¶ Balancing Multiple Businesses, Travel, Property Management
Hey, welcome to Run a Profitable Gym . I'm here with Jolene and Layton Bingham and I invited them onto the show because I want you to hear how many things they do in their life. All of 'em are amazing and how they balance them . So guys, welcome to run a profitable gym .
Thanks for having us.
Yeah. So pumped to have you both, and especially together. Let's talk about what you've got going on in your life.
Oh, where to start? Well, obviously we own a gym, multiple gyms. Actually we own one together. I own co-own another gym with somebody else. We just brought our youth back into our main location. We own nine doors in real estate currently. Um , manage those self-manage those as well. We . I know, right? We have three children, a 17-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 5-year-old. All play different sports at various levels.
From varsity basketball to kindergarten basketball to coding classes. And I know I'm missing a lot of stuff, so ,
Um , parkour, gymnastics, basketball. Yeah .
Yeah . The whole laundry list of kids. Things that everybody else does. We both. What
About travel?
Travel, yeah, we can get travel there. So we, I personally travel , um, every quarter to go to some awesome tinker Meetup locations. We just came back from a cruise two weeks ago, planning our next family vacation to Peru at this point , um, for the summer.
What about the last 13 months?
Oh, the last 13 months. So we could, we could go all the locations that we've been in the last 13 months. We actually talked about it yesterday and it was a little insane. Yeah. Um , all the places , let's hear it . Greece, Sweden, Portugal, where else am I missing res ? Sweden . Portugal, yeah . And then Colorado multiple times. 'cause we own properties there.
San Diego, Texas, Chicago, Nashville, and many other camping trips with our children. Yeah. And basketball locations. So my daughter plays a travel basketball team and we were in Alabama for that as well.
And you're both on the BR mentor team too? Yep . Yep . Amazing.
That was a lot. All all
At one . Yeah . I mean, do you sleep?
I do actually, surprisingly. Um, I am in bed usually before 10 o'clock at night, so,
And latent , it wasn't too long ago that you were still in the military, right?
Correct. Yeah, so I actually retired, what is it? Three, two and a half years, two and a half years ago now. So we were , you know, doing part of the gym there and then doing full-time, military , uh, during the day, so. Wow.
Yeah . Alright , well we've shared your kind of origin story on here in the past, and I think we even talked about like the expansion into the second gym and , uh, Jolene's been on just to talk about building staff journeys and careers and stuff too.
But what I'd really like to pick up the story at is where you started like, okay, now let's get into property and let's also have these travel schedule about like, when did all that stuff start happening?
I would say right after Covid, and I, I know I have spoken up about this before, but Covid was really the catalyst for us starting to take action and do other things. And actually the catalyst for our gym to grow, which is a whole different story in itself. But with the , um, the travel, I had grown up traveling. My grandfather was professional of international relations.
Um, so he would take me to different countries with him when he ran to college trips. And I wanted my kids to experience the same difference cultures and meeting different people and seeing different things. Um, and then after Covid I realized, well, why not now? Right? We, we've been in one place and for a long time we haven't been able to go anywhere. I'm tired of this. Let's just go see and do new things.
So when we sat down and figured out our plan for the year, it included, right ? Well , we're going to take time and set aside money for it instead of buying all these extra things that we want. We're gonna devote some of that to experiences for our kids.
But still, I mean, okay, so you guys have the money because you have so many successful things, but it's really the time, right? And how, how do you possibly carve out the time to do all those things and then carve out even more time to travel?
So it's very scheduled. Um, and I know that that's a struggle for a lot of people. It is very scheduled down to the minute on our calendars. Um , I have very good systems of each person is color coded on our calendar. Each day of the week is devoted to a different thing for me personally.
I know Layton might have a different system for his schedule and fitting that in, but all of the things that we do, we block off , um, a week on our calendar and we make it happen at the beginning of the year. So, for example, our trip in August, we've already blocked that off. We already know when that's gonna happen. And so when we're looking at where do we fit our work in, where do we fit?
And you know, maybe a renovation that has to come to the property, we're not gonna schedule things around those things that are already planned out.
