Run a Profitable Gym

Episode 143: The Easiest $1000 You'll Make This Year

On this episode, I interview Matt Albrizio of Forever Fierce. Forever Fierce is a custom apparel company that is hyper-focused on affiliate owners worldwide. Matt walks us through just how important retail is and why it should become a priority within your CrossFit Gym starting now. We talk about apparel in the fourth quarter of 2018, the importance of having a theme, and what you should be looking to do in 2019! Additionally, Matt talks about how to make the easiest $1,000 dollars you have...

Food For Thought Friday- What Happens When You Get Robbed?

Episode 142: The Three BIG Questions

Every few months on this podcast, I like to take a chance to answer the big questions within the CrossFit World. Usually, the answers to these questions are tactical: "Should I raise my rates?" or "Should I deaffiliate?" But there are three BIG questions that I've been sitting on and rolling around for months. These questions have been coming up more and more: either through our Tinker program (for higher-level entrepreneurs) or through phone calls with CrossFit gym owners. The first quest...

Food For Thought Friday- Do You Have First Class Cheerleaders? Part 2

Episode 141: The Founders' Club, with Kaleda Connell

Kaleda Connell has made it to Tinker Phase:  She makes more than enough money at her gym  She only does the work she wants  Her staff initiate programs and sell memberships  She owns her building  ...and, as you'll hear, she's practically the mayor of her town. She even invites other entrepreneurs in to help THEM! And she's done it in UNDER THREE YEARS. In a town of 2500 PEOPLE.

Food For Thought Friday- Do You Have First Class Cheerleaders? Part 1

Episode 140: The PreMortem

It's the Hallowe'en Spooktacular!   Not really--but it's a fitting time to do a Business PreMortem. With the end of the year coming, I'm sure you're booking calls with your mentor to set up your 2019 strategic plan. In the TwoBrain family, we start this process in November. If you're not in the TwoBrain family yet, you can use this exercise to kickstart the process (a little fun before the spreadsheets!)   In this episode, I walk through a simple exercise to help you identify and priorit...

Food For Thought Friday- Stop Comparing Yourself!

Episode 139: The 30-Day Conversation Challenge, with Rob Connors

Episode 139 – The 30-Day Conversation Challenge, with Rob Connors   At Two Brain we teach three different types of marketing. We typically start with affinity marketing, or the people closest to your best clients and to you. Then we move on to organic digital which is performing the free function on social media platforms. Finally, we move on to paid digital which is paying for ads on various platforms. All of these are important, and we teach them in the Incubator. But above all, selling ...

Food For Thought Friday- Are you Ready To Sell Your Business?

Episode 138- Will Hawthorne, Investment Banker at Code Advisors

Last weekend in San Francisco, Two-Brain held its first Tinker Meet-up.   Entrepreneurs who have complete financial and time freedom and are seeking their next project are called "Tinkers." You can take the test to find out where you are in your entrepreneurial journey here.   One of our speakers was Will Hawthorne, an investor at Code Advisors.   Will is a partner in CodeAdvisors, an investment bank focusing on mergers and acquisitions. He's negotiated deals for some of the biggest tech com...

Food For Thought Friday- How Much Control Do You Have On Your Business?

Episode 137- Charu Sharma, CEO of Next Play

Food For Thought Friday: Are You Ready For 30 New Members?

Episode 136– How I Learned To Embrace Fear and Lean In To Stress

Whether you are starting a brand new business or you are having to go back and make difficult changes, either way, you are going to have to embrace stress and lean into challenging events. Today I want to talk about my experiences working through struggles and some tips for how to handle difficult situations. First, your body doesn’t know the difference between fear and excitement. The bodies default response when it comes to surging adrenaline is to be scared. A lot of times all that is n...

Food For Thought Friday- How's Your Handwriting?

Episode 135: How Excellence Makes You Money

The Pursuit of Excellence is a CrossFit trademark but it is not unique to the fitness industry. This doesn’t just mean being excellent once but being consistently excellent. Today we talk with Danielle Brown, the manager of quality control at Two Brain Business on how to achieve operational excellence and consistency within this process. We will be walking through the entire quality control process from hiring future mentors, giving mentor’s feedback, and how these same process can be applie...

Food For Thought Friday: Are You Evaluating Yourself?

