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Two-Brain Radio With Sean Woodland, Episode 7: Tim Paulson

July 3, 2019 Personal Development Podcast
Sean: 00:00 – Hi everybody and welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland. On today’s episode, I speak with two-time CrossFit Games athlete and co-owner of CrossFit Pallas in Ithaca, New York, Tim Paulson. Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland is brought to you by Two-Brain Business and to learn how to generate profit and take your business to the next level, check out “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief,” by Chris Cooper. It’s available now on Amazon. Tim Paulson made his CrossFit Games debut in 2017 and he finished 19th his rookie year. He returned again in 2018 and he will be competing again in Madison this year. We spoke about how he found CrossFit, why he gave up a job as an accountant with a nationwide firm to open his own gym and what high-fantasy novels and authors are his favorites. Thanks for listening everybody. Sean: 00:56 – Tim, thanks so much for joining me today, man. How are you doing? Tim: 00:59 – I’m doing great. How are you, Sean? Sean: 01:00 – I’m doing all right. I’m doing all right. First thing I always like to ask people. How did you get into CrossFit? Tim: 01:07 – So actually my to-be business partner, so a friend of mine on the hockey team in college, he introduced me to CrossFit. So we had played on the team together and when I transferred to Ithaca College, he was like, “Hey, you should try this workout with me.” So we went over to the school gym, we did like a deadlift, push-up box jump triplet. And I got hooked, fell in love with it. And then we actually just started training together, you know, four or five days a week for kinda off-site stuff, and then we actually ended up opening a gym together a couple months after that. Sean: 01:36 – What do you think it was about ...
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How to Handle Tough Conversations

July 2, 2019 Hiring Staff
By Per Mattsson, Certified Two-Brain Mentor In this text I am going to share my best advice when it comes to managing tough conversations. We call this “low affective”: remaining calm and relaxed in relation to the one you’re talking to. When you are low affective, you pose no threat, and that helps your counterpart relax and speak more openly. It also helps you get to a resolution fast. Use this strategy when dealing with challenging members, when helping upset staff or even when talking to a skeptical person online. Below are my top three tactics for leading a tough conversation. Before the conversation starts, prepare the person by telling him or her what you want to talk about. When you first sit down, don’t beat around the bush: just tell it like it is. Like this: “I know that you and I are don’t totally agree on this situation and I can tell that you are quite upset. Could you tell me how you feel about this and what your take on this is?” Tactic #1: Listen Give the other person the opportunity to speak her mind. This gives you lots of valuable information. Instead of making assumptions, you hear things straight from the source. Now, you may hear things that you don’t agree with at all. You may hear things that are just wrong. And you may hear things you don’t like. But it is very important that you don’t interrupt and start to answer. Interrupting turns the situation into an argument—not what you want. No one is going to “win” an argument. Keep listening, take notes, and ask open-ended questions to collect more information. When your counterpart is finished, try to sum things up. “OK, so what you have told me this happened and then you felt that I was doing this and then your reaction was this because you thought that I was…” Tactic #2: Ask ...
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Two-Brain Marketing Episode 16: Tyler Lee and Jonathan Gibbons

July 1, 2019 Gym Marketing Podcast
Mateo: 00:00 – Hey, it’s Mateo Lopez of Two-Brain Marketing. On this edition of the Two-Brain Marketing podcast, I’m talking to Jonathan and Tyler of CrossFit Resurrection. You’ll hear about their experience going from coaches to buying out the previous owners of the gym. You’re gonna learn more about their growth in the Two-Brain Incubator and how last month they spent $800 on ads and generated over $5,000 in front-end sales. You’ll also hear their take on what it takes to have and maintain a successful partnership in the gym 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. Chris: 00:40 – This episode is brought to you by Healthy Steps Nutrition. I first met Nicole over a year ago when one of my favorite CrossFit affiliates introduced me to her, because Nicole was helping them, Sam Brumenschenkel at CrossFit Port Orange, start a nutrition program in her box. And that conversation turned into something larger. A year later, Nicole has a fantastic bolt-on nutrition program that you can add to your box anywhere in the world. So if you’re thinking, “I need to start presenting better nutrition information to my clients” or “I need a new revenue stream,” or “I want to know more about nutrition, but I don’t know where to get started,” Healthy Steps has that. What they’re going to do is put you or one of your coaches, even better, through a course, get them qualified to start teaching nutrition. Then they’re going to add you to a private Facebook group. They’re going to give you a rollout so that you can do a nutrition challenge at your gym, which more than pays for the cost of enrolling them in the course, and then provide an ongoing mentorship program for your nutrition program so that you can continue to run things for ...
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Solving The Icon Problem

