Chris Cooper's Blog, page 96

The Business Dance: Flik And Victoria of Sleek Ballet Fitness

Today I’m talking to Flik Swan and Victoria Marr. They are classically-trained ballerinas, professional dancers and the co-founders of  Sleek Ballet Fitness , which combines fitness training with the steely strength of classical ballet technique. We talk about what its like starting a business with your best friend, taking risks, the identity crisis that can often come with career shift, motherhood and more. 

If you are curious to try out Sleek Technique for yourself (I’m a big fan), head to  sleekballetfitness.com  where you can take advantage of a 7-day free trial. 

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1:02: Starting a biz with your best friend

3:10: Balance and compromise

4:52: Dividing business and personal time

6:53: Coping with a career shift

8:05: Redefining yourself

11:11: Taking risks and starting a new business

16:03: Developing an authentic ballet fitness technique

20:07: Getting product to market

22:54: Getting comfortable in front of a camera

23:50: Becoming moms together

26:13: Deepening knowlege of where clients are at

27:57: Coping with Lockdowns

31:15: Vision for the future

 

 

Tiffy (00:04):

Welcome to Women In Fitness Business. Today, I’m talking to Flik Swan and Victoria Marr. They are classically trained ballerinas, professional dancers, and the co-founders of Sleek Ballet Fitness, which combines fitness training with the steely strength of classical ballet technique. We talk about what it’s like going into business with your best friend, the identity crisis that can often come with a career shift, motherhood and more. I hope you enjoy it.

Tiffy (00:38):

Flik and Victoria, welcome to the show.

Victoria (00:40):

Thank very much, Tiffy.

Flik (00:43):

Hello.

Tiffy (00:44):

So you two have known each other for a long time. You met in performing arts school and then you both went on to become professional dancers. When did you realize that you wanted to start a business together?

Victoria (00:59):

Oh, honestly Flik is the person I’ve kept in touch with most since school and actually, my relationship with her has been constant through decades and so many changes in our life. I can honestly say, you know, through teenage breakups, births, marriages, the whole thing, we’ve at each other’s side. So, you know, looking for somebody to go into business with, it wasn’t just that layer of friendship and support that was there. It was our kind of, our shared passion for dance. The fact that we both came to the same point around the same time, thinking about the what next we’ve been performing for 20 odd years professionally. And we got to that point, yeah, pretty much the same time and being planners as we are. We didn’t wanna get there and not have an idea of what the next step was gonna be. So we chatted it through and we weren’t quite sure what it was yet, but we decided we wanted to do something together.

Flik (01:59):

I was just gonna say, it’s funny because we were both at points in our careers where we weren’t, the what next was definitely there, but, you know, Victoria was still dancing, lead principal roles at the height of her career, receiving great reviews, you know, had the director of the company that she was dancing with a daughter. I think I was at the old Vic at the time that we actually first really sat down. And I think I was saying to you, I was, you know, working with a very high profile director at that point. So it wasn’t like we were going, oh my gosh, you know, we need to think about the what next, because our careers are on the decline. You know, as Victoria said, we’re both quite forward thinking people, we’re planners. We both probably from our training in dance like to have a certain element of control about where our lives can go.

Flik (02:43):

And as much as we can put into that and mak those journeys happen, we will. So coming together for me, there was never anybody else that I would’ve embarked on a business with, apart from Victoria, because we are very different people, but we are also very the same in lots of ways, in terms of things like drive and passion. We are always on the same page with stuff. And if we aren’t on the occasional time, we aren’t, we always manage to find a balance between each other and a compromise. So, it’s not difficult. And sometimes I think it can be difficult going into business with a friend, especially as Victoria said, we have been best friends since we were 11 years old. Basically. My daughter said to me, who’s only just turned five years old.

Flik (03:29):

The other day we were talking about best friends at her primary school. And she said to me, Mimi, who’s your best friend. And before I could even answer, she went, it’s auntie Vixy. Which is what they call her. And I said, yes, auntie Vixy is definitely my best friend. And, you know, that’s just my children just aware of that, bearing in mind since the lockdown Victoria and I haven’t been in a room together as much as we, you know, previously would’ve been, but they still feel that. So, yeah, it was an absolute no brainer us two coming together. The rest of it was, you know, was not simple. We had to do a lot of blood, sweat and tears, which we’ll come to, but, you know, working together was just, it was a no brainer.

Victoria (04:06):

Yeah. It was funny. Actually the only one thing I would say, actually, exactly the same thing that drew us together and made us want to work together was the one thing that did cross my mind, of us not to work together was we, wow, we have this wonderful friendship, will being in business together change that or put that in jeopardy. And, and that was the one concern I had. But it wasn’t a big enough concern. I thought we, you know, had the minerals to power through any decisions that, you know, got in the way that we disagreed on. Or I really felt that it was the right thing to do, even though that was one thing I’d say that potentially losing what we had, that was great already.

Flik (04:45):

Time to time, Tiffy, how we combat that. But it’s not conscious sometimes we’ll ring each other. And the first thing we’ll say is it’s not a Sleek call, just wanted to see how you are or I’m just phoning. So we, you know it’s not a lot. It’s not like we will regularly consciously do that. If I know something’s been going on that Victoria’s had a bit of stress with, I will call her. And before she even says, hello, I’ll say this, isn’t a Sleek call. How are you doing? And vice versa. We try to have, you know, still a portion of just Flik and Victoria, Fliky and Vicky, but we try to keep that. And, you know, we always still have our laughs in abundance.

Tiffy (05:25):

I interviewed a woman who was in business with her husband and she talked about having like sacred time and having business time. And the sacred time was the time where they would just talk about their stuff. And the business time was, it was clearly delineated and she swore by that. So, Vicky, I wanna talk a little bit about the transition from being a professional ballerina to going into business. Flik was saying she was a bit more at the ready for that transition because she was a freelance dancer and there was a bit more of that verve, but can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like going through retirement and kind of that identity shift that happened for you? Yeah.

Victoria (06:15):

Flik navigated it beautifully and, you know, I think she made a really seamless transition and she’s very good at grasping the here and now, I think because maybe that freelance, you know, lifestyle is maybe a little bit more transient with the groups of people. You tend to work with great groups of people for a short time and then move on. I’d kind of worked with a core group of people for 17 years. People have come and gone, but, you know, there was a real sense of family the ballet, some of us had come all the way up from school together. And we, you know, we toured together. We lived together, lots of times we worked unsocial hours. So we always socialized together. It was as much that element as it was the performance, the people, I really mourned that family environment, that social environment as well as actually being on stage, it was very much a two prong thing.

Victoria (07:10):

I did miss performing. I did want that sensation still of finishing and taking a curtain call. That was, it’s a bit of a drug, that, you never want to lose that. But equally I found it quite heartbreaking at the time that most of my friends, their life carried on as normal as a group. And they went off on tour together for six weeks and I was kind of left behind waving going see you. And I felt a little bit, I felt a little bit flawed for a while and couldn’t quite find my place. I said, probably for a good year I didn’t feel myself because I’d always identified myself as you know, oh, I’m Victoria Marr, I’m a ballet dancer with Ballet Royal ballet. This is, you know, what I do, it’s such a big part of who I am.

Victoria (07:49):

And I lost that element of identity a little bit. And now with a bit of time and age on my side, I don’t define myself in those same parameters anymore. And I very quickly spread my wings and made lots of friends outside of the ballet world, had great support from Flik and my family, to actually just, you know, keep me up the butt and say, there’s still so much live to be had great people to meet other business opportunities, other career opportunities. That’s gone. It was great, but move on to the next thing. And I did, I probably wasted not wasted cause we were always acting and doing stuff to push Sleek. But I think from my, enjoying things to its full potential point of view, I didn’t for the first year and then something switched and I was like, this is where we are now.

Victoria (08:35):

Yes, that was wonderful. But this can be great too. And I’m not enjoying all the benefits of it. I think when Flik and I both had children and again, we had kids within a few weeks apart of each other, which was amazing and totally unplanned. But we, as again, we just got to that stage about the same time. And we understood each other’s journey because of that. And that equally gave me another perspective of now I have this work where before I was at the beck and call of my rehearsal instructor, you have to be at this theater at this time. We’re touring for five weeks here. Then later in the season, we’re going into the states and this, then I had this little person in my life and I had a business that we were in charge of. We could decide what time table we did things on.

Victoria (09:24):

We could do it predominantly from home. And all of a sudden I was like, wow, I’ve got this amazing thing that fits into my life beautifully. And it couldn’t have been, it couldn’t work better. And that’s when I really, really started to appreciate, you know, all the other things around Sleek that made it great for us. I was still getting to dance. I was still getting to be creative, but I didn’t have to go away for weeks at a time to strange countries and foreign theaters that I, you know, and be away from my baby. So that gave me a level of appreciation for it.

Tiffy (09:58):

When you were building your business, coming from a ballet or a dance background, what area of building that platform had the steepest learning curve for you both?

Victoria (10:11):

Oh, I think Flik both and I would say we weren’t massively techy.

Flik (10:18):

No, no, we weren’t. We weren’t. So when we were going in and bearing in mind, you know, eight, nine years ago online, certainly here maybe slightly more ahead over in the states, but certainly here in the UK and Europe, people weren’t working online, you know, here in Europe, you go into an office. If that’s, if you know where you are basing your job, you are in an office, you’re working on a computer, but you are literally in there in a brick building face to face with people, obviously that’s completely different now. So when we thought about creating the business, which I’m sure we’ll come back to how it started at some point. We really, we took quite a big leap, but not perhaps quite as consciously as we realized by thinking, well, whatever it is that we come up with that will come up together, you know, when we had the lightbulb moment to go, well, let’s do it online.

Flik (11:06):

Really, that was a really big risk. Yeah. Which paid off in the way that we, you know, formulated the business, which like I say, we can go back to, but you know, nowadays setting up an online business, nobody’s gonna blink. Back then people were saying what you do online classes, what? And you’d say, yeah, think of it like Skype. And most people would go Skype who, you know, Skype, people still just picked up the phone and called people. People just sent a text. So the world has rapidly changed in nine years and never more so than the last two and a half years. Two years. So yeah, it was kind of a big thing to navigate because even the developers that we were going to to say, this is the business we’ve got, were going.

Flik (11:50):

Okay. So you want, okay, so you kind of wanna stream a bit like Netflix. Okay. And you wanna host live. So even the techy people were getting their heads around what we wanted. And then when they came back with how they were doing, that was tough for us. But there were many times we’d be sat under the table, giving each other a nudge because they’d be speaking to us. And I could tell Vic was the same as me. Wasn’t quite up to speed, but we were doing the nod. The second we walked out, what did they mean by that? And you were like, I dunno, either. So we had quite a few laughy moments. So we had to navigate that. Obviously we’re up to speed a lot more so now.

Tiffy (12:30):

When it comes to working together in a partnership, what would you say is the other’s superpower?

Flik (12:37):

Oh, Vicky’s full of superpowers even saying, you know, talking about her transition, then you know what she, of course would miss out because she is who she is, is she was at the top of her game when she transitioned into Sleek. This wasn’t, you know, we taking this one out now she’s trying, it’s like for you to move on Victoria Marr give you a clap. She was at the top of her game, dancing these incredible roles, could have carried on. But what Victoria sees is she sees the here and now, but she sees the future and the future where she wanted to go out, you know, in her best fabulous shape and still with her body and soul brimming with ideas for a future. Yes. It was very difficult for her to transition. But what Vicky does way more so than I, as she sees always a solution or a positive thing in something.

Flik (13:29):

So I will, you know, tend to, I don’t know, let’s say I’ve had a bad day. Might not even be a Sleek thing and I’ll say to Victoria, oh, I don’t know. Oh, I dunno. For example, you know, something’s going on at my child’s school and I’m just thinking, oh, I dunno what I’m gonna do there, Victoria always comes back with something which is right. Well, you can think of it like this. So she, it’s not that she’s this chippy chirpy smiley, you know, everything’s great. She is very good at weighing things up. And because of that, when it comes to business, what she does is she, she sees a big picture. So in terms of jumping into things and being a little bit more risk focused, I’m probably happy to take a bigger risk. Victoria isn’t risk aversive at all, but she will step back and she is a level player. And most of the time, that’s great. Occasionally we need my skill to go. We just gotta yeah make that decision and we’ll make decision. But, but she’s full of, I mean, yeah. I could give you another 10 more if you want.

Victoria (14:31):

I think that kind of level headness maybe stands me in good stead, but as I say that, nice, the flip side of that is that Flik is ballsy beyond belief. I love her and she is brave. She’s fearless. And she’s navigated several transitions, you know, in her career. She’s never been satisfied to be just okay in anything she’s always wanted to be the best at everything. So when she’s achieved that in one thing, she’s generally moved on to another and she’s achieved it there too. Yeah. So she doesn’t stop. She’s relentless. She is relentless. And so whereas I, sometimes I stop and I go, right. I have to, sometimes I have to reign her in and sometimes she has to kick my butt, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas I say, right, have we thought about from this level, this angle, you know, there’s that balance. And then when we thought all that through, she says, right, can we do it now? I’m like, okay, now we can do it.

Tiffy (15:27):

Yeah. So when you’re adapting ballet techniques into the fitness space, what factors come into play specifically? Cause it’s a very different thing. It’s not like a typical like aerobics video. Like it’s very much a ballet class, but there are modifications. How do you approach that?

Flik (15:50):

When we set up the business, we were very, very conscious of making a method that was authentic to us. So what our experience and knowledge and expertise was in, which was essentially both of us started in classical ballet and obviously Victoria’s career excelled in that. So therefore being authentic to that meant we needed to do a lot of research. So Victoria went over to the States, researched a lot of methods. At the time, barre was really exploding onto the scene. Yeah. So Victoria went to several studios over in New York and around the states, I did the same thing here in London. What we discovered was fantastic classes. Absolutely not putting barre down on any stretch, but they weren’t actually rooted in classical ballet. They had movements or certainly terminology that was similar to, but it was not in a way that a dancer would ever train, to get that very long lean, supple, but strong body, get a different kind of body and a very fit one. Absolutely. No doubt. So, in terms of that, we had to make sure that our research was absolutely on point and then come back to the table and then take all the bits that we liked, the bits that worked, the bits that didn’t work, mix it with our expertise and at the time, and I’ll let Victoria tell you, Victoria also had just finished doing her fitness qualification. And then we found a way to blend that. And I won’t say anymore because I’ll let Victoria speak on that.

Victoria (17:10):

We spent a lot of time together as well. Flik came up to the studios at BRB and, you know, we actually got in the studio together and we are very, very lucky or maybe it’s, genetics, or maybe it’s the way we train. We both uniquely not had any injuries in our career, any big injuries. And I’ve worked with people who’ve had two years out. My own partner Tom has had several hip operations, ankles and has had in total of two years out of his career, and Flik and I very, fortunately never had anything that took us off more than a day or two. So that I think gave us some confidence that we were on the right track with our training, what we were doing and we wanted to keep it really authentic to ballet technique, which is tried and tested, which has been remarkably unchanged for hundreds of years.

Victoria (18:05):

But there not say there aren’t things that have been improved in that. So bringing that fresh fitness feel into it and going away to step away from ballet to do that was really important to me as well, to bring that back in. But I think it was getting in the studio. It was seeing what felt good to us. We trained the same way we trained at the same school. We were on the same lines with everything and bringing that fitness knowledge in added this extra layer, which made it more accessible to more people because not everybody loves ballet, and not everybody’s gonna love Sleek, but more people find it accessible because of the fitness element as well, that we bring into it.

Flik (18:45):

And incorporating that in, that fitness element, you would be amazed actually how much fitness training, certainly dancers of today do anyway. So, maybe not so much when Victoria and I were training a couple of decades ago, we did do obviously, certain amounts of fitness and Pilates, but now it’s very important part of a dancers training, whether even be a classical or a modern or a contemporary dancer. So actually blending the two, if you know what you are doing, and if you know the results that you’re expecting from that, if you are able to just find a way to do that, it’s actually, it’s not as complicated with our experiences you would think. Right. But it, you know, we only came up with a core handful of workouts. You know, and as we got into the studio and we refined it, we went in and we went back and I think we started with seven.

Victoria (19:33):

I remember it’s 10, maybe

Flik (19:38):

Seven or 10. Certainly. No more than that. That’s all we started with, you know, so we, and we made sure they were absolutely a hundred percent what we would do day in, day out in order for us to develop a dancer-like body. And, and that’s when we were happy when we go, okay, we’ve got those. Now we’re off.

Tiffy (19:57):

So when you get this product and you, and this platform established and you know it works. What was the process then to get it out to market? And what were the sort of hiccups you faced along the way in that process?

Victoria (20:12):

I think the similar thing to what we spoke about earlier, our strengths always lay in creating the method, putting it together, you know, the choreography, the effectiveness of the workouts, we had, all that knowledge. What we didn’t have is how to take it to market, how to build a website. So we got some of that help in obviously, but that has been the biggest challenge for us. And the biggest learning curve for us probably is then once you’ve got great content, how do you get it out to people? And how do you get it in front of the right people? We’ve had some help with that along the way. We’ve had some really great people give us advice, but being confident in the product we had, we’ve used socials a lot. We’ve not had to, as a company, do a lot of paid marketing because we’ve grown a lot on word of mouth.

