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Two-Brain Radio: Jeff Burlingame

September 2, 2019 Gym Operations Podcast
Mateo: 00:01 – Hey, it’s Mateo of Two-Brain Marketing. On this edition of the Two-Brain Marketing podcast, I’m talking with senior Two-Brain mentor Jeff Burlingame, owner of Friction CrossFit in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This episode is all about sales, the final piece in your marketing funnel. Jeff has been selling personal training and fitness since he was 18 years old and is now the sales guru at Two-Brain Business. So you don’t want to miss this. Make sure to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio for more marketing tips and secrets each week. Greg: 00:34 – Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by Two-Brain Business. We make gyms profitable. We’re going to bring you the very best tips, tactics, interviews in the business world each week. To find out how we can help you create your Perfect Day, book a free call with a mentor at twobrainbusiness.com. We’d like to thank one of our amazing partners, Driven Nutrition. Have you ever been asked by your members or your staff what supplements to take, when to take them and where you should get them? How about the time it takes to put in the orders and making sure you have the right amount of supplements on hand? What about your profit margins on your supplements? Do you know what they are? Are they good, even? Your time is worth something, and ordering supplements isn’t worth your time. Driven Nutrition has solved this for you. They allow you to step aside and use preorders to send to your members for all supplement orders. That way you don’t have to have extra inventory on hand and it allows your members to order the supplements when needed. They’ve created an amazing on-boarding process for new businesses to allow for quick and easy understanding of what they have to offer and true profit margins that most other supplement companies promise but never deliver. This is why I ...
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An older client and a younger personal trainer sit and log a workout with coaching software in a gym.

The 7 Best Fitness Coaching Software Platforms: Our Unbiased Review for 2019

August 31, 2019 Selling Gym Memberships
Software companies haven't always focused on showcasing client results in the gym. We hope this review will help change that. To start the process, we evaluated seven platforms in detail: CrossFit btwb, Exercise.com, SugarWOD, Trainerize, TrainHeroic, TrueCoach and Wodify.
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A handshake in front of a squat rack with the words "Two-Brain Business Partnership Program."

Why We Have a Partnership Program

August 30, 2019 Gym Operations
“If you’re trying to monetize your blog, you’re doing it wrong.” — reader comment on DontBuyAds.com, 2011 “How much does it cost to sponsor your podcast?” — software company, 2017 “How can we buy a booth at your Summit?” — insurance company, 2019 We don’t sell podcast spots. We don’t sell advertising. We don’t sell trade show booths. Our mission is to make gym owners profitable. As a gym owner myself, I know that we need certain tools to run our business. And as a mentor, I know it’s my job to say “This is the best one” as definitively as possible. Making Things Better When I opened a gym in 2005, I made appointments in a paper calendar. When it was time for clients to pay their bill, we’d count the sessions in our calendar and give them a total. Then, around 2006, we began using an online booking calendar. And in 2007, we signed up for MindBody. I mentioned MindBody in my first book because it solved gym owner’s problems: clients could book their appointments online and pay for them in advance. The system removed the “time to pay me!” conversation for coaches and trainers and gym owners. It was really revolutionary. And back then, there were only a couple of alternatives (I remember testing ChampionsWay, too—they mailed me a CD back then). But now the fitness space is jammed full of products and tools. So my job has evolved from saying “here’s this thing that might help” to “this one is best.” Two-Brain’s responsibility as industry mentors is to filter through tools and products and share the results with you. But our responsibility as industry LEADERS is to improve things. That’s what our Partnership program is built to do. Driving Change A few months ago, we published our Gym Management Software report. Before we could measure the platforms objectively, we had to publish Software Compliance Targets for ...
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A series of increasingly complete lightbulbs drawn on a chalkboard to illustrate optimization.

