creating a new identity, it’s not about, you know, trying to become someone else. There is a popular word in psychology, in motivation and self-help is transformation. We don’t use transformation because we don’t want to turn triangles into circles and circles, you know, into pyramids . It doesn’t make sense at all. It’s just a really bad idea because we, as you know, as psychologists, as life coaches, we believe in what is called biological determination. We think that you are born complete. You’re just confused. And you don’t need to try to become someone else, you need just to find what is your own emergency and emergence as well. So emergency is about what you need to do now. Emergence is about who you can become. Okay ? So that’s the, you know , third stage when you suddenly reinvent yourself to find who you’ve always been, and this is the moment when your mind becomes calm, tranquil and unstoppable. And after that, there is a final stage. It’s the fourth stage. And to be in our system, you need to be a master coach to be able to bring someone to the fourth stage. And the fourth stage is called alchemy. And this is- So, backstory. One of my personal heroes is Carl Gustav Jung, famous psychologist. And at some point they were friends with Freud and they were friends for four years, but then their values set them apart. And , uh , Jung went ahead to create an incredible amount of things in his life. And what is special about Carl Jung is that he was a medical doctor, psychiatrist and scientist, and also he was incredibly religious. But not religious in a way that he believed in Christianity only, or in Quran or in Buddhism. He was what we currently- like nowadays, is called spiritual. Okay? And he was able to unite the idea of alchemy with science because basically alchemy is the inner science and he was able to unite those two things. And the state of alchemy is when you can move things from formless to form; when you see something that is presently not manifested, and you actually manifest that into reality. Now I don’t want to use this new age language because I actually get irritated by those definitions. So I prefer to be, be more on the science part of it, based on observation, based on specific criteria, et cetera . But what I strongly believe is that every great scientist in the history of humanity was an Alchemist. You know, if we think about Einstein, if we think about Maxwell, if we think about Darwin, everything they had created, before them was nonexistent, it was formless. And they were able to manifest that into the form; new symbols and new knowledge.

Chris Cooper: 33:14

So where does metacognitive programming fit into all of this?

Mikhail Saidov: 33:21

Okay , perfect question . And perfect segue into that . So what is meta cognitive programming? We believe that you cannot directly affect human behavior . That’s the reason why common sense and advice doesn’t work. Like you cannot give advice and expect that this advice will be followed. I know that many people still try to give others advice. Doesn’t really work, especially if you know, it is not asked for. But the way we change behavior is by modifying the emotion. And the way we modify the emotion is by changing the thought process. So let’s explain the first part and then move to the thought processes after. There are only two types of emotions, it is either the emotion of approach, for example, love or wonder like surprise or looking for surprise , like joy and even sadness. These are emotions that create this certain chemistry in your body that makes you come closer to the object. So a good example is Pavlovian behavioral theory, he would ring a bell. The dog will start salivating and will come to the bell. Okay. Why? The chemistry will be dopamine, right, in the dog’s body. And dopamine, probably norepinephrine will make dog move towards the object. Okay . So the second group of emotions make you distance yourself from the object. It’ll make you either freeze or run. Okay. By the way, the emotion of anger is an emotion of approach as well. When you’re angry, you want to move towards the object and either destroy object or do , or , um , subordinate the object or do something with the object. Okay . So emotions of distance, these are shame, guilt, fear, right? And pretty much every other negative emotion that I didn’t mention. So this is how you understand how emotion influences behavior or action, right? Another emotion is an emotion of repulsion. That’s the emotion of distancing yourself from , from the knowledge . So if you want people to go ahead and make things happen, you need to make them feel a certain way. They either gotta feel interest or love, or anger. That’s pretty much it. So the first principle of MCP is that you need to modify emotion if you need an action to happen. Or, if you want to stop doing something, you need to modify emotion as well. Now, how do we modify emotions? And the only way to modify emotion is through our thinking. And this is the basic premise of cognitive behavioral therapy: That every thought will create a certain emotion and that emotion will create behavior. So to change someone’s feelings, we need to change someone’s thinking process. And the way you change someone’s thinking process is through three steps. You make them aware of what they think. You make them abandon what they think, and you help them find a new model of thinking. The reason we call this practice meta cognitive- and meta can be translated as about. So we teach our coaches and therapists to discuss, or to think about clients’ thinking. Not about clients’ words, not about clients’ content, not about clients’ feelings, but about clients’ thinking; about clients’ cognition. So about cognition is meta, cognitive or meta thinking, Okay, now why programming? So we want to change the behavior permanently. So we need someone to start behaving a new way, and the way you start behaving a new way is by thinking new thoughts every new day. Okay ? So we need to train our clients to think differently. And we use what is called neuroplasticity for our clients to accept new ways and this is what the MCP about and the promise, the overall promise of meta cognitive programming is that currently the program, the mental program you are using is not effective for your life. Because you see, if you don’t have FERMI in your life, the reason you don’t have FERMI is because your behavior is not effective. The reason your behavior is not effective is because you’re not feeling proper emotions for that behavior. And the reason you do not feel proper emotions is because your thinking model is not efficient for that. So if we give you a better model, if we help you find a better model, you will be able to change your behavior, and you will find what you’re looking for in your life. And that’s the promise. Now, this approach is incredibly, incredibly effective . My company today is conducting 1000+ sessions every week. We have thousands of clients. We’ve certified almost 1000 of coaches. And our goal is to have MCP as a golden standard on every continent of life coaching and psychotherapy.