Wow. Okay. So if you're listening, here's a prompt to this interview. I send Jolene and Leighton a text. I'm like, you guys got a lot going on. I don't know how you do it. And Jolene says
Systems. Yeah,
Systems and scheduling. I got a system.
Yep .
Okay. Well , well, what I'd love to do before we actually give people the system or teach them how to build a system is, let's get really specific. So let's start with your gyms. Tell me about your two gyms.
Yeah , so our adult location is primarily personal training at this point. We do a little bit of semi-private, and I would say it's about 85% personal training. We own that one together. Um, we have an amazing team that helps us and allows us to travel, but also helps us run it. And then our second secondary one is corrective exercise.
I co-own that with , um, a woman who has 20 some years of experience in the field of physical therapy. And she is very much the hands-on technical part of it. And I run the business side of it. Wow. Our youth one , the school district decided not to renew our lease, so we've now combined that back into our adult one. And so they're running in the same location.
Okay. And on top of that, I saw a Facebook post from you that actually prompted the conversation where now you're looking to partner with or acquire other gyms in the area too. Is that right?
Yeah , so I really like creating systems, obviously the whole reason we're here. Mm-Hmm. and I like helping business owners develop those and run them and be able to have the time in the day that I have. But some gym owners just wanna coach. They love the coaching side of it. They don't wanna run the business side of it. And that's what I would like to help them with outside of that.
So good. And marketing too, I think, right? Is that Layton's? Yep .
That would be where the takes over .
That's fantastic. I know , uh, our friend PE is doing something very similar in Sweden where, you know, he, he partners with a gym and uh, does like an equity stake and uh, then he brings the gym into two brain and then, you know, and it's awesome. Okay. Well now let's talk about property . So you said that you have nine doors. I don't think that fully paints the picture of what you guys have going on.
Do you wanna share that?
Yeah, so we have , um, well I'm gonna let Layton share that. That's his thing. I don't need to speak the whole time. Well ,
So we have obviously our Airbnb in , uh, Colorado. Mm-Hmm.
Beautiful.
Yeah. Which was , uh, actually our second house. She owns, owns one by herself, a single family home. Um , then we have a, another duplex here in in Pennsylvania. We have a Quadplex here in Pennsylvania,
And then our primary home. Then our primary home. Yep . And then I'm also, I also am half owner on another house still currently too. Yeah.
How much time does that take? Like my, my worst nightmare, I have commercial buildings because I'm worried about getting that 3:00 AM phone call about the clogged up toilet. Right. So like how much time does this take for you?
Well, so as long as there's well time, well, I've got a few 3:00 AM phone calls or 1:00 AM phone calls , uh, when a tree , when two trees fell on, on our quadplex. But as far as time, I'm , I mean, depends on the week, but yeah, five to 10 hours a week, just kind of fielding phone calls or fielding text or, or whatever.
Um, recently we just had to put two new tenants in there, so that required a little bit more time, but it's , uh, you know, it's , it's only about 20 hours a month , um, to manage 'em too, so.
And how do you guys do the one that's way I think you said is Colorado, but might have been Montana,
Colorado, Colorado .
Yeah. How do you manage that?
We have an amazing property manager in place , um, who has compensated well , um, that's planned into our rates that we charge . And I actually recently took it back over from a company that we had marketing it just from like the putting it on all the different platforms and have been able to triple our rates and Wow . Have better occupancy just by having that human touch in it.
Amazing . I'm not surprised that , uh, staffing is , uh, like one of the keys I'm sure that you're gonna mention for your success. And I think you brought it up in every case so far, but let's talk about systems. So Jolene , when you're starting this, do you make a plan for the year or is , are these just systems that have kind of organically evolved over time?
I think it's been a combination of both. You know, they had to organically evolve because life throws you curve balls and then you have to figure out how to fix that.
¶ Annual Personal and Business Goal Planning
But now we're at the point where we sit down and we have planned in January this year. We normally try to do it in November or December, but in January and plan out our year, what do we wanna accomplish? Where do we wanna travel? Which sometimes fun places come up and you just have to go, where do we wanna travel? When are they fitting in the year? What do we need to make that happen?
