Last week I gave you a pop quiz. I asked: between two affiliate owners, one with 40 clients and one with 400 which was more successful? The truth is, you really can’t tell unless you have additional metrics such as length of engagement, average revenue per member (ARM), and profit. 

The average CrossFit gym is only going to maintain around 150 members at any one time. This means that each client must be paying enough to cover the fixed costs associated with your gym, pay the coaches, and allow the owner to make a profit. If a business does not generate a profit, it is not a successful business! 

In this episode, we talk to Josh Price about what it takes to increase ARM. Once you begin to create a meaningful career with your business, it is time to diversify your revenue streams and to create a less fragile business. These are the beginning steps to increasing your ARM.

Jay Williams is a senior mentor at TwoBrain. He owns two CrossFit gyms (one in California, one in the UK) and his mentoring style is different than mine.

Jay is a problem-solver. He's direct and transparent. He's never rude or abrasive--I don't think I've heard him say the F-word more than three times in four years--but he gets right to the point. He's huge on accountability. He doesn't believe in wasting time.

Every year at the TwoBrain Summit, I like to put Jay onstage as the last speaker. It's too easy to attend a seminar and get educated, or even motivated...but then go home and take no action at all. That is NOT what TwoBrain is all about. That's not what mentorship is all about.

Mentorship means mapping a path, and then leading you down it step by step. TwoBrain has done that for over 500 entrepreneurs now (not including the kids on last week's show!) and we're now attracting entrepreneurs outside the gym industry: from body shops to bakeries.

What kind of mentorship do you need right NOW?

This year at the Two-Brain Workshop, we're running a day camp for kids. It's called "Founder | Farmer | Tinker | Thief," and the kids spend the day creating their businesses, doing CrossFit, shooting videos, building obstacle courses, solving Escape Rooms, picking and preparing food to eat, doing Ninja Warrior challenges, launching catapults they build, designing their brand, playing Minute to Win It ... and there's even more.

The week culminates in a one-hour "Shark Tank" where the kids, aged 8-12, pitch their business to a local entrepreneur. They invite their parents; we record the whole thing. It's pretty incredible. One of the media experiences the kids do each week is a podcast interview.

In this episode, 5 of the FFTT kids share their new businesses with Two-Brain Radio.

Today we are joined by Jason Rule of Driven Nutrition. Jason has been a serial entrepreneur for over 20 years, and originally got his start by creating a software company. Soon after his passion for health launched him into purchasing GNC store and bursting onto the health supplement scene. After becoming frustrated with the current supplement offerings, Jason started his own supplement line, Driven Nutrition, focusing on outreach to CrossFit affiliates and serving their customers. Today we will discuss more about how he started his company, how it has grown, and what is next for Driven.

"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.