Mentorship FAQ: Coop's Got the Answers You Need

How will your model work? For me? The answer is that we're a one-on-one mentorship practice. And so while we build similar systems for every gym, like systems for marketing systems for sales retention, everyone is tailored. And so that means that we give you a course with curriculum and templates, and then we also assign a mentor to work directly with you and make the changes. The hard part about turning your gym around or taking it to the next level isn't knowing what to do.

It's really filtering all the information, creating time and space to actually get the work done, avoiding the overwhelm and then taking the information and translating it to your specific gym . So before Two Brain , there really was no model for a CrossFit affiliates or even Micro gyms. And so we built this model that allows us to be a little bit flexible. Think of it as kind of a paint by numbers where your mentor can show you like, here are the lines, here's what we're trying to build.

And then help you paint your own work of art in your gym. For example, we might give you a staff playbook and we'll say, here's the template, here are all the parts that you need. Here's some text from my gym or from Chris's gym or from another mentor's gym, and let's go through it and tailor it. And our goal is to have it done by Friday so we can deliver it to your staff at the staff meeting on Saturday.

Here's how we're going to deliver it, here's how we're gonna have that conversation, et cetera. You can go back and forth with the mentor about setting up your policies, but the point is just to get your business out of your head and onto paper. Now, when I did this exercise on my own, it filled up an entire weekend and I had to revise it, revise it, revise it for years. You are going to be able to do this in about two hours because you're starting with a template, but it'll still be your own.

So it doesn't matter what kind of micro gym you own or what kind of coaching business you own, that's your method. Your business model can be built one-on-one with a mentor regardless of what your method is. And of course, you know about half the gyms that we work with are CrossFit gyms. Over 30 of our mentor team are CrossFit affiliates, but we also work a lot with bootcamp gyms, strength and conditioning gyms, even franchises like nine round, F 45, stuff like that.

And the key is that we can tailor your systems to your business, but we want you to build systems so that you have a business. The next question is, what if I don't like my mentor or it doesn't work out, it's not a perfect fit. We've been doing this for a very long time, and our mentor match process is really amazing.

That said, about one time in a hundred , uh, situations change or maybe you find like, I don't really sync with this mentor, or, Hey, the time zones are making it tough to work with this person. Or, you know, is there somebody that can , um, just hold me more accountable or , or, you know, teach a different way or something like that. When that happens, we're happy to make a mentor switch. Now keep in mind that like your mentor is not your virtual assistant.

Your mentor is a successful entrepreneur in the fitness business who has dedicated some of their time, usually about five or 10 hours a week to mentoring other gym owners. So this has to be a perfect fit for them too because , uh, you know, they're not just in this to get paid. They're really in this to serve and to help you.

They're not here to do the work for you, but they are here to lend their expertise, their story, their experience to the, the systems that you're going to build through Two Brain . So that's, you know, why it's okay to change mentors because they're still going to be working through the systems with you. They're still gonna be using the same tools, but their personality might be different, and we can always work to optimize that.

Personally, I like to work one-on-one with a mentor for about two years, and at that point we're almost like friends and, and I'm not really feeling as accountable to them as I did when I started. So two years for me is kind of like my limit with one mentor.

The beautiful part about Two Brain is that with over 60 mentors worldwide, you can shift mentors and your new mentor will know all about your business, all about your progress, what you've done, what you haven't done, all of your metrics, and you're not starting from scratch. You know, you're , you're 80% of the way there already, and now they're just gonna have a different approach in delivery and accountability and stuff like that. The next question is, what if I don't see an roi ?

The average return on investment in mentorship at Two Brain , uh, depends on which program you're in, but even in our most basic program called Ramp Up , the average ROI is 2.4 times what you invest. So for every dollar you put into Ramp Up , you get about $2 40 cents back. The average R ROI on growth phase is about 13 x . So the average person in growth puts a dollar in and gets about 13 back. The real difference here isn't that one program is better than the other.

It's that results compound from mentorship. And so what that means is that when you start building the systems in Ramp up , you start to see some gains right away, but those gains get bigger and bigger and bigger. The longer you run those systems, the longer you run that marketing, the longer you use that sales strategy, the longer you're employing those retention systems.

And so in Growth phase, while you're working on new stuff for marketing, sales and staff Ascension, the stuff that you built in Ramp Up is actually continuing to work for you and compound. And that's the beautiful part about this program is that those things can keep working for you, keep compounding.

For many, many, many years, the really the only people in the history of Two Brain who haven't had a positive r ROI on mentorship, and I'm only talking within the narrow window that they're within Two Brain , everybody has a positive ROI on mentorship if given enough time, there's maybe one or two people who have said like, I'm not getting a good r o ROI here. That is always because they didn't have time to actually do the work.