So do we need to hire additional staff? Do we need to make more money, more revenue, because that's a key part of it, how are we gonna do that? So we have our family plan, and then we have our business plans. And those two, I know when we talk about work-life balance, they still have to be in integrated with each other.
Well , and I think, I think we also have like somewhat of an individual goals or plans. Mm-Hmm . as well. Um, as long as they mesh well , um, they work with the plan and so Yep .
Can you gimme an example of that? La
So last year I was like, okay, I want to go back to doing CrossFit and I wanna do a competition. Um , but I also wonder why more property? Mm-Hmm . . So the CrossFit competition was my thing. And then buying more property was an US thing. Not that I actually, it wasn't last year, but the year before, I think that I did the CrossFit competition and I hated it. ,
. I didn't expect you to say that. It caught me off guys .
I didn't either actually ,
I was like , this hurts. Everything just hurts.
So how do you, how do you resolve that? So let's say that like the, the work , uh, goal is in conflict with the personal goal. Like, we wanna make an extra a hundred thousand, but we also wanna work less. Or maybe it's in conflict with like your , you know, the fam the family goal, the work goal or the personal goal. What happens if there's a conflict somewhere in that trifecta?
Hmm . So I can tell you what, for me , um, the, the family goal always comes first, right? So my, my hierarchy is family goal, personal goal, work goal, right? So if I have to make a decision, this one, the family one's always gonna come. But I also, every single time that comes up, I ask myself a question and I, I know I heard it somewhere on two brain . But if I say yes to this, what else am my life?
Am I saying no to? Right? So if I say yes to an opportunity that makes me more money is that thing I have to say no to, that less important to me that I'm okay saying no to it.
Very interesting. Okay. I think that question's gonna come up again in a moment. So when you're sitting down and , and the two of you are setting up kind of your family goals for the year, what does that look like? Do you go away someplace? How do you start the conversation? Are you taking notes? Walk us through that.
Yeah, so we, we , we do a destination away from the kids. And this year, how many days is it this year? Three. Three days? This year. Last year it was only a day. Um, or a , a day in a , in a , in another half day. But , uh, there, there are some questions that that kind of prompted . Like , uh, we do have like what do you, what do you wanna accomplish in the next year?
Or what didn't you accomplish last year?
So there's a, there's a template basically of questions that we run through from start to finish, starting with did we accomplish everything we wanted, wanted to, why or why not? And then, you know, overarching plans, individual plans, timeline for each of those KPIs for each of those and how that's gonna happen.
Incredible. And maybe walk us through how you do it for your business too. So if you're listening at home, I'm gonna preface this by saying Jolene is one of our most popular mentors in two Brain . And every year at this time, every gym goes through this process of annual planning and it starts with the perfect day of the owner. And then we tag revenue goals and profit goals to that.
And then we back out the revenue goals, et cetera . And all the metrics that you need to hit to get to that personal goal is amazing at this. I'm sure nobody is surprised by this point, but Julian , can you just walk us through like, you know, how do you go from those personal goals to the, the gym goals and set up your gym's annual plan?
Okay. So one of the, the things that we have to identify first to set up our gym's annual plan is how much money we wanna make from the gym. Yeah . And how much of that we need basically for all the things that we wanna accomplish. Once we have that, one of the biggest things that I also need to look at is how much staffing do I need? So I'll look at how much do I wanna make?
Do I need to add any more staffing to do all the extra things that I wanna do? So is there things that I have to give up? So maybe I need a 30% increase in staff costs in order to take on some of the additional things. I think that's one of the things that gets forgotten a lot. And then reoccurring revenue, or not revenue, sorry, expenses. I've been running through these so much in the last few weeks.
, uh, do we have any increases coming up? Did we lose a sublease? Did we gain a new sublease? Are our costs going through the roof with inflation and coming up with that overall number? Then when I just ran through this with our gym , um, it's actually on my list to finish up this week. It's a number we're not at right now where I wanna be for next year. And then we break it down even further .
Okay, so here's the number we need to be at, here's where we're at. What do we need to add additional, what do we need to stop doing that might be actually costing us money? And that was a big one that I looked at. And then how are we gonna make that happen? Like what are the exact steps that we're going to do?
