"As soon as you plant a flag, people will start shooting" - Mel Siff, author of Supertraining, told me that nearly 20 years ago. Innovators and entrepreneurs are often forced to deal with the bad habits of their competitors. When owners are scared, they do shady things: they email clients at other businesses and offer them deep discounts. They copy blog posts and videos. They even make fun of other owners online--can you imagine a more transparent cry for help? Original ideas are sometimes ridiculed by jealous competitors. Out of ideas themselves, they throw rocks because it's the only tool they have. And even businesses serving a similar niche can compromise their core values when they're scared of losing money. But take heart: no competition is forever. And if they're copying, criticizing or complaining, it means you're winning.

For this episode, I asked members of the Two-Brain family to share their best advice on dealing with local competition. I took the first ten responses, and our producer compiled them into a very entertaining and helpful episode. These are the opinions of their contributors, not necessarily Two-Brain. They're uncut and--in some cases--very raw. But on this topic, like all the others, I believe in radical transparency.

Every six months or so, I like to answer questions I'm asked by you, the listener or reader. but I've always shied away from publicly posting my responses to the "what do YOU do?" questions, because it feels like hubris.

But recently, a friend pointed out that people ask Tim Ferriss and James Altucher those questions because they're looking for a model. No one--not even Tim--can do all of the 270 ideas he published in Tools of Titans. No one can follow every person he writes about in Tribe of Mentors. We ask Tim "What do YOU do?" because we're looking for a model; we want to try on his life to see if it fits. We want to know where to start.

I'm also a huge believer in setting very clear, visual goals, and then working backward to build a plan. I did this for my clients for 20 years at the gym, and I've done it with my mentoring clients for 6 years now. But sometimes goals and "perfect days" are hard to visualize without context; until Bannister broke the 4:00 mile, no one had ever done it. As soon as he did it, several others did it within months. It just took someone to show them it could be done.

Today we are joined by Michael Collette, Michael Scott, and Brendan Sheehan. Each of these guys are involved in CrossFit in some form but are also founders of Waymark Wealth Management. Today we will be having a very valuable conversation about how exactly you retire from CrossFit and what steps you can be taking now to ensure you are prepared!

"But Cooper HATES lead generation, doesn't he?"

We get that a lot. I teach retention first, then sales mastery ("Help First"), then Affinity Marketing. I do it this way because many entrepreneurs are too focused on the magical appearance of digital marketing, and they lose sight of the low-hanging fruit.

But when you're great at retention; when you've practiced your conversion strategy; and when you deliver an excellent service, by all means: open the floodgates!

Enter TwoBrainMarketing.com.

 

Finding energy in your work can be the key to unlocking your full potential. Trevor Mauch struggled with this for a long time, until his mentor taught him that energy-producing work is the key to unlocking your full potential. Because of this, he encourages everyone to do what is called an Energy Audit. This is done by first grabbing a piece of paper and drawing a line down the middle. Then,  list all the activities in your life that give you energy and fulfillment and all the energy draining activities on opposite sides of the line.