Victoria (20:59):

It’s lovely. We’ve done some great campaigns of people like sweaty Betty, and, one recently with B Royal ballet where people who like fitness, who like dance of, you know, a lot of people have found us through one collaboration. And those collaborations are, you know, things that we do because we want to work with that company.Tthey’re not, you know, massive money on us for us. It is literally it’s because they’re people we wanna work with. And we know we’ve got a crossover of clientele, hopefully that then brings people to us as subscribers. But if it doesn’t, it’s brand awareness. And that’s really the thing that we go after every day and we try to make this great content that we have visible to the right people. To date the things that have worked best for us. And I’m quite proud to say that is recommendation, word of mouth and utilizing all the free stuff out there that I’d give that advice to anybody starting a business while it is still free. You know, your Facebook, your Instagram, your YouTube, you know, we work hard to get stuff out there. So people are aware of who we are and if they love what we do, you know, hopefully they’ll come and pay for it at some point.

Tiffy (22:06):

I think a big part of it for you two, I’m a Sleeker, I am attracted to your personalities. Like they really shine and it’s, you’re not these, like, I don’t know, cliche fitness, you know, coaches. Like you really get a sense of your personality and your banter back and forth and your rapport with each other. So I think that is also a pull for people because you see you’re real people, you know.

Victoria (22:35):

That’s nice to hear. Cause I certainly initially , Flik was far better. Like she was like a duck to water when we started filming workouts, you know, she’d had a lot of theatre background, she’d done acting she’d, you know, she’d done singing as well as dancing. And so in front of a camera, she was just a natural. It took me a long time to feel really comfortable in front of a camera. And now hearing you say that, I think probably you should see the behind the scene bits. We’re far more naughty.

Tiffy (23:01):

I wanna talk a little bit about, how becoming moms, played into your development as entrepreneurs and also your development as people. Like how did that change things?

Flik (23:20):

Well it did change it. when Victoria and I both found out we were pregnant, honestly, people think we planned it. We didn’t. And as Victoria said before, but we couldn’t have planned that better. Because again, as Victoria said, our journey was literally hand in hand. I mean, we both had sons to start and they were born four weeks apart. They would’ve actually been born probably closer together, that’s why they were four weeks spot. They would’ve probably been like within a week of each other. If pregnancy went by a calendar, like everyone expects it to, and it never does. So we always, you know, I’m not gonna lie. When we both said, oh, I’m pregnant, oh, I’m pregnant. Me too. We both like, how are we gonna do this, but actually, again,

Flik (24:05):

And I put it back to our similarity in personalities in terms of our drive and our belief about, you know, you can do anything providing you’ve got the right support around you. And if you’ve got some self-belief and you know what you’re doing, you can do anything. We navigated it. In fact, we actually even did a retreat at that point. I think we were about six months pregnant at that time, maybe a bit more. and we were setting up obviously to have a little bit of time off, which in the end, we didn’t really have postpartum.

Victoria (24:36):

We took it down a level. We were still there and active, but we have some lovely and amazing instructors that, that teach for us. And, you know, Sophie in particular, at that time who’s been with us almost since the start was fantastic at stepping up and running a few things and taking control of a few bits that Flik and I had to step off a little bit for a while. But gosh, I’ve gotta say I would never have got where Flik was in if she’d had her little one and I’d done it later down the line, I wouldn’t have understood what she was talking about when she said, I just can’t focus on this. My brain is mush or today this happened. And I love him, but I just wanna scream.

Victoria (25:17):

I’d be like going, come on, Flik, get a grip. It’s just, you know, I would not have understood where she was at. Had I not been at the same point myself. And it gave us this enormous support, you know, cuz we were in the same place of it the same time through that, the whole thing. And we could laugh about it. We could cry about it. We could, you know, pick each other up when we said, right, well we need to rally for today. We’ve gotta, you know, film with sweaty Betty, which we did, you know, weeks after three months after giving birth, we had a massive campaign with sweaty Betty and we got ourselves up to do that and we support each other. The camera stopped rolling we were off breastfeeding.

Victoria (25:55):

Just pushing on through, but we had each other there to laugh about it and you know, just keep on, keep on keeping on really.

Flik (26:02):

And that understanding that we had then of each other also filtered down to our community to us. Cause obviously we had a lot of women that already had children or had young children or who were pregnant. So it gave us even more of an understanding of those Sleekers that were also mothers or mothers to be just as much as it did our Sleekers that weren’t and weren’t going to be, or didn’t want to be, doesn’t really matter. It meant that when we created our pre and postnatal babies Sleek series, we had a real understanding cuz we did that while we were pregnant so much like we got into the studio to create the original method. We did the same thing. We got into the studio. We were both pregnant and went, what do our bodies want? What do our bodies need?

Flik (26:40):

What do our Sleekers’ bodies who are in the same predicament, it’s the wrong word, same situation, but it could be a predicament I suppose. What will their bodies want? And so it was great. So we could create that whilst looking after our bodies through pregnancy and then, and after, and that’s the program we followed after and lots of our Sleekers have gone on to follow that program as well. So again, it’s still, it enriched our lives, but it didn’t stop our business and you, we probably couldn’t have predicted that. And again, still at this point, not many people were online. So we were still at that 0.6 years ago where the online classes and live classes and interaction was still not aa popular thing.

Tiffy (27:22):

When it came to the pandemic in this last couple of years, your platform seemed to be ideally situated to deal with that. But it was also a hard time, like you’re also in lockdown, got little kids around, like how did you cope during that time? And what lessons did you learn?

Victoria (27:48):

I think we were very fortunate that we reinvested in Sleek just before the pandemic hit about a year before. So our app was up and running, ready to go. We just refreshed our site. We organized our contents. It was really accessible on every platform. And so we were really, you know, iwe were right up there from a technical point of view without knowing what was about to come. As soon as lockdown hit, we must have taken half a dozen calls a day from friends, colleagues, people in the fitness industry asking how do we get online, my studios closing, what platform do you use? How do you run your own classes? You know, we must have spent the first month probably taking calls from people, and just telling them how we got started or what platforms we were using and helping them, you know, find their way through this tricky time.

Victoria (28:38):

Cuz a lot of people’s businesses were in jeopardy. It was very, the only thing that was hard for us, I think cuz we had a bit of a lift, in obviously in clientele over lockdown and you never wanna profit out of a horrible situation. That’s going on with the rest of the world, but people needed to keep moving and exercising and also keep a connection. And a lot of people found Sleek helped with that over that period. What was tough from a personal point of view is exactly like everybody else. We were at home with both the kids and our other halves in the house at the same time. Trying to catch minutes to run out to our home studios, to film some content. We couldn’t get together, which was the hardest thing. Flik and I bounce off each other so much in person and we on a film day, whenever we work with people, I’m gonna blow our own trumpet here because my partner now also works in the kind of filming industry.

Victoria (29:28):

He’s like, nobody works the way you two work, you come into room and you power through. We film 12 workouts in a day back to back and we don’t stop. And he’s just like the amount of content as I, we walk in and say, don’t worry, we’ll do it in one take. And you say we’ve left four hours, we’ll need two max. And we’re done because we know each other, not cuz we’re, you know, mega brilliant cause we know each other so well. So although we don’t need a lot of time together to create content, we didn’t have any and that was painful. Because it was you know, a totally virtual relationship for a year and a bit nearly and all the lovely content that people enjoy with us together. And like you say, a bit of banter and this and that we weren’t able to deliver. So we had to just give as much as we could in, you know, in the situation we had and we still got some great workouts out there, but God, I can’t tell you how nice it is to be back filming to together now about to change.

Tiffy (30:24):

I won’t keep you too much longer. I’m just wondering what you see the future of Sleek being now that now that you’ve come this far together, it’s been what, 10 years? Since almost 10 years.

Flik (30:37):

10 years since the idea, but I think, yeah, I think we’re coming up to year nine of actual business this summer. Aren’t we there?

Tiffy (30:44):

So where do you see Sleek going from here? What’s your vision for it?

Flik (30:49):

We would love to have a wider Sleek community. We are so lucky we have a really good proportion of European and UK Sleekers with our American Sleelers actually being the slightly bigger chunk of our community. So we’ve got a more of a Sleeker presence over in the states even than we do in the UK Europe, which is wonderful. And when we partner with other brands or businesses, they’re always like, wow, that’s amazing. I dunno, maybe it’s our accents. Maybe you like our accents, but maybe it’s as simple as that. So for us, it’s about maybe broadening that a little bit more because there are so many benefits to ballet and ballet fitness. Certainly the method that we’ve created, we’re very much about working smart and not hard and making, fitness or the regime that you take on to improve your fitness.

Flik (31:40):

Also improving your mental health, your self-confidence, empowering you to go I’ve done my workout. I’m ready for the rest of my day. Sleek isn’t about flashing around, you know, our original Sleek technique. The reason technique was in the title was because as Victoria said, we never got injured. So very rarely. And if it was, it was a couple of days here and there, a twinge here and there. So it is about making the method something that everybody could do excessively and really feel the improvements, not just in, you know, so many fitness methods, like talk about weight loss. And of course all these things are important, but actually about loving and empowering your body to be strong, like a dancer and to be feeling like you leave your workout, you shut your computer down and you can get on with your day, feel good. And you know, so spreading that out, getting that to a wider audience, of course any business wants that, but we really, really do want that. We’d love to have a bigger community. That’s what we’ll be concentrating on in the short term. Certainly.

Tiffy (32:40):

Thanks a lot for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.

Flik (32:43):

It’s been a pleasure today. It’s been really great. Thanks for having us.

Tiffy (32:49):

That’s it for Women In Fitness Business. Thanks for listening.

 

The post The Business Dance: Flik And Victoria of Sleek Ballet Fitness appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The CrossFit Affiliate Model Doesn’t Work—Here are 3 Models That Do

Andrew (00:01):

Are you struggling as a CrossFit affiliate owner? If so, what business model are you following? It’s Two-Brain Radio and Chris Cooper is behind the mic to give you three data-backed models that can help you make a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Chris (00:14):

I never missed a paycheck in the fitness industry until I became a CrossFit affiliate. Hey guys, it’s Coop, and today I’m gonna tell you the flaw in my thinking when it came to building a CrossFit business, and it’s the same flaw that affects most other micro gyms. But before I do that, I want to give you the right answer. I wanna give you a tool that will help you grow your gym, but more importantly, define a model that works for you. We all got into fitness for the same reason, to help people, but we wanna run our businesses in different ways. And so in this free guide, there are three different models that are proven to work with data and experience from over 2000 gyms around the world. If you go to gymownersunited.com, you’ll be able to download this free guide, which is called how to make a hundred thousand dollars a year with 150 clients.

Chris (01:06):

And in that guide, you’ll find a couple things. First, three of the models broken down that you can follow. Second, a sample P and L, profit and loss document, but it’s really just a spreadsheet that you can plug numbers into. What if I charge more? What if I charge less? What if I have more clients? What if I have less? And that will show you how exactly these models can work for you. Heck, if you wanna put in your own data and try and prove us wrong or break the model, do that too. I encourage you to do it. So here’s first the mistake that I made. Like many, when I affiliated with CrossFit in 2008, I thought that the CrossFit business plan was the same as the CrossFit method. You coached really, really well. You corrected movement faults, you bumped fists and people paid you for it.

Chris (01:52):

But what I didn’t understand was that the method is not the model. So while CrossFit is really effective at producing unmatched fitness, there’s never been a proven this model for the affiliate. Simply doing the thing really well won’t make you successful as a gym owner. Early on, as a devout follower of the CrossFit method, I thought that I was the problem. That my gym was failing because I wasn’t intense enough, or I wasn’t certified highly enough, or I wasn’t following every video closely enough. Or I even had the sneaking suspicion that my box would do better if we won Regionals somehow. And we all fall into this trap, when we care about something, we wanna believe that when it all falls apart, it’s our fault because that means it’s up to us to fix it. And if we just try harder, then it will eventually work.

Chris (02:46):

But my mission is to make gym owners successful, not to make CrossFit home office successful, or the certifying body for Pilates instructors successful. We all took big risks to open our gyms and we deserve the truth. We deserve answers. We deserve data, not the bro culture of our certifying method or new leaderboards on the CrossFit Games site. So this resource that I’m giving to you took me nearly a decade to build, this resource is a guide to three different business working models for CrossFit affiliates, with a sample P and L so that you can figure out which is best for you. And you can get it in the show notes, or you can get it by going to gymownersunited.com. It’s taken me nearly a decade to build this, but it’s the thing that I needed when my CrossFit gym nearly bankrupted me back in 2008.

Chris (03:37):

So I’m gonna go through each of these models with you, and you can decide which suits your current lifestyle the best. First, where did the current CrossFit quote unquote model come from? Well, in 2006, there weren’t very many affiliates around. And so, there was also this vacuum of information out how to run CrossFit business because, you know, there was only a hundred or 200 maybe. And so there was some information sharing, but nobody was really ready to step forward and say like, yep, I got it figured out. Follow this model. Except for this guy named John Birch. Now John Birch came from a martial arts background and he was already coaching a lot of martial arts studios. And he partnered up with CrossFit LA, Andy Petranic, and they brought this martial arts model into CrossFit LA, right? So you had big classes.

Chris (04:32):

People were more choreographed really than getting like individual coaching. They had a high churn rate. They had a low signup rate of people coming in in the door, but they didn’t really need one because lead gen was so easy. They were in downtown LA. They were the only CrossFit, et cetera. Right. So now of course, you’ve got replication over the years because Glassman put John Birch on stage at the affiliate summit in 2006. And he talked about this model and people adopted it. And over time it just kind of became the dogma. This is how you do it. The interesting thing though, is that this is not how Greg did it. Greg started out doing one-on-one training and then he expanded to partnering his clients up. So he was doing one on two and then very small groups. And if you look at the size of the original CrossFit gym, I mean, there’s no way you would ever have more than about six people in there.

Chris (05:24):

If you want to hear Greg’s story, you can go to Two-Brain business.com/greg. And he’ll tell you about his model. He’ll tell you about the higher price that he charged at intake. He’ll tell you about charging more for nutrition coaching and all that stuff. So I don’t need to go into that here. What I do want to share with you are three models that do work. So the first model is big groups with lots of coaching for the owner, right? You’ve bought yourself a coaching job that you love to do. You love sharing CrossFit with people. Amazing. This model will work for that. Second. Coaching smaller groups and making about 30% of your revenue from personal training. This is usually a model that people adopt when they wanna bring on some help and they wanna make a meaningful career for one or two other people.

Chris (06:14):

And then the third model is smaller groups where the owner works less and it’s more stratified. So you’ve got a nutrition coach. You’ve got some personal trainers, you’ve got some group coaches. You might have another program. You know, focusing on kids, you might have a program focusing on seniors, something like that. And we call this a stratified model. So where do these models come from? They come from collecting data since about 2016. They come from the proof of thousands of gyms worldwide that have actually made it. They come from the gyms whose owners are now millionaires using one of these three models. And I’m gonna share these three with you. In the book, they’re called scenarios, but these are really like three different business models for owning and operate a successful micro gym. I’ve kept a couple data points the same. So in all three models, I use 150 clients.

Chris (07:06):

Why 150, because that is the average number of clients that is found in micro gyms. OK. The rest of it is really, varied depending on the model. OK. So model number one, you’ve got 150 clients. 95% of your revenue comes from group training. The only secondary revenue stream is the gym’s OnRamp program, which is $300. The gym charges an average membership rate of $150 per month. Now, I use that 150 as a mean average. So if you take all of your membership options and you divide them by the number of clients you have, that’s your average membership rate. OK? This gym also runs an event because gyms that focus more on big groups also tend to focus more on competitive aspects. And so they’ll run events, maybe fun ones that encourage participation, the intramural open, maybe competitive ones like throwdowns.

Chris (08:02):

The key features of this model is that the owner is coaching most of the classes. The owner also does all of the admin, the cleaning and the social media tasks. The owner has one other coach doing on ramps and they coach around 25 classes a week earning $56,000 per year. The owner earns the same pay for coaching classes as the other coach does plus a salary of about $3,500 per month. And so at the end of the year, the owner collects about $90,000 in pay plus about $11,000 in profit. OK. Pros of this model are that there are very few staff to manage. I think, I mean, I don’t think I was alone. When I started a box, I didn’t really realize that I would have to become the manager of other humans, right? So this model is like a true owner operator model.

Chris (08:55):

You’re busy, you’re working a ton, but you’re doing what you love, you’re coaching. And you’re making a good living. The cons. This is the most fragile model. If the owner gets sick, they take a pay cut. If the owner gets busy, the marketing stalls out. The owner can’t take a holiday and will probably work a ton of hours forever until they change the model. And this might be the path for a young owner of a new gym, but it’s not sustainable for more than a couple of years. It was certainly my path when I opened up, I was so passionate about teaching CrossFit through the world and helping the world improve through fitness that I didn’t care if I was working an 80 hour work week, but eventually I started to miss my kids and I wanted to buy the more expensive cheese at the grocery store.