So a lot of times when I work with a gym, it's, you know, they'll come with, okay, well we're gonna do digital marketing. Okay, great, let's come up with the exact plan for that. How much money are we gonna spend on that? How are you gonna monitor the metrics? So we just break it down in even more detail. I like numbers a lot. If you can't tell from listening to me talk No ,
I love this. And in fact, I'd, I'd love to just throw something that, that I didn't prep you for. And that is, so let's say that a gym owner says, okay, I want to put a a down payment on an Airbnb. I need $96,000. Okay , 8,000 more per month and you know, take home or whatever to be able to do that. How do you from there build a plan out to help them get there?
Yeah , that's great. Um, 'cause I just did that last week with somebody actually. Yes . Not for a house , but they needed more money . So we look at current expenses , obviously where they are currently. Is there anything that we can do an expense audit and cut that and provide them an immediate right immediate boost in owner's benefit. Yep . But then, okay, you need an additional $8,000.
What are your revenue streams that you can pull the levers on currently? What do you currently have, right? If you're doing personal training, is there an opportunity for more? If you don't have personal training, let's talk about adding that and how to sell that. Are there specialty programs that your clients have wanted but you're not offering right now? Right.
And so we talk about how do we stack on top of or sell more of what you currently have? And then before we are done with that, what staff do you need to make this happen? Because you can't add $8,000 worth of revenue yourself and implement all of it yourself. And then taking into account the staff costs .
Okay, now you've added $8,000 worth of revenue, but you've added 2000 staff costs , so now we've gotta add more. Making sure they're getting what they want.
I love it. And the reason I really wanted to go deep with that is because when, if I said to a gym owner, how are you gonna make an extra $5,000 next year? Their answer is always gonna be marketing, but I'm just gonna market better. Right? But that's not it. And, and you know, the expenses, the staff costs , you have to figure all those things in.
And if you're listening at home or while driving, you might think, wow, this is complicated. But actually it's not. When you work one-on-one with a mentor and they're guiding you through it and asking the questions and clarifying, like, I always have to work with somebody else to pull this stuff out of me or else I just can't do it. Just pivoting to you for a second man.
So Layton is a marketing specialist at Tube Brighton and he gets on these calls and he helps people set up their ad accounts and gets their ads going and tweaks them , et cetera. Layton , how big, like how important is marketing to the overall solution when somebody says, I have a specific goal of making an extra $50,000 next year?
I think that's, that's a good question. The reason why I say that is because there's, it's , it's twofold. Uh, organic marketing pays, he's a , a huge role into it. 'cause if you don't build your avatar client and you're not marketing through organic marketing, that's , uh, that's a , that's a big issue because you're not gonna be drawing in the people.
I get so many people in like, we get so many people in the door saying, oh , I've seen your Facebook post, I've seen your Instagram post, or whatever. But then I think the paid ads play a like a 50 50 role, you know what I mean? Okay. So, and it , with the paid marketing, we can reach new people. Mm-Hmm . Um , versus the , versus everybody that just sees your, sees your organic marketing over and over and over.
But I really think it's an individual per gym as far as like how, how big of a role it plays. So, but for us it plays a pretty significant role. We do, we do. Well, she does the organic marketing, I do the paid , paid ads. Um, and I keep like upping our ad spend budget .
Okay .
But we're seeing , we're seeing r we're we're , we do , we're seeing an ROI on it. So I don't Yeah . I I don't see why , you know, like you could, you could, you could make $50,000 a year and if you spend 10,000 on ads and you're getting an ROI on the 10,000, I don't see what the problem is.
Yeah, exactly . It's an investment when you know what you're doing, not at expense. It makes sense.
¶ Leveraging Time and Financial Freedom
So I'm, I was about to ask you guys like what are your biggest points of leverage to, to buy back your time and, but I think one of your, your biggest levers is each other. It really sounds like you have a very complimentary working relationship. I mean, Jolene, not many people come on here and say, I love systems and you know, here's my husband who loves marketing. Right.
Would
You guys agree with that? Like, do you lever each other?
I think so, and I think one of the important parts is that we reassess the things that we like to do in the business frequently. Right? So when he came, when he left the military and he came back to working in the business, there were things that he wanted to work on. And then I realized that they weren't being enjoyed very much.