Chris Cooper: 40:30

How does somebody become a life coach? Or get training for metacognitive programming if they are already a psychotherapist?

Mikhail Saidov: 40:41

Yes, it is great if they are already serious about this work. Because there was something in the first place that attracted them to join the profession, right? And if they already were certified as coaches, life coaches, or psychotherapists, that just shows me that they’re very serious about this profession, and they want to progress. It takes them 12 months to train with me directly. Normally I’m taking small groups and I’m training these groups myself. Plus my coaches, my master coaches, we train and we teach. And we make sure that they have enough practice. And in 12 months they are able to do three things. They’re able to work one-on-one using MCP modality. They are able to work as facilitators in group settings with MCP modality or through MCP modality. And they are changing the approach to business coaching as well, because we teach them how to coach businesses as well, but only for those who want to take that as their next steps. Okay . But, you know, in years of our practice and you know, the life of the company, pretty much every coach we certified became a very, very successful coach. Because the way we approach things, the way we teach is so incredible and unique that they become very, very rare coaches once they graduate. And we don’t take many, for example, this year we’re probably gonna take 20 coaches only to train. And I choose and I interview them personally. And we normally accept 10 to 15%. And in 12 months we certify only 45%. So those who want to join us, they need to understand in advance that we do not promise certification in the end. But if they got certified, it pretty much means they are one of the best in the world.

Chris Cooper: 43:30

Very interesting. And I love how you are kind of leading the way in the world of life coaching , partially by establishing a credential that is very hard to get

Mikhail Saidov: 43:42

Mm-hmm

Chris Cooper: 43:43

Yes. You don’t always see that amount of rigor or challenge in becoming a life coach, right?

Mikhail Saidov: 43:50

Yeah. It’s so interesting. I had a conversation the other day and she basically told me, “Oh, I’m a life coach now.” And I’m like, “Oh really? So where did you train?” And she’s like, “Oh, I went to this place and we got trained over the weekend.” I’m like, “Okay. You know, that’s the problem.”

Chris Cooper: 44:09

yeah. It’s very common in the fitness world too, honestly. You know, very common and it’s hard to discern who is qualified and who is continuing their education. So , let’s just talk about that a little bit more your program . So first off, where should people be going if they want to find out more about the program?

Mikhail Saidov: 44:31

So they need to set up an interview with me. We have a new batch starting in the end of may. And I can give you my contact information. So probably is gonna be my team who will be setting up the interview with me. There will be a few questions before the interview. And then once they come for the interview, they will have to coach me. Now they don’t need to be licensed or certified. They just need to have a common sense and I will give them a problem and I will see how their mind works. The interview will take max 20-25 minutes and I will tell them right away if they’re a good fit for the program. Okay. If not, I will recommend something else. Once they pass the interview, we will set up three things for them. So number one is their group, where they’re gonna be supervised and where they will be practicing the material. Also when to come for lectures and the lectures are generally life , and this is like every week and who is their partner, assuming they will be, you know, working together. So generally it takes between five and seven hours every week for 12 months. There Will be practicums as well. And the practicum is when we get together for a week and we work nonstop until we see that their level of understanding progresses really fast. What also is interesting is that if you got certified, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re gonna get a job. It’s either- And if you want to get a job, because we’ll also teach them how to build their own business as a coach. But if they want to get a job, we will give a blind offer with 60K as an annual salary and they can start working for our company.

Chris Cooper: 46:58

That’s amazing. And I love how much faith you have in your own program, especially in a marketplace that’s seeing kind of an influx of life coaches and people with these work weekend certifications, as you said. Should people visit thinkmeta .ai to find out more?

