Blog

Today is the second anniversary of TwoBrainBusiness.com!   I started mentoring gym owners in 2012, after the publication of my first book, Two-Brain Business. For several years, my service was sold through a website company. But I thought I could provide a deeper, more valuable experience by focusing on 1:1 mentorship instead of selling video modules. I knew a personal mentorship was more work, and didn’t “scale” the way software does. But I also knew that a personal mentoring relationship is the ONLY thing that works for founders in the personal relationship business.   On February 13, 2016, over fifty gym owners followed me into the desert. Within 24 hours, other consulting companies offered me a job selling their stuff (I declined). Within a week, Ken, Dani and Jay started their own journey toward mentorship, and Brian and Larris soon followed. Today, Two-Brain is the largest fitness mentoring practice in the world.   Our motto and practice is “First with the head | Then with the heart | Then with the hands.” Here’s what it means:   First with the head: we use data to drive our decisions. We don’t guess. And we have the largest data set in the world, growing daily. Then with the heart: making the right decision is only half of doing the right thing. Change must be delivered with empathy and care. Then with the hands: knowledge without action is useless. Mentorship means you’ll take ACTION.   Education, empathy, accountability. Head, heart, hands. In that order.   Today, members of the Two-Brain Family are getting a little extra homework. And many of them will fly the Two-Brain flag on social media. When you see it, know that they’re working HARD to make the fitness movement stronger for everyone–even those owners who aren’t in the family yet. Join them or don’t, but thank them anyway: they’re raising the standard of care and pushing the standard of ...

If I asked, “Who’s your nearest competition?” what would your answer be?   We all know the political answer: “Other CrossFit gyms aren’t my competition. The couch is my competition.” But do you actually FEEL that way?   Are you comparing prices with them? Are they copying your stuff? Does anyone try to “poach” clients from the other?   Have you ever referred a client to a nearby box, or them to you? Why not?   I’m going to bet on one of two answers: fear, or famine.   It’s really one answer: if you’re starving, you’re scared to let any dollar (or any client) slip through your fingers, right? I know EXACTLY how that feels. I’ve been there. It’s tempting, when you’re broke, to engage in behavior that would embarrass you: deriding their program, finding things to dislike about them, running them down to potential clients. But if you’re starving, you sometimes feel like you have to.   When you’re broke, or just breaking even, you’re running scared. That makes fear the ONLY reason you have “competition” in your town from other boxes. Dump a million dollars on every gym in town, and you’d all be friendlier. Take away the money problem; get everyone operating from a solid base; and suddenly the confidence issues and trust issues are gone.   I grew up on a farm. We had wolves around. Fences kept them out most of the time. But if there was a long winter and food became scarce, the wolves would start taking chances. They’d steal sheep and kill chickens. Eventually, a bullet would find them, but not before they did some damage.   Our best defense was to keep the wolves FAT. When wolves are fat, they don’t chase your flock. So we fed them. Dead sheep, deer hit by cars on our road…all were dragged far into the bush, where the wolves would eat them. And ...