So we did a reassessment and said, okay, these are the things you love and that you wanna work on. These are the things you don't love and you wanna work on. So let, let's find somebody to take them on. And the same thing for my roles, right? Like every six months I'll sit there and I'll say, do I still enjoy doing this? Yes. I'm gonna keep doing it.
Oh, very cool. Very cool.
So I think while we leverage each other, it's also that reassessing what we're doing. Is it still working? And are we still the best person for it in our business? Because that might not always be true.
And what if it's not,
Then somebody else needs to do it.
You hire somebody,
Right. Or one of, or we'll swap it, right? So for example, you know, the most recent one is some of that organic stuff. Yep . Right. I just naturally will talk to people. It's something I'm good at. Something that he doesn't wanna do from an organic marketing standpoint. He's really good at the ads. I'm not. So we might, we might swap that out now . I'll never take the ads from him because that would not work.
just, you know, full, full disclosure, Leighton is one of two or three people that work on ads from my gm and I would never take that from 'em either. So I don't get that. Yeah,
No , I look at it and I see numbers and while I love numbers, I don't love them in, in Meta's background. So
Yeah, I get that. Okay. So you are each others' leavers . That's good. How else, like what are some other big levers that you can pull that, that creates time and financial freedom for you? It seems like personal brand might be one. Jolie.
It is. Personal brand for me , um, has made a lot of connections. And I think that that's the biggest one. I resisted doing personal branding for so long. Everybody kept saying, you need to build your brand, you need to build your brand. I was like, no, I'm just gonna post my kids on Facebook. Nobody cares about what I do.
And then realizing that people saw what I did and they made a connection to it and they realized that they could leverage something from me too. And I know that sounds horrible, but that's really how we build. That's how you build things, right? You, you leverage connections with other people in the relationships. So from those connections, we've been able to make investments that allow us to have more time, right?
So while the real estate is time consuming, it also provides us a source of freedom, right? Like, he might do five hours a week, but they can be whenever, right? So we can go to our kids' sporting events, we can be there at their school. We can show up when we need to show up. And I think circling back to when we talk about work life balance, that's the biggest thing is that freedom of time.
Like I'm not sitting here saying I don't work a lot, but I work when I wanna work and I work around the things that are important to me.
How integrated are your kids in the business?
They, well they're employees of the business. First of all. They actually do some work
, literally. Yeah .
Literally our employees in the business. My teenager does some social media and my kids , um, are part of pictures and marketing and things like that, but they're there all the time. So my son is favorite thing is to come and do math on the whiteboards at the gym. My daughter loves the rings. They are her favorite thing to do. So they're there frequently.
They like being there because we've made it a happy, positive place for them to be. Um, and my my teenager trains with us for sports.
They're , they're also a big part of your personal brand, I think too, Jolene, like I look at your stuff , uh, on Facebook because I, I don't really look at Instagram and what I see is like, here is somebody who can do so much. And on days when I'm feeling like overwhelmed, like I, I can't keep all these balls in the air, I'm like, man, Jolene's doing way more than me. Keep paying attention to Jolie . Thank you .
Yeah, yeah, sure. In , in fact, you know, I didn't even think of the integrating the family into the businesses until you brought that up. But this summer we were cutting grass at one of our buildings and , uh, my brother-in-law goes by and he is like, ah , sucker , you're out here on a hot day and you're cutting the grass. And my son turns to me and he says, how many hours a month do we work at this place?
And I said, I don't know, three. And he is like, how much do we make a month? And I said, $12,000 . And he's like, so $4,000 an hour is what we're making to cut the grass. Yep . Oh, I got it. Okay. .
I love it. I love that story.
Yeah. So it was just like to see that teenager brain kick over , like ah , right. Would you say that your kids are aware that they're part of the business or like working in the business with you?
Yeah, so it's funny story. We're actually driving to school the one day and talking about the businesses. And my son, he's seven now, but I think he was six when he brought this up, said, so if we buy more gyms, we get to make more money. Right? Mom said, well, boom , yes , but there's a lot more work that has to go into that. He's like, but we make more money. Right?
And then now they recently they want to open their own business within this one. So they wanna have their own things where they sell to people coming into our business , um, to make money for themselves. Yeah . For cakes.
