Run a Profitable Gym

Food For Thought Friday: Long Term Planning For Your Coaches

Episode 120: The Farmer Phase

After years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I can tell you there are four distinct phases of entrepreneurship: the Founder Phase; the Farmer Phase; the Tinker Phase; and the Thief Phase. The Farmer phase is the most important for a gym owner. Some gyms struggle to ever leave the Founder phase, even after years in business. But after a year, most have achieved at least a nucleus of success; they have a small cadre of very loyal members, a backup coach or two, and they're taking home a paycheck. These...

Food for Thought Friday: What obstacle got in your way this week?

Episode 119: The Founder Phase (And How To Get Through It FAST)

After years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I can tell you there are four distinct phases of entrepreneurship: the Founder Phase; the Farmer Phase; the Tinker Phase; and the Thief Phase. Each phase requires a different mindset, different tactics and different types of help. Today, we will be discussing the Founder Phase and what it takes to make it through this phase successfully.

Food For Thought Friday: Who's taking your time?

Episode 118: Tinker

After many years of mentoring entrepreneurs, I now see more clearly the maturation process of starting and growing a business. Today I will be discussing the various stages of entrepreneurship and how they apply to owning a gym. The four stages of Entrepreneurship are: the Founder stage the Farmer stage the Tinker stage, and the Thief stage. Most of this episode is going to cover what to do in the Tinker phase. This is when you enter the realm of success with your first business and you are pond...

Episode 117: Weightlifting Programs In Your Gym, With Rickard Blomberg of Eleiko

Today we are joined by Rickard Blomberg, the President of US operations for Eleiko Sport. Eleiko has been the gold standard when it comes to weightlifting equipment. Since 1963, they have been building a weightlifting bar that lasts longer and performs better than any other in the industry. Join us today to learn how Rickard has helped transition this company into the modern age and carry on the company’s legacy since its founding!

Food For Thought Friday- The Power Of A Letter

Episode 116: Iron + Mortar

Today on the show we are joined by Layci Nelson of Nelson Management Strategies. She is the co-founder of the Iron and Mortar Summit which aims to equip entrepreneurs to be the best version of themselves. Layci comes from a family of entrepreneurs and as a result, has an admiration for the change makers and risk takers within the business world. It is because of this that she enjoys engaging and inspiring leaders to become the best version of themselves possible. Layci has been involved in the c...

Food For Thought Friday: Marketing Through Your Members, Not Facebook

Episode 115: Jeremy Kinnick

Jeremy Kinnick is an OG of CrossFit. He competed in the 2008 Games - you'll see him in "Every Second Counts." He's a ten-year affiliate owner, a family man and a hell of an athlete. This episode focuses on hard lessons learned as an athlete and affiliate owner. We'll share a lot of Jeremy's stories about the Games and his gyms. And you'll hear how each has shaped the other. This is a very valuable interview because mistakes are expensive. People open gyms for all the RIGHT reasons, but close the...

Food For Thought Friday: Intensity Over Mechanics

Episode 114: The Baltimore Connection

The 2018 TwoBrain Summit is June 2-3 in Niles, IL! Book your spot here! Episode 114 – Baltimore Crew Think about the other affiliates in your city. Do you know the owners? Do you know their their spouses or even their kids? Back in the day, we all had this rosy picture of CrossFit Gyms working together in their community, throwing fun competitions, having picnics together on the weekend. However, in reality, CrossFit gyms can be fierce competitors and regularly accuse each other of cutting price...

Food For Thought Friday: The End In Mind

Episode 113: Working With Entrepreneurs

Episode 113 - Working With Entrepreneurs, with Eden Watson of Two-Brain Workshop Entrepreneurs are one of my Top 3 target audiences at Catalyst. I think entrepreneurs are perfect clients for CrossFit gyms, because they have: Time flexibility Financial flexibility A clear sense of priorities No time to waste "guessing" what workout to do. In previous episodes, we've mentioned the Two-Brain Workshop, working with corporate groups, and even the best workouts for entrepreneurs. But today, Eden Watso...

Episode 112: Where Should Your Focus Be?

In this episode, I'm going to help you figure out where your gym currently sits; who your target audience should be; how to zip ahead of your local competition; and what to do TODAY to focus your attention and grow your CrossFit family.

Episode 111: Love and Logic, with Garner Tullis

Episode 111 – Garner Tullis Your business exists to serve you. And you, in turn, serve those closest to you first: your spouse, your kids, and your family. But too often, your family is asked to sacrifice for the good of the business. At startup, this might be necessary--for awhile. But many gyms are still in making the sacrifices of startup after YEARS in business. Today on the show I have invited Garner Tullis, of Our Greater Good, to talk about maintaining healthy family relationships, mainta...

