The Gym Owner’s Guide to Finding the Right Mentor

Now you are a fitness coach and you know the value of coaching, and you understand that if you have a coach for fitness or for business, you're gonna get where you want to go a lot faster. But choosing a mentor is tough. You , you want the right mix of empathy. You know somebody who's been there and accountability to keep you moving forward.

As an entrepreneur, a mentor's first job is to diagnose your largest problem and then show you the best, simplest, fastest solution for you right now. But that's actually the easy part. We use tools like the Two Brain Dashboard and the two Brain Growth Toolkit to make that diagnosis and the prescription really, really clear. The hard part is implementation. Now, you went to school, I went to school.

And at school our teachers have taught us that knowing the answer is the solution to any problem. But that's not true. You know this as a fitness coach, just knowing the answer does not get you results. Knowing that you should raise the rates in your gym won't make you profitable, right? You need to take action. Most people fail to take the hard steps and the risks and all the stress that's required to change.

And most of us get paralyzed by fear. And, you know, myths like grandfathered rates and these stories that we tell ourselves, just inertia. And we need somebody to break the big problems down into small steps. Help us get over our own internal barriers, and then stay with us while we execute on one little thing at a time. Now, you've seen the personality tests out there like Myers Briggs and Kolby and StrengthsFinder.

I'm sure you know those. They're interesting, but they don't tell us how to actually get the work done. So today I'm gonna give you an exercise to help you figure out the kind of mentorship that you need that's gonna actually get you results. Alright , here we go. So there are six steps to finding the best mentor that's gonna get you the best results right now. And I've, I've got this little worksheet here.

Uh , you can download it through the link below, but if you wanna just draw this on a piece of paper, you can do that too. Just pull out your pencil, draw, you know, two vertical lines. Two horizontal lines, and that's gonna create three columns. And at the top of one you're gonna write wins. The top of the second column, you write, coach. And at the top of the third column, you write lever.

And what we're gonna actually do now is work through this together. So the first step is, I want you to think back to a time in your life when you were proud of yourself. What was the thing that you had just accomplished? Was it sports related ? Did you get an A on your report card? Did you win the big game?

Did you win the spelling B, strike out the key matter hand in a project that you really love , make a painting? Or was it something you know that you accomplished outside of school? Was it something that you did in sports, of course. Or was it something you built a trio with your mom and dad, you know, whatever.

You earned admission to college, you completed a piece of art, you did a big project, you set up a window display your first retail job. What was it that you were proud of? Okay, maybe it was fitness based even. Did you hit a PR on something? Did you do your first competition? Did it happen in the military? Did it happen at home? Did it happen at work? You know , did you achieve sobriety?

Uh , were you accepted into your church list? These things in the first column under wins . Now, if you thought of more than one instance in your life, when you're really proud of something you accomplished, great. And if you can only think of one time right now, you know that's fairly normal, that's okay. So what you're gonna do is write that down in the wins column. Okay?

So let's say that, you know, I won the state championship. So for us, I mean that, that might be hockey or something else. Uh, maybe I'm gonna put down, you know, college acceptance that just happened with my son yesterday. And so I, I saw how proud he was to tell us about it. I'm gonna write that down. It's a great example. And I'm also gonna write down a senior thesis.

You know , I can remember back to being in college and turning in something that I was really proud of, okay? But I want you to use your own examples here. So, you know, go ahead and write down three things, five things that you can remember back in your life when you thought like, Hey, I'm proud because I accomplished this one thing. Okay?

Now, while you're thinking about that accomplishment that made you really proud, I want you to answer a couple of other questions. Who was your primary coach? Okay , uh, who was the person that helped you get there that told you what to do? But also who was your model? You know, who were you trying to emulate? Who were you trying to be like back then?

Who was the first person you called up and told about your victory? You know, who were you proud to share the victory with? Uh, who was the person maybe you were trying to impress with the victory? Right?

Now, there could be more than one person, but I know that in every single win that you've had that you were especially proud of in your life, there was a coach or a teacher or a mentor or a model that you copied and you wanted to follow. So I want you to think about the names under that second heading, which is coach.

So, you know, maybe , uh, you won the state championship , uh, under, you know, coach McGrath, okay ? You don't have to think about what made Coach McGrath so amazing right now. You just have to think about like, who was the, the mentor or the coach to you at that point. Um, college acceptance. You know, who was the person that you were most proud to tell? You know, and it could be your parents. Absolutely.

Um, I'm gonna write down Ms . LaRue , a guidance counselor, okay? And , uh, that senior thesis project, while Dr. Wingate really helped me out with that, I didn't wanna do it at all and he kind of coached me to, to break it down, okay? Whatever that is, I want you to write down who your primary coach was. Like who, who you were trying to impress or who you were happy was impressed when the end result came. Okay?