Yeah. They , they , they cake , they want to bake cakes inside the gym.
Maybe on the way out of the gym is when I buy the cake .
Yeah . But it's there . I do
Product market fit. I mean, that's perfect, right? By the way, if you're not following Jolene on Instagram and Facebook, you need to do it because her son especially is like, brilliant. Like this, this kid is one day gonna open three brain business because he is like three times as smart as the average person. So that's awesome guys. What I'd love to hear is just kinda like, what is your weekly schedule?
Has that just kind of like organically evolved or are you planning this out ahead, writing down a schedule, and then just like following it?
Yep . So I actually , um, way long time ago the schedule was a mess. So this all came why I'm good at this from being a mess to begin with. I started planning my weekly schedule and because of all the different things we do, I had to allocate certain periods of time to each thing. I can move back and forth things pretty quickly, but it, it's just annoying to do. And you lose time.
So Monday is a day where I go do an athletics class at my kids' school. Um, it's a fun thing. I I just do it for them. And then I have the rest of the day to have meetings with staff. It's dedicated to my one gym business. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I dedicate to two brain mentoring. But between very specific hours. Mm-Hmm , .
Um, so for example, Tuesday mornings I start at 5:00 AM uh , my time because I work with gyms in Europe and I want them to be able to do the same things that I say, like when you're home with your kids, be present and not have to be at home doing a call with their child. So I do the 5:00 AM calls for them. Wow. I love that time of day. I might be weird with that, but I love that time of day.
And then Friday's my catch all day. And I think this is where I've, the biggest system that helped me is having that, okay, if I didn't get anything done, if I need to meet with somebody, if there's something that came up that catchall, even if it's only a couple hours, it allows me to go in the weekend and be present with my kids and family. So it, it's three hours that I don't touch at all.
How do you, how do you avoid distractions? This is for both of you. So you're , I know what it's like to be a mentor. You're on this call when, when we hang up, you're gonna look at your phone, there's gonna be 12 texts, you know, three slacks, maybe not, 'cause I'm also on this call, but like five emails. How do you avoid distraction when you're doing one thing? Yep .
So turning things on do not disturb number one thing, the one thing that I, I wanna trial at home, and I know this has been brought up before, is they have those phone lock boxes . And so for somebody who might actually be distracted during the day at work, that might be helpful for them putting their phone in the phone, lockbox do not disturb on my computer.
And then just continually repeating to myself, these are the hours for this time. So if somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I need you to do this. I can do it then when I have it allocated for that. But that's how my brain works and I'm really good at doing it that way.
But does it still take some practice too ? Jolene , sorry to cut you off. Oh
Yeah, yeah . No, it definitely takes practice. And it's always that question again, if I say yes to this and change my schedule, what now has it messed up for me later in the week? Right? Like, what does that sick kid do? If I'm the one staying home from them, what do I need to shift everywhere else?
That's great. I think it's a really, really good tool that will help people get used to second order thinking. Like, what is the downstream effect of doing this? And you know, what Jolene said earlier was, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? I think that's a fantastic exercise.
Uh , so Leighton , you know, I think I've said this to you before, but I, I actually think that your superpower is really deep focus. Like, when you're focused on one thing, you're not distracted by something else. Like how do you, how do you do that? How do you stay on one field to play at a time and like partition your attention?
Uh , well, so I, I do have like hyper focus . Um, so a little bit of Asperger's, a DHD , um, so I'm just naturally, we'll say gifted that way. And I turn on my do not disturb. Um, but I also use an app to plan i my days and the tasks that I need to , uh, accomplish. And then they send me reminders. Mm-Hmm . . Um , so, and then everything else unfortunately gets blocked out.
Um, so like, like you said, I'll have 12 text messages, five phone calls, you know, 16 emails. But , uh, those come after those things.
And I'll say, go ahead , sorry. No, I'll say when he hyper focuses , even somebody speaking to him, he's not gonna hear it. And my, my son's very gifted in the same way too, but it , it is really like he tunes everything out around him.