Chris (09:40):

So in this model, the owner would likely have to work around 60 hours a week to get everything done. If they’re efficient. I’m not efficient. So it was taking me about 80. OK. And you can download the spreadsheet as part of this guide. You’ll see it, all the numbers broken down for you. OK. Here’s the second model, again, 150 clients, but now 10% of your revenue comes from personal training or nutrition coaching, right? So note that that creates the additional burden of about 40 personal training sessions per month to fill. In this model, the owner coaches fewer classes, about 17 per week, but they also do admin. They do the client success management, right? They handle accountability and check-ins and lead nurture. And they also do the social media work, but they have more time to do those things too. That means there are 33 more classes and 10 personal training sessions per week to fill.

Chris (10:32):

So the gym owner probably has two other coaches helping out, at least one of those will be full-time and one will be part-time for owner compensation. The owner earns the class rate for all the classes that they teach, but they also earn a salary of 5,500 per month. So at the end of the year, the owner collects $99,000 in pay plus 5,400 in profit. As long as they run their business lean. The pros of this model are that staffing is tight, but it offers enough flexibility for team members to cover for one another. That’s why I love it. Like I can run tight, but I can’t run without any parachute at all. This is probably a perfect day scenario for a lot of micro gym owners in their first few years of business, right? They’re coaching two to three classes a day.

Chris (11:19):

So they’ve still got lots of energy. They can work three to four more hours on the business. After they’re done working in the business, seven or eight hours a day, they’re done and they still have time to work out. The other pro is that more personal training will also aid retention. So the owner can spend less time on marketing. Now, most gyms coming into Two-Brain, whether they’re CrossFit or something else, they start out with model one and then they move to model two. And that’s what shifts them dramatically from barely breaking even, or even losing a bit of money to making about a hundred thousand dollars per year. The cons of this model are that the owner is still doing a ton of work and most entrepreneurs struggle to stay focused. So three to four hours on the business can quickly become five or six, especially when you’re trying to learn 50 different things at once, like how to do Facebook marketing and what should I post on Instagram?

Chris (12:14):

Right? Part of the mentor’s job by the way, is to keep you focused and have you doing only the things that make a difference as proven by data, instead of doing 50 random things in your time at the gym. The other con to this model is that owners have to possess a very diverse skillset. They have to learn sales and marketing, have to learn about client care and retention. They have to learn a little bit of accounting and they have to learn lead nurture and all the other admin work. And some owners might not like that. The thing is though, you have to learn it. You have to do it yourself for a little while, even if you intend to replace yourself later. Right? So I remember going through this phase, I was starting to feel good. I had my weekends off again. I wasn’t missing my kids at bedtime anymore.

Chris (12:59):

I was making more money than I ever had, but the downside was that I was still managing people, learning sales and marketing. And I didn’t really enjoy that stuff back then. Now you can get this spreadsheet with the template and see all of the numbers and exactly how this breaks down in this free guide too. OK. So again, gymwnersunited.com, you can download this free guide. It’ll tell you exactly what to do according to these three models, you can shift the models. You can see exactly how your alterations or changes will change things for you in the end. The third scenario is 150 clients, but now 70% of your revenue comes from group classes. 20% comes from secondary revenue streams. So that’s personal training and nutrition usually, and 10% comes from tertiary revenue streams, like kids programs, selling supplements, selling other retail stuff.

Chris (13:52):

Maybe you’ve got like a legends program and you’re more stratified, right? You’ve got a more diverse business model. This could also include online coaching by the way. So in this scenario, the owner coach is about 17 classes per week, still, right? You’re not completely out of coaching yet, unless you really want to be. The thing is that for most of us, we want to coach, but we find our selves burned out and not enjoying coaching because we’re distracted by all the other crap. I can’t tell you how many times I was working with a client trying to pay attention to what they were saying, trying to be fully engaged in the session, trying to be energetic. And all I can think about is like that other person at the back of the room owes me money, and I need to collect it. Also in this scenario, the owner has not hired a general manager yet, but they do pay $2,000 per month for non coaching roles.

Chris (14:44):

So this could be like an admin. It could be a client success manager. It could be a social media person. OK. They’ve got some low value roles off their plate. It’s probably a cleaner. The owner also pays about 65,000 per year for class coaches and 42,000 per year for nutrition, PT, and specialty coaching. So there’s some great opportunity for others to make some income on your platform. Coaches are paid $30 per class, plus benefits and four ninths of secondary revenue streams like personal training. It’s really important to note here that the average pay for a CrossFit class is $22 worldwide. That’s a mean average, and there’s a slight difference between the median and the mean, but for all intents and purposes, we’re paying coaches 20% more than the average here. And they can build on top of that with personal training too. The owner compensation goes like this.

Chris (15:39):

The owner earns the class rate for all classes, right? When they’re doing the job of a coach, they’re paid as a coach plus a salary of 5,500 per month. And the owner collects 99,000 in pay plus 4,700 in profit at the end of the year. So scenario three, doesn’t earn them a ton more money than scenario two, but it saves them a ton of time because they’ve got somebody doing the stuff they don’t like. The admin, the lead nurture, social media posting, creating content, stuff like that for about $2,000 a month. The pros of this model, you’ve got diverse revenue streams, and that means less agility and a greater opportunity for your staff to make a career. This makes the owner more replaceable and actually creates a slightly greater margin for error. If you screw up and your marketing doesn’t work this month, you’re going to be OK.

Chris (16:28):

When clients take a break or they cancel from this model, other revenue streams can quickly close the gap. The best gyms in the world don’t have 10 revenue streams, but they usually have about three. This model also has greater retention than a class only model. And it tends to attract higher value clients for higher ticket services. And coaches’ wages are variable, right? That coaches earn more by growing the pie for everyone else. So it’s very hard to go into the hole or lose money with this model. There are some cons though, the cons are that the gym owner isn’t coaching as much. And if you got into this because you wanna coach 30 hours a week, then the second model might be better for you than this third model. The other cons are that the gym owner does have to manage more and that’s not a perfect day scenario for everybody.

Chris (17:18):

Also the gym systems have to be tight so that every single decision doesn’t come back to the owner every single day, you need playbooks. You need sales binders, right? You need to give people a way to make decisions without asking you all the time. And finally the gym must operate according to a set of rules, instead of allowing the owner to negotiate prices and rules with everyone, or offer different discounts. If you do that, it will undermine any of these models. Now these are three models. You can use any of these three as your starting point. You can add coaches, you can add clients, you can take coaches away. You can take clients away. You can raise your rates. You can increase your retention. You can improve on these models, but without a model to start from, you’re really kind of starting from nothing, right?

Chris (18:09):

The problem with a completely blank slate is you’ve got lots of room for creativity, but you have no boundaries. You have no guidelines telling you even in which direction to start, right? And this is a problem. There are such a thing as positive constraints and starting with a model like this allows you to get really, really good at operating a business. And then you can decide, well, I wanna change this one thing and do it slightly differently. I wanna add open gym access. Great. Once your model is proven and you’re making money, do that, you know, start with the basics and get really, really good at them. So why am I talking more about this than I ever have have? Well, a few weeks ago, the CrossFit APN staff approached us about partnering up and maybe being part of the affiliate partner network.

Chris (18:57):

And we pursued the conversation for a couple of weeks, but we were unable to overcome the resistance from some of the staff to give affiliates a working model. Now, this has been a decade long conversation between me and HQ, but this one example sums it all up for me. About 2018, I was visiting CrossFit. And during those years I would show up about twice a year, have conversations about business and what we were telling affiliates. And, you know, it would really go nowhere. But we were sitting outside in this cafe and the CEO of CrossFits there, Jeff Cain, the COO Bruce is there. And they’re asking me questions about affiliates because you know, they wanted to help. Absolutely. And I said, you know, the number one thing that you guys can do is just collect data from everybody. It’s not that hard. If you went to all of the payment processors and said, we want data, they would be eager to collaborate with you.

Chris (19:55):

If you did a survey of all affiliates, the data would be less, you know, precise, but you’d have something, right. And that’s all you’ve gotta do is collect this data and show it to us. You don’t have to tell us what to do with it. You don’t have to tell us how to run a business. You don’t have to take responsibility for our success or failure. Just tell us the numbers. And they said, Chris, that’s a great idea. We are never going to do it, but you should. And I walked away from that discussion first depressed, and then really just fired up like, OK, you know, I’m in this position now. I have the trust of a lot of affiliates. I have the trust of HQ at the time. Maybe it is up to me to build this thing. And so now we eventually walked away from this discussion with current home office, at least for the time being, because I now fervently believe that I can help CrossFit affiliates of which I am still one more from the outside than from the inside.

Chris (20:55):

So if you wanna improve your business, you should look at others who are doing what you want to do. Use them as a model, do what they’re doing. I’m lucky enough to have over 800 gyms in Two-Brain. Their wins are what guide the stuff that we publish to you, right? The truth. Not stories from my bros or unproven models from guys who wanna make a quick buck while their own gym can’t even pay them enough to survive. This is data. We publish our data. So even if you don’t use these models, you can still look at our data, which is valid and audited, and you can make up your own model. Start there. If that’s too broad, too hard, you don’t have the bandwidth to do it. Cuz you’re busy. Start with one of these three models, follow those models, follow our free content, learn how to apply the lessons from that content into these models.

Chris (21:44):

And if you want help and clarity and guidance and support making the tough changes. That’s when you turn to mentorship. What’s really important here is that while 12,000 people will listen to this podcast and another five will watch our video on this topic. And you know, 35,000 will read about it on our email list. Most of those people will not buy anything from me, including maybe you and that’s OK. I hope that you find a mentor because making these changes are gonna be really, really tough, but they’re a lot easier if you have a clear target. If you have a model to work from, you can build really, really fast. If you’re all on an island or just getting opinions from a random Facebook group, you’re gonna build slower. Number one, you won’t have clarity on what you should do right now, or even next. Number two, you wanna have targets to aim for. Number three, you’re gonna make some mistakes. The reason I’m publishing this stuff is because this is exactly what I needed in 2008 and nobody else could publish it then. And nobody else is publishing it now. I hope it helps and grow a gym, save lives. I hope this makes the process easier.

Andrew (23:04):

For more advice from Coop on Two-Brain Radio, don’t forget to subscribe. Now. Here’s Chris one more time.

Chris (23:11):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. 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 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 The CrossFit Affiliate Model Doesn’t Work—Here are 3 Models That Do appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Clearing the Air: Will Belgian Ventilation Plan Help or Hinder Gym Owners?

In post-pandemic Belgium, the federal government is now rolling out the details of a “ventilation plan” for public places, including gyms, restaurants and theaters.

It’s an interesting move that might have significant effects on the fitness industry if governments in other areas follow suit.

Some of those effects might actually be good for a change.

The exact details of Belgium’s plan—read about it here—are still fuzzy.  

For example, the news report lists two “non-compulsory target values” for air flow. It’s not clear if they will be used in a “please reach them” manner or as part of a “vent or shut down” plan.

Here’s what we know:

Managers of public spaces will have to perform a risk analysis. That will include C02 measurements and an inventory of ventilation and air-purification systems.If the analysis reveals subpar ventilation, the manager will be required to create an action plan.Gym owners will have 12 months to fall in line after the government plan becomes official—likely this spring.In 2025, public spaces must have an “air quality label” provided by a certifying officer.The Belgian government will keep track of these labels in a database.

Here’s the big one:

“In the event of a possible new pandemic, the government can then take targeted measures tailored to different public areas.”

Pros and Cons of the Belgian Plan

I’ll avoid starting a debate about government-mandated closures of small businesses. I hope we never have to deal with that again.

But if these new measures allow well-ventilated gyms to stay open in the future, that would be a win—even if I have an aversion to ever-increasing amounts of red tape and bureaucracy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, gyms suffered more than they needed to because they were all lumped together: “Close or face fines.”

That worked for bureaucrats who were sloppily painting lines with gigantic brushes. But it meant that all gyms got closed—even well-ventilated, access-controlled coaching facilities that served relatively small numbers of people in spaces with plenty of room for social distancing.

This was so unfair that forward-thinking gym owners actually started monitoring and improving ventilation levels in an attempt to prove to clients and governments that they were safe. Read about that here: “COVID and C02 Monitors.”

My hope would be that if the Belgian government decided to close public spaces again, it would allow well-ventilated businesses to remain open. That would give those entrepreneurs a chance to preserve their revenue and stay afloat.

My cynical suspicion is that the government will force gym owners to jump through a host of hoops and then just close them all anyway out of fear of transmission. But that’s just me, and I’m low on trust these days.

The downside to this Belgian plan: More regulation and the potential for increased facility expenses.

Improving ventilation is expensive. Costimates.com suggests air purification systems will run a business between $7,500 and $15,000. That’s a very broad range, but the point is that air-flow improvements aren’t a $400 proposition, and many small businesses aren’t set up to handle large expenses like this. Especially if the government forces them to do it on a timeline after two years of reduced revenue.

Improved air flow also increases heating and cooling costs—and perhaps emissions, which governments are also trying to regulate.

So the downside involves cost and government interference. The upside is the potential to preserve revenue if restrictions return.

Not all Gyms Are the Same

It’s uncertain how Belgium’s plan will affect other governments, but if I take anything from the news, it’s this:

Not all public spaces are the same, and not all gyms are the same.

I sincerely hope we’re beyond pandemic restrictions for good. But if we aren’t, I hope local governments avoid broad categorization of all businesses when forming policy.

Science might provide a reason to close a poorly ventilated commercial gym that’s packed tight with 1,000 people who are breathing hard while roaming freely among the machines.

If that’s the case, that same science should be applied when considering small, well-ventilated microgyms in which a trainer coaches five or eight clients who are all separated by several meters.  

The post Clearing the Air: Will Belgian Ventilation Plan Help or Hinder Gym Owners? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

How to Coach Clients on Sleep: Nick Lambe

Mike (00:02):

My clients are training hard and eating right, but they’re not getting results. Could it be a lack of sleep? Chris Cooper talks to sleep coach Nick Lambe about how you can help members get more Zs. This is Two-Brain Radio.

Chris (00:14):

Hey, everybody, it’s Coop here. And today I am joined by Nick Lambe, the online sleep coach. And I recently just met Nick by luck. But for years, we’ve been talking about the SEMM model, sleep, eat, move, manage, and how these are the four pillars that we need to be helping clients attain and improve if we want to improve their healthspan, their lifespan and their fitness. Unfortunately, there are very few people talking about sleep outside of a clinical setting. Like nutrition, like exercise, a lot of people don’t seek help until they’ve got an acute problem. Doctor. I can’t sleep. Doctor. I’ve got sleep apnea doctor. I can’t even, you know, I feel exhausted all day, whatever that is, they seek medical help and now more than ever, people are turning to Google for help. In fact, the search results for sleep far outnumber the number of search results for exercise fitness and nutrition combined. So today Nick is gonna talk to us about how do we coach sleep, why it’s important and give us some very specific tactics that we can use to help our clients improve their sleep and thereby improve their fitness and thereby improve their health. Nick, welcome to Two-Brain Radio.

Nick (01:27):

Thank you for having me, happy to be here.

Chris (01:29):

Oh, I’m really excited Nick, because you know, a lot of us know that we should be encouraging sleep. That it’s part of fitness, but we don’t know what we should be telling our clients, how we should be measuring improvement or any of that other stuff. So I’m excited to get into it with you.

Nick (01:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, like you said, there’s a really big void that exists in the industry. And you know, for the longest time, you know, coming up in the industry, I heard the three pillars of health talked about, right. And it was exercise and movement, nutrition and sleep. And we see obviously how much emphasis and attention is given to exercise and nutrition, how many education opportunities are available and how much it makes up our coaching process with clients, and sleep lacks behind, significantly. And that’s, you know, for a variety of different reasons that we can obviously dive into, but yeah, a large part of my emphasis and focus right now is to raise more of that attention and awareness and really provide coaches some practical strategies that they can implement into their coaching process so that they can actually address it.

Chris (02:31):

I love it, man. So what drew you to this calling?

Nick (02:35):

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been in the industry for a little over a decade and the majority of my career was actually spent working in the rehabilitative setting. So thought I was gonna go to physical therapy school, so was spending most of my time working in PT clinics. So working as a trainer and coach in PT clinics and kind of that collaborative setting. And so really became enamored with what went into predisposing somebody to injury versus somebody else, and also what impacted their recovery times, right? Why were people doing very similar interventions and, you know, being equally compliant and doing all the things that they were supposed to, but there being all these outside variables that impacted their recovery times and, you know, taking a deep dive into that. One of the things that I of course came across was sleep. This thing that we spend a third of our lives doing and just really became fascinated with everything there was to know about sleep and to the point where I actually started providing it as a separate service, where I was working at the time, started doing some online sleep coaching and it just kind organically grew in a lot of ways.

Nick (03:36):

And then as I found myself in a position to mentor other coaches and talk to other coaches, I realized that there was just nothing in the industry that really focused on how to do this, right? Like we said, how to actually implement this into a coaching process. And so just started giving some presentations on what it was that I did in my process. And again, just realized that there was this huge void, because if I think about all the things I had to learn about sleep, a lot of it was just through my own trial and error and experience and sifting through probably hundreds of hours of research and seeing if there was things that I can glean. And so again, just decided to create a resource and provide education to kind of bridge that gap and provide some practical resources because they didn’t exist. And even now as sleep becomes more prevalent, becomes something that everybody understands a bit more, it’s still coming from the world of sleep science. And that’s tremendous. They’re the ones who are doing the research and connecting the dots, but they’re not the ones who are in the trenches having to actually practically coach this up. Right. So there’s this disconnect that also exists between the sleep science world and those of us who, again, are in the trenches, working with people on a day to day basis.

