Andrew (00:02):
Welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio. Want to hear Seth Godin talk about the fitness industry? The Two-Brain Business Summit will be online on September 19th and the 20th. And it’s going to be an amazing chance to listen to world-class speakers, including the one and only Seth Godin. Listen, then take immediate action to improve your business at home or at one of the 30 regional meetups. Here’s Two-Brain Business founder, Chris Cooper, to tell you exactly what you can learn from each presenter.
Chris (00:28):
Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by AGuard, providing elite insurance for fitness and sport. AGuard offers coverage for functional fitness facilities, mixed martial arts gyms and even events and competitions. You can also get access to healthcare insurance, discounted AEDs and discounted background checks. AGuard’s coverage options are designed to keep you safe. To find out more, visit affiliateguard.info. Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper here this year. I thought it was really important more than ever before for gym owners to come together. And so when we realized that COVID would prevent us from having our big annual summit in Chicago in June, first we tried to move it back to September, and then we said, we’ve got to find a better way. Luckily, gym owners were already starting to come together in various locations around the world to support each other and say, let’s get open or let’s get closed or let’s work together to share common best practices.
Chris (01:21):
We’ve been facilitating this for years. And our new data set will really help gym owners in different locations further their relationships with each other instead of seeing each other as competition. So this year for our summit, September 19th, we’re going to do is 30 regional events around the world. And so you’ll have a speaker projected into your location. It could be a gym, it could be one of the sponsors and they’re going to be giving a presentation. And then together we’re going to work through an exercise that they prescribe. So the cool thing is that instead of sitting around a table with maybe 12 other people in Chicago, you’re going to be sitting around a circle with maybe a dozen other people in a gym setting, and these will be your neighbors. And you’re going to work together to figure out how you can act on the advice of these amazing speakers.
Chris (02:09):
The speakers will stay live to do Q and A if you have questions, they’re going to be presenting the exact exercises that they want you to do. And this is how we’ll bring massive, massive names into your world to take action and also to work together with the people who are closest to you, because we all need support right now. When I was looking around the affiliate world and the gym owner world, and I realized that we all need to tell different stories now than we did three months ago, we need to tell a story about our personal brand and our beliefs and our values and why we started this gym. We need to start a lifelong story about health and fitness and how to get there. And we need to tell that story better. We need to make it stickier. I said, who is the best person in the world for this?
Chris (02:55):
And the answer was immediate and obvious. It’s Seth Godin. Seth Godin, my dream presenter. I found Seth’s blog in 2006. I had already been producing and publishing content, but it wasn’t good. I was just kind of putting my opinion out there following Seth’s guidance. I went from owning a failing gym in 2009 to owning an incredibly successful one, and my larger company Two-Brain Business is built on Seth’s strategies and ethos. Seth taught me how to tell good stories, sticky stories, that were real and true. And he taught me how to relate to my audience better. How to make a point and how to ask a question. Those were the first lessons over time. I learned that we’re all storytellers and that business isn’t really about the price you charge or the service you provide. It’s about how you make people feel and you make them feel things by telling better stories.
Chris (03:48):
After sitting with Seth’s work for nearly 15 years now, I learned something deeper. That business is good. That we can do this the right way. And that we can only do it together. Seth talks about telling stories, but if you read between the lines, he’s really telling us how to change the world. Seth’s books. You’ve heard of them. They include “All Marketers Are Liars,” “Purple Cow,” “Linchpin,” “This Is Marketing” and a whole host of others. His podcast Akimbo is award winning and the sum of his work is life changing. It’s easy to find Seth online, just Google Seth, literally, but it’s very hard to talk to him in person. He’s expensive and he’s busy, but he’s also exactly the voice that gym owners need right now. So I asked him to come to the summit and he said, this is important to me. I’ll be there.