I , I know a lot of entrepreneurs will claim, oh, I've got a DHD, but true, A DHD actually does come with that gift of hyper focus . Mm-Hmm. . Do you think that the other entrepreneurs who are saying like, I , I just can't focus, I I'm so scattered. Is it maybe just a case of them not being disciplined or what is
It? I would say discipline is, is a big thing, but also not being organized. That's , uh, that was for, for a while. That was my largest issue. Once I became organized, then I could hyperfocus on everything that I wanted to do.
Do you ever get tired when you're, when you're going from one area of focus? I'm for working on the real estate to I gotta fix the marketing from my gym?
No, because I do, I do have time blocks or I do one thing and then the next thing, but , uh, what was I gonna say? Yeah , I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember.
Do you , do you break up your day so that you've got like work, exercise, work, kids, et cetera ? Or is it just kind of like one long window of work and now you're done with work and you're onto working out or ,
Uh, no, it's, it is blocked. Okay . So it, it's work in the morning kids and then exercise and then work for, what is it , what is it, nine to nine to two 30, and then it's home with the kids and wife.
Love it. So guys, I mean I , we know that Jocko likes to say discipline equals freedom. In this case though, it's, it's less discipline, I think and more planning is what you're saying. Am I reading that right?
Yeah. Yes, very much so. And the acknowledgement that we do have three kids, which means especially this time of year, one of them is gonna be sick most likely every single week. And , and honestly, that is why , that's why I built that catchall time in there because I was getting so stressed out with losing that time and not having anywhere else to make it up with.
Uh , and that was causing a lot of anxiety for me. So that's why that specific block is in there.
Jolene , you've been doing this for a while and do you find that this actually gets easier as people become more successful because there's less stress? Or do they become more successful as they get more disciplined at blocking their time to do the work?
I think the second thing, yeah. Yeah, it allows more clarity of thinking too, because you're not trying to worry about five things at one time. You can focus on getting the one thing done you need.
What do you tell mentees? Like if , if they're just starting out and they're coming into the program, they're , oh , I'm so overwhelmed. I got all this stuff through . How can I do this work that you're giving me? Like how do you coach them into getting the work done?
We start with creating a schedule. They can work around and they still might be coaching 20 to 30 hours a week on the floor, but we've gotta find at least one block of time where they can set aside time just to work on the things they need to with no other distractions. And showing people how important that is through my own stories is really what's helpful for them.
¶ Time Management for Gym Owners
Yeah. Listeners, it's not released yet, but thanks to , uh, Jolene's experience and success in doing this, we now do this with every gym starting in January, 2024. The first exercise you will do is carving out the time to do the work so that we know that you can do the things that will make you successful. So thanks for that, Jolene . I mean that's , uh, it's, it's gonna really help a lot of gym owners, guys.
If somebody said they just, they ran into you at Starbucks, I'm a gym owner, I'd love to do all the stuff that you guys are doing. There just aren't enough hours in my day. Where would you tell 'em to start?
First of all, I'd tell 'em to find a mentor, right? That's what I tell everybody. Find a mentor , um, and then sit down and really look at what you are actually doing. Because a lot of times you get the screen report from your phone, there's six hours a day on your phone, seven hours a day on your phone. So a time audit of what are you actually doing?
Have a third party come in and help you with what do you need to accomplish? What are those main things you need to get done in order to make progress?
I think I think the , the annual plan is like a , like just the planning in general is , uh, a huge thing. 'cause like, I like to push forward about a thousand miles an hour and jump to the end of things. Like, I want all the, all the glamorous things before I , uh, plan and make it happen. Mm-Hmm . . So I think the planning is a huge thing too.
So before we sign off with Leighton and Jolene, I've asked her to get very specific. Uh , so she's gonna go step by step in how she actually plans her day to get all this stuff done.
So, and it might , this might seem a little bit long, but I sit down and I say, okay, I am working on these three things today, right? So I know Monday I work from nine to two 30 on my business, very specific, nine to two 30, nothing outside those hours because the rest of the time is devoted to my kids. So if I need to accomplish these three things, when are they happening in that time?
Well, from nine 50 to 1120, I'm at my son's school, so they're not happening there. My workout is before that, so it's not happening there. So I will very clearly on my calendar for the day actually draw in when I'm accomplishing three specific things I need to get done that day Tuesday .