Chris (04:45):

Let’s talk about how important this actually is before we get into the tactical stuff. So, you know, on a hierarchy of nutrition, exercise, you know, mindfulness, where would you place sleep?

Nick (04:59):

Yeah, I think I mean, I wouldn’t wanna put it in a place where, you know, I used to do this at the beginning of kind of this whole, narrative of saying that it’s equally, if not more important than exercise and nutrition and I don’t necessarily like to lead with that. Cause obviously we know how powerful those interventions and strategies can be and how pivotal it is in overall health and well-being. But I think when we look at sleep, firstly, let’s just take the fact that an individual spends more time doing this in their life than any other activity, right? More time than working, more time than spending with friends and family, really anything else, right. They spend a third of their lives sleeping. So any one individual activity. And if we think about this from a evolution standpoint, right?

Nick (05:43):

If sleep were not incredibly important and impactful for an individual’s overall health and wellbeing, it wouldn’t have stuck around and wouldn’t have stuck around in the capacity that it is, right. It would’ve been maybe filtered out because if you think about it, you can’t hunt for food, you are not alert. You can’t protect yourself. Right. All of these things from an evolutionary perspective. So for the longest time in the sleep science world, it was how do we find a universal theory that explains why it is that we sleep right. And really have come to the conclusion that there isn’t one, right? It’s a variety of reasons. And it’s the fact that if you think about every single physiological system, sleep impacts it in some way shape or form. And I think as a coach or as a health practitioner or somebody who ultimately wants to impact again, the health and wellbeing of those that you work with and improve their performance, all of these elements, I think you’d be hard pressed to find one lever that you can pull that influences so many things, right.

Nick (06:42):

You know, breathwork is a powerful strategy and different nutrition interventions are powerful strategies. But again, one lever that you can pull that in turn enhances all of these physiological systems. Right? And also the fact that it’s a missing void in a lot of people’s lives as well, right. They already maybe have a lot of options available with respect to exercise and nutrition. But one of the graphics that I always like to share is if you look at Google trends, right, what are people actually looking for in terms of help. People searching for sleep help, they’re searching for those things exponentially more than they’re searching for exercise and nutrition help. Right? And that’s because there are so many people that are struggling and there’s very few practical, sustainable options for them. And then, you know, just from a pure, you know, client goal perspective, if you think about, I kind of break this into the four main categories of goals that people will come with in a fitness context, right.

Nick (07:38):

Improved performance, improvements in overall health improvements in body composition or decreasing pain in some capacity. And if you think about all four of those things, sleep impacts just about every facet of what goes into those things being successful. So if we take body composition for example, right, people come to fitness professionals to look better naked. If we think about overall impact on metabolism and metabolic flexibility, the fact that an individual who’s sleep deprived will take in on average 500 calories more per day, what the body will preferentially do with those calories varies when an individual is sleep deprived. So again, every facet of the very common goals that people will have are gonna be to directly impacted by sleep. And then the last thing I’ll say on this, just kind of goes back to exercise science 101, right. If we think about what it is that we do as fitness professionals, we provide a stimulus, right?

Nick (08:33):

Typically exercise, and that stimulus causes the body to go into a state where it is forced to adapt, hopefully right. And that individual is able to recover from that stimulus and ultimately adapt and get better than they started off as right. Kind of very basic foundational what we’re trying to provide in terms of exercise science or what we do. Right. But the reality is if we don’t take onus of guiding that process of recovery and adaptation, they don’t reach that threshold we want. And in fact, because exercise is a stressor and I think a lot of coaches don’t think about it in this way, we can actually be adding more stress to their cumulative load. And if we allowing them to recover, we can actually be doing more of a detriment in some instances, right. And that’s when I say that I usually get pushed. I’m not in any way advocating that in any situation, people don’t move and they don’t exercise and they don’t load. Right. Those things are always important, no matter what, it’s just the idea that again, we have to take onus of this process of recovery and adaptation if we ultimately want them to get the best possible results.

Chris (09:38):

So I think every coach does want to get their clients the best possible results. Why aren’t we talking about this more?

Nick (09:46):

So there’s a few different reasons. Just kind of in my experience, talking to a lot of coaches, the first is, and this is not an egotistical perspective, but you know why I’ve decided to create resources because there really isn’t a good resource or wasn’t a very good resource that existed that just made it really easy for coaches to learn these things in the way that we have structured programs around exercise and nutrition. Right. I think that’s one element. And then the other element is the fact that because again, most of the information coming around sleep is coming from the sleep science world or from the medical community. There’s this disconnect, right? There’s no bridge between the fitness community and those really advocating and talking about sleep. So sleep science again. Great. And they’re providing a lot of research, a lot of awareness, but their goal is ultimately to sell more of the books that they have, if they have them.

Nick (10:40):

Their goal is to get more funding for research and just promote more awareness. Right? Of course they wanna see people improve their sleep, but it’s more focused on more funding and research. Right? And if we look at the medical community, of course, they’re addressing things more from the standpoint of sleep disorders, which we can talk about out, and those things do exist, but it’s created this narrative that sleep is really not to be dealt with by coaches, right? It’s more of a either medical problem or it’s a sleep science problem. You know, it needs to be addressed via just technology hacks or any of these things and where the big disconnect really lies is in that in experience. And in the experience of a lot of coaches I”ve had the opportunity to work with, a lot of sleep issues are very behavioral in nature, especially those that are chronic and stick around long term.

Nick (11:28):

And if we think about obviously things from a behavioral perspective, we’re gonna be much more equipped to deal with that than any other medical provider, right. Than any MDs or, any other providers. And so, you know, those are just kind of some of the reasons why, and the other, the last thing, and this is something I dealt with a lot in creating the course is scope of practice. And this kind of comes back to the idea of it being perceived as a medical problem that, you know, one of the reasons why nobody really wanted to create a sleep coaching course was because they didn’t wanna broach that topic of scope of practice and kind of get into that gray area. And I mean, the reality is there’s always gonna be gray area and scope of practice, right? Because when we’re having conversations about people’s past and history we’re, you know, playing quasi therapists sometimes, right.

Nick (12:18):

We’re like right on the fringe of, you know, these being deeper rooted things that people are dealing with that maybe they should be seeing a mental health provider about. Right. And from a nutritional perspective, every good coach is at least having these conversations around nutrition, depending on where you live and you know, what your credentials are, how do you toe that line? So I view sleep very similarly. And as long as you really establish the scope of practice and establish where your lines in the sand are and know what your role is in the process, I don’t think there’s any problem with a coach addressing sleep.

Chris (12:49):

Nick, do you think there’s also maybe the problem of hubris, like, OK, everybody should drink five glasses of water and get eight hours of sleep a night. Right. We think that we know all there is to know about sleep and that everybody else does too. So we don’t have to address it. You know, have you seen that come up with coaches that you work with?

Nick (13:07):

Yeah. I think there’s an element of that. You know, look, sleep is not sexy either. Right. Which is sometimes a problem. That’s the reality in the industry. And I think we as an industry and I’ve seen this, we think we know more about sleep than we do, because I think we oversimplify sleep and now, and a lot of instances in the industry, I think we overcomplicate things and I’m sure you would agree with this. Right. And if we just kind of go back to the basics with a lot of things and be really good at those things, we overcomplicate things and you don’t wanna overcomplicate sleep either, but if you oversimplify it, you kind of miss the boat. And so for example, most of the conversations that coaches have with around sleep with their clients, or just in general centers around sleep duration, right?

Nick (13:55):

Maybe the thing that they have on their questionnaire or the conversation, the question that they ask is how many hours a night do you sleep, right. Six, right? And they define healthy sleep in the context of sleep duration, right? You sleep five hours, you’re an unhealthy sleeper. You sleep eight hours. You are a very healthy sleeper, right? The problem with that is multifaceted. One, it doesn’t really capture the whole picture. There is more to sleep than just sleep duration. When you only focus on sleep duration, you’re losing sight of the other pillars of sleep quality in depth, regularity, continuity, sleep efficiency, which isn’t really a pillar, but it’s what percentage of time is an individual asleep relative to being in bed? You know, are they wasting time just lying there, not sleeping. So when you only focus on sleep duration, you’re missing the bigger picture. The other thing, and we can talk more about this is it creates a stress and anxiety for a lot of individuals, this eight hour focus that’s out there in the media.

Nick (15:02):

And that we even, you know, perpetuate a little bit, it creates this idea for people that it’s all or nothing on eight hours that sleep success can only be defined by eight hours. Right. The example I always give for this is, an individual that goes out with some coworkers for dinner and maybe a couple drinks, right. They just have a social outing, right. And they come home and it’s around 10:00 PM. And they know they need to be up at 6:00 AM the next day, whether it’s for work or an engagement, whatever it’s right. And the common intuition, now that person just came directly from eating, being out, right. Being in a more stimulated environment, not really ready to sleep, not in a really good place to just let their head hit the pillow and sleep.

Nick (15:50):

Right. But their common intuition would tell them, well, it’s 10 o’clock. I need to be up at six. So let me just brush my teeth really quick and go to bed. Right. And what ends up happening is they don’t fall asleep right away, more often than not, right. So the eight hours that they were trying to achieve, they don’t get anyway. And now they’re lying in bed for an hour or more. Right. And it creates this association of being in bed awake, which we can talk about how that kind of forms over time. And it’s a real issue, but it creates this stress and anxiety response that builds up over time. And again, they didn’t get the eight hours that they were really after in the first place. And so I would always much rather a person in that situation have a routine, wind themselves down. Even if it meant they got six and a half hours of sleep. I know it would be efficient. And I know it would be a much better quality.

Chris (16:41):

So that’s interesting, you’ve already introduced another, kind of completely different perspective on it, or another lens on sleep that coaches could talk with their clients about. Where do you think that coaches could implement this into their coaching practice? Could they do it with a group? Should they be doing it one on one? How do they measure it? Like, I’d love to hear some of the tactical elements here, Nick.

Nick (17:03):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’ve helped coaches do this in a lot of different ways. So I have a course, the sleep and recovery coaching course, an, you know, I’ve had around 750 students go through the course so far, and I would say 20% end up offering this, 20 to 25% end up offering this as a separate service as an adjunct service that they offer to their clients, to their community. And usually that’s in a one-on-one setting, although it’s sometimes done in a group setting. A lot of times I know that the majority of the audience to this podcast is gym owners. So a lot of times if I’m consulting with somebody who owns a facility where they have multiple trainers, they’ll pinpoint or select one or two individuals within their facility, that will be the, you know, the head of that sleep coaching program.

Nick (17:50):

And they’ll be the ones who actually run that, but it’s something that they can now offer to their community as a separate service. And then there is the other say, 70, 75% that integrate the sleep coaching process, or try to integrate the sleep coaching process into what they already doing, to kind of just find ways to fit it into their existing process. What are the things that they can add to their assessment and screening? Do they do a sleep onboarding session at the beginning of working with somebody to make sure that box is addressed? Is it just something that they address more in general and have some referral options available for that individual? Maybe it’s somebody else in the community who does sleep coaching. Right. One of my goals in the future of the course is to bridge that gap or make that percentage of those who actually offer it as a separate service, a little bit higher, right?

Nick (18:39):

Provide more structure and support for those that do wanna offer that. Because I do think there is tremendous opportunity there, right? Not just from the standpoint of this is something of value that we can offer to our clients that will get them better results. But I think also from a business perspective, you know, you can break it down this way, and this is very generally speaking, but roughly half the population struggles with sleep in some capacity and what it means to struggle, everybody has their kind of own definition of this, for some it’s, you know, there was actually a study that was done by consumer reports where they looked at, I believe it was 5,000 middle aged adults. And 80% of those individuals admitted to struggling with sleep at least one night a week. Right? So if you loosen the criteria of what it means to struggle, maybe that number of half the population is a little bit more, if you change the criteria, maybe it’s a little less, but the point is, it’s a large number of individuals, right?

Nick (19:36):

Then you take the fact that the majority of options that are available for people are either sleeping pills that are being prescribed by physicians or hygiene lists and technology, right? So firstly taking the sleeping pills into account, that’s maybe more of a different conversation we can have, but they come with a lot of health risks, and negative health outcomes, especially when taken for long periods of time. There are currently only 7,500 licensed sleep physicians in the United States right now. And there is not an influx of those eager to get into the field of sleep medicine. So that number is going to continue to be a problem. Meaning if we take half of the population, we’re looking at 150 to 200 million people in the United States struggling with sleep and 7,500 physicians that are available for them to provide solutions, right.

Nick (20:29):

Not gonna happen. And then again, if you go on the other side of it, the hygiene lists that are available, the top 10 sleep tips, the top seven sleep tips, these things come with no context or individuality to that person, right. I always liken this to exercise. If somebody came into your gym and said, Hey, you know, I wanna start exercising. I wanna get in better shape. And you just gave them a list of the top 10 exercises and said, Hey, thanks for coming in. I really appreciate it. These are the top 10 exercises we think are really important for your health. Right? Of course we would never do that, but that’s kind of what’s done around sleep. It’s these hygiene lists, there’s technology, products that over promise, right? They, of course, from a business perspective, have capitalized on the fact that people are struggling. I don’t say I necessarily say I blame them, right? If you have a sleep product and you know, there’s hundreds of millions of people struggling, you might exaggerate some things about your product to try and sell more. Right. An so I think the big thing is really that there is a large business opportunity within sleep coaching, within your community, where your gym is right, or even just to service the people that are already in your community already in your network.

Chris (21:46):

How do you market this service to your members? Because I think that a lot of that same overconfidence that coaches have, we all have, you know, like, OK, I know I should be getting eight hours, whether I’m doing it or not, man, you know, I’m wearing a Whoop, an aura ring. I’ve got this other device, a Fitbit. It tells me I don’t sleep enough. OK. Well, I feel fine. I like coffee, you know? Yeah.

Nick (22:10):

I think the biggest thing that you’re combating with this in terms of marketing it to the general population and in terms of creating buy-in from the general population is you are fighting those narratives that are out there and have been out there for a long time, right. Especially in certain circles. So in corporate circles where, you know, the mentality of I’ll sleep when I’m dead or sleep is for the weak, you know, those type of things that believe it or not, those are things that are still ingrained in people culturally. And those are things that people still, believe in a lot of ways. Right. And, you know, there’s always the default of, you know, I’ve never been a great sleeper. I’ve only slept this amount of time and I’ve still been successful, right. Or I’ve accomplished this. I’ve still done that. And, you know, the main message really is there’s a difference between getting by and thriving.

Nick (22:57):

And there’s also a difference in, you know, kind of paying the piper long term, right? And this is something even incredibly successful individuals who have sacrificed sleep over many years have seen how it’s affected them. And if they could change something going back in time, it would be that they prioritize sleep. Right? The idea that by sacrificing sleep an individual would be less productive or less successful is just not true. And we can point to just about every metric of what it means to be productive and what it means to be successful and see it improved by sleep. Energy levels, overall productivity ability to focus, creative thinking, problem solving, all of these things, right? So I think a lot of times when coaches start to market this, they go at it from the angle of maybe the big picture of chronic disease and mortality and all of these things.

Nick (23:52):

And I’ve given a lot of presentations on sleep to the general population. These are not the things that people connect with. And we kind of know this already, right? If people were motivated by the fact that, you know, not exercising and not sleeping well might kill them in a lot less time than if they prioritize these things, we’d be outta business, right. They would do the things they needed to do on their own. Right. And that’s not as much of a powerful motivator. And so I think the same applies to sleep and more of the conversation and emphasis that I ended up having with people is on the things that they experience on a day to day basis. And so one of the more successful things that I’ve done and had other coaches and gym owners do with their community is run sleep challenges.

Nick (24:36):

And having them pick, say three to five subjective values or things in their life that they wanna see improve right now, making a structured program around some sleep interventions that you know, would improve for them and say, really the mindset is, Hey, give me, you know, gimme four weeks on this. And if you don’t see those things that are really important to you improve, I won’t bring this up again. Right. But more often than not, they’re going to see some improvements in how they feel on a day to day basis. And these are the things that are ultimately motivating people, their energy levels, their ability to focus, their mood, you know, people who are sleep deprived and don’t realize it are often more reactive with the people that they care about. Things like that. That again, on a day to day standpoint tend to be more powerful buy-in strategies.

Chris (25:25):

That makes a lot of sense because it would be hard to track like a very specific metric other than just the volume of sleep that you’re getting. Let’s talk about tracking for a minute, Nick, like, so I use an app on my iPhone. I set it down, you know, beside the bed other people are using rings, whoop, like what’s accurate out there and is anything.

