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The Problem With "Balance"

“Part of this balanced breakfast!”   What memory does that stir up?   For me, it’s something from 35 years ago: little Chris in his Transformer pajamas, eating his Frosted Flakes and watching The Smurfs.   In those days, as now, sugary cereals marketed to kids when they were at their most vulnerable. And they got their ads past the censors by using confusing language. They couldn’t say “healthy” or even “good” breakfast, so they used another term: balanced. And, over time, we all started to believe that “balanced” meant “good”.   Balance doesn’t mean equality; it doesn’t mean tolerance. It sometimes means “as much evil as good” or “just enough of X to justify all that harmful Y.” It’s worth noting that healthy food producers don’t have to talk about “balance”, because they can legitimately say “good”.   Our duty as coaches is to help our clients reach health and fitness–not to help them reach “balance”.   My role as mentor to fitness business owners is to help them achieve wealth. That means, instead of presenting all possible opinions, I serve as a filter. I fight infobesity (thanks Brendon). I don’t want to overwhelm or paralyze; I want to activate.   There are a lot of fake gurus and consultants out there who would love to sell you something. But a sales platform requires some authority, and authority requires a platform. Credible platforms take a long time to build (it’s taken me over ten years.) So they get themselves booked on podcasts or published on websites as a shortcut. Listeners tune in to hear a balanced perspective. And their misinformation blunts our collective progress.   Let me give you a more specific example: the best way to sell supplements is to show them beside steroids.   You might not have fallen for this, but I have: as a new trainer in the late 90s, I saw ads for spray-on ...
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Why I Started TwoBrain

Last week, I told you why I started a gym: to create freedom for my family.   Today, I’d like to introduce you to my larger family.   Years ago, a physiotherapist told me, “If you care about your health, then you have to care about the health of the people around you. And if you care about their health, then you have to care about the city.”   I started the gym to take care of my family, and help my wife achieve her goal at the same time. But I started TwoBrain to help my larger family: other first-time entrepreneurs who had opened a gym. I knew what they were going through, and the camaraderie of the early days of CrossFit affiliation encouraged me to share all the mistakes I’d made.   You’ve probably heard the story ad nauseam: I hit bottom, found a mentor. Posted the mentor’s lessons on a blog called DontBuyAds.com every day for four years. Answered a call to mentor a couple of gym owners through a website company. Published three books about gym ownership, added a few dozen videos and articles to the CrossFit Journal, and continued to publish love letters to gym owners every day.   But the story I haven’t told is why I founded TwoBrainBusiness.com; why we keep producing free stuff every single day; and why I’m more committed than ever before.   In early 2015, while still mentoring gyms through a website company, I built a 14-hour online course around the conversations I’d been having. While every gym is different, certain work has to precede other work, and I recorded videos, wrote lessons and built templates around these foundations. I was the guy on the videos and the guy behind the lessons. I thought we could help more gym owners by selling the video course for less. And with a waiting list, selling a course as an alternative to ...
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Episode 155: The Intramural Open

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Lead Magnet Success Quickstart Guide Part 3 FINALE!

This week’s edition of Marketing Monday will be a follow up to last week’s lesson on lead magnets. If you didn’t get a chance to check out Part 1 or Part 2, CLICK HERE for Part 1 or CLICK HERE for Part 2 to catch up! Otherwise, keep reading… We’ve been learning a lot about Lead Magnets.  We learned that the first step to generating more leads is – you need to have something on your website that entices people into opting-in and that get’s the conversation started. Next, we talked about how you can generate opt-ins for free by simply posting on your business’s Facebook page. In this week’s video, you’ll learn how to expedite the lead generation process and how you can 3x your opt-in rate with paid client attraction and lead magnets.
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Why I Started A Gym

At TwoBrain, we teach that successful entrepreneurship creates freedom. Freedom means the ability to choose: will I coach classes today, or not? Will I sleep in, or get up early? Will I mop the floors, or will someone else do it?   But successful entrepreneurship also means freedom for the people you care about most.   I opened a gym because I had to. I wasn’t under the impression that it would be easy, and I didn’t even have the CrossFit brand to lean on.   In 2005, I was a personal trainer at a small facility. I worked with 6-12 clients every day, one on one. I was paid around $20 per hour. Go ahead and do the math. My wife, Robin, had a great job. She loved her company and she was paid around 3x what I was. She liked her coworkers and she liked driving new cars around every day.   Then we had Avery. And built a new house out in the country. Life went from great too amazing. And then, when Avery turned one, it got really tough.   In Canada, new moms take a full year off work. And after a year, Robin went back to work. She struggled. I struggled too: I cried when I dropped Avery off at daycare, because she was a shy baby. One month after her return to work, Robin said: “I just want to be home with her.” And I realized that I wanted the same thing.   The problem was money: I didn’t make enough. After one 13-hour day without a break from coaching, I added up my share of the revenue and realized it wasn’t enough. I had no choice but to start my own business.   Keeping one partner home is expensive, but it also meant I could work 80 hours outside the home while she worked in our home. We both understood what was ...
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How To Make The Open Easier

The Intramural Open is the best thing many gyms do all year. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. The CrossFit Open is 5 weeks of extra classes, extra organization, extra stress. Clients are in an anxious state; coaches are overworked; and you’re adding more of everything to your plate. As a gym owner, I love and loathe the Open at the same time. I’ll do anything to help my clients feel amazing. And if I can find a way that makes it easier on my staff, I’ll do it. So here are my tips, and over a dozen tips from the TwoBrain family: Get more judges than you think you’ll need. Offer to pay for the judges’ course AND give a pound of coffee to any member willing to take it. If you can fit 1-2 more athletes into each heat during your Open tests, everyone will get home faster. Run Friday classes as “Open Workouts”. Even those who aren’t registered still do the workouts with those who are. Avoid the chaos of a separate programming stream. If an athlete needs to test outside of a normal class time, they can buy a 1:1 session to do so. Post heat signups in advance. First come, first served. We use a whiteboard: we count up the judges in attendance, and open that many spots per heat. When the athletes walk in, they put their name in the earliest heat available. We allow 3 minutes’ break between heats, and we stick to the schedule. Any professional event will do the same. Delays and disorganization don’t help anyone. Don’t allow free “do-overs”. I don’t think anyone should do an Open workout twice unless they’re trying to qualify for the next level, but that’s just me. We allow anyone who wants to “re-test” to do so…if they buy a punch card for extra classes. It’s not about the extra $15. When we allowed athletes to ...
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