“I’m the problem. It’s me.”
T Swift isn’t a business coach, but she can help you identify the thing that’s limiting the growth of your gym.
A business will only rise to the level of its CEO. To lift the ceiling, the CEO must acquire and hone new entrepreneurial skills.
An example: Every three weeks, we produce a free step-by-step, tactical guide that’s better than the paid resources created by other mentorship companies—you can get the most recent one here.
These guides are enormously helpful. They will make you money.
But hundreds of people collect them thinking the knowledge in them will change their businesses.
That’s a falsehood. Possessing the information won’t do anything. You must take action. If you don’t, cue Taylor Swift: You are the problem.
Don’t worry: I’ve been the problem in my businesses, too. I solve it with self-improvement: I acquire new entrepreneurial skills—skills that will serve me for the rest of my life in any business.
Here are the five skills I believe you need to acquire and develop in 2025.
Focus
Focus is your ability to dedicate undistracted time to one task that will grow your business.
When we ask the most successful gym owners in Two-Brain how they made swift progress, they often say, “I just do what my mentor tells me.”
Gym owners who are struggling often say stuff like this when they receive instructions:
- “I don’t have time for that.”
- “I’m too busy.”
- “I’ve got to do something else first.”
The focused owners progress 4.5 times faster than anybody else because they can get the work done. They don’t dawdle, chase shiny objects or hit “pause.”
And I know you have focus: You work out regularly, right? So you have the ability to do the work when it suits you. Now you need to learn how to do this when the barbell is in the rack and your mentor told you to practice closing sales.
Focus is a critical skill. It’s so critical that I’ll give you permission to click out of this blog right now to get the “focus manual” I created this year: “The Golden Hour.” Read that short book and use it to focus for just one hour every single day.
If you do, your business will grow—fast.
Objective Reflection
This is the ability to honestly evaluate your performance without bias or defensiveness.
Example: A gym owner notices her ads aren’t working. Instead of saying “Facebook sucks. I only get cold leads,” she analyzes the funnel, reviews the data and takes clear steps to improve the numbers.
Data is key to objective reflection. Numbers don’t have emotions, so rely on them instead of your feelings.
To develop the skill of objective reflection, review key metrics weekly and ask, “What worked this week and what didn’t?” Put the answers in a journal and review them later—a little time will increase your objectivity. Then take action to improve the numbers—use the skill of focus here!
Pro tip: A mentor will find it very easy to review your metrics and provide objective insight. Inside your business, it can be hard to see the big picture. Your mentor is “outside the walls” and can give you the objective perspective you need to improve the business.
Tact and De-Escalation
This is the ability to use diplomacy and calmness to navigate tough conversations—with staff, clients, partners and even online keyboard warriors.
Example: You print staff shirts for your coaches, but one of them says wearing the apparel makes it “feel like a franchise.” Instead of escalating, you listen and say something like this: “I hear you and I understand. A few months ago, I would’ve felt the same way. Here’s why we’re doing this to improve the business.”
Tact doesn’t mean “being nice to everybody.” It means providing clarity with kindness. You can’t avoid the tough conversations, but you can better navigate them so they don’t result in increasingly poor relations or open hostility. Be clear but be compassionate and empathetic.
To improve this skill, work on de-escalating yourself so you don’t enter conversations one nudge from an explosion. Take it one step further by developing the ability to pause before you react to an emotional trigger. Escalation happens fast when the first emotional domino falls. Break the chain with a thoughtful pause.
Similarly, practice active listening: Repeat back what you hear in a tough conversation to make sure you understand what the person’s saying. Your first interpretation is probably the wrong interpretation, and the person probably didn’t speak perfectly clearly, either. Ask for clarification, which buys you time to think and gives them an opportunity to explain what they mean.
Your third drill: Role-play tough conversations with a mentor. If you get some reps, you’ll feel much more prepared for the real deal.
Forward Thinking and Problem Solving
This is the ability to anticipate challenges and create proactive solutions.
Example: An owner reviews metrics and realizes summer revenue generally declines. So in February he creates a kids program that’s perfect for teens who are out of school. He markets the program in April, when parents are making summer plans. Instead of a summer dip in revenue, he hits a PR.
Forward thinking allows you to play offense instead of defense. You can acquire this skill naturally over time, but you can earn it much faster by working with a mentor who has a ton of experience. That mentor will see things you can’t and provide tested solutions so you don’t have to play the trial-and-error game.
Again, we’ll come back to metrics: Regularly evaluate trends in your gym’s key performance indicators (our app for clients makes this easy). Look for lessons in the past and then think about what you can do to avoid mistakes and create success in the future.
Cultivating an Abundance Mindset
This is the belief that success is not a zero-sum game and that opportunities for growth are always available.
In 2005, I would get to my gym at 5:30 a.m. just because I wanted to press my face to the window and see that other gyms weren’t open yet. And of course they weren’t. My plan was to take their clients and put them out of business.
That’s a scarcity mindset.
Here’s abundance: Instead of fearing competition, a gym owner should collaborate with others to host fitness events, expand their audience, build goodwill and get inactive people who need help into gyms.
Your competition is not the other gym down the street. It’s the couches that are sticking to your future clients’ butts. It’s the misinformation on food labels. It’s screen time.
Cultivating an abundance mindset is harder than it sounds. To start, celebrate your wins every day in a journal. Write down three to five things that went right. Stop counting losses. Log your wins—even if you have to look for them on some days.
Every time a client says “you changed my life” or sends you a text, print it out and stick it on your wall. Create external reminders of your wins.
Then practice “gain thinking.” Instead of thinking about the distance to your goals, focus on the progress you’ve made toward them. Dan Sullivan has a great book on this called “The Gap and the Gain.”
Finally, work with a mentor to reframe negative thoughts to showcase growth opportunities. Instead of saying “I lost three clients,” you can say, “If I use this opportunity to fix my retention, I’ll keep more clients for the next 30 years.” It can be hard to make this shift yourself, so lean on an objective mentor.
Improve the Owner, Improve the Business
Here are the five things that will help your business grow in 2025:
- Focus
- Objective reflection
- Tact
- Forward thinking
- An abundance mindset
Think through this list and identify your weakest area. That’s where you can make the most progress this year.
And if you’re having trouble diagnosing yourself or creating a plan for improvement, we can help. A mentor can tell you exactly what to do today to improve yourself and move your business forward.
To hear more about that, book a call here.
