I found my first mentor in 2009. I had struggled for YEARS to “figure it out on my own”. I thought real entrepreneurs cut their own path. I was wrong. I was invited to mentor another gym owner in 2012. I’d already been writing for years. I already had my first book, Two-Brain Business; it had sold a few hundred copies. A website company decided to help gym owners with education. They invited me to fill that role. At the time, I understood “mentorship” to mean “tell them what to do.” I quickly learned that “mentor” and “teacher” were overlapping roles, but they weren’t the same thing. Later, we decided to augment the mentoring calls with an online video library. I’d been selling an online course for years through the IgniteGym platform, so I knew the process. I also knew its value. I spent a Christmas season alone in my basement, filming against a black backdrop, and then editing while my kids went to visit their grandparents. We sold the course. We made a bunch of money. But I soon realized it wasn’t working. Gyms weren’t having dramatic turnarounds, like they were with mentorship. It took me awhile–and a tough conversation with my friends, Jay Rhodes–but I realized that in-person mentorship was critical to success in any business. After all, it had been in mine: I was reading books, listening to others, absorbing more education than anyone else–and STILL failing until I found a mentor. As soon as I realized that selling video modules wasn’t saving gyms, I wanted to stop. The website company wanted to continue. It took a few months to untangle things, but when I launched TwoBrainBusiness.com in 2016, I had a clear vision: we are a mentorship practice. Your gym is not Catalyst. My staff handbook can form the base template for yours, and save you hours of work, ...
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