Mikhail Saidov: 47:16

So think meta.ai is not the platform for coaches. Yeah. So for now we have , I think actually it is on thinkmeta. So we have our landing page for the program on thinkmeta, but I will send you the link.

Chris Cooper: 47:37

Wonderful. We’ll put that in the show notes.

Mikhail Saidov: 47:39

And you can share that and then there will be a button to show how they can schedule an interview. And then I hope to see someone from your audience, you know, to join us because , well, that’s, that’s gonna be the best decision of their lifetime, I promise.

Chris Cooper: 47:58

Yeah. I think more and more fitness coaches, especially in the nutrition side are understanding that it’s not the workouts that you give somebody, it’s the behavior that you create that ultimately determines success. And now I understand you’re not just giving people advice, but you’re actually reprogramming their brain and their thought process. It’s brilliant. So Misha, thank you so much for coming on. I’m sure people are gonna reach out to you with questions or just general interests. But this has been really enlightening for me and I’ve got three pages of notes and sticky notes and everything here. So, thank you so much for helping us out.

Mikhail Saidov: 48:43

Chris. I appreciate you for inviting me to the show. I loved your questions and hope to talk soon.

Chris Cooper: 48:51

Thanks, man.

Mikhail Saidov: 48:51

Yeah. Thanks.

Mike Warkentin: 48:54

Thanks for listening! Be sure to subscribe for more great shows just like this. Now, here’s Chris with a final note.

Chris Cooper: 49:00

If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook, this is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in and I’m in there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook.

The post Metacognitive Programming: Psychotherapy Meets Life Coaching appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Burnout, Impostor Syndrome & Finding Balance With Bonnie Skinner

I’m this episode, I talk with registered psychotherapist Bonnie J. Skinner about how our own mental well-being is affected by the different challenges that fitness entrepreneurship brings.

We delve into imposter syndrome, managing the transition from work to home, and the big one for many women in fitness business—burnout.

Bonnie is a Registered Psychotherapist with a background in Neuroscience, and over a decade of experience in helping individuals strengthen their mental fitness skills. As a CEO, executive coach, a wife and Mom, Bonnie knows first hand the unique challenges business owners and executives face on their journey to success. In addition to her clinical practice Bonnie runs Level Up Mental Fitness Coaching for clients in high performance roles, helping them gain confidence, consistency and focus. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mentalfitness4ceos

Level Up Mental Fitness Coaching

B. Skinner Coaching and Psychotherapy

1:00 – Impostor Syndrome

2:19 – Shift to home + transitions

7:44 – Partner support

13:09 – Social pressure

16:30 – Dealing with sexism in coaching

18:56 – Capacity building and burnout

23:41 – Positive entrepreneurship and CEO mindset

Tiffy Thompson: 0:04

Hello, and welcome to women in fitness business. I’m Tiffy Thompson. And today I’m gonna be talking with my friend, Bonnie Skinner. Bonnie is a registered psychotherapist with a background in neuroscience and over a decade of experiencing in helping people strengthen their mental fitness skills. As a CEO executive coach, a wife and mom, Bonnie knows firsthand the unique challenges that business owners and executives face. And in addition to her clinical practice, Bonnie runs level up mental fitness coaching for clients in high performance roles, helping them gain confidence, consistency, and focus. In this episode, we talk about imposter syndrome, managing the transition from work to home and the big one for many women in fitness business burnout , a body. Welcome to the show.

Bonnie Skinner: 0:57

Thank you. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

Tiffy Thompson: 1:00

So among the, the entrepreneurial women that you work with in your practice, how common is imposter syndrome?

Bonnie Skinner: 1:10

Oh, very common. I’d say it is equally as common as it is amongst the, the males that I coach as well. I think there is a, there’s a certain, I think there’s a certain characteristic that you could find in those that wanna do entrepreneurship that wanna build businesses. Mm-hmm that just automatically , uh , necessitates the presence of the imposter center . Right? So imposter syndrome is what we experience when we are going from one level to a new level. And it is the anxiety around, you know, what do I expect at this level? Can I be at this level, do I deserve to be here? And so I think it’s, you know, it’s pretty even across a board, men and women, but definitely men , women experience a lot of imposter syndrome. When they’re building businesses.

Tiffy Thompson: 1:51

I had a listener who is a gym owner, write in , say, as a business owner, I have trouble shutting, shutting it off and just going home and being a wife, I feel in charge all the time. And I can’t be the only one for, for women fitness entrepreneurs that also have kids and spouses. How difficult is it for them to shift gears and move from work mode into home mode without bringing all the stress with them? Like, is it possible?