And what happens if you don't get it done? I'm sorry.
Oh, no, I, what happens if I don't get it done? This is where the discipline comes in. Those are the things I have to accomplish that day. That means after my kids go to bed at night, I'll accomplish those things.
Wow, okay.
Yep . And I will say there are caveats, like if I'm sick, I'm not gonna make myself more sick by staying up, you gotta give yourself some grace. Yep . Tuesday, Thursday, I have a block from five to 7:00 AM for mentoring, and then on my calendar I draw out from 7:00 AM to eight 30 is when I get my kids ready and get 'em to school. Like, it's very, very specifically time blocked .
Um , and I just wanna make people aware that you can't be too specific on your calendar, right? I know people are like, oh, I'm gonna work from nine to two. Well, what are you doing from nine to two? What are you actually accomplishing? So then I might go in and from nine to one, I'm gonna do mentoring calls from one to two 30, I'm gonna work out from two 30 to three 30, I'm gonna pick my kids up.
And then the rest of the night is with my kids. So I get very specific with the hours of the day and what's happening through the whole rest of the week. So I know when I said, Friday is my catchall day, well , I'm still gonna write out what is happening during that time. I'm not gonna just leave it as an empty blank.
So whatever I didn't accomplish, because maybe a chick sick child was at home, I'm going to draw on my calendar. This is what I'm doing from nine to 10, 10 to 11, and so on. And for me, that accountability might write comes from seeing it there. Yeah. Okay .
And you might write that in like Thursday night or something?
Yes. Yep . I do everything the night before for the next day.
Oh, fantastic. So is this kinda like how you end your day? Do you reflect on, on what you've already done and , and make your plan for the next day?
Yes. Correct. Okay.
Yeah .
Yeah .
Incredible.
And all of that's kind of on an overarching calendar, but the specifics of like what's happening from nine to two, that's in my daily planner and I'm, I'm a paper person, I'm still old school with that, but those specifics are written there because if I put it on the Google calendar, it would be way too much for people.
Do you save like your, your past calendars, the stuff that you're done? I do. Do you just like stack 'em up? Do you , you could probably build a for out of them right now. Right.
I'm have a , a shelf, a bookshelf in my office at home that has them, but I also take notes in them. And so there's a table of content, so when I need to refer back to the notes, I can find them.
That's so awesome. I'm, I'm gonna start doing that. What I love to do is just like track words written. That's a really important metric. I know that I'm like mentally healthy. If I'm hitting 750 words a day, I know that my thoughts are more organized and I'm more focused. So that's the only one that I track. I also use Google tasks to check off as I finish things. And so I track those every week.
Like how many things did I actually check off? But you, you will find out like you're gaming the system a little bit, right? Like start call with Leighton and Jolene on time, check, you know,
,
I need some wins . Gimme , you know,
¶ The Importance of Planning and Inspiration
that is ,
It's very true though . And I think that's important though for people who feel like they're not accomplishing something. Put something in your checklist you can check off. Yeah. It makes you feel good.
Exactly. Oh , that's, that's an awesome little tidbit too. Okay guys , uh, thanks again for coming on and uh, yeah, we'll, we'll post your contact info at Two Brain , uh, and , and also your uh , Instagram link too. Jolene .
All right , perfect. Thank you.
Alright , well hey, thank you very much. I think this is actually gonna help a lot of people who just feel overwhelmed, like they can't do it all and they're sacrificing the business for the family or vice versa, or they're sacrificing their fitness for everything else.
You know, Leighton and Jolene are amazing role models to me and everybody else and to Brian , and if you really want some inspiration on how important this planning is and what kind of lifestyle it can provide for you, you can follow Jolene on social media and Leighton, if you can find him . Yeah,
Well I just recently opened my account to friends, so .
Okay, well that's great. Are you posting, like, this is me driving 14 hours straight from , uh, Colorado to Texas?
No , um, actually I didn't do that. It's, it is more of the kids and , uh, thoughts of the day, that kind of stuff to , uh, encourage discipline and , uh, things moving forward. Awesome
Guys. Thanks. Thanks so much for your service and your time.
No problem. Thanks for having us .