In one case, the person came in skeptical and like really just wasn't , uh, convinced before they started. They they shouldn't have started, we shouldn't have let them in, in, in the other cases it's always been, I just don't have time to execute on this. And so that's why in the intake process now, we ask , do you have 30 minutes a day to actually work on your business or can you find that 30 minutes? So that's basically like how ROI works on mentorship.

Any mentor that I've always had has always given me an amazing r roi . What's changed is not the amount of roi, it's the time window required to reach that roi. And that has always depended on how much work focus and dedication I can put into the program. Next question, how long will it take to turn my business around? We get this a lot. Honestly, about 10% of the people who come into two Brain haven't started a gym yet.

They wanna start on the right foot, they want to get clients in the door and they wanna be cash flow positive on opening day. But most gyms coming into two Brain have been open for a while . Like me, the founder said, I'm just gonna figure it out on my own. And you know, now they, they want some help. Maybe they're doing really well and they want to take it to the next level. Maybe they're struggling and they need to fix it. In general.

A good rule of thumb is that every mistake that you make when you open takes about six months to fix. So if you're off on your pricing, it's gonna take about six months to completely fix that. If you're off and you don't have an on-ramp process, you know, we can fix that in under a week. But in general, people come in with about three big problems. They have a staff problem, they have a pricing problem, or they have like a , a marketing problem or I guess a retention problem too.

And when we're fixing those things, these are big changes. But again, like we're, we're fixing something that's been broken for several years and we're gonna try and fix it for decades that we don't have to fix it again. So that can sometimes take a couple of months. If your business comes in and you're struggling with marketing and with sales and with retention and with systems and with staff, then yeah, it's gonna take a little bit longer to fix those things.

But you can rest assured knowing that those things are getting fixed. If you're not actively fixing those things, they never just fix themselves. They always just get worse. The next question is, my business is running well, I don't think I need a mentor. You know, the the concept of like what well means in this industry is really undefined.

You know, if things are going okay and you're breaking even some people will say that they're doing well if you're getting paid a little bit, you know, but it's not enough to sustain your lifestyle. Some people will say they're doing well, I even know gym owners who will say that they're crushing it and they're not even taking a paycheck home, or they're making like less than $50,000 a year. It's time that we redefine what good means in this industry.

And to me, you're doing well if you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year or more and you're not working a 60 hour work week at your gym. So if we start with that definition, some people will still say, ah , I think I'm doing pretty well, but there's always a next level. So , uh, for example, if you're making less than a hundred K net owner benefit per year, you , you can use a mentor to get there faster. So if you're not making any ground, then you're probably never gonna get there.

Uh, but you know, you can use a mentor to start that process, start building momentum and get there faster than you would on your own. If you're already making 50 K a year, then the jump from 50 to a hundred is much faster with a mentor's help. Because when you buy a mentor, you're buying speed. If you're already over a hundred k net owner benefit per year, you still should be thinking about what happens when you can't make income anymore.

So that's all income, but what you actually want is wealth, because even if you're doing well right now, making a good income, you can't work forever. Time is actually the more valuable asset. And so it's really hard to leverage, like, what can I do right now that will set me up from the time when I'm not gonna want to train anymore? So for me, there's always another level and it's just a matter of being coachable enough to ask like, what comes next for me? That's why I'm always hiring mentors.

You know, I I have a pretty massive worldwide business right now, and I invest more in mentorship now than I ever have because I need to, I see opportunities to grow myself as a leader , uh, as a , you know, a marketer, as somebody who can get better results. You know, a as a husband and father, all these things. The more you look for ways to improve yourself, the more you'll find and the faster you and your business will grow too .

So there's never a point where I think anybody says, I don't need a mentor. Uh, the most successful people in life generally have like more than one. The next question that we get a lot is what makes two brand different from all the biz coaches out there? You know, I'm sure you've heard of this before where you , or you've seen like a 50 million ads about I will flood your gym with 30 leads, I'll get you 30 clients and stuff. So Two Brain was really founded on, here's what I need to fix my gym.

You know, the early blog don't buy ads.com, which I ran for three and a half years was just letters to myself. Like, here's how I screwed this up, here's how I'm fixing it, here's how it's working. And it was almost like tracking a science experiment where, you know , I wanted to make sure that I was doing things right and, you know, changing one little thing at a time. So what Tube Brain does is it brings a decade of experience , um, into like filtering data and knowledge.