Bonnie Skinner: 2:19

Absolutely. It’s possible. I think it is something that really requires a lot of intentional effort. And so, for example, in, in my coaching practice, one of the things that I often encounter is that there hasn’t been that intentional effort, meaning the idea of coming home, most of us don’t think about preparing to go home. Right. But what we’re actually doing is we are transitioning from one role to another. So, so you’re , you’re um, uh , the lady that wrote in there, the gym owner that wrote in, she’s talking about that, you know, I’m transitioning from being in charge here at work, and now I’m going home and I’m being the wife. I don’t know what that means for her, but whatever it does mean that’s where she’ll find the root of the struggle. So what does it mean to be the boss at work and I’m going home and I’m gonna be the wife at home, but what kind of wife or your home are the boss wife at home? Are you the , like, I think there’s so much that I would I’d wanna know about her role when she gets home. That makes it difficult for her to turn off. So what we do know about women is we , we tend to take on a lot of I’ll call it life, ed men , right. where, you know, we’re going home. We’re thinking, okay, what bills have been paid? Have the kids eat . And if they ate, what did they eat? When did they eat? Uh , was there anything that I forgot to do this morning? Or like, so sometimes we’re going home in the same state or with the same high level focus that we’re showing up at work with. Right. And if we don’t, if we’re not intentional about what that transition looks like and the costs of that, because now we’re with this heightened state all day long, then, then we don’t actually put plans in place that support the transition between from one place to another.

Tiffy Thompson: 4:04

So what would those transitions look like? Like what, are there certain things that you recommend your clients do to, to make that transition?

Bonnie Skinner: 4:12

Yeah, absolutely. So when I’m working with my coaching clients, I have them think very intentionally about the last hour and if they can, the last two hours of the day. So what we tend to like to do is pack everything, you know, or somebody will come up with a problem cause they wanna catch us before we leave for the day. And so we’re always working on this last minute stuff. The more we can build processes into our day where we’re actually winding down within the last hour. Now, some people have a 45 minute, 50 minute or more commute home. That’s actually a good thing because that is the forced time that you need to decompress or that can help you decompress. But , but you can do other things. So for example , um , I have one client who has a ritual at their, at their workspace. So , um, she actually organizes her desks a certain way before she leaves. She turns off her turns off her computer and then she closes her door when she locks her door. That’s her day over. Right. So that’s, so that’s the mental transition for her is like, everything that is about work is done when I lock my door. And I thought that was absolutely brilliant, right. Because what our brain thrives on is very clear, what am I supposed to do now? So when , when she locks that door, it’s like, okay, now she’s thinking about, I think her commute is about 15, 20 minutes on the commute home. She’s listening to music that she really likes. She’s listening to anything that she would listen up to on the weekend. She’s not listening to the news or checking on certain things. That’s her decompression time. Mm-hmm, what she also does is when she gets home, she, excuse me , uh , two little ones. And she’s like the first 20 minutes of getting home is playing like a kid. Right . So what happens is you take an hour and a half or a two hour block and you say, I’m gonna have to transition in this time. What, what , how can I structure this so that I’m actually transitioning the way that I want to,

Tiffy Thompson: 6:06

Is

Bonnie Skinner: 6:06

It so for her? Yeah ,

Tiffy Thompson: 6:08

Go ahead. It , it sounds like it’s a matter of it’s, it’s almost like blocking this time and scheduling it in yeah . Into your day.

Bonnie Skinner: 6:16

Very much so as much as you do anything else, like, I mean, if we think as entrepreneurs, we’re always thinking about how can we be the most efficient, right. Well, transitioning is a task that does require efficiency. We want to , we want to transition well. So if we say, you know, first of all, how do I want to transition if I, if I know for example, that when I go home, I got nobody waiting on me. Nobody, you know, it’s just my downtime that may not be as big a priority or as big a difficulty as my transition say , from home to work. Right. So it’s the reason I don’t kind of give out a blanket statement and say, okay, people just need to do this is because everybody’s transition is gonna look slightly different. Mm-hmm . But what you wanna know is, you know, what do I actually want to feel when I get home? Right? What is it that I’m thinking about? So going back to the lady that really in the owner that wrote in, what are the things , what do you want going home to look like? And what’s getting in the way of that, are you going home and having, you know, having to field 21 questions about things? And if so, how can you hand off some of the responsibility, right? How can you share or restructure things so that you’re not CEO over here and then coming home and being CEO over here, right? Maybe being co CEO type thing, TV spaces