The next thing that I want you to do is look at the list of names in that second column, right? So these are the people who have mentored or coached you to successful action in the past. Maybe they didn't have the name coach or they didn't have the title of mentor. Maybe you paid them, maybe you didn't. Maybe they were paid by somebody else, whatever.

But these are people who actually got you to do something and be successful at it, right? They're not just somebody who taught you something interesting. They didn't write the your favorite book. They're not the host of your favorite podcast. They're the people that actually got you a result that you're proud of.

So now what I want you to do is, under that lever call and that third call , I want you to write down what was their coaching or leadership style. And you don't have to be formal about this. Just write down the first word that comes to mind. Were they like an authoritarian? Just do this. You know, were they a listener? Were they a cheerleader? Were they Socratic? Right?

Like they just asked you questions and tell , you came to the answer yourself. Were they a drill sergeant? Literally, or , you know, figuratively. So write down one or two words to describe the lever that they used to help you get to that result. Okay? So for me, you know, coach McGrath was a real authoritarian. There is no room for doubt. Do this right now. Show up at this time.

If you don't make practice, you're benched. You know, stuff like that. The college acceptance though, she was more of a questioner, you know, almost like a therapist. You got this high school kid, he doesn't know what he wants to do. Both of his parents are teachers, you know, his grandparents are farmers. What do you wanna do? Uncles work at the steel mill.

You know, just continually asking questions until it came to me what I thought I wanted to do. And then, you know, Dr. Wingate was more of a scientist, but I'm also gonna add questionnaire there too, because he was a great teacher and he , he led you to the answer by asking you better and better questions. Okay?

But whatever that is, I want you to write that down for yourself and you , it doesn't have to be my terms, you don't have to think about like Socratic dialogue or anything like that. Just put the first word that comes to your mind. Now, what I want you to do is go down this list of names and look for commonalities, which names and levers appear more than once.

And you've probably been guided in your life by different types of people and different things worked at different times. When you were in the fifth grade, every teacher was an authoritarian and you know, maybe that helped, but maybe there was one really kind teacher that kind of took you under their wing.

You know, when I'm thinking back to, to Coach McGrath, what's funny is that while we won the state championship, it was actually one of the assistant coaches on the bench, the trainers that I bonded most closely with. His name was Mark. And I can remember, you know, as a little kid, I was brand new to hockey.

The other kids were a few years ahead of me, and I kept like going offside and you know, we'd be bringing the puck down the ice and the rapid blow the whistle. Chris, you're offside again. And I happened like three times in a row and the , the , my teammates were getting and the head coach was like, what are you doing? Get on the bench.

And it was actually Mark that came over to me and he's like, Chris, do you know what offsides is? And I said, no. So I was getting upset and frustrated and paralyzed 'cause I didn't know what I was doing wrong. And he, he pulled out like a dime and a nickel out of his pocket. And he's like, okay, you are the nickel, the dime is the puck.

When the dime goes across the blue line first, you're good when you go across the blue line and then the puck comes across the blue line after you, that's offside and the ref blows the whistle. Oh, got it.

Okay. So what I'm actually gonna do here is I'm gonna change, I'm gonna cross off, you know, the longer I think about this, it wasn't really Coach McGrath, he got us to the championship, but it was Coach Mark that helped me do the thing that made me proud that got us to the championship and his lever was explainer. Okay ?

He didn't explain by handing me a rule book or reading me a rule book, he hand explained it to me by taking two dimes or a diamond , a nickel out of his pocket and saying, here's how this works. Alright ? So he's a good explainer, meaning that he was good at breaking things down into language that I understood and telling me point by point . Okay? So that was his lever. So I changed that.

The next thing that I want you to do though is like, identify what these levers are in common. Okay? Or like, do you have the same coach or the same mentor in three different places? Maybe? And I want you to circle the , the things that these people had in common, because this is gonna tell you a lot about yourself, like what you respond to. A lot of us think we need this drill sergeant mentor, right?

And, you know, maybe that works for a little while, but long term you wanna find people who do things the way that have always worked for you. So for me, like questioner, oh boy, that's a good one. You know, that that's something that people have had in common when they're coaching me in the past. And another one is like somebody who's scientific.

Okay, that's good because, you know, I, I wanna be able to take 'em seriously. I want to know what they know, what they're talking about. They're not just guessing or making things up. But another great one for me is explainer. Like somebody who knows the topic so well that they can answer my questions, but also break it down into tiny little steps. They're not just reading me the rule book.

They're not just, you know, repeating something they heard on a podcast, they've done it and they've done it well enough that they can break it into tiny steps for me. So, you know, that's what works for me. That's what I look for in a mentor. Now, what we need to do next is to, we found the common levers we need to find the expert, okay? Find the mentor.