Food for Thought Friday: The Truth About Balance

Listen at www.twobrainbusiness.com/podcast ASK CHRIS A QUESTION: www.twobrainbusiness.com/podcast

Episode 110: TwoBrain Mentors Dani Brown and Ana Bennett

The 2018 TwoBrain Summit is June 2-3 in Niles, IL! Book your spot here! I've always believed that CrossFit gyms have a higher proportion of female ownership than almost any other small business. HQ doesn't have the data to support or refute that claim, but my empirical experience, when compared to industry data held elsewhere, says that more women own CrossFit gyms than any other type, and the success rate for female entrepreneurs in CrossFit is higher than almost any other option. Today on the ...

Episode 109: Greg Strauch

Episode 109 – Greg Strauch Today on the show we are joined by Greg Strauch of CrossFit Unkown Elements in Clovis, New Mexico. Greg joins us to talk about how he got his start with CrossFit after the Air Force, What it takes to build a successful gym, and his transition into becoming a mentor with Two-Brain.

Episode 108: Affinity Marketing 108

One of the most common questions I get from gym owner on our free call is, "How do I get more leads?" The "magical" nature of online ads distracts many away from easier, more natural opportunities The Affinity Marketing plan is made of concentric rings. Each ring or “loop” represents a new audience for your service. The center ring ("Axial Clients") has very high affinity, because they're already buying your service and loving it. But it's the smallest possible audience. As we radiate out from c...

Episode 107: Programming During (And After) The CrossFit Open

The CrossFit Open starts this week!It's one of the largest opportunities for marketing and sales in 2018 for CrossFit gyms. But it's also one of the periods of greatest overwork: you're possibly adding class times to the schedule, amping up the hype, dealing with competitive stress, ordering equipment (fingers crossed), hosting parties and getting your coaches realigned around the rules every week.And how do you program workouts around Castro's Big Reveals? Jason Brown of BoxProgramming.com is h...

Episode 106: Building a Robust Business

Strong community. Strong clients. Strong staff. Weak business? 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. One of the first questions I ask gym owners when they book their free call is, "What are your revenue streams?" The vast majority still make most of their money selling group fitness classes: the service with the highest turnover, lowest ARM and least predictabili...

Food for Thought Friday 020218

What if the BEST action...is no action at all?

Episode 105: Selling Hybrid Memberships, with Dr. Brian Strump

Dr. Brian Strump is the owner of Live Active Charlotte, CrossFit Steele Creek, and a few other companies. An early adopter of the prescriptive model, Brian was one of the first to offer hybrid memberships in a CrossFit gym. His current top membership rate is $919 per month. Part of my mission on this podcast is to change the perspective of scope for other CrossFit affiliates: to show where the high bars and gold standards sit and demonstrate to listeners what's possible. Just like seeing an athl...

Episode 104: Nutrition Programs in 2018

Two years ago on this podcast, I introduced Nicole Aucoin to CrossFit affiliates. Nicole, an RD, was piloting a nutrition program at CrossFit Port Orange in Florida. From that podcast, hundreds of nutrition programs were launched in CrossFit gyms, resulting in millions of dollars in new revenues.More importantly, many of us are back in line with Greg's vision of CrossFit gyms. As he said in Episode 93, "If you're not changing your eating, you're not doing CrossFit."The prescriptive model is a co...

Food for Thought Friday: What Will You Change in 2018?

You need to balance UPGRADES with unnecessary tinkering. How can you tell the difference?

Episode 103: Q+A With Coop

Episode 103: Q+A With Coop I like to start every year with a recap of the BEST questions I received the year before. I get over 200 emails and texts every day. Some of these questions come from those within the TwoBrain family; others from those who aren't yet part of our tribe. In the latter case, I choose the questions that recur most often (like 'what's the best marketing advice you gave last year?')

Episode 102: Changing Behavior

One of the key metrics we track in Two-Brain is LEG: Length of Engagement. The average LEG of gyms when they start the Incubator is 13.1 months (that's going down, by the way, thanks to 6-week challenges and "free trial" entry points.) If we can increase LEG to 15 months--every client in your gym stays an extra two months--that could easily mean an extra $45,000 per year for your gym ($150 x 150 clients x 2 months.) Yeah, retention is kinda important. Long-term retention is really long-term beha...

Episode 101: The Level Method

Episode 101 – Level Up with Nathan Holiday & Josh Price This is a VERY visual episode, so I'm going to include the video recording of the discussion. It's not edited or produced (as the podcast always is) but it's worth an hour in front of a screen to see it. If you visited CrossFit.com in 2006 (as I did,) you would have found the original CrossFit message boards. And one of the most-discussed concepts was the idea of a "belt system" for progressions in CrossFit. Many of us sketched out our ...