Tiffy Thompson: 7:33

That kind of leads it to my next question. What about women who are actually co-owners with their spouses? Like what, what are the unique issues that they face,

Bonnie Skinner: 7:44

Who God bless your hearts? um, those who do it well, there’s a few characteristics of those who do it very well. When they have a , a partnership they have spent the time clearly defining their roles, who’s responsible for what, right. So it depends also on, did they start the business together or did one person, you know, become a part of the other of their partner’s business. So I think there’s some dynamics there that need to be looked out . But the first thing I would say is, you know, make sure that who’s responsible for what is incredibly clear. The next thing you wanna think about is how does our roles in our business affect our role as partners? So let’s say we go to work, we’ve got this really, you know, lots of pressure going on at work. How are we still going to be a close and connected couple? When we get home, maybe, maybe we’re on two different sides of a business decision. I wanna make this decision. My partner wants to make that decision, but I’m supposed to go home now and we’re gonna get along and, you know, model well for our kids. And how do we do that? And I think that needs to be a really intentional conversation about the fact that there is additional pressures that are on a couple, because they’re going to, they’re going to face different , uh, different situations, whether they be at home, whether they be socially or whether they be in their business.

Tiffy Thompson: 9:10

Right. What are the advantages though, of, of being a owner with your spouse,

Bonnie Skinner: 9:17

All collaboration, a hundred percent. Like, like I said, when it’s , when it’s done well, it can be incredible because for the most part , um, partners , uh , marital partners or whatever, we’re gonna wanna call it a business, tend to be working on the same vision. Right ? So the same, they’re, they’re building a business for the same reason, but they’re both in intricately connected to that vision and that goal. Right? So, whereas if we are bringing on partnerships in our business or we’re, you know, we’re driving our team or, you know , expanding our leadership, we have to sell and hope that those, those, we promoting our vision too, buy in . Right. And I think that’s, that’s different when you have spouses that are working together in a common vision, because it’s , it’s almost like now you may have, you know, I’m not saying it’s always the same across the board, but for the most part, you’ve got somebody else already at the same level or at the same level of desire as you are with the vision you’re working on

Tiffy Thompson: 10:19

When, if the business doesn’t or if the, sorry, if the marriage doesn’t work out, though, can , is , is it possible to have a business beyond that together? Or do you ever, have you ever encountered that your clients,

Bonnie Skinner: 10:34

If it is clearly delineated, if the roles are clearly delineated, it’s , it’s gonna be a lot easier,

Tiffy Thompson: 10:39

Right?

Bonnie Skinner: 10:41

Because for the same, you know, for the same reason you have any kind of dispute, if be , if the, how I say this , if the expectations or the roles are unclear, that’s when you have the arguments and the , you shouldn’t have done this and you can’t have that and all that kind of stuff, but what you also run the risk of is that personal professional overlap, that if we’re arguing at home, now we’re arguing at work. If there is a dispute at work, now we have a dispute at home. So what you can see happen, what I have seen happen is you get these disagreements in the workplace that are not about anything that happened in the workplace, you know? So, so just like we can use anything to kind of , you know, get our , get our partners or, or rile somebody up the businesses. No , isn’t an exception for that. People can use their businesses to hurt their partners or ex-partners or whatever the case may be. And I think it’s about having the legal clarity. Like if your partner’s in a business, you should have a talk an agreement about like, what happens if the marriage doesn’t last. Right, right . How do you manage that? And I think I’m, you know, lots of people are different. I’m a really big proponent about talking about those things. Like every couple should talk about what it would be like to split up, right? Every business partner, every business partnership, they should have a talk about what it , what it would be like to split up. Because if not the going on will never happen. It’ll never happen. Never . Well, it means that when it does happen, if it does happen, there’s no prep , there’s no preparation, right? So now you’re in the middle of it and it , and it doesn’t, it can go a lot worse than it really has to.

Tiffy Thompson: 12:24

Mm-hmm switching gears a bit. I , I wanna talk a little bit about , um, women in the fitness business and their kind of unique situation. There’s a , there’s a lot of Mamo surrounding the fitness industry and male coaches and gym owners are, are definitely more common than, than female coaches and, and gym owners. So women in the fitness business will definitely run into some sexism and some power struggles. How widespread is that in your estimation and, and what can be done to mitigate it?

Bonnie Skinner: 13:02

I don’t have specific stats on how widespread it is in the fitness industry itself.

Tiffy Thompson: 13:08

Hmm .