Episode 134: Mike Michalowicz of "Clockwork"

Mike Michalowicz' new book, Clockwork, continues his tradition of writing VERY actionable books. While business books containing one great idea are published every week, Michalowicz' books are valuable because of the action they trigger. His Pumpkin Plan and Profit First strategies are part of our Incubator and Growth Phase curriculum, and Clockwork's "Queen Bee Role" has been the subject of great discussion in our private Facebook group. First, we start with Mike's definition of the Entrep...

Food For Thought Friday- What Are You Prioritizing?

Episode 133: Michele Letendre

Today we are joined by Michele Letendre of Deka CrossFit. Michele was the most successful coach at the 2018 CrossFit Games. Michele is a six-time CrossFit Games veteran herself and finished fourth in 2014. She is a former collegiate swimmer and national-level water polo player. Michele decided to retire from competition after the 2016 season to focus on her coaching career, and she now works with top CrossFit athletes across the world. Join us today as we discuss training methodology as well...

Food For Thought Friday- Are You Ready For A Heart Attack?

Episode 132: The Pebble

How you do anything is how you do everything. In other words, consistency > everything else. We can talk ourselves into anything. We're masters of justification. We tell ourselves, "I can live with it" when we encounter small problems in our lives, and in our business. We avoid hard conversations because we fear the downside. We allow people to take advantage of our goodwill because, on balance, the relationship is slightly more positive than negative. But sooner or later, these little "pe...

Food For Thought Friday- Are you Hindering Your Team?

Keeping Clients Longer, with Anastasia Bennett

This week I again ask you the same question as last week: I have two affiliates in front of me, one with 40 clients and one with 400. Who has the better business? The answer is that you can’t possibly know because what matters is profit! At Two-Brain, we measure only a few metrics which include Profit, Average Revenue per Member (ARM), and Length of Engagement (LEG). This week we dive into LEG by talking with Anastasia Bennett about peak moments, bright spots, firing the wrong clients, and ...

Food For Thought Friday- Are You Telling Your Client’s Story?

Episode 130: Increasing ARM, with Josh Price

Last week I gave you a pop quiz. I asked: between two affiliate owners, one with 40 clients and one with 400 which was more successful? The truth is, you really can’t tell unless you have additional metrics such as length of engagement, average revenue per member (ARM), and profit.  The average CrossFit gym is only going to maintain around 150 members at any one time. This means that each client must be paying enough to cover the fixed costs associated with your gym, pay the coaches, and al...

Episode 129: Taking Action, with Jason Williams

Jay Williams is a senior mentor at TwoBrain. He owns two CrossFit gyms (one in California, one in the UK) and his mentoring style is different than mine. Jay is a problem-solver. He's direct and transparent. He's never rude or abrasive--I don't think I've heard him say the F-word more than three times in four years--but he gets right to the point. He's huge on accountability. He doesn't believe in wasting time. Every year at the TwoBrain Summit, I like to put Jay onstage as the last speake...

Food For Thought Friday- Do You Discount?

Founder Kids BONUS EPISODE Warning: Cute

This year at the Two-Brain Workshop, we're running a day camp for kids. It's called "Founder | Farmer | Tinker | Thief," and the kids spend the day creating their businesses, doing CrossFit, shooting videos, building obstacle courses, solving Escape Rooms, picking and preparing food to eat, doing Ninja Warrior challenges, launching catapults they build, designing their brand, playing Minute to Win It ... and there's even more. The week culminates in a one-hour "Shark Tank" where the kids, a...

Episode 128: DRIVEN, with Jason Rule of Driven Nutrition

Today we are joined by Jason Rule of Driven Nutrition. Jason has been a serial entrepreneur for over 20 years, and originally got his start by creating a software company. Soon after his passion for health launched him into purchasing GNC store and bursting onto the health supplement scene. After becoming frustrated with the current supplement offerings, Jason started his own supplement line, Driven Nutrition, focusing on outreach to CrossFit affiliates and serving their customers. Today we ...

Food For Thought Friday- What Do You Really Sell?

Episode 127: Dealing With Local Competition

"As soon as you plant a flag, people will start shooting" - Mel Siff, author of Supertraining, told me that nearly 20 years ago. Innovators and entrepreneurs are often forced to deal with the bad habits of their competitors. When owners are scared, they do shady things: they email clients at other businesses and offer them deep discounts. They copy blog posts and videos. They even make fun of other owners online--can you imagine a more transparent cry for help? Original ideas are sometimes r...