Nick (25:50):

So, you know, there’s a lot to unpack with sleep track. The first thing I’ll say is the pros to sleep trackers are the obvious, that they do promote a lot more awareness around sleep, which I think is tremendous. The fact that these wearables and trackers are available, are getting more people interested in sleep. It’s more accessible for them. It gametizes the experience a little bit sometimes, right. It can provide them some contextual awareness around how different things like alcohol or foods might impact their sleep. And so I think all those things are tremendous. And I have a good relationship with a lot of individuals that have created a lot of great products and a lot of, I don’t have affiliation with any of them, but a good relationship. And I think the future of these sleep trackers is really bright.

Nick (26:40):

However, the dark side to this is, this is me putting my coaching hat on. I tend to, for an individual who is currently struggling with sleep, discourage sleep tracker use. And the reason for that is one of the primary reasons that individuals struggle with sleep, especially on an ongoing basis is the stress and anxiety that is built up around sleep. And now if I add something that provides a number, a metric, and just adds another component to the process, I find that it promotes more stress and anxiety for that individual who’s struggling. Especially one of the things that I do from a coaching perspective, one of the key coaching strategies is thought restructuring, right? Coming from cognitive behavioral therapy, how do you help people restructure some of the negative thoughts that they have? And this is very key around sleep because people have a lot of negative connotations around sleep and their own sleep and sleep ability.

Nick (27:42):

And so when you have sleep tracker data, even if that data isn’t necessarily a hundred percent accurate in a lot of areas, I can’t change the narrative on that. No matter what I tell them, that number or not getting the number that they want is ingrained in their head. Right. And I can’t change that. So objective data isn’t always necessarily a good thing. And I think in a lot of instances around sleep, it’s not, and this usually surprises people, right? Because again, these sleep trackers are great. They promote awareness. I think you have to really look at the individual that you’re working with and know, are they somebody who is motivated by having data and more information, right? Certain individuals in the athletic population, they do really well with this, or are they somebody who is going to hyper obsess about these numbers and it’s gonna create more stress and anxiety for them.

Nick (28:31):

Right. The other element, you know, that you mentioned is the accuracy piece. And again, the future is bright and they’ve already come a long way. Even in the say, five years, I’ve been in the sleep space five, six years. So they’ve already come a long way and they’ll continue to improve. But currently I break this into tiers. And so tier one is sleep duration, estimating how much time and an individual is actually asleep. And I think the vast majority of them are very good in this area. They do a good job here. The next is differentiating between the two main categories of sleep being non rapid eye movement sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. Less accurate than just solely sleep duration. But again, most do a fairly good job here. Where we really start to get into the inaccuracies is in really distinguishing how much time an individual is spending in, you know, non REM stage three versus stage two, for example, this is where it gets a little more muddy, and where a lot of them kind of miss the boat.

Nick (29:39):

So this is where you want to be using this information with a grain of salt a little bit more. Another thing I’ll say is that even ones that are a little bit inaccurate in these areas, they are consistently inaccurate. If that makes sense. So you still they’ll still provide you your baseline. And so if you’re using them to get context around how these things will ultimately impact your sleep, for example, like I mentioned, alcohol or food timing, or exercise timing, stress, you can still do that. You can still get that contextual information, but if you’re basing the big picture on distinguishing these sleep stages, that I wouldn’t recommend. You know, I don’t, I don’t tend to spend too much time talking about each individual one because they all have their own kind of focus. But what I will say is I think this is generally speaking.

Nick (30:38):

So I spend a lot of time doing things with heart rate variability for years as well. And any time a wearable or tech tries to do and focus on too many things and too many variables, I find that each individual variable becomes a little less accurate because they’re just trying to crunch too much data. Right. Whereas the ones that solely focus on that one metric, right? So we take aura ring, for example, they will look at a lot of different physiological variables, but we’re really looking at everything through the lens of sleep. So they tend to be more accurate in the aspects of sleep. Whereas something like a whoop band for example, will tend to be a little less accurate in the sleep variables because it’s trying to do other things, right. It’s trying to focus on other things. And so in terms of the one to use that I find is the most accurate, and again, I have no affiliation with them. I have no link to share. but it would be Oura Ring to this point that would be the preferred preferred method for me. But again, taking into account, all those aspects of, especially as a coach, is this appropriate for my client.

Chris (31:53):

Really interesting. What we find is like, what is the thing that you’re going to use? And that’s usually the thing that’s gonna get us the best data over time, because since none are accurate, at least they’re all, as you say consistently wrong.

Nick (32:08):

For sure. Yeah. So what I should have pointed out is the alternatives to using a sleep tracker, right? Because you do need to have something that you’re looking at with clients. You can’t have this be, you know, fly by the seat of your pants and just, you know, oh yeah. Generally feel better. You do have to have something you’re looking at. And so the two alternatives here are one is a sleep diary. So this is something I use with just about every sleep coaching client in some capacity. There’s a lot of them out there. I have one that I like to use specifically in the course, but there’s plenty of them out there. And what I like about these is you’re still getting information, but again, it’s not promoting as much of that stress and anxiety by just having them fill out some information on a paper versus the wearable.

Nick (32:53):

Right? So it doesn’t promote that same stress and anxiety response and still getting really good information. So key variables on a diary that you wanna make sure that they’ll have, obviously time that an individual went to bed, rough estimate of when they went to, when they fell asleep or when they thought they fell asleep, knowing that might not be the most accurate thing in the world. Any time, amount of times that they woke up in the middle of the night, if at all. And the big thing that a lot of them will have is what are an individual’s thoughts that they have around their time of sleep, right. Going into sleep, and then when they wake up. So again, back to that idea of what are their thoughts and perceptions that they have around sleep, you know, that’ll be something that I always wanna see included on a sleep tracker.

Nick (33:37):

And then if we really just wanna shrink the investment for the person involved, going back to that challenge example, right? It’s just some subjective values that are important to them and that we know are directly tied to sleep. And so usually the big ones here are gonna be energy levels, mood, ability to focus, right? Things like reading the same line over and over, daytime fatigue. And you get some subjective values that you track over time in these things, if an individual is improving their sleep quality, you’re going to see these things improve. Right. That’s not the ideal tracking method, but again, if we’re trying to shrink the investment to, like you said, just get the person to actually do it. That might be a good starting point.

Chris (34:22):

All right, man. That is awesome. Especially because, you know, we have these things, but not everybody does.

Nick (34:28):

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, especially, you know, when someone’s coming to you for coaching and, you know, paying, you know, if they’re working with you long term thousands of dollars, and then you tell them, Hey, go and buy this, you know, $200 Oura ring or whatever it might be, you know, especially at the onset of them working with you is not always, a great strategy either. So just being able to have a subjective tracker that you’re using with them, even if they want more into the process, down the line, then you can, you know, maybe direct them to a sleep tracker and maybe they’re in a better place by then as well.

Chris (35:00):

One kind of gap that I’m seeing a lot with coaches right now is they will actually prescribe to their clients, like wear a whoop band for three months. Right. And then, so now the coach has new data, but they’re not really sure what to do with it. And so it doesn’t change the client’s nutrition prescription or workout program or anything. Right. But part of that is too that they just don’t underst sleep. So Nick, like, what exactly is your service and how does it help trainers with this stuff?

Nick (35:29):

Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree, you know, context is everything, you know, this is in part why I stopped giving kind of heart rate variability education because people became so focused on the numbers and how interesting the numbers were. But those things don’t tell you anything, if you don’t understand what was different for those individuals. But within my course and education, whether it’s presentations or anything I give what I’ve really tried to do around sleep and recovery too, kind of lumping that in there. What I’ve really tried to do that was lacking is create a system. I’m big on systems, always have been. I think they’re incredibly important and that’s really what’s been lacking around sleep. We have systems for exercise, systems for nutrition systems for business, but we don’t have systems around sleep. And so my system of sleep centers around what I call the bucket system.

Nick (36:19):

So essentially I have five key buckets. And the goal within the course is to go through an assessment process that allows you to identify where someone stands in these five big buckets or areas. If the bucket is empty, they need coaching attention in that. And if the bucket is full, they don’t need as much coaching attention. And then to provide practical coaching strategies that help fill those buckets with the idea being, if you cover all five of these buckets, you’re really setting somebody up in a good situation from a sleep perspective. Another massive emphasis of the course going back to scope of practice is we have an entire module and talk a lot about the assessment and screening process, right? So making sure you don’t allow something to slip through the cracks, you know, what your red flags are, you know, what your refer out points are, but then obviously having a system, once you get past that and you actually are in your coaching process.

Chris (37:18):

Now that’s great, man. Where can people find out more?

Nick (37:21):

Yeah. So the site for the course, and, you know, all the information as well as a host of, you know, free resources and other things as a practical coaching toolkit, is sleepcoachcourse.com.

Chris (37:33):

OK, man,

Nick (37:34):

You can find me on find me on Instagram, @theonlinesleepcoach.

Chris (37:38):

OK, perfect. I will put all that stuff in our show notes, Nick. Thanks a lot for coming to help out. I think like this was just a complete blind spot for most coaches out there, including me. And, from this, I’ve gained a lot of insight on like why I should be talking about sleep, but also the practical elements of like, how do I do it? So, you know, it’s interesting that you’re like the only one out there that’s really talking about this in practical terms that coaches can use that aren’t just medical practitioners, but I sure am glad that you’re doing it.

Nick (38:11):

Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you having me on.

Mike (38:17):

Don’t forget to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio for more interviews and stories from gym owners. Now here’s Chris one more time.

Chris (38:23):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. 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 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.

 

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The New LEG Score: Measuring Length of Engagement

We’re changing the way we calculate length of engagement—LEG.

LEG is important because we build our gyms on relationships. It’s not enough to know how many people quit this month; we want to know how long a client stays. This info is critical because we need them to stay long enough to change their lives. Measuring average monthly retention won’t tell us if we’re having the impact we want to have.

From a more pragmatic viewpoint, we also need to calculate the lifetime value of a client. We need to know if we have an equal exchange of value (what you deliver and what they pay). Further, we need to know what it costs for us to get new clients and what we can spend on little bonuses to keep them.

The old way was simple but time consuming. To calculate LEG, you’d add up the number of months each client had been at your gym and then divide by the number of clients. Mindbody used to make this really simple (their old retention report was really the original LEG calculation).

You’d see something like this:

Milly Trowbridge—9 monthsBilly Shepherd—12 monthsSally Davis—14 monthsAverage: 11.67 months.

Simple, right? Of course, no other gym software calculates LEG this way (and even Mindbody has changed).

The problem? Many software platforms give the wrong LEG metric. And it’s usually too high.

So gym owners think they don’t have a problem with retention when they really do.

For example, it’s not uncommon for a gym owner to report that they have a LEG of over five years. But think about that: Old LEG calculations were significantly influenced by very long-term members, which didn’t give gym owners current info about how long newer members would be likely to stay. A 10-year member can really skew the data. And adding new members—which is great!—would actually pull down the current LEG score dramatically even if those new members go on to stay for a long time.

So we’re going to calculate LEG for Two-Brain clients.

Every month, Two-Brain gym owners log in to our app and report their core metrics. But from now on we’ll calculate your LEG based on your other numbers.

This will allow you to spend time figuring out your other numbers—and we’re working on some integrations with different software platforms to make it even faster!

For the nerds (like me), the new LEG calculation is this:

1 / churn

Churn = (lost clients this month) / (total clients last month)

We’ll be using a rolling six-month average to account for big spikes and dips.

To learn why LEG and retention are more important than marketing, click here.

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Why You Absolutely Must Do Goal Reviews With Clients

Mike (00:02):

Goal reviews. Are you doing them with clients? If not, you need to start. And if you are, here’s a refresher on how to do them properly. Chris Cooper is behind the mic and this is Two-Brain Radio.

Chris (00:14):

Imagine you have a migraine. You go to the doctor, the doctor says, take some Tylenol threes. That’s the cure. That’ll be 199 bucks please. So you pay her and she leaves you with the bottle. How many Tylenol threes do you take? Half of 1? 1? 3? How often? For how long? When is it time to change? When should you watch out for addiction? When are the pills doing more harm than good? When do they stop working? This is why you need goal reviews in your gym. This is goal review month at Two-Brain. So our 850 gyms worldwide are all scheduling goal reviews with their clients. And today I’m gonna tell you why and how they benefit your clients and how they are more than just an opportunity for coaches, they’re also your responsibility aas a professional coach. Most micro gyms follow this process. A new client comes in the door and says, I want to try your service.

Chris (01:11):

And the micro gym says either, OK, let’s talk about what your goals are, which we call the prescriptive model, or they say, OK, do you want to try a class? Or they say, sure, let’s sign you up. At that point, there might be some discussion about the client’s goals or whatever, but ultimately the coach says to the client, OK, how often do you wanna come? Twice a week, three times a week, four times a week. And the client says, I don’t know what I need here. So I guess I’ll go with the only filter that I have, which is my budget. I’ll try twice a week. So nobody has said to this client, here’s your goal. To reach your goal, you need to come three times a week and go for walks twice a week, or you need to follow this nutrition plan, or you need to do this meditation, or you should also add yoga.

Chris (01:57):

Nobody said any of that. And it’s just like going to the doctor and the doctor saying, Hey, you got a headache. Here’s the medicine cupboard. OK. The medicine cabinet. Help yourself. And then walks outta the room. And the client says, all right, there’s lots of different medicines in here. There’s pink ones, blue ones, orange ones, yellow ones, white ones. What do I take? And they look around and they see, oh, here comes somebody else up to the medicine cabinet. And they look like they know what they’re doing. They took some pink ones. Maybe I’ll take some pink ones too. Maybe they’re brave enough to ask, Hey, do you have a headache? I have a headache. What should I do? And maybe the other person even says, oh yeah, I’ve been taking the blue ones for headaches for 20 years. They’re awesome. And so the client grabs the blue pills in a way they go, but nobody checks in on them.

Chris (02:44):

Nobody measures their progress, changes their dosage. And so a few months later the client says I don’t have headaches anymore. Do I really need these pills? They’re getting expensive. I don’t know if I’m making progress. If I’m getting better, if I’m cured or if I’m getting worse, I kind of feel like maybe I’m addicted, but nobody’s telling me any different. So I need to just, I don’t know, cancel. And obviously what happens is that the doctor loses the client, but more importantly, the client loses their opportunity to improve their health. They lose the thing that they came in to buy in the first place, because we give them the person with the least amount of knowledge in the equation, the choice on what they should do, the choice on making their own dosage and setting their own prescription, right? Right when a client needs us the most, and they’re asking, what exactly should I do?

Chris (03:32):

We sometimes shy away because of our own biases about price, or we sometimes don’t want tell the client exactly what to do. And we want them to make up their own mind. And this is doing a disservice to everyone, to the client who is seeking help to the coach who is trying to build a meaningful coaching practice to the other clients in the gym who want these good fits as part of their community and to the other staff who only want to deal with people who are open to receiving their help. The prescriptive model is one that we teach very early in Two-Brain, people who are with us for a few months, they get their marketing and their sales going. And then the next thing that they learn is this prescriptive model. The prescriptive model starts with an interview process. So you could call it a no sweat intro.

Chris (04:18):

Most people do. Even people aren’t part of Two-Brain who have taken that from my books. They know what a no sweat intro is. From there, the next 90 days should be pretty mapped out, which means you should know exactly when to call and check in on a client. How often you’re going to text the client for accountability, what kind of nutritional guidance you’re gonna give that client, which workouts and on which days, and which trainers are going to serve that client, you’re gonna know which pieces of your educational content you’re gonna send that client. We have this all mapped out for you, and it’s called the first 90. And it’s in the Two-Brain Business mentorship program. But if you wanna build your own client journey map, start by mapping out this first 90 days, because at the end of 90 days is the client’s goal review. At that point, the client should come in for another appointment with you.

Chris (05:05):

This should take about 10 minutes. And in that appointment, you’re going to measure their progress. And you’re gonna measure the thing that they care about, which might or might not be the thing that you care about. So if a client comes in and says, I wanna lose 10 pounds, you better measure their weight at the goal review. If a client comes in and says, I just feel weak all the time, you better measure their strength and energy at that goal review. If a client comes in and says anything, I want to improve my deadlift. You better measure their deadlift at that goal review. And then what happens next is up to you, the coach, the professional, who is making the prescription and updating that prescription. If the client has reached their goals, you say, are you completely satisfied that you’ve hit your goals? And if they say yes, then you make a new prescription.

Chris (05:50):

If they say no, then you upgrade their prescription based on your knowledge and experience as a professional coach. What don’t do is leave them alone to guess, is this working? Why isn’t it working? Should I have a nutrition plan? But as coaches, we feel like, ah, I shouldn’t step in because we feel like we’re trying to sell the client something. And I will say this. About 20% of the time, a client will wind up upgrading their membership. Sometimes they’ll actually downgrade because you, their professional coach, are saying, you’re over training. You need a break. You’re too stressed out. You know, it’s summer, whatever. And when they do upgrade, yes, you will earn more money. But the intent of these goal reviews is not just like a blanket upsell; it’s to make the right prescription. And when the right prescription is more of this, less of that, it’s more one-on-one attention.

Chris (06:44):

It’s come more often. Something just basic as that. Then that’s the prescription that it’s your duty to make as a professional coach. But a lot of the times we stop ourselves because we feel like I don’t want to feel like a salesperson. What you need to understand though, is that your job is to provide the solution to the client, not to, you know, express your wallet onto them or project your budget onto them. So the question I always ask myself before I’m due a goal review with session with a client is if money were not an object, what would I tell this person? And then I tell myself, it’s my duty to tell them the truth. So if they need more from me, I’m just gonna tell them that. If they need you know, different service from me, they need nutrition instead of weightlifting, I’m gonna tell them that.