Bonnie Skinner: 13:09

But I think the struggles are very, are , are as common as you’ll see it in any other fitness industry. Right . I think what I do hear from my clients and those I interact with that, that do have businesses in the fitness industry is the expectations. So for example, the expectations around , um, body edge , body presentation, right? So am I supposed to look a certain way if I, you know, if I am, can I look less FA quote , unquote , less feminine, right. If I have, you know, big muscles and I’m toed and I work out a lot , is that a bad thing is, you know, are my , are , are members going to care if, you know, I’m maybe I put on 10 or 15 pounds over the summer. So you you’ve got the same, the same kinds of concerns and body images that I think we , we end up with across industries. The difference is, is when their clients are coming in, when their potential members are coming in, it can be a subjective piece. Right. So I think it’s, it’s not to say, okay, well , a gym owner should look like X, Y , Z , but I’ve, I’ve heard gym owners, you know, wondering about, well, does it matter what I look like? Does it matter? You know, how often I work out , does it matter what kind of equipment I own or equipment I have. Right. Right . Like , that’s one that I hadn’t thought of that is just, you know, if I own this kind of gym, can I own this kind of equipment? Like, so, but I think what it really goes back to is you have to find a place to locate who you are. Right. And, and , and it not necessarily being about the gym owner cuz people don’t. We tend to think that when people buy a product, they buy us, they don’t right. They don’t buy us. Even, even, even when I have clients that choose me as a coach or choose me as a therapist, they’re not buying me, they’re buying the story they created about me.

Tiffy Thompson: 14:58

Right,

Bonnie Skinner: 14:58

Right . They’re buying that, that person can help me. That person gets me. And so, so long as that is the thing that we’re focused on is we’re focused on helping them cultivate the most positive story they can. That’s rooted in how we want to help. That tends to alleviate a lot of worries about, you know, who am I, what am I supposed to look like? And you know, what happens if I’m 15 pounds overweight? And I I’m , I wanna take somebody in as a PT client. Right. And it’s like, the answer is they’re gonna care if you care. And if you care, it’ll show up subliminally in kind of everything that you do or how you present yourself. And that’s usually usually the struggle

Tiffy Thompson: 15:39

Or could, could it be possible that like for coaches in particular , um, a big Broy guy is not really gonna take commands from a , a woman, you know, like mm-hmm , , it’s how, how, how does one contend with that level of ignorance and sexism and, and still maintain composure and, and still be a good coach?

Bonnie Skinner: 16:08

That’s a , that’s a really great question. The reason I’m I’ve paused here is because I’m thinking there’s, there’s a direct and an indirect way to deal with this.

Tiffy Thompson: 16:19

Bonnie Skinner: 16:20

I will, I will throw the caveat that I am the more direct type. Like I’m the more let’s throw on a table and deal with whatever it is. But I recognize that that’s not everybody’s style. What I would say to, to women that are encountering that is to go back to what exactly are you doing? That’s rooted in the that’s rooted in the client’s goals. So if I was to walk up to the coach at that particular time, and I say, okay, why this plan with that client, if you could say to me, Bonnie, because of this, this, this, this, and this, then you are set. You are , you are rooted in what it is that you’re doing right now. You’ve got an option from there, depending upon the pushback that you’re feeling. Right. I would say, Hey, let’s sit down and have a chat about, you know, what you feel like isn’t working for you and let the member or the client explain why they don’t think it’s working. That provides you with an opportunity to say, oh, I’ve chosen this and this because of these things, here are some alternatives, but what you, don’t what I think we tend to want to do is go in and explain ourselves and to defend ourselves and to say, no, no, no, no, no . I really know what I’m doing. Or to get angry and defensive. Right. And be like, well , that guy’s just a jerk. Maybe, maybe not.

Tiffy Thompson: 17:38

Right.

Bonnie Skinner: 17:39

But I , I think that is if you take that on, not as I’m encountering sexism today, but instead as I’m encountering somebody, that’s going to challenge whether or not I’m a good fit for them today. Right. Whether it’s because I’m a woman, whether it’s, because I’m this, that the other thing that’s where we can kind of bring the focus back into what we can deal with, because we’re not gonna go, nobody opens a , I don’t, I don’t think maybe I’ll get calls about this tomorrow, but nobody opens a gym to say, I’m gonna crush all the sexism in the world.

Tiffy Thompson: 18:12

Right.

Bonnie Skinner: 18:12

But a good coach can change a lot to the right person. Right. So it’s really about recentering, not letting somebody get the emotional best of you and going back to justifying what you’re doing and then allowing them to talk about whatever problem they think is on the table.