Chris (04:36):
Here’s how Seth is going to work with gym owners at the summit. First, we’re going to watch a recorded presentation. He’s going to give me access to his private vault of presentations that he’s done in the past, but then he’s going to walk us through an exercise on video chat. And then this is my favorite because the best part of Set’s work is that it’s directive. You can sit down and do it. So some of the attendees will break out into small workshops at their regionals, or some of them are even taking their team to the beach and working with them. And you can take immediate action. So some will be working from home by themselves. Some will be working with their neighbors. Some will be, you know, going away with their team to work together on Seth’s message. No matter how you want to work with them,
Chris (05:16):
There’s nobody likes Seth. And this is a unique a once in a lifetime opportunity, not just to watch Seth, but to participate with Seth as he works through things. And he’s going to do it just for gym owners. So obviously I’m really important to get Seth involved in Two-Brain. He’s one of my all-time heroes. Chris Cooper, this episode of Two-Brain radio is brought to you by Wodify. Wodify is an all in one solution for member management, appointment scheduling and tracking. Wodify’s insights tool includes the business health dashboard co-developed with Two-Brain to provide average revenue per member, length of engagement and more key metrics. Gym owners, to receive 20% off your first year of Wodify Core visit wodify.com/twobrain. Our next presenter is Risha Grant, and Risha caught my attention by saying in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Chris (06:09):
She said we don’t have diversity problems. We have people problems. And that really caught my attention. So I tuned into her seminar and after I attended that first one, I had two questions first. When’s the next one, because it was awesome, is very engaging. Risha interacts with the audience, but she also understands the audience and the real questions the audience are asking. So she let us ask these questions anonymously and she answered them truthfully, you know, and a lot of people were asking questions like, is it OK to say Black? And Risha said, yeah. And, you know, then she expanded on that. The second question that I had was how can I get Risha in front of gym owners? Because I firmly believe that micro gyms are living examples of inclusion and equality, or they can be. Many of our gyms aren’t as racially or ethnically diverse as they could be.
Chris (07:01):
And none of us is telling that story as well as we should be. We could be shining examples. If more people knew that we were, it would help more people. Here’s an example from my own gym, this new client, great guy, he goes through my ramp up process and he says, OK, I’m going to continue. I’m going to do this with group training. And I said, fantastic. Meet me in my office five minutes before the group starts, I’ll walk you in. I’ll introduce you to everybody and I’ll work out with you. So on his first day, he meets me in my office and we walked through the big gym and I introduced him to the group. And you know how that goes, right? Like there’s a way that only people in those group classes greet other people, it’s very warm. Welcome. Congratulations on making it through on-ramp we can’t wait to work out with you way to go.
Chris (07:48):
And there’s the usual joking about like, are you scared? Right? So he shakes hands and he walks straight across the room to the only other black person there. And he says, Hey, they got both of us here now. And what he meant was this was the joke. There’s only a couple of black men in our city, and now they both belong to the same gym. And at the time it seemed funny. It was funny to them. I cracked up too. But of course it’s not true. Our city is diverse. So why were almost all of my clients white? And why were all of my coaches who come from my clientele also white? So I asked Risha Grant that question and she answered it for me. She gave me things that I could do to fix myself and my own perceptions, but also how to get more people of color into my gym.
Chris (08:33):
She gave me a good balance of like how to help more people and how to make your business better because of it. She bridged that gap for me. And I think that’s really, really important for gym owners to hear. I don’t know a single selfish gym owner. I know every gym owner wants to make themselves better. What we want to do is link the right brain empathy, the inclusiveness, to the left brain, how does this improve my business? And Risha Grant is a sole voice in the wilderness. Yeah. I mean, she’s great at this. I’m thrilled to have her at the Two-Brain Summit this year. Our next speaker is Chris Voss. Now Chris was a hostage negotiator for the FBI. He wrote the bestselling book, “Never Split the Difference.” One of the most recommended books I’ve ever I’ve ever shared. I’ve got 20 copies of it on my bookshelf.
Chris (09:18):
I’m looking at it right now. I hand it out to people who come and visit me at the workshop. The business that we’re running is the best business in the world. It literally saves lives. So why aren’t people signing up for that? It’s because your success in the fitness industry doesn’t depend on how much you know about teaching the deadlift. Your success depends on how well you can convince people to start—and then start again every single day. So you have to be comfortable asking people, do you want to do this? Or how do you want to pay for this? And as an owner, you have to be comfortable fixing your mistakes because we’re in the people business. Most of our mistakes center around people and relationships, and the only way to fix those is through conversations done really, really well. Chris Voss is the best in the world at tough conversations.
