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Your business exists to serve you. But your own pay usually comes LAST, right? And if you’re in the Founder Phase–sometimes even in the Farmer Phase–your pay might just be a combination of pocket lint and warm wishes. Paying yourself is more than a math problem: it’s a habit problem. Your expenses will always expand to fill your budget. You’ll get pretty creative to pay the rent if you don’t have the money, but you won’t work as hard to pay yourself. You’ll opt for martyrdominstead. You need to develop the habit of paying yourself first, or you’ll never pay yourself enough. Here’s how to start. In the Founder Phase, your goal is “breakeven plus”. That means your business is cash-flow-positive, and you’re paying yourself something. Some of us have the benefit of a family who depends on our income, and we’re forced to cut that check on the first Friday. But others are willing to wait…and wait…and tell themselves they’re “reinvesting”, when they’re really just spending. If you’re in the Founder Phase, don’t wait to for your cash flow to match your expenses before you pay yourself. Pay yourself SOMETHING from day one. In other words, pay yourself a wage instead of waiting for profit. Exercise: write yourself a check for $100 per week, payable every Friday. Date them in advance, sign them, and take them to the bank for deposit. Now the money is coming out without a conscious decision from you every week. If you’re still tempted to cancel the payments on the checks, write them to your wife instead.Every three months, give yourself a mandatory raise. In the Farmer Phase, your goal is to reach a 33% profit margin in your business. This is different from paying yourself a wage; you’ll switch to taking profit PLUS a wage. Start by finding your replacement value: what are others in your industry paid to do the work you’re doing? If you were to replace ...

The Pursuit of Excellence is a CrossFit hallmark, but it is not unique to the fitness industry. From the start, we’ve written that excellence in coaching means great results for your clients. Excellence in business means great results for your family, your clients and your staff. Excellence in coaching does NOT make you excellent in business. They’re completely different skillsets. And if you own a gym, excellence in business is your job. This doesn’t mean being excellent once, or having peak moments of excellence, but being consistently excellent. Today we talk with Danielle Brown, manager of quality control at Two-Brain Business, on how to achieve operational excellence and consistency. Dani will give us step-by-step instructions to build a framework for excellence in your business. She’ll also tell you exactly how we do it at TwoBrain: from hiring future mentors; giving mentors feedback; continuing staff education and ensuring excellence for OUR clients. Then we’ll be discussing the “Queen Bee Role”  that we mentioned in last week’s episode. Call her Dani or Danielle; call her coach or use Her Excellency: Dani is a favorite at Two-Brain. Danielle Brown has been with Two-Brain from the start, first as a client and now as a mentor. She opened her CrossFit gym in 2011, where she dove into learning anything and everything about business that she possibly could. Since then she has experienced it all and knows what it takes to run a successful gym and helps other entrepreneurs achieve success in their gyms. Join us today and take good notes as this episode will truly be invaluable. After listening, be sure to head over to twobrain.com/test and see where you are at in your entrepreneurial journey! Timeline: 3:03 – Introduction to Quality Control. 4:35 – Danielle Brown’s journey from Two-Brain Mentor to manager of Quality Control. 7:18 – The truth about coaching and business success in CrossFit. 9:22 – How important is it to ...