Tiffy Thompson: 18:31

Does that make a bit of sense? It does. It does. Um, when you talk about not getting the emotional best of someone, you’ve, you’ve talked a lot about in other podcasts, this idea of , um, keeping your cup filled up. And can you explain a bit more about what that looks like when it comes to, to being a fitness entrepreneur?

Bonnie Skinner: 18:56

Yeah, absolutely. So I talk a lot , um, and I think this is what you’re referring to about capacity. Yes . And so how I explain capacity is capacity is , uh , the sum of all of the physical and mental energy that we have to run every aspect of our lives . So I say, you know, imagine that you have one cup and out of that, one cup comes everything, all the physical and mental energy, you need to do everything in your life. So talking to me, hanging out with your kids, grocery, shopping, everything, when that cup is full, our brain allows us to do more easily. So if I got groceries, I’m like, oh, I’ll just run to the store and go grab some groceries. Right? If I , my kid says, Hey, mommy, come play with me. I get down the floor and we’ll play with her. Right. Everything seems to be pretty easy. But one of the jobs that your brain has is to adjust your activity, according to how full or how empty the cup is. So its job is to be conservative about how you spend that cup as you start to get depleted. So why I’m talking about balancing your emotional energies , because if we , when we take the time to get riled up and upset and let everything offend us and, and everything, you know, exhaust us and we don’t take care of ourselves. So our , our outputs are high. Then what happens is your brain is forced to start finding new ways to conserve energy. One of the ways it likes to conserve energy is by shutting down our ability to regulate our emotions. That’s why, if you, if any, I know you’ve got a , a little one I’ve got a four year old . So if you remember the toddler phase, right, they’re tired. Are they the most wonderful human beings you’ve ever seen when they’re tired? Not a chance, right? We love them , but they ain’t sweet at that stage. It’s because there’s no energy left. And the, the energy that it takes to regulate our emotional state is a lot. So your brain just goes, Nope, no energy left for that. We then turn that off. Right . And now all of a sudden we’re a lot more reactive. And so being able to manage all the demands that are on us as entrepreneurs requires that we get really, really good at knowing where we are, how full or how empty that cup is. Okay . And so there’s two ways to do that. One is we can increase our inputs. Our inputs are anything they’re basically, you know, good nutrition, hydration. Um, sleep is a massive one that we never think of, or don’t think of enough breathing really well, meaningful relationships, positive engagement, you know, a sense of purpose. These are all things that fill our cup up. Okay . Everything pulls out of our cup, whether it’s negative or positive. If you think about, you know, I always give the example of , um , those six weeks between November 1st and , and , and , uh , January 1st. Right? Well, in that state, everybody, whether you like the holidays or whether you don’t, we’re all in this, this state where we’re putting out more energy than we’re , we’re , we’re couping right. We’re planning, travel, we’re shopping. We’re worrying about money. We’re doing all these different things. That’s why in January, February, most clinicians know their numbers are gonna go up because people think they’re depressed or they think that they’re , they’s something wrong with them. Cuz they’re so fatigued. They’re so tired. And that’s, that’s the brain in the body trying to recover six weeks of continual output with no recharge. Right. Okay . So, so that’s, that’s how we find the, let me put it this way. That’s how we build our mental endurance. Right. So we build our mental endurance by constantly making sure that we are filling up the cup and spending it in ways that are good for us. That, that , that create progress for us. That like , you know, not arguing with my friend about something that doesn’t matter.

Tiffy Thompson: 22:37

Those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re not operating in the red basically. Yeah,

Bonnie Skinner: 22:42

Exactly. It’s when we operate in the red, that problems tend to compound cause one, right ? We don’t see them the way they actually are. So when we are operating the red, our, our brain changes the way it sees things. It’s actually way more likely to assume that things are worse than they are. Right . That’s called a negativity bias and we’re more likely to grab on beliefs that are rooted in the possibility of threat or the so we , so basically we assume things are gonna be more problematic than we are. And if you can imagine, you know, what that would do to a business sense. I mean, you wanna be careful and risk averse in business, but if you are tired and, and burnt out and that kind of stuff like that gets amplified and all of a sudden you’re putting up fires that aren’t even fires,

Tiffy Thompson: 23:29

Right. Swinging the other direction. What are, what are the amazing aspects of entrepreneurship as a woman? Like what are, what are the positive aspects? Oh man ,