Chris (07:32):

And then I’ll deal with the price thing later. So after I say something and the client says, how much is it, then I’ll deal with the price thing. But I owe it to everybody to get the right answer off to them first. And then you’re going to book the next goal review for another 90 days. How do you get people to do this? Well, people who use the Level Method are really good at this because they attach their goal review sessions to their global assessments. But if you’re not with Level Method or you want another model to use this, at Two-Brain, we have these scheduled into our calendar for all Two-Brain gyms, about three times a year, it’s on an annual calendar so that we can plan for it. And we give people social media posts to use. We help them schedule.

Chris (08:13):

We practice doing goal reviews with people. We talk about metrics that you can look at to make better prescriptions. We review this with everybody in our mentorship program, so that everybody’s getting the best results for their clients. Now, sometimes the conversation gets even better and the client is a raving fan. They want to be an evangelist for your business. And you think the only way that I could improve this service for them is if their husband joined them or I invited their sister to come, or I gave them a way to bring their kids. And at that point, you might say, how can my service help your husband? Now, again, you are asking for a referral and we do this in a way called affinity marketing, but you only do it when the client is a raving fan already, they want to bring their husband in.

Chris (09:01):

They just dunno how to do it, because like you, they are not a salesperson. And all you’re doing is just opening up the drawbridge, basically. So goal reviews sometimes end in affinity marketing, but more importantly, they’re a way for you to track and celebrate your client’s progress. And that’s the last point I wanna make here is how important it is to actually celebrate progress. Because most clients have tried something in the past that didn’t work or it worked for a while, and then they got worse, but no client is getting praise for their progress outside of your gym. Their boss is not saying to them, Hey, amazing job. Their spouse is not saying you are doing it right. Their kids are not giving them fist bumps because they prepared an amazing dinner, right? The people at the drive through are not giving them high fives and hugs just because they completed a hard workout or anything else, nobody is thanking them for their patience.

Chris (09:56):

Nobody is rewarding their efforts. Nobody is praising their accomplishments, except for you. You are the only one putting them on the podium, turning on the spotlight. And a goal review is a great chance to make your clients famous because nobody else will. So first off you wanna say, great job every chance you get second. And if the client is especially proud of their accomplishments, you wanna share that story with everybody so that everybody can praise them. So you pull out your phone and you say, I am so proud of you, tell us what you’ve accomplished and why you’re proud of it. And if you wanna go a little bit further, you can even say, what advice would you give to the person were two years ago? And that’s when things tend to get emotional. I won’t go down that content rabbit hole, but telling your clients’ story, if you don’t know what other kind of content to create, this is, it’s a never fail strategy. Make them famous. So goal reviews, you wanna do them three times a year. You wanna track your client’s progress. You wanna update their prescription when it’s necessary. You know, most of the time, it won’t be. You wanna offer the service that they actually need to get to their goals because that’s your job and you wanna praise them. You wanna tell their story more. That’s why Two-Brain gyms are doing goal reviews by the dozen in April. And that’s why we recommend that every coaching business has some kind of goal review process.

Mike (11:21):

This is Two-Brain Radio, please remember to like and subscribe for more episodes. Now here’s Chris one more time.

Chris (11:27):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. 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 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.

 

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Why Didn’t We Hear More About Fitness During the Pandemic?

It’s nice to see fitness mentioned in court.

That happened on April 4 in Alberta, where a group of plaintiffs are challenging the Canadian province’s COVID-19 restrictions. They claim the restrictions violate constitutional rights—and we’ll leave that violent debate completely alone here.

Of special note for gym owners: Plaintiff lawyer Leighton Grey asked Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, why public advice on weight and eating wasn’t offered as a way to help citizens reduce their risk of serious illness due to COVID.

Whether you agree or disagree with vaccines and COVID restrictions, the question is valid—and the answer is important for gym owners.

Every single article on COVID becomes rocket fuel for a debate that usually devolves into a mess of dogma, morality and insults. So I’m going stay well clear of the political issues, and I won’t bother to comment on vaccines and how COVID restrictions affected gym owners and other entrepreneurs.

I won’t even state whether I support Grey and the group of plaintiffs—one of whom is a gym owner.

I’ll just restate Grey’s question more broadly:

Why didn’t we hear more about fitness and nutrition during two years of press conferences and COVID briefings by doctors and health experts all around the world?

The answer is critically important for gym owners—people who make a living by measurably improving health and fitness in relatively short periods of time.

Another question: What if doctors had gone through their briefings on social distancing, masking and all the other “fundamentals” but then closed with a quick note on fitness?

For example: “I’d also encourage people to move regularly, eat more vegetables and reduce intake of highly processed, sugary foods and beverages.”

None of that is controversial or complicated. It’s just basic but sound advice that applies even in the absence of a pandemic.

Fundamentals And … ?

I listened to a lot of COVID briefings over the last two years, and I can almost recite the talking points that were repeated over and over. Wear masks, limit close contacts, stay home if you feel ill, etc. The daily briefings became repetitive and tedious. So doctors and politicians had ample time to offer more assistance and expertise to people, and a quick note about food and movement would have been just the thing.

Scientists know that good food and regular exercise likely reduce the risk of severe COVID symptoms. Researchers also know 39 percent of 15 million people studied gained weight during the pandemic. And people know their habits have changed: In a poll of 1,000 WebMD readers during the pandemic, 68 percent said they were snacking more, 54 percent said they are exercising less, and 54 percent said they have gained weight.

Let’s stop for a minute to recall that less exercise and more weight are linked to a host of health issues, not just severe COVID.

And yet we heard almost nothing about these additional measures—for years.

Sendentary Behavior, Salad and Silence

Here’s a question that might be posed to politicians and medical officers around the world:

“Why was basic but effective advice on fitness and nutrition not provided regularly as a means to help citizens reduce their risk for severe COVID symptoms and avoid overwhelming health-care systems?”

According to CBC.ca, Grey brought this point up with Dr. Hinshaw through a statement that was less than eloquent and far from ideal:

“You never told Albertans they could reduce their risk of COVID-19 by reducing the amount that they ate. … You never said, ‘You know, it would really help you, it would really help your health, if you would get your weight under control.’”

Hinshaw’s comment: “Obesity is a chronic condition. It’s not a condition that can be changed in a short period of time.”

But what about two years? Would that have been enough time to make some progress in the right direction if a literal army of doctors had given fitness and nutrition information to citizens who were tuning in for daily briefings?

Gym owners and trainers know two years is plenty of time. It might not be enough to help a person lose 100 lb., but it’s more than enough to make dramatic, measurable changes to health and fitness. You can literally change your life in two years—this is not hyperbole.

With proper nutrition and exercise over 730 days, you could expect lower levels of body fat, increased muscle mass and strength, greater bone density, greater cardiovascular capacity and endurance, improved blood work and so on.

These changes would all be 100 percent measurable—gyms around the world already have mountains of supporting data, and so do doctors. None of the changes listed above are abnormal or extreme. All are possible on a two-year timeline.

Even if no changes were seen over that two-year period of diet and exercise, at least people wouldn’t have been gaining weight and increasing their risk for severe COVID and other diseases. If we assume that about 39 percent of the population gained weight, staying the same weight might have been considered a win.

A Problem With a Solution

According to the CBC, Dr. Hinshaw reminded Grey that obesity “isn’t just a willpower problem.”

I wholeheartedly agree. But it’s nonetheless a problem that can be solved. Gym owners make a living by providing effective, sustainable solutions.

If experts provide the right advice, the problem can actually be solved by individuals on their own, even if the very best solution involves nutrition and fitness coaching from qualified, experienced trainers who supply programming, movement instruction, healthy habits, motivation, accountability and expertise.

Regardless of your personal politics, we can all agree that the world would be better if COVID didn’t make as many people sick.

So why didn’t we hear more about fitness and nutrition during the pandemic?

Why, indeed?

The post Why Didn’t We Hear More About Fitness During the Pandemic? appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

Grow Your Gym by Thinking Outside the Box

Mike: (00:02)

Intro

Chris: (00:10)

Hey, everybody it’s Coop. And today I’m gonna talk about thinking outside your box, where should you go for information to help you grow with your business? When should you stick with what you know, and when should you expand your boundaries? So today I’m gonna give you some things to consider that you won’t hear from CrossFit home office or your fitness franchisor or your yoga master. Because if you want to grow a business, then you need to gain an objective viewpoint. You need to see it as an outsider sees it. Now for CrossFit affiliates. You know this story, Greg Glassman built a fitness model by thinking outside what was known in quotation marks in fitness in the late nineties. At that time, when people pictured fitness, they thought about bodybuilders. So the common model was to copy what the bodybuilders were doing. I remember people carrying copies of flex magazine to the gym, and that was only two decades ago.

Chris: (01:05)

Instead Greg started from scratch and he asked what is real fitness. And then starting from that blank slate and his new definition, he asked what will improve this definition of fitness. He created a model of mixed model interval training that he defined as constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity. And then he demonstrated that constantly varied meant more than doing 12 reps versus eight reps. It meant kettlebells and Olympic lifting and powerlifting and sprinting and rowing and gymnastics. And for a little while it meant parkour and virtual snow shoveling, and other modalities that he later cut in the name of function or intensity. The key here is that Greg didn’t stick to one narrow silo of fitness dogma at the time. He went outside the box to determine the answer from square one. And this was his genius. He was a fitness outsider, and he saw fitness through the eyes of an outsider. But this podcast is about business.

Chris: (02:09)

So three weeks ago, I was on a call to explore partnership with the new affiliate team at CrossFit home office. And we were talking about the APN and the affiliate team said we were the only mentorship practice that was currently being considered. And though I knew the answer to the question in advance, I asked anyway, why Two-Brain? Now to an insider at Two-Brain, the reasons are obvious. We make decisions based on data. We publish our results. We’ve worked with over 2000 gyms. We’re producing actual millionaires. We can prove it. And we, nobody else has that proof, but I wanted to hear home office’s perspective. So I was a bit surprised when Austin Malleolo said you came up from CrossFit. You’re one of us. Because I don’t really feel like I belong in the club to be honest, I’ve never been one of the bros.

Chris: (03:00)

Even when I worked for CrossFit, I’ve always been an outsider. When I started my CrossFit box, I didn’t have any margin for error. So I went through every journal article that mentioned business. I think I read every message on the CrossFit message boards and the prevailing wisdom was run big groups, do a free trial, just be a great coach. And they’ll refer their friends. And I listened because here were box owners who said they were doing well. Here were all of my OG CrossFit heroes, but after two years of trying to run group times and no OnRamp and discounts for every person under the sun, my business was failing. And I thought it was me, honestly, looking back at my mindset in 2008 might remind you of a cult follower, right? I think I’m the problem. The reason that I’m failing is because I’m not devout enough.

Chris: (03:51)

I need to republish more stuff from CrossFit journal. I need to go deeper. I need to work longer. I need to love this more. I need to criticize every other fitness modality in the world. I need to be more hardcore. You know it right? It’s all my fault. I do not receive the blessings because I am not devout enough. And then I read something from Nikki Valeti about this 21 day OnRamp. Now this OnRamp was not part of the CrossFit canon. Here was someone doing something that wasn’t in the journal yet. And it worked. What? But this wasn’t what CrossFit LA was doing. This wasn’t what people were saying on the CrossFit message boards. This was something Nikki made up on her own and published. And it worked. And soon after that, I found my first mentor. He assigned me reading material that I didn’t understand at first, books like the E Myth and Good to Great.

Chris: (04:47)

I asked, how does this apply to fitness? This doesn’t make me a better coach. And he said, your method doesn’t matter. The stuff that you teach people isn’t the same as your business model. I started applying these crazy important lessons in my gym. I translated them onto a blog and then into books, my gym became successful and I started teaching these principles to others. Many of the most devout said, Chris, those are bullshit. Follow the teachings of the leader. And you will be lifted into heaven. Was I successful because of CrossFit, independent from CrossFit or despite CrossFit, you be the judge. My point of this story is that you need to look outside your business to find the things that will grow your business, merely being better and better and better at delivering your method or your religion won’t grow your business or your church.

Chris: (05:37)

Now, there are really six strategies that you can use to grow your business. And today I’m gonna give you a book from outside the box, outside the perspective of fitness, even, that will help you with each of those six strategies. The first one is called “Profit First.” Now the beauty of this book is that you don’t have to read Mike Michalowicz’s original profit first, and then translate that into the fitness business because John Briggs has already done that for you. And what John did was he took profit first and he wrote his own book with the help of Michalowicz called profit first for micro gyms. So if you’re looking to grow your from an objective perspective, I strongly suggest that you start by reading profit first for micro gyms, by John Briggs. The second book that will help you is called the E Myth.

Chris: (06:29)

And this is written by Michael Gerber. And this will help you turn your business into a system. You can deliver world to class coaching, but if not every coach delivers world-class coaching, then it almost doesn’t matter how good the best coach or how good you are at coaching because your business will fall to the level of its systems. It will not rise to the level of one coach’s excellence. So the E Myth revisited really save my gym in the first place. Even when I thought I needed marketing, or I just needed more clients, what I actually needed was for the gym to run consistently well, even when I wasn’t there. The third book I’d like you to read is called good to great by Jim Collins. Now, Collins is an interesting guy. He’s a researcher on business practices mostly, but what he does really well is he translates the data into usable stories, anecdotes, fables, and so you can learn what actually kills businesses from reading this book.

Chris: (07:30)

And here’s a hint. It’s not usually lack of marketing. The next book I’d like you to read is called rich dad, poor dad by Robert Kiosaki. And by the way, if you’ve seen these books pop up on other people’s lists, don’t be surprised. There’s a reason that these books have stood the test of time. More books get published today than ever before. Right? There’s been more stuff published in the last five years than in all of human history combined, but these books still stand out as the ones that I keep 20 copies of in my office and hand out to people when they’re starting a business. The reason rich dad, poor dad is so impactful is that it gets you thinking outside your box. You start thinking like an investor and you start looking at problems differently. You start looking at revenue and you start looking at cashflow, and then you start looking at generating just a little bit more than what you need and investing it.

Chris: (08:29)

But you also learn to ask a couple of really important questions. And one of those is how can I do it? You learn to start looking at the goal that you wanna achieve, and then working back from that goal, breaking that goal into tiny steps along the way. And that was really the step. The question that I learned to ask that’s helped us now produce millionaires at Two-Brain. And even though every gym owner doesn’t necessarily wanna be a millionaire, we can get them to whatever goal they want by starting with, how can they do it? The next book that I want you to read is called never lose a customer again by Joey Coleman. This is one of those books that you read it once. And you’re like, yeah, that’s pretty interesting. And then a few months later you say, Hey, I read something about this.

Chris: (09:13)

I wanna read it again. And the interesting thing about this book is it’s not just theoretical. Most business books spend way too long talking about theory and not enough time on the practical aspects, like do exactly this. But if you go through the book and go to Joey Coleman’s website, you’ll find one of the most important tools that you can build in any service business. And that is a customer journey map. So you want to think about every single thing that happens to a client from the very start to the very end of their time with you over the years, you know, you’re gonna add steps. You’re gonna take away steps. There is no more important tool except for maybe the prescriptive model for keeping clients engaged long term, than mapping out that journey. And Joey Coleman’s book does that. So to improve retention, it’s hard to find a book that’s more important than this one.

Chris: (10:05)

The next book I wanna recommend is a classic. It’s called how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Now, it’s really important that when you’re making changes in your gym or when you’re trying to sell, or when you’re trying to market, or you’re trying to gain referrals, or even just build trust with people that you understand how to talk to people. This book literally changed my life. I order copies by the dozen. I hand them out to every kid I know that’s graduating high school to every new entrepreneur. It’s sounds like a basic, but I reread it every year. And it’s called how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Now the last book that I want you to read this, isn’t like a book that I’ve published like gym owner’s handbook or Start a Gym, or even Two-Brain Business.

Chris: (10:51)

The last book that I want you to read, you can get it for free. And it’s called the state of the industry. And we publish this every year based on data. The reason that I publish this is this is the book that I needed back in 2005, when I started a gym, back in 2008, when my gym was almost bankrupt. I needed a proven source of truth. I needed to see like, yes, this is working and it’s been tested. And here’s how well it’s working compared to that other thing, because even in 2008, when I was in trouble, even before you had all the Facebook gurus giving advice, the gym owners who are now like selling business coaching or whatever, there were still, people who were sharing good advice from failing gyms or sharing good ideas that hadn’t actually worked, or that couldn’t work for anybody else.

Chris: (11:46)

Right? And I’ll get into this on other podcast episodes, but really the micro gym community needs this source of data to help them make decisions. And when CrossFit HQ originally said, no, we’re not gonna do that. I said, well, it has to be done. I guess I’m the next best person to do it. And so we did it starting in 2018. We started collecting this data. Now we publish it every year for free. The current edition has data from over 14,000 gyms worldwide. And when you’re making decisions on anything, you should start with like, what are the proven facts that will help me? So the key here is that if you’re looking for help in growing your gym, you can always do better by starting outside and say like, what does the science its support? What does the body of knowledge include? And then how can I apply that to my gym?

