I’ve never met a gym owner who didn’t have a great idea.
Before January 1, I’ll have done over 1500 free calls with gym owners. And almost every time, I hear this:
“I really want to get my X started, but I’m too busy.”
or
“I listen to your podcast and I’m intrigued by your Z, but I don’t have the staff to help me run it.”
or
“I can’t afford to pay my coaches to start a Y program. I can barely get them to clean the floor at night after their classes!”
Next Monday on the 100th episode of our podcast, I’m afraid I’m going to make it worse. I’ll share my vision for what the next three years holds for the microgym owner: the threats, opportunities and tactics for reaching the next level of success.
If you’re still coaching most of the classes at your gym, that episode will make you angry. Good. More ideas isn’t the problem. Lack of action is the problem. And it’s a solvable one.
Here’s how to get yourself the time to build your “big idea”, add new programs to your gym–or just go home to see your kids in the Christmas pageant.
First, break down the roles and tasks in your business. We cover this in the second week of the Incubator, and it’s also spelled out in Two-Brain Business 2.0 if you’re running at DIY speed.
Second, assign a value to each role. This is the cost to replace you in that role (for example, I can hire a cleaner for around $13 per hour in my city.)
Third, do a time valuation: wear a watch for a week, and record every role in which you spend more than five minutes. This is tedious, and there are apps that can help. But if you spend more than five minutes on email, write that down. If you spend more than five minutes on Instagram, write that down…and then stop. It’s like a food journal for entrepreneurship.
Fourth, identify the lowest-value role you’re performing. Many owners who are new to TwoBrain are surprised to discover they’re most easily replaced in the coaching role. More on that later.
Fifth, “buy” yourself some time–replace yourself in that lowest-value role for three months. Pay someone else to take your evening classes; hire a cleaner; pay a coach to answer your emails or update your social media. Commit for three months.
Sixth, use the new time to work on higher-value roles, like sales. Or build a coach-training program. Or start your nutrition practice, or launch your kids’ program. Build these new programs with a plan to quickly move them to someone else.
Finally, measure the difference in revenue gained.
This is the secret to entrepreneurship that Michael Gerber and John Maxwell and dozens of others write about: moving from “doing the job” to “owning the business”. You don’t need to hire a full-time coach to free up time (in fact, if you hire anyone without doing the above exercise, you’ll just wind up looking over their shoulder all day anyway.) You can move from role to role incrementally.
Some other key notes:
- You must replace yourself in each role COMPLETELY. That means identifying the tasks to be done; codifying those tasks; setting a ‘gold standard’ for each; and then evaluating success. We show you how to do that, step by step with templates, in the Incubator.
- You must have a clear PLAN for the higher-value work you’ll do. Otherwise, you’ll be sucked back into paralysis.
- Finally, even if you DON’T have a great idea right now, you need to be READY for the next one. A huge reason why my companies grow so fast is that I don’t have a permanent role in any of them; I can replace myself quickly when a new opportunity comes along.
Look, this stuff isn’t easy. You can DIY if you want to trade months of time against the price of mentorship. I’m no longer willing to make that trade. Instead, I rely heavily on my mentor to say, “You should assign that to someone else and get working on this next project.” That’s how TwoBrain–the ultimate Idea Machine–continues its exponential growth. But if I was still coaching 9 hours every day at Catalyst, none of this would exist.