Optimize for THIS

August 28, 2019 Gym Operations
Your business is set up to achieve—something. What is it? You spend all of your time and energy working toward that goal. All of your systems, your hires, your prices: they’re all built by working backward from that goal, right? Or maybe not. Maybe you don’t have a clear goal. Maybe you copy ideas from Facebook groups, hire people just like you and spend money as you make it. Maybe you just kinda take business as it comes. As a professional coach, you’d never allow your clients to follow this path. You’d start with their goals and work backward to achieve them. You’d test their progress and change their workouts, their diets and their habits. You’d always seek ways to improve their results. In other words, you’d optimize their plan for success.   Optimization Is Focus   If your client is a baseball player, you’d optimize their workouts and diet for baseball performance. If they want to lose weight, you’d optimize their plan for weight loss. If they need to strengthen their back, you’d optimize their plan for strength. Optimization means focus: having a clear goal and doing only the things that support that goal. So what are you optimizing your business for? Is it headcount? Is it ARM? Is it “community?” Is it size? Is it Games appearances by your athletes? Is it nothing? Are you kinda chasing all of those things?   Optimization by Stage   Is your focus vague? If so, let’s fix your business by clarifying your focus. Here’s what we recommend: Founder Phase: Optimize for Revenue—Get to breakeven, whatever it takes. Work long hours, bootstrap, leverage your personal connections to get clients. But build the systems that will let you get out of Founder Phase as soon as possible, because Founder Phase is hard on your health and family. And make sure you’re actually optimizing for revenue, not headcount: if you try to just sell ...
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Two-Brain Radio: Rory Mckernan

August 28, 2019 Personal Development Podcast
Sean: 00:02 – Hi everybody and welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland. On today’s episode, I talk with a good friend of mine and one of the original members of the CrossFit Games media team, Rory Mckernan. First: “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” by Chris Cooper is the blueprint you need to start or grow your business, but don’t take my word for it. Reader Mary Boimila says, “If you’re thinking about being an entrepreneur, are an entrepreneur or know an entrepreneur, wait no longer and dive right in.” Get your copy of “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” on Amazon today. Rory Mckernan is probably the most recognizable face when it comes to the media side of the sport of fitness. He played a key role in building the CrossFit Games media team over the years and he is still covering the season and the athletes today. We talk about how he got started with CrossFit, some of his favorite memories from the early days of the media department and his latest collaboration with Katrin Davidsdottir on her book, “Dottir.” Thanks for listening everyone, Sean: 01:10 – Ro, my friend. How the hell are you, man? Rory: 01:13 – Oh man, you know what, I am great. We are, you know, time wise, got a little bit of air to breathe after the CrossFit Games and I’m doing good man. Yeah. You know—it was an interesting year as you well know, so had some time to decompress and now I’m sitting back in Cookeville, Tennessee, it’s a sunny and beautiful day, and I got no job to be at. I got nowhere to go. Just kind of enjoying my morning coffee a little bit longer than I should. And getting back into fitness and , it’s been great. Sean: 01:42 – Awesome. I think that for some people, you have kind of always been present in CrossFit media, ...
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A woman raises a dumbbell overhead in front of a pirate flag, with the words "bleed or leave" superimposed in red.

Hardcore is Expensive.

August 27, 2019 Personal Development
In 2008, I thought hand rips were cool. I flew a Pirate Flag in the corner of our gym. I had a black website with black-and-white pictures. I printed T-shirts with Mark Twight quotes. I was counter-culture and proud of it. I held serious training “meetings” with our top athletes to talk about competitions. I cranked up the Metallica and let the “serious” clients train anytime they wanted. Other CrossFit gym owners told me I was awesome. They were wrong. “This Gym Isn’t for You” My early “counterculture” attitude nearly cost me everything. Yes, I attracted a few hardcore early adopters. I thought their discounted rates would still make me money. But I was consistently sending a very expensive message to the people I should have tried to attract: “This isn’t for you.” “If you don’t think bloody palms are cool…then this isn’t for you.” “If you care about clean floors and air conditioning…then this isn’t for you.” “If you’re sensitive about our music or our appearance…then this isn’t for you.” “If you don’t want to drive to a remote location in the Industrial Park…then this isn’t for you.” And on and on. I sent so many “not for you” messages that I eventually excluded everyone. You’re a firefighter who loves P90X? Pfffft. This isn’t for you. You don’t want to deadlift? Don’t have tattoos? Don’t like swearing? This isn’t for you. Stay home, or go elsewhere to exercise. Many, many clients called to inquire. Many others showed up for on-ramp, and we filtered them out with FMS screening. Very few left because our prices were expensive; most left because of our attitude, and our egos and our signaling. We turned away dozens of people because we were counterculture; hardcore; competitive; too different from their reality. Hardcore is expensive.  What Signals Are You Sending? Every signal you give that says “this isn’t for you” costs you clients. And it usually ...
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