And instead of just hyping and selling like the next greatest thing, we actually test everything and make sure that something is working and figure out the best practices before we give it to our clients. And that empirical approach is really , uh, rare. Like in business coaching, we certify and train our mentors. So the way that it works is a client enters two Brain , they go through Ramp Up , they work on their growth, they get to a hundred k net over benefit a year.

They , um, get into our Tinker program and start building their wealth. And at that point they might decide that part of their legacy is to help other gym owners. And so they apply for our mentorship program, and then the mentorship program takes about six months to complete. They are trained on how to actually mentor people, they're certified and then they're trained on like our model. So there's a lot that goes into it.

And every single mentor that comes through the Two Brain Mentor Certification program is highly skilled. They're tested. Um, they, you know, they work with people so they're not just being thrown live to clients and they're drawing off a massive dataset. You know, the old days a decade ago where you could say, do this, it worked for me, those days are gone. And now we need to know like, does this tactic or does this specific strategy work for everybody?

You know, and , and what are the, what are the limit cases where it doesn't work? So , uh, I like talking with data, I like talking with Science Two Brain is an empirical program, which means that we're always improving, we're always auditing, we're always making sure that we're putting just the best out, and we're also filtering. So the other value of a a good mentor is that they filter out the stuff that you don't need.

So you don't have to sort through this massive pile of ideas, options and pick out what's gonna work or like test it yourself. But the mentor's gonna do is say like, just do this exact thing right now. You can worry about that later, or that one's not a good fit for you. So that's really like how we're different. I have a lot of skepticism about , uh, business coaches and mentors, and I've hired many, many over the years. I've spent well over $2 million on business mentorship and coaching.

And my skepticism is always , uh, grounded in the fact that like they're telling you how great everything is in their life, but they never actually tell you what their mistakes are. And so it's something that we're very particular about is sharing, like, what are the biggest mistakes that I've made that the mentors have made?

Because I want you to know, like these are real people who've had to go through the struggle themselves, come out the other side, and now they're successful so that they can actually help you too . So over time, because this is an empirical scientific process, the program just keeps getting better and better and better. When I started off, I was just teaching half a dozen other gym owners what I did.

And then out of that half a dozen, you know, one or two emerged who took what I had built and just refined it a little bit, did it better and got a better outcome. And then they taught the next generation, which was about 50 gym owners and that generation , uh, you know, one or two rows above everybody else took the systems, improved them even further, and got better results.

And so now, you know, 10 years, 10 generations into this, the results that our clients are getting are results that either took me 10 years or they're so great that I could never have even dreamed they were possible when I started my gm . You know, we're producing millionaires two to three every single month now. There were no millionaires in fitness when we started.

And so it's really this process of constant improvement, constant evaluation, proof data and empathetic mentoring that keeps producing better and better and better gyms that are really on the cutting edge of success. So here's, here's maybe the biggest question or the one we get most often. You publish all this stuff for free. If I took all of your books and all the free materials and all the emails and just did them, I would be successful, right? Like there's no secrets out there.

And we do try to make our free guides even like clearer and clearer and clearer. So you have action steps, you know, follow this checklist and go. But the reality is that without that objective viewpoint, right, that that person who's our friend, like they're close to us, they care about us, but they're not us and they're not in our gym, without that person helping us, it is very hard to take action on stuff.

It's easy to procrastinate on doing the hard things or it's easy to delay because like, I don't know how to set up Facebook ads, I don't have time to learn it, I'm not gonna do it. That's where really having a mentor helps. And you know, earlier I said like, I've got this massive company. I still have mentors. I work with some mentors one-on-one. I work with some mentors who are specialists or coaches , uh, like for a very short period of time.

And , um, I'm always trying to like improve because what's holding me back is the same thing that holds every entrepreneur back. It's me, right? It's themselves. It's, it's like what they don't do. So it's really common in entrepreneurs right now to like try and read 50 books a year. But after reading those 50 books, most of them couldn't tell you how their business is better or how they're actually making any more money. And that's the difference.

A mentor forces you to take action, holds you accountable, removes roadblocks, and kind of shows you the next level, right? Their inspiration, their empathy, their knowledge, their experience. And quite often, you know, when you're faced with like, okay, I I don't really know what to do today. Or you find a week has gone by and you haven't done anything to grow your gym. It's not lack of knowledge, it's overwhelm . And so a mentor cuts right through that.

And that's why we say when you buy mentorship , uh, you're buying speed. Ultimately. It doesn't matter how smart you are. You know, my lowest point in gym ownership came at a point where I said, okay, look, I think I'm smart enough to figure this out, right? I'm hardworking enough, my gym is still not growing. There must be some other element. And that element is mentorship. In fact, it's possible to be too smart.