June 27, 2019 Vision
The following is adapted from Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.   When you first start a business, you are the face of your company. But eventually, your business grows and you need to phase yourself out of the starter jobs. The first hurdle in replacing yourself in any role is to solve the icon problem.  Give Your Clients Appealing Substitutes As the figurehead for your business, clients expect to see you in every position and view your staff only as substitutes of lesser value.    For example:   Athletes ask which classes you’ll be coaching and book around those times. Clients aren’t willing to do some of their training sessions with another trainer. “When will Chris be back?” is a common question in the gym. Members text you, saying, “It’s not the same when you’re not here.”   These are flattering at first. You feel loved and irreplaceable. But don’t fall into the trap. How will you ever take a week off without your business struggling? How can you ever sell your gym or move on to a higher-value role or make the time to improve your business? If clients are disappointed when you’re not around all the time, you’re an icon. That’s a problem.   “My clients think I’m their personal servant!” Have you heard that one before?   “They think I can just drop everything and listen to their little dramas!” I’ve been there.   “They think I just drink coffee and surf the internet when I’m not coaching!” Been there too.   When I finally realized that a stable income meant working ON my business, not IN it, I struggled to separate myself from the day-to-day stuff. I wrote blog posts and read articles while sitting at the front desk of my gym. Clients felt like I was ignoring them. When I expanded and put in a small office, they’d knock and ask why I was “hiding” in ...
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Two-Brain Radio With Sean Woodland, Episode 6: Craig Howard

June 26, 2019 Personal Development Podcast
Sean: 00:00 – Hi everybody. Welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland. On today’s episode I sit down with Craig Howard. Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland is brought to you by Two-Brain Business. For free business tips and advice, you can sign up for our mailing list at twobrainbusiness.com. Craig Howard is a two- time CrossFit Games competitor in the masters division and he won the 50-to-54-year-old division in 2013. He is also the owner of Diablo CrossFit in Pleasant Hill, California, an affiliate that is in its 13th year of operation. I talked with Craig about the keys to competing and training as a masters athlete, how he started and then grew Diablo CrossFit and how his gym has managed to send nearly 60 people to the CrossFit Games. Thanks for listening everybody. Sean: 00:53 – Craig, how are you doing today, man, thanks for being here. Craig: 00:54 – Good Sean. Thanks for driving up by the way. Sean: 00:57 – It’s my pleasure. My pleasure. Yeah, it’s always fun dealing with Bay-area traffic, but I got a little bit lucky it wasn’t that bad. First question that I always like to ask people is how did you find CrossFit? Craig: 01:07 – I found it through a Men’s Journal article that talked about the best online fitness programs and they labeled CrossFit as the hardest online workout that you will ever do, and the workout that they listed was Murph. And at the time I was doing triathlons and push-ups and pull-ups and I said I want to try that. And I went out and literally within two days, I did that workout and I honestly think I gave myself rhabdo. Sean: 01:35 – Did you go like old-school straight through? Craig: 01:39 – Yeah, straight through and, you know, I started out 10, my pull-ups was like 10, 10, eight, five, three and ...
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How The Best Advice Gets Better (And Why Bad Advice Sticks Around)

June 25, 2019 Gym Operations
Two-Brain Business is the bestselling fitness business book in history. And some days, I think about pulling it off the shelves.   There are over 120 actionable steps you can take in that book. Dozens of people have told me “it saved my business!”. Thousands have read it, and then booked a free call with a Two-Brain certified mentor. Hundreds have leveled up in our mentorship program called the Incubator.   But there are three things I wish I could update in that book. Because the best advice evolves over time. Here’s how:   Gyms who seek mentorship from Two-Brain business are taught to track the metrics that matter. This helps gym owners see what’s working, and what’s not. Then they can make changes and grow, or double down on the things getting them results. And sometimes, their results are better than mine ever were.   Gasp!   When one gym owner raised her rates without losing a single client, we tested her strategy in a few other gyms. The results–measured by data–were amazing, and so we replaced my strategy with hers. A few months later, when another gym owner made one small change that improved his retention–measured by data–we upgraded again.   In fact, if you went through the Incubator four years ago, and went through it again now, you’d probably see a LOT of difference. That’s because the best advice evolves.   But if you’re not tracking success, it can’t evolve. Because without data, everything is a guess.   It’s pretty hard for a new idea to make the cut into the Two-Brain Incubator now. That’s because the actions we take in the Incubator are time-tested and proven. But we’re always looking at the outliers. For example, one gym owner just finished the Incubator with an ARM of $495 (that’s an average client revenue of $495 per month). Another gym owner just sold $50,000 in personal training in ...
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