An uncaffeinated state is not my favorite. Neither is “hangry”. But I’m at my writing table without coffee or food this morning, because we’re testing an idea at my gym. Catalyst is often the Petri dish for new ideas. In this case, we’re taking blood from ten clients and coaches, shipping it to a lab for analysis, and then looking at the results together. Those results might mean a better way to make exercise and nutrition prescriptions. On the other hand, they might mean nothing. So we don’t share the idea with other gyms until we’re sure, one way or the other. Our new COO, Mike Lee, described Two-Brain Business as an “idea machine”. We now have twelve mentors on the team, and each of them is brilliant. That means a huge idea every half-second. Some of the ideas are great. These are the ones you read about in my books, and on this site. Others don’t work out, and you never hear about them. Here’s our vetting process: A mentor or member of the TwoBrain family has a great idea. We ask them to test the idea, and suggest an objective basis for comparison. Instead of, “Did you like it? Did people like it?” we don’t guess: we say, “what results can prove this is better than what you were doing before?” or even “What data says this is better than doing nothing at all?” If data supports the new idea, we share it with three other mentors on the team. Some of us–especially Brian Alexander and me–are only too willing to test new ideas, but we try to spread it out. You really can’t test more than one thing at a time, and since we’re always testing, we spread ideas around. If data still supports the new idea, we’ll cherrypick ten clients and share our experience with them. Then we’ll tell them exactly what ...
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