Chris: (12:39)

Instead of saying, what do all the other yoga gyms in my town do? What do all the other CrossFit gyms charge for their group classes in town? You should start with these books and a body of objective knowledge. And of course, you know, we publish every single day for free. We publish about 12 pieces of content a week, including this podcast, including the blog, including our YouTube channel. And you can start there if you want to hear knowledge that comes from data. But if you don’t want to hear it from me, go right to the source. And these books will be listed on our show notes today. Good luck with your gym.

Mike: (13:17)

This is Two-Brain Radio, please remember to like and subscribe for more episodes. Now here’s Chris one more time.

Chris: (13:23)

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. 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 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 Grow Your Gym by Thinking Outside the Box appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

From Unhappy Housewife to Fitness Entrepreneur: Kirstin Smith Rewrites Her Story

In today’s episode, I chat with Kirstin Smith. Kirstin is a fitness entrepreneur and coach, gym owner, realtor, wife, and mom to four young kids. She has a new book out called Confessions of an Unhappy Housewife, How I changed my bullshit stories and created a life I love. Today we get into the sense of identity loss that often accompanies becoming a mom, the myth of ‘I dont have enough time’ and how a painful transformation has led her to help others. 

Website: https://kirstinsmith.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thekirstinsmith/

Book: Confessions of an Unhappy Housewife: How I Changed My Bullsh*t Stories to Create a Life I Love

Facebook Group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthymomslivewell

1:15: Ideals vs. reality

2:20: Losing my identity 

7:09: Depending on your spouse to fulfill all your needs

10:36: The downward spiral

15:30: The tipping point

22:42: Mindset shift

24:47: The Coaching Pyramid

28:40: Shifting off autopilot

35:30 Teaching other women to write their own story

Tiffy (00:04):

Hello, and welcome to Women In Fitness Business. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Kirsten Smith. Kirsten is a fitness entrepreneur and coach gym owner, realtor, wife, and mom to four young kids. She has a new book out called “Confessions of an Unhappy Housewife: How I changed my bullshit stories and created a life I love.” Today we get into the sense of identity loss that often accompanies becoming a mom, the myth of I don’t have enough time and how going through a painful transformation has led her to help others. Kirsten, welcome to the show.

Kirsten (00:43):

Thank you for having me.

Tiffy (00:45):

So you’re incredibly accomplished. You have two masters degrees. You’re a two-time council of American overseas research center scholar, a gym owner, did becoming a stay-at-home mom kind of sneak up on you?

Kirsten (01:03):

You know, I wanna say no, I grew up with a stay at home mom. OK. she was there when I got off the bus and I really valued the fact that she was always around. That was something that I think really impacted me growing and deep down, I knew that I wanted to be able to do that with my kids. So ultimately, you know, when I was working on a PhD, I chose a career field in academia and the back of my mind, the logic was I’m gonna be able to, you know, kind of have a career, work kind of school hours without, working in a K through 12 educational setting, right. I’m not usually gonna be working in the evenings. I can be around for my kids in the afternoons and evenings.

Tiffy (01:54):

Right

Kirsten (01:55):

Now. I think my expectation of what it was going to be like being a stay at home mom was drastically different than the reality, and that’s what really snuck up on me. It was kind of the cognitive dissonance between, you know, sort of thinking I wanted one thing saying I wanted one thing and then experiencing it and being like, oh man, this is real tough.

Tiffy (02:20):

Right. And in your new book, you talk about how this feeling of like losing your identity came about when you had kids. When did that sense really hit you?

Kirsten (02:35):

You know, we have four kids and they’re all, they’re roughly around two years apart, right. We kind of stair stepped and spaced ’em out that way. I don’t think I was aware of it for a while. You know, it was playing a role, but you know, any mom to young kids understands that for a while, you’re in survival mode, right. You’re underwater, you’re so in the weeds with just trying to get through the day that the things that you took for granted before, like those things seem like luxuries now, right? When you wanna take a shower, when you’ve got little kids, you know, God forbid you wanna go to the gym or you want to invest in your personal development, those things just, they’re the first things that kind of fall off the plate. So I can’t quite pinpoint exactly when I realized it. I think once I realized it, I had kind of worked my way out of it almost, you know, I was so lost. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Tiffy (03:39):

Right. As moms in our culture, though it’s changing, there’s kind of this expectation that moms will put their own needs on the back burner and prioritize their children, which is important. But it’s also the whole mask on the airplane thing. Like what was your experience with that?

Kirsten (04:03):

Oh gosh. I call this the mom martyr and I was the supreme mom martyr. Whatever anybody else needs. Right. I’ll, I’ll sacrifice. I will give up. You know, I’m not gonna spend money on myself. I’m the mom. My kids need shoes or they need, you know, school tuition, things like that. But it is ingrained in us without a doubt that we’re not supposed to be selfish. Right. You are supposed to give, you have this cup, right. You pour outta your cup all day, every day. You know, if you’ve got a husband that you’re supporting, especially, you know, a husband that’s an entrepreneur, that’s a whole different story, but you’re pouring into him supporting that. You’ve got young kids who need you all the time. You’re constantly pouring into them, nurturing them, giving them everything that they needd. You know, you add your housework, responsibilities, managing a household on top of that. And it’s really common to think I’m going to give myself what’s leftover at the end of the day, right? Taking care of ourselves is almost, it becomes a luxury.

Tiffy (05:16):

Right.

Kirsten (05:17):

And when you think about it, that is, I think it really ends up being profoundly detrimental for women. Because society has told us that that’s the way it’s supposed to go, that is the way that a lot of us operate. And eventually we run ourselves so ragged, right? It leads to resentment in your relationship, it can lead to poor communication. It can lead to resentment to your kids. It can lead to, you know, all the subtle stressors throughout the day that you’re not managing well. And then you’ve got this straw that broke the camel’s back in the evening because your husband didn’t take out the trash or because you had to ask your kids five times to turn off the TV and go brush their teeth. Right. And then all of a sudden you snap. It’s not because of the TV or the garbage, it’s that you prioritize everybody else all day long that you were maybe reactive instead of proactive from the moment that you woke up and you get to the end of the day and there’s never anything left over. Right? Yeah. So, I found myself kind of looking around feeling really empty all the time, pouring from this cup, and then ending up with this empty cup, thinking like, can’t anybody give back to me, please? Anybody like, can anybody pour into my cup every once in a while? And it just never happened. Right. And that’s kind of where I stayed in that really unhappy place for years, quite frankly.

Tiffy (06:46):

And you talk about it in your book, how you kind of had an expectation that it was your husband’s job to fill that cup. How did that sort of pan out, like, we’re certainly bombarded with this idea that you can kind of find your missing piece and then get married. Everything’s gonna be copacetic, but then when it comes to that other person fulfilling all your needs, it doesn’t shake out that way.

Kirsten (07:11):

Oh yeah. When you’ve got an expectation for someone else to show up a certain way and they don’t, it’s a big disappointment and that’s hurt feelings and it’s resentment. You know, I think another expectation that we have when we go into a relationship is that things are 50/50. Right. Right. I mean, how often do you hear that? And so that was kind of how I justified things in my mind was relationships are 50/50. And like, man, I’m showing up, I’m giving a lot of myself, I’m giving at least 50%. And I wondered, well, why is my husband not showing up with his 50%? Right. Like I’m carrying the bulk of the burden, I feel like, and I can’t get him to show up with his 50, you know, kind of reach across the table, meet me in the middle. And so what ended up happening was, you know, I’m sitting there with my empty cup all the time, waiting for him to show up and fill my cup. I’m running through my days, I’m in the weeds. I’m feeling, you know, battered and bruised by the end of the day. And then he rolls in the door. And my expectation is that he’s gonna put me back together. Which didn’t happen.

Tiffy (08:22):

Ever.

Kirsten (08:22):

So then, you know, now I’m feeling like super dissed because this guy’s not showing up to put me back together. Well, that must mean that like, he doesn’t love me. He doesn’t value me. I’m underappreciated. My goals aren’t important. My well-being isn’t important. All of these stories. Right. And they just got reinforced day in and day out. And what I came to realize was I had to be the one to fill my own cup. Right. Ultimately that’s my responsibility, my wellbeing, if I can’t prioritize that for myself, it’s unfair to hold other people to that high of an expectation that they’re gonna prioritize my wellbeing for me. And so I had to confront those hard truths that I wasn’t doing that work. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I wasn’t creating, you know, good habits, good discipline in my own life. And I had to do those things in order to fill my own cup.

Kirsten (09:18):

Right. And I also realized that in doing so, a relationship is not 50 50 it’s 100, 100. Right. So when I showed up fully, that included showing up for myself, I couldn’t just show up for my husband and my kids and expect someone else to show up for me. My job was to show up for me too. Right. So when I started showing up 100%, then I started realizing how he was showing up. Cause the problem is when it’s 50, 50, he might be giving me the 50%, but it’s not the 50% that I needed. And I can’t see because I’m so narrowly focused on what I need to feel good and whole and healthy and happy that I can’t see the effort that he’s making because it’s not the exact 50% that I think he should be making. When I showed up and I was 100, 100, I was filling my own cup. And I was putting the effort into that. Then anything extra I got was just extra.

Tiffy (10:18):

Right. Did it come to you all at once this realization? Like what was the sort of catalyst for this? Was there like a breaking point where you lost it and

Kirsten (10:28):

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it didn’t come all at once. OK. But, but there was a low point, honestly, there was a low point in our relationship where, you know, every day felt like groundhog day. It was the same old thing. It was wash, rinse, repeat, you know, feed the kids dinner, put ’em in bed, hit the living room couch. Maybe like watch a couple episodes of a show, scroll on your phone. And you know, we would have some very like surface level conversation, but we were just really disconnected. My focus was honestly our family, you know, within the four walls of our house, whereas his focus was in growing a business. And to be honest, we were frustrated with other aspects of our life. And I think that it’s, there’s a lot of human nature that you put your energy and you put your focus where you know how to get wins.

Tiffy (11:29):

Right.

Kirsten (11:30):

Right. He knew how to pull the levers in business. Create wins, feel like he was being successful. I knew how to pull the levers and create wins for myself at home, but we were missing the mark and we were falling short with each other. You know, I felt like we had the same fight over and over again. Like why can he not hear the things I’m asking? And he felt like that in reverse, like realistically we were just, we were not speaking one another’s love language at all. Right. And I think that my wake up call was we got to a point where we kind of both stopped trying. It was easier to just not talk in the evenings, go about our separate lives, essentially during the day, living in our own separate silos. And then kind of come together in the evenings for family time in a very cursory way.

Kirsten (12:24):

But no real in depth connection. Like we were, we didn’t have a shared vision for where we were going. We didn’t have shared goals. We didn’t have things that we were working on. And that did not facilitate a lot of trust back and forth. Right. Cause I wanted to micromanage things or he wanted to micromanage things because we didn’t know we were on the same page all the time. Which makes things really hard. And I think that, you know, the low point was I was pregnant with our fourth kid and I realized that we had both kind of just given up and it was that like, are we gonna be one of those couples that maybe stays together for, you know, till the kids are 18 and they graduate and leave, and then you find yourself alone with somebody that you haven’t talked to in two decades, really anything more than like what’s for dinner.

Kirsten (13:13):

Is that all there is? You know, and I think that coming to that realization one day that like this can’t be it. But I also felt really trapped cuz here I am a stay at home mom. Right. I don’t have any money. I don’t, what am I gonna do? If we don’t stay married, like what does this look like? Where did I mess up in my life that this is now, you know, something that I’m even thinking about? All of that kind of pushed me to realize that like I can’t control how anybody else shows up. Right. I can’t make him listen to me. I can’t make him hear things that I’m saying. Maybe I’m not saying them the right way, but regardless it’s been the better part of a decade of me, you know, pushing things one way and that’s not working. So I’m gonna focus on myself and I’m gonna work on being the best version of me that I can be because I don’t know what the future’s gonna hold. And once I made that commitment and I started going down that road that I started having these little epiphanies, right. I started seeing things that had been going on, maybe that I hadn’t seen before, because I was so deep in the stories I was telling myself.

Tiffy (14:37):

Embracing your own health and fitness was a huge part of this rewriting of these stories that you were telling yourself. Can you talk about how that came about because you you’re a gym owner and you’re under a certain amount of pressure, I’m assuming, to look a certain way and compounded with having all these kids and then where were you at with that? And how did that come about, that journey?

Kirsten (15:07):

Yeah. I felt an intense amount of pressure after our first kid was born to look the part of a gym owner.

Tiffy (15:13):

Right.

Kirsten (15:14):

And I didn’t. I gained a lot of weight with our first kid because, you know, they said, oh, eat 300 extra calories a day. At the time, I didn’t know what 300 extra calories looked like. So I’m like, hot chocolate from Starbucks. And that cupcake? Sounds good. And I probably gained, you know, 50 pounds easily and I didn’t lose it quickly. I thought I would, you know, I nursed each kid till well over a year and I thought, well, I’m still breastfeeding. So that’s probably why I’m not losing weight. And I was beating myself up in the gym and just not really bouncing back. Right. And then the second kid comes along and then it starts to snowball because now I’m not back at my pre-baby weight.

Tiffy (16:03):

Right.

Kirsten (16:04):

Right. So then you snowball weight gain and all the hormones and the postpartum journey with the second kid. And then you can throw in a third kid. Well, after our third was born, I was deep in the stories of my husband always gets the time to work out right. Health and fitness is a priority for him. And he doesn’t prioritize my goals. That’s why I can’t lose this weight cuz I can’t get any time to work out cuz he doesn’t really care. There are certain points in life where you may not realize it at the time, but you can look back and you realize it’s a pretty pivotal thing that happened. For mother’s day, he hired me a coach. One-on-one nutrition, fitness coach. He taught me how to track my macros. he wrote programming for me. It was different than what I was used to. It was not kind of the CrossFit style, high intensity interval training. I was doing, you know, I was weightlifting. I was doing hypertrophy stuff and stuff that was, you know, more geared towards body building and physique kinda work. And I saw results for the first time in years. Right. This combination, I felt like I’ve been fighting with one arm tied behind my back because I kind of been eating like an asshole, to be honest, you know, leftovers off my kids’ plate and stuff like that. That I just wasn’t I wasn’t thinking about. Bottle of wine in the evening because you know, us moms are stressed out, all that stuff.

Tiffy (17:32):

Yeah.

Kirsten (17:34):

So I had to kind of confront a couple stories. One, I could not stick to the story that he did not prioritize my goals when he hired me a coach.

Tiffy (17:43):

Sure.

Kirsten (17:44):

Right. Cause I’m like the dude just dropped a whole bunch of money to support my goals now. So now I had to show up and do the work and I had to acknowledge that he was prioritizing something for me and for my own wellbeing. Also I had to confront the story that my body was never gonna look the same after having all these kids, realistically, I just hadn’t figured it out. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I was working harder, not smarter. So being able to see those results, those were two kind of two things that really on kind of a profound level shook my foundation and everything that I thought was true. Right. Everything that I’d kind of, I had accepted as just a fact of nature. You know, maybe it wasn’t true after all and if this stuff isn’t true, what else is out there that isn’t true.

Tiffy (18:35):

Right? When did you decide to transfer what you you’d learned and use it to help other women who were in your same position?

Kirsten (18:52):

The funny thing is it totally happened by accident.

Tiffy (18:56):

Hmm.

Kirsten (18:56):

2019, our fourth kid was born by that point. You know, I became a, got my nutritionist certification. I lost that baby weight quickly. I was really active. I knew exactly what to do. Right. And people started to kind of notice right. Neighborhood moms, you know, school friend, moms, things like that. People reached out and they were like, Hey, you look great. What’s going on? And so I’d help them give them some pointers. And then next thing you know, we got spring of 2020.

Kirsten (19:30):

Now no one has gyms to go to and people are cooped up at home. And you know, we were working on the pivot with our gym going virtual. What does this look like? And I saw this opportunity where there were a whole lot of moms that didn’t know what to do. Right. We all feel outta control. So let’s control what we can control. Right. So I set up a Facebook group and I invited, you know, like all of my female friends to this Facebook group and I would post workouts in there every day, you know, stuff that they could easily do at home, no equipment, you know, cause everybody, there was a run on dumbbells and all sort of fitness equipment, you know, for the first half of 2020. And that worked out really well. There was a huge response to it.

Kirsten (20:22):

So I started, you know, posting more stuff, kind of running some just habit based challenges, getting people to focus on their nutrition, on their sleep, on their intentional movement. And then, you know, even doing kind of nutrition, webinars, just, I tried to serve, figure out kind of what people needed, what skillset I had that I could offer. And people liked it, right. There seemed to really be a willingness. And I thought, you know, it occurred to me there could be an opportunity here for my own business. And I tried it on my own, let’s say throughout 2020, and I made all the mistakes, all the mistakes. And so I basically just shut it down. Right. I gave her the old college try and I was like, this isn’t really gonna work. I couldn’t figure out who’s my audience. Are they stay at home moms?

