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The Martyrdom

February 21, 2018 Personal Development
“10:19 p.m. Leaving the gym. Missed my girls, but my 5-a.m. class will have clean floors. All about the hustle!” “I don’t care if this gym ever pays me. I love the community and I’ll fight like hell to keep this box open!” “A bunch of members quit when this new box opened down the road. They’ve got daddy’s money and all the toys. But I’m just going to keep coaching my clients even better even if it means my wife has to go back to work.” Scroll through the Instagram and Facebook pages of gym owners for an hour today, and I guarantee you’ll find one of these. I know, because that’s where I found all three. All came from excellent coaches who are changing their clients’ lives. All came from coaches who had thousands of followers on social media. All came from coaches who deserve better. All came from dads whose kids deserve to see them at bedtime. All came from husbands whose wives deserve to live without stressing over the grocery bill. This has to stop. Here are the myths that lead to martyrdom, and what to do about them: 1. No one can do it like I can. You *might* be the best coach in your gym, but I doubt you’re the best cleaner. Or the best Instagrammer, best programmer, best website builder, best writer or best bookkeeper. You’re definitely not the best at ALL of them, I promise. And there’s a way to pay them that doesn’t involve asking volunteer coaches to be volunteer cleaners. 2. There’s no money to pay myself. Yes there is. Your expenses will always expand to fill your revenues. If you pay yourself first, you’ll get paid. I opened Catalyst on Monday, and had to get paid on Friday. I emptied the business bank account to do so, because there wasn’t an option: make money, or don’t eat. Not everyone has the luxury ...
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Garage Gym Guy

February 20, 2018 Personal Development
by Jay Williams, Two-Brain Mentor   “I’ve been doing CrossFit for 4 years on my own in the garage.” You ever have this guy walk into your gym? He walks in with a TON of info (and bravado) and kinda “pokes around” your place. He checks out the workouts, the equipment, the size of the place, and maybe even the people working out there. But has almost NO interest in the coaching, even though you KNOW that’s what he needs. Doesn’t this drive you crazy? You KNOW your gym isn’t about the workouts, or the facility… It’s about the coaching and the community, right? And the truth is, if this guy doesn’t eventually get this, he’ll NEVER get the best results or the best experience. But let me ask you this: Are YOU that guy in your business? The ideas from Two-Brain Business are all over the place now: -The 4/9 model -The Intramural open -The no sweat intro It makes it so that you can effectively run a garage gym based on our stuff…AND get great results! But it’ll never be the full experience or the BEST results. Reading about this stuff is not the same as being coached through it by an expert who can help you tailor the message to YOUR town, YOUR clients, and YOUR business. Even if the information is EXACTLY the same, it’s never in the same order or with the same impact as when you hear it from a coach. That’s the value of mentoring. You might know it all…but a mentor can help you maximize that knowledge to get the best RESULTS. Book a call with your mentor today. Jay
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Episode 107: Programming During and After The Open, with Jason Brown

February 19, 2018 Gym Operations Podcast
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Action Is Everything

February 15, 2018 Personal Development
The TwoBrain motto is “First With the Head | Then With the Heart | Then With the Hands.”   Some people wonder why I include that last one. After all, doesn’t knowledge equal power?   Nope. Knowledge equals potential power. Education without action is a waste.   In the summer, I listen to Jim Rohn books while I lift weights in my garage. This is his best quote:   “Don’t let your learning lead to knowledge. Let your learning lead to action.”   The paradox of education is that it can stop you from making progress. You can listen to an hour of an audiobook every day. You can build a desk out of hardcover editions by Tony Robbins or Tim Ferriss. And none of them will make you profitable.   Conversely, action without education is–well, it’s an education that’s 10x as expensive.   Knowledge is critical for success. Care is the channel through which knowledge flows. But without action, nothing happens.   Here’s your homework for today: first, read “Polishers” for context. It’s a cornerstone blog post on this site.   Then I want you to listen to this podcast episode. It’s Jay Williams, presenting at the 2017 TwoBrain Summit. (He’ll be presenting again this year – tickets are here.)     This is my strategy for Action.   I share this with TwoBrain gym owners on our regular calls, and I’m sharing it with you now. I know this will probably further the divide between gyms doing very, very well and gyms who aren’t going to make it. Gym owners who take action will pull even further ahead of gym owners who don’t, and this episode will make that divide even broader. I’m okay with that. To save The Movement, I believe some of us need to push even farther, and then model success for everyone else. Are there millionaire gym owners out there? You’d better believe it. ...
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Money and Care

February 14, 2018 Personal Development
On the CrossFit Podcast today, I talk a lot about money and its amplifying effect. There are other elements mixed in there–authenticity, wealth, retirement–but the undercurrent was: “Is money bad?”   (Skip to 1:16:40 to hear the main part of this discussion, but it’s a common thread in the whole episode.)   I said “They need to build a bigger engine before they can pull people with their truck.” I was talking about the financial engine of the gym owner.   One of the reasons I’ve dedicated my life to helping gym owners is because there are few others who will be more generous with their success. Almost every day, I speak with a gym owner who’s SO generous that she’s giving away everything: her time, her money and her energy.   For example, they’re running fundraising events for charity, but not taking a paycheck themselves.   Or they’re giving their coaches 70% of Personal Training revenue, but holding a “day job” to pay the bills.   Or they’re giving a 20% discount to people who earn more money than they do.   Everyone benefits from their box–except for the owner.   My friend, you and I both know that’s unsustainable. If the pilot is tired, the plane will crash.   Money might corrupt people, but not nearly as often as poverty does. Money simply empowers people to make choices. And despite what the media tells us about crooked bankers and CEO parachutes, most people with money use it to help other people.   The best way to help people is to be a success yourself.   Build a gym that will support them for the next 30 years, instead of one that excites them today and leaves them alone when the lease runs out.   Build a family that gets Daddy’s attention instead of his exhausted phone-checking during playtime.   Build a community that can take pride in their coaches ...
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It's Two-Brain Day!

February 13, 2018 Vision
Today is the second anniversary of TwoBrainBusiness.com!   I started mentoring gym owners in 2012, after the publication of my first book, Two-Brain Business. For several years, my service was sold through a website company. But I thought I could provide a deeper, more valuable experience by focusing on 1:1 mentorship instead of selling video modules. I knew a personal mentorship was more work, and didn’t “scale” the way software does. But I also knew that a personal mentoring relationship is the ONLY thing that works for founders in the personal relationship business.   On February 13, 2016, over fifty gym owners followed me into the desert. Within 24 hours, other consulting companies offered me a job selling their stuff (I declined). Within a week, Ken, Dani and Jay started their own journey toward mentorship, and Brian and Larris soon followed. Today, Two-Brain is the largest fitness mentoring practice in the world.   Our motto and practice is “First with the head | Then with the heart | Then with the hands.” Here’s what it means:   First with the head: we use data to drive our decisions. We don’t guess. And we have the largest data set in the world, growing daily. Then with the heart: making the right decision is only half of doing the right thing. Change must be delivered with empathy and care. Then with the hands: knowledge without action is useless. Mentorship means you’ll take ACTION.   Education, empathy, accountability. Head, heart, hands. In that order.   Today, members of the Two-Brain Family are getting a little extra homework. And many of them will fly the Two-Brain flag on social media. When you see it, know that they’re working HARD to make the fitness movement stronger for everyone–even those owners who aren’t in the family yet. Join them or don’t, but thank them anyway: they’re raising the standard of care and pushing the standard of ...
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