So you have to start off with asking yourself, what do I wanna achieve next year? Okay? And then dig deeper. Why do I wanna achieve that thing? Well, I want to, you know , get my gym to $300,000. Okay ? Why? Well, because I wanna be able to take home at least $70,000 myself. Why? Well, because if I make 70 KA year, I'll feel like I'm contributing to the family, and we're not just living off my wife's income.

You know, I'm really sharing a personal story myself here. Now, you know why? Well, honestly, I, I feel a little guilty that she's bearing all the burden. While I have no problem with, you know, her being the primary breadwinner, I know that she kind of hates her job. And I feel a little bit guilty because I love my job, but I'm only making a third of what she makes. This really happened , right?

This is like , uh, 1999 for me, okay? So that's why I wanna make 70 KA year, and for me to take home 70 KA year, I the gym needs to make 300. Okay? Great. You know, and you , you might say something like, I need 300 gym members next year. Why? So the gym makes money, why, you know, et cetera , and you just go down that trail, but you gotta get to your root motivation here.

So now you wanna say, okay, well who has actually achieved this specific thing? Okay? You wanna identify some people who have achieved your specific goal, not necessarily the people who have done it the way that you think it should be done. So for example, you don't just wanna say, I need 300 members. I'm gonna find somebody that has 300 members at their gym.

You need to go through the exercise of actually asking yourself why. Then you can say, oh, I need to find somebody who has made 70 KA year, take home from their gym because they, you know, wanted to be or carry more of the, the financial load at home, or something like that, right?

This is a really important point because in the fitness industry, we often chase after the tactical experts instead of the people who are truly successful. We think like, oh, 300 members is a way to make money. I've solved it. So we pay the marketing agency or whatever to help us get to 300 members, but we miss our actual goal and we need to talk to the person who will make us successful at the real goal.

The goal that you might have to dig a bit to get to, and you know, what happens a lot in the fitness industry is it results in people who aren't actually successful at anything making money as experts by selling their advice, by helping you chase the wrong goal. Okay? So here's, here's a great example. Unsuccessful gym owners selling marketing secrets or like doing business coaching, right?

Maybe they're good at marketing themselves, whatever, but you know, their gyms still failed. So you wanna list two or three people in your industry who have achieved your actual goal. Now, hey, a great place to start is on this, run a profitable gym podcast. Listen to the guests. Have they achieved what you wanna achieve? You know, listen to their lifestyle right now, reach out to them on Facebook.

Hey, what's your lifestyle like? Ask them questions. Go in gym owners united.com. These are 10,000 of the, you know, the best gym owners in the world. There's other Facebook groups too. You know, we filter gym owners united.com for personality. Basically we want humble, helpful people in there because, you know, when I started looking for a mentor in the gym space, I couldn't find any of those people.

You know, every like expert or business coach in the gym space was kind of a jerk. Like really pushy with sales and I didn't wanna be successful like that. And so I wanna surround myself with people who are successful, but who are also humble and helpful. And so you can reach out to those people in gym owners united.com if those are the kind of people that you wanna work with. Okay?

Now the next step is to call the expert. The only way to find out if the expert can get you results is to call 'em . So the next key here when you're looking for a mentor is you don't just want somebody who's been successful themselves, okay? Like that's necessary but insufficient to be a good mentor.

You know, it's like seeing a fit dude on the beach who really can't help other fit , uh, other people get fit, he can help really fit people get fitter, but he can't help somebody who's a beginner start to get fit. It's the same with a lot of mentors. And so you have to find out like, can this milch mentor actually help me get where I wanna go instead of just like telling me what they're doing? Okay?

So ask him or her how they would approach your problems. Ask how they have overcome your specific challenges, right? Which is a deal breaker a lot of the time. Does that person possess the levers? All of these things that are necessary to actually guide you to getting your best result , right? Um, the things that you know have gotten results for you in the past, or are they just selling a tactic?

Hey, get 30 leads, whatever the best mentor that you find it , it might not be me, it might not even be one of the 55 professional trained mentors on the two brainin team, but there's only one way to find out. Started by booking a call with my team. It's free. And you know, we might choose each other. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And look, I firmly believe that every coach needs a coach.

If you don't have a coach, it's gonna be really hard to convince your clients that they need a coach. That's true for fitness. It's just as true for business. If you really wanna have a successful anything in life, a coach is the person that's gonna be your objective.

I , it's gonna be the person that guides you there, that shows you the shortest path, the easiest path that gets you there quickest and helps you achieve more than you ever thought possible. Hopefully we can be that for each other, but I hope this exercise guides you into picking a mentor so that you can grow your business and help more people.