And second guess every single thing, you know, become really cynical as you're like trying to find fault with all the potential mentors out there and you eventually never get anywhere. In fact, if you look at like free public Facebook groups, you'll find there are people in those groups who are very cynical, they're critical of business mentors and business coaches, and they hate everything. And their own gym isn't doing well. And that's not because they're correct.

It's because they can't get outta their own way. And they're usually very smart, very intelligent people who just cannot trust people enough to , um, allow like their gym to grow. And , um, that's really at the root of it. So here's a common concern. I don't wanna raise my rates and , uh, you know, it's really common because in the, the gym industry, most gyms are charging way too little.

You know, there, there are some outliers who are charging what coaching is actually worth, but more than , uh, more than the average are charging little. And they're doing that because they found their passion for CrossFit or Pilates or whatever at another studio that was charging too little. And the founder of that studio got their passion for Pilates, CrossFit, jujitsu from somebody else who was charging too little.

And so you started this kind of downward cascade of pricing and really a coaching business should be charging, you know, quite a bit more than it is probably above $250 per month. Now, a lot of you are gonna feel like, whoa , I'm never gonna charge that. But the reality is, like, that should be your a r m, your average revenue per member. And so the way you boost your average revenue per member up is you give the people who want more, more, and you charge for that.

So when people come in to ramp up , we never ever tell people to raise their rates and ramp up. It doesn't matter what their rates are, even if that's like the easiest, obvious fix, we don't tell them to do that because it's, it's challenging for them. Instead, what we wanna do is help them prove to themselves that they're worth more first. Okay ? An investment in, in mentorship is an investment in your business, but it's also an investment in yourself.

And one of the things that you need to do is understand your worth. We wanna prove that to you. So what we generally start off with is adding a valuable service. Maybe it's to the front end of your business, maybe it's to your existing clients, whatever. Maybe it's like an upgrade option and , uh, letting you coaching you to sell that to five people. So we craft it with you.

We make sure that you find a lot of value in it, that you would pay for it yourself if you had the money and we help you make it a compelling offer. And then you offer it to people. And when you sold five of them, this light bulb goes off like, whoa, people actually will pay me for this. They want it, it's valuable to them .

And once you've done that, now you've kind of reached a new level of maturity as an entrepreneur and you're a couple levels away from actually raising your rates and feeling confident. The last thing that we want you to do is put you in a risky position where you stand to lose something through mentorship.

We wanna make some gains first, create some margin, some buffer so that when it is time to make a more drastic change, like a price increase, for example, you have the buffer to to do it and withstand it. And it's not gonna be like scary because it could potentially be fatal, right? Eventually, a lot of gym owners do wind up raising their rates, but I don't want you to do it until you're comfortable.

I don't want you to do it until you've proven that people will pay up for a higher rate, for more value, and you've proven it to yourself. That's really the key here. Finally, how do we choose your mentor? So when you book a call with our in intake team, Matt or Cody or Ashley, we'll talk to you about your goals and they'll ask you about your metrics and they'll talk to you about your history. But what they're really doing is assessing your personality.

And these are experts who have gotten really good at this over the years. And so what they'll do is say, this person will respond best to a high-touch, high accountability mentor, or this person is very smart, but she gets in her own way. And so she'll respond best to a mentor who simplifies things down to one fine point and says, just do this and text me by Friday or, or whatever. Like, there's a thousand variations here.

And so the intake team, if they invite you to mentorship, will also make recommendations to our success team. And so you'll, you'll , um, get through your intake and the success team will take over from there and they'll say, okay, you know , based on your preferences, your personality, where your business is and what type of coaching you respond best to, we recommend one of these two mentors.

Or they might have a , a clear and obvious favorite and they'll say, I recommend, you know , Gary or, or Jolene or whatever. And then they'll book you on , on a call with them. Now, of course, as I said earlier, you can always change, but the client success team knows so well who is gonna get the best results out of you? That I would trust their judgment a hundred percent of the time. And , uh, it's very rare that people switch mentors in two brain , but it's always an option.

If somebody wants to, that's not a problem. So those are the most common questions that we get about mentorship. You could apply these questions and these answers to the best mentors in the world. That's why Two Brain is the best and largest mentorship practice for gym owners in the world. Because we take these best practices that very few people are doing and apply them to the gym industry like nobody else is. I hope that helps. This is run a profitable gym . Do you have other questions?

Just go to gym owners united.com. That's our free Facebook group. We deliver value in there every single day, and you can ask us anything. Take care .