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We teach Affinity Marketing, which is the overarching practice of focusing on your best clients, and making new connections through the “Help First” strategy. That means we don’t usually focus on lead generation or social media advertising, because there are WAY too many easier opportunities to get new clients. People who find your brand online are usually unqualified “cold” leads who are nowhere near ready to sign up for a long-term service. They might not be able to afford a premium service like CrossFit. They might live too far away, or be too busy, or prefer to do Barre in the basement. But sometimes, we DO tell gym owners to run a six-week challenge. We’re a mentorship practice, so we don’t have to stick to a script. Sometimes a gym simply needs some new faces. Sometimes the owner needs a short-term win, even if it’s not a good long-term strategy. And sometimes an owner would simply not worry about their marketing. Tommy Hackenbruck shared his six-week challenge (the New-You Challenge) on our podcast nearly two years ago. Many of the others are copies, so I’ll use NYC as an example. Here’s how to do it best, what to avoid, and what to focus on: First, your focus should be on the long tail. Online challenges are often good at generating leads. Most of these are cold leads–they’re uneducated, unqualified, but curious. It’s hard to convert them to long-term clients, in my experience. But the real value of the challenge is to start a conversation, not convert cold leads into sales. If a person clicks through the ad, reads the landing page, fills in the form…and then suddenly goes dark, it doesn’t mean they’re disinterested. It doesn’t mean they’re scared. It just means they can’t sign up right now. They might not see how your service can solve their problem. They might not yet know they HAVE a problem. Their credit ...

I was visiting a new gym in Boston. The coach said, “Warm up with double-unders.” I’m okay at those, so I did 100 unbroken. Then I noticed people were staring. “You just broke the record!” one lady said. The others were still frozen. “What was the record?” I asked. “SEVEN!!!” she said, loudly. I love visiting new gyms. To a brand-new CrossFitter, I can pull off a bit of athleticism because I have a good skillset even if my fitness isn’t at its peak. A REAL CrossFit athlete can usually lap me on any given day. The point is that context matters. The fastest way to 10x your business is to have a really bad business, and then make it mediocre. It’s very, very hard to 10x a GOOD business, because it’s already doing the things that make it successful. TwoBrain grew by 300% this year–which is remarkable–but it was only our second year. Growing Catalyst, IgniteGym or another of my established companies 300% would be close to a miracle. Because they’re already very successful. In fact, a 20% growth in Catalyst would be a 200% growth in other gyms. Context matters. When you’re considering growth, start with what you NEED to earn first: Being stretched I decided good seed would be investing in a business mentor- Chris Cooper… curious and wondering how long it would take to start seeing some fruit, we jumped in. That first year 2016 with 2BB we made 200K that’s 110K more than the year before!! More than that my family slowly started getting their dad and husband back. My parents started getting their son back… my friends started getting their friend back. My team started getting the leader they needed and wanted. This year we have already well surpassed our last year revenue and still have 2 months to go. The best part is because of this group I am constantly challenged to do ...