Bonnie Skinner: 23:41

, I , we don’t have enough time today to talk about all this, but I think, you know, I , I gave a talk. This was, oh my God. It had to be 10 years ago. Now eight , nine years ago to, it was a group of women in Nova Scotia. And they, they were women that had gotten into , to , um , conflict with the law and they were having trouble kind of regrouping and, and , and they’re face . They were about to get placed in these new jobs. I think it was a new program. And one of the thing , one of the activities that, that really kind of moved me one day was I , I had them all list the skills it took to be a mother, right? So, you know, things like , um , grocery shopping and planning and , um, being able to wrangle multiple children and being able to arrange a point like , and basically I took , uh , I create a whole list of skills, leadership skills, organizational skills, support skills, team, building skills, all of that stuff. But I did it in the tasks that they used them as mothers. Okay. I made a second list of all of the corporate, all the skills you need to be an , an executive level corporate employee mm-hmm and they matched almost perfectly. Wow. And when, when we were going through the list and I forget, there’s a mom in the back and I could see her tearing up and I said, do you mind if I ask you what’s going on? And she said, my whole life, I thought I was nothing. And you are telling me I could be a CEO. You know? And , and I think as women, as mothers, we don’t take time to think about the value that we offer to the marketplace. Cuz I think historically, historically being excluded, we haven’t been able to develop the understanding about how valuable our skill sets are. Right . But in much the same way as the owner that you mentioned is talking about. Yeah, I go and I run my business and then I come home and I run household. I step into this other rule . We are so used to transferring in and out of those rules , we almost don’t think about it. Right, right. And that, that is the one thing that makes us incredible, incredible business asset . Right . So I think we, there’s absolutely no harm and a ton of benefit in setting back and going. What about being a woman? What about being a mom? Makes me incredible as an entrepreneur because you don’t have to dig very deeply to find that there are some things that are amazing attributes, right. That that is really about, okay, well if, if our children are sick with my daughter sick, I’m like, oh, sorry, honey, mommy’s taking a mental health day. I can’t help you with that. We’re used to working under pressure. We’re used to knowing that no health is coming sometimes. Right? So again, there’s, there’s just so many things that, that , that make women superstars when it comes to business mm-hmm

Tiffy Thompson: 26:52

and, and when it comes to what, what the appealing aspects of, of running your own business as a woman are it’s you have, you have that , um, opportunity for expansion for, for going as high as you want. There’s no ceiling really.

Bonnie Skinner: 27:13

Sometimes, you know, I’ve been a lot of different conversations where we’ve talked about the , you know , the glass ceiling that women feel they face. And I always say, you know, if you, if you see , if you see a ceiling, then there is a ceiling.

Tiffy Thompson: 27:25

Right,

Bonnie Skinner: 27:26

Right. If you refuse to , to believe that there’s a ceiling there, then whether or not there is a ceiling is none your business. Right. Right. Because you are still going to plan is if there’s not. And I think that’s one thing that I, I espouse to all of my clients, whether, I mean, whether it’s male or female , but it’s really about what are the limitations you’re willing to accept because they’re the only ones that are gonna matter. Right. If you accept that, oh, because I’m a woman I’m gonna go out and things are gonna be really difficult for me, then that’s exactly what they’re gonna be. That is called a confirmation bias. We look for what we believe. Right. But if you go, oh yeah. Things might be really difficult for me, but I’m gonna be as prepared as I can. Then all you have to do is deal with the next thing that comes along. And so I think there is some benefit to stepping away from some of the stories or some of the narratives that I think originally were intended to be helpful for women. I think they’re , I think they were originally intended to say like, Hey look, you’ve been oppressed and , and you need to fight and you need to push. You need like, and yes, I can, I can see that. But ultimately if somebody takes that narrative on and decides, oh, well I have to constantly be in fight mode. Then what you do is you pull somebody out of the growing mode, right. Because you can’t be a thinker and a fighter at the same time.

Tiffy Thompson: 28:49

Right.

Bonnie Skinner: 28:50

Right. This is true . And so what we wanna do is is the more we can stay in that, that clear thinking strategizing , that’s where we want to be instead of like, okay, well I have to prepare for the next thing. That’s around the corner. Forget about it. If you’re gonna build your business and you’re going to, you know, set your family free, like you’re gonna be prepared anyway. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t sit on the doorstep and wait for the fight to come. If you see it along the road, fine deal with it. Right. Don’t just sit back and be like, oh I can’t cuz there’s a ceiling there.

Tiffy Thompson: 29:17

Yeah. Bonnie , it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for coming on today.

Bonnie Skinner: 29:23

Thank you. And pleasure’s all mine

Tiffy Thompson: 29:26

And that’s it for today’s episode of women in fitness business. Thanks for listening.

The post Burnout, Impostor Syndrome & Finding Balance With Bonnie Skinner appeared first on Two-Brain Business.