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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text delay=”0″]This 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 Charu Sharma, CEO of NextPlay. Charu has had an amazing life: In 2003, Charu and her brother fought two goons in a train robbery, saving the lives of women on the train. She later represented India in South Korea, fighting in Taekwondo. Chapters of textbooks are dedicated to her in India. When she moved to the U.S. for a four-year University program, she founded two start-ups out of her dorm room, lived at sea for a semester, and visited all seven continents on internships. Now she has five National Awards, expeditions to all seven continents, over 600 stage shows, and three books published. Charu was enlisted as a “Power Woman” alongside such notables as Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Gandhi, and Melinda Gates by Youth Incorporated Magazine in March 2012.   Our mission at Two-Brain is to make 1,000,000 entrepreneurs wealthy. Charu has created Go Against the Flow to educate 1 million women to take risks and build their own businesses. Charu has contributed to Huffington Post, Venture Beat, Business Insider, The Times of India and Youth Incorporated, among various publications. She organized TEDxRiverNorth in Chicago, and she has spoken at two TEDx conferences on risk-taking and entrepreneurship respectively. Yeah, she’s kind of a big deal. And she’s still a few years away from turning 30.   In this episode, Charu is interviewed live by Jay Williams, a Bay Area Two-Brain Mentor. Her responses are both brilliant and sincere: No canned answers, lots of laughter, and some poignant quotes. Like these:   “I don’t want to just look good on paper.” Charu’s resume is amazing, but she actually goes out ...

“If my gym was making money, I wouldn’t be calling you!”   I hear this message every single week. We do dozens of free calls with gym owners, and many of them are in trouble. They wait until they NEED help before they look for it. And I can’t blame them.   I did the same thing.   I thought, “I’ll figure this out myself! I’m smart!” What I should have thought was, “Let me burn my cognitive candles on new problems, and find the people who have already figured this stuff out.”   When I finally DID get it mostly figured out, I didn’t stop receiving mentorship. No way: I doubled down. And you know what I found? There’s no ceiling to it.   Now I travel and learn with millionaires. They ALL have mentors. Every single one. Most of them aren’t in the fitness industry, but the millionaires WILL appear in our industry soon.   As soon as gym owners stop confusing “profitable” with “successful”, as soon as we stop accepting the minimum viability of our gym and start thinking, “How can I actually get wealthy?” you’ll meet them. Their gyms might be different, but they’ll all have mentors.   I guarantee it.   This weekend, I’m meeting with two groups: first, with a dozen entrepreneurs who are working through the “valley of death” between $2M and $5M in earnings. I’m a student in that group. Second, with 30 gym owners who have entered the “Tinker Phase” of entrepreneurship and want to talk about what real success in our industry can mean. I’m lucky enough to lead that group with Jay Williams and Jeff Smith, two other TwoBrain mentors.   Success in our industry doesn’t mean a high gross revenue projection, or a pocketful of buzzwords like “run rate”. It doesn’t mean simply “being excellent” at coaching–though that is a prerequisite. Success means being excellent at business. And ...