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Don't Fear The Cyber

She came into the gym crying, and told me she had to cancel her membership.   “Why?!” I asked, immediately panicking. She was one of my best clients!   “My husband bought me a treadmill. It’s really expensive. I don’t like it. But I feel like I have to use it.”   I never saw her again.   I used to hate it when a client bought a treadmill. When FitBits showed up after Christmas, I could barely stop myself from ranting about wasted money. And when Orange Theory started touting heart rate as the primary metric of fitness, I probably wrote and deleted 50 blog posts. I saw these things as a replacement for true fitness. They were all taking up time, energy and money that my clients could have spent on better stuff, like CrossFit.   Then I grew up a little, and started realizing that the tech wasn’t my competition. In fact, it could be part of my program. If you’re running a prescriptive model in your gym, all of the stuff I’m about to share can fit under your coaching umbrella.   (If you’re not using the Prescriptive Model, this is the best time to learn it. Book a free call with a mentor to talk about it here.)   What follows is a long post about the tech most likely to touch your gym in 2019. I get into neurochemistry, wattage measurement and even microfibers. It might be too long. But I want you to know what you’re up against–or, if you’re in the TwoBrain family, what your new position of leverage might be.   The Delivery of Fitness is Changing. But our brains aren’t. Dopamine is the “happy” chemical. It’s triggered by feelings of success, but only when combined with novelty. Running the same 5k time over and over doesn’t trigger dopamine. Doing the same bench press workout more than three times doesn’t trigger ...
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How to Attract New Members During the Holidays

Holidays are tough for us in our industry. Speaking from personal experience, we get hit with a lot of “hold” requests and cancellations during the Holiday season.  At our NYC location, it’s really difficult to get new signups during the end of November and into December because prospects have a hard time rationalizing the idea of starting a monthly membership when they know they are going to leave town for 7-10 days to visit family. So what can we do, does it make sense to spend money on ads to attract new clients during a time when many people are less willing to commit to a membership? If you need help optimizing your sales funnel, book a call with a mentor!   Two-Brain clients – click here.   If you’re new to Two-Brain, click here.
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How (And Why) To Thank Small Businesses

If you own a small business, you can share this with your local community. At TwoBrain, we’re here to serve YOU, because we believe in your mission to serve THEM. Thank you. Copy and paste the below text into your blog. Feel free to use our picture, or your own. Want more help? Click here to book a free call with a TwoBrain mentor.   The industrial economy is over.   For many reasons, that’s a good thing. Heavy industry is a big polluter. Heavy industry relies on humans behaving like cogs in a wheel. Heavy industry suppresses the earning potential of the workforce. But heavy industry also provided good jobs, with health benefits and a way to stop working at age 65. As industrial jobs disappear, so do the securities they carried.   The only ones who can fill that vacuum–creating jobs, filling vacant buildings and pushing the economy forward–is entrepreneurs. Today, “Small-business Saturday”, is their day. Here’s why you should care.   64% of new jobs come from small business in the US. In Canada, 87.7% of new jobs come from small businesses. These trends are rising. Your kid will probably work for a local entrepreneur, or become an entrepreneur themselves. Local entrepreneurs give more to local charities. Local entrepreneurs support other local entrepreneurs, creating a cascading effect. Small businesses pay more in local taxes than you do. Small business owners pay their staff far more than they pay themselves. Small business pulls money INTO your city. Big business pulls it OUT. Small business creates sixteen TIMES more patents than large business does. That means more innovation, more future security, and more jobs.   But the real reason: the local business owner has probably been up since 5am, getting ready to serve you. They’ll probably still be going after you’ve had your dinner. They probably make less than you–for now–and they’re probably wondering if they’ll still be open ...
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The Lineage of Mentorship

I just got a new business mentor. I’ll tell you about her in a moment, but I want you to know where I’m coming from first.   My first real mentor was an operational expert. Denis had already turned around several huge industrial companies. He was on the team featured in “Good to Great” (the Kimberly-Clark story). Then he led an employee buyout of a huge lumber producer. Then he turned around our local steel mill. Then he decided to leave a legacy by mentoring five local entrepreneurs before he retired. I was one.   In 2008, I thought I needed more marketing. What I really needed was to turn my project into a profitable business. Denis did that, I wrote a book about it, and life’s been better because of it. The changes I made with Denis’ mentorship are what make my lifestyle possible today, ten full years later.   My second mentor was growth-focused. Dan helped me take TwoBrain from infancy to a multi-million-dollar worldwide movement. We have powerful mentors on three continents, and nearly 500 clients. We’re attracting entrepreneurs outside the gym industry. Our processes aren’t perfect (yet) but they create a LOT of joy for our clients, and most say we change their lives.   Now, with a huge team of big thinkers, I know I need to grow as a leader. So I sought the mentorship of Marcy Swenson, and the team is already seeing the benefits.   I met Marcy in San Francisco a few months ago. She was the mentor for my own mentor at the time, and I immediately recognized the reason: she’s very different from Dan (and very, very different from me.) I’ll share her lessons soon.   Each builds on the one before. Marcy’s lessons, in 2008, wouldn’t have saved my gym. But they’re exactly what I need NOW.   What’s really important here is that every mentor I have–or ...
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5 steg för att ge dina coacher vad de VILL i livet (medan de bygger din verksamhet)

Har du någonsin tänkt “Jag önskar jag kunde betala mina coacher bättre, men jag tjänar inte tillräckligt mycket pengar?” En sådan “top-down”-modell är en fälla: du kommer nog aldrig tjäna tillräckligt mycket pengar genom att jobba på egen hand för att börja betala andra att hjälpa dig. Tänkandet är vanligt, tyvärr bakvänt och självklart gjorde vi detta fel tidigare. Varje coach ska generera intäkterna som betalar hen. Och mer! Hos oss är coacherna “kassaflödes-genererande tillgångar” (förutom fantastiska empatiska människor) som förstärker vår verksamhet istället för kostnader som dränerar den. Vi använder oss av “4/9-modellen”. 4/9 (eller 44%) av intäkterna är tillgängliga som lön för de anställda. Resten är öronmärkt för annat (fasta kostnader, investeringar, vinst etc.) Matematiken bakom modellen finns väldigt bra beskriven i Chris Coopers böcker så jag kommer inte gå in djupare på dem här. Men tanken är att modellen ska ge meningsfulla möjligheter för coacherna att styra över sitt eget öde (= ersättning och arbetstid). Den gamla industrialistiska modellen “Jag betalar dig en lön för 40 timmars arbete” sätter ett tak för den anställdes möjlighet att tjäna, lära och investera i sig själva. Hur många som avlönas på det sättet känner DU som hoppar upp ur sängen varje morgon för att gå till jobbet? På CrossFit Medis behöver vi coacher som ler från öra till öra vid 05.30, kramar medlemmar välkomna vid 06.00 och high-five:ar dem på vägen ut efter passet. Det är en “4/9”-coach. Här är 5 steg för att ge dina coacher vad de VILL i livet medan de hjälper till att bygga din verksamhet. Fråga dem: “Vad vill DU göra NU?” var tredje månad. Människor ändras. Så även deras behov. Hjälp dem att från deras mål baklänges räkna ut hur ni ska bygga en intäktsmodell som matchar målen. (Så här kan det gå till: länk.) Erbjud utmaningar och möjligheter. Utmaning: kontinuerlig utbildning med regelbundna uppföljningar. Möjlighet: “Vad brinner du MEST för?” Sen bygger ni ...
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Episode 145: Greg Strauch Interviews Chris Cooper

 
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