Food For Thought Friday-Are you getting a part time job?

Episode 126: What I Actually DO (Q+A With Coop)

Every six months or so, I like to answer questions I'm asked by you, the listener or reader. but I've always shied away from publicly posting my responses to the "what do YOU do?" questions, because it feels like hubris. But recently, a friend pointed out that people ask Tim Ferriss and James Altucher those questions because they're looking for a model. No one--not even Tim--can do all of the 270 ideas he published in Tools of Titans. No one can follow every person he writes about in Tribe ...

Food For Thought Friday - Are Your Coaches Jumping Into Class?

Episode 125: How To Retire

Today we are joined by Michael Collette, Michael Scott, and Brendan Sheehan. Each of these guys are involved in CrossFit in some form but are also founders of Waymark Wealth Management. Today we will be having a very valuable conversation about how exactly you retire from CrossFit and what steps you can be taking now to ensure you are prepared!

Food For Thought Friday-How Often Are You Jumping Into Class?

Episode 124: Two-Brain Marketing

"But Cooper HATES lead generation, doesn't he?" We get that a lot. I teach retention first, then sales mastery ("Help First"), then Affinity Marketing. I do it this way because many entrepreneurs are too focused on the magical appearance of digital marketing, and they lose sight of the low-hanging fruit. But when you're great at retention; when you've practiced your conversion strategy; and when you deliver an excellent service, by all means: open the floodgates! Enter TwoBrainMarketing.c...

Food For Thought Friday-What Don't You Know?

Episode 123: The Energy Audit, with Trevor Mauch

Finding energy in your work can be the key to unlocking your full potential. Trevor Mauch struggled with this for a long time, until his mentor taught him that energy-producing work is the key to unlocking your full potential. Because of this, he encourages everyone to do what is called an Energy Audit. This is done by first grabbing a piece of paper and drawing a line down the middle. Then,  list all the activities in your life that give you energy and fulfillment and all the energy drainin...

Food For Thought Friday: Are You Proactive Or Reactive?

TwoBrain Radio Replay: Greg Glassman

Originally published October 30, 2017.www.twobrainbusiness.com/gregGreg Glassman isn't your average genius.Greg shares the mannerisms of the virtuoso: he moves while he talks, fidgeting with coasters on the table. He leans in, then back, tipping his chair from one side to the next. His answers are so quick, most of the time, that you'd think they were rehearsed. But they're not.And Greg isn't just a big thinker. He's also a big doer: he acts. He travels extensively. He has frequent speaking e...

Episode 121: The Thief Phase

Episode 121 – The Thief Phase  Over the last few weeks I have been talking about the phases of entrepreneurship:  The Founder Phase, Farmer Phase, Tinker Phase and now the Thief Phase. Today, we will be discussing this final phase and what do you do when your idea has reached the pinnacle of success. 

Food For Thought Friday: Long Term Planning For Your Coaches

Episode 120: The Farmer Phase

After years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I can tell you there are four distinct phases of entrepreneurship: the Founder Phase; the Farmer Phase; the Tinker Phase; and the Thief Phase. The Farmer phase is the most important for a gym owner. Some gyms struggle to ever leave the Founder phase, even after years in business. But after a year, most have achieved at least a nucleus of success; they have a small cadre of very loyal members, a backup coach or two, and they're taking home a paycheck. ...

Food for Thought Friday: What obstacle got in your way this week?

Episode 119: The Founder Phase (And How To Get Through It FAST)

After years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I can tell you there are four distinct phases of entrepreneurship: the Founder Phase; the Farmer Phase; the Tinker Phase; and the Thief Phase. Each phase requires a different mindset, different tactics and different types of help.  Today, we will be discussing the Founder Phase and what it takes to make it through this phase successfully. 

Food For Thought Friday: Who's taking your time?

Episode 118: Tinker

After many years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I now see more clearly the maturation process of starting and growing a business. Today I will be discussing the various stages of entrepreneurship and how they apply to owning a gym.  The four stages of Entrepreneurship are:  the Founder stage   the Farmer stage  the Tinker stage, and   the Thief stage.  Most of this episode is going to cover what to do in the Tinker phase. This is when you enter the realm of success with your first business a...