Kirsten (21:15):

Are they working moms? I need people that can set goals, but like, we got this mindset gap, right. Because I need people that maybe have already figured some stuff out, but yet I wanna help people that haven’t quite figured out that they might have these stories that are holding them back. And so I just, I couldn’t really bridge that. And what the tipping point, you know, another kind of tipping point in hindsight for me was going on a mastermind retreat to Mexico, in January of 21. You know, one of those late night sitting around in a sushi restaurant, you know, with another business owner, scrawling things out on a bar napkin and kind of mapping out a business. Saying here’s my struggle. And he’s like, oh, easy fix. Right. We just kind of map all this stuff out. So I ended up joining a mastermind in early 2021, which is fantastic and got in the room with the right people that have really helped me set things up again and do it the right way this time. And you know, it’s been gangbusters ever since. I’ve been incredibly fortunate and I’ve just been kind of enjoying the ride. But I did not think that this was how it was all gonna pan out, to be honest.

Tiffy (22:34):

What was the steep, what aspect of building out your business had the steepest learning curve for you?

Kirsten (22:44):

Probably mindset.

Tiffy (22:46):

OK.

Kirsten (22:46):

Thinking that I was capable and or worthy to help other people.

Tiffy (22:54):

Hmm.

Kirsten (22:55):

Cuz I really, you know, massive imposter syndrome, massive imposter syndrome. I stayed inside my house, raising kids focused on, you know, Peppa Pig and snacks and potty training for years.

Tiffy (23:11):

Yeah.

Kirsten (23:11):

And I still, sometimes I view myself as like, well, I’m just a stay at home mom. Right. Why would anyone care what I have to say? And it took me a really long time to shake that voice in my head and realize that, you know what, like I’ve been through a lot and I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I made a lot of mistakes and I am in a position where I can share things with people and I can potentially help them avoid all the mistakes that I made. And if I can do that, then you know, as uncomfortable as it might be sometimes to put yourself out there and risk, you know, vulnerability and judgment and all those things. In a way I almost feel like it’s my duty. Right. So I had to really wrap my mind around that fundamental mindset shift to be OK doing that.

Tiffy (24:13):

With the women you work with, they’re predominantly moms, I’m assuming. Busy, don’t have time to prioritize themselves. How do you help them deconstruct those ideas that they might have?

Kirsten (24:31):

Usually we gotta go one by one. Right? And like you, you hit the nail on the head. One of the biggest stories that we tell ourselves all the time is that we don’t have time.

Tiffy (24:41):

Right.

Kirsten (24:41):

Always. So the way that I coach women is kind of like a pyramid, right? The basis of your foundation is mindset. Right? The next thing that we tackle is nutrition. And then above that’s gonna be movement. Because you can have all the diet and exercise is not gonna fix a crappy mindset at all. Right. So, you know, when it comes to time management, I had a client who, you know, she joined, she was really motivated initially. And then she started being kind of inconsistent with her workouts. So I reached out, I said, Hey, what’s going on? Like, how can I support you right now? What’s going on in life. And she said, I’m having a really hard time finding windows to get workouts in. So I said, OK, then we’re gonna back up a little bit. We’re gonna tackle your schedule right now.

Kirsten (25:39):

So your homework is not to go work out. Your homework is to figure out, look at your week, map it out. When can you get 3 45-minute windows for you to exercise? Just time for you. No interruptions. And I want you to block ’em on your schedule. Well, she called me in an absolute tizzy. I mean, distraught. She said, I cannot find 3 45 minute windows in my week anywhere unless I drastically rearrange things. So I’m like, well, we’ve got a much bigger problem here. Right? First question I ask her. What time you wake up in the morning? Well…. So I initially knew what her issue was. You know, she set her alarm, I think for six, she had two, you know, late elementary, middle school, age kids. And she usually hits snooze, sometimes for up to an hour. Right? So now she is waking up same time her kids are waking up, she’s rushing around. She’s gotta feed them, get them off to school. Now she doesn’t eat breakfast. So her hair is on fire all day long. So we had to tackle the idea that she’s gotta look at her schedule. And you know, I use the analogy from, the book Richest Man to Babylon, which is all about personal finance, right? One of the big lessons in the book is you pay yourself first. Right? Right. If you earn 10 coins, you spend nine, right. That first one goes in your pocket to save.

Kirsten (27:11):

So I use that same analogy when it comes to time, right? You’re not divvying up your 10 coins. Right. But you’re divvying up 24 hours in a day. Yeah. And if you are not skimming off that first chunk of time for you and the things that you have to do to fill your own cup, like you, you have to pay yourself first when it comes to your time. And I think that that’s a hard lesson for people to learn because we’re so used to thinking about finding time, right? Time is not like that hairy sour patch kid in your couch cushion that you are just gonna accidentally find.

Tiffy (27:48):

Right.

Kirsten (27:49):

Right. It is something that you make and you make time for things that are priorities to you. So gradually like that, we’ll kind of figure out what are the stories? How are you maybe conceptualizing something in a way that is not helping you reach your goals and then how can we look at it a different way so that you now have power over it?

Tiffy (28:13):

Absolutely. When it comes to how you see yourself now as a leader, what would you say is your superpower?

Kirsten (28:26):

That’s a good question. I like this. My superpower, I think my superpower is to help people open their eyes to the fact that they might be living life on autopilot, right? That this is their one life. There is no guarantee for how long you get on this planet. And they might be wasting a lot of opportunity if they’re simply going through the motions every day, right? If they are an actress in this play, you know, written by fate and that they don’t have any control over how it’s gonna turn out. You know, the flip side is like, you write your own story. You figure out, well, who do I want to be? There’s no reason why you can’t be who you want to be. Right? You are your own limitation.

Tiffy (29:28):

It’s strange how so many people view themselves as just like a subject in their own life. Like they don’t have any agency. Why do you think that is?

Kirsten (29:39):

I mean, gosh, I’ve watched something interesting in my own kids over the last couple years. Obviously, you know, 2020 was a weird school year, the 2020 to 2021 year, my husband and I ended up making the decision to pull our kids outta school. So our older two are school age, our younger two are not in school yet. OK. but it was a tough decision, but my at the time, my six year old, you know, she was going into kindergarten and I didn’t want her kindergarten year to be, full of things like wearing masks to school and social distancing. And, you know, they could go outside, but they still had to wear their masks. And like, they weren’t supposed to go within two feet of each other. They couldn’t touch the playground equipment. And I just said, no, this is not what I want for her. So one of the things that I have noticed in my own kids being home and being exposed to maybe a different way of thinking is they’re a little less robotic.

Kirsten (30:44):

Than they were in a school setting. You know, and I think that that is it’s the nature of the beast, because if you’re a teacher, how do you have 25 kids in your room, all sit down and do the same thing. How do you reach them? How do you help them without essentially kind of getting them to behave like little automatons. Yeah. But it’s been interesting to watch kind of their personal growth over the last year. The personalities that have emerged, the confidence that’s emerged in them. They’re a little bit more imaginative than I think they used to be when they were in a school setting all the time. And you know, I don’t wanna say it’s just school, but if you think about it in a lot of ways, you go, you sit in 12 years of education, whether it be public or private and you sit at a desk and it’s essentially training you for kind of a nine to five job.

Kirsten (31:44):

And then when a lot of people think I’m going to go have this career and I’m gonna have security and you know, I’m gonna have two kids and the picket fence, and I’m going to get, you know, a new Camry every three years. And you know, I’m gonna have a, you know, three percent raise tossed my way annually and that’s the American dream. So I think that a lot of people are content to do that. Right. And it takes all types in life, but you can still do those things, right. And maybe open your eyes to having more control in other aspects. Right. Cuz we all value different things. If you value security, you know, then maybe working for a corporation and having, you know, solid W2 income, that’s way different than being an entrepreneur, right? Yeah. Like you gotta be pretty risk averse, you know, to be comfortable one place versus another place. And, I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s an element of once, like you think in terms of the matrix almost right, you get a little red pill. Yep. And it’s hard to not see what else is possible in your life. Right. When you take control of one thing and you can change and you can kind of create your own destiny, it’s kinda like if this is out there, what else is out there.

Tiffy (33:17):

Exactly. Where do you, what’s your plan then? What’s your big vision for yourself five years from now?

Kirsten (33:27):

Five years from now? I think the way that I have built my schedule now, and the way that I can reach people, I kind of filled my time initially by working one on one. And once I realized that there’s an upper limit to that. Right. I only have so many hours in the day and I got a lot of responsibilities and a lot of people pulling me in different directions, I rolled out a group coaching program as a way to kind of, you know, essentially replicate myself and be able to impact people on a broader scale that has worked out very, very well. One of our core values as a family is freedom. So I do not, I’m unwilling to be tied to an office, to a physical location. You know, we hop in an RV and we might be on the road and live in an RV for a month. That’s what we’ve done the last two years. We’ll do it again this summer. And you know, I’ve got visions of, well, let’s just rent our house and let’s head out west, go, you know, explore all these amazing national parks, you know, homeschool our kids on the road. And we know one day a week we need a really good wifi connection for some zoom calls.

Tiffy (34:50):

Right.

Kirsten (34:52):

Right. I wanna keep doing what I’m doing as long as I can because I love it. I love the people that I work with. I love seeing these women, you know, take an active role in writing their own stories and living a life that they love. I think they show up as better moms. They show up as better wives. They show up as better, you know, employees or business owners. It just creates this halo effect that it’s thrilling honestly, for me to watch. So I don’t wanna stop doing that. I wanna continue to expand if that means that, you know, eventually we need to scale and I bring on some other coaches to help out with those things, you know, maybe run some different classes in group coaching, then that that’s what it looks like. But ultimately I wanna keep doing what I’m doing. I wanna do it on the road. I wanna, you know, live my life and make sure that it’s kind of in alignment with our core values and the things that, you know, make life worth living while my kids are still little.

Tiffy (36:03):

You’ve come a long way from, you know, being pregnant with your fourth one and in the depth of despair.

Kirsten (36:12):

Indeed, indeed. It probably couldn’t get any lower at that point. Yeah.

Tiffy (36:19):

I really appreciate you talking with me today. It was a pleasure.

Kirsten (36:22):

Absolutely. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you for having me.

Tiffy (36:25):

That’s all for Women In Fitness Business for this week. If you like this episode and you wanna hear more, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

 

 

 

 

The post From Unhappy Housewife to Fitness Entrepreneur: Kirstin Smith Rewrites Her Story appeared first on Two-Brain Business.

The Best Way to Spend Extra Cash and Grow Your Gym

Mike (00:02):

Hey, I’ve got some cash left in my operating account. And I have already given myself a raise. Can I use this money to make more money?

Chris (00:10):

The month is over, you’ve got a little bit of money left. What do you do with it? My name is Chris Cooper. And today I’m gonna talk about the best ways to spend the money that you have to grow your business. A gym is a small business, and that means that you should spend your money on things that will give you a measurable return. The key word there is measurable. Every time you’re thinking about spending a dollar in your gym, you should be able to ask yourself how will spending this dollar now create $2 for me later. Obviously you are not concerned primarily with profit. You want to give everybody the best possible experience, but sometimes we go overboard and we do things that our clients don’t actually care about. And we could be investing money in things that they do care about or investing money in things that will help our family or help our gym grow or become more profitable or create other careers.

Chris (01:04):

The point is that sometimes we buy stuff that doesn’t actually make a difference in our business because we just like new things or we think that we should buy it. So today I’m gonna answer a great question that came up from the public Facebook group, Gym Owners United. Now I don’t spend a lot of time in this group because it’s not a mentorship group and I wanna help our clients before anybody else. But I do pop in there once or twice a day just to see what’s going on and see if there’s any stuff that I can help out with, share resources or just offer some data. And this great question came up. Hey, I’ve got access to $5,000. Where do I invest it to see the greatest possible return? Is that new branding? Is it new equipment? Do I try and find a bigger space or do I pump it into marketing?

Chris (01:52):

And it’s actually a very smart question to ask and I’m glad it came up. So first off, let’s start with the easy stuff. Expenses. Equipment is an expense. You cannot buy one more rower and say, OK, I’m gonna pay $1,800 for this rower, but it’s going to generate $3,600 in new revenue. Now, if you can do that, if you can say buying this new thing will directly create this new revenue, I can write it down. I can map you the path. I can draw you a picture of how it’s gonna work, then by all means that is a great investment. But if that path is murky, if the ROI is actually unclear, then just don’t do it. There’s better places to put your money. The next one is a more direct purchase where you can actually track the ROI. So let’s say that you’re talking about whey protein and you can spend a thousand dollars buying whey protein and you will make $1,500 selling that whey protein, then yes, that is a good investment because it will actually give you a provable ROI with a very clear path to ROI.

Chris (03:00):

Now what makes that path murky with supplements is you’re not really sure that you’re gonna sell ’em, but if you create a presale, for example, and you get people to give either a credit card number and pay for stuff in advance, then yeah. Obviously spending the thousand to get $1,500 back is a good investment because there’s a clear path to ROI. So this clear path is really what it all comes down to. Too many gym owners especially make these bets. And it’s not really clear where the ROI is going to come from. And if you aren’t sure where the ROI is going to come from, then it’s probably not gonna come at all. So what they do and I’ve been super guilty of this is we buy a thousand dollars worth of t-shirts thinking like, OK, I’m gonna sell this eventually, somehow, or you buy two air bikes because clients are asking for air bikes, but you’re not really sure how that’s actually going to make you more money, right?

Chris (03:53):

It’s just an expense. And so purchases for your gym should have a very clear path to ROI, one time. Expenses for your gym don’t have a path to ROI or it’s murky how that’s going to work. One great example here is like expanding your space. So some people are doing just fine in 5,000 square feet classes are starting to get filled. And so they think I need to double my space and we say, will doubling your space double your profit. And they say, well, I guess probably because, you know, I’ll double my expenses, but like, I’ll get twice as many clients and that’s gonna double my profit. The reality is that to double their profit, they don’t need to double their space. Maybe they need to add a thousand square feet or whatever, but they can actually make way more money by doing far simpler things than just adding more headcount in their gym.

Chris (04:47):

So you have to look at what you’re spending money on and the goal that you’re trying to achieve. And can you draw a clear path from that spend to the outcome that you’re trying to get? Can you explain to me exactly how this purchase is going to get you that outcome that you want? Now let’s talk about investment and now obviously I have a dog in the fight here, but I’m telling you this as somebody who invests in mentorship a lot, I spend between 150 and $250,000 per year on mentorship, because I now know that mentorship is a compounding investment. That means that if we help you make a change one time, you will not go right back to where you were when you stop working with a mentor. Change that you do with a mentor compounds. So for example, let’s say that you have 50 clients paying you $100 per month.

Chris (05:41):

If you can increase your RM by $5 per month, so every client is now paying you $105 per month. You will make an extra $3,000 over the next year. And that move will compound because you’re not gonna go backward. You’re not gonna start charging people less again when you stop working with a mentor. If you add 10 more clients at that new ARM, then those results will multiply each other. They will compound. And now the total value is $15,600 per year recurring. And if you calculate that out over the 30 years that you’re going to earn your gym, those two small moves are worth half a million dollars. And now if you increase LEG, length of engagement, then that is a multiplier also. So buying equipment is not an investment. It’s an expense, because it doesn’t compound. Advertising spend is a purchase, but it also doesn’t compound because your ads disappear when you stop paying for them. Mentorship as an investment, because its value compounds over time.

Chris (06:49):

Now you can also determine the ROI of purchases like Facebook ads by looking at numbers from other people, right? You don’t have to test everything yourself. You don’t have to make your gym a Petri dish. So instead of spending $50 a day for two weeks on Facebook ads and then making a tweak and spending $50 a day on Facebook ads again and making a tweak and testing again, and then deciding after three months did this work for me, you can actually look at the results from other people and say, what is working for them right now on what spend? For example, my gym, Catalyst, spends a dollar 60 per day on ads. We have a waiting list. We cannot bring people in as fast as they want to sign up right now. We have a very high ARM. Our on-ramp program is over $500. It doesn’t matter.

Chris (07:40):

We keep our ads running so that we don’t have to relearn the Facebook algorithm. But the ads that we run are exactly the ads that are in the Two-Brain Business Facebook program. I didn’t create those ads. I didn’t test them. I didn’t have to because we saw what was working at other gyms, bought the rights to their stuff and shared it with every other Two-Brain gym. And guess what? It works for them. You don’t have to be unique. You don’t have to do your own experiments. You don’t have to be an island. You can bridge to everybody else if you’re in a group like that. So I wanted to talk about this because it’s such a great question that came up in GOU. And occasionally I’ll see a question that’s so good that deserves a response that’s beyond the scope of Facebook and I wanna do a podcast about it. So coach, thanks so much for asking this great question. It took me a while to really understand the difference between a purchase and expense and an investment when I was a gym owner and really until I started getting involved with having a mentor, that’s when I started to see compounding results over time, hope it helps.

Mike (08:45):

Two-Brain Radio airs twice a week with tips, tactics and stories from real gym owners who are building amazing businesses. Make sure you subscribe so you get it all. And now here’s Chris one more time.

Chris (08:55):

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. 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 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 The Best Way to Spend Extra Cash and Grow Your Gym appeared first on Two-Brain Business.