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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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Episode 106: Building A Robust Business

February 12, 2018 Gym Operations Podcast
An anti fragile business is one that grows while others are failing. Antifragility doesn't simply mean avoidance of problems; it means using problems to diversify and grow.
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What To Do When They Copy You

February 11, 2018 Gym Operations
***This was my response to an email from Coach B. Coach B read a love letter from me last week called “Keeping Wolves Fat”, and responded with his own story. You’ve heard it before, and if you’re an innovator, you’ve probably been through this: you have a great idea. Another local gym copies it verbatim. You’re frustrated. What can you do? This is what I told him.***   Hey B, I read this on Friday and thought about it since then.   The reason I repeat the message “Don’t worry about being copied” so often is that I get copied a LOT. And it drives me nuts. Right now, three different companies are giving away  “Intramural Open Guides” as clickbait. Of course, the Intramural Open started at Catalyst from something I learned in 1989 at my high school. I don’t want credit for it, I just want people to stop ripping off Affiliates using my idea as bait. And I hear this all the time from high-tier gyms: “We start something, it’s awesome, and then everyone copies it.” And that, my friend, is the nature of being a leader. You have good ideas. They have your ideas. Because you’re a leader, and they’re in second place. Mel Siff once told me, “As soon as you plant a flag, people will start shooting.” He was mostly right. First they’ll criticize you, then they’ll copy you, and then they’ll claim your idea was so self-evident that anyone could have come up with it on their own. Arthur Jones made this defense when he was accused of stealing his machine designs from their Swedish inventor, Ling. It’s frustrating. But here’s the good news: 1. You’ll never run out of good ideas. 2. They already have. 3. People are smart. They know where good ideas come from, or they’ll learn, eventually. And people will graduate up to your service, just as they graduate up ...
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Prison Escapes and Hard Conversations

February 9, 2018 Gym Operations
I don’t do powerlifting meets in prisons anymore.   Picture this: 4000 men, and all of them innocent (just ask them). All incarcerated for life. All bored to tears, with nothing to do except lift weights and smoke.   Every year, inmates in this prison [name withheld] used to get one present at Christmas: me, and a couple of buddies, who would come in and lift weights with them. We had an annual Powerlifting Meet, with judges and everything. My friends had massive lifts, and the inmates looked forward to our visits all year.   Then one year, some of them tried to escape.   They dug a tunnel sixteen feet down to pass below the electrified fence that was buried in the ground. They used homemade shovels. They carted sand out in their pockets and spread it around the yard. They worked through the night, and rigged up lights. They kept it a secret for years while they dug, hoping to end up in a forest on the other side of the fence.   Then, on the night before their escape, with only feet left to go, they were caught.   One of them got cold feet, and blew the whistle on the others.   These guys were CLOSE. The pickup car was ready. Guards later found a pile of dirt next to their escape hole, ready to fill it in. I mean, they were GONE. But one guy couldn’t do it. He gave up, and buried the rest.   Why? Because he wasn’t sure if the others were going to take him along. They wouldn’t answer his questions about it. They avoided a hard conversation with him. And now they’re all stuck for many more years, and all perks–including powerlifting meets–are canceled for everyone. The gym is full of bunk beds now.   Most gym owners, like these inmates, are one hard conversation away from freedom.   That ...
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