Chris (10:07):
And that’s why I invited him to the Two-Brain Summit. The best thing about Chris Voss though, is it’s not theory like lots of former negotiators have great stories in their books, and here’s how this panned out. And here’s how I did it. But Voss is directive. We took away several specific scripts from his book that we use in Two-Brain curriculum now, like say exactly this. So here’s an example when you’re having a tough conversatipn, for example, you’re about to raise prices on your monthly membership. You have to remove emotion from that discussion first. So you sit down with the person affected by the rate increase. One-on-one face to face. You now imagine that her emotions are a big balloon between the two of you. Neither of you can see the other’s face clearly through this balloon. So you have to empty the balloon.
Chris (10:50):
You got to deflate it a bit so that it sinks. And so you pop it with a pointed question like this. So you’re upset about the rate increase, right? You get right to the point, literally, and then you slowly let the air out of the balloon. You let the person vent. You let them talk for like 10 minutes, if they need to. And the balloon slowly sinks, and you can start to see the person in front of you and they see you, but then you have to do it again. So you have to make sure the emotion is completely gone. So you ask another pointed question like this, Oh, you’re worried that your family won’t be able to afford the extra $20 per month. And you say that with care and transparency and honesty, and then you let the person vent again. And if necessary, you poke the balloon a third time only when all the emotion has been let out, can you approach the problem logically?
Chris (11:39):
So then you lay out the problem you’re trying to solve. Well, here’s where we are. I don’t think I have a choice but to raise rates by $20 per month, do you see that I have a choice? You’ll have to consider the next step in the conversation because many clients have opinions about business without any context or true knowledge. Like, Hey, if you cut your rates in half, you’ll get twice as many people in here, but you know, they only have a consumer’s perspective and you don’t want to get into an argument. So you should tell them here’s the problem I’m facing. This is the only solution that will work. Can I count on your support now? Vos, wasn’t the only author to release a negotiation book in the last couple of years. He wasn’t even the only former FBI hostage negotiator to release one, but Voss’ book is infinitely valuable because it’s directive. And that’s why I love it. That’s what makes them the best in the world at solving these problems and why I want them at the summit. So after he delivers a keynote, he’ll do a live Q and A with me. And then we’re going to set everybody to work at our 30 regional locations or in your living room. You’ll be given some specific examples to practice and help them leverage Chris’ lessons and how to grow their business on the spot.
Chris (12:47):
The next speaker is Jennifer Broxterman. Now Jennifer might be the speaker aside from me that you’ve never heard of before, but she has an amazing story. Jen is a successful entrepreneur. I’ve known her for years. She’s the founder of Nutrition RX. And with her husband, she’s owned a CrossFit gym in London, Ontario, Canada, since 2006, I met her by proxy first. One of my clients was visiting London, Ontario for his job. And this was, you know, 2008. We had just founded the CrossFit gym and he said, I want to go do CrossFit at this gym. What do you think? What’s the process? And I was like, geez, Glen, I don’t know. I guess just call them. So he calls them. They said, where do you train? He says Catalyst. They say, come on in. And they gave him this amazing, like quick dry t-shirt that I could never have afforded to provide to my clients, let alone to give away for free to a visitor.
Chris (13:40):
And they said, just keep training at Catalyst. We know you’re in good hands. Well, they only knew me by reputation. I had never met them, but you know, Glen had an amazing experience and he loved CrossFit more after visiting that gym. And he came back and he was a real advocate for CrossFit after that. That was my first introduction to Jen and her husband. It turns out that her grandmother lives in Sault Ste. Marie. And so when she came to the city later, I got to meet her and learn some of this remarkable story. And over the next 10 years, more of this story played out. So Jen’s our registered dietician. She’s worked with thousands of people, including NHL hockey players, and Olympic athletes who have sought her out. She’s a winning athlete herself. She was a dual varsity athlete in ice hockey and rowing.
Chris (14:26):
She won nationals more than once in university. She’s a four times CrossFit regionals individual competitor, as a CrossFit athlete too. She’s an effective teacher. She won teacher of the year as a foods and nutrition university professor. She’s an all in mentor. She writes content for Precision Nutrition. She’s a cancer survivor, actually wait. Survivor’s the wrong word here. Jen didn’t survive cancer. She was given a 9% chance of living at her diagnosis and she beat it to the mat. It’s gone. I invited Jen to the 2020 summit so that she could tell us how to change lives better. Out of all of this experience, as an RD, as a survivor, as an athlete, she’s developed a system that will help you change lives better with nutrition. She’s going to connect her story to you. And then she’s going to tell you how to connect your story to your audience and use her system to change lives. She’s a living inspiration herself, and she’ll push you to act first with the head then with the heart then with the hands. I am so proud to introduce Jen Broxterman to you and to the Two-Brain 2020 Summit stage.
Chris (15:37):
Finally, Cameron Herold. Now there are six speakers at the summit this year, and I’m the sixth. You don’t need to hear my bio right now, but it’s important that you meet Cameron Herold. Cameron is known as the CEO Whisperer, but I met him over lunch. He was brought into a mentorship group that I was a part of in 2018. He showed up for lunch and he blew my mind. The stuff that this guy was talking about. And I had never heard of him at the time because he’s not a CEO. He’s a COO, he’s the operator. He’s the guy that delivers. And when he was the COO of Got Junk, 1-800-Got-Junk, he doubled their revenue and profit within like two years. Now, we’re talking about, what’s currently a billion dollar company and he did that as the COO, the second man, the guy behind the curtain, his book “Double Double” is the story of that.
Chris (16:29):
And I really recommend it. It’s the story of doubling revenue and profit in 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but what really made him famous was his next book. “The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs,” which is one of the most popular books in the world for habit setting and morning routines. The thing is, that’s not my favorite book. “Vivid Vision” is actually my favorite book by Cameron Herold. Because while it’s popular now to write about goal casting and vision setting and having this unique, you know, clarifying vision, Cameron actually writes a step by step tactical directive. I started this book on audio twice, and both times after an hour, I had to hit pause, get off my bike and get my notebook because it was so step-by-step that I was like, OK, I’ve got to do the work here before I move on to the next step. The reason that we chose our summit speakers this year, they all have this common theme do exactly this thing right now.
Chris (17:26):
We picked them to be the best in the world at something that you need to know. That’s how I choose mentors. Honestly, this is my secret cheat code for mentorship. I say, Oh, here’s this new problem. I’ve never experienced. It’s going to cost me a million dollars to figure this out and three years of my life, who’s the best person in the world. What’s it going to cost me to buy the answer from them? And that’s what I did with all these speakers. And that’s really like what I’m doing at the summit this year is identifying who is the best in the world at solving this problem and then giving you access to them. But what makes them all the best in the world is that they don’t just give you advice or like, you know, a strategy. They give you a directive, do this thing right now.
Chris (18:08):
And that is what the summit has always been about. And these guys are best at doing that. So the speakers are all valuable because they can turn this hazy idea into a clear task. And Cameron Herold is renowned for taking the fuzziest concepts like mission and vision and values and turning them into clear exercises. So he’ll be on stage presenting virtually to all of you around the world. And then working together with you with Seth, Chris Voss, Risha Frant, Jennifer Broxterman and me, he’s going to present on a topic and then answer questions. And then the best part you’ll work together in small groups or at your desk or with your team and take immediate action to improve your business forward right away. At our 30 meetup locations around the world, the work will be facilitated. Action will happen on the spot. You will do things at the summit, not just sit there, do a workout and watch presenters.
Chris (19:02):
We’ve always done summits differently. This year, I think it’s a huge step forward. We’re going to bring people together where they are. We’re going to provide local forums and meetups. You’re going to be heard. And you’re going to hear from the best people in the world, you’re going to take action. You’re going to make your business better. I really think this is the way forward. I think that working together in local communities with your neighbors with boots on the ground is not only how we improve entrepreneurs, but it’s how we change the health of the world.
Andrew (19:34):
This has been another episode of Two-Brain Radio with Chris Cooper. To register for the Two-Brain